To say life with ADHD is often chaotic is an understatement. 

Your attention is like a TV remote going rogue and switching channels whenever it wants. Executive dysfunction leaves your brain's circuits on their own, like an orchestra without a conductor. 

If each symptom is not problematic enough, navigating them all together can be more challenging than juggling balls on a unicycle while hanging from a tightrope.

All your symptoms likely create a deep desire for structure and order to reduce anxiety and bring clarity to your life. However, much like operating a leaky boat, the moment you stop giving 120% effort to fix the holes and keep the boat floating, the whole system collapses. 

There is no magic solution, but you can always find ways to increase the chance of keeping your structures in place for longer.

This article will cover how to think about system building and some general rules and principles for successful structures and systems. 

System Building with ADHD 

Building a system means designing your physical environment, digital presence, and social network to be compatible and supportive of your ADHD symptoms. Below, we will cover two of the main types of ADHD systems you can build. 

Internal Systems

Internal systems help to maintain clarity and order, organize your thoughts to reduce anxiety and overwhelm, and give you a sense of control over your life that's not entirely dependent on action. Examples of popular internal systems include:

1. To-do lists

Out of sight, out of mind. To-do lists allow you to see clearly what you have to do so you know what should be prioritized now. However, just listing 27 tasks will leave you overwhelmed, so you need to adjust the approach. 

A simple solution is to organize tasks by urgency (needs to be done today or tomorrow), importance (not urgent but aligned with long-term goals), and the remaining tasks (nice to do but not essential), which you can do once the tasks from the other two sections are done. 

To-do lists are no guarantee that you will get any actual work done, even if you have the perfect system. I’ve had weeks where my to-do list was perfectly organized, but I barely did 20% of what I was supposed to do. Still, the clarity it provides can reduce feelings of anxiety and overwhelm about what you are supposed to do, which makes you more likely to start. 

2. Calendar 

Calendars are the ultimate way to bypass distractibility and forgetfulness. They are especially great for responsibilities and events happening on a specific date and tasks that repeat weekly (university classes, house duties, etc). 

You only have to manually check them once or twice a day to see if something is upcoming, so you can add it to the urgent section of your to-do list. I know this is not a bullet-proof strategy because you can just forget and not care enough to check some days. 

For even better results, synchronize the calendar with reminders and alarms so you get a notification even if you forget to keep track. The more annoying and attention-grabbing, the better. This way, you don’t have a choice and must look at it no matter what. 

3. Journal 

Have you ever struggled to keep your attention because you randomly start to think about the book you’ve been reading earlier, the YouTube videos you were planning to watch, the small argument with a friend that’s bothering you, or anything else that’s trivial yet capable of capturing your focus?

Since self-control is impaired with ADHD, it’s very hard to create a wall between what you want to think about and the random thoughts about everything else going on in your life. This internal hyperactivity creates the feeling of being overwhelmed with a high amount of thoughts every minute. 

The best way to reduce how annoying and persistent those thoughts are is by giving them an outlet. It would be easiest if you could just talk out everything with your partner, best friend, or a few friends during a casual conversation. However, this is not always an option. This is where journaling comes in.

The type of journaling has more to do with taking all your thoughts and dumping them into pages instead of getting worked up and trying to make a well-written masterpiece out of them. This form of brain dumping using a journal can happen on a paper page, digital document, or over a voice recording. Try all of them once, and see which ones require less effort and feel most natural and effortless. 

It doesn’t matter what you end up writing. It could be random shower thoughts, topics you mean to research, hobbies you want to pick up, conservations you want to have with someone or something that is worrying you right now. 

Giving it an outlet means you’ve acknowledged it, making it less likely for the thought to keep annoying you constantly. The thoughts you have turn from background noise into the center of your attention for a short while. This form of active processing of information allows you to understand better what’s going on inside your head. 

Furthermore, the more you journal, the better you become at seeing patterns and connections between your different thoughts. 

For example, you can connect a journal entry discussing your low self-worth issues with another page full of ramblings on over-compensation and a third work on workaholism. Over time, you can see how they are all interconnected since feeling inadequate creates the need to overcompensate in multiple areas of life, including at work, which creates the intense desire to overwork yourself, even when it makes you feel miserable. 

What If It Doesn't Work In The Beginning?

All those systems in place sound nice in theory, but they don't always work out in practice. 

It's very common for people with ADHD to set up a digital to-do list or buy a bullet journal, only to completely abandon it in two days. The excitement and motivation for a new chapter in life dwindle to nothing soon enough, and you are back to zero.

What then?

Accept the setback and try again. The fight isn’t over until you win it. 

This sounds almost comically simplistic, but it's true. It's not a perfect solution, but the alternative is much worse. Trying to create a perfect system that will somehow always work creates an all-or-nothing approach. This is unnecessary pressure that can become unbearable at some point, making you quit any effort altogether. 

Realistically, you will make a customized to-do list and stick with it for three days. Then, forget about it for a whole week. Next time, in an effort to stay consistent, you will set up an alarm as a reminder to write down your tasks. This will work for a while before you forget to check your to-do list during the day. 

Eventually, you will get a whiteboard and place it right next to your desk or plaster sticky note reminders throughout the home. After a few weeks or even months, you will go from using a to-do list for three days out of every two weeks to at least three times a week. Some weeks, you will use it six times, and others, you will drop it entirely for almost a month because your life got shaken up and you lost your previous structure.

That's progress. Slow and painful but steady. You will get better, but not in a linear way. Forget about the "1 percent better every day" advice you hear from productivity gurus. Unless you isolate yourself and become a monk, this is not compatible with the chaos of life and your ADHD brain. 

It is all about trying and sticking with it, no matter what. It's not ideal or perfect, but it is better than nothing. 

I know you may get discouraged if you don't see results quickly enough, and your brain craves rewards in the near future. It doesn't help that everything on TV, social media, and at work sounds like you can get your life together and become a demigod of productivity, health, and happiness in six weeks. 

Unfortunately, real life is much more chaotic, unpredictable, and full of unexpected setbacks and challenges. That's a bummer, but don't worry about it too much. 

I know your hyperactive brain feels like an engine going at 200 km/h, and you feel the need to rush through everything, but you have your whole life to figure it out. For instance, using a to-do list for three days of the week after two years of effort is an amazing achievement, even if it took some time and the end result fell short of your expectation of doing it every day. 

External Systems 

If you have a trusted friend, family member, coach, or community support, an external system guarantees you will get reminders and be pushed towards action because of social pressure. For example, it's much easier to rationalize to yourself how skipping one gym session won't hurt, but skipping is non-negotiable if you have a gym partner because they are waiting for you. 

As a result, external systems keep you motivated, accountable, and available for the most important tasks by asking other people to help you. Finding a trustworthy partner can be tricky, so having an external system is less accessible for some people but much more reliable if you find the right person. 

External systems are so valuable because no matter how much you try, some tasks will continue to be a pain in the ass due to executive dysfunction and other ADHD symptoms. Admitting it isn't a sign of defeat but merely being candid about your strengths and weaknesses. 

Examples of common external systems include:

1. Body doubling

For some people with ADHD, having another person next to them turns them into a productive machine. 

The presence of other people creates pressure to work, and there is always the fear that you can get caught doing nothing, which creates urgency to get started. Body doubling can work with a close friend who's also working and studying simultaneously or by merely going to a place with many other people who are also trying to focus, like cafes and libraries.

2. Accountability Buddies 

The premise of accountability buddies is to have a person who's guaranteed to call you for a few minutes every day or at a set time during the week to check up on your progress. Similar to body doubling, the desire not to disappoint and the clear and short deadline you have until the meeting create an urgency to get started with your work. 

More than that, you can discuss long-term goals and how you plan to reach them. This dynamic works best if you are pursuing the same or very similar goals because you can share learning experiences and common struggles. 

3. Outsourcing

Outsourcing can be personal, like asking your partner to deal with taxes, papers, and other unpleasant tasks and asking favors out of friends (as long as you give back to them equally). It can also be from a paid service, like paying for your house to be cleaned every two weeks, buying takeaway food when overwhelmed, etc.

The point of outsourcing is to save yourself time and effort. Not because you are lazy and don’t want to do it, but simply because something in the activity is not compatible with the way your brain works. For instance, leaving it to your partner to do the shopping or going with them makes it almost impossible to end up with snacks and favorite sweets in the basket that you were trying to cut from your diet. 

How To Approach Structures for ADHD

Tying 10 minutes of HIIT cardio, a hot shower, and 15 minutes of meditation is as much of a routine as waking up, spending half an hour on your phone, and chugging two cups of coffee at the last moment before you need to rush for work. 

Similarly, your system for productivity could involve working 12 hours of doing everything by yourself or working 4 hours and delegating non-urgent tasks for the future or to other people. 

Just having repetition and structure in your life is not enough. We don't want to just make decisions. We want to make smart decisions. This is why we want to sit down and really think about how we use our time and energy every day. 

I think you can make smart decisions if you radically accept your ADHD and life circumstances, practice self-awareness, and consciously prioritize before committing to anything. Those are the core principles behind building smart systems and meaningful structures in your life. 

Radical Acceptance

Acceptance of your ADHD traits, quirks, and symptoms is at the core of system building. You need to act without shame, guilt, discomfort, and awkwardness when designing your life to be more ADHD-friendly. If you deny your condition and try to diminish the impact of your symptoms, you are handicapping yourself. 

There is nothing wrong with being different and having strategies others don't. ADHD is officially labeled as a disability, and there's a legitimate reason why it is considered a mental health disorder. While it's not healthy to fall into a victim mentality, you shouldn't deny yourself the necessary accommodation and support either. 

There shouldn’t be shame if you stop a conversation to take notes because you'd otherwise forget what was just said. You shouldn't feel ashamed to pay extra for sliced fruits and veggies because they'd otherwise rot in the fridge. Leaving a task for tomorrow because you feel tired is a smart choice, not an act of laziness, which should make you feel guilty. Delegating tasks to others, even if they should be easy, is not a sign of weakness. 

Self-Awareness

After radical acceptance comes self-awareness. 

You build a system to resolve a difficulty or to make sure some problem is prevented from becoming a huge one. This requires you to know the severity of your symptoms, under what circumstances they become more harmful and destructive, in what contexts they show up, and what your main traits, beliefs, drives, and motivations are. 

Throughout your lifespan, you will naturally get hunches, feelings, and strong intuitions about what is going on, even without actively thinking. After all, your mind is a problem-solving machine. However, you can always pick up reflective habits, like journalling on paper, taking digital notes, or using voice recordings to speed up the process. 

For example, you can only stop binge-shopping if you reflect on the thousands you've spent on pointless items. Motivation to improve your sleep is more likely to come if you directly compare how you feel with 9 hours versus barely getting 6 per night. You can come up with easy-to-make recipes only when you track your meals and see you miss eating four times a week due to being too tired to cook for 30 minutes. 

Prioritization

Meaningful structure requires prioritization. 

One where you intentionally create a hierarchy that guides your effort in the right direction. This is necessary because your intuition for prioritization may suffer due to executive dysfunction, impulsivity, and cravings for stimulation. They can all blind you to what's truly important. 

Furthermore, many people with ADHD are perfectionists, so their "all or nothing" approach often clashes with prioritization. Why should you pick one activity or hobby over another if you can do them both? This idea sounds very appealing, but it's not sustainable.

Certain habits and systems in your life are almost second nature - showering, using Google Calendar, going for a walk in the morning with the dog, playing sports with your friends, etc. You don't have to put much effort into doing them, and even if you stop, it's relatively easy to get back into it. They are already a part of your identity, so you merely return to what you usually are.

However, when trying out new things, you actively try to change who you are and how you behave. This disrupts the already established patterns and connections in your mind, making it much harder to change how you behave. For this reason, each new habit, like meditating and working out, requires a lot of attention and effort until it becomes part of who you are.

What makes this even harder is that for some people, the magical fusion of habits with your sense of self never happens. Many people with ADHD report how they can't effortlessly sustain habits no matter how much time has passed. Even if habits won't suddenly become second nature, it is still worth prioritizing them at a time because the habit will still be easier to do. 

For all those reasons, prioritization requires you to focus on one positive change at a time. Even if you can technically handle more, you have a much higher chance of succeeding with one or, maximally, two activities and habits at a time. 

A more minimalist approach reduces the chance of burnout and overwork, which carries over to other days and increases the chance for you to always have energy and time remaining with no excuses for your current priorities. 

Okay, you got the point. You must prioritize and focus on what matters the most at any given moment. But how do you clearly see, compare different options, and decide what matters the most?

Learning To Prioritize By Using The Right Criteria 

Here are three criteria to consider when trying to prioritize across multiple options:

1. Universal value - If everything is in chaos, you want to start with habits and systems that make multiple ADHD symptoms and aspects of your life better at once. Eating well, sleeping enough, being active, and getting enough sunlight are all habits with enormous benefits for every aspect of your life. Comparatively, strategies like the 5-second rule, breaking down tasks, and doing memory exercises are all useful, but their value is highly specific to one field with relatively less carry-over.

2. Relevance to ADHD symptoms - Having ADHD means you experience all symptoms to some degree, but which ones cause the most trouble in your life will change from person to person. If you are an introverted, career-orientated person, improving distractibility may be the most important thing for you. In a different scenario, if you are a very extroverted person, improving emotional dysregulation and rejection sensitivity dysphoria can be more useful. 

3. Certainty - Every action you take costs energy, time, and sometimes even money, which is why you want results. An action, habit, routine, or system is more likely to lead to a positive outcome if you see other instances where it has worked. For anything health-related, this is easy because you can look into the research behind habits like strength training, cardio, and mindfulness. For self-care and productivity tips, you can look at personal testimonies in neurodivergent communities because not all mainstream strategies are ADHD-friendly. 

Those three metrics can help you to establish what's important enough to prioritize. However, each metric will have a different value depending on your circumstances. 

If you are just starting with ADHD management and self-care in general, begin with habits and systems that bring universal value. This means improving your diet, sleep, and activity level. 

For most advice, you can say, "Each person knows best what to prioritize," but that's not the case for those essentials. They are the core of health for a reason, and there isn't ever an excuse to skip them.

Once you have the basics covered, you can start to pay more individual attention to ADHD symptoms, which create the most challenges, setbacks, and mental health issues. Once you have a specific symptom you wish to prioritize, you can select strategies most likely to work. This way, you can get certain results for what would create the biggest magnitude of change in your life. 

For example, you are doing fairly well with your sleep hygiene, eating habits, and physical activity. You are in your early 20s, so you want to build your career to get qualified for excellent high-paying companies and have more options if you lose your job. This means you'd want to find ways to maintain motivation and focus and reduce action paralysis when learning new skills independently. 

No matter which option you choose, focus on it entirely and try to put everything into the background for a bit. With ADHD, you can do more by doing less. The more simple and accessible your system is, the easier it becomes to stick with it no matter what. The less you have on your plate, the more you can put your energy into a single task without worrying about anything else. 

Key Takeaways

Talking about system building and structure can sound vague and complicated. But it doesn't have to feel so restricting, convoluted, and intimidating. So, here is a short breakdown of how all those concepts flow together.  

Learn to accept your ADHD and the consequences of your symptoms, no matter what. 

Observe your everyday life and see the ADHD symptoms causing the most trouble. 

Choose a symptom as a top priority and find useful digital and physical tools.

If you have the option, consider paid services, like therapy and coaching.

If you don't, ask friends for help or find people online for accountability.

Combine the system you are building with useful habits and routines.

Keep putting your effort into the single area until you get used to it. 

Move on to the next priority once it becomes easier to manage. 

Don't be afraid to return to previous goals if you regress. 

Repeat until life happens, and you quit for some reason.

Don't overthink the stop and dwell on what-ifs.

Try again.

All of this is true not only for the systems you build but also for your habits, routines, and any other actions aimed at managing your ADHD and making life better. 

You will inevitably abandon systems and routines, get sucked into the chaos of life and forget, be forced out of your commitment due to unexpected events and new problems, and so on and forth. The point isn't to be perfect every day but to wake up most days and find the strength to pick right up after every time you stop.