Your ADHD “problems” could be the way to prevent your ADHD “disasters.”

I’m about to drop a truth bomb that the productivity gurus don’t want you to hear:

It’s not “one little trick”, and it’s definitely something actual mental health professionals WANT YOU TO HEAR.

You’re not failing at ADHD. You’ve just been taught to fight it instead of use it.

Yeah, I know, annoying, right?

You’ve got the disasters:

• Keys? Always lost.
• Appointments? Missed.
• It’s Saturday? Was I supposed to work yesterday?  Did I?
• “I swear I just had that” moments? Daily.
• Finding the one or two tools before you start a job that should take 20 minutes, but now it takes all day. 
• Impulse decisions that felt fantastic and then…the consequences, then the serious consequences, then the hidden consequences.

And what do people say?

• “Have you tried a planner?”
• “Why don’t you write it down?”
• “You should make a list.”
• “Just set an alarm.”

Oh, sure! Because those are the magic bullets that fix everything.  (And maybe they do, but not for us.)

Let’s get real: the problem often isn’t your ADHD behavior; it’s how you’ve been told to interpret it.

It’s time to flip the script and recognize that your ADHD can be a source of strength rather than just a collection of disasters.  That’s NOT to say it’s a super power, it’s not.  But if you are the main force working against yourself, you just can’t win. 

Understanding ADHD Difficulties. (aka: Your Brain Trying to Help You, Badly)

I call them disasters sometimes, too.

I get it.

Sometimes your life looks like:

• A crime scene made of Post-it notes.
• A purse that could qualify as a small ecosystem.
• A calendar that exists purely as decoration.

If you’re thinking to yourself “casual”,”noob”,”amature” or “I wish those were the problems in my life.”  There’s no way the person writing this could understand what my life is like, here’s a story I rarely tell (and certainly not to anyone I want to work with.)

I was 19 when I got my driver’s license and my first car.  Over the next year I lost my car TWICE! It didn’t get repossessed; I MISPLACED IT.  Yes, I was much younger, sillier, and more irresponsible than I am now, but still, completely misplaced my car, twice.  It took several days and several people to help me locate it both times.  There were no drugs, psychosis, or any kind of “altered state” involved.  Just ADHD, time blindness, and desperately trying my best. (Of course more on that later.  I won’t just leave you hanging!) 

I hope you never have to deal with losing your car, but I’m sure you do in fact lose important things. Here are some of the ways your ADHD brain can help you stop doing that.

So, however badly your ADHD is affecting you, I assure you, I’ve been in a similar place.

Something I’ve found as I continue to learn how to manage my ADHD is this…

Most ADHD “disasters” are actually:

• Overcorrections.
• Panic-prep.
• Survival strategies.

Just… unrefined.

You’re not just randomly chaotic.

You’re solving problems before they happen.

That’s right. You’re preemptively addressing potential issues, but doing it in a way that looks like a mess to everyone else (and, yeah, sometimes to you too).

Think about the last time you lost your keys. What were you doing? You were probably juggling a million other things in your head, trying to keep track of everything. Your mind is like a high-speed train, racing ahead, and sometimes it derails. But that’s not a failure; that’s a sign of a brain that’s wired to think in multiple dimensions at once.

Or another example: I’d bet good money that people teased you about your messy desk, or messy room, (filthy car?), but when someone asked you where something was, you could find it immediately. Then when you finally got motivated and got everything cleaned up “A place for everything and everything in its place” you couldn’t find a single thing.  It might have even brought your entire life to a sudden halt for a few days.  If any of this sounds familiar, you’re in the right place, and on the right track.

The Shift in Thinking (This Is Where Things Actually Change)

Stop asking:

“How do I stop doing this?”

Start asking:

“What is this behavior trying to do for me?”

Because every “bad habit” you have? It’s doing a job.

Examples:

• You lose things? → Your brain keeps EVERYTHING visible.
• You overbuy? → Your brain is building backups.
• You procrastinate? → Your brain is avoiding overwhelm or failure.
• You can’t clean up all the messes? → You’re focused on more important priorities.
• You’re late? → You’re having a “once in a lifetime experience” every day.

That’s not broken.

That’s misdirected problem-solving.

And honestly? It’s kind of impressive.

You’re not just aimlessly chaotic; you’re actively trying to manage a complex world. It’s a bit like being a firefighter whose firetruck keeps getting stuck in traffic. You’re trying to put out fires, but the system around you is working against you.

Let’s take procrastination as an example. You might think you’re just being lazy, but deep down, it’s your brain’s way of saying, “Whoa, hold on! This task feels massive and overwhelming. Back off for a second.” Recognizing this can help you adjust your approach instead of beating yourself up over it.

Small Shifts in Behavior (We’re Not Fixing You—Relax)

YOU’RE NOT BROKEN!!!  If you only take one thing away from this article, from this website, from the day you’ve had today, it’s this.  You’re not broken.  Your experience is valid, deserves respect, and can even be useful, if you learn how to work with it.  Yes, sometimes you might have to work around it, but working against it is working against yourself. 

Now don’t freak out—I’m not about to hand you a color-coded life system and expect you to stick to it.

We’re doing small shifts. Real ones.

1. Create Routines (But make them tiny…miniscule.)

Not military-grade routines here.

I’m talking:

• Loose anchors.
• Repeatable starting points.
• “Good enough” structure.

If your routine only works on your best day? It’s useless.

Instead of rigid schedules, aim for flexibility. Think of your routine as a cozy sweater that you can adjust depending on the weather. You want it to fit well enough that you can rely on it, but not so tight that you feel trapped.

For instance, if your morning routine consists of waking up, making coffee, and then sitting down to plan your day, that’s great—but what happens if you oversleep? Instead of falling apart, have a backup plan. Maybe it’s just grabbing a coffee and checking your email before diving into the day. Flexibility is your friend here.

By miniscule I mean build your routine one thing at a time, and it could take months to make that a habit. Your entire routine starting out could be “make my bed” and that’s it. But as long as you do it sometime during your day, that’s a huge win.

2. Use Visual Aids (Because Your Brain Is Out of Sight = Doesn’t Exist)

You need:

• Visible lists.
• Reminders that interrupt your chaos.
• Systems that assume you will forget.

Because you will.

And that’s perfectly fine.

Visual aids can be your lifeline. Use sticky notes, whiteboards, or even apps that send you reminders. Some of the most effective tools I’ve found are reviewed here:  The goal is to create a visual cue that breaks through the noise in your head and reminds you of what’s important.

For example, create a “brain dump” board where you can jot down everything that’s bouncing around in your mind. It’s like letting your brain take a breather while you transfer those thoughts onto paper. That’s just one of the strategies I used in creating a planner that works the best with ADHD brains.  Check out some of the other strategies here:

3. Set Smaller Goals (again, miniscule.) No grand plans to change overnight.

You’re not lazy.

You’re overwhelmed.

So instead of:

“Clean the house”

Try:

“Pick up the trash in this room and throw it away.”

That’s it.

And it’s OK to stop there and get on with your day.  It’s also OK to let that momentum take you and get the whole house cleaned in less than one day.  Most importantly, it’s OK to build the kinds of plans and schedules where you don’t have to make that decision until you get there!

You’ve probably heard the phrase “The best laid plans of mice and men” that phrase is from the poem “To a Mouse.” The full line is 

“The best-laid schemes of mice and men

Go oft awry,

And leave us nothing but grief and pain,

For promised joy!”

Planning and failing happens to everyone.  But, it happens to people with ADHD over and over again.  Until we’re discouraged, and sometimes give up completely, on everything.

But creating small goals (microscopic!) can build your confidence and give you the momentum you need to tackle larger tasks later on. It’s like building a sandcastle—start with a few grains of sand, and before you know it, you’ve got something impressive.   If you can manage to disconnect the plan and the effort from the outcome, it reduces your mental burden.  And if you can disconnect outcomes from your self worth EVERYTHING changes.  (I’m still working on it.)

Connecting Problems to Solutions (This Is the Part No One Told You)

Let me make this painfully clear:

Your ADHD problems are not separate from your solutions. They are the blueprint. Sometimes they are ALREADY the whole solution. You’ve just been conditioned to see them as a problem.

You just haven’t been taught how to read them.

Examples:

• Lose things constantly? → You need duplication, not discipline.
• Always late? → You need buffers, not better intentions.
• Can’t start tasks? → You need friction reduction, not more pressure.

You don’t fix ADHD by trying harder.

You fix it by getting smarter about how your brain already works.

Think about it: if you’re always late, it’s not just that you need to manage your time better. You experience time differently. You need a different way to track it, and a different way to keep it under your control It’s about accommodating your reality, not forcing it to fit into someone else’s mold.

Let’s Be Honest About Planners for a Second

Most planners fail you.

Not because you suck.

Because they assume:

• Consistency.
• Predictability.
• Linear thinking.

We have none of those. (Again—not a moral failure.)

So yeah… of course, it didn’t work.

You don’t need a planner that tells you to be better.

You need one that says:

“Cool. You’re chaotic. Let’s build around that.”

Find planners that allow for flexibility, that can adapt to your changing needs, enough structure to keep you on track, and a system in place that rewards your small wins.

You are not a disaster.

You are a person with a brain that:

• Overcompensates.
• Over-prepares.
• Overthinks.
• Focuses on everything and nothing.
• And occasionally absolutely derails itself.

But inside of all that there IS a system.

A weird one. A messy one. A slightly unhinged one.

But a system.

And the second you stop trying to erase it—and start working with it?

Things get a hell of a lot easier.

There’s no shame in having ADHD. In fact, it can be a source of creativity and innovation if you learn to embrace it. (No. It’s NOT a superpower. I wish people would stop saying that, too.) But, if you stop fighting it and start harnessing it. Your “disasters” can lead to breakthroughs if you’re willing to see them that way.

Oh right, back to the car story.

One night, before smart phones, cheap trackers, or cameras everywhere, I ran out of gas on the way home from work. I was able to pull off the freeway and park in a fairly safe, well lit, but unremarkable area. And I took public transportation home. I was quite proud of myself for managing to get myself home at a reasonable hour considering the somewhat unreliable public transportation in the city I lived in. I had managed to 1. Not run out of gas on the freeway, 2. Actually considered my safety, and the safety of my car, and 3. Have enough money with me to get myself home without having to FIND A PAYPHONE and have someone pick me up in the middle of the night. I went to bed feeling unusual responsible and self reliant. I didn’t even have work the next day, so plenty of time to retrieve my car.

After sleeping in my roommate took me to get my car. We stopped at the gas station, filled up a gas can, and were on our way. When we got to the freeway exit, the car wasn’t there. My roommate thought it might have been stolen but I thought no one would fill a cars gas tank just to steal it, and no one would want this car either way. We drove down all the suburban neighborhoods, back roads, alleys, thinking the place I had parked might look different during the day. After an hour and a half, I couldn’t bare to waste any more of my roommate’s time and asked them to drop me off at my parents.

The most horrifying moment of the whole ordeal was telling my dad that not only had I run out of gas (irresponsible) but that I couldn’t find it. (lazy, entitled, a problem, a spaz, would never “make it” on my own.) After the lecture we went and looked for the car for another two hours, and one of my friends from work joined the hunt. Partly spectating, I think, but I still appreciated the help and the sense of silliness they brought to the whole ordeal.

It’s always hard to ask for help, but sometimes you have to, everyone does. Here are some ways to do it

Eventually even the police got involved. I don’t remember if they thought we were acting suspicious or someone reported it as “possibly stolen.” (Which sounds pretty suspicious.)

After roughly four hours of searching, the help of 5 other people, and all kinds of confusion and embarrassment, we finally found the car two exits away from the one I thought I had taken. To ad insult to injury, the police officer tried to start the car when we got there and told me the car wouldn’t start. (No kidding. I’m a mess, not stupid, and not lying.) It was one of my most embarrassing, frustrating, and discouraging moments of my life. I didn’t know I had ADHD at the time, so it was just another huge example of me being irresponsible, not thinking, and being a problem.

I’ve definitely had horrible ADHD moments since then, but since I know why, it’s a lot less confusing, and can prepare for even some of the weirdest situations I’ve gotten myself into.