I always thought “there’s no way that I’m ADHD – I’m too organised!”

I turn up on time for everything, actually I turn up early for everything (well I did the first 30 years of my life before having my son!).

I’ve got everything written down. I’ve got lists about lists, post-its and planners. At one point we even had a whiteboard in our house!

On reflection my time management and memory is awful and that’s why I write everything down and get to places early, otherwise I will be horrendously late or forget everything.

On paper my time management and organisation looks spot on but what it hides is a completely chaotic mind.

I have to do things as soon as they come to mind, otherwise I forget. I can’t leave a message on ‘read’ because I’ll forget all about it. The same with emails.

I struggle with prioritising things because as soon as I get told something it instantly becomes a priority otherwise it is forgotten. Treating everything as a priority is a one-way ticket to burnout.

As I get older this gets trickier. I now have a little one at home which changes all my priorities, and any plans or the ability to remember things have gone out of the window.

So now, in my early 30s, I’m trying to work out how to prioritise things, because I’ve been working on the basis that everything needs to be done *now*.

Especially in workplaces where people don’t really give you a timeline. So, I often think “that means straightaway then.”

All this time my hyper-organisation was me trying to work around my ADHD. And now that organisation is slipping? I just feel like a fake adult.