I have struggled with this forever. I have gotten OK with lists of things I need to do and organizing those in a few different places I actually will look at, but what do I do about scheduling/calendars? I can do what my work calendar says but anytime I make my own schedule, it becomes invisible to me and I don’t even consider it very quickly.
Anyone have any tips for scheduling tasks and actually following through with it?
I’m sorry. I cannot help you.
I put everything on my calendar and then promptly ignore it.
I was telling my husband about how someone was managing their working memory issues with planners, apps, etc. And he kinda side-eyed and raised an eyebrow and I said “of course, that would require me keeping up to date with the planners and following through,” and he was all uhh-huh, that’s what I thought. 🤣😅😭
I have the same “invisible calendar” problem as you. It’s like once I input something into the calendar, my brain marks it as “dealt with” and moves on. There is no part of my daily routine that promptse to check the calendar (or weather) and nothing I could do with the information if I successfully looked. I can use it for appointments (with the "warn me via push a day before, and hour before, and ten minutes before flags all turned on), and to remind me it’s recycling day, but for complex tasks? Forget it.
What works for me is making the tasks take up space in the physical world. For example, if I need to take something to work, or to eg. the post office on my way to work, I hang it by the front door or put it in my bike helmet. If I have to do something in the morning after breakfast I set it on the dining table. If something needs to be stored downstairs in the basement I throw it in the laundry bin and sort it out next time I take the laundry down.
For me it has to be an audible alert from a device that I will hear no matter what. Cell phone alarm is great. If you have a smart watch, even better. If you live on your computer then something like an outlook calendar alert might work for you. Now when the alert happens you still have to do the thing. I tell myself that doing the thing avoids more pain than not doing the thing and then after a while it becomes routine and I just do it without any justification needed.
I need a physical calendar/agenda that’s always in plain view, digital doesn’t tend to work for me
I have my phone on me all the time, so I use my Google calendar. Anytime I’m scheduling something, I’m adding it to the calendar while talking with the scheduler. I set the notification based on what I’m doing, something that requires going somewhere or is important I’m getting that reminder a day before, an hour before I need to leave and when I need to leave( I also build in 10 minutes of poor time planning skills into leaving time knowing it will take longer than i expect). Things like medication are alarms that I won’t allow myself to turn off until I’ve actually taken it. My notifications are all audible. Figure out what gets your attention best and run with it, for me I know my brain will fight me if I let it so I annoy myself into doing it. One last thing I do is have the calendar widget on my homescreen so when I’m flipping through I catch a glance at what’s coming up.