182: A Hack to help your ADHD Brain to Tackle an Overwhelming Complex Project

The Hack for Big, Overwhelming Projects (Using Christmas as the Example)

How much of life is like one big, complex project that overwhelms your brain, shuts you down, and then suddenly lights up in the final hours before a deadline, where everything falls into place and you pull it off, exhausted and stressed, quietly hoping you won’t do it that way again? Christmas is the perfect, timely example of this pattern, but the hack I want to share works for any large project.

Skip the Pinterest checklist

The instinct to search for a polished Christmas organizing checklist or project guide online is a trap. What you’ll find is spreadsheets and rigid lists built by monkey brains who have no idea how your brain actually works. You’ll end up staring at item after item thinking, sure, I know all of this needs to happen, but which one do I start first, and why is it in this particular order, and can I skip to number three even though the tree isn’t supposed to happen until number seven? It usually makes you feel worse, not better.

The actual hack: a nonlinear pending list

Set a twenty-minute timer, grab a pencil and a stack of sticky notes, and just brain-dump everything swirling around in your head, one item per note. Decorate the tree, decorate the mantle, buy stocking stuffers, get the gifts, order Christmas cards, wrap presents, plan the food, handle party invites, pick up a hostess gift, whatever comes to mind. None of it needs to be prioritized or put in any particular order yet. The relief comes just from getting it out of your head and onto paper.

Once it’s all out, go back through and star or circle anything that’s genuinely time-sensitive, ordering personalized cards, a gift with a shipping deadline, an event date you can’t miss. Keep that urgent group small, three to five items at most, so it actually rises to the top instead of blending back into everything else.

Where to put the stickies

However you’ll actually see them regularly is the right answer. Stick them on a kitchen wall you pass daily. If you don’t want that visual clutter, try a manila folder instead: pending items on the left, and a “tackled” column on the right where you physically move each note once it’s done. Watching things migrate to the tackled side is genuinely reinforcing. A decorative box works too, pending items in the lid, completed ones in the bottom. If you’re someone who needs things in your direct line of sight to remember them exist, stick them around your computer monitor or your fridge, whatever it takes.

Why this beats a linear checklist for our brains

A nonlinear list lets you jump straight to whatever task feels interesting in the moment and bypass whatever you’re currently stuck on, trusting that urgency will eventually unstick it when the time comes. Pairing this with daily accountability, checking in with a group, sharing what you tackled, seeing what others are working on, means that by the time the usual last-minute swirl arrives, you’ll have meaningfully fewer things left to scramble through. The goal isn’t eliminating every last straggler task. It’s the difference between a few small stragglers and full-blown panic-buying deodorant at CVS at 11:50pm on Christmas Eve for a stocking stuffer.

Your practical, actionable step

Set a twenty-minute timer right now, brain-dump every Christmas (or project) task swirling in your head onto individual sticky notes, star the three to five that are genuinely time-sensitive, and put the rest somewhere visible where you’ll actually interact with them daily.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.