Blog Posts Tagged "Adult ADHD".

The idea of “batching” tasks to streamline your workflow isn’t new, but I thought I’d share a couple of very quick examples of how I actually use this.

These are related to finances, but aren’t TOO personal.

Batching isn’t something that needs to be applied perfectionistically – you can batch any components of a task rather than every component, and do it when you want to and not do it when you don’t want to. It’s your life – so you can design any systems you want and break your own rules whenever you want.

Here’s some batching that I do:

- Pre-filling out the fast deposit bags that I use to deposit business income at the bank. I fill out around 30 of these at a time. I fill out the account number on all 30, then the account name of all 30 etc. Batching within batching!

- I have 11 different payments I have to make to the tax department each year between business and personal. My bank allows me to pre-load all these payments. I preload the payments for whichever payments I already know the amount for, and set dates for 5 business days before the tax is due.
Preloading multiple payments once I am already in the bank’s web interface and have all my tax info on hand, only takes a few seconds longer than preloading a single payment.

The tax dates are the same each year, so I have Google Calendar events set up to “recur annually” for the days the money will be leaving my account. I have to remember to make sure enough money is in the correct accounts so I have Google calendar reminders set up. Seven days before the money will leave my account I get an email and an SMS, and again two days before the money will leave my account. These reminders carry over to the next year and can be set up in a couple of seconds. Just click on your event in GCal to edit it and you’ll get a nice drop down of options for when and how you want the reminders.

- I create folders on my computer for expenses and create 12 monthly folders at the beginning of the tax year, so when companies send me electronic invoices for supplies, I just shoot them into the folder for that month.

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I made a free download people can use for prioritizing tasks.

You can view it online here.

To download it so you can use it however you please, click the link above, go to the File Menu, and select “Download As”.

- If you are a Microsoft Office user, you can download it as an excel file and then use it as you please on your own computer.

- If you are a Google Docs user, go to File > Download As > and select CSV file. You can then upload it to your own Google Docs account. Select “convert to Google Docs Format” when you get the prompt during the upload process, and you’ll have a working spreadsheet.

You can’t edit the online preview but once you have downloaded it, you’ll be able to use the “sort” function to order the items by whether they are A, B, or C tasks.

For Google Docs, just hover your mouse over the column header (column H or column I) and a little triangle will appear giving you the “Sort Sheet by…” options.

I highly recommend the Google Docs option because you can access the doc wherever you have web access (i.e., at home or work).

- If you’re rocking it old skool, you can also choose “File > Download As > pdf”.

I’ve populated the template with made up examples, which you can just delete.

Any problems downloading, you can flick me an email to: reportabug (at) aliceboyes (dot) com.

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I read some research awhile back (I can’t remember where sorry!) that said that people’s spare time usually occurs in chunks of 40 minutes or less.

The time I have to work on admin tasks tends to occur in very small chunks – 10-15 minutes here and there. For example, when I come home from seeing clients at the office, I might have a little bit of energy left to do an admin task but not more than around 15 mins of energy.

The solution I’ve found to this is to have lists of the individual steps involved in larger repeated tasks.

Here’s an example of part of my list of the steps involved in recording my monthly business expenses. The actual list is much longer than this but I’m not posting all of it for privacy reasons. At least you’ll get the idea from what I’ve written below. I keep both dead tree copies of bills and electronic copies. So, bills that come in electronically need printing, and bills that come in as paper need scanning.

- Go through VISA statement and input transactions into spreadsheet
- Go through EFTPOS statement and input transactions into spreadsheet
- Print Skype Bill
- Print Jungle Disk Bill
- Scan Telecom Bill
- Scan Power Bill
- Scan Credit Card Bill
- Scan Petrol Receipt/s
- Name scanned files and file in correct electronic folder.
- Print off monthly bank account statement for each of work accounts and personal account. File in filing cabinet.
- File electronic files of bank statements in the appropriate electronic files.

My tax year starts April 1st. I have a little system of Xs, where XX before the item means I have done it already for both April and May, and X means so far done for April only. By the end of the year, there should be 12 Xs next to each item.

Prior to developing this list, I was spending a ton of time working out what I’d done already and what I hadn’t done yet. I can now take advantage of scraps of time to tick one or two things off the list and not have that effort negated by later needing to check what I’ve done so far.

Common advice is to chunk similar tasks together and do them in batches because batching tasks (e.g. doing all scanning at once) tends to be much faster than task switching. That is great in theory. But, I find that for many tasks it doesn’t work in practice because my spare time/energy only occurs in short windows.

Having the list of each specific action that needs to be done also gives me a realistic perception of how much I need to get done in order to keep up to date with the task. I learned that the reason this task feels like it takes a long time is because there are a LOT of steps involved. It might seem like confronting this reality would be depressing. In some respects it is depressing but I find that having a realistic perception also helps me feel calmer. I can allow and plan for the reality of the situation rather than deluding myself that I can get the task done in a short amount of time.

Another benefit of having identified tasks that are important but short and not at all cognitive demanding ,is that I can do these tasks when I’m feeling like my brain isn’t up to doing anything cognitively demanding. This might be when I’m tired after seeing clients, or sometimes in the mornings if I wake up feeling still cognitively tired and need to do some brainless tasks to wake up into the day, and get activated and energized.

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