Why "just use a planner" doesn't work for Neurodivergent business owners (and what does instead)
If I had a pound for every time I heard something along the lines of "just try ___ planner, it worked for me" …well I wouldn't be sat here writing this, that's for sure — more likely I would be on a beach somewhere sipping a mocktail, but alas... instead I am sat in my suffocatingly warm, (thank you July heatwave and sold out AC) ranting about the chronic lack of understanding around being neurodivergent in the workplace.
So I digress...
Please, please don't be one of these people. I know you mean well, I really do, but it feels like banging our heads against a brick wall when you say things like this. I promise you, alongside every other neurodivergent business owner, we have tried every planner humanly imaginable, every productivity app and all of the routines out there. It doesn't click for us like it clicks for you - and that's ok, because 99% of them weren't designed with our brains in mind.
Ok, so rant over - what actually works?
It's definitely not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. I have personally worked with countless neurodivergent business owners and have trialled all different kinds of methods for each person. Sometimes things take a few adjustments to find the right thing — other times you can literally see their shoulders dropping as the relief sets in — we love it when the latter happens.
So if you are a neurodivergent business owner looking for some things to try, or maybe you're a virtual assistant looking for some new things to help support your clients, give these a whirl:
Time blocking — assigning specific hours to specific tasks rather than an open-ended to-do list that just stares at you all day
Body doubling — working alongside someone else (in person or on a call), even if they're doing something completely different to you. Sometimes you just need that person there to stop you wandering off and starting another one of your 1000 unfinished projects.
Pomodoro method — short bursts of focused work with built-in breaks, instead of expecting yourself to sit and grind for hours
Accountability setting — someone checking in on progress, not to police you, but so the task exists somewhere outside your own head
Externalising your to-do list — whiteboards, sticky notes, anything visual, rather than trusting your memory to hold it all. (A personal fav of a lot of our clients is voice noting things in the moment - it’s a great way to brain-dump a lot of info quickly before you lose it all and then have your VA turn it into an actionable task list).
Task pairing — bundling a boring task with something more enjoyable, so your brain has a reason to actually start
Please feel free to suggest any others — I'm always collecting more.
If you've read this and thought "great, but I still don't have the capacity to actually try any of it" — that's genuinely what we're here for. Half of what we do at Bloom isn't the admin itself, it's building the systems around it so you're not the only one holding it together. That's a conversation for another day, but the offer's there.