Productivity on Sam's Blog

ADHD Prioritizing

Wed, 20 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The ADHD Prioritization Problem

Okay, so let’s talk about prioritizing when your brain basically treats every task like it’s either THE MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER or completely invisible. Because that’s what ADHD prioritization feels like, right? Either something has grabbed your attention and it becomes this all-consuming hyperfocus target, or it might as well not exist.

I’ve been trying to figure this out for years now, and I think I’ve finally found something that actually works for my chaotic brain. It’s not perfect—nothing ever is with ADHD—but it’s gotten me out of more than a few “oh shit, I was supposed to deliver that yesterday” situations.

The Formula

The formula is actually pretty simple: Impact - Effort = Importance Importance + Urgency = Priority

But like most simple things, the devil is in the details.

Let me break this down because when I first wrote this little equation, I thought I was being clever, but it took me months to actually understand what I meant by my own system.

Understanding Impact

Impact is supposed to be straightforward—how much does this thing matter? But ADHD brains are terrible at estimating impact because we’re either catastrophizing (“if I don’t respond to this email immediately, everyone will think I’m unprofessional and I’ll lose my job and end up homeless”) or minimizing (“this is probably fine, someone else will handle it”).

So I had to get really specific about what impact means. I use a 1-3 scale:

Impact 1: Nice to have, makes things slightly better
Impact 2: Meaningfully improves something important
Impact 3: Critical for major goals or prevents significant problems

The key insight for me was realizing that “important to someone else” doesn’t automatically make something high impact for me. My manager might think it’s critical that I update that spreadsheet, but if it doesn’t actually move any needles that matter, it’s probably a 1.

Rethinking Effort

Effort is where ADHD gets really weird, because our effort estimation is completely shot. Tasks that should take twenty minutes somehow expand to consume entire afternoons. Meanwhile, complex problems that should take days sometimes get solved during a random burst of hyperfocus.

I’ve learned to think about effort not in terms of time, but in terms of mental load:

Effort 1: I can do this without much mental energy, maybe even while doing something else
Effort 2: Requires focus but doesn’t drain me
Effort 3: High cognitive load, will leave me mentally exhausted

Here’s the thing about the Impact - Effort calculation: it’s designed to surface the high-leverage activities. The stuff that makes a big difference without destroying your brain. Impact 3, Effort 1 tasks are golden—they’re your quick wins that actually matter.

But ADHD brains love to procrastinate on Impact 3, Effort 3 tasks. They’re important but hard, so we avoid them, which makes them more urgent, which makes them more stressful, which makes them feel even harder. It’s a vicious cycle.

The Urgency Reality Check

That’s where the Urgency factor comes in. I use a 0-3 scale:

Urgency 0: No particular deadline
Urgency 1: Should be done soon-ish
Urgency 2: Has a real deadline that matters
Urgency 3: On fire, needs to be done now

The Importance + Urgency = Priority calculation is basically the Eisenhower Matrix, but with ADHD-friendly modifications. Because here’s what I’ve learned: urgency is often artificial, but sometimes it’s not, and the ADHD brain is terrible at telling the difference.

Someone sending you a “quick question” with a red exclamation mark doesn’t make it actually urgent. But a production outage that’s losing the company money? That’s legitimately urgent.

Finding the Sweet Spot

The magic happens when you start looking at tasks that are high importance but low urgency. These are your Impact 3, Effort 1 or 2 tasks that don’t have artificial deadline pressure. They’re the investments that pay off over time, but they’re exactly the kind of thing ADHD brains will ignore until they become urgent.

So I try to batch these during my hyperfocus periods. When I’m in that sweet spot of mental energy and attention, I’ll look for the high-importance, low-urgency tasks and knock out as many as I can.

The other thing this system does is help me say no to things. If something is Impact 1 and Effort 3—low importance but high cognitive load—I can confidently decline or delegate it. My brain wants to treat all requests equally, but they’re not equal.

Reality Check: It’s Not Perfect

Now, does this system solve ADHD prioritization completely? Hell no. I still get distracted by interesting problems that score low on both impact and urgency. I still procrastinate on important-but-boring tasks until they become urgent. I still occasionally hyperfocus on reorganizing my task management system instead of actually doing the tasks.

But it gives me a framework for making decisions when my brain is too scattered to think clearly. It helps me recognize when I’m avoiding something because it’s hard versus avoiding it because it’s not actually important. And it makes me feel slightly less guilty when I choose to work on the interesting problem instead of the “should do” task, because at least I’m making that choice consciously.

The Real Insight

The real insight, though, is that prioritization for ADHD brains isn’t just about choosing what to work on. It’s about choosing what not to work on. About recognizing that our attention is finite and precious, and we need to be strategic about where we spend it.

Because the alternative is letting urgency and anxiety drive all our decisions, and that’s a recipe for burnout and constantly feeling behind.

So yeah, that’s my system. Impact minus Effort equals Importance. Importance plus Urgency equals Priority. Scale of 1-3 for everything. Simple enough that I can calculate it in my head when I’m overwhelmed, complex enough that it actually helps me make better decisions.

Just don’t ask me to prioritize writing about prioritization. That’s definitely a high-effort task that I’ve been procrastinating on by hyperfocusing on the system itself.

Another Day, Another Tool, Another Dopamine Hit

Fri, 13 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Another day, another productivity app. Another JavaScript framework. Another note-taking system that’s going to finally, finally be the one that gets my chaotic ADHD brain organized.

I know this cycle intimately now. I’ll be struggling with some aspect of my workflow—maybe I can’t keep track of my tasks, or I’m losing important information in the noise, or I just feel like I’m not being as effective as I could be. And then I’ll stumble across some new tool, some elegant solution that promises to solve exactly the problem I’m having.

The demo looks perfect. The interface is clean and intuitive. The features seem designed specifically for someone like me. I can practically feel my future self thanking me for discovering this game-changing solution.

So I sign up. I spend an afternoon configuring everything just right, importing my data from the previous tool, setting up integrations, customizing the interface. I feel productive and organized and optimistic about how much more effective I’m going to be now that I have the right tool.

For about two weeks.

Then the novelty wears off, and I start noticing the limitations. Maybe the mobile app is clunky, or the search function doesn’t work the way my brain expects it to, or it doesn’t quite fit into the rest of my workflow the way I thought it would. The initial excitement fades, and I’m back to feeling like I’m fighting against my tools instead of being helped by them.

And then I see a post about some new tool that promises to solve exactly the problems I’m having with the current tool, and the cycle begins again.

I’ve been through this so many times now that I could write a field guide to productivity tools for ADHD brains. Task managers, note-taking apps, calendars, time trackers, habit builders—I’ve tried them all. Multiple times.

Obsidian, Notion, Roam Research, Logseq, RemNote. Todoist, Things, OmniFocus, TickTick. Clockify, RescueTime, Toggl. Forest, Habitica, Streaks.

Each one was going to be “the one.” Each one had some feature or philosophy that seemed perfectly aligned with how my brain works. Each one generated that same burst of dopamine-fueled optimism.

And you know what? Some of them actually were genuinely helpful, for a while. The problem isn’t that these tools are bad—many of them are excellent. The problem is that I keep expecting them to fix something that can’t be fixed with software.

The ADHD brain craves novelty. It’s wired to pay attention to new and interesting things, and to get bored with routine and familiarity. This is actually a strength in many contexts—it makes us good at spotting patterns, adapting to change, coming up with creative solutions. But it’s a liability when it comes to consistency and routine.

We need systems and processes to manage our scattered attention and poor working memory. But we also get bored with systems and processes, especially once they become predictable. It’s like needing medication that stops working after two weeks because your brain adapts to it.

The tool-switching isn’t really about the tools. It’s about the dopamine hit of discovery, the excitement of possibility, the brief period where everything feels manageable and under control.

It’s also about hope. Each new tool represents hope that maybe this time will be different. Maybe this system will be the one that finally makes everything click into place. Maybe this interface will be intuitive enough that I’ll actually stick with it. Maybe this approach will work with my brain instead of against it.

And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that hope. The alternative is accepting that you’re just going to be disorganized and ineffective forever, and that’s not a healthy mindset either.

But I’ve started to recognize the pattern, and that recognition has helped me approach it more strategically. Instead of expecting any tool to be a permanent solution, I think of them as temporary scaffolding. Something to support me while I’m building habits or working through a particular challenge.

I’ve also gotten better at identifying which aspects of a tool are actually useful versus which ones are just novel. The shiny new interface might be what initially attracts me, but the boring features—like reliable sync, good search, simple data export—are what determine whether it’ll actually be helpful.

Mostly, I’ve learned to be more forgiving of myself for the constant tool-switching. It used to make me feel like I was flaky and undisciplined, like I couldn’t commit to anything. But I’ve realized that the experimentation itself is valuable. Each tool teaches me something about how my brain works, what kinds of interfaces and workflows feel natural, what features I actually need versus what I think I want.

The ADHD brain learns by doing, not by planning. We can’t just think our way to the perfect productivity system—we have to try things and see what works. And what works changes over time as our responsibilities shift, as our understanding of our own needs evolves, as the tools themselves improve.

So yeah, I’m probably going to keep trying new tools. I’m probably going to get excited about the next note-taking app that promises to revolutionize how I organize my thoughts. I’m probably going to spend a weekend setting up some elaborate system that I’ll abandon in a month.

But now I know that’s okay. The tool-switching isn’t a character flaw—it’s just how my brain explores the space of possibilities. The dopamine hits aren’t shallow and meaningless—they’re fuel for the experimentation that eventually leads to insights and improvements.

And sometimes, just sometimes, I discover something that genuinely makes my life better. Not permanently, not perfectly, but meaningfully. A workflow that reduces friction, an interface that matches my mental model, a feature that solves a problem I’ve been struggling with for years.

Those discoveries are worth all the false starts and abandoned setups. They’re worth the eye-rolls from friends who’ve watched me get excited about productivity systems dozens of times. They’re worth the nagging voice in my head that says I should just pick something and stick with it.

Because the alternative—giving up on the search for better ways of working—means accepting limitations that might not actually be permanent. And the ADHD brain, for all its inconsistencies and contradictions, is fundamentally optimistic about the possibility of improvement.

We keep trying because we believe things can get better. We keep experimenting because we’re not satisfied with “good enough.” We keep switching tools because we’re still learning how we work best.

And you know what? Sometimes that relentless optimism pays off. Sometimes the next tool really is better than the last one. Sometimes the experimentation leads to genuine insights. Sometimes another day, another tool, another dopamine hit is exactly what we need to keep moving forward.

Even if we’ll probably be trying something new again next month.