For years, I tried to copy productivity gurus.
The YouTube channels. The blog posts. The Instagram carousels with perfectly colour-coded Notion setups. I kept thinking: if I just follow their system closely enough, something will finally click for me.
It never did.
Copying the gurus
I’d watch someone walk through their whole morning routine. Wake up at 5am. Journal. Time-block the day. Every task in its box, every hour accounted for. It looked so clean. So doable.
So I’d try it. I’d set up the system. I’d feel that little buzz of excitement, like this time was different.
By day three, I’d already fallen off.
The problem wasn’t that I wasn’t trying hard enough. The problem was that I was trying to be someone else. Their brain worked a certain way. Mine doesn’t.
The calendar that never worked for me
One thing that always comes up in traditional productivity advice: “If it’s not in the calendar, it’s not happening.”
I get the logic. I just have the opposite experience. If it’s in the calendar, it’s probably not happening, unless something urgent forces it.
I can’t plan tasks around specific times because I have no idea how I’ll feel at 2pm on Thursday. I might be exhausted. I might be hyper-focused on something completely different. Strict schedules don’t leave room for that. They just leave room for guilt when you miss them.
The setup trap
You know the one. You spend three hours building a new Notion workspace, convinced that once it’s perfect, you’ll finally get organised. It feels productive. It kind of is, in a low-stakes way.
But then the real work comes and the system still doesn’t help you start.
That’s the part traditional productivity misses. It assumes that once your tasks are organized, you’ll naturally do them. For a lot of ADHD brains, organising and doing are two completely separate problems.
What actually helped
I’m not saying there’s a perfect fix. I’m still figuring it out, honestly.
But what’s helped me most is letting go of other people’s systems entirely. These days, I take one idea from someone else’s setup at most. Not their whole workflow, just one small thing I can fold into what already works for me.
I always come back to NotePlan. I’ve tried to leave it many times. I always come back because my brain knows it. I don’t have to think about setting it up. I can just open it and capture whatever’s in my head.
That’s actually the goal. Not a perfect system. Just one that’s familiar enough that you use it.
Where to start? 💡
➡️ Pick one thing from someone else’s setup that sounds useful. Just one. Try dropping it into whatever you’re already doing, without rebuilding everything around it.
Good enough is better than perfect.
You’ll adjust as you go. You’ll get bored and want something new. That’s fine. That’s actually just how ADHD brains work. The trick isn’t to resist it. It’s to stop building systems that assume you won’t.
What would it look like if your system was allowed to change with you?