The Weekly Review in ADHD

I set up a new system. The first week goes wonderfully. The second week it stumbles. By the third week I do not even remember it.

I have lived this so many times that at one point I thought the problem was in the systems. I bought a new notebook, tried a new app, learned a new method. Each time it collapsed in the same place.

Then I saw this: the problem with the system was not in how it was set up. It was in there being no maintenance. Everything I built was like a machine left without upkeep, and when it broke I bought a new one instead of repairing it.

Why systems collapse

No arrangement that is set up recovers by itself:

• The list swells, and the more it swells the less it gets looked at
• The calendar drifts from reality and becomes unreliable
• Papers pile up
• New tasks get stacked on top of old ones
• Tasks left half done are forgotten

All of this is normal and happens to everyone. The difference in ADHD is that maintenance does not happen by itself: noticing that the system has broken down is a separate attention job. I usually realize my list has become unreliable when I have missed something, that is, after it is too late.

The weekly review takes maintenance out of being a decision and turns it into a fixed task.

Setting up a system is a one-day job. Keeping the system standing is a weekly job, and the second is the really hard one.

Half an hour of maintenance

The checklist should be short and the same every week. Five items are enough.

1. Empty. A ten-minute brain dump. Whatever is in your head, out.

2. Collect. Sticky notes, phone notes, papers, what is waiting in your email. Move all of them to one list. The single list rule comes into play here; scattered notes are almost the same as no notes at all.

3. Clear. Delete the items that have been sitting on the list for months. Keeping a task that will not be done on the list makes the list unreliable. This is the hardest item for me, because deleting means saying "I will not do this," and saying that sentence hurts. Still, it has to be said; otherwise the list turns into an archive.

4. Look at the calendar. What happened last week, what is coming next week. Appointments, deadlines, things that need preparation. For a long time I skipped looking back; yet the real surprise comes out there, because tasks that need preparation are usually not visible on the calendar.

5. Pick three priorities. Three items for next week. More than that does not hold for me. In the glossary it appears as three priorities.

That is all. The moment it goes past half an hour, it turns into a ritual that does not get done.

Making it doable

A fixed day and time. Friday afternoon, Sunday evening. Which time it is does not matter; it being fixed is what decides. The meta-analysis by Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006) shows that plans that specify "when and where" are carried out markedly more often.

Doing it in the same place. According to the habit framework of Wood and Rünger (2016), tying the behavior to the same context speeds up automatization. The same cafe, the same table, the same chair.

Writing the checklist and putting it in front of you. A review done from memory stays incomplete. A written list makes sure the same thing is done every week and removes thinking.

Rewarding it with something. A coffee you drink only then, an album you listen to. Reward pairing is what works best for boring but necessary tasks like this.

Do not try to make up for the week you missed. If you skipped a week, do not do a two-week review. Do the same half hour and leave the rest. The logic of making up for it swells this kind of maintenance until it cannot be done, and that is what kills most systems.

What ruins the review

A short list drawn from my own failures. I did all of these and all of them killed the system.

Setting out to redesign the list. I sit down to review the list, then find myself changing the format of the list. Two hours later I have a beautiful template and not a single item has been reviewed.

Turning the review into a work session. While looking at the list I see a small task and start doing it. Then the second one. Work starts before maintenance is finished, and maintenance never finishes. The rule now is this: no work is done during maintenance, things are only written down.

Judging the past week. The question "why didn't I do this" turns maintenance into an audit. The audit upsets me, and when I am upset I do not sit down the next week. The only question now is this: is this item still valid?

Making it too long. A maintenance that takes an hour does not get done the following week. Half an hour is exactly the time I can bear, and I found this by trying.

Noticing these four helped more than learning the method. Because I already knew the method; I did not know the points where it breaks.

Why it works so well

The study by Solanto and colleagues (2010) in adult ADHD shows that a structured program targeting planning and self-monitoring skills had a significant effect on inattentive symptoms. The weekly review exercises exactly these two skills regularly.

There is also a less talked about benefit: seeing your own week. For someone who struggles to feel time, weeks blur together and the feeling "I got nothing done" settles in. Looking at last week often disproves this feeling.

I was surprised the first time I did this. The story I had about myself was "I couldn't get anything done this week either." When I looked at the calendar, there were three meetings, two deadlines and a lot of small tasks. The story was wrong, but I had never collected any evidence that could correct the story.

The monthly and seasonal versions

There are longer-interval versions of the same logic:

• Once a month: Subscriptions, spending, prescription and appointment tracking, postponed tasks. When they are not looked at once a month, they quietly pile up.
• Every three months: What worked, what did not. Reviewing the systems you dropped and reopening the ones that are still needed.

These are not mandatory. If the weekly one is working, the others get easier by themselves. In the quarterly one I usually notice something: I dropped most of the systems I dropped not because they were bad but because there was no maintenance day.

Why setting this up took time for me

Let me be honest: the hardest part of this article is not describing the method, it is admitting why sustaining the method is hard.

Weekly maintenance produces nothing. At the end you do not have a new piece of work, no one notices, and it gives no satisfaction. Doing regularly a task whose reward is far away is one of the things I struggle with most in ADHD.

The only thing that worked for me was to stop associating it with productivity. Now I think of it like brushing teeth. It does not need to be enjoyable, its result does not need to be felt. Being done is enough.

I covered why systems collapse in the article on all-or-nothing thinking, and the habit of constantly searching for new tools in the article on app hunting.

I wrote in the diary about how I set this up one Sunday evening: A good week is about to begin.