Watch This If You Keep Making Plans but Never Follow Through

I'm a pro procrastinator, and the only time I get motivated is the night before the deadline. When I tell this to people, oftentimes I get recommended to use a planner. Everyone recommends writing things down that I need to do, putting them in an order, blocking time on my calendar, and don't forget to add that reminder, as if I'm already not doing it. For me, the issue is not planning; it's the following the schedule part. When I get a calendar notification reminding me what I'm supposed to be doing, I notice it, stare at it, sigh, and ignore it.

For the longest time, I thought it's because I'm lazy and I lack discipline. Whenever I would pull an all-nighter the day before my deadline, I would blame myself for putting myself in such a stressful situation. I would promise myself I would never do it again, but the next day, I get the calendar notification again, notice it, and still procrastinate. The funny thing is, when I'm procrastinating and running away from my schedule, I'm not doing something fun.

The more I repeat this cycle of procrastination, hyper-focusing before deadlines, and then beating myself up, the more I started to question my abilities. I lost confidence in myself, and I felt like I was stuck on a treadmill, constantly running but never getting anywhere. This constant cycle didn't just stress me out, but it also led to burnout. I started to feel like I was wasting my life, my potential, and also my time.

We all know that time is our most valuable asset, right? We all have dreams and goals we want to achieve, but if you keep letting procrastination run the show, those dreams could slip right through our fingers. If you're feeling stuck like I was, it's time to make a change before you find yourself further away from the life you want to live. That's basically when I knew I had to do something about it.

I got diagnosed with ADHD, and most of the popular productivity methods just don't work for my chaotic brain. But through years of trial and error, I finally found a way to fix this issue. This method allowed me to grow my YouTube channel to 1.4 million subscribers, establish a consistent workout routine where I used to have none, and make time for my family as well as for my hobbies.

Obviously, I'm not a productivity machine, and there are periods of time where I am less consistent than I used to be. But if nothing has worked for you so far, and if you want to take control over your time and stop feeling bad about yourself, this video can help.

Let's start with a problem that many of us face, especially if you have ADHD, and that is time blindness. Time blindness is when you don't have a natural sense of time passing. You might sit down to work on something and then get completely absorbed, and before you know it, hours have slipped by. Or it can be the opposite: you think you've been working on something for hours, but when you check the time, it’s only been like 10 minutes.

This makes it incredibly difficult to stick to a schedule because we're constantly misjudging how long tasks will take. You know, I would plan thinking I could knock out a project in an hour, and then I would only find myself working on it for two hours. When that happens, the rest of the day just falls apart because it doesn't match. This isn't just about poor time management; it's actually deeper than that.

If you don't have an accurate sense of how long things take, your entire schedule can become chaotic. Suddenly, you're behind your schedule, stressed, and feeling like you have no control over your time. And it's not just ADHD that can cause this; anyone can struggle with time blindness to some extent.

But here’s the thing: time blindness is only part of the problem. Another major issue is fluctuating energy levels. You know, some days you wake up feeling ready to conquer the world, and other days you can barely drag yourself out of bed, like I was today. This fluctuation in energy is a major reason why sticking to a routine can feel impossible.

Now it's not that you’re lazy or lack discipline; it's that your energy isn't consistent. Most schedules don't account for that. Traditional time management techniques tell us to break our day into neat little blocks, assuming that we can perform at the same level all day long, but that's just not how it works in reality.

This is where a lot of us go wrong, especially me, because we focus so much on managing our time, fitting everything into a calendar, blocking off hours of tasks, setting reminders, that we're going to completely overlook energy management. Time management is important for sure, but it's just a part of the equation. If your energy is low, it doesn't matter how much time you've blocked off for a task; you're not going to get it done efficiently, if at all.

Think of it this way: time is a finite resource, right? Like we all have 24 hours in a day, but energy is dynamic. It ebbs and flows depending on a variety of factors: how much sleep you got, what you've eaten, your stress levels, and even the time of the day. If we don't pay attention to our energy, we are setting ourselves up for failure.

When we plan our day based purely on time, we're ignoring how our energy levels align with those plans. You might schedule your most demanding tasks for the morning, thinking you will be fresh and ready to go, but if you're someone whose energy peaks in the afternoon like me, you're literally setting yourself up for frustration in the morning and potentially burnout by the end of the day.

So, how do you manage your time when your energy levels are all over the place and you struggle with time blindness? That's where the two-calendar method comes in, and I'm a big fan of it. Here’s how it works: every day you plan out your tasks, estimating how long each one will take and blocking off that time in your calendar. This step alone helps address time blindness because it forces you to make an educated guess about how long something should take.

But, and this is the key: you also keep a second calendar where you log what actually happened, and this is your reverse log. Let’s say you scheduled a big project for 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., but you find yourself still working on it at 2:00 p.m. Or maybe you just got distracted and didn't even start it until 11:00 a.m. Either way, you log that in your second calendar.

This visual comparison at the end of the day between what you planned and what actually happened helps you understand where your time is really going. If you have time blindness, this method is a game changer because over time you will see the patterns in how long things actually take versus how long you thought they would take. This helps you improve your time estimates, making your future planning more accurate and realistic. The more you do this, the better you get at it.

But the benefits don't stop there. This method is also incredibly effective for managing fluctuating energy levels because when you track your time and also your energy, you start to notice some patterns. At the end of each day, take a few minutes just to reflect back. Look at your reverse log and look at your estimated calendar. Ask yourself when you felt the most productive during the day, when you struggled, and whether you hit a wall at any point or whether you had a burst of energy that you didn't expect.

Over time, you will start to see some patterns. Maybe you find that you're consistently more productive in the morning or that you hit a slump after lunch. Once you identify these patterns, you can start aligning your most demanding tasks with your peak energy periods and save the easier stuff for whenever you’re feeling low.

If you want to dig even deeper, you can track other factors that might influence your energy levels, like what you ate, how much sleep you got, or whether you exercised. These can all play a big role in how you feel throughout the day. By paying attention to those details, you get a clear picture of what works best for you.

I think this method also helps a lot with perfectionism. Instead of beating yourself up for not accomplishing everything, the two-calendar method really encourages you to observe and learn. You start to see your day as a series of adjustments rather than a rigid plan you have to follow perfectly.

There’s another big challenge that can mess with your schedule, which is feeling overwhelmed. I feel overwhelmed a lot. When you've got a long list of tasks staring back at you, it's really easy to feel stuck. You don’t even know where to start, and when that happens, my brain literally freezes up. I end up doing nothing, or I get distracted by things that really don't matter.

It’s quite common, especially if you have ADHD, and it's called analysis paralysis, where you have so much on your plate that you can't even make a decision. You're stuck because every task feels urgent and important, and it's really hard to figure out what to do first.

The key to breaking out of this overwhelm is learning how to prioritize. When you know what's most important, it’s a lot easier to focus on and let go of the less important stuff. But to be honest, prioritizing can be quite difficult, especially when everything feels like it needs to get done right now. I've tried a bunch of apps and methods but came to the conclusion that Todoist is best at prioritizing tasks to allow creating a flexible schedule matched to my energy levels.

Todoist unites your to-do list, notes, habits, and calendar in a single app with a twist that I've never seen before called task score. When I discovered the task score tool and how it works so well with ADHD, I approached them to ask if they would sponsor this video. Thankfully, they agreed, and I'm really glad they did because it's genuinely a game changer.

Here’s how task score works: imagine you've got a bunch of tasks to do, but you're not really sure which one to start, right? Task score helps you out by looking at a few things. First, it considers how often you are opening a task note. If you keep coming back to it, task score bumps it up the list because it's clearly on your mind.

Next, it looks at urgency and importance. If something is urgent, like it needs to get done in the next couple of days, it's going to score higher. If it's important, meaning it aligns with your goals, it will score even higher. This way, the stuff that really matters isn't buried under less important tasks.

But it also doesn't stop there! If a task has a deadline or if it's holding up another task, it gets an extra boost. This makes sure that time-sensitive tasks and blockers don’t get ignored, and it all does it without you thinking about it. It sounds complicated, but it does it for you, so you don't have to worry about it.

If you're using a traditional to-do list, you probably know they can get quite overwhelming fast. Tasks that aren't immediately urgent often sink to the bottom, and you forget about them. But with task score, your list is always evolving. The most relevant tasks rise to the top, and you can easily snooze or dismiss tasks that don't need your attention right now.

One of the big problems with classic to-do lists is that they don't differentiate between what's new, what's urgent, and what's important. Everything kind of jumbles together, and it's really easy to get stuck working on recent tasks that aren't the most important. Even if you don't use Todoist, you can apply this idea to your own system. Whenever you are prioritizing, try to focus on tasks that are urgent or aligned with your goals, and don't be afraid to let go of tasks that are no longer relevant.

We need to say no. If you're someone who struggles with ADHD like I do, or if you just find it hard to stay on top of everything, Todoist is hands down the best app out there for prioritizing your tasks and getting organized. So if you're looking for a tool that can help you manage your time, energy, and priorities, especially if you've tried other apps and they just didn't stick with you, give Todoist a try.

It's made a huge difference for me, and I think it could do the same for you. Remember, following the schedule isn't about being perfect; it's about finding a system that works for you and helps you get a little better every day. With the right tools and the right mindset, you can take control of your time, reduce overwhelm, and start making real progress towards your goals.

If you're interested in how you can get better at managing your time without relying on discipline and motivation, check out my free email newsletter that I send every single Friday. And if you want to learn more about why most productivity advice doesn't work for you and how to combat them, you need to check out this video.