Hi all,
I'm work for a process reengineering consulting firm and I'm currently designing an organizer specifically designed for people like us.......with ADD.
I need your help to make this work!
What features would you like to see in an organizer? What works for you? What doesn't work for you?
Any suggestions are appreciated!
Hi ADD,
The organizer will be simular to a 'Daytimer' or Dayrunner', however, more ADD friendly. (A calendar, note pad, phone book, day planner, to-do list....that type of thing.)
From speaking to many of you, we seem to have the same problem: constantly writing down ideas/infomation on post-it notes, slips of paper....only to be lost and often never seen again. What features would help retain our information in an orderly fashion? What works for you?
I don't want to give too many details because I don't want to steer anyone in one perticular direction. ADD people are often know to be very creative people.
Any ideas? Features? Suggestions?
This is honesty, we do make notes, we do lose them, we have the best of intentions. I've worked super duper hard at my challenges, even before I knew I had adhd.Here are a couple of things that I have found that help me out. Here is a watch that I purchased at Wal Mart a few months ago. I can add contacts and appointments in Microsoft Outlook and than upload it to my watch with alarm settings.
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product_id=219436 5
Here is another thing that I found recently, as I do spend alot of time on a computer and like to keep track of things coming up as well. Here is a program that will allow you to put down appointments in a calendar and save it to your desktop so you cannot miss it.
http://www.screencalendar.com/
Just download the program, there is no need to pay for it, all the features work just fine.
Ohh i have been trying to hard to find this..
Multiple Tasks lists that fuse with Outlook... or color coded
There is nothing more anoying when all my tasks are on one list,
The list gets so long, I loose stuff I need to do.
I would like to be able to click, HOme and see all the home tasks
or work. and there should be a master task, that takes all the tasks
that are do from all the lists and displays them.
I hate having one task list.
Also.. If you could build in a Phone message Log, that would be awesome. I have found with my ADD that If I write my phone messages in a book it helps allot the next day to remember what I was working on. Having dropdowns for people who call allot will help. There is nothing like comming back on a monday and being able to look at fridays phone messages and use that to trigger what you were doing at the end of last week. RIght now, I use a while you were out pad, and record them there, it helps allot.
Okay done. LOL
Dave2u4now38505.8203935185Are you talking about a paper-based organizer or an electric one? Or maybe a hybrid?
I'm using a little paper-based one that's about 1/4 of an 8 /12 x 11 page--generally (too lazy to go measure it). It's small enough to keep in my purse so I have it when needed and large enough that it's harder to lose around the house. It has a strap and snap to keep it from getting stuck w/ other stuff in my purse. I'd be lost without that.
I tend to be one with the best intentions who buys this stuff and then never uses it, but I use this one--religiously. Only problem is that I got it on sale at Target (cheap--probably being discontinued) and it has no company identification so I've got no idea where to go to find replacement pages. I'm cringing at the thought of running out of them and what I'll do then.
If cards have built-in recording devices (and my little organizer does come w/ a thin, built-in calculator), then you should be able to include some sort of timer/recorder. When you're driving, for example, hard to write down an idea or information, so a recording capability would be really convenient.
Mine has the same thing the daytimers do--a plactic thing you can move that says "Today" so I don't have to search to find the right date. That's been a godsend.
I also like the idea of the use of color both to prettify (and make it more appealing to use) and to code information for easier retrieval. And ways to cross-index information is useful, too. Maybe via color-coded paste-it type tabs or something.
I like the idea of a reference section, too, that has ADD tips and resources.
I love all the ideas everyone is sharing. For those who don't have palm pilots or other fancy gizmos (like me) one thing I found to help me remember upcomming events more than one day before, is using my voice mail. My voice mail has an option where you can record a message for yourself--or others--it will call back on a date that you assign and play back when you answer it. I don't know if your organizer is electronic or not, but either way, MAKE SURE THE PEN/STYLO IS ATTACHED WITH A CORD!! I can't tell you how many checkbook pens I lose a month (is it just me?). Attaching a pen to my clipboard at work with an elastic string is the only way I ever have something to write with!Yes I Hope this helps. I could use a stapler that would go through about 3 inches of sticky notes. You see after I write all my to do's on the notes I could staple them together for later review.
a taperecorder in the planner, big area to write, pages to attach stickies in the calendar area, it should fit in a purse, and it should look relatively normal and conservative from the view point of other people
This link has some good info about executive functioning, and how to get organised
http://www.tourettesyndrome.net/ef.htm
Here's a watch with 30 alarms, a bit extreme but you could set alarms for 'eat lunch', 'go to work' etc
My problem is I write To Do lists at work and never look at them until it's time to go home, at which point I think, whoops, have to do that tomorrow instead. Tasks can take years to get done.
I just bought a casio watch that beeps on the hour and has 5 alarms. It's a bit cooler than the watchminder. I'm going to start trying to write a to-do list for the day, allocating approximately when I'm going to do things.
Then every hour when the watch beeps, I look at the to-do list, or my planner and can stay on track.
Definitely a to do list with an alarm attached would be good, and colour coding.
An integrated planner/calendar/to do list that allows you to schedule small tasks immediately (eg pick up dry cleaning friday), and to break down larger projects into small chunks, and schedule those.I would like a robot that would follow me from room to room and put my stuff away...lol Super long—sorry
[QUOTE=goldenmoment]Well, here's my two cents already, COLOR CODING! That's my two cents. Color coding works a lot for me as it stands out more. I also will change the color of a Word document alternating paragraphs, especially if I have to breif a case or something that can be considered detailed or rather long, then put it all back to black when done
[/QUOTE]
COLOR CODING!!! is the best.
[QUOTE=addlad456]an organizer that dispenses ritalin. lots of ritlin[/QUOTE] Thanks for making me laugh! I've had a terrible day and really needed that!I bought myself a small whiteboard last week and coloured markers.
It's propped up on my desk and I've written lots of things I want to do on it. I can't write more tasks until I've completed one and rubbed it off as I've run out of room.
Seems to be working well
I was thinking about the same thing about a yearI recently bought a paper planner that works great - http://www.domesticplanner.com/ It's the Domestic Planner Planner. It has lots of great pages per month (Ideas, Events, appointments, weekly notes, etc). It just doesn't get down to a daily setup. I find that I can just create a new post-it for each day, throwing away the one from before. It is large, not small hand size.
For electronic type of planners, I'd want it to be light weight, I had a Palm III and it was almost too bulky. It needs to be easy. It'd be great if it would setup with a blank screen for you to add in your notes, and then it'd organize itself by date and time, with the option for adding titles to them. So you can see any progressive ideas and how they got there. I'd use it for ideas and poetry.
autumnstar
I've tried 'em.
I had a sexy Symbian mobile phone with a planner/organiser/alarm which synced with Outlook, Lotus Notes, etc.
The alarm would sound to tell me to do something, and if I'd remembered to bring the device with me I'd even hear it! Then I'd cancel the alarm, and whatever it was the thing was reminding me to do I'd decide to do it 'in a minute'.
Then I'd forget.
I get you there. My Palm never did me any good. I'd leave it everywhere, lose it at home in my piles of stuff or on my work desk under piles of stuff (typically all those pieces of paper I've written all over).
It'd have to be light weight and easy to attach to myself - like an Ipod.
What would be perfect is if it would use voice recognition to put it into Word format (type it out) because if I just recorded my voice, I'd never get around to replaying it to type it out and I forget what I hear quicker than what I read.
*A guide to how to handle and INTEGRATE emails, TO DO lists, and files. I need a system, not just a tool that will do things. I have that; it is too much gadgetry and not enough conceptual help about how to follow up on things. Whatever software or gadget should contain an excellent tutorial.I have two Time Managers(R), one I was given and one is an old one that was in a box in the supply room. They have some "nifty" ideas about organization with 50 different kinds of forms and so on, but I personally have not found them to be useful. However, the fact that they have section dividers that you can stick lables onto is great for me. I went so far as to cut up some other dividers so that I could have many more catagories.
One of the binders is for work and one for personal stuff. Each has about 20 dividers for various categories of information. Within each section, I have individual pages (or multiple pages) for each sub-category. I also have several different colored pens. Typically, each item that I write down is in a different color than the previous entry. Have slots where I can store these pens!
It doesn't have a calendar, as I have on online that will send me email messages (all part of an open source groupware tool that I set up at home).
I added a clip to the inside of the front cover, this is where I can quickly jot down notes and they won't get lost. There are three pages "Do Now", "Do Soon" and "Do Later". The last group I transfer regularly to the individual sections.
I like goldenmoment's idea of ADD management tips in a plastic cover. Anyone have something like that we can download and print out?
In my binder for work I have a plastic document protector with a list of things to do when I get to work (login to all applications, read email, look through notes). It seems pretty silly, but we all know the necessity for this kind of thing. On the back of that page is a list of things to do at specific times (start of day, during-day, end of day)
The dividers need to stick out far enough to see. I personally don't need color coding, but I understand the need for it. The basic aspect here is that the user has someway of immediately identifying the appropriate section/information.
I like adultadhd's comment about a timer as a reminder to "review my notes and ideas." Maybe your product could have a built in watch/clock. Hey, I figure an extra -50 bucks would be worth it for a built-in clock with a couple dozen alarms.
Maybe the binder could include several pages of somewhat harder plastic and a slot to insert a pad of post-its, or maybe three or four slots for different colors. These could then be pasted to the plastic sheets. These could be for the "Do Now" and "Do Soon" kind of reminders. I just played around with the concept using my binder and I think I am in love!!!!
Make the page format a standard. For example, *exactly* 1/3 of an 8.5x11" page. That way we can print out pages and easily cut them to fit. Don't forget those of us not in the US. I am an Germany and we have a different paper format.
On a side note, some of us don't use Windows so creating something that integrates with Outlook or only runs on Windows is not very useful to me (assuming that it will have a software component). I use Linux and there are hundreds of free tools available. For example, the groupware tool I use to manage my information is web based and I have access to all of my information no matter where I am, as long as I can load any web browser.
Regards,
Jim Mohr