📊 How to Create a Personal Dashboard for Your ADHD Life
🧠 From Chaos to Clarity: Build a System That Works With Your Brain—Not Against It
👋I Didn’t Need More Motivation—Just a Map
For years, I tried forcing myself into productivity systems that made me feel like a failure. I'd wake up with 17 tabs open in my brain, jump between tasks, forget half of them, then feel awful at night.
It wasn’t laziness. It wasn’t lack of ambition.
What I lacked was clarity.
The day I built my first ADHD-friendly personal dashboard, I realized:
“I don’t need to remember everything—I just need one place where it all lives.”
That dashboard became the anchor that helped me focus, track progress, and actually feel in control.
Let’s dive in!
🔍 What You’ll Learn
In this guide, you'll discover:
✅ How to turn your ADHD chaos into a visual, calming system
✅ The best tools—paper and digital—that actually work for ADHD brains
✅ A weekly review ritual to reset and refocus (without guilt)
✅ Simple visual hacks that your brain will actually want to use
✅ How to build a system that’s fun, flexible, and fail-proof
🧠 What Is an ADHD Personal Dashboard?
It’s more than a to-do list. Your ADHD dashboard is your:
📍 Command center
🧭 Visual compass
🧘 Safety net when your brain feels scrambled
It’s a space that shows you what matters now, helps you plan next, and makes you feel in control again.
This is not about productivity porn. It’s about clarity, simplicity, and self-trust.
🔬 Why It Works (According to Science)
ADHD brains often struggle with:
🧠 Working memory
🔁 Task switching
⏰ Time blindness
🚦 Prioritization
According to Dr. Russell Barkley, ADHD is less about attention and more about executive function, the brain’s ability to plan, organize, and manage itself.
That’s why external systems are key.
“You must externalize information and structure your environment. Relying on willpower alone doesn’t work.”
📚 Source: Barkley on Executive Function
Creating a dashboard is exactly that:
An external tool that supports your executive function, like glasses for your brain.
🛠️ Step-by-Step: How to Build Your ADHD Dashboard
1. Choose Your Format
Start by choosing a dashboard format that suits your brain and lifestyle:
🖥️ Digital: If you love structure, searchability or working on your computer/phone. Try Notion, Trello, or Sunsama.
📝 Paper: If you’re tactile and love the feeling of pen to paper. Use a bullet journal or printable planners.
🧱 Physical: If you’re forgetful and need things in sight. Go with whiteboards, sticky notes, or even a fridge setup.
Pick the one you’re most likely to look at daily. The best system is the one you’ll actually use.
2. Set Up Your Core Sections
Your dashboard should answer:
“What’s on my plate and what matters most this week?”
Start with these ADHD-friendly sections:
🎯 Top 3 Priorities – Your daily/weekly must-dos. Nothing more. ADHD craves simplicity.
🗂️ Project Overview – A space to track long-term tasks and break them down into steps.
🗓️ Weekly Plan – One glance should show you what your week looks like. Keep it visual.
⚡ Quick Wins List – Easy tasks for low-energy days. Builds momentum and dopamine.
🌡️ Mood + Energy Tracker – Start recognizing your rhythms so you can work with them.
🔁 Weekly Review – Every Sunday (or Friday), take 15 minutes to reset.
3. Make Your Weekly Review ADHD-Friendly
This is where the magic happens. Your review should include:
✅ What went well? Celebrate wins, no matter how small
🛠️ What needs tweaking ? Gently adjust what didn’t work
🎯 What matters next week? Re-set your focus
Pro tip: Do this with your favorite drink or playlist. Make it a treat, not a chore.
Habit stacking is the name of the game!
🎨 Make It ADHD-Enjoyable
Make your dashboard so satisfying that your brain wants to check it:
🎨 Use color-coding and emojis to make things visually pop
✨ Add rewards like stickers or dopamine treats for finished tasks
🧠 Use symbols (⚡ 🌱 🛑) to make info easier to scan
🔄 Keep it flexible—change layouts often if needed. Novelty helps!
⚡ ADHD Tools to Explore
Here are some fun, flexible, and focus-friendly tools to try:
💻 Digital Tools
Ideal if you love tech + structure in one place.
🧠 Notion ADHD Life OS – Your second brain, fully customizable
☀️ Sunsama – Plan your day by energy + intention
🗂️ Trello / ClickUp – Visual kanban boards for task juggling
📝 Paper & Physical Tools
Perfect for out-of-sight = out-of-mind brains.
📓 Bullet Journal method – Analog simplicity with total freedom
📃 Dani Donovan’s ADHD printables – Funny + relatable tools that actually help
🧲 Whiteboards, sticky notes, fridge charts – For keeping tasks front & center
🌀 Before & After the Dashboard
😩 Before
💥 Overwhelmed + scattered
⏰ Missed deadlines + forgotten tasks
🔄 Feeling like every day starts from zero
😵💫 No system = No progress
😌 After
✅ Clear, visual priorities
📈 Progress you can see
⚡ More energy, less guilt
🎯 Finally… a sense of control
🧭 When You Need a Dashboard Most
Use it as your reset button when:
🧯 You're burnt out
❓ You've forgotten what you were working on
🆕 You’re starting something new
💡 You have 100 ideas and no plan
🧘 You need structure—but not pressure
Your dashboard becomes your anchor when everything else feels wobbly.
🧩 ADHD Dashboard Cheat Sheet
Here’s a quick setup recap:
🔝 Keep daily priorities to 3 max
🗓️ Do a 15-min review every week
🎨 Make it visual, fun, and easy to scan
🔁 Keep everything in one place—no scattered apps or notes
💡 Let it evolve! What works one month might need a tweak the next
Print this and tape it to your wall, or turn it into your screensaver.
💬 Final Thought
You don’t need a “perfect” productivity system.
You need a safe space to put your thoughts. A place that reflects how your brain works—not how a neurotypical system expects you to.
Build your dashboard with kindness. With curiosity.
It’s not about being productive.
It’s about building self-trust—one glance at a time.
✨ Loved this guide? Let’s build clarity together! ✨
💬 Drop a comment below sharing how you organize your ADHD life — or what challenge you want help with next!
🔄 Share this with a friend who needs a little more calm and control in their brain chaos.
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Let’s turn overwhelm into flow — one dashboard at a time! 🚀🧠
Rgds,
Lud
Love all of this. Notion is my main go-to, and I’ve been using some form of this for a few years now, but I’m always tweaking, a) as I learn new things (will be applying some of these tips!), and b) for novelty exactly like you said. One thing I’ve been experimenting with recently is adding in an ADHD Eisenhower—ie based on impact and energy, not urgency and importance (cos how are we supposed to know those?). I rate my tasks low or high for those two scales, and my board automatically puts them into quadrants that tell me when to do them (or whether to do them at all 😅). Finding it really helpful at my new job, where I’m trying to absorb a lot of new information and get up to speed on a lot of new projects at once 👌🏻
Are you reading my mind?? I just got The Anti-Planner by Dani Donovan and saw her whiteboard on her website. So of course, I’m now waiting on delivery of my own whiteboard to set up a system that works for me!! I like your ideas too and will use them when I set up my board.
I know it will not be the miracle cure but it will help get these things out of my head and organized! Thank you💜