170: Break this Organizing Rule if You Have ADHD – Conventional Methods Work Best

Break the Rule: “Conventional Methods Work Best” (You Need Convention to Break It)

Every tenth episode, I dig into a piece of organizing advice worth bending or breaking for ADHD brains. Today’s target: the idea that conventional organizing methods are simply what work best.

Both sides of this argument have always existed

We hear plenty of phrases defending tradition: it’s tried and true, it comes from the wisdom of the ages, don’t break from tradition. And we hear just as many pushing against it: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, there’s no progress without innovation. Both camps have a point. There’s real value in sticking with one approach long enough to actually get good at it, and there’s real value in trying many different things to discover what actually fits you. Neither side has to win outright.

Convention and unconventional need each other

Conventional simply means the way something is usually done. That definition alone invites the question: why is it usually done that way, and could it be done differently? But here’s the piece I think gets missed: you can’t actually be unconventional without first knowing what the convention is. There’s no norm to push against, and no creativity born from pushing against nothing. The standard and the deviation from it need each other to exist at all.

Cursive writing as the clearest example

I taught elementary school back when cursive was still standard curriculum, precise rules for how a letter should reach the line, whether a D or a T stretched higher. By the end of my short teaching career, it was already being phased out to make room for other instruction. My own kids never learned it, and I’ve watched them stare in genuine fear at a driver’s license signature pad, worried their signature would look like a second grader’s attempt. We’ve nearly circled back to the days when illiterate people simply marked an X on a contract.

But think about what a signature actually was in the first place: a creative twist on the conventional letters everyone learned, stylized into something personal and distinct enough that we coined the phrase “give it your John Hancock” after his famously bold signature on the Declaration of Independence. That uniqueness could only exist because everyone first learned what the letters were supposed to look like. The convention and the personal deviation from it were never actually in conflict. One made the other possible.

How this applies to organizing, and to me

My whole fish-brain, monkey-brain framework is built on pushing against conventional organizing standards, but I respect that those standards exist for a reason, and I took the time to actually understand why they work well for so many type-A brains. That understanding is exactly what gives me the freedom to ask, why doesn’t this particular step work for this particular person, and what happens if we tweak it here instead? The tweaking is only possible because there’s a real standard underneath it to tweak.

Even history backs this up: pioneer women scrubbing laundry against rocks along the Oregon Trail thought the first woman to show up with a ridged metal washboard was ridiculous, until her clothes came out visibly cleaner than everyone else’s. Convention shifted. Then someone else came along with the idea for a washing machine, and it shifted again. It bends and flexes precisely because there was a baseline in place to bend away from.

Your practical, actionable step

The next time a conventional organizing suggestion rubs you the wrong way, resist the urge to reject it outright. Try it once as intended, then genuinely ask yourself why it isn’t working for your brain specifically, and experiment with one small tweak to it. The convention isn’t your enemy, it’s the raw material your own unconventional version gets built from.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.