I haven’t written a newsletter article in weeks. Not because I don’t have ideas. Not because I don’t care about helping designers navigate ADHD and AI tools.

But because somewhere along the way, my brain decided it was done caring about this specific thing, and now the gap between “I should write” and actually opening a doc feels fucking insurmountable.

Classic ADHD wall. You know the one.

The task becomes emotionally loaded.

Your brain treats it like a threat.

You avoid it.

The avoidance creates more shame.

The shame makes the wall higher.

Repeat until you’re here, staring at a blank page, wondering if you’ll ever be able to do the thing that mattered to you just a few weeks ago.

And every day I don’t write, the wall gets higher.

Here’s what actually happened:

My hyperfixation shifted.

I’m painting now. Every day. For hours. It’s just for me. No pressure. No audience. No “this needs to help someone” or “this needs to perform well” or “this needs to be consistent.” Just paint and canvas and the kind of flow state that feels like my brain finally gets to rest.

And the newsletter? The thing I built to help people? The work that actually matters?

My brain has moved on. And I’m sitting here terrified that I’ve let you down.

This is the ADHD-specific terror that nobody talks about enough:

What if the thing you built your business on, the thing you told people you’d show up for, was just a hyperfixation? And now it’s gone?

Not “I’m tired and need rest” burnout. Not “I need a vacation” burnout.

But “my brain has moved on and I have no control over when or if it comes back” burnout.

I’ve experienced this pattern my whole life.

The intense focus on something. The conviction that this is the thing. The building, the momentum, the public commitment. And then one day the fire just isn’t there anymore.

And you’re left holding the thing you built, wondering if you’re a fraud for starting something you couldn’t maintain.

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Here’s what the resistance actually feels like right now:

I know intellectually that once I start writing, I’ll probably be fine.

I’ve done this a thousand times.

But the gap between knowing that and actually doing it has become so massive that avoidance is the only thing that feels manageable.

I’m not stuck on what to write. I’m stuck on starting to write.

The topics feel stale. The voice feels performative. Opening the doc feels like staring at evidence of my own failure to be consistent.

So I paint instead. Because painting doesn’t judge me for not showing up yesterday.

Here’s what I need you to hear:

If you’re in this place right now, if you started something that mattered and then your brain moved on and now you’re drowning in shame about it, this is happening to me too.

Right now.

Not “here’s how I overcame it.”

Not “5 tips to reignite your passion.”

Not some bullshit productivity hack that assumes you can just decide to care about something your brain has moved on from.

Just: I’m in it.

You might be in it.

And acknowledging that it’s happening is the first step to moving through it.

I still care about helping designers with ADHD navigate this landscape. That part hasn’t changed.

But caring intellectually and being able to access the motivation to write are two different things. And my ADHD brain doesn’t give a fuck about the difference.

The dopamine is all going to painting right now. The newsletter gets none. And I can’t just decide my way out of that.

Here’s what I’m learning in real time:

The wall gets higher when you avoid it. But writing this, admitting where I am, being honest about the struggle, this is me climbing it.

Not by writing the article I “should” write. Not by forcing myself to show up as the expert who has it figured out.

But by showing up as the person who’s in it with you. Who’s struggling with the same patterns. Who’s trying to figure out how to do work that matters when the brain chemistry isn’t cooperating.

Acknowledging it doesn’t fix it. But it does make the wall smaller.

Small enough that maybe I can see over it. Small enough that maybe I can take one step.

I don’t know if this is the beginning of me writing regularly again. I don’t know if the hyperfixation will cycle back or if I’ll have to build a different relationship with this work.

But I know this: the work still matters even when the dopamine isn’t there.

You still matter. Your struggles still matter. The thing you started and can’t seem to maintain still matters.

And sometimes the way through isn’t pushing harder. It’s admitting you’re stuck and seeing if anyone else is stuck with you.

If you’re in this place right now, if your brain has moved on from the thing you built, if the wall feels insurmountable, if you’re avoiding the thing that used to light you up, I see you.

This is happening to me too.

And we’re going to move through it. Not by fixing ourselves. Not by forcing consistency. But by being honest about what this actually feels like and taking the smallest possible step.

For me, today, that step was writing this.

What’s yours?

Jon Wiggens is a Visual Product Lead with 25+ years in game UI/UX who sometimes writes about ADHD and design when his brain cooperates. He’s currently painting a lot and trying not to feel guilty about it.

It usually looks like the Double Diamond. It’s linear. It’s logical. It goes something like this:

• Step 1: Research & Discovery

• Step 2: Low-Fidelity Sketches (Napkins only!)

• Step 3: Wireframes (Gray boxes only! No color allowed!)

• Step 4: High-Fidelity UI (Finally, the pixels)

• Step 5: Prototype & Ship

For the neurotypical brain, this process is a safety net. It minimizes risk.

For the ADHD brain, this process is a cage.

And when you can’t do it, when you skip straight to Step 4 and spend three hours tweaking a drop shadow before you’ve even decided what the button does… you don’t just feel inefficient. You feel like a fraud.

You feel like everyone else got the manual and you’re just faking it.

The Dopamine Deficit of Gray Boxes

Let me be clear: we don’t skip wireframes because we’re lazy or undisciplined.

We skip wireframes because for the ADHD brain, engagement is fuel.

A gray box with an “X” in the middle offers zero dopamine.

It’s abstract.

It’s boring.

And when an ADHD brain is bored, it doesn’t just lose interest—it shuts down. We can’t visualize the solution because the “vibe” isn’t there yet. The abstraction doesn’t give us anything to grab onto.

For us, aesthetic is a function.

We need to see the high-fidelity visuals… the colors, the typography, the spacing to understand if the solution actually works.

The “vibe” anchors our attention. It gives us the stimulation required to keep the executive function engine running.

Standard design methodology is like bricklaying: you lay one brick at a time, row by row, from the bottom up.

ADHD design is like sculpting: you throw a massive, chaotic blob of clay on the table, and then you carve away everything that doesn’t look like the solution.

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The Shame Tax

Here’s the part nobody talks about.

You’re in a design review. Your manager asks you to walk through your “design rationale.”

And you freeze.

Because the truth is, you don’t have one. Not in the way they mean.

You didn’t decide to use 18px line height. You just... tried a bunch of things until one felt right.

You didn’t conduct a competitive audit. You looked at three screenshots in your inspiration folder and Frankensteined something together.

And now you’re supposed to explain why you made these choices, and all you can think is: “Because it looked good?”

Or worse: you’re about to hand off a file to a developer, and you know—you know—that when they open it, they’re going to see:

• A layers panel that looks like a crime scene (Group 456 copy 2).

• Fourteen different shades of the same blue.

• Padding that’s somehow 13px in one place and 22px in another.

• Components that aren’t actually components.

And they’re going to judge you. They’re going to think you don’t know what you’re doing.

This is the trap. If you stay in chaos mode forever, you ship bad products and you collect evidence that you’re a bad designer.

The secret isn’t to force yourself into a linear process you’ll never be able to follow.

It’s to post-rationalize the grid.

The Strategy: Reverse-Engineering Structure

We need to stop trying to build the grid before the creativity. Instead, apply the structure after the chaos.

Here’s the Edge Cases workflow for the neurodivergent designer:

Phase 1: The Sandpit (Chaos Mode)

Give yourself permission to design “badly.” Open a frame. Call it “Sandpit” or “Workbench” or “Fuck Around Zone.”

• Drag in random screenshots.

• Don’t name a single layer.

• Ignore the 8pt grid.

• Use whatever font weights feel right.

• Just get the idea out of your head and onto the canvas.

Chase the dopamine. Make it look “real” as fast as possible. This is not the time for discipline. This is the time for velocity.

Phase 2: The Audit (Finding the Ghost Grid)

Once you have a screen that looks 80% right, stop. Do not duplicate it yet. Do not show it to anyone yet.

This is the most important step, and it’s the one most people skip.

Look at what you made.

Your intuition likely followed some internal logic, even if you weren’t conscious of it. Your brain was running pattern-matching in the background. You just need to surface it.

Here’s how:

Ask yourself:

• What spacing did I use most often? (Select a few elements. Check the padding. I bet you’ll find you gravitated toward 16px or 24px more than you think.)

• What font sizes did I actually use? (You probably used 14px, 16px, and 20px. Maybe a 32px for headers. Write those down.)

• Which elements feel like they’re the “same thing”? (Those three cards? They should probably be a component. You just didn’t build them that way yet.)

• Where did I break my own pattern and why? (That one card where you used 14px instead of 16px? Look closer. Was it because the card was smaller? That’s not random. That’s a rule you just discovered.)

This is where the magic happens.

You’re not imposing a system. You’re discovering the system you already built.

You’re looking at the desire paths in the grass, and now you’re going to pave them.

Phase 3: The Retrofit (The Grid)

Now you build the system.

You create the variables. You snap everything to the spacing scale you just discovered. You turn those three cards into an actual component. You rename the layers so they make sense.

You’re not starting over. You’re just formalizing what you already did.

This is the part that makes the file hand-off-able. This is the part that makes you look like you knew what you were doing all along.

Practical Tactics for the Chaos Designer

If you want to adopt this workflow without drowning in technical debt, here are three rules:

1. The “Playground” Page is Mandatory

Never design on the “Final” page. In Figma, keep a page called “Playground” or “Workbench.” This is a lawless zone. Nothing here needs to be neat. Only move things to the “Build” page once they’ve been retrofitted.

This also protects you from the shame spiral. Nobody sees the playground. It’s just for you.

2. Global Colors are the Only Constraint

If you ignore every other rule, just stick to Color Variables from the start. Fixing spacing later is easy. Fixing 50 different hex codes is a nightmare.

This is the one piece of structure you need up front. Everything else can be reverse-engineered.

3. Separate “Creation” from “Refactoring”

Don’t try to clean up your layers while you’re designing. That requires switching between “Creative Brain” (right hemisphere, big picture, vibes) and “Analytic Brain” (left hemisphere, detail-oriented, systems).

That context switching kills flow.

Make the mess first. Clean it up Tuesday morning.

Conclusion

The end user doesn’t see your layers panel. They don’t know if you started with a wireframe or a high-fidelity mockup. They only see the shipped product.

If your brain needs to generate a storm to build a house, let it storm.

Just remember to clean up the debris before you hand over the keys.

Some faces I know. Most I don’t.

We’re defining what would become UXF: the initiative to unify the UI across EA Sports’ biggest franchises. The pitch to leadership was clean: better user experience, lower development costs.

Simple.

Except nothing about this is fucking simple.

I’m trying to explain why we need to build the foundations before we start on the rooms. This is before “design systems” became a thing, before there was a shared vocabulary for what I’m trying to describe.

And I can feel myself losing the thread.

My palms are sweating. My voice gets quieter. My thoughts are scrambling. Three different explanations running in parallel and I can’t figure out which one to use.

And underneath it all, the voice:

They think you’re just the “make things pretty” guy. They’re waiting for you to stop talking so someone who actually understands systems can take over.

I’m trying to read the room. Neutral faces that could mean anything. Someone checking their phone. Are they bored? Confused? Do they think this is bullshit?

The meeting ends.

No clear consensus.

No confirmation that anyone absorbed what I said. Just... ambiguity.

I walk out wondering if we’re even on the same page. Wondering if I’m the right person for this. Pretty fucking sure I’m not.

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Here’s the thing about imposter syndrome with RSD and ADHD: it’s not just doubt. It’s your threat detection system hijacking your working memory in real time.

It’s losing your train of thought because half your brain is scanning faces for signs of rejection.

It’s walking out of important meetings with zero reliable data about how it went, just the certainty that you fucked it up.

The worst part is that I’d been doing this for over a decade at that point. I’d shipped UI for major titles. I’d managed teams through platform transitions.

None of it mattered in that room.

The next year, we shipped FIFA, NHL, and Madden with a mostly unified UI.

Not perfectly unified. But unified enough.

The foundations I’d scrambled to explain? They worked.

The thing I was convinced I couldn’t articulate? Teams built on it.

And my brain’s response? Yeah, but that was luck.

Lucky timing. Lucky team. Lucky that the right people championed it when I couldn’t. The imposter syndrome doesn’t give up just because you have evidence. It just gets creative with explanations.

But here’s what repetition does: it makes “luck” a less and less believable story.

Another project. Another high-stakes initiative. Another room where I’m convinced they’re about to realize I don’t belong. Another thing that ships anyway.

And another.

And another.

Time gives you perspective that the moment can’t. Eventually, you look back at the pattern and realize: luck doesn’t explain 25 years of shipping. Luck doesn’t explain teams choosing you to lead complex initiatives. Luck doesn’t explain the thing you were most afraid of, that you didn’t understand systems, being the exact reason they wanted you in that room.

The “make things pretty guy” story was never real.

They picked me for UXF because I understood systems.

The imposter syndrome had me convinced I was faking the very thing that qualified me for the job.

Here’s what I know now that I didn’t know in that conference room:

The scrambled thoughts weren’t evidence of incompetence. They were my ADHD brain making connections across franchises, seeing patterns in UI that others weren’t seeing yet, trying to communicate something that didn’t have language yet.

The quiet voice wasn’t weakness. It was me trying to make space for 20 different perspectives while my RSD screamed that silence meant rejection.

The uncertainty I walked out with? Everyone in that room probably felt some version of it. Because we were trying to do something that hadn’t been done before.

Uncertainty wasn’t proof I didn’t belong. It was proof the work mattered.

If you’re reading this and recognizing yourself, if you’ve sat in rooms convinced you’re about to be exposed, if you’ve shipped things and attributed them to luck, if your brain tells you everyone else has credentials you’re missing, here’s what I need you to hear:

The feeling isn’t evidence.

Your different processing style, the one that makes you feel like you’re faking it, might be exactly why you’re seeing things others miss.

The struggle to articulate something that doesn’t have vocabulary yet isn’t proof you don’t understand it. It’s proof you’re ahead of the language.

I didn’t overcome imposter syndrome by fixing myself or finally becoming qualified enough. I overcame it by collecting enough evidence that my brain’s story about luck stopped being believable.

You’re probably already more qualified than you think. You’re just measuring yourself by standards that were never designed for how your brain works.

The work will prove it. You just have to stay in the room long enough to see the pattern.

If this resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it.

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There's a designer, a developer, a creative sitting in a room right now convinced they're about to be found out. Send them this. Let them know they're not alone.

My brain immediately goes to: They hate it. I’m getting fired. I should quit before they fire me. Maybe I was never good at this. Maybe I’ve been fooling everyone for two decades.

All in the 3 seconds it takes them to open their laptop.

This is Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria.

And if you have ADHD, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about.

RSD is the reason I’ve rewritten this paragraph four times already. It’s why I’ve killed good ideas before anyone else even saw them. It’s why I’ve defended mediocre work way too hard, and abandoned great work way too quickly.

And here’s the fucked up part: I chose a career where feedback is literally the job.

The Traditional Advice Doesn’t Work

“Develop thick skin.”

“Don’t take it personally.”

“Separate yourself from your work.”

Cool. Super helpful. Let me just... turn off the part of my brain that’s been wired this way since childhood. Why didn’t I think of that?

Here’s what no one tells you: RSD isn’t about being sensitive.

It’s neurological. It’s your brain misinterpreting neutral feedback as existential threat. Your amygdala is screaming DANGER while your stakeholder is literally just asking if the button could be blue.

And the traditional designer coping mechanisms? They make it worse.

Spending 40 hours on a design doesn’t build investment, it builds attachment. The more time you sink in, the more your ego fuses with the pixels.

By the time you present, you’re not showing work. You’re showing a piece of yourself. And when they critique it, your RSD hears: You’re not good enough.

I’ve sat in enough reviews to know: the designers who spiral hardest are often the ones who care most.

The ones who put their soul into every detail.

The ones who should be succeeding, but instead are drowning in the gap between their standards and their emotional regulation.

How AI Changes the Equation

Here’s what changed for me: AI gave me a buffer.

Not between me and the work… between me and the attachment.

When I use Claude or ChatGPT or Gemini as part of my process, something shifts psychologically.

I’m no longer defending my design. I’m curating options. I’m a design director evaluating solutions, not a designer protecting their ego.

That distance? That’s oxygen.

It starts before the work even begins.

RSD makes you afraid to start. What if it’s not good enough? What if they hate it? What if this proves you’re a fraud?

So I start with AI instead. I dump my messy thoughts into Claude: “Here’s the brief, here’s what I’m thinking, here’s what scares me about this project.”

And Claude gives me back something structured. Not perfect. Not final. But something.

Suddenly I’m not staring at a blank Figma file with my RSD screaming that I have no ideas. I’m iterating on a starting point. I’m a curator, not a creator starting from zero.

The paralysis breaks.

Then comes the “pre-feedback” layer

Before I show anyone my work, I show it to AI.

“What’s working here? What’s weak? What questions will stakeholders ask?”

This is the part that saves me from spiraling later. Because AI gives me objective critique without the emotional charge. It’s not disappointed in me. It’s not questioning my competence. It’s just pointing out that the hierarchy is unclear or the use case isn’t solved.

I can hear that feedback. I can metabolize it. I can fix the issues before human eyes see the work.

By the time I present to actual stakeholders, I’ve already processed the criticism my RSD was afraid of. Their feedback doesn’t ambush me. I’m prepared.

The rapid iteration thing is real

RSD makes you precious about your work. You spend days on something, so it has to be good, right? You’ve invested too much for it to be wrong.

But when I’m using AI to generate variations, I haven’t invested days. I’ve invested minutes. And that changes everything.

“Try 5 different approaches to this navigation” doesn’t cost me my soul. It costs me a prompt.

When stakeholders say “what if we tried X instead?”, I’m not defending 40 hours of attachment. I’m saying “let me spin that up real quick.”

My ego isn’t in the equation. And my RSD doesn’t have ammunition.

The spiral catcher

Here’s the thing about RSD: it doesn’t just happen in meetings. It happens at 11pm when you’re lying in bed replaying a critique from three days ago.

They said the layout was “interesting.” What does that mean? Did they hate it? Do they think I’m incompetent? Should I redo the whole thing?

This is where AI becomes a thought partner for reality-checking.

I’ll literally open Claude after dinner and ask:

I got this feedback today: [exact words]. My RSD is telling me this means I’m bad at my job. Can you help me interpret this objectively?

And Claude will break it down. “They’re likely pointing to X specific issue, not questioning your overall competence. Here are 3 ways to address it.”

It’s like having a therapist who specializes in design feedback. Someone who can interrupt the catastrophizing and bring me back to: this is just a design problem, not an indictment of my worth as a human.

The Deeper Shift

What I didn’t expect: using AI this way actually started changing how I see myself.

I’m not “a designer who needs AI to function.”

I’m a design leader who’s figured out how to manage my neurodivergence with the best tools available.

Just like I use Figma instead of Photoshop. Just like I use Slack instead of email. Just like I use every other tool that makes me better at my job.

AI isn’t compensation for weakness. It’s accommodation for difference.

The designers I know who are using AI most effectively aren’t the ones trying to replace their skills. They’re the ones who’ve figured out how to route around their neurological pain points.

RSD is still here. I still feel that chest tightness when someone wants to “talk about the work.”

But now I have a way through it that doesn’t involve white-knuckling my way through feedback sessions or killing good ideas before they see daylight.

If you’re a designer with RSD, you don’t need thicker skin.

You need better tools.

P.S. If staring at blank files while your RSD screams is your personal hell, my Designer's AI Toolkit might help.

30 prompts for the moments when your brain is fighting you and you still have work to ship. $14, 60-day guarantee. Check it out here.

In the design world, we’re fed this constant “growth mindset” bullshit.

We’re told that “critique is a gift.”

We’re told to have thick skin, to kill our darlings, and to leave our egos at the door like a dirty pair of shoes.

But for those of us living with Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD), that advice isn’t just unhelpful.

It’s a flat-out lie.

RSD isn’t “being a bit sensitive.” It’s a neurological glitch (usually bundled with ADHD) that turns a minor suggestion into a perceived existential threat.

When you have RSD, a red line through your layout isn’t just a correction.

It’s a physical blow.

A blunt Slack message from a PM doesn’t just mean “fix the padding.”

In your brain, it translates instantly to: “You’re a fraud. Everyone finally knows it. You’re going to get fired. You should probably just quit before they have the chance to embarrass you.”

It sounds dramatic to the neurotypical crowd. But to us? It’s a visceral, fight-or-flight response.

Your heart rate spikes. Your face flushes. Your brain goes into a total lockdown.

It’s the RSD Spiral, and it’s the #1 killer of creative careers.

But here’s the shift:

We finally have a way to build an emotional exoskeleton.

We have AI.

And if you’re a designer with RSD, AI isn’t here to take your job.

It’s here to save your fucking sanity.

Phase 1: The Feedback Sanitizer (Data vs. Drama)

The most dangerous moment in a designer’s day?

Opening a fresh notification.

Whether it’s a comment in Figma, an email from a client, or a “Hey, got a sec?” on Slack, the RSD brain immediately assumes the worst.

We spend 90% of our energy analyzing the tone and only 10% on the actual task.

We’re looking for the hidden meaning.

Why didn’t they use an emoji? Why was the sentence so short? Does “Let’s discuss” actually mean “You’re dead to me”?

Enter the AI Buffer. Before you let those raw words hit your nervous system, you run them through a “Sanitizer.”

You copy that cold, shitty email. You paste it into your AI tool of choice. And you tell it:

I have RSD. Below is a feedback transcript that feels like an attack. I need you to act as a neutral filter. Strip away the perceived tone. Ignore the bluntness. Just give me a bulleted list of the technical requirements I need to address. Do not include the ‘fluff’ or the criticism—just the actionable data.

Suddenly, the “attack” is just a to-do list.

You’ve successfully separated the data from the drama.

You aren’t reacting to a person who might be disappointed in you. You’re reacting to variables.

You’ve outsourced the emotional labor of being criticized to a machine that doesn’t have feelings to hurt.

That’s not just a “productivity hack.” That’s self-preservation.

Look, cleaning up a few shitty emails is just the baseline. It’s the low-hanging fruit.

If you want to actually stop the bleeding… if you want to know how to kill the “freeze” before it kills your deadline, how to walk into a live interrogation without your heart exploding, and how to use the “Truth Table” to finally separate your self-worth from your font choices, you need the rest of the exoskeleton.

Everything below this line is the difference between burning out by 30 and actually enjoying your career. Here’s what’s waiting for the paid crew:

• The “Private Fail” Strategy: How to use AI for exposure therapy so human crits don’t hurt anymore.

• The Ghosting Logic Check: What to do when the silence from a client starts screaming.

• The Red Team Script: How to pre-game a meeting so you never get caught off guard again.

• The Full RSD Power Prompt Library: My personal “In Case of Emergency” list of copy-paste commands to keep you in the game.

Read more

If you spend too much time on Twitter/X, you’d think Gemini and ChatGPT have already rendered us obsolete.

I’ve been doing this for over 25 years.

I’ve worked at EA, Disney, Nintendo, and Warner Brothers. I’ve seen tools and trends come and go—Flash, Skeuomorphism, the rise of Mobile, the shift to Figma.

Every time a new technology drops, the panic sets in. And every time, the job doesn’t disappear; it just evolves.

I can tell you with absolute certainty: AI is not going to replace the strategic, empathetic, human work we do. It cannot replicate the nuance of negotiating with a stakeholder, or the gut feeling that a UI flow “just feels off.”

However, it has completely changed how I handle the parts of the job I hate.

The “Executive Function” Tax

I was diagnosed with ADHD later in life, at 47.

Suddenly, my entire career made sense.

It explained why I could hyperfocus on a complex design system for 12 hours straight, losing all track of time, but couldn’t write a simple project brief to save my life.

For neurodivergent brains (and honestly, for many neurotypical ones too), the hardest part of design isn’t the designing. It’s the starting.

It’s the “Executive Function Tax.”

It’s the energy required to switch contexts from “big picture thinking” to “writing an email.” It’s the paralysis of the blank canvas. It’s the administrative friction that sits between having an idea and executing it.

I don’t use AI to “design” for me. I don’t ask it to “make me a website.” That results in generic garbage.

Instead, I treat AI as a tireless, highly efficient Junior Designer who sits next to me.

This Junior Designer doesn’t have great taste, but they are incredibly fast, they never complain about revisions, and they are excellent at getting the ball rolling so I can take over.

Here are three specific ways I use this “Junior Designer” in my day-to-day workflow to bypass my brain’s roadblocks.

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1. The “Blank Page” Destroyer (User Research)

One of the biggest hurdles in any project is the initial research phase. You have a vague brief, and you need to start understanding the user. Staring at a blank Notion page trying to conjure “User Personas” from thin air is a recipe for procrastination.

I used to put this off for days. Now, it takes 15 minutes.

I paste the project brief into my AI tool of choice (usually Claude or ChatGPT) and run a prompt to generate a “Strawman Persona.”

Based on this project brief, generate 3 detailed user personas. Include their frustrations with current solutions, their technical proficiency, and 5 specific questions they would ask during an onboarding flow.

The Result: The output is usually about 60% right. It’s often a bit cliché. But that doesn’t matter.

Because it is infinitely easier to edit a bad persona than to write one from scratch.

I can look at the output and say, “No, that’s wrong, our user isn’t tech-savvy,” and immediately correct it. The AI breaks the seal on the blank page, allowing my actual expertise to kick in.

2. The “Unstuck” Generator (Microcopy)

Nothing kills my flow faster than stopping high-fidelity UI work to figure out the text.

You know the feeling: You’re deep in Figma, designing a complex checkout flow. You’re moving pixels, balancing hierarchy, checking contrast. Then you hit an empty state or an error message.

Suddenly, you have to stop being a Visual Designer and start being a Copywriter.

• “What should this error say?”*

• “Is ‘Whoops’ too casual?”

• “Is ‘System Failure 404’ too robotic?”

I used to stare at the cursor for 20 minutes, letting all my visual design momentum die.

Now, I use a prompt to generate 10 tonal variations instantly.

Give me 5 options for a ‘Credit Card Declined’ error message. 

Tone: Empathetic but clear. No technical jargon. Keep it under 140 characters.

I rarely use the exact output it gives me word-for-word.

But seeing 5 decent options instantly gives me the momentum to combine them into one good solution and move on. It turns a 20-minute blockage into a 2-minute task, keeping me in my flow state.

3. The “Brutal Critique” Partner (QA & Accessibility)

We all get “designer blindness.”

After you’ve been staring at the same set of screens for 6 hours, you stop seeing the mistakes. You miss contrast issues. You miss logical gaps. You forget that users don’t know the product as well as you do.

In the past, I’d find these mistakes two days later during a stakeholder review, which is... painful.

Now, before I show work to anyone, I paste screenshots or copy descriptions into AI and run a specific critique prompt.

Act as a senior UX researcher. Critique this user flow based on Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics. Be ruthless about potential accessibility failures and visual hierarchy issues.

It acts as a fresh pair of eyes. It will point out things like:

• “The ‘Cancel’ button is too close to the ‘Confirm’ button, which violates error prevention heuristics.”

• “The grey text on the grey background likely fails WCAG AA standards.”

It catches the silly mistakes so I don’t have to. It allows me to walk into meetings with confidence, knowing I’ve already stress-tested the logic.

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Building a System, Not Just Prompts

The key to making this work isn’t memorizing a thousand random “magic words.”

It’s about integration.

Over the last 18 months, I realized I was using the same scripts over and over again. I stopped trying to be a “Prompt Engineer” and started treating these prompts like any other design tool—like a Figma component or a sketchbook.

I started keeping a personal library of the prompts that actually worked reliably in production environments.

These aren’t “make a picture of a cat in space” prompts. They are “write a usability script for a 30-minute interview” prompts.

I realized this library was saving me about 10 hours of busy work a week.

That’s 10 hours I can spend actually designing, or spending time with my daughter, or just not feeling overwhelmed.

The Designer’s AI Toolkit

I recently cleaned up that personal library. I organized it, added my notes on why they work, and put it all into a Notion dashboard.

I’ve packaged it up as The Designer’s AI Toolkit.

It includes the 30 specific prompts I use for:

• UX Research (Personas, Journey Maps)

• UI Ideation (Color palettes, Layout ideas)

• Content Generation (Microcopy, CTAs)

• Feedback (Heuristic analysis, Accessibility checks)

I also included my “AI Output Critic” system, which is a checklist I use to make sure the AI isn’t hallucinating or giving me bad data.

I put a $14 price tag on it. That’s basically the cost of a sandwich and a coffee.

I’m not trying to get rich off this.

I’m charging a small amount because I spent real time curating it, and I believe that when you pay for a tool, you’re more likely to actually use it.

If you’re a designer who feels overwhelmed by the “grunt work,” or if you’re neurodivergent and tired of fighting your own brain to get administrative tasks done, I think this will help you.

If you want to grab a copy, you can download it here.

P.S. If this helped, I’d really appreciate a restack.

It helps the piece travel and keeps me motivated to keep writing practical stuff for designers navigating the AI era.

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GPT-5.2 didn’t get worse. It got stricter.

This version is tuned for production work.

Reliability.

Fewer surprises.

Less vibe-based guessing.

More “do what I was told and nothing else.” That shift is subtle, but designers feel it immediately.

It doesn’t riff the way 5.1 did. It doesn’t fill in gaps. It doesn’t “helpfully” invent things you forgot to mention.

It waits. It follows. It assumes nothing.

If your prompt is vague, your output will be technically correct and practically useless.

That’s not a creativity problem. That’s a specification problem.

Here’s what’s funny.

Designers already do this for a living. We write constraints. We define scope. We think in edge cases and handoffs. We just forget to do it when we’re typing in a chat box.

Once you stop treating GPT-5.2 like a brainstorming buddy and start treating it like a junior designer who needs a clean brief, everything clicks.

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What Changed (and Why It Feels Harder)

The biggest shift isn’t intelligence. It’s behavior.

GPT-5.2 seems to plan more.

It structures its thinking more deliberately.

It follows instructions more literally.

It also says less unless you explicitly invite it to say more.

Where older models filled in the blanks based on vibes and precedent, GPT-5.2 refuses to pretend it knows what you meant.

This is why prompts that feel obvious to you sometimes fall flat.

You’re relying on context that only exists in your head. The model won’t read the room. It won’t infer taste. It won’t protect you from your own ambiguity.

It will do exactly what you asked for and nothing more.

That friction isn’t a bug.

That’s the model telling you your brief is shit.

What It’s Actually Good At

GPT-5.2 shines at the unglamorous work that keeps teams moving.

It’s excellent at turning messy research into structured summaries, cleaning up long documents without losing nuance, and producing clear, repeatable documentation.

It’s particularly good at anything that needs to be unambiguous before it reaches engineering.

For UX writing, it works when tone, platform, and constraints are explicit. When you don’t define them, you get safe, generic copy. When you do, the output is often close to production-ready.

For design critique, it’s more useful when you ask it to look for failure modes instead of opinions. Asking what could break, confuse users, or create accessibility issues produces sharper feedback than asking what it thinks.

For specs, handoffs, and Jira tickets, it’s quietly excellent.

Disciplined, literal, good at removing ambiguity before it becomes expensive.

It’s not a mood board generator. It’s a systems thinker.

What It’s Bad At

At least for now.

It’s not great at blue-sky ideation, vibes-based exploration, or early visual concepting. Anything where ambiguity is the point will feel constrained.

If you don’t yet know what you want, GPT-5.2 won’t rescue you.

The Three Fixes That Solve Most of This

Tell it exactly what shape the output should take.

Not “be concise.” Not “keep it short.”

Say “one paragraph, then three bullets, done.”

Say “five sentences max.”

Say “two options, each with a title and one-line description.”

When you define structure, the model settles down and stays focused.

Enforce scope like you enforce a design system.

If you don’t explicitly forbid extras, GPT-5.2 may add UI elements, interactions, or styles you didn’t ask for.

Say “exactly and only what I requested.”

Say “no additional features.”

Say “don’t suggest new functionality.”

It feels redundant. It works.

Tell it how to handle ambiguity.

Either ask the model to surface clarifying questions, or instruct it to present multiple interpretations with stated assumptions.

What doesn’t work anymore is hoping it will guess correctly.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Here’s the difference.

Instead of writing:

Review this and tell me what you think.

You write:

Review this wireframe.

Output:

- 1 short paragraph summarizing overall clarity
- Then 5 bullets labeled: Usability risk, Accessibility concern, Missing state, Edge case, Recommendation

Constraints:

- Focus only on information hierarchy and interaction clarity
- Do not suggest new features or visual styles

If anything is ambiguous, surface it as a question instead of guessing.

The difference in output quality is immediate.

Four More Prompts You Can Steal

Research Summary

Instead of:

Summarize these user interviews and pull out the key insights.

Try:

Summarize these 5 user interview transcripts.

Output format:

- 2-sentence overview of what we learned
- 3 primary pain points (one line each, ranked by frequency mentioned)
- 2 surprising findings that contradict our assumptions
- 3 direct quotes that best represent user sentiment

Constraints:

- Only include insights mentioned by at least 2 participants
- Do not infer motivations not explicitly stated
- If participants contradicted each other, note that instead of picking a side”

UX Writing

Instead of:

Write error messages for this payment flow.

Try:

Write 4 error messages for a payment flow failure.

Scenarios:

- Card declined
- Insufficient funds
- Expired card
- Network timeout

Tone: Calm, helpful, no blame language Platform: Mobile app (iOS) Character limit: 60 characters for title, 140 for body

Output format per message:

- Title (under 60 chars)
- Body text (under 140 chars)
- Recommended action button text

Constraints:

- No technical jargon
- Assume user wants to complete purchase
- Don’t suggest calling support unless no other option”

Component Spec

Instead of:

Document this button component.

Try:

Create a component spec for this primary button.

Output sections:

- Purpose (2 sentences max)
- Visual specs (padding, radius, font size, colors for each state)
- States (default, hover, pressed, disabled, loading)
- Usage rules (when to use vs secondary button)
- Don’t use for (3 specific anti-patterns)

Format:

- Visual specs as a simple table
- Everything else as short bullets
- No implementation code
- No design philosophy explanations

If any state behavior is ambiguous from the image, ask instead of assuming.

Stakeholder Update

Instead of:

Write an update on the checkout redesign project.

Try:

Write a Slack update on the checkout redesign project for the product and eng leads.

Include:

- What shipped this week (2-3 bullets)
- What’s in progress (2-3 bullets)
- What’s blocked (if anything, with specific blocker)
- What I need from them (clear ask or ‘nothing’)

Tone: Direct, optimistic but honest 
Length: Under 200 words total

Constraints:

- Lead with outcomes, not activities
- Mention specific dates only if confirmed
- If nothing is blocked, say ‘No blockers’ instead of omitting
- No project management jargon

That’s it. The model didn’t change its personality. You just started talking to it like an actual teammate instead of a magic box.

Now go write clearer briefs.

If GPT-5.2 keeps “doing exactly what you asked” and exposing where your prompts fall apart, that’s useful information.

The Designer’s AI Toolkit turns that friction into structure.

Clear inputs. Predictable outputs. Less back-and-forth.

It’s how I use AI for real design work, not vibes.

Grab it here: 👉 https://jonwiggens.gumroad.com/l/ekprn

It’s mocking you.

The Slack notification slides in from the top right corner of your screen. It’s the Project Manager.

“Hey, just checking in… are we good for the 2pm review?”

You look at the time.

1:30 PM.

You look at your Figma canvas.

It is... optimistically sparse.

And then, you do the thing. You type the lie.

“Yep! Just polishing up the final details.”

Stop.

We need to talk about this moment.

Because this specific moment—right here, where the panic meets the keyboard—is where your reputation goes to die.

You aren’t lying because you’re malicious. You’re lying because of the Time Compression Fallacy.

Your brain has convinced you that you can compress six hours of deep work into the next 28 minutes if you just focus hard enough.

But you can’t.

And when 2:00 PM hits, you have two bad options:

1. The Rush Job: You deliver something trash and manic.

2. The Ostrich: You ghost the meeting. “Wifi issues.” “Slack was down.”

Do this twice, and you get the label.

You know the one.

“Talented... but flaky.”

It’s the kiss of death. It means they love your output, but they don’t respect your process.

Here is the truth I had to learn the hard way:

Stakeholders don’t care if you’re late. They care if they’re surprised.

Surprise is the enemy. Surprise looks like incompetence.

Communication looks like control.

I stopped trying to “fix” my time blindness (it’s a feature, not a bug). Instead, I built a system to handle the fallout.

Here is how to control the narrative when the clock runs out.

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1. The “Proof of Life” Protocol

When we are late, we hide.

We want the Big Reveal. We want the “Ta-da!” moment to make up for the delay.

But in the corporate world, silence is terrifying. Silence looks like you’re at the beach.

So, break the silence.

Show the mess.

Don’t wait for perfection. Take a screenshot of the half-finished, messy, broken file right now.

Send it.

“Heads up. I’m deep in the weeds on the navigation logic. It’s looking promising, but it’s not ready for the stage yet. I’m not going to rush the polish because I want to get the foundation right. I need another 24 hours.”

This changes the dynamic instantly.

You aren’t hiding. You are working.

You just bought yourself 24 hours of breathing room, and you didn’t even apologize.

2. The Quality Control Pivot

Never say: “I ran out of time.”

That sounds like you’re disorganized.

Always say: “I’m protecting the quality.”

That sounds like you’re a professional.

Because usually, that is why we’re late. We went down a rabbit hole trying to solve a complex edge case. We hyperfocused. Use that.

The Script:

“I was aiming for EOD, but as I got into the interaction design, I found a break in the mobile flow. I want to solve that specific edge case before I hand this off, so I’m pushing delivery to tomorrow morning. I’d rather give you a clean flow than a fast one.”

See the shift?

🔴 Version A: “I’m late.” (Weakness)

🟢 Version B: “I’m thorough.” (Strength)

3. The “Double Bind” Close

If you absolutely must miss the deadline, do not just drop the bomb and walk away.

That makes the stakeholder feel helpless. Helpless people get angry.

Give them agency.

Give them the Double Bind—a choice between two options, both of which work for you.

“I’m running behind on the high-fidelity mocks. We have two paths:

1. We keep the meeting at 2 PM, and I walk you through the wireframe logic (low-fi).

2. We push to tomorrow at 10 AM, and I show you the polished visuals.

Which do you prefer?”

90% of the time they pick Option 2.

They want the pretty pictures.

And just like that, you didn’t flake.

You negotiated.

You aren’t flaky. You just process time differently.

Stop apologizing for the way your brain works, and start designing the interface for how others interact with it.

Control the frame, and you control the deadline.

Time blindness is the quiet struggle of the creative world.

If this post made you feel a little less broken, please share it. Let’s stop apologizing for our brains and start building better systems for them.

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You just came off a great sprint.

The UI sings.
The flows click.
The problem actually feels solved.

You’re riding that high when someone asks a completely reasonable question.

“Can you write up the specs?”
“Can you update the Jira tickets?”
“Can you document this for handoff?”

And your brain immediately tries to escape your body.

If you’ve ever wondered why this part of the job feels so stupidly hard, this article is for you.

Because what’s happening in that moment isn’t laziness.

It isn’t lack of discipline.

And it definitely isn’t a character flaw.

It’s a dopamine crash caused by task switching.

You’re being asked to move from high stimulation, visual problem solving into low stimulation, linear translation. For an ADHD brain, that switch is chemically expensive.

In this piece, I’m going to explain why documentation feels so wrong, why forcing yourself through it only makes things worse, and the exact low dopamine workflow I use to automate design handoffs with AI.

I’ll show you how I go from a messy, rambling walkthrough of a Figma file to clean, professional Jira tickets without staring at a blank text field or hating myself in the process.

Because documentation is part of the job.

White knuckling your way through it doesn’t have to be.

The Post Creative Crash

Design is high stimulation work.

It’s visual.
It’s spatial.
It’s relational.
It’s pattern heavy.

Documentation is the opposite.

Linear text.
Precision language.
Abstract reasoning.
Low novelty.
Low reward.

So when people frame this as “just part of the job” or tell you to be more disciplined, they miss the real problem.

For an ADHD brain, translating visual systems into linear text is chemically painful.

Not metaphorically.
Chemically.

It’s Not Laziness. It’s Translation Cost

This is not about motivation.

It’s about task switching.

Design and documentation use different brain gears. Design is associative. Documentation is sequential.

When you finish designing, your brain is depleted from one mode and is being asked to immediately spin up another with no buffer and no reward.

That switch has a cost.

Executive function cost.
Energy cost.
Mood cost.

So the solution is not trying harder.

The solution is removing the translation burden.

You don’t need to become a better documenter. You need a translator.

That translator is AI.

Once I stopped treating documentation as a discipline problem and started treating it as a translation problem, everything changed.

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I’ve got exactly two hours before I need to present the redesign to my team.

I’m in Figma, scrolling through Google Fonts for the third time today.

I’ve narrowed it down to two options: Inter and Work Sans.

I set them side by side. I type out the headline in both. I adjust the weight. I try Medium. I try SemiBold. I export sample paragraphs and squint at them on my phone.

Inter feels too corporate. Work Sans feels too casual.

Maybe I need to look at Geist. Or Public Sans. Or just go back to Inter but at 16px instead of 15px.

It feels critical. It feels like craftsmanship.

I’m in the zone.

Then someone Slacks me: “Can you drop the link? We’re ready.”

I look at the actual screens I’m supposed to present.

Half of them are still wireframes. The user flow has a giant red box that says “FIGURE THIS OUT LATER.” The value prop on the hero section is literally lorem ipsum.

But my typeface? My typeface is exquisitely considered.

I wasn’t working.

I was hiding.

And I’ve been hiding like this for 25 years.

If you’ve ever spent three hours choosing the perfect typeface while your mockups are still full of placeholder boxes, this is for you.

If your brain craves tiny, controllable details while the Big Picture feels like staring into the void, you’re in the right place.

By the end of this, you’ll know how to tell the difference between real progress and expensive distraction. And more importantly, you’ll have a system to stop yourself before you burn another day in the weeds.

The Safe Dopamine of Detail

I used to wear my perfectionism like a badge of honor. I’d tell clients and co-workers, “I obsess over the details.”

But that obsession was rarely about quality.

It was about safety.

For the neurodivergent brain, or anyone with a noisy mind, the Big Picture is terrifying. It’s abstract. Undefined. It demands a massive amount of executive function just to hold in your head.

But a typeface?

A typeface is safe.

A typeface is controllable.

When I swap that font, I get immediate visual feedback. The page refreshes. The hierarchy shifts slightly. Click. Reward.

It’s a tiny, predictable dopamine hit in a world of chaos.

I have a name for this: High-Fidelity Procrastination.

It’s dangerous because it looks like work. It feels like work. Unlike doom-scrolling Twitter, you can justify it to yourself.

But it’s a trap.

The Cost of the Micro-Obsession

The Pareto Principle says 20% of the effort yields 80% of the impact.

The layout. The hierarchy. The core message.

But my ADHD brain inverts this.

I’ll spend 80% of my energy on the last 20% of the details. Often before the foundation is even poured.

This is where Time Blindness kicks in.

When you’re in the weeds comparing typefaces, three hours feels like ten minutes. You look up and the day is gone. You’ve burned all your cognitive fuel on crown molding, but you haven’t built the walls.

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Are You in the Trap?

I had to build a diagnostic for myself. A way to check if I was in Flow or just Stuck.

If you catch yourself doing this, stop:

• Are you tweaking visuals to avoid writing the difficult copy?

• Are you solving problems that literally only you can see?

• Have you zoomed out to 100% in the last hour?

• Is the Side Quest (aesthetic polish) blocking the Main Quest (functionality)?

If yes? You’re not refining.

You’re avoiding.

The Antidote: Design Constraints

I can’t rely on willpower to stop this. My brain craves the tiny details.

So I built a system of constraints.

The “Fat Marker” Phase

I force myself to start with tools that prevent detail. A whiteboard. A thick Sharpie. A wireframing kit with zero styling options.

If I can’t nudge a pixel, I can’t procrastinate on it.

Time-Box the Polish

I’m allowed to be a perfectionist. But only at the end.

I set a timer for the last 30 minutes of the day. That’s my cleanup window. It turns the obsession into a reward, rather than a method of delay.

The Squint Test

If I have to squint or zoom in to see the difference I just made? Bottom of the priority list.

That’s noise, not signal.

Define “Done” First

Before I open the software, I write down what Done looks like.

If I don’t, I’ll polish the doorknob until the friction burns the house down.

Perfectionism isn’t a virtue.

It’s a budgeting issue.

You have a limited amount of executive function currency every day.

Spend it on the architecture.

A “good enough” thing that ships is infinitely better than a “perfect” thing that lives in your drafts folder forever.

Stop polishing.

Start shipping.

If this resonated with you, send it to another designer who’s been stuck in the weeds. Sometimes the most helpful thing is knowing you’re not the only one hiding behind perfectly organized layer names.

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Want more like this? I write about using AI as cognitive accommodation for neurodivergent designers. No productivity porn. No “just try harder” advice. Just honest breakdowns of what actually works when your brain doesn’t brain the way it’s supposed to.

You have a wireframe due at 2:00 PM. The deadline is not in the distance anymore. It is sitting across from you with its elbows on the table. You open Figma. You stare at the empty grid. It stares back.

Your brain does a quick scan.

Am I hungry.

Is my desk clean.

Is my plant ok.

Have I watered it recently.

Would now be a good time to reorganize the spice shelf alphabetically.

Ten minutes later you are wiping down the desk.

Twenty minutes later you are vacuuming.

By 11:30 the kitchen is spotless, the plants are drowning and the Figma file is still a bald, naked rectangle.

If you have ADHD, this moment is not rare. It is your Tuesday.

The creativity is there. The ideas are already crowding the hallway waiting for you to let them through. But the starting. The beginning. The mental shift from nothing to something. That is where the friction is.

This is not a moral failure.

This is not laziness.

This is executive dysfunction. Your brain knows what to do. It just refuses to hand over the controls without the right signal.

This article is about the signal.

This article is about body doubling.

Body doubling is one of the few tools that gives the ADHD brain a real-time pattern interrupt. It does not rely on motivation. It does not rely on willpower. It does not rely on a perfect morning routine or a motivational quote taped to your monitor.

It relies on something your nervous system already responds to.

People.

Let’s get into it.

What Body Doubling Really Is

And why it works even if you think it shouldn’t.

Body doubling means you do your work while someone else is working near you. That is it. They do not help. They do not participate. They do not need to understand your job or care about your layer naming crimes.

They just exist in the room. Or the call. Or the corner of the couch.

For a neurotypical person, this sounds ridiculous.

Why would another body in the room matter.

Why would their presence transform your ability to start.

Why would their existence on Zoom make you suddenly capable of designing a hero section you have put off for three days.

Because your brain is built differently.

Because attention is social for you.

Because your nervous system calibrates to the room.

If you grew up getting in trouble for “needing someone there” to get homework done, congratulations. You were body doubling before adult language existed to explain it.

Here is what it looks like in practice.

Your buddy opens their laptop and starts typing quietly.

They might be answering emails. They might be shopping for socks. They might be doomscrolling. You do not know. You do not care.

You open Figma. And suddenly your brain just… obeys.

You begin.

You move a frame.

You drop a rectangle.

You write a headline.

You commit to a flow.

The friction is gone. Not reduced. Gone.

That moment matters. That is the shift.

Body doubling is not a hack. It is a biological response to co-regulation.

You are not tricking yourself into productivity.

You are returning your nervous system to a regulated state where starting feels possible again.

Why Body Doubling Works

The science and the lived experience.

People love to overcomplicate ADHD. Let’s keep it simple.

Body doubling works for three reasons.

1. Mirror Neurons

Humans are wired to mirror the emotional and behavioural state of people near them.

You see someone working calmly.

Your nervous system takes the hint.

Your brain copies the vibe.

Focus is contagious.

2. The Audience Effect

You behave differently when you feel observed even slightly.

You are less likely to wander into the kitchen for the seventh time.

You are less likely to deep clean a drawer.

You are less likely to scroll your phone under the desk like a teenager hiding contraband.

You are anchored by presence.

Not pressure.

Presence.

3. Borrowed Regulation

When an ADHD brain struggles with self-regulation, it borrows the external structure of the room.

You piggyback on someone else’s stability.

Their quiet focus becomes the scaffolding for your own.

You start because they are starting.

You keep going because they are still going.

This is not cheating.

This is how your physiology works.

Body Doubling in Real Life

A few lived examples because theory is never enough.

Example 1: The Partner on the Couch

You take your laptop to the couch. Your partner sits beside you reading.

No talking.

No commenting.

Just presence.

Ten minutes later you are deep in the wireframe. You forgot you were stuck.

Example 2: The Discord Coworking Room

You join a silent coworking channel.

Cameras on.

Mics off.

Ten faces staring slightly downward doing their thing.

Your brain settles like snow in a globe.

You begin.

Example 3: The Cafe

You sit near other humans who are typing or drawing or pretending to work.

Your brain snaps into alignment.

ADHD is not random.

Your attention responds to energy.

Being around others gives your focus something to sync to.

How to Body Double Without Derailing Yourself

Because chatting for an hour is not the assignment.

People make two mistakes with body doubling:

1. They treat it like social time.

2. They start too big.

Here is the clean version that actually works.

1. Camera on. Mic off.

This is the core rule.

You can use Zoom, Discord, Google Meet, FaceTime, whatever.

The camera provides the soft accountability.

The silence creates the container.

Silence says: we are building.

If you talk, you lose the spell.

2. Declare your mission out loud

Before the session starts, you must say what you are doing.

Not the project.

The next inch.

I am fixing the nav bar.

I am updating the icons.

I am sketching the first two frames.

I am cleaning up these cursed layers.

When you speak the task, you commit.

Your brain doesn’t get to wiggle away from it.

Failure mode: you pick a task too big.

Fix: break it into something you can complete in 20 minutes.

Momentum is the drug.

Small wins are how you dose it.

3. Set your environment before the call

Do not let your brain derail you with micro excuses.

You need a five-step ritual so you don’t lose the first ten minutes deciding what lo-fi playlist to choose.

We’ll get to that ritual in the toolkit.

4. Use the right tools

You are not meant to do this alone. Here is where to borrow humans.

Focusmate

Pairs you with a stranger for a silent 50 minute sprint.

No small talk.

Shockingly effective.

Discord Coworking Rooms

Designership, Shadows, ADHD communities.

Silent rooms.

Camera on.

People grinding quietly.

Caveday

Guided sprints if you want someone managing the rhythm.

Your friends

Seriously. Ask them.

They get a lot done too.

Everything beyond this point is where the real transformation happens.

Scripts. Rituals. Environment setup. Psychology.

The parts that make body doubling effortless instead of awkward.

Let’s get into the good stuff.

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If you are an ADHD designer drowning in messy Figma files, this article will show you one thing.

How to turn hyperfocus into a system that actually ships work instead of burying you in chaos.

By the end, you will know exactly how to structure your files, where your messy ideas should live, how to extract the good stuff without losing momentum, and how to stop letting Figma trigger a meltdown.

Now let’s walk into the fire.

We all have that one file.

You know the one.

Untitled (4).

You open it and instantly regret your career choices.

Frames everywhere.

Auto Layout screaming.

Layers stacked like geological fucking sediment.

For an ADHD brain, the infinite canvas of Figma is not freedom.

It is a casino built to exploit our inability to stop making things.

We hoard ideas.

We hoard half executed components.

We hoard every shade of green we ever liked for one second.

And then the file becomes so overwhelming that we avoid it.

Not because we are lazy.

But because the chaos hits the nervous system like a truck.

Here is the truth.

Hyperfocus is not the villain.

Hyperfocus is the engine.

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The problem is we try to aim it at two jobs.

Make cool things.

Organize cool things.

That split kills our flow.

So we need a container that respects the truth of our brain.

A system that lets chaos breathe without letting it spill everywhere.

A system that gives hyperfocus the playground it needs while keeping the deliverable clean.

Here is mine.

The Church & State Protocol

Design requires two different selves.

The Artist: The one who thrives in mess, colour, instinct, speed.

The Architect: The one who loves clean systems, good naming conventions, tidy components.

Doing both jobs at the same time short circuits the ADHD brain.

It forces you to shift states every five minutes.

It is like trying to run a marathon while doing your taxes.

So I split them completely.

Top half of the file is The Office.

Clean. Calm. Professional.

Bottom half is The Basement.

Chaotic. Emotional. Brilliant.

I use empty Pages as visual fences.

Literal blank dividers so my brain knows where it is allowed to be wild.

Here is the map.

🟢 COVER

Client safe. Polished.

🚢 SHIPPED

Only page devs and clients can see.

Everything here is structured and intentional.

❖ COMPONENTS

Design system.

Truth.

Order.

• ---------------------

Empty divider.

A quiet warning.

🧪 THE LAB

The playground.

The creative engine room.

Where hyperfocus runs barefoot.

🪦 GRAVEYARD

Retirement home for ideas that were almost good.

How To Operate The System

The Lab is where the work actually starts to live.

But it has rules that protect you from yourself.

1. No Auto Layout

Auto Layout is brilliant for execution.

But it murders exploration.

It demands logic.

It demands discipline.

It demands you think about constraints before ideas.

So in the Lab, it is banned.

I drag. I distort. I create layouts that would make a developer cry.

This is where hyperfocus thrives.

Pure aesthetic instinct.

Pure dopamine.

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2. The Extraction Ritual

Eventually, the chaos produces gold.

A card.

A header.

A layout with a pulse.

Then I extract.

Copy from Lab.

Paste into Shipped.

Now the Architect takes over.

Now the structure happens.

Now the naming conventions come online.

Two phases.

Zero conflict.

3. The Graveyard

ADHD brains hate deleting because it feels irreversible.

So I don’t delete.

I relocate.

Anything that stops serving the idea gets dragged to the Graveyard.

Out of sight.

Still safe.

No emotional cost.

I almost never go back.

But knowing I could keeps the panic quiet.

Why This Works

Hyperfocus is not designed for tidiness.

It is designed for depth and obsession and craft.

It can spend two hours tuning padding.

It can find the perfect shade of blue by feel.

It can generate twenty versions just to discover the one that sings.

But it cannot organize.

Expecting it to do both is a guarantee of burnout.

This system solves the real problem.

Not the mess.

The context switching.

It gives the Artist a place to play and the Architect a place to finish.

No collisions.

No guilt.

No cognitive whiplash.

When you separate the states, you finally get the best of your brain.

Not the exhausted version.

The weaponized one.

The Summary

If you skimmed everything above, here is the core.

Hyperfocus works beautifully when you aim it at one job.

Exploration or execution.

Never both.

Create a file structure that respects the split.

Let the Lab be messy.

Let Shipped be clean.

Move dead ideas to the Graveyard so your nervous system can rest.

Your Figma files get lighter.

Your process gets calmer.

Your hyperfocus stops working against you and starts working for you.

Stop fighting your hyperfocus.

Start weaponizing it.

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Paid subscribers get the full library of AI prompts I use for design work, weekly deep-dives on tools that actually help neurodivergent designers, and the stuff I can’t say in public.

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I had 847 overdue tasks.

I know the exact number because I finally opened Things at 2pm on a Tuesday, already six hours into a workday where I’d accomplished absolutely nothing.

Just tab-switching and email-staring and that specific kind of ADHD paralysis where you’re simultaneously exhausted and haven’t done anything.

The app opened to a wall of red.

Overdue badges on everything. Tasks from three months ago sitting next to things from this morning. High priority. Medium priority. Work. Personal. Someday/Maybe.

Each one demanding I make a decision about it.

I stared at it for maybe ninety seconds.

Then I closed the app and felt my chest unclench for the first time all day.

That’s when I knew the system was broken.

The Thing Nobody Tells You About To-Do Lists

They’re designed for brains that work nothing like mine.

Every productivity guru sells you the same lie: if you just find the right system (the right app, the right categories, the right prioritization method) you’ll finally get your shit together.

You’ll be one of those people who calmly works through their day, checking boxes, making progress.

I tried for years.

GTD. Eisenhower matrices. Time blocking. The Pomodoro technique. I’ve used Things, Todoist, Notion, Asana, TickTick, and approximately forty-seven other apps whose names I’ve forgotten because I abandoned them after two weeks of initial enthusiasm followed by three months of guilt.

The pattern was always the same:

Week 1: This is it. This is the system that’s going to fix me.

Week 2: Okay, I just need to reorganize these categories.

Week 3: I should probably re-prioritize everything.

Week 4: Why do I have 847 overdue tasks?

Here’s what I finally understood: traditional to-do lists assume you have working executive function.

They assume you can look at a list of 37 things and your brain will calmly assess priority, estimate effort, consider deadlines, and select the optimal next action.

My brain doesn’t do that.

My brain looks at 37 things and immediately shorts out. Too many variables. Too many decisions. And every single incomplete task is just visual evidence that I’m failing at being a functional adult.

The tool designed to reduce my cognitive load was actually drowning me in it.

What I Use Instead

I talk to my phone.

That’s it. That’s the system.

When something occurs to me (a task, an idea, something I need to remember) I open my voice notes app and I just say it. No categories. No due dates. No priority flags. Just words into the void.

“Need to email Sarah about the design review.”

“Madeline’s science project is due Friday.”

“That thing about the button states. Check if we already solved this in NHL.”

“Grocery store. Also I think we’re out of coffee.”

Then, once a day (usually morning, sometimes afternoon if I’m in potato mode), I dump all of those voice notes into Claude with this prompt:

I have ADHD and I’m looking at my brain dump from the last 24 hours. I need you to:

1. Pull out anything time-sensitive that’s happening TODAY 
2. Group related things together 
3. Tell me the 3 things that actually matter right now 
4. Ignore everything else unless it’s urgent

Don’t organize this into a beautiful system. Don’t give me a prioritized list of 20 items. Just tell me what I should do in the next few hours. Be direct.

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Claude reads through my chaotic voice notes and hands me back something like:

Today:

• Email Sarah before end of day (you mentioned the design review is tomorrow)

• Coffee run (you said you’re out)

• Madeline’s science project (due Friday, probably needs supplies)

Everything else can wait.

That’s it. Three things. Sometimes two. Sometimes one.

No system to maintain. No overdue tasks haunting me. No decisions about whether something is high priority or medium priority or “someday/maybe” which is just a polite way of saying “never.”

Why This Works (For My Brain)

The voice notes part solves the capture problem.

I can’t lose the thought because I said it out loud immediately.

No friction.

No “let me open the app and find the right project and pick a due date.”

Just talk.

The AI part solves the triage problem.

I don’t have to look at everything and make executive function decisions about all of it. Claude does that. It has working executive function. I don’t.

And here’s the critical part: nothing carries over.

Every day is a blank slate. If something didn’t make it into today’s top three and it actually matters, it’ll come up again.

I’ll voice note it again.

It’ll keep surfacing until it gets done or until I realize it didn’t actually matter.

There’s no growing list of shame. No “you’ve been putting this off for six weeks” guilt trip. Just: what matters today?

It’s not optimization. It’s survival.

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The Part Where I Admit My Credentials

I’m a design lead at EA. I’ve been in the gaming industry for 25 years. I’ve built UI systems used by millions of people across FIFA, NHL, UFC. I led the project that unified design systems across multiple sports franchises.

I can architect enterprise-level design frameworks.

I cannot manage a to-do list.

And I’m done pretending that’s a character flaw.

The Thing About Productivity Systems

Every single one of them was designed by someone whose brain works differently than yours.

They assume:

• You can hold multiple priorities in your head

• You can estimate how long things take

• You can resist the dopamine hit of reorganizing your categories instead of doing the actual work

• Future-you will have the same energy and context as right-now-you

If your brain doesn’t work that way, the system isn’t “helping” you.

It’s just a daily reminder that you can’t do the thing that “everyone else” finds simple.

So here’s my actual advice: stop trying to fix yourself into fitting their system.

Build something weird that works.

Use AI as a prosthetic for the executive function you don’t have.

Use voice notes because typing feels like friction.

Use daily resets because carrying cognitive debt makes you want to crawl into bed.

Use whatever ugly, duct-taped, unconventional system actually lets you function.

I don’t use AI to be more productive than you.

I use AI to be functional like you.

There’s a difference.

Your Turn

What productivity system are you still trying to make work even though it’s been failing you for years?

What’s the “simple” organizational method that makes you feel like you’re broken?

Tell me in the comments. I want to know what we’re all still pretending works.

A lot of ADHD advice focuses on motivation.

But motivation isn’t the real problem at 5pm.

The real problem is that your brain has already paid full price for the day.

By the time evening shows up, you’ve used every token your nervous system had.

Every plan.

Every decision.

Every little executive function checkpoint.

So when the clock hits five, it feels like the world goes dim.

The trick isn’t to fight that feeling.

The trick is to set up your life so you need less energy in that moment.

Here’s the practical version.

1. Make your evening choices earlier in the day

Your 5pm brain cannot make decisions.

Your 11am brain can.

Use that window.

Pick tonight’s dinner, the clothes for tomorrow, and any small errands before lunch.

Lock them in.

No thinking later.

Just follow the script.

This one shift alone removes a surprising amount of friction.

2. Create a low energy mode for the end of the day

You don’t need to be heroic at 5pm.

You need defaults.

Build a handful of low lift routines you can drop into without thinking.

Examples:

• A simple end of day shutdown ritual

• One tiny cleanup loop

• A no-brain dinner plan

• A “bare minimum” list that still counts as a win

The pattern matters more than the output.

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3. Protect your transitions

ADHD burns the most energy when switching tasks.

One messy transition at the wrong moment can wipe out the rest of the night.

Try this:

• End work with one clear next step written down

• Put everything you need for tomorrow in one visible spot

• Give yourself a five-minute buffer before shifting roles

These tiny seams save you more energy than you’d expect.

4. Decide what “enough” looks like ahead of time

Evenings get heavy when you’re trying to hit an invisible standard.

Define your minimum version:

• Minimum tidy

• Minimum meal

• Minimum social energy

• Minimum self care

Lowering the bar is not failure.

It’s strategy.

5. Use micro resets to recover small bursts of energy

Not breaks.

Resets.

Quick pattern interrupts that turn your brain back on:

• Step outside for sixty seconds

• Change rooms

• Drink cold water

• Sit on the floor for a moment

• Turn on a single light that signals the day is shifting

These are small but they move the needle.

6. Don’t wait for motivation. Build scaffolding instead

Your evening problems are usually morning problems in disguise.

Energy drops because everything is still on your plate.

Scaffolding looks like:

• Defaults

• Pre-decisions

• Routines that carry you

• Tools that reduce choice

• Systems that catch you when you fall off

Your brain loves rails.

Give it rails.

A quiet note

Evening energy isn’t about discipline.

It’s about design.

And if food is part of the struggle, or you want to build more no-brain defaults, I made something that helps you feed yourself without shame or pressure.

A no-shame guide to getting food on a plate when your energy drops.

Grab it here 👉 The Offline Brain Cookbook

If you want a calmer evening routine with half the effort, this will get you there.

Some days my brain wakes up with one clear goal:

do not let this man cook.

I open the fridge and forget why I’m there.

I pull ingredients out, put them back, forget I pulled them out, pull them out again.

I try to start dinner and somehow end up alphabetizing spices like I’m prepping for a cooking competition no one invited me to.

ADHD and food is a weird battlefield.

You know you need to eat.

You know your family needs you functioning.

You know future you will collapse if you don’t.

But executive function has other plans.

The Loop No One Talks About

The hardest part of eating with ADHD is not the cooking.

It’s the starting.

Starting requires decision making.

Decision making requires clarity.

Clarity requires mental fuel.

And you have none because you haven’t eaten.

Welcome to the loop.

I used to shame myself for this.

I’d think, I’m a grown adult with a career, a mortgage, and a family that needs me. Why does feeding myself feel like a boss fight I can’t win?

Then I learned something important:

My brain isn’t broken.

It’s overloaded.

And overloaded brains don’t cook.

They survive.

When you’re juggling work, parenting, and a household, the mental load becomes a second job.

And food is often the first thing that breaks under the weight.

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Tiny Helpers That Saved Me

These aren’t recipes. They’re shortcuts.

Little ways to skip the mental gymnastics and get straight to the part where food happens.

1. The Two Item Rule

If I can’t decide what to make, I tell myself: just pick two items you can combine.

Eggs + toast.

Bagel + ham.

Rice + veggies.

Two is doable. Two unlocks momentum.

2. The One Pan Trick

Any time I feel frozen, I grab a sheet pan or skillet and throw things on it.

Season. Cook. Done.

Less choice. Less cleanup. More eating.

3. The Pre-Decided List

ADHD has no memory for meals in real time.

So I made a short list of foods I can make on autopilot and stuck it where I can see it.

When my brain blanks, the list makes the decision for me.

None of this makes me a better chef.

It just makes feeding myself possible.

And being fed helps me show up better for the people I love.

A Little Kindness Goes a Long Way

This isn’t about discipline.

It’s about compassion.

When your brain is tired, hungry, or scattered, you need gentler systems.

Ones designed for days when the tank is empty.

That’s why I created The Offline Brain, my no shame guide to feeding yourself when ADHD wins.

Not a fancy cookbook.

Not a Pinterest aesthetic.

Just simple ways to get food on a plate when your brain is offline.

No pressure. Just support.

👉 If you want it, it’s here

Take the win.

Eat something today.

Your brain and your family will thank you later.

So here’s the thing.

You’ve got the task management system running.

(If you missed it: here’s the complete AI-powered ADHD task system that this builds on. It covers the daily brain dumps, nightly sorts, and how to actually organize the chaos. This article assumes you’ve got that foundation.)

You’re doing the brain dumps. The nightly sorts. Claude’s giving you your one task for tomorrow.

And then you sit down to actually DO the task and...

Nothing.

Your brain just goes “nah.”

Or you open your email and there are 36 unread messages and your chest gets tight and you close the tab.

Or you’re staring at three tasks that all feel equally urgent and you can’t pick one so you pick none and scroll Twitter for 20 minutes instead.

Yeah.

The system gets you organized.

But organization doesn’t fix the moment when your brain refuses to cooperate.

That’s what this is for.

The specific prompts for the specific moments when everything falls apart.

Not theory. Not explanation.

Just “my brain is doing the thing, here’s what to copy-paste right now.”

Let’s go.

Part 1: Decision Paralysis (When Everything Feels Equally Urgent)

The Problem: You’re looking at your task list. Three things need to happen today. All of them feel important. Your brain can’t choose. So you choose nothing and suddenly it’s 2pm and you’ve accomplished exactly zero things.

What’s Actually Happening: Your prefrontal cortex is trying to calculate which task has the highest value/effort ratio while your amygdala is screaming that all of them are important and choosing wrong will be catastrophic.

So your brain just... freezes.

Quick note: The task system I published last week handles the organizing part—capturing thoughts, sorting chaos, choosing your daily priority. But it doesn’t handle this moment. When you know what you should do but your brain won’t cooperate. That’s what these prompts are for.

The Prompt:

Read more

I used to wake up with twelve ideas about what to do first.

Or zero ideas.

Both felt like paralysis.

So I’d sit there for 20 minutes scrolling my task list, getting more anxious, accomplishing nothing.

Then I got diagnosed with ADHD at 47 and realized the problem wasn’t me.

The problem was asking my brain to make a decision it’s not wired to make.

“What should I do first?” is an impossible question when you have ADHD.

Everything feels equally urgent.

Or nothing feels urgent at all.

So I stopped asking my brain to choose.

I started letting AI do it instead.

Here’s the exact system I use.

The Problem With Morning Decisions

Here’s what used to happen:

I’d look at my task list.

“Slack Sarah. Fix the button. Write the blog post. Review the client feedback. Research that thing. Buy milk.”

My brain: “All of these matter. None of these matter. I don’t know where to start. Maybe I should reorganize the list first. Or check Slack. Or make coffee. Or redesign my entire productivity system.”

20 minutes gone.

Zero tasks started.

The issue wasn’t the tasks.

It was the decision.

ADHD brains don’t do well with open-ended choices, especially first thing in the morning when executive function is at its lowest.

You need a starting place that doesn’t require thinking.

What I Do Instead

Every night at 5pm (or whenever my day ends), I brain dump everything bouncing around my head into Apple Notes.

Not organized.

Not prioritized.

Just everything.

slack sarah project update
fix checkout button color
call mom
did i pay electricity bill?
client feedback on homepage
that shower design idea
research notion alternatives
buy milk
analytics broken - why?

It’s a mess.

Then I copy it into Claude and use this prompt:

I have ADHD and I’m looking at a mess of tasks.

Here’s everything from today:
[PASTE YOUR CHAOS]

Please:
1. Sort this into: Tasks, Ideas, Random Thoughts
2. For tasks: identify which ONE task I could do tomorrow that would give me momentum, not the one I “should” do
3. Keep it simple

No extra commentary. Just help me see what’s here.

Claude sorts the chaos and recommends one task for tomorrow.

That’s it.

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What This Actually Looks Like

My brain dump:

email sarah project update
fix checkout button color
call mom
electricity bill?
client feedback on homepage
that design idea
research notion alternatives
buy milk
analytics broken

Claude’s response:

TASKS:
- Email Sarah project update
- Review client feedback on homepage
- Check electricity bill status
- Fix checkout button color
- Buy milk
- Troubleshoot analytics

IDEAS TO REVISIT:
- Design idea from shower
- Research Notion alternatives

RANDOM:
- Call mom (scheduled?)

RECOMMENDED FOR TOMORROW:
Email Sarah project update

(You mentioned this first, which suggests momentum. It’s also quick and will feel good to complete.)

Why This Works

1. It removes the morning decision

I wake up and look at one task.

Not twelve.

One.

I don’t have to think about priority, importance, urgency.

The decision was made last night when my brain was slightly more functional.

2. It picks momentum over importance

Claude doesn’t recommend the “most important” task.

It recommends the one I’m most likely to actually do.

The one that has momentum.

The one I mentioned first, or mentioned multiple times, or seems smallest.

Why does this matter?

Because motivation is unreliable.

Momentum is real.

One small win changes your brain chemistry.

Dopamine kicks in.

Suddenly the next task doesn’t feel impossible.

3. It’s one prompt, one answer

I’m not having a conversation with AI.

I’m not refining the output.

I’m not asking follow-up questions.

I dump the mess, get the answer, move on.

Low cognitive load.

What to Do in the Morning

Wake up.

Look at yesterday’s sorted tasks.

Find the recommended task.

Ask yourself: “Can I do this before checking email?”

If yes: Do it.

If no: Pick the smallest task from the list instead.

That’s it.

Don’t overthink it.

Don’t re-analyze.

Don’t decide the AI was wrong and you should do something else.

Just start.

When This Doesn’t Work

Some mornings, the recommended task feels impossible.

Too big. Too vague. Requires energy you don’t have.

Don’t force it.

That’s the trap.

Instead, look at the rest of the task list and pick the smallest, easiest thing.

The thing you could do half-asleep.

“Buy milk” counts.

“Slack Sarah” counts if you already know what to say.

The goal isn’t to be productive.

The goal is to trick your brain into wanting to keep going.

The Before and After

Before this system:

• 20+ minutes of decision paralysis every morning

• Started 3-4 tasks, finished none

• Constant guilt about the “important” thing I wasn’t doing

• Gave up by noon and scrolled Twitter

After this system:

• Look at one task

• Start within 5 minutes

• Finish the first thing (even if it’s small)

• Dopamine hit carries me to the next task

• Actually get momentum instead of hoping for motivation

Try This Tomorrow Night

Tonight, before you stop working:

Step 1: Open Notes (or whatever you use) and brain dump everything still in your head.

Every task, idea, worry, random thought.

Don’t organize it.

Step 2: Copy it into Claude (or ChatGPT, or whatever AI you have).

Use this exact prompt:

I have ADHD and I’m looking at a mess of tasks.

Here’s everything from today:
[PASTE YOUR CHAOS]

Please:
1. Sort this into: Tasks, Ideas, Random Thoughts
2. For tasks: identify which ONE task I could do tomorrow that would give me momentum
3. Keep it simple

Step 3: Save Claude’s response.

Look at the recommended task tomorrow morning.

Do that one thing first.

See what happens.

One Last Thing

This won’t fix executive dysfunction.

It won’t make you neurotypical.

It won’t solve all your productivity problems.

What it does:

Takes the hardest decision of your day (what to do first) and removes it.

You’re not trying to be better.

You’re trying to start easier.

That’s enough.

Want the complete system? Paid subscribers get my full AI-powered ADHD task management workflow, including:

• How to capture thoughts before they vanish

• Context recovery after interruptions

• Weekly review protocol

• Emergency reset when everything falls apart

• Complete prompt library

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Have questions? Reply to this email or drop a comment. I read everything.

I tried 27 productivity systems before my ADHD diagnosis.

Every single one failed.

Not because I wasn’t trying. Not because I’m lazy. But because they were all built for brains that work differently than mine.

Then I got diagnosed at 47 and everything clicked.

The problem wasn’t me. It was the systems.

So I built one that actually works with an ADHD brain. Not against it.

Here’s the complete system I’ve been using for six months. The one that’s still running past Thursday.

The Core Problem Nobody Talks About

ADHD task management isn’t about remembering tasks.

It’s about:

• Capturing thoughts before they vanish

• Organizing chaos without getting lost in organization

• Choosing what to do when everything feels equally urgent

• Remembering what you were doing after an interruption

• Recovering when the system inevitably breaks

Traditional productivity systems fail because they assume you have working memory, consistent executive function, and the ability to maintain context across time.

You don’t.

Neither do I.

So I stopped trying to fix my brain and started using AI as external executive function.

Here’s how.

Part 1: Daily Capture (Brain Dump Protocol)

The Problem: Thoughts vanish before you can write them down.

Or you write them down and forget where.

Or you write them down, remember where, but have no idea what “fix button thing” means three days later.

The System:

Step 1: One inbox. No exceptions.

Everything goes in Apple Notes “Brain Dump” folder.

Not Tasks. Not Someday. Not “Quick Ideas.”

One folder.

Every thought, task, idea, reminder, random 2am panic about something you forgot.

All of it.

Your brain stops hunting for where things live.

Step 2: Voice notes for thoughts that won’t wait.

Keep voice memos on your phone’s home screen.

The second you think of something: record it.

Don’t try to make it coherent.

Just talk.

“Need to email Sarah about the thing. Also the button color is wrong. And I think I forgot to pay the electricity bill. Check on that.”

Perfect.

Step 3: End of day brain dump.

At 5pm (or whenever your day ends), open Notes and type everything still bouncing around your head.

Don’t organize. Don’t prioritize. Don’t edit.

Just dump.

Sample brain dump:

email sarah project update
fix checkout button - color wrong maybe?
call mom
electricity bill - did i pay it?
client feedback on homepage
that design idea from shower this morning
research notion alternatives
buy milk
figure out why analytics are broken

It’s a mess.

That’s the point.

Part 2: AI Sorting (The Nightly Janitor)

The Problem: Looking at that mess triggers decision paralysis. Your brain can’t prioritize when everything feels important.

The System:

Step 1: Copy everything into Claude.

All of it. Voice memo transcripts, brain dumps, everything.

One conversation per day works. Or one conversation per week. Whatever doesn’t make you feel pressure.

Step 2: Use this exact prompt:

Read more

I used to think productivity meant control.

If I could just organize harder, I’d finally feel calm.

Spoiler: I didn’t. I just got better at hiding the chaos.

Every planner, every habit tracker, every system made me feel like I was supposed to fit a mold that was never designed for my brain.

So I started asking a better question:
What if I stopped trying to work normal and learned how to work weird on purpose?

The Myth of the Perfect System

Every productivity method promises freedom through structure.

But for ADHD minds, structure can feel like a straightjacket.

You end up spending more time managing the system than doing the work.

When your brain runs on curiosity and chaos, too much order kills momentum.

The trick isn’t to find the perfect system.

It’s to build one loose enough to breathe.

Why Working Weird Works

When you stop trying to fit the traditional mold, something wild happens: your energy starts to flow in its own rhythm.

• You sprint when you have clarity.

• You rest when you hit fog.

• You follow sparks instead of schedules.

That’s not flakiness. It’s adaptation.

Productivity isn’t about consistency. It’s about sustainability.

And the more you honour how your brain actually works, the more work you get done without hating yourself in the process.

How to Work Weird and Still Get Shit Done

1. Build Micro Systems

Stop overbuilding. Start micro-building.

A single sticky note beats a Notion database you’ll never open again.

Micro systems are bite-sized structures that make your brain feel safe without trapping it.

Here are a few to try:

• The Two-Task Sticky: Write two things you must finish today. When they’re done, stop. Anything extra is bonus.

• The Catch-All Note: Keep one running note in your phone or notebook for stray thoughts. Don’t organize, just dump. Review it later.

• The Reset Box: A small basket for everything that doesn’t have a home yet — cables, receipts, pens. Clear it once a week.

• The Timer Trick: Work for 15 minutes. If momentum kicks in, keep going. If not, at least you started.

Micro systems work because they lower friction. You don’t need a full system; you need a small one that starts the engine.

📌 Free subscribers learn how to work weird on purpose.

You’ll get weekly posts on building a life that fits your brain… not one that fights it.

Paid members get the full backstage pass:

🧠 My personal ADHD systems

📓 Real behind-the-scenes lessons

🧩 Templates I actually use to keep the chaos in check

It’s the unfiltered version of this work… the messy middle, the experiments, the stuff that never makes it to the main feed.

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2. Use Momentum as a Signal

When you’re on fire, ride it.

When you’re fried, walk away.

Productivity for weird brains means using energy as your compass, not your schedule.

Examples:

• Sprint Windows: When focus hits, drop everything nonessential. Capture that window of flow even if it’s short.

• Energy Mapping: Notice the hours or environments that make you sharp… then plan your hardest work there.

• Creative Overflow: Keep a list of small follow-up tasks for when energy spikes. Pour it somewhere useful instead of burning it off.

Momentum isn’t magic; it’s a signal. Follow it when it’s high, rest when it’s gone, and stop treating both states like moral judgments.

3. Timebox the Chaos

You don’t have to ban distractions. Just give them boundaries.

Set a timer, doomscroll guilt-free, then bounce back.

Call it structured chaos. It works.

Ways to apply it:

• The Guilt-Free Scroll: Set a 10-minute timer before you open TikTok or Threads. When it buzzes, stop mid-scroll. It rewires control.

• Noise Windows: Schedule short bursts of random, messy multitasking—music, messages, micro breaks—then lock back in.

• Impulse Capture: If you suddenly want to Google a weird fact or sketch something random, dump it in a “Later” list instead of spiraling.

Timeboxing doesn’t limit freedom. It protects it from turning into chaos.

📌 Before we continue - If this landed for you, would you consider hitting that restack button and sharing it?

It’s the easiest way to help other weird brains find this space and it keeps me fueled to write what actually helps, not just what trends. 🙏

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4. Create a Start Ritual, Not a Plan

Plans overwhelm you. Rituals anchor you.

Light a candle. Open the doc. Put on the same song.

Your brain learns what’s coming next.

Ideas to build your ritual:

• Sensory Cue: Use smell, sound, or light to signal start mode. A certain playlist or scent can become your mental switch.

• Environment Prep: Clear the desk or open the same app sequence every time. Your brain loves repetition more than rules.

• Mini Movement: Stretch, shake it out, or walk a loop before starting. It burns nervous energy and triggers focus mode.

You don’t need a plan to begin. You need a doorway your brain recognizes.

5. Celebrate Partial Wins

You don’t need to finish everything to feel progress.

Half-done still counts.

You showed up. That’s the hard part.

Ways to celebrate:

• Visible Wins: Keep a Done List. Seeing proof of progress fuels motivation.

• Reward Ritual: Pair small wins with something positive—music, snacks, five minutes of pure nothing.

• Micro Reflection: End your day writing one line: “What worked weirdly well today?” It shifts focus from gaps to gains.

Partial wins build momentum faster than perfection ever will. Every small finish tells your brain you can trust yourself again.

The Real Goal

Stop trying to fix how your brain works.

Start building around it.

Productivity isn’t about control. It’s about cooperation.

And weird brains are built for creative problem-solving, not conformity.

When you learn to work weird on purpose, you stop fighting your wiring.

You start flowing with it.

That’s when shit actually gets done.

Try This Week

Here’s how to actually put this into practice without overthinking it.

Pick one, maybe two. Don’t turn it into homework.

1. Write Your To-Do List Like a Buffet

Instead of a rigid schedule, make your list a spread of options.

Choose three things that feel doable today.

If your brain wants to jump between them, let it.

The goal isn’t order, it’s momentum.

2. Replace the Word “Plan” with “Experiment”

Planning assumes certainty. Experimenting invites curiosity.

When something doesn’t work, you didn’t fail… you gathered data.

Treat every new productivity tweak like a mini lab test. Keep what works weirdly well and dump the rest.

3. Build One Ritual That Signals “It’s Go Time”

This is your focus cue.

Light the same candle, play the same song, open the same doc.

Repetition trains your brain to drop the bullshit faster.

Keep it simple and sensory.

4. Schedule One Micro Rest

Set a timer for five minutes. Step away from screens.

Stretch. Stare out a window. Breathe.

You’re teaching your brain that rest is part of the process, not the prize.

5. Track What Worked Weirdly Well

At the end of each day, jot down one line: “What worked weirdly well today?”

It shifts your focus from what you didn’t finish to what actually moved the needle.

Do this for a week and watch your confidence rebuild itself.

You don’t need to fix your productivity.
You just need to work weird, on purpose.

The Final Word

You’re not behind. You’re not broken. You’re building a rhythm that finally fits.

Working weird isn’t a flaw… it’s a strategy.

Every time you choose to work your way instead of the world’s way, you take back a little more power.

So stop waiting to feel ready. Start small, stay messy, and keep moving.

The point isn’t to be perfect, it’s to show up in a way your brain can actually handle.

If this hit home, you’ll love my guide “When Your Brain Won’t Brain.”

It’s packed with the same real-world, no-bullshit strategies to help you work, live, and rest with the brain you’ve got.

Go grab it and start turning your chaos into clarity 👉 Download for free

Every few months, I start to lose the thread.

I forget to eat at real times. My desk becomes a geological timeline of half-finished ideas. I start using caffeine like courage.

And every single time, the same truth hits me again. My life doesn’t fall apart all at once.

It unravels quietly.

There’s no big crash. Just tiny signs. The mug pile. The skipped shower. The browser tabs breeding overnight.

The world gets louder and I get smaller.

What stitches it back together isn’t discipline.

It’s ritual.

Not the self-care kind that lives on Pinterest.

The kind that looks ordinary, maybe even stupid, but somehow keeps me tethered to reality.

A specific mug.

A certain song on repeat.

Turning the lights off in a certain order before bed.

These are the little anchors that pull me back from the drift.

Today, I want to show you the small, ridiculous, and sometimes sacred rituals that quietly keep me functional.

The ones that don’t look impressive on Instagram but somehow keep me human.

→ Keep reading for the rituals I actually use, why they work, and how you can build your own version.

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