How I Use Recordo to Help With My ADHD

1. Squirrel Mind

This is my #1 — and you can easily see how this is the main theme behind Recordo. The thoughts come all the time, and random times. During business meetings, dining with my wife, or when you just laid down in bed hoping to sleep.

People compare them to butterflies — I find comet analogy more appropriate. A bright, fast comet has entered your space — and suddenly nothing else matters — you're watching it, thinking about it. And then, a moment of distraction, you turn around — and it's gone.

My way to deal with this is to capture it before it's gone. My wife now understands, I'm purely open that I will pick up the phone, record it real fast and get back to her. That is not the nicest, but it's much better to be distracted all dinner still thinking about it. I know it's been captured so it's safe.

Recordo is all about quickly capturing thoughts and tasks, and lets AI translate and organize it. You can speak it, type it, snap it. Piece of paper works, too, but you don't have it always, and it can be lost.

2. Overwhelm

I'm sure most ADHDers feel the overwhelm frequently. You have too much so that you can't do anything. You basically can't select what to start with, and end up doing everything and nothing at the same time, or rather, just fall back to some known and accessible dopamine source — procrastinate. And after procrastination, comes guilt or anxiety. Better not to end there.

I don't know if there's any other way to deal with it other than prioritization. I sometimes create a full brain dump on piece of paper, and then ruthlessly prioritize it. That works, but it requires a fair amount of cognitive energy to start with it, which you don't always have.

Recordo intentionally shows just one task on the main page. Unlike endless checklists, this is helping you to narrow down to just one thing. That is usually not enough though to overcome the executive dysfunction — we'll talk about it in the next section.

3. Starting & Staying Focused

Even if you know what to do, you don't necessarily know how to start. Usually this happens when you're not fond of the task you need to do. Starting is so much easier when you know there will be dopamine during or after. The bulletproof method for this is to find the first tiny step and do it.

Happily, today's AI assistants can help you with that. They can brainstorm it with you. Recordo has chat-first user experience, where you can ask about anything. ChatGPT might work, too, but Recordo already knows your tasks and history, so it gives more relevant answers.

Then once you start, it is hard not to distract. See above — the squirrel mind makes sure you have what to distract to. And when the focus is lost, it's really hard to get it back.

People invented various techniques like Pomodoro to deal with this. I'm writing this post in Recordo's task focus mode, which similarly helps you to concentrate with intentionally zen interface.

4. Forgetting

We ADHDers have notoriously leaky memory. We forget, because we are in our thoughts. Sometimes we forget immediately. I can easily forget why I entered a room — while walking, I start chasing some other thought.

I don't know if the technology is there to solve for this immediate forgetting — I certainly wouldn't want to log every single thing. But important things need to be remembered. I don't want to miss kid's school event or brilliant business idea just because I got lost in the space.

The core idea behind Recordo is that everything is accessible at any time — you just ask the squirrel in chat, and it brings up ideas, thoughts, memories, tasks — and chores.

5. Disorganization

How many times have we sworn that we'll start fresh on Monday? And then by Wednesday it's vague, by Friday you don't remember it. ADHD brain needs organization. It needs routines. Routines help to temporarily "turn off the brain", so you can do important lifestyle things like brushing the teeth or exercising without a significant mental effort — leaving the mental energy for other items.

I tirelessly fight to stay organized, and I'm sure I'll need to do so my whole life. The moment you relax and get out of your routines, things quickly get messed and disorganized.

Recordo supports both one-time tasks and routines, effectively mixing them based on the due time and priority. It helps to pick the most important one (see #3 above), but also keep track of everything you need to do, today.