One of the quickest ways to make prioritisation difficult for me is to present every task with the same level of urgency. If five messages arrive marked urgent, three people need something today and my own list contains six things I have already labelled important, the word urgent stops helping. It becomes background noise with an exclamation mark attached.
ADHD prioritisation is not simply about knowing which task matters most. I can often tell you perfectly well which piece of work has the greatest objective importance and still find my attention pulled towards the thing that is newest, most emotionally immediate or easiest to begin. Urgency, novelty, interest and consequence all compete, and the winner is not always the one I would have selected in a planning meeting.
That is why vague requests such as ‘as soon as possible’ are particularly unhelpful. They give me emotional pressure without giving me useful information. Do you mean before lunch, by the end of the week or before the next meeting? If everything is described as soon as possible, I am left to build the hierarchy while also doing the work, and that extra decision-making can become the thing that slows me down.
I work much better with explicit trade-offs. If this needs to move to the top, tell me what can move down. If two things genuinely have the same deadline, help me identify which consequence matters most. If something is important but not urgent, say so. Clear priority is not micromanagement when it removes ambiguity that would otherwise consume executive function.
I have also had to become more disciplined about the urgency I create for myself. The Responsibility Monster and People Pleasing Monster are both very capable of promoting tasks without consultation, particularly when another person is waiting. Somebody else’s impatience can become my emergency remarkably quickly if I do not stop to ask whether the deadline is real or simply loud.
There are still days when the list becomes emotionally flat and everything feels equally pressing. On those days I need to externalise the choice rather than hoping my brain will spontaneously produce a sensible order. A written top three, a conversation with the Crew or one clear next action can reduce the noise enough for actual priority to become visible again.
Barry has a much easier rule: a web can register movement everywhere without responding everywhere at once. I am still practising that one.