ADHD Top Tip #2 Text message reminders

You probably have a diary, or several, but do you remember to look at it? You may not even take your diary around with you for fear of losing it. But, you are probably pretty good at keeping your phone with you…

Google Calendar and Yahoo Calendar both have the very useful (and free!) feature that you can set them to automatically send you a text message a certain length of time before an appointment. You need to tell it the your phone number of course, and set up a default warning time which people often set to an hour or you can change it to whatever you want. You can also set up e-mail reminders.

The e-mail reminders are great for remembering something a day or weeks in advance, especially as you can set up more than one for each event so it acts as a sort of countdown e.g. “Wedding Anniversary on the 30th BUY PRESENT/BOOK RESTAURANT!”. Arrange the calendar to e-mail you perhaps two weeks in advance, then one week and the day before and click the box for ‘repeat’ and for the rest of time you’ll get a timely reminder to prepare for the event.

Set the texts to come in nearer the time. Again, you can set more than one. If you are bad at timekeeping the text message sound will jog your memory. You can even use them as a to do list. If you have a stack of things that you need to do on any given day, put them in the calendar one after the other as if they were appointments. Space them out a reasonable time apart. Then, when you’ve finished the first thing on your To Do list and wander off to have a cup of tea, start thinking about something else, turn on the telly, lose the list, forget why you went into the room in the first place, phone a mate (you know all the things that stop you getting anything done) a few minutes later the next text will come in, jog your memory and tell you what to do next.

Of course, this does all require you to actually put stuff in the calendar in the first place. Some people with ADHD swear by it though, especially as some phones sync up to the on line diaries so you can put in appointments anywhere. Have a go. Tell us your experiences, or if you’ve found something along the same lines.