139: Quick Tip Tuesday – Try a Pending List for your ADHD Brain

The Pending List and Sticky Note Trick

This is a quick, actionable one, a single piece of my intentionally flexible planning system, shrunk down small enough that it doesn’t feel overwhelming to try.

The problem this solves

You know the feeling: you plan, but don’t follow through, or you try to take action but end up scratching things out, moving them around, rewriting the same item for the twelfth time. That defeated feeling around planning is what this fixes.

What you need

Any notebook small enough to carry with you, or a phone photo if you’re out and about, a pencil, and a sticky note.

How it works

Put the sticky note on the bottom half of a notebook page, and jot down a few things you’re hoping to get done today. I call it a pending list on purpose, because any decision you make about an item on it counts as action, even deciding not to do something. If you get to the end of the day and realize one of those things genuinely wasn’t important, the world didn’t end, and you’re not going to do it, you can cross it off with a clear conscience. Choosing not to do it is still a decision, still action taken.

The empty top half is where the magic happens

Whenever you actually complete something, write it on the top half of the page, that’s your done list, and check it off or cross it off your sticky note. If it turns out you only got one thing done today, that’s fine, you have two options: move the sticky note to a fresh page, or leave it where it is and try to tackle the rest again tomorrow. Once everything on the pending list is finally handled, pull the sticky note off and toss it. Or, if you’d rather not stare at unfinished business, throw the sticky note away at the end of each day regardless, and start a fresh one the next morning, even if that means rewriting a couple of leftover items.

Why the done list matters more than the to-do list

We have notoriously unreliable memories for what we’ve actually accomplished. Writing things down as done, and being able to flip back through the notebook later, gives you real proof that you’ve gotten things done, directly countering the lie our brains love to tell us that we’re hopeless and never finish anything. Gretchen Rubin calls this a “ta-da list,” and there’s something genuinely powerful in that reframe, ta-da, look what I did, instead of another unchecked to-do sitting there as a reminder of what didn’t happen.

Why the physical sticky note matters

Moving the note to a new page, tearing it up when it’s done, scratching an item off, these small physical actions matter to our brains. They let you release the leftover, unfinished remnants instead of carrying them forward as a growing pile of undone things. What you’re left with, page after page, is only ever the done list.

Your practical, actionable step

Grab any notebook and a sticky note today. Write down just a few pending items on the sticky note, and start a done list on the page above it. At the end of the day, either toss the sticky note if everything’s finished, or move it to a fresh page and keep going tomorrow.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.