The last couple days I’ve finally been able to work on some of the big projects I care about and have wanted to do for months. But wanting to do all the things I want to do and having lots of ideas is painful, like before I got anxiety, ADHD treatment (which my doctor interpreted as being more of an anxiety thing) but also stopped doing the big things.
It’s so tempting to ignore the things I really want and go burry myself in a video game or something.
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I started doing that last year with Joplin on my computer and it’s a big help.
I also keep big notes to just dump everything I’m working on into - websites, pdfs, screenshots, screen video captures with no commitment to organization except I can add things in chronological order. A lot of it is initiated by showing it to someone else and then realizing I should have a note for myself too.
I really should start doing the same with personal stuff and random observations. If something is important enough to tell (or what to tell) other people about it should be important enough to tell my future self about.
It’s crazy how much not experiencing rewards yourself/the inability to do things for yourself influences things I wouldn’t even imagine before understating what ADHD is/does and consciously examining them.
OneNote has been my dumping ground for 15 years now, it’s a chaotic mess, because I’ve been lazy and search works really well.
Today I have a few notebooks, some for actual, organized work, and some for the grandiose ideas I get, or the random stuff I find.
I recently started a new notebook using the PARA model:
Projects
Areas of Responsibility
Resources
Archive
(And an additional section which I added to the model)
Reference
I added this to PARA, I find it useful for some resources to be in a separate Reference section, since Resources gets archived upon completion of a Project or Area of Responsibility.
So in addition to my other notebooks, I have this PARA one at the top, with these four elements as Section Groups (Sections Groups Are Sections that can contain other sections, kind of like major tabs in a notebook, that can have smaller tabs in them). I largely work out of it every day, using other notebooks to capture all the random stuff that catches my eye.
Every Project/Responsibility/related Resource is added to that notebook. Other stuff (random articles, curiosities, etc) go elsewhere. This notebook is specifically for actionable, actually important, life management stuff.
Everything flows from the Project Section and the Areas of Responsibility Section. Resources never exist on their own - they are always related to either a Project or an Area of Responsibility (I even name the Sections in Resources the same as their related Project or Responsibility so it’s clear they go together).
Just last week I archived my first project, including it’s related Resource section - what a great feeling!
When I started using Evernote (years ago) I was clipping everything, but it became a giant black hole eventually, and like all those bookmarks we’ve saved, I never looked at 95% of that stuff.
The need for external validation is a burden, indeed, but you’re already on the right track. You got this!