How to Buy the Perfect ADHD Planner #251
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How do you choose the perfect planner? The one that will solve all your ADHD woes…
In this episode, we’re discussing:
All the brands of planners I have tried (the list is long),
The two major mistakes people with ADHD make when choosing a planner,
How to differentiate between your calendar and to-do list for optimal planning,
Questions to help you assess what your perfect planner needs,
And why even the best planner won't solve everything… without the right skills!
If you have a stack of planners gathering dust on your shelf, this episode will help you rethink your approach and find a system that fits your unique brain and your family’s lifestyle.
PLUS: We're celebrating with a special birthday sale! 🎉
1) Grab the pdf for my simple Weekly Planner for only $5.00
and/or
2) Jump into the Daily Planning for ADHD Moms course for a $50 discount with code BIRTHDAY
Snag these deals by December 17th, 2024.
Together, let's build your external brain system so you can manage all the details of mom life with confidence and ease.
Tune in now and start 2025 with a fresh, effective planning strategy you’ll actually use!
lINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
What if you could learn an easy, 3-step system for organizing your day, sorting through your to-do lists and keeping your commitments?
What if you had a group of other ADHD moms to hold you accountable week to week?
It's all possible with Daily Planning for ADHD moms. Figure out your life in a way that makes sense for both mom-life and an ADHD brain. Join us today! bit.ly/adhdplan
***Grab the coupon code above before you purchase!
Patricia Sung [00:00:00]:
I bought a planner for the first time in probably 5 years. How did I know that this was the right planner? Let's discuss. Are you overwhelmed by motherhood and barely keeping your head above water? Are you confused and frustrated by how all the other moms make it look so easy? You can't figure out how to manage the chaos in your mind, your home, or your family. I get you, mama. Parenting with ADHD is hard. Here is your permission slip to let go of the Pinterest worthy visions of organization and structure fit for everyone else. Let's do life like our brains do life, creatively, lovingly, and with all our might. When we embrace who we are and how our brains work, we can figure out how to live our lives successfully, and in turn, lead our families well.
Patricia Sung [00:00:53]:
At the end of the day, we just wanna be good moms, but, spoiler alert, you are already a great mom. ADHD does not mean you're doomed to be a hot mess, mama. You can rewrite your story from shame spiral to success story, and I'll be right here beside you to cheer you on. Welcome to motherhood in ADHD. Hey there, successful mama. It's your friend, Patricia san. I love a new office supply. They make my heart happy.
Patricia Sung [00:01:23]:
I love the stickers and the pens and the bedazzling and all that stuff, and it's totally distracting from my actual job of planning, but it doesn't change how much I love it. So I have tempered back my love of purchasing the new things and focused on really what do I need to do for the planning. And if I have time, I can decorate it. Great. But if I don't, it's okay. Sometimes you need the happy dopamine of a cool new sticker, but I'm also okay with just the planning part now that I've gotten used to it and I've gotten better at it and it's gotten so much easier. So So today, I'm gonna take you through the 2 major mistakes that people with ADHD make when they are choosing their planner. And then what are the things you need to think about in order to choose the planner that is right for you? But, like, how did I know this was the right planner? Like, given that I have not bought a planner in 5 years, I have been using basically an Excel spreadsheet that I have templated out to be, like, what I want it to be.
Patricia Sung [00:02:12]:
And it's worked great because you know what? I had bought all the planners. I used to use the school planner when I was a kid. I've bought the $10 one you can find at TJ Maxx or HomeGoods. I have bought the Erin Condren, the Horatio's, the Plum Planners, the Rocketbooks. I've done the bullet journal. And where I landed was the Excel spreadsheet really worked for last few years. Like, the way that my life was set up, it worked. But I had found myself in the last couple of months not using the system I had in place.
Patricia Sung [00:02:42]:
And at first, I was like, I am a teacher of planners and I'm not using my planner. And I realized that, like, I had gone to the point where, like, most of my routines had solidified where I didn't need to have them written down anymore, which is, like, the goal. That's the goal. I made it to the goal. I made it. Ta ta da. So, like, a lot of my personal stuff had gotten sorted out. And, like, I don't have to write down do laundry.
Patricia Sung [00:03:05]:
I just do the laundry. I don't have to write down the meal plan. I do the meal plan. It's like, I'm not the best at it, but, like, it's good enough. You know? But my work stuff has had a lot of shifts in the last couple of months with my team changing and all of a sudden, like, the system that I was using wasn't really fitting with the season that I was in. And I was noticing, like, I've got a lot of post it notes here and, you know, list scrabble scrabble there. And I got my ClickUp task and all of a sudden I was like, oh, this isn't quite working. So what do I need to do to adjust my system to fit the season that I'm in? So what prompted me to buy a new planner, given that I've just been using my Excel spreadsheet for quite some time, is that when we were at the retreat, one of the mamas brought her planner.
Patricia Sung [00:03:52]:
I fell in love because I realized it hit all the things that I need in a planner, and I had yet to find a planner that hit all the boxes. That's why I designed my own, and I've been using it for 5 years. And then I saw the Hobonichi, and the angels sang, and the sky opened, and the light shone, and I was like, I think this is it. Now I won't know until next year if this works. So I will report back. I will give a part 2 of the planner. But I wanna talk you through, like, how did I figure out, like, this was worth buying? It is worth changing my system that had gotten a little off kilter to move to this system. Like, how did I know that this is worth buying? Because spoiler alert, the perfect planner is the one that you're going to use.
Patricia Sung [00:04:37]:
I am not gonna tell you to buy one specific planner in this episode because everybody needs something different, and you are gonna need different things in different seasons. The way that I set up my day when I had preschool pickup and drop off in midmorning midday, and my day was chopped up into, like, a bunch of small chunks, which is honestly not how I work the best. Like, that was a different way of planning than now where both my kids are in school, but I have a lot more client meetings. Like, I need different things, and it's okay to choose different things in different seasons. And it's not that you're doing something wrong, and it's not that, like, oh, wow. You're just such a screw up that you can't stick with the system. Like, sometimes the system isn't meant to be forever. Sometimes the system has to change because you've changed or your kids have changed or your life has changed.
Patricia Sung [00:05:20]:
And that's okay. What we're gonna look at right now is where are the two places that most people get wrong about planners and why they don't work so that you can actually choose the one that will fit what you need. So here are the two things that people with ADHD get wrong when they go to choose a planner. Number 1, your calendar is not a to do list, and your to do list is not a calendar. Your planner brings both of these things together to make the plan, but your planner is neither a calendar nor a to do list. It is a combination of the 2 to bring the plan together. So how do we differentiate these in our heads? A calendar is the list of things that you have to do at a certain time. It also probably includes where you need to be, but the whole point of a calendar is that you have to do this thing at this time.
Patricia Sung [00:06:14]:
It is not changeable. It's not shifting around. The calendar tells you exactly where you have to be and when. That means that this is something that gets filled out in advance, and then it pretty much stays the same. Yes. You're gonna have some things change around, like, yes, maybe that doctor's appointment gets moved over here. But generally speaking, like, once you put the thing on the calendar, it's gonna stay there or maybe get moved, like, once or twice because there was some kind of emergency. But, like, generally speaking, the calendar stays the same.
Patricia Sung [00:06:40]:
On the other hand, your to do list is what you would like to do. And there are things on there that you have to do, but they are activities that can happen at any time. There is no required moment in time where you must be doing that thing. In that case, it would be on the calendar. The to do list is a list of things that you would like to do that you can change when they happen. It's constantly changing. It's constantly shifting. It's going to be changed by your priorities and your values and, like, what's going on and, you know, whatever pops up that day, that's going to change.
Patricia Sung [00:07:13]:
So we take these two things. The calendar that is a fairly static list that is not gonna change much, and your to do list is the list of things that you'd like to do but they don't have to be done a certain time. Then the planner is the combination of how are you going to make all those things happen based on what you have to do and the things that you would like to or need to get done at some point. They come together into the plan for the day. So our planner is filled out in a more like present moment timeline. The calendar's been filled out. We've known about that doctor's appointment for weeks or months. The plan is made not long before the plan happens.
Patricia Sung [00:07:49]:
Like, yes, we are gonna do some forward planning, but, like, generally speaking, the plan is happening in a more current time frame. So if I'm making my plan for the day or I'm making my plan for the week, I might plan for the month. But even that is gonna be like a very, like, rough plan that has more flexibility to it. So when we think about the planner is made up of the calendar and the to do list, we can see how people with ADHD will take their calendar and then put all the to do list stuff piled in there. And all of a sudden, everything is in one place and it's super overwhelming, and you miss the things that you have to do at the certain time. They can't live together all the time. We only put them together when it's time to plan. Because when we have ADHD, we are not good at prioritizing.
Patricia Sung [00:08:36]:
That is one of the basic executive functions that we ain't good at. When we put everything on a prioritization list, we think that everything is important and everything is urgent because I gotta get it done. And then we start freaking out about, like, well, what if I forget? I gotta get this done now. Oh, my goodness. Or it's like, well, this is a really cool project, and I want to do it all right now. So our brain does not understand time. So we think everything is urgent. And because we're worried about missing something, everything is important, and there is no delineation of what the actual priority of something is because they all fell in urgent and important.
Patricia Sung [00:09:12]:
This is one of the skills that I teach you in daily planning because when we create the Eisenhower matrix of the things that are urgent versus important, one of the key things we have to consider is the timeline. That's why I teach about this in daily planning because time, if you're anything like me, is, like, totally elusive, and I don't understand it. So I have to think about it in a very different way. And that's why I teach that skill in the class because if you're trying to prioritize by time and you don't understand time, good luck. It's gonna be way harder. What is urgent in terms of today is very different than what's urgent if you're writing your goal list for all of 2025. Because let's be honest here, if you're saying, hey. I gotta take the trash out today because trash day is tomorrow.
Patricia Sung [00:09:57]:
That's urgent. But I also wanna finish my 4 year degree. And, you know, if I don't finish soon, then I'm gonna lose my credit. So that's also urgent. I gotta get that done. And you're putting on your to do list the things that are important today and also in the next 4 years. Of course, you're overwhelmed. Obviously.
Patricia Sung [00:10:15]:
That's super I'm like, I'm overwhelmed just thinking about putting a 4 year degree on my to do list. Like, that's a lot. So when we with ADHD try to put our calendar in our to do list in one location, we miss it. We miss the things that are actually need to get done. And you're not gonna notice that you have a dentist appointment on Thursday if you're worried about trying to plan out the next 4 years of your degree. It's too much stuff in one place. So when you're looking at your planner, what are you actually planning? Your planner needs to be the plan you need for right now. And for some people, they can plan a whole week.
Patricia Sung [00:10:48]:
Some people can only plan today, and their brain can can, like, compute all that. Some people are gonna look at the whole week and be like, woah, man. That's too much. So if you're looking at your planner view, you wanna pick the one that gives you the information you need. Do you need a weekly planner? Do you need a daily planner? What's the amount of information that you need to see to make a good plan without getting overwhelmed? But your calendar is something different. It goes elsewhere. Yes. You need to include it in making your plan, but we can't put them on 1 home.
Patricia Sung [00:11:19]:
So when you're buying this planner, are you using it to hold your calendar and do your planning? Do you have a separate calendar? Do you have a separate planner? You can choose any one of the options, but you wanna pick the one that's right for you. So for example, I keep my calendar on my Google Calendar. It's digital. That way, it's always the same everywhere. I'm not constantly erasing things and moving them over here. And I can share those appointments with my husband, and I can put it on our Skylight calendar, and other people can see them. And they if I change my calendar, theirs gets changed too. But the calendar lives digitally, and everyone can access it that needs to access it in the way that I have it set up.
Patricia Sung [00:12:00]:
But my planner, that's for me. So my planner is paper. I plan on paper because I need to be able to see what's going on. So for you, what do you need to see? Do you have capacity to look at a full month? Is that too much? No. I wanna look at just a week. Do you wanna look at a day? What is going to make sense for your brain and how you're planning? And, again, this is gonna be very different if you are working a corporate job and you have tons of meetings. Like, you might need more details because you got a lot of stuff going on and you're changing all day. If you're home with a newborn right now, you might be good with a simpler version because you don't have to keep track of all the details because won't even got time for that or you're not sleeping enough to keep track of all that.
Patricia Sung [00:12:39]:
Like, you can create the system that fits what you need right now. And it's okay that you're using one system for this 3 months and then next season you have another option. We also need to consider, is this something that's portable and it's gonna go with you places, or is it gonna stay in one place? So for me, my calendar is digital. It goes everywhere with me. My planner is a notebook. It mostly stays at my house. Sometimes it goes with me. But, like, if you're somebody who loses a lot of stuff, you probably don't want something that goes with you.
Patricia Sung [00:13:09]:
You want it to be stationary and attached to something so it can't leave. What do you need? Do you wish there was a way to feel confident about your day? To know exactly where you need to be, when you need to be there, and what you need to do today. I know what it's like to buy 15 different planners and not use any of them for more than a week or 2. When you're tired of disappointing your family, your boss, and yourself. Imagine with me that tonight, when you look back in your day, you know that you did the things on your to do list. You showed up well. You feel productive and accomplished. That's why I created daily planning for ADHD moms, where I teach you how to keep a calendar and organize your to do list.
Patricia Sung [00:13:52]:
When you learn these skills from another ADHD brain, in super short videos, they finally make sense. So now you'll be able to keep up with the commitments you've made and feel confident in how you're organizing your day. You'll walk away with an easy to stick to 3 step system to keep up with your calendar and a simple way to sort through the giant to do list and figure out what actually matters. Plus, we have accountability group, so you can ask questions when you're stuck and jump back on the wagon when you fall off because you will fall off. That's just part of ADHD, but now you will know how to prepare for that. So if you're ready to figure out your day in a way that makes sense both for mom life and an ADHD brain, I wanna help you make this happen. Join me at bit.ly/adhdplan
Patricia Sung [00:14:40]:
That's b i t period l y forwar/adhdplan. It's all lowercase letters. I cannot wait to see you feel confident and competent in how you run your family life. A question that I already touched on is, like, who needs to see this information? In terms of my calendar, my husband needs to see the calendar, my kids need to see some of the calendar, but, like, none of them need to see my planner. My planner, it makes my husband's head, like, explode when he looks at my planner. Like, he's like, woah. What is what what is this nonsense? Because for him, that's not how his brain works. So I'm giving him the information digitally that he needs, but he is not looking at my planner and being like, what the heck? Because also that used to really bother me that he would insult my planner.
Patricia Sung [00:15:25]:
And I'm like, dude, this isn't for you. The plan is for me. You don't need to like my planner because it's not your plan. So I give him the digital calendar information that he needs and only that, and he's not looking at my, like, brain chaos on the paper because not for him. Another thought is, like, how big is your handwriting? If you're doing a paper calendar, like, I'm in love with this right now, but, like, I write really small. For some people, that's not gonna work because their grid paper is super tiny. How much space do you need to write? Do you need extra notes? Like, I already know that, like, even though I'm gonna have the for my planner, like, I'm not gonna get rid of my bullet journal. My bullet journal still goes everywhere with me.
Patricia Sung [00:16:01]:
It has all my brain dumps. But, like, to me, like, this is really the crux of, like, whether or not the Hobonichi is gonna make it to be, like, the planner of all planners is that there's no space for me to brain dump in there. And I do a lot of brain dumping with my planning. So I'm like, is this 2 book system gonna work? I might be like, nope. Too much work and scrap it and go back to my one piece of paper. I don't know yet. We're gonna find out. But do you need some extra things there? There's a ton of planners that have, like, quarterly goal setting and dream pages and all this stuff.
Patricia Sung [00:16:32]:
And some people really love that. I'm like, please stop with extra junk in here and tell me what to do. Everybody's different. Do you wanna have, like, the extra, like, you know, the floral design or the, like, cheetah print over here? Like, do you need that extra stuff to bring joy? Some people really like that. So they're like, just give me a piece of paper. That's it. So you wanna pick these on your tendency because, again, going back, the planner that's right for you is the one you're going to use. So as you answer all these questions, you have a list of things that your planner needs to have for you to be happy with it.
Patricia Sung [00:17:03]:
And once you know I have to have a paper planner, it has to have a lot of space for writing, it needs to be here, it needs to do this. When you have that list of, like, 6 or 7 criteria, then when you go to look for them, immediately you will know, like, oh, look. This planner has very tiny spaces. I need places for big handwriting eliminated. And you'll be able to get rid of, like, 90% of options just by going through the requirements that you know you need to make this work for you. Now, the second big mistake that I see people with ADHD do is expect the planner to solve all their problems. You know if this is you. How you're like, I'm gonna buy this planner and it's gonna solve all my life problems, and then I'm finally gonna be organized because I bought this planner.
Patricia Sung [00:17:41]:
Listen, owning a planner, even if it is the perfect planner for you, is not going to solve your organizational problems if you either don't know how to use the planner or you don't have a plan on you're going to use the planner. It's as though you go through and research, like, all the vacuum cleaners and you know you have looked at every vacuum cleaner, you know all the specifications, you have come down and you have chosen the glorious Dyson is the one for you or you're like, cool. I just need this $15 Dustbuster from Walmart and you know you buy it, you're like, tada. I bought the perfect vacuum cleaner for me. And then expecting the vacuum cleaner just magically clean your house. The vacuum cleaner is not going to clean your house. You have to use the vacuum cleaner and you have to know how to use the vacuum cleaner. Because if you never use the vacuum cleaner, obviously nothing's gonna get cleaned.
Patricia Sung [00:18:30]:
And if you use it incorrectly, it also is not going to clean your house. So you have to know how to use it and then have the plan of, like, when you're going to actually use it. This is why my very first class was daily planning for ADHD moms. I want you to know how to use a calendar. How do you use a planner? Because if you don't know how to use the planner, you're not going to use it, and you're just gonna, like, dump all your stuff in. And, again, you're gonna have the goals for today and for all of 2025 on that list, and then it's not helpful to you. Because as soon as you start missing the dentist appointment on Thursday, you're like, this isn't working. We have to know how to use it.
Patricia Sung [00:19:05]:
And I teach you that in a way that makes sense for your brain in this course. You know how to find the things that you're actually gonna get done today today. You know how to make sure that the things all get written in the calendar at the time that need to be written down, so they don't get lost in the shuffle. And you create these habits and systems that fit you so that you'll actually use the calendar, use the planner, and be able to keep on top of all the things that you need to keep on top of as a mom. So that, you know, you didn't miss another, you know, you forgot to pack the lunch for the field trip this week, or you forgot to turn in that paper for signing up for piano recitals, then your kid doesn't get to perform even though you've been practicing this stupid same song for the last 3 months. Like, this is what the planner does is it creates a like an external brain system for you. So you don't have to keep all this in your head because it's too many details as a mom to keep in your head. We can't do it.
Patricia Sung [00:20:00]:
We need somewhere to keep that. And the planner and the calendar serve as a it'll be like external hard drive for you to keep this information. And then the plan is the way you set it up so that you can actually get all of it done. Now I want you to have these skills going into 2025 so that you're setting up your new calendar and you're ready to go in a way that makes sense so that you're starting off the year with this fresh, crispy paged planner knowing you know when you're going to make the plan and that it has all the information you need. So for my birthday this year, this is the birthday sale. This is the birthday promo, is you can purchase the template that I've been using for the last 5 years that works great for keeping things really simple and planning out what needs to happen this week or and or and or or and or and and or you can buy daily planning. And in that course, figure out how do you actually use the planner so that you don't fill in 4 pages and it goes onto a shelf to die and collect dust for the next 3 years, and then you come back and be like, oh, look, another failed planner. No.
Patricia Sung [00:21:01]:
We're not doing that. You can build the skills to learn how to use the planner and when you're going to use the planner so that you actually get this stuff done. You show up where you need to be on time. You get done the things that you need to get done because you're only looking at the things that matter right now. You're not looking at the other 53 things that your brain's like, I gotta do this. You do, but not right now. You don't have to do that today. So go check out the show notes.
Patricia Sung [00:21:25]:
Get the link. Grab the template for my daily plan or grab the course on how to use it, whatever planner you buy. It literally works for any planner. And with those skills, go into 2025 knowing that you know what to do, you know where to be, you know what needs to act on so that you can build that confidence in yourself again. So when you go into the show notes, you will see the link to go grab a template. It's just a couple bucks. I've never sold this separately, like outside of my courses. So this is like it's oh, it's a new shiny new thing, a new office supply of a digital.
Patricia Sung [00:21:57]:
Head over to that link and grab that template. They'll send you a PDF immediately. Or if you wanna learn daily planning and figure out how do I actually use the syncing planner so that I can do what I need to do, you're gonna go to patriciasung.com/adhdcalendar, and that part's all one word, adhdcalendar, all one word, and you're gonna drop in that coupon code birthday to get the course for just a $147. So go grab that course while it's on sale. Celebrate with me. I made it another year around the sun, and you're gonna hit this next year knowing what to do, where you need to be, and making it so much easier to feel like you're in control of your day. Again, that's patricasung.comforward/adhdcalendar, and the promo is birthday, all capital letters. Now the promo goes through Tuesday, December 17th.
Patricia Sung [00:22:47]:
And if you get confused, go to the show notes, it's in there too. So I'm off to celebrate, and I'll talk to you soon. Successful mama. For more resources, classes, and community, head over to my website, motherhoodinadhd.com.