Finding a Planner That Works With ADHD, Not Against It

A look at how people with ADHD use Morgen to plan with more clarity, structure, and self-kindness.

Managing time with ADHD isn't about willpower. It's about using tools that support how your brain works.

Morgen is a daily planner that many people with ADHD rely on for daily planning. It makes it easy to structure your day, match tasks to energy cycles, and avoid the overwhelm of lengthy to-do lists. We've pulled advice from our conversations with Marie Poulin, Bryan Jenks, and Martine Ellis here on how they've adapted their daily planning with Morgen to work for them.

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ADHD and Planning Isn't One Size Fits All

ADHD is often perceived as a barrier to productivity, partly because traditional productivity systems and workplaces assume consistent attention, reliable memory, and linear task execution. Those with ADHD may experience time blindness, emotional regulation challenges, sharp energy spikes and dips, difficulty initiating tasks, and sometimes, hyperfocus. These traits can make it hard to follow conventional routines, even for things you genuinely want to do.

But it's important to note, there is no single approach that will work for all ADHD brains. As developer and content creator Bryan Jenks says:

"If you’ve met one person with ADHD, you’ve met one person with ADHD."

While no system works for everyone, the key is finding the one that's right for you, helping you both protect and harness your energy and focus.

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Choosing a Planner That Works With Your Brain

There is no shortage of productivity tools to choose from. When evaluating your options, here are some considerations you may want to weigh.

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1. Have Visibility Over All Parts of Life

Traditionally, most people treat personal and work time as distinct. They maintain personal and work calendars, task apps for their personal to-dos, and project management tools at work.

Yet, for most of us, the lines between personal and work time blur. And even if you have a job where there is a clear delineation between work and personal time, for better or worse, stress doesn't respect a schedule.

If work is in a particularly high-intensity period, you're likely more tired and stressed outside of work. If you have a major life event, you'll likely have less energy and feel more distracted at work.

It's why Martine Ellis, an educator and coach, uses Morgen to combine her calendars from each life zone (personal, coaching business, and education work).

"I need something that can handle all of me. Not just my work self or my personal self. Morgen lets me bring it all together."

She color-codes her calendars in Morgen, making it easy to see if the time commitments in the upcoming week are heavily skewed toward one life zone. This gives her a visual queue to make sure the commitments in her other zones are lighter to accomodate the energy demands. It's less about day-to-day work-life balance, and instead, about ensuring she's balancing her energy demands and avoiding burnout.

If one calendar is overloaded for a prolonged period, it's also her signal to reevaluate the sustainability for her plan and whether it needs to be adjusted.

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2. See Your Capacity Clearly

Another benefit of seeing your calendars together, is the holistic picture of your capacity. Marie Poulin, founder of Notion Mastery, stresses the importance of scheduling maintenance moments in her calendar. Be it meal prep, renewing car insurance, or grocery shopping, she uses recurrent tasks to schedule time in her calendar.

Her reasoning is simple:

"We tend to take on more than we can handle, especially if we forget the time needed for small or routine tasks.

It's easy to say yes to one more project or one more client if we don't have a clear picture of our time. But if you have a picture of the hours available, you will quickly see if you have the capacity needed to add one more thing to your plate.

Martine adds:

"When I can see everything I've said yes to, it's easier to say no to the things that don't fit."

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3. Know What to Do Next

Many people with ADHD say that deciding what to do next can kill their motivation and put them in procrastination mode. Time blocking can be a powerful way to schedule time for tasks, both big and small. Whether you plan daily or weekly, those time blocked schedules reduce the frequency of decision-making throughout the day and the burden of remembering the list of to-dos.

For Bryan, time blocking alleviates a lot of stress:

“I don’t want little tasks filling up my brain or to spend time worrying I’ve forgotten something. Trying to keep track of all the tasks I have to do looks like a giant executive dysfunction mountain I’ll never be able to surmount.”

Instead of constantly trying to climb that mountain, he captures all his tasks in Obsidian, then plans them in Morgen. That way, his cognitive load isn’t clogged by trying to remember what to do, and instead can be focused on the task itself.

That's why for Bryan, “if it’s not in the calendar, it’s not getting done.”

Marie echos the importance of scheduling tasks. While she doesn't schedule every task, she always puts her "win the day" task in her calendar. This is the task most important for her day. If it's completed, the day is a win.

Using a planner that integrates with your task managers alleviates the need to jump between apps or try to remember what's on your list. Martine relies on Todoist, Bryan on Obsidian, and Marie on Notion. They each have these connected to Morgen. They can time block manually or get Morgen to recommend daily time blocked plans based on their task due dates, priorities, and capacity. Using the AI Planner reduces the cognitive load of planning, while still letting users adjust the plan.

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4. Leave No Tasks Behind

Even the best laid plans will sometimes falter. Perhaps a task took longer than estimated, an urgent to-do landed on your desk, or you simply weren't feeling it.

Any time you have a scheduled incomplete task, Morgen will ask the next day whether it should reschedule the task for you so it doesn't get forgotten. It can reshuffle your plan to make room for it, or schedule it at the next open time.

Bryan says that he used to feel demotivated if he didn't finish everything in his plan. He’s trying to be more kind with himself when this happens:

“It will get done. Just not today, and that’s okay.”

If you find that most mornings, Morgen suggests incomplete tasks to be rescheduled, it might be a sign that your time estimates should be increased. You can do this manually, or have AI Planner round up every estimate by 20%.

Since most of us tend to underestimate how long a task will take, this will help build achievable daily plans. And when a tasks needs one more session to get it done, try to take Bryan's advice.

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5. Plan Around Energy, Not Just Time

If you've found yourself trying to adopt conventional productivity advice and methodologies, only to burnout or feel like you've failed, you're not the problem—the system is. Marie told us about the shame spiral she felt when trying to live up to hustle culture. Her work schedule was unrelenting, yet she wasn't making the progress she wanted.

That changed when she reoriented her approach around her energy, not just her hours.

"What if my inconsistency and energy is a feature, not a bug?"

Instead of pushing through fatigue or planning based on an ideal calendar, she started building recovery time into her schedule, especially after big efforts. She gave herself permission to rest during the day when her energy flagged. In Marie’s words, "rest is part of the cycle."

Planning this way doesn’t mean doing less. It means doing things more intentionally, in ways that align with how your body and mind work.

Bryan also takes his energy levels into account when planning his days.  

“I know I am less effective between 6-8pm and checked out by 8pm. I used to schedule tasks at that time, then would inevitably end up dragging them to the next day. I’ve stopped booking that time with tasks and instead leave it open for reading books.”

Morgen makes it easy to schedule time for breaks and buffers to pulse in recovery time, and to schedule energy-intensive work when you're at peak focus.

In Morgen, planning your days based on your energy cycles can be done using Frames. If you know when your energy tends to peak, you can dedicate that time to deep work, harnessing your energy for your most challenging tasks. Similarily, Morgen can add buffer time and schedule low-energy quick wins during energy dips

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6. See (and Celebrate) How Your Time Was Spent

By time blocking your days, not only do you have a plan, but at the end of the day and week, you have a record of how your time was spent. Marie talks about the importance of reviewing each week, to reflect on what went well and celebrate the wins. She ends each week with the Notion Mastery community doing a weekly wrap, in which they take stock of what they worked on and celebrate the wins.

This provides a great sense of momentum, as well as an opportunity to notice if anything is offtrack to course correct in the upcoming week.

If the idea of a weekly wrap sounds unappealing, you can add some fun and a little dopamine to it. Martine sticks to a weekly review by making it quick and fun:

"Every week I summarize my week with a GIF. It's fun, it gives me a dopamine hit, and it helps me stick with a habit I know is good for me.

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Ultimately, It Needs to Work for You

If you're asking, "What's the best daily planner for ADHD?" there's no single answer. But for people who want a digital planner that respects their time, their energy, and their need for flexibility, Morgen may be a good fit.

While Morgen isn't designed specifically for ADHD, it's a planner that gives structure without being rigid, helps surface priorities without taking over, and lets people adjust plans as needed.

For Bryan, Morgen gives him the flexible support he needs:

"I have ADHD and autism, so structure is something I need, but it can't be inflexible. Morgen gives me what I need to stay organized without making me feel boxed in."

If you're curious, try Morgen free for two weeks to see if it's a good fit for you.