ADHD and hacking an ever growing todo list

Are you familiar with FOMO? Surely.

After using TickTick for long enough and judging my stats, I've noticed I was efficient at solving tasks I focused on, even if I was not always focusing on the most important ones. Yet I have this feeling of being overwhelmed by my self imposed todo list. Whatever I do and it doesn't matter how long I work on my todos, the list keeps growing and distracts me from living my life far from screens. There must be rationale explanations and a solutions, right?

I've revisited my backlog hundred times without allowing me to delete those items nor finding the motivation to tackle enough of them. Occasionally I would do some triage, e.g I bump the priority on some favorite tasks by adding custom tags like "x2", x3" etc. It allow me to find such favorite items later and sort them by priority/urgency.

Yet I still had around 400+ tasks, far from my Inbox Zero principle. How to solve that? I did managed to be efficient at email triage, and at automation, coding, problem solving, I could likely win in any board game, I'm a debrouillard, I know. So how do I solve my tiny issue with my todos without depraving myself of sleep, and without recycling my todo items into the thrash?

The key is most of those todos are not urgent and will be solved in the long term, without specific date. They ressemble more the concept of an idea or an inspiration, or motivation, rather than a problem to be solved.

And that's for now my trick to tackle those needed-for-later items in TickTick -> Tag them as "💡ideas" and convert into Note.


Slice the backlog

Je souffre de TDAH et c'est bien galÚre de prioriser des tùches plutÎt que d'autres, tant la passion de tout faire est présente. Parfois pourtant on se retrouve submergé.

AprĂšs avoir lu les 4 premiers tomes de la BD Samurai, le cycle de l'empereur et du treisiĂšme phophĂšte donc, je me suis remis Ă  gribouiller, un Samurai bien entendu, devant mon fils admiratif (il a quatre ans, Ă©videmment que tout ce que je dessine lui paraĂźt bien ;-p). Bref j'ai eu envie de m'appliquer Ă  la mĂȘme discipline, Ă  dĂ©faut de lames j'opte pour le dĂ©graissage de ma liste de tĂąches sur TickTick.

Et ça tombe bien, je suis en train de lire La semaine de 4 heures de Tim Ferris, il y a un passage qui m'a fortement marquĂ©, pour aider Ă  faire le tri entre les envies et les choses qu'on doit absolument faire. Je n'ai pu m'empĂȘcher de penser Ă  Steve Jobs qui avait pour rĂ©putation d'associer le moins Ă  la perfection et le surplus Ă  une absence de vision.

Bref, j'ai une liste TickTick de plus de 500 tĂąches, dont certaines reviennent chaque semaine, et chaque jour mon lecteur de flux RSS rĂ©cupĂšre de nouvelles entrĂ©es passionnantes. J'ai Ă©galement une famille avec laquelle j'essaie de passer du temps de qualitĂ©, plein de projets, de livres, sĂ©ries TV, films dans mes envies. On n'a pas forcĂ©ment de contrĂŽle sur le temps qui passe, et l'argent va et vient, mais ne rĂ©soud pas tout. Par contre je peux choisir oĂč mettre mon Ă©nergie.

En conscience de tous les travaux de rénovation qui m'attendent, de la famille qui va s'agrandir d'ici septembre, de mon travail accaparrant en tant qu'indépendant, il me faut vraiment tailler dans le lard.

J'ai donc ajouté une tùche récurrente dans TickTick pour éliminer une dizaine de tùches au quotidien, toute chose qui me prendra du temps et qui n'est qu'une idée/envie, finira sans doute à la poubelle ou devra aller ailleurs que dans TickTick.


Productivity monk

I have taken a few habits recently:

  • Inbox zero by bedtime. Unhandled mails go to TickTick.
  • Tasks default to next week. If they matter, they’ll wait.
  • One work task per day. If it drags, I commit or kill it.
  • Articles get bookmarked. Read later—or never. Doesn’t matter.
  • Tasks get automated. Or ignored.
  • Midnight is my hard stop. Usually...
  • Everything goes in TickTick.
  • No date = no task. No surprises.
  • Task and blog ideas are dumped into TickTick as notes, voice or text.
  • LLMs get a few hours. That’s it. And only for automation.
  • LinkedIn runs on auto-reply.
  • Same rules at home and work. One brain. Scripts everywhere.
  • I keep folders of tabs—Wednesday, Friday, Daily. I open them when it’s time. Not before.
  • I use browser userscripts to bend websites to my will. UX included.
  • Family runs on self-service. Automation takes care of the rest.
  • And a few things don’t change—only improve: Backups and monitoring for everything. Unit tests for all my scripts. And pipelines. Obviously.

This isn’t a system. It’s survival. Simplicity is the only thing that scales, especially with kids and ADHD.


Empathy in Partnership

Partnership—aka living together—can be challenging, but it also opens the door to step up and lead by example.

  • Don’t take it personally if your partner is mad at you. It could be they feel unsupported, overwhelmed, or just tired.
  • Don’t respond in anger or with resentment if your partner yells at you. Stay calm and see how your help or support can improve the situation.
  • Don’t try to convince your partner at a bad time, like when they’re in a rush. Maybe they just need some time alone.
  • Don’t get mad if your partner can’t decide about simple things. Instead, try taking care of some of their mental load.
  • Don’t get mad when your partner makes mistakes, and don’t “remember that” later just to make them feel bad. It’s hurtful.
  • Don’t answer right away—listen and acknowledge your own mistakes, even if you want to justify your behavior. Keep those explanations for calmer discussions.
  • Keep your harsh words in your head.
  • Support your partner when it’s very difficult for you or when you feel like you’re imploding, because that’s how you grow into the partner they need.
Mastodon