Nineteen items. That was Monday’s list, written in one go, in a burst of Sunday-night optimism that felt productive at the time. By Friday, four were crossed off. The other fifteen got copied onto next Monday’s list, where the whole thing happened again.
Here’s the part that took me embarrassingly long to notice: the fifteen leftovers weren’t harder than the four that got done. Some of them were easier. They just happened to be written differently.
So this post isn’t about what belongs on the list. It’s about the ADHD to do list format itself, by which I mean four concrete things: how many lines the list has, how each line is worded, how much is packed into one line, and where the list physically lives. Those four things are what I kept changing, and they turned out to matter more than anything I put on the page.
Count the Lines: Where the ADHD To-Do List Format Starts
Nineteen lines and three get done. Six lines and four get done. Same person, same week, same amount of willingness.
A long list makes everything look equally important on the page. The dentist appointment and the tax return and “buy milk” all get one line each, same font, same weight, which means the ranking has to happen before any of the work can. That’s a second job, and it’s the one I tend to stall on, and then blame myself for stalling, which never once helped.
Worth saying about that stall: hesitating when everything looks equally weighted is a reasonable response, not a broken one. Wanting to be right about what matters most, before spending the energy, is a decent instinct. It’s the same one that spots the flaw in a plan nobody else questioned. It just needs the ranking to happen on the page instead of in your head.
The fix I use: cap the daily list at five lines. Not five as a target, five as a physical limit: the page doesn’t have a sixth line. Everything else goes on a holding list somewhere else entirely, which is what a brain dump is actually for. The holding list can be four pages long. Today’s list gets five.
Start Every Line With a Verb
“Admin.” “Sarah.” “Insurance thing.” Every list has a few of these, and they are the lines that survive longest, untouched, migrating from week to week like they’ve got tenure.
They survive because they aren’t tasks. They’re categories wearing a task costume. “Admin” could mean twelve different things and you’d have to open a drawer to find out which. So you read it, get no instruction back, and move on to something that does give an instruction. Usually the phone.
Reading a task line that literally is not a flaw, by the way. The line said “admin” and there is no such action as admin-ing.
The fix: every line starts with a verb. Not “insurance thing” but “call insurance about the excess.” Not “Sarah” but “text Sarah the date.” It takes three seconds more to write and removes an entire decision from tomorrow.
Split the Lines That Are Secretly Two Tasks
“Email Sarah and book the dentist” looks efficient. One line, two jobs, tidy. It is, in practice, a line that cannot be crossed off, because you’ll do one of them and then stare at a half-completed line for four days deciding whether it counts.
A half-done line is a small argument with yourself every time you look at the page.
The fix: one task, one line, one possible outcome. If a line contains the word “and,” it’s two lines. If it contains “then,” it’s two lines. Yes, this uses up your five faster. There were only ever five slots; bundling just hid that.
Write the First Physical Move, Not the Outcome
“Finish the presentation” is a result. Nobody can start a result. What you can start is “open the file and write the title slide,” which takes ninety seconds and is, conveniently, the exact thing standing between you and the next forty minutes of work.
This is where a lot of otherwise sensible advice about “breaking tasks down” goes wrong: it tells you to break the task into smaller tasks, which is still a planning job, and planning is the thing you were avoiding. Breaking it into a physical first move is different. It’s not smaller planning, it’s no planning. Your hands know what to do with “open the file.” They have no idea what to do with “finish.”
The upside hiding in this one: once the first move happens, staying with the task can get a lot easier. That’s certainly how it goes for me, and it’s a pattern plenty of people with ADHD describe. The problem was never the forty minutes. It was the ninety seconds.
Keep the List Where Your Hands Already Are
A list in an app is behind a lock screen, three taps, and a notification that will absolutely be more interesting than the list. A list on paper is on the desk, open, in the way, and in the way is exactly where I need it.
Not a paper-is-morally-superior argument. It’s about how many steps sit between you and seeing the thing. If your list lives in an app you already have open all day, fine. If it lives somewhere you have to go and find, the format doesn’t matter, because you won’t be looking at it.
Worth knowing: the blank page itself can be its own obstacle, and that’s a separate problem with a separate fix.
Test Your ADHD To-Do List Format Against Tomorrow Morning
Here’s the check that catches everything the four rules miss. Read your list as if you’re tomorrow-morning-you: tired, slightly late, holding coffee, no interest in interpreting anything.
Can that person start every line without making a single decision first? If yes, the format is doing its job. If any line makes them pause to work out what it means, that line needs rewriting tonight, while you still have the context in your head. Tonight-you knows what “insurance thing” meant. Tomorrow-you will not, and tomorrow-you is the one who has to do it.
On a day that starts low, this matters even more. A day you’ve already marked as low on the energy check has no spare capacity for decoding your own handwriting.
The Short Version
- Five lines a day, hard cap. Everything else goes on a holding list.
- Every line starts with a verb. “Admin” is not a verb.
- One task per line. If it has “and” in it, it’s two lines.
- Write the first physical move, not the finished outcome.
- Keep the list somewhere already open, not three taps away.
- Test it as tomorrow-morning-you. No line should need decoding.
None of this makes the week lighter. It makes the list honest about what fits in it, which turns out to be most of the difference between a page you use and a page you avoid. If the whole system keeps collapsing anyway, that’s usually a planner design problem rather than a you problem.
A Planner With the Cap Already Printed
The Flowers ADHD Planner puts the same cap one level up. Every weekly spread opens its right-hand page with TO-DO THIS WEEK: five printed lines, five checkboxes, and then the box ends. Not a bullet list that keeps going until the page runs out. Five things for the week, chosen on purpose. The hourly columns on the facing page are where you decide which day each one actually lands on, which is the daily version of the same rule. Everything that doesn’t fit goes to the brain dump page at the front, and then to the sorting page next to it. Which is where it belonged anyway.
Pink Lobster Creatives is run by Liesbeth, a surface pattern designer building the tools she wished she’d had 10 years ago. Everything here comes from lived experience rather than a medical qualification. Nothing on this blog is a substitute for advice from your doctor, therapist, or ADHD coach. Strategies that work for one person with ADHD may not work for another. If something resonates, take it. If it doesn’t, leave it.
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