ADHD Tips: Phone Notes

This is one part of a series about productivity tools and things that help me. All the related posts will be listed on an overall directory page (which is also the parent of this one). As with everything, take these as suggestions and experiment with whatever sounds interesting to you. Everyone’s brain will be a little different, but hopefully, this can help you set up or improve one of your own systems.

Google Keep

As of this writing, I’ve been using Google Keep for, uh, however many years it’s existed, I think. This functions like a pack of sticky notes that I can search and add to without running out of space or losing them. Sticky notes in real life become invisible to me in no time, thanks to ADHD, but Keep helps this problem enormously.

Please note that you will need a Google account to use this tool.

I like Google Keep because it’s quick and works on both mobile and in the browser. I keep it open at all times in my browser as a pinned tab so I can always access it without losing my train of thought. It also syncs quickly to and from my phone, so I can throw something in when I have a sudden thought while doing chores and then circle back to it when I return to my desk. You can try it at keep.google.com before committing to installing it on your phone. It’s currently available for both Android and iOS.

Pinned Notes

First, I like to have a few pinned notes – only a few. You will otherwise make the feature useless because you’ll forget to scroll down far enough to see everything – these are the top priority items that I refer to repeatedly throughout the week.

• Package tracking
  • Whenever I get a shipping number from anything at all, I quickly paste it into this list. Sometimes, I even add the estimated delivery date. This helps A LOT with stuff that you order with longer shipping times. It’s easy for me to forget things for long enough that I could potentially not realize an item was delivered to the wrong address or lost in transit.
• Meal plan
  • I can’t deal with big meal-planning approaches. Here, I include a list of what I’m going to make for one shopping trip. Whenever I think, “Oh, I haven’t made that in a while, and it sounds good,” I’ll add it to the list. When it’s time to think about buying more groceries, I have a list of stuff that recently sounded good, so I’m not staring blankly and wondering what I like to eat.
  • When I come across a new recipe from a blog, group post, a friend’s recommendation, or something I saw on TV, I can add it here as a ‘make next time I want to try something new’ kind of entry.
• Things to print
  • It’s just annoying for me to print stuff from my phone, and it’s also sometimes annoying to search for that thing I just saw on my phone but suddenly Google hates me and it won’t come up. It’s a streamlining aid for me to keep my train of thought on the rails.
• Reframe those thoughts
  • This one’s a bit experimental. I’m working on my inner critic and the way I talk to myself. When I have a thought that includes ‘should’ I like to try to reframe it into something that’s less centered on responsibility. An example of “I should do the dishes” is relatable to all of us who eat food. I would have it listed here with a suggested variation like “I feel peaceful when the sink is empty”
• Writing thoughts
  • This one is specific for my situation as an author, but anyone with a creative work in progress could try it out. I have so many random thoughts as I’m going about my day and my brain is mulling over some plot holes or character development paths in the background. I keep a note pinned where I can add in a random thought. This is a supplement to my main organizational notes for my novels, and I try not to let it get too long before I update that main notebook.

Labels

What if I need to write something that isn’t one of those pinned subjects? Like, a list of things to bring on a weekend trip, a random confirmation number I may or may not need again, or the head measurements of my relatives? Okay, that sounds weird, but I like to knit hats and I need to know they will fit the recipient!

This is an ideal time to use labels. You can add them at any time, including after you’ve already written the note, and you can easily view an alphabetized list of all labels you’ve ever used. I have ones you’d expect, like #writing and #recipes, but some others that have helped me a lot are #holiday, #gifts, #measurements, and #garden.

That last one is a great example. Have you ever excitedly bought a bunch of plants at the garden center, spent hours working in the yard, and then realized after 3 weeks you no longer remember what you planted where? And then the next year rolls around, it’s spring, and the plants are on sale again, and you’re staring at a thousand pots, wondering which one it was that lived last year and which one struggled and died. These notes have been a lifesaver for me as I struggle my way through home ownership. When I’m huddled up in a blanket in the dead of winter and yearning for spring, I can build a wishlist of plants that might grow in different parts of my yard, and then when it’s finally May and I can go plant shopping, I have some framework to start from.

I really recommend using this for holiday gift shopping, especially if you have a large family. I list couples/households and their children, and whenever I see a random thing throughout the year, I put it by their name on the list. When November comes, I have a starting point to help me keep end-of-year panic to a minimum.

Searching

Maybe you read that part about labeling, and you thought oh fuck that, I’ll never do it. You know what? That’s fine! Just be a tiny bit wordy when you make a note. If you get some unexpected phone call and you need to write something important down, write something helpful before or after the critical sentence. Instead of 7pm on Tuesday just add something like apartment maintenance tell roommate. If you see a recipe that makes you excited instead of dread the idea of food, just preface a few words like cookies Christmas potluck idea before you paste in the link. If your kid (or your parent) keeps dropping hints about presents, put it in a note.

Now, when you’re lying on the sofa 3 hours later and your brain is feeling mushy, you can at least type into the search bar apartment or potluck and see any time you’ve previously had a thought about this before.

You should delete the utter nonsense you find this way, too — after using this for years there are definitely things like “Comcast confirmation number” that I will never need again — but even if you don’t, those old notes will be pushed down the list over time. You can also archive entries so they stay off your main view, but are available for searching. I do this with previous years of holiday lists or gardening stuff.

Miscellaneous

Keep will let me add photos to my notes, and as I write this, they are expanding it to add extra formatting options. That can make it easier to read later when I need to highlight something.

When you paste in a link, it will add a preview of that link to the bottom of the note (you can remove this preview if you want).

You can add checkboxes to a list and cross them off (and restore them if you did it by accident).

It’s also possible to share notes between users. You can have collaborative lists! One of these days, my BFF and I will make that dream trip to Salem!

I hope this was helpful! Let me know about any features I missed in the comments, and maybe it will help others, too!