Hey, everyone, its Erica. Today I'm gonna talk a bit about strategies that are ADHD friendly, for planning out your day and doing it in a way where you're more likely to stick to your plan. And where you have a good shot of ending your day feeling like, "wow, I really did what I needed to do today." And I will confess, I spent decades of my life, never having the sense, at the end of the day that I had really done what I needed to do today. So I'll share with you some strategies that have worked for some of my clients. And maybe they'll spark some ideas for you.It all really comes down to three ideas. Keep it simple, keep it fun, and embrace structure. So the thing with structure is, a lot of people I know with ADHD initially resist having structure and set routines, because many people feel a sense of identity about being creative, and improvisational and fun loving and have a sense that setting up a bunch of structures of doing everything in the same order each day, would take away from that. But the thing is, more often than not, I have seen that setting up these routines of habits and blocking out the day with a fair amount of regular structure actually creates more opportunity for fun, more time for fun, more sense of ease. Because your brain isn't being dragged down wondering "did I remember to eat lunch today? Wait a minute, I don't have time to exercise." A good example of this is my friend Kathy, her son has ADHD. And for years, they had these chaotic mornings, that inevitably set him up for a very challenging day, rushing in late for getting a scarf, all that kind of stuff. And so what they do now is they have a very simple, set and repeat it every single day, set of habits. So she can tell you the precise number of minutes it takes from feet on the floor to feet out the door. And her son has a written list of the order in which he does all of the things in his checklist in the morning. So it's always in the same sequence, brush teeth, then get dressed, then grab the coat, then check the bag. And he also knows what time he's doing it at. So the result here is that it actually creates a morning of calm and ease. It puts them in a situation where they can have a conversation in the car on the way to school, and he can get there early enough that he can take a breath and relax and get settled for the day.And the only reason I learned about Kathy and her son's morning plan was because she ended up helping me with a problem I was having. I work in a painting studio, and I mentioned to her that I was just having trouble. As much as I wanted to be doing the creative work, I would get to the studio and somehow, strangely, in this ADHD time warp, it would take me maybe like an hour and a half to actually be sitting with my sketchbook and working out some ideas. Because you know, I'd sit down and I realised "oh, I didn't get water" or I realised "oh, I have to go put my bag away or I can't find my phone", and so she talked me through and she said well, "okay, if you were to take all of those little things that you have to do to be settled and condense them, how long would it take you total?" I said, "well, I don't know, maybe 15 minutes", like "okay, well, let's write out an order, what's a logical order, write it on a post it hang it up and challenge yourself to see if you can just get from front door of the studio to focussed creative work within 15 minutes." and it's honestly been transformative for me.As coaches we call it habit stacking. So you've got a sequence of habits that you're doing. And, after time, you start to not have to remember the next one because the cue to do "grabbing the coat" is "putting on the clothes" or whatever the sequence might be. With the ADHD world, though, you do have to keep it fun. So some little fun hacks that you might want to know about are, you can write with a sharpie marker on your mirror. I find a lot of people when they're first getting the groove of a morning sequence, want to have it written down, otherwise, you might forget it, and it keeps you on track. So apparently, you can just clean it off with rubbing alcohol and I know some people who write it really really big on their mirror. Or maybe they they laid the clothes out the night before but put the alarm clock on the other side of the room. Or maybe they'd change it up and there's a different coloured post-it each day. So if you need something to kind of re-sparklize it and keep it interesting or fun, think of how you can do that. But try out the strategy of having this very set sequence because it might just give you some space to begin the day with greater ease.It can also be useful to add some bigger, broader structure to your day. I find this is especially helpful for people who are entrepreneurs or who work for themselves or students who don't get the privilege of being in an office or a school environment, where the structure is provided for them. What's interesting is to think about matching when you do what, to your chronotype, to your natural rhythms, right, so we'll say that we're a night owl, or we're an early bird. And most people have some set pattern where their attention energy goes, and it's useful to try to match with that, especially because, if you have ADHD, you want to try to maximise as much as possible doing things when you're going to have that most focussed time. For most people, it's the morning but not everyone. So pay attention to when that naturally happens for you, and you can start building your day around it. And as you map out what a good rhythm of a day would be for you, I can't emphasise enough, making time for exercise. Exercise is critical. It is one ADHD treatment that doesn't require a prescription or a visit to a therapists office or the expense of hiring a coach. And there is a tremendous amount of research, demonstrating that even moderate amounts of exercise have a profound impact on helping ADHDers manage the cognitive and physical challenges of ADHD.So in closing, I want to come back to this idea of when you're setting up a routine and a plan for your day, keep it simple, keep it fun, and embrace structures and routines. We've talked a lot about stacks of habits that you might try to be able to manage those transition moments with a little bit more ease and a little bit less drain. And I also just want to emphasise how important it is to keep it simple. This will come up in your crazy to do list. And one of the greatest pieces of wisdom I've heard is: to decide the night before the one thing, the one thing that if you do it the following day, it would really make a difference for you. And then possibly possibly come up with two more. And then write them down, those critical things, and hang them up somewhere, make it visual and in a place where you will not be able to avoid it. So that you're not at risk of forgetting it and if you get off track, you will always have a cue that will remind you of what is really, really critical for the day. So that you dramatically increase your chances of being able to end that day saying "I got done what I planned to get done". And it may sound crazy to focus on just three but just imagine how wonderful it would be to have that sense of accomplishment and build from there. So good luck to all of you planning your days, hoping you have many fun days ahead. Till next time.