Put your brain outside your head

External tools do the remembering so your working memory can do the thinking.

The short version: try one today

• Calendar for anything with a time.
• List for anything without one.
• Alarms for transitions between them.

Want one app instead of five? Priori does task breakdown, reminders and body doubling, and connects to Google Calendar. (We make it. It's free to download.)

Right now your head is probably holding something like this: reply to Mum, the electricity bill, a seminar reading, the thing you said you would send your manager, a friend's birthday on Friday, and a vague sense that you are forgetting something important. That is a lot to keep spinning. ADHD external tools exist so you can put all of it down somewhere safe and stop carrying it around.

Working memory is the mental notepad you use to hold things while you think. With ADHD that notepad tends to be small and easily wiped. Every item you are trying to remember takes up room you could be using to write the essay or follow the conversation.

Calendar for anything with a time

If it happens at a specific time, it goes in the calendar. Lectures, shifts, the dentist, coffee with a friend, the bin collection, the day your rent leaves your account. If someone says 'let's do Thursday at six', it goes in before the conversation ends.

The rule is to enter it at once. 'I will add it later' is how double bookings happen. Add the travel time as well, because time blindness makes the gap between leaving and arriving feel shorter than it is.

Use one calendar. A paper diary for university, a work calendar and a phone calendar for social plans are three places to check, and you will miss one of them on the day it matters.

List for anything without a time

Everything else is a task, and tasks go on one list. Buy stamps. Chase the deposit. Book an eye test. Email the tutor. They have no set time, so putting them in a calendar only fills it with events you will scroll past.

The list has two parts. A capture spot, where you throw things the second they occur to you, and a short today list of about three items that you pick each morning. The capture spot can be long and messy. The today list has to be small enough to finish. There is a full method in your to-do list is too long.

Capture has to be instant. If the thought arrives while you are on the bus, it goes in your phone notes now. In the shower, say it out loud and write it down the moment you are out. A thought you trust yourself to remember is usually already on its way out.

Alarms for the gaps between

Calendars and lists tell you what to do. They do not get you to stop one thing and start another, and that switch is where ADHD days go wrong. You are deep in a spreadsheet and the meeting begins without you. You are scrolling and the time to leave slides past.

Alarms handle the handover. Set one for when you need to start getting ready, a good while before the event itself. Label it with the action: 'Shoes on, leave in ten'. For the big ones, set a second alarm as a backstop.

A normal Tuesday might run like this. An alarm at 8.20 says leave for the 9am lecture. The calendar shows the lecture, then a shift at two. In the gap, your today list says to email the landlord and buy milk. An alarm at 1.15 says pack up and walk to work. You have decided nothing in the moment, and nothing was dropped.

Keeping your ADHD external tools trustworthy

Your brain will only let go of things if it believes the system will catch them. That trust is built by checking.

• Look at your calendar every morning, tied to something you already do, like your first coffee.
• Empty your capture spot into the list once a day.
• Do a ten minute tidy of both once a week.
• Delete alarms you have started ignoring and set fresh ones.

Many women with ADHD have spent years masking by holding everything in their heads and running on panic. Writing things down can feel like admitting weakness. It is simply good equipment, the same as glasses.

If the whole thing collapses for a week, do a brain dump on one page, sort it into timed and untimed, and begin again. For more on the handover moments, see planning for transitions.

Quick questions

What are external tools for ADHD?

They are anything outside your head that holds information or prompts action, such as calendars, lists, alarms, sticky notes and whiteboards. They take over remembering so your working memory is free for thinking. A simple setup is a calendar for timed things, a list for untimed things and alarms for switching between them.

Should a task go in my calendar or on my to-do list?

If it has to happen at a specific time, put it in the calendar. If it only needs doing at some point, put it on the list. Keeping the two separate stops your calendar filling up with items you learn to ignore.