Difficulty with time management is common for an adult with ADHD. You may lose track of your time, miss deadlines, or underestimate on how much time is needed for a task. Some adults with ADHD may spend too much time on one specific task – also known as hyper focusing, that nothing else gets done. The difficulties can you leave you feeling, frustrated, and useless, however here are some steps to help you manage your time better.
Leave Time In Between Tasks – Try not to put all of your tasks close together. Leave 5-10 minute cushion between each task. This will help you finish up the previous task and start off on the next one.
Color-Code Your Priorities – Think about your current to do list and what you need to do first, second and third. Then color code your to do list according to the priority. You can use a yellow highlighter to color cod the morning task that are most important and a pink highlighter to color code the tasks that need to get done in the afternoon.
Eliminate Your Time Wasters – What takes your time away from completing tasks? Is it Facebook? Twitter? E-Mail? Then stop checking them so often. One thing that you can do to make it more difficult to check them is to remove them from your quick links or bookmarks and put them into a hard to access bookmark folder. While you will still check your Facebook or twitter, you will find that you will do it less.
Block Out Distractions – What is distracting you in your daily activities? Is it the phone ringing? Text messages constantly popping up? While I am working on an important project or task I put my phone on vibrate and let it go to voice mail and I will contact that person at later time. This helps me concentrate better.
Put Similar Tasks Together – For tasks that are related to each other, put them together. For instance, my work as an ADHD coach can be categorized into these core groups (1) writing my blog and upcoming e-book. (2) Coaching (3) marketing (4) administrative. I put together all related tasks together so there is synergy. If I need to make phone calls, I set aside time to make my calls. It streamlines my process.