Remembering to track and manage time: how Rachael manages her ADHD with Timeular

“I tried everything and nothing worked. I even tried making my own terminal utilities.” At Timeular we’ve heard this one before: people desperate to find an accurate time tracking tool that’s easy to remember to use and will actually help improve time management.

Track your time is a great way to help you overcome ADHD procrastination and to improve your planning skills when you have ADHD. It was a frustration shared by Rachael Dawn, a senior developer at a business intelligence firm. 

But she’s not just speculatively tracking her time – Rachael has clear goals: make sure she hits work deadlines, stay focused on impactful work, and keep on track writing her book about how she’s applying Stoicism and Taosim to better herself. She also uses it to keep her ADHD from interfering with these goals.

“If I don’t have what I need in front of me, I’ll literally lose hours because I’ll struggle through without realizing it. If I don’t have a bottle in front of me, I’ll forget to drink.” 

What Rachael’s describing is object permanence – what isn’t seen isn’t remembered. Quite literally, when she was in deep work, if the software was hiding away in the background, she’d forget to track. And it was this need for a physical prompt to help her track time to hit her goals that led Rachael to discover Timeular and has led to minute-accurate time data that she habitually tracks each day. 

Managing time with Timeular

Rachael’s day starts with a reflection of the previous day. “I’m looking for how I did yesterday. Are there more grays than yellows?” she asks, referring to the colors she’s assigned to deep work and distractions. “Then I’m looking at the day ahead – how do I feel? What am I expecting today?”. It’s the discrepancy between perceived productivity and actual productivity that she’s able to spot in Timeular and, coupled with some additional context like sleep or nutrition insight, can help work out what needs doing to stay on track to meet her goals.

On a really good day she can optimize for 5 hours straight of deep work (compare that with the max. 15 minutes she’s able to focus at a time on a really bad day). Though with ADHD she’s also careful not to get too ingrained in a bout of hyperfocus (notifications help her with that).

And of course, everything is tracked to go through the same routine the following morning.

“I could never get time tracking to work effectively. That’s changed now.” Rachael now tells everyone she knows looking to improve themselves about Timeular – thanks Rachael 🙌

If you too are struggling with object permanence, Rachael has another great tip – this time for getting things out of her head for later so she’s not distracted by them. “I have a ‘distraction inbox’. When a thought crosses my mind, I write it down on a bit of paper and throw it in the inbox for later”. 

Ready to take control of your time?

Rachael uses the Tracker with the Timeular app. Get on top of your time management too – discover the physical time Tracker.