What is a To-Do List?

Something on your “to-do list” that never gets done.

I’m AuDHD, so I’m kidding. Of course I know what they are. I make them all the time. By the hundreds. Then, “ooh. Snickers.”

My dad did the “Daily Franklin” planner training when I was a kid, so when he showed me how tasks lists work, I use them to this day. And it doesn’t work if I do it on my computer. I have to physically write it in a journal before I start adding things to my Google Tasks. That’s because Google Tasks doesn’t use the Daily Franklin method.

You need three columns- Priority, Task, and Status.

That way, you can do your task list stream-of-consciousness and then have room on the left to figure out what’s most important, represented by A, B, C, etc. Instead of just crossing things off, the “status” column can be a dot until it’s a check. A dot means “in process.” My journals are a mess because I can’t draw for shit and my tables look awful, but I’ve been doing this for 35 years. I have tried, and doing it in Excel does not work for me because the retention comes from holding the pen.

Demand avoidance makes me unable to do a lot, but I do what I can with the spoons I have. Link is to a PDF of the original blog entry, because I couldn’t find a copy in HTML. It’s one of the best blog entries I’ve ever read, so if you have friends with long term illnesses, it would help you to read it. I had to save the file to my OneDrive and share the link, so please let me know if there are issues with it. I’ve tested it on my own machine, which is a guarantee it won’t work for anyone else.

With disabilities, the recurring refrain (in A flat minor) is “but you don’t look sick.” When I figure out how to do that, I’ll let you know…. but honestly, it’s not a hard leap. Most people know I don’t move right, my eye drifts, I tilt my head to the side a lot because I have monocular vision and I’m trying to use my good eye….. leading people often to say, “are you looking at me?” “What are you looking at?” “I’m over here.” I’ve been teased mercilessly my whole life and it’s gotten better with age, yet some adults are still rude. Some adults still only have the emotional capacity of a teenager, and I meet most of those people at work.

Neurotypical people don’t know how to communicate with the neurodivergent, and no one knows how to communicate with the physically disabled because it’s like someone died, in some respects. When someone close to you dies, people genuinely and repeatedly do not know what to say. They handle people with disabilities the same way. It’s amazing how many people think teasing me before they even know me is the right tack.

I don’t even let my friends tease me (about this), and if you knew me, you’d know that. However, my friends would have the good sense not to say those things in the first place (or some of them would, anyway). A stranger or a coworker has no such qualms.

So, mostly the thing that never gets done on my task list is shutting down ableism, and it won’t go away in my lifetime. Everything is a dot because of my processing disorders and physical limitations.

When all I want is a check.