Five sentence summary I'm sharing a tool or visualization method I use when I am totally overwhelmed and having trouble prioritizing. It relies on two ideas: external pressures indicating the importance of the task and internal pressures making the task hard to do. Prioritizing is an executive function, which means it is something ADHD folks struggle with. This includes adults. If you're overwhelmed with the million little things you need to do before you turn in a final paper or before you finish a final presentation, trying making something like a triage table. I created this as a tool to help students studying for final exams, but it quickly became obvious that it could be used for anyone who feels overwhelmed and immobilized by that feeling (I use it). On one side you have what is essentially the importance or urgency of the activity. This the heading across the top of the columns. And on the other side, across the rows the rows you have your own internal struggle, whether you're struggling because you're not interested in the task or because you're paralyzed with anxiety, it's your struggle. Both rows and columns only have three options : high, moderate, and low. Keep it simple. Take your list of tasks, steps, or study topics and place them in the corresponding cells. When you start working, your goal is to stay in the solid red (see the image below). You want to work on the most urgent and important items first: the items you can't forget or can't exclude. Use the outline color or left hand side as a secondary guide. Have an exam you're really nervous for? Start with an activity with low internal discomfort but high external importance. If you want to start your day accomplishing one of your hardest tasks first, start in the bottom right-hand corner. If you're feeling really unmotivated and didn't sleep well, start in the top right. Steer clear of those activities that are solid green until you've accomplished all of the solid red ones. Try not to move to any solid orange activities until you've finished all of the solid red tasks, but all of this is subjective and dependent individual energy, environment, and so forth. Some days it may be all solid green items. Use the reverse low bar limbo if you can't get yourself to start. The examples below have one activity per cell, but you might very well have three tasks that are high priority and cause you a high level of internal discomfort and zero tasks in some other cells. If red stresses you out, change the colors to whatever works and makes sense for you. Creating a table like this forces me to prioritize. Color coding makes it easier for my brain to process. I used Canva to make these figures but you can use Google Sheets or Excel or even make a Power Point slide and adjust as needed. How can I determine if a task is important or not? When identifying if something is important or not, ask yourself the questions on the image below. Do other parts of the project depend on this part? If you can't do steps 3 and 4 of the take home exam without doing step 1a, finish 1a. What would happen if you didn't finish the conclusion and turned in the paper without it? Well, your grade will likely decrease but it's not the same as not creating a fully defined thesis question, especially if that was specified as one of the key requirements. Students studying for an exam, see the triage table in the blog post on studying. It replaces external pressure with likelihood the topic will be on the exam. Internal discomfort is replaced with your own comfort level with the topic. I'm sure there are other flow charts and tools out there that operate on a similar premise. There are probably apps as well. Please feel free to share what works for you in the comments! Key points
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