Noel B

Who posted here about singing their to-do list to the tune of "Dragula" because I want you to know you're the only reason I remember to pack my lunch these days

Apparently I am now a Working Professional Adult so I need to do things
what apps do y'all use for doing things (todos/calendaring/whatever else helps you actually do things)

(lmao started writing this right as the site went down and I lost my draft so idk if I'm forgetting something also yes, this did get way longer than I expected, this is the adhd experience)

I find it's less about the specific app and more about how I personally use the app.

to-dos
No app, I use a bullet journal (here's a post I made about how I manage to keep using one without giving up immediately). All my work, personal and school stuff go on a rolling to-do list here, no frills, no fancy systems. Just everything in one place that I've trained myself to consult often.

calendaring

Google calendar because all my email accounts are through gmail and it's the path of least resistance (now that's what I call a monopoly, babey). I do add my work calendar to my personal calendar so I don't overschedule myself, but I don't add my personal calendar to my work calendar so I don't miss meetings/deadlines because it's too cluttered.

Everything with a specific date/time goes here: meetings, events, reminders to call a friend after they're done with work, deadlines, etc.

Everything that does not have a specific date/time goes on my to-do list on my journal because overscheduling myself leads to overwhelm.

My default notifications for calendar stuff are a day before (so I can plan the night before), four hours before (so I can wrap up stuff) and two hours before (so I can get ready to go and account for travel time, knowing I'll probably forget something/take longer/be distracted). I change these as needed depending on the event, but if I get distracted/forget/don't feel like it, then this default makes me feel like I'm covered in 90% of cases.

For Big Things that are way too far away in the future and that likely need me to prepare/do something in advance (like when I moved continents, but this can be any life change, a trip you're looking forward to, a wedding, etc): I schedule "events" a month before and a week before so I'm not taken by surprise when the Big Thing is tomorrow and I am definitely not ready.

email

Have separate emails for work, school, and personal stuff.

Do not subscribe to that newsletter. Not even if they offer you a discount code or a free book or whatever tempting lead magnet designed to make you add yourself to their email list and then get spammed forever. You can google the discount code and the lead magnet is usually ass, I know, I write those for a living (or used to, anyway). Listen to me, this is important. Listen, listen: do NOT subscribe to that newsletter. If you, against my advice and your own instincts, subscribe to that newsletter, then go to your inbox immediately to download the free book/get the discount code and unsubscribe right then and there. Do not leave it for later because "it's fine," it's not going to be fine, it's going to be four months later and your inbox will be at 232552 unread messages and you'll be avoiding it because it's overwhelming and makes you anxious. This is actually the only important piece of advice in this post, do not subscribe to that newsletter, I mean it.

If I open that email, I deal with that email. Reply to it if I can, delete it if it's not useful (and unsubscribe if applicable). If it's a thing that I need time to process/do/find relevant information on, then I add it to my to-do list and then use the "snooze" function so the email disappears from my inbox until it's relevant again.

If I open an email and realize I don't even have the executive function to decide what to do with it, I mark it as unread so I don't assume I already did something with it and forget.

If I don't need to do anything but I need to keep the information for some reason (receipts, work stuff that I may need to cover my ass later, etc), then I tag and move the email to one of the folders I created for this specific scenario, so it's not clogging my inbox. Generally, newsletters or things that I will "definitely" read or act upon "later" because it "sounds interesting" and "I will totally get to it one day" get deleted. Except in the moment I don't realize that's what I'm doing so I move them to my "read later" folder and every few months I realize I've been hoarding useless data there and just bulk delete.

an actual app that I use for my work email is Streak. Like I mentioned, I'm a freelance copywriter (for now....) which means I'm balancing multiple clients/projects/etc. It's a gmail addon that integrates a project management/client management pipeline and a bunch of extra marketing functionality. I don't handle a shit ton of clients and I work alone, so the free plan is plenty for me:

I can tag email contacts/conversations so I can keep straight who's a client, who's a lead, etc. And also, where we are with negotiating a contract, which stage of a project I'm working on, if I'm waiting on something from them, etc. I can go to a client/project and see which stage we're in and what's next, etc. From the project view I can drag and drop conversations when we move forward in the process, attach notes or documents to the project, etc. It's a basic CRM but it's really nice to have it all on my inbox instead of on a separate tab that I forget to check or is annoying to update.

I have a bunch of email templates that I use often and it saves me time and stress to have them there so I'm not reinventing the wheel every time I need to remind someone to actually pay me or to ask for specific information for a project, etc. It also lets me schedule things which you can do on gmail anyway but the function is located in an annoying place so this is easier for me lol

It lets me split conversations so I don't have a bunch of disparate topics on the same email thread.

It lets me see when someone has opened one of my emails so I can judge better when to send reminders, etc.

It also lets me do mail merges which I don't really use anymore but I did when I was sending cold emails for finding new clients.

Anyway I can't think of anything else, good luck! And don't subscribe to that newsletter.

This post is brought to you by me losing all morning trying to figure out what the fuck was going on with that one outlet that I use to charge my laptop instead of... plugging my laptop in any of the working outlets literally feet away. Yes I do have a deadline tonight.

It's not even the procrastination thing of "doing anything but The Thing." It's more that this problem is now an Open Loop and the brain will not focus on anything else until the loop is closed.

Aw fuck I can't believe I've done this¹

1. took my afternoon adderall and immediately fell asleep, didn't wake up until the meds stopped working so now I wasted the afternoon and the meds in the middle of a shortage and I'm no closer to finishing my homework but may in fact be further away because my brain is just cotton