I have always had a notebook on my desk for capturing things for as long as I can remember.

At some point I felt that my ADHD (before I got diagnosed and all of that) started to become so much worse that I needed a way to focus more.

Where I looked in my task manager, wrote down what was the most important to do right now. And also wrote down on it everything that popped up in my brain. That included everything from ideas, to impulses to feelings. Plus that I mix in things I want to do like responding to Snaps and chat messages in between. So it is typically like doing 3-5 real tasks, then looking and some messages etc. Pomodoro ish.

When the a page filled up I just flipped over to the next and carried over everything that was undone.

For most of the time I have used notebooks for this that let me tear pages out. Rhodia DotPads ring bound or regular is without a doubt what I have used the most.

For the longest time I just used them regular. But at some point I started to put a line in the middle because I noticed that I could waste less paper by treating it as a double page. Then later I tried with 4 boxes for different purposes but wasn’t that good for me.

Then at some point I flipped it over to the side, and started to split the page into small columns, to waste even less paper, and limit how often I have to transfer to a new page.

These days I do the same with my Panobook when I have them.

The layout I have used for the last year or so, probably longer, is to have 8 dots or 4 cm / 40mm between each line. It makes the A5 pads have 4 columns and the Panobook have 6.

Most of the time I just use the columns without have any for particular purposes. Other times I start doing Capture in the last column.

The formatting of the lists are stiff very based on Dash plus. And I will scribble over the parts where everything has been completed to make it obvious where I’m at.

This is one of the core pillars of my system that always works. If it goes more than two minutes where I’m lost, overwhelmed, I just find a notebook and start writing everything down, and then start dealing with it.

Digital could have worked for this I guess. But I’d want a separate app for this stuff, since none of the apps makes it that easy to select some stuff and only showing me this for now. Without going into some serous complexity.