Parul Singh, welcome.

Hello. Good morning, Henry. How are you doing?

I am doing great. I can hear you loud and clear, see you fantastically. And I know how hard you've worked on this and like it's an absolute passion as it is for me. I think it's one of the most important segments of the conferences, of the real life stuff of of putting things in your life to make change. And honestly, I think you'll take away more than one thing from this for the people watching. But even if you take only one away, it's a good chance it changes every single day of your life. Like, there's these things when we talk about strategies and we talk about changes to you, we're often talking about putting something into your life that you'll use every day or so regularly and it makes every day better. That's so worth it. And.

So this is wonderful. Parul, I'm going hand over to you. Thank you so, so much.

Brilliant. Thank you so much. Could I get the slides on the screen? Perfect. Thank you. I mean, Henry has done a pretty brilliant introduction to my talk, so I'm gonna tell you a little bit more about myself. So hello. I'm Harold. My pronouns are she, her, and I became a founder rather abruptly when I left my last job in January last year at 28 years old. I'm doing it all by myself. I don't have any support. I don't have any funding. I'm still managing to keep lights on somehow and doing that whilst being neurodivergent. I am autistic, I have and also complex PTSD. I also have chronic migraines, so that is a bit of a horrible mix to make life very, very difficult. So, anyone who is also chronically ill will know the feeling.

And, unfortunately, I also do love all of the side quests. I've never known a day of peace in my life. I like to keep busy because when I'm left alone with my own thoughts, that is not good for me. I am mom to Dory the Corgi, who you'll see here. She's incredibly cute. I always have to put her in my sides. I do crochet. I play piano. I run an online community. I just don't like having any sort of, like, quiet. So I'm constantly juggling a lot of things. Some of them of my own accords, and I love everything that I do, but it's particularly difficult having ADHD. And I didn't know that I had ADHD until 25 years old. So going through school, university, and part of my career, struggling with keeping on top of things, remembering things.

My focus, my attention, all those things, I didn't know all of the stuff that could actually help me, which is labeled as, like, ADHD strategies. But because I grew up in the age of technology, I kind of loved fiddling with tech and figuring out how I can actually use it to make my life a little bit less overwhelming.

And I know that for a lot of you watching this, you probably do feel overwhelmed quite a lot. You feel like you never get to the end of your to do list, and you're feeling, you know, quite bent out. So I hope that the things that I'm gonna share with you today will help in some way or another. And just as Henry said is I'm covering a lot of tools in this, by the way. I'm a I'm a I will be sharing the slides and all of those tools, so just keep that in mind. But even if you just find one that you think is gonna help you, then I've done my job well. So what I'm gonna cover, I have four groups of tools which are tied to areas of life or ADHD traits and challenges, like organization, working memory, time management, etcetera.

They they offer both personal life and also work life. I'm also gonna show you demos and examples of the tools, so with, screenshots and videos to show you how they actually work. And then I'm also gonna highlight the most ADHD friendly features because.

There's a lot of tools and apps out there. Like, if you just go and Google now, like, productivity apps or productivity techniques, you just got so much. But the reality is is that a lot of those don't necessarily work with people for ADHD. It's not the same for everyone, but, like, for example, I really struggle with, like, the Pomodoro technique. It's just a little bit too rigid for me, and, like, that's absolutely fine. So I'm gonna show you things that are maybe a bit more likely to work for you. And as I go through this, I want you to think about, you know, which of those barriers do you relate to the most, which are the tools that pique your interest.

Not everything will, and that's okay because you also don't want to overwhelm yourself by trying to go into everything. Jot down a few things that you wanna look into after. And, also, don't worry if you are not a pro in technology. I have used my mom as a guinea pig for this talk, and she is probably the biggest technophobe. I know. She actually, until a few weeks ago, was writing down her passwords on her notes app in her phone. I was like, oh my god. Mom, no. This is such a bad thing.

I should have to use the passwords app. So definitely pass the pass the mom test. And, also, my, slot was shortened slightly, so I'm unlikely to be able to take questions. But you can still put them into the chat, and I can see if I can adjust those in my newsletter. Now before I go into the actual tools, I'm gonna share with you three things that will make your tools work better for ADHD brains, and those are automations, widgets, and integrations. I'm going to explain what these are in a moment as I'm gonna be mentioning these throughout the talk as ways to level up the tools that you use to make them easier for your brain. So they're a way of, like, layering on top of things. They're not things that exist on their own.

So automations, as it probably suggests, are things that happen automatically. They're an action that, you know, it links to a time. It happens at a certain time or when you're at a place or a different trigger. And automations are great because they call out remembering fiddly steps and therefore reduces the manual load. Some tools that I mentioned and other tools just have their own automations and workflows, but they're also automation apps. So for example, in iPhone, it's called shortcuts. There's one called automations in Android. And this is an example of an automation which I have on my app, and it's also shared in the toolkit at the end. And this is an ETA, so estimated time arrival automation.

So when I'm connected to my car Bluetooth, but I'm not at home, it figures out where I am, how long it's gonna take me to drive home, and then WhatsApps my partner, and I literally don't have to click anything. So cool. Widgets are mini apps on your phone or desk and they help keep important information visible because we know that as ADHD is we struggle with the whole out of sight, out of mind thing. So having that quick access, having it visible, it's fewer steps, and it's less friction. So one example of a widget which I use on my desktop is I have this brain dump note on my notes app, but I probably will just forget that it exists. Typical ADHD.

So I just added the widget to my desktop, and this acts as a quick drop zone for my thoughts. So when I get a thought, don't know whether it's like, oh, that's a content idea or that's like a personal task or that's a work task, but I need to do it next week or it's this kind of, like, category. There's no kind of, like, filtering process. I can just get it out. And then also because it's visible, it stops me from forgetting that it exists, and I do need to sort them out. So you can have these on your phone wallpaper, on your on your, like, home screen on your phone. You can have them on your laptop, on your smartwatch, etcetera, if you've got one of those.

And then finally, integration. So an integration is something which connects apps so they talk to each other. This helps reduce steps and switching. It helps avoids the mental blockers, like open this copy paste. So, you know, if you've, like, generated a transcript on something and you need to open a different app and you need to email it or you're going between teams and something else, an integration helps bring those things together very easily to reduce the contact switching. Okay. So now you've got these three ways to layer on top of your tools to help make them better. Now let's get into the tools. And I started with one of the things which is possibly the hardest thing for people with ADHD, which is keeping organized.

There are just so many things, and it's so hard to keep hold of them. It's kinda like you're holding a bunch of, like, marbles, and they're all kinda like dropping on the floor. You know, inevitably, you're gonna keep some, and you're gonna drop some. You know, it's not great. Forgetting birthdays, forgetting to pay bills, forgetting to do things which everybody feels like they can do with ease. And it is basically just impossible and exhausting for ADHD brains. Every now and then, I meet somebody, and they're like, I don't have to write down things to remember them. Like, I don't need to do that. And I'm like.

How to what what is inside your brain? Like, I could never. If it's not written down, you know, it doesn't exist. So having something to keep myself organized is very key because that's a lot of things to juggle. I'm sure you probably do as well. And this is why tools really matter. Though there is no perfect fix, the right tools will reduce the load, but the wrong tools will add to it. So what the goal should be is to make your life easier, not more complicated. And where people go wrong when trying to find, like, an app or a tool to manage their tasks, etcetera, is they're getting confused between project apps and task apps. So project apps are built for teams workflows. So these are apps like ClickUp, Asana.

Trello. You might have heard of some of those. Might possibly use them in work, and they're really good for work projects. I use ClickUp for work personally, and it's very, very robust. However, this is far too complex for most ADHD is personal use. I will show you what it looks like actually on this one. So this is my ClickUp. You look at that and you go, oh my god. What is going on? There's so many things. If you were using that for personal your life, you're like, you're gonna set it up and you're probably never gonna look at it again.

So that's why you need to differentiate between what's project app and what's task app. Because task app is a lot simpler. It's easier to use, helps you keep track of, like, your life admin, kid's store, shopping list, appointments, etcetera. And these are designed for individuals. And the things that make task apps ADHD friendly, first one is visual clarity. So you want something which has a clean, uncluttered interface. It should have high contrast. It should have simple lists, maybe just a bit of, like, color coding so you your eyes know where to look at and not having those big balls of text like in my ClickUp that I just kinda showed you there. That's my ClickUp home screen, which is like and everything is on one screen.

You also wanna have frictionless task capture. By this, I mean, you should be able to add a task with two steps or less. You should have multiple ways to be able to add a task. So maybe by, like, voice input or, like, dictation. It's a bonus if there's a bit of, like, gamification or rewarding. So maybe when you complete a task, it goes, whoo, bit of confetti or some, like, proper gamification or some streaks if you do like that sort of thing.

And then also an info dump zone. So is there an easy way for you to just dump something into an inbox and then actually sort it out later similar to what I just said with the brain dumping. With ADHD, the more steps that it takes to do something, the less likely you are to do it. So having a way to pop something in, dump it, leave it until later to sort it without being able to organize on the spot is a massive bonus for our brains. And there are so many task apps out there to choose from, and it's a very, very personal choice. But by using these things, you can help find one that works for you. But I am going to give you a recommendation of one which I have been using for.

I think, over five years now, which is possibly the longest that I've ever stuck to anything. And it's called Todoist. This is great because it's simple but functional task management that works really well for ADHD brains. You can see on the right here, this is what the home screen looks like. It's super simple, just a few lists. It has a free version, which honestly, I think is really comprehensive, and you don't actually.

You don't actually need, you know, like, the paid the paid version. And, only a few people need it. But even with the paid version, it's, I think, only, like, $4.99 a month and then cheaper if you sort of, like, pay for the year. So few features. There are loads of features for this. The but there are a few which are perfect for ADHD brains. And the first one is these really simple task lists. So you've got a few different view options, but it's like color coded by priority. You can sort by that. You can sort by the due date. It's just very visually uncluttered, but it sorts them in the right level of kind of, like, sorting that, you know, not everything is kind of, like, in one list.

And then they also have this quick add feature, which they say, which the sort of tagline is capture tasks at the speed of thoughts. Again, there's a theme here. So you need to make it as easy to add the tasks or do things as possible. So the quick add feature, if you press a combination of keys, you can also customize the shortcut. It doesn't matter. You don't need to have to do a stop. And if you press this combination of keys, this window will pop up. This window is a quick add window. So let's say you're on a meeting and you've got an action. You could press this. And I'm gonna type in my task, and without having to click anything, I can type Tom9AM, and it sets the due date for tomorrow 9AM.

I can put type p one, and it sets the priority. I can do an app, and it adds a label. So all of this is really clever, and it's really quick. And you can do that, and then you can just close it. You can add the task, and you can close it. So it reduces the number of clicks to need to add something, and it makes it a lot easier because you can just pop it up from anywhere. They also have location based reminders, which I've actually not seen in any other apps. So if you need to get do something when you are at a certain location. So let's say that I need to go buy when I go to Buttes next time, which I don't know when that's gonna be.

Instead of reminding me at a certain time, it's gonna remind me when I arrive at the location. This is great for those things where you're like, oh, I need to buy that next time I go there, and they'll let you always forget, and then you end up going back. Then you end up buying all things. So this is really helpful, and it's very, very clever. The last one, of course, there are lots of other features that you can explore, is the the ramble feature. So we know that with ADHD, sometimes the written processing can be a bit of a mental block. You know, when you sit down and you go to, like, write something and, like, brain not working.

But you can probably verbalize it and speak it. If you click the ramble function, you can just speak. So here, I said, I need to finish cleaning downstairs tonight, maybe about, like, 06:00, and then I go and get some groceries tomorrow at 9AM, and it just types it like magic, which is amazing. Just dump the task. Fable dump. Now.

Leveling up with the layers that we mentioned, you can also use widgets with Todoist and probably most of the task gaps as well. So up here, I have got a list of just three tasks. So, again, this is great because it's not overwhelming. You've only got three. And then here, you've also got ramble. So when I think of something, I can really, really quickly click the ramble and then just add it and then just add it in there. It also has loads of integration. So if you end up using it for, like, work, you can integrate it with Slack. So you can add a task just from, just actually from, like, a Slack message or a Teams message. You can add a task straight from an email. So, again, reducing the number of steps.

Really helps to actually add the tasks and reduce that sort of, like, executive functioning and overwhelm. So there are other apps out there. I have tried a lot of them, and some of them people might love. If you've got a particular task app that you love, feel free to pop it into the chat, share it with other people. Have shared us some alternatives with the resources, but a lot of people don't like that speech. You don't actually use this one, and it's really surprising considering that, like, there there's a free version, and it does quite a lot. But when you're trying to find something to keep you organized, keep it simple. Do not go for something which is actually meant for, like, work project management.

Ensure you've got something that makes it as easy to attest as possible because that's what's gonna help your ADHD brain. Leverage all of the right features in there. So you might get, like, the app, but are you actually exploring the different features which might work for you? And then where possible, see if you can level it up with, you know, the integrations and the widgets and the automations. Okay. So now going on to focus tools. So, I mean, be hard to find somebody out there with ADHD who doesn't struggle with their focus, and it really gets in the way sometimes. So I'm gonna share a few easy things that you can do to help with your focus. A lot of them are gonna be to do with the phone, unsurprisingly.

And the first one and possibly the most simple one is focus modes. So we all know about I mean, most people will know about the do not disturb focus mode. But a lot of people actually don't leverage the other focus modes which exist, like driving and sleep, but you can also create your own custom focus modes. This is available on both Android and iPhone, and you can use them to have different levels of filtering for apps and people that it allow the notifications through. You can put them on a schedule. So my work so, again, rather me remembering to put on my work focus mode at 8AM, it'll just do it automatically from eight to 4PM.

Monday to Friday. And this is free. It always uses on your phone. You don't have sign up to anything. You don't have to pay for anything. It is just there. And it's very logical, and it really helps people with ADHD because our brains are hypersensitive to pings and alerts. A single notification can can always lead to a full derail, and we know that it's can be so hard to get into that focus mode. So then being pulled out of it and trying to get back into it, and then we just really struggle to actually get things actually get things done. So this really quick fix of actually leveraging those different focus modes really helps cut the noise and to protect your flow. So they help filter notifications.

I wanna talk about the phone a little bit more. Now I am guilty of having a lot of screen time. Okay? I love I love TikTok. I love my phone. It's my comfort place. And a lot like, telling somebody with ADHD to just use your phone less, just put it in a different room is honestly just really pointless because phones are like dopamine slot machines. There are so many apps, so many distractions, short form content, TikTok, which, again, look, I love. But if it's hindering your life and your distractions and being able to, you know, kind of, like, do your work.

There is something that can help with that. But it's not gonna be your screen time limit, unfortunately, for most people. So screen time limit, they have it on my iPhone, I think Android as well. And you can set it for active. Okay. Okay. My my daily limit for Instagram is thirty minutes. And then this pops up, and then I just go, ignore for today, and I just carry on doomscrolling. So that is, like, basically as useful as a chocolate teapot. So what can actually help with that? Distraction blockers. They can help you reduce that mindful scrolling, and I was recommended one called Opal, o p a l, which is linked in the resources. But I was shook when I saw that the paid version was £20 per month. And I was like.

It's it's not even that, like, fancy. So I was looking around for cheaper alternatives, of course, and I found this one called one sec. And, honestly, it's changed my life. I still have an affinity. I'm still drawn to my phone. Like, I have ADHD. It gives me that kinda, like, dopamine. It's that's never gonna go away. Stupid little slot machine. But I do have a far better relationship with it and a a little bit more of that kind of, like, intentional use. I'm both opal and on sack and other things. They do have free versions, but one sack is a lot more affordable for the paid version. But, again, you might not need it. It's only £3.99 per month. And it is available on both iPhone and Android. So let me show you how one sec works.

In practice as a distraction blocker. So I am gonna open TikTok. So I don't know whether you could hear that, but that guy is going, you sure about that? You sure about that? I think it was a meme apparently. So that comes up. It says, do you wanna open TikTok? I go, yeah. It then asks me, how long do you wanna use it for? I go fifteen minutes. And then when it hits that fifteen minutes or thirty minutes, whatever it is, it does it again. And you can completely customize this to, like, different apps, different schedules. Like, for example, like, I do wanna indulge in a bit of TikTok over lunchtime. So it doesn't run between, like, twelve and 2PM. So, you know, it is actually really, really handy. It's a very clever app.

But, again, there is a way that you can level this up as well if you wanna take it a step further for people who like making things even more efficient. So this will probably take you out a few minutes to settle, but you can combine focus modes on your phone with automations and then also one sec to get your ultimate focus combination. So an example of how I've done this. So when I arrive at the gym, this is my automation trigger. It sets my gym focus mode. So that bit is, like, super simple. You can do that. It's it knows where I am. It sets my gym focus mode.

But then I've changed the behavior of one sec so it behaves differently when I'm in that focus mode, and it changes it limits my notifications even more because I want less distractions, but it also stops me from being able to open email and LinkedIn. I go to the gym over lunch quite a lot, and this is a problem for me because I can't switch off my brain because I've been working for, like, three, four hours. And then I go to the gym, and my brain is still in work mode, but I really don't wanna have those distractions. But then by all of this happening automatically without me not having to press a single thing, I'm able to have a really good workout, get a little bit of, like, a mental break with less distractions.

So I'm gonna link all of these tools and also some other guides to be able to set this up in the resources at the end. So that's distraction blockers. Now we're going on to the final tool for our focus section. Section, and I wanna talk about task initiation and task completion. So we struggle with getting started with things. I'll tell you one time, I was supposed to get set up on this, like, this portal to get paid for a new client and for an invoice.

And I put it off for four weeks. This is to get paid, by the way. I put it off for four weeks. Do know how long it took me? Three minutes. Three minutes. There's no logic behind it. But, yes, we do procrastinate things even if we know that we need to do them, even if sometimes we, like, enjoy doing them. Or even if we can get started with them, we maybe struggle to finish them. So, you know, maybe, like, we start something off and it's like, whoo, novelty, dopamine, etcetera. But then when that runs out or we have so many distractions, then we just end up having, like, a million things which are half finished and, you know, we don't kind of, like, really know where to go. That's quite difficult for a lot of people, struggling to get started.

And struggling to get things finished. One of the things which a lot of ADHD people say works very well for them is this concept of body doubling. So if you haven't heard of body doubling, it's where you work alongside someone either, like, in person or virtual to help boost your focus, reduce overwhelm, and help you stay accountable for starting and finishing the thing that you said that you're gonna do. And some of you might do this without even realizing that you do it. So if you've ever sat next to your partner or you're like your family member at home on the sofa and you've gone, right. I'm gonna do my life admin or I'm gonna do my tax return or something.

And you just have them. They're not they're not hovering over you, making sure that you finish. You know? But the the act of sitting next to them, like, that is called that is body doubling, basically. And it would be great if that works for you to have somebody who can sit next to you permanently and make you feel accountable, but that might not always be possible. And that is where, that is where some oops. Sorry. I've gone the wrong way. That is where some online platforms can actually come in handy now. So there's one which is a really popular one, particularly with ADHD is, but otherwise. It's called flown, and they have a variety of sessions. They have one hour focus sessions, two hour deep dive sessions.

And, I'll show you what it looks like in a second, but you can choose to, share your intentions in the chat. So they'll be like, what are you gonna work on in the session? So you can do it in the chat, or you can opt to go into a small breakout room with, like, two, three people and talk to them in the beginning. And then at the end, you'll get put into the same breakout room and then kind of, like, share sort of, like, how you did. And, honestly, it works like magic. And they, again, have a free version, but the sessions are a bit more limited.

And this one is £20 per month, but I've been paying for this out of my own pocket for, like, well over a year now because it's, like, absolutely worth it for me because it actually means that I got things done. I think I did about four sessions this week working on these slides, and it really, really helped. And one thing which I really respect about them, this is, like, kinda side note, is you don't need card details to sign up for the free trial. It's almost like they know their audience. They know that a lot of people got ADHD, and and we know that we can't we forget to cancel subscriptions. So you can do your free trial with, like, with no repercussions. And this is what it basically looks like. Like, it is it is a Zoom effectively.

But I have this open on my laptop, and then I do my work on my monitor. And here, I've put my intentions in the chat, and it's just really, really nice. And it really helps you kind of, like, stick to what you are doing. So that's one to look into. There are few other, like, alternatives, but, like, flown has has been working really, really well for me. And, again, a way that you can level this up is just like a re it's a really simple integration. So if you're thinking, like, how am I gonna remember to book my sessions or, like, how do I make it easier for myself?

If you go to this kind of, like, it's a little feature in there and you personalize your calendar. So here, you'll basically tick all the sessions that you might do. Obviously, that I'm not gonna do one to two AM. But these are the sessions that I might do, and then it creates a calendar feed. So here is my calendar for today. So this is my diary. Obviously, I've got nothing except for the conference. Very important. But on the right here, you'll see the float sessions. So what I can do is I can just cross check. Oh, I've got, like, a free afternoon. I'll just click it and then a bucket. So it makes it, like it actually just makes it super easy to, like, do it around my schedule and around my meetings. So, summary of the focus tools.

The focus modes that you already have are a really easy way to help cut the noise. You can use distraction blockers like one sec to help break those doom scrolling loops. Doing things like body doubling, either in person or using an online platform like Flow can really help that accountability and help you do those tasks, which you really, really don't like doing, but you kinda have to do because adulting is hard. And, also, there are ways across all of those that you can level those up with automations and integrations. Fabulous. So time blindness tools, time blindness. Do you ever just feel like time melts away?

You start the day, you start the week, and you're like, where has the time gone? I've run out of hours. I just wish I had more hours in the day. Having ADHD, it's very common to have a difference in the perception of time. It doesn't pass the same as it does for, like, other people. And this can result in hyper focusing to the point where you are, like, so absorbed in something, you are, like, dead to the world. You might struggle with underestimating how long something is going to take or spending longer on one thing when you really should have been doing other things, and that can cause a lot of challenges. So finding a few things to help you with that visual time management.

Sorry, time management really helps. And the first one is visual time management. So there's an app called Tiimo, that's t I I m o, which is built for ADHD brains, and it helps you see the time and not track it. And it is fab. It's got a free version or six pounds a month or 36 a year, I think. And just also as a side note, this one and a few other tools which I have mentioned and will mention in this talk are actually covered by access to work, and you can also ask for some as reasonable adjustments. So that's, again, something to think about is that you might not have to pay for these things yourself. So two things in Timo, which are very ADHD friendly.

Is they have this magic breakdown. So I put in a task into it, and I go clean my house. And then I press a little magic wand button, and it adds these subtasks, which are actually really accurate. Like, some of the some of the things which you, like, break down tasks with AI, and they're, like, actually really stupid. Well, actually, really good. And then it estimates the time as well. And it puts a little emoji. So when it's in my list, it's, like, all nicely organized. I don't have to do anything. That's amazing. Less work for us. And then the actual visual time a bit. So when I start a task, you can see this thing here, the purple bit, that will go up.

So I have a you can also create repairing task. You also create different profiles. You can do one for work. You do one for personal different things. And every day, I wanna practice piano for thirty minutes a day. So I just start this, and I just put my phone there so that I can just remember because sometimes if I'm playing stuff that I really like and just kinda get absorbed in it, and I sort of lose track of time and should be doing something else. Or when I'm cleaning and I'm doing a lot of cleaning, then I'm like, I'm not even halfway through, and I've got, like, fifteen minutes left, so I'm gonna have to start wrapping up. So it really helps with the time blindness. But if you are a little bit old school like me with some things.

This isn't technically a tool, but I just thought it deserves an honorary mention because I even have it on my visual timer. I have it on right now to make sure that I keep the time for this talk. So I have the time in my presenter notes window.

Of when I started. I've got the clock in the right hand corner. I've got got the clock on I've got the clock everywhere, but I don't know why. This visual timer is amazing. It's supposedly for children, but, like, you know, I'm allowed. But it really helps me, like, physically see, like, the passage of time. I use it for when I'm doing work tasks. I use it for when I'm not, like, getting ready because sometimes I'm, like, jamming a little bit too much to my songs and then ends up being late for something. And I think it's about, like, twelve, thirteen pounds on Amazon. So, like, if you don't wanna use your phone for everything, this is actually amazing. And speaking of time management, are you somebody who is always late to meetings?

Do you get absorbed in what you're doing? And you're like, oh, I was supposed to be in a meeting five minutes ago. Oh, no. And you might get notifications, and they just ignore them, or you just don't see them, or you just, like, snooze them, and you're like, oh, I've still got ten minutes, and then you end up being late. There are two tools for this, and I'm really sorry. They are unfortunately both only for Mac. I tried my best to find Windows, like, equivalent, but there was nothing that really existed. There was one that had really bad reviews. So I won't go into these in detail, but I'll share them if you wanna have a look at them.

This one is called next meeting, and it is completely free. And you don't have to set up an account or install anything or do anything. You literally just have to install the app, select whichever select whichever calendars you want it to work for. And then what it'll do is here, it will show you so in the bottom left here, it'll say this meeting in fifty four minutes. Or if you click it, it will show you a little thing about your calendar. How nice is that? And it's free. So if you've got a Mac, go and download this one. It's amazing. But if you are somebody that even that will not do the job, there is another app which is £1.99 a month, and it's called in your face. And just as it kinda describes, it is a little bit more.

In your face. So at a set time before a meeting, it will go full screen, and it'll go, you have this meeting in one minute. Click here to join. So you basically can't avoid it. So that is for people who just need something a little bit more in your face. Fabulous. So time blindness tools, Timo, or there are other alternatives. I'll wait for that visual time management and being able to see, like, you know, how long is something gonna take and helping you break things down.

And.

You can avoid being there for meetings with the apps which I mentioned. Now going into the final section of the talk, these are work tools. They I do have personal use cases as well. So if you're somebody who came to this for more for kind of like your personal life, don't switch your brain off right now. But also on the other hand, so a lot of the things which I've mentioned might be more for personal use, but can definitely always be used for work. But I've got a few ones in the section which I'm gonna share with you before we get wrapped up. And the first one is goblin tools. This is quite popular in the neurodivergent community. It is a collection of free neurodivergent.

Friendly tools. You can see there's some on here. There's there's lots of different ones. They got one called chef, so you can put in all the sour ingredients rotten in the bottom of your fridge vegetable drawer. You know what I'm talking about. And you're like, what can I make for this? And it's for you. But, anyway, that's not I don't think that's the best one. And there are two tools which I think are incredibly helpful for work. And the first one is the formalizer. So when you click on the formalizer, it'll pop up with this thing, and you can put in what you want to say, basically. So this happens to me on a weekly, but it's this person who cancels meeting last minute or they just don't turn up, and I feel really dysregulated.

And I'm I'm just I'm quite pissed off, to be honest. Happens a lot. So what I want to say is you didn't turn up and you canceled last minute. You're really rude, and it's a waste of my time, and you should learn some manners. And but a lot of the time that's actually apparently not really acceptable to say to people and, you know, having a bit of that kinda like that filter. And you're like, I should not have said that. So that emotional dysregulation when you're really upset or angry at something, combined with the lack of impulse control from ADHD can mean that sometimes we send or say things that we maybe really didn't wanna say it in that way. So you just pop into the formalizer. You can click make it more professional.

Make it less waffle, make it more polite, and then it'll give you the output. And you can click these three little chilies here, and you can choose the level of spiciness. So if you're like, this is really bad. I need you to do a lot of work to make this more professional. You can put up to, like, five chilies. If you only need a little tweaking, put it on one. And now the email now says, I noticed you were unable to attend. I would appreciate if you could confirm times in advance to ensure better communication and mutual respect. Thank you. Much better. This is much better. Much less likely to get somebody pissed off at me. Much less likely to get me fired from work. Very good.

And then this one which is kinda like the other way around. So, I mean, how many times do you get, like, an email or, a message, and you're like, oh my god. They absolutely hate me. I'm gonna get fired. What's going on? And you just spiral over it, and that's because of the rejection sensitive dysphoria. Right? So let's say I get this email, and it says, I was expecting an update from you on this project. We can't progress without this update. There's a lot of disruption. Can you let me know what's gonna happen? And I'm like, oh my god. I've messed up. This is so bad. So I copy and paste it. I put it into the judge, and it says a load of things. But it says, overall, the tax comes across as professional, yet concerned.

That communicates urgency, aiming to prompt action while maintaining politeness and respect. And what that does is it helps nip RSD in the bud, and it can even suggest a response as well. So I love these two tools from goblin tools because I think they kinda act like neurodivergent neurotypical translators. So a lot of neurotypical people just don't really, like, say what they mean or, like, mean what they say, and there's always, like, a bit of a hidden meaning behind it. So you can't blame us for thinking that maybe it does mean something else. Or sometimes, again, you just wanna type how you sort of, like, feel and, you know, maybe you don't wanna do it that way. And you might be thinking.

If you've got well, if you use why don't you just use chat GPT for these things? Right? And, basically, everything else that Goblin tools does, chat GPT can absolutely do. But the challenge with chat GPT is that when you open it, you have a blank screen. Like, where is the prompt? You need to think of the prompt, and you need to write it. Whereas this is built specifically for this purpose, and it helps reduce that mental block. So that is goblin tools. Now 30% is the average working hours somebody spends in meetings a week. For some of you, it might be more. For some of you, it might be a little bit less. And we all know that the majority of those meetings could have been an email. So what's happening in those meetings is you all sat there.

Trying to look like you pay attention, trying to listen to what other people are saying, but you're actually just associating. So that verbal processing is really difficult, and, like, paying attention is, like, quite hard for us. But then when you have a lot of meetings and you need to take notes, you need to take out the actions, but you can't remember anything, that is very difficult. And that's where transcription tools can help. So these are apps that transcribe meetings and calls in real time so that you can stay present in the moment and review the details later.

And there are lots of great options for transcription tools out there. This is probably the only one where I'm like, you know, there there are actually quite a few, like, really good options, and it just depends on what kind of features you need and your budget. One of the ones which I love is called, tactic, and they have, I think, the best free version. So the free version doesn't limit you on the number of meetings oh, sorry. On the number of, like, minutes or, like, how long in the meeting. But what you can do is just that you just go for that one. So unless you need more than, like, 10 meetings per month oops. Sorry. I've gone back a little bit.

And then yeah. So I've just seen a message in the chat having the list of the tools. You're gonna have all of the tools that I've mentioned as well as some extra ones that I could only give him honorary mention, and then also how to actually, like, use them. So just wanted to give you that. You don't need to write everything down and the size, of course. So tactic, very, very good. What does it look like? So this is me in a meeting by myself wearing some fabulous, it's a filter, obviously. And I really like this one because it's the only transcription tool that doesn't join the meeting as a participant, which might be a personal thing, but I just find it feels like a little bit intrusive.

When, like, this, like, otter as, like, a person. And it just kinda, like, has this toolbar on the side. So if we zoom in on that a little bit, this is the live transcription on the side of the window. And I can click so this bit here, I can click on any part of the live transcript as it's writing it during the meeting to highlight it so you don't need to make the notes. Or if you hover over it, you can click one of the emojis to either log it as a key point or an action or an idea. So which is really helpful that you don't have to, like, write any of these things down because it's just there, and it's actually very accurate. My last team, the last Scottish people, very strong Scottish accents.

And it did pick up the majority of what they said, which is great. And also mine, I have a Scouse accent. Still very good. What it also has at the bottom is this notes window. So this this for ADHD is absolutely genius because how many times are you in a meeting and you have a thought or you have a question, but it's just not your turn to speak. And sometimes that impulse control means you just blurt it out because you don't wanna forget about it. And then people think that you're being rude, which is understandable. But if you have this little notes window, in the actual meeting screen, you can write down a key point that you don't wanna lose, but you can write down a question that you wanna ask later.

While you wait for your turn. It's amazing. It's so it's so easy to use. The free version is absolutely amazing, so I definitely recommend giving this a go. And one of the ways which you can also use this, and this is like the the AI within this, is you can use the AI to generate summaries. So, obviously, a transcription tool is great, but what's the point if you need to, like, go through it and, like, look through all of your notes and things? So if you just click this, you can get, like, a detailed summary or you can get, like, some of it, like, action items. But what you can also do is you can write your own personalized prompt. So for my use case, I do a lot of client meetings, and I do, like, proposal meetings.

So I write this custom prompt, which is aligned to how I write a proposal or a follow-up email. And I say, write a proposal based on this meeting using the following sections. What are the main objectives? Also, what are the challenges that are neurodiversity specific? What are their objectives? What services did we discuss and how would they help? And the output is structured just like I would put into a proposal. And then it's ready to send draft. I just have to do a few tweaks. That saves me hours at a time. Like, honestly, it's so much easier to use. And not even just for kind of like work life, but also like personal life. So I have a friend and he's doing piano lessons, and he uses Otter because Otter does have a mobile app.

Whereas tactic doesn't. And he puts Otter to transcribe on his phone on top of the piano during his lessons, and it captures the teacher's instructions in detail. And then he doesn't have to either waste time in the very expensive piano lessons, writing things down, but then he also doesn't forget what to practice in between his sessions. So it's a great time saver. So maybe have a think, you know, is there a way that a transcription tool could help me outside of work? And, of course, you know what's coming up next. How do we level these things up? So you can use tactic with its inbuilt automations with workflows and their integrations to, again, make things easier and less manual. So you can create workflow and tactic.

Which is triggered by by a a, like, a thing. I can't think of my words now. So in this case, it's triggered by the participant's email. So anytime that I have a meeting with Nicole, it triggers the workflow. And I have this prompt because every time I have a meeting with Nicole, I need to have a detailed summary with key updates, project focus, and, like, top three actions for us, you know, for this month. So this is the same every single time. And then what it does is it generates that. It adds it to the transcription at the top, and then it and then it exports it to my chosen integration. So this so in my case, it's Notion because that's where I keep my meeting notes. It's a no code platform.

But you can also share it to Google Docs. You can also share it to HubSpot. You can also share it to Asana or whatever you have with work. And, again, this whole automated process means I don't have to do a single thing. And then when I need to find those actions or that summary, I know exactly where to find it. Okay. This is the last one. So we're gonna wrap up after this, and it should be more or on time. But workflows sorry. Workflows. Slides decks. If you are somebody who love who makes a lot of slide decks, but you really don't love how much how fiddly they are, you're gonna love this one. So there's a super.

Funky tool called Gamma, and you can make professional looking slides with ease with a lot less fiddling and a lot less formatting. So what you do is you basically put in what you wanna put into the slides, and it uses AI to create slides with the right kind of layouts depending on, like, what you've actually written. And what you could also do is if you use chat GPT to get you basically dump some thoughts into chat GPT and then ask it to format it in the right format for Gamma. It knows how to do that. So it will give it in this formatting with the line breaks with this. It knows that this is a different slide. It's so clever, and it's so quick. And then it will create the slides.

With a nice kind of formatting and things. And, like, I'll or you can paste, like, a big thing of text and ask it to summarize it and then put it into the slides. Like, oh my god. It's so easy. And, again, the free version is really good. I've never paid for Gamma. I've never needed to do it. But just an example of, like, slides which it has made. So I wanted to do, like, an outreach project for higher education, and I've never done it before. I didn't know if it's gonna work. So I didn't know whether, like, is this gonna be a good use of my time? So I just used Gamma to do it, and it, like, made these funky looking slides.

And I appreciate that might be a little bit dark, but, like, you know, it's got these, like, little, you know, stats and, like, boxes and the source and stuff. And then it's on these things. So I've got, like, a little icon and the text and stuff, and it just took me maybe about, like, thirty minutes. But if I needed to do that by myself, it'd take, like, a day. And I didn't know if this existed until, like, earlier this year, and now I use this to make Not this slide deck though because I wanted to make it really pretty for you. I used Canva for that. But most slide decks which make, I make use in Canva. So I'll work to a summary, goblin tools, neurodivergent.

Neurotypical translator, but there's other kind of, like, tools in there. So if you wanna be like, am I getting the vibe right? Or how do I make this a little bit more kind of, like, concise? Just put it in there. It's a lot easier. I think less mental blocks than my chat GPT. Look into transcription tools. If you do a lot of meetings and you really wanna stay present, you don't wanna miss things. If you make a lot of side decks, use something like Gamma to make them a lot easier. And once again, think about what are the features? Am I using all of the right features for me to make it easier? Am I automating things with with the workflows? Am I using the the integrations which are available to me to make this even better?

So as a summary, as we're wrapping up now, how to make the tools and apps work for your ADHD brain? And the first one is do not end overengineer it. Okay? I know I've shared a lot of things today because I wanted it to be really varied and, like, guarantee that everybody will take at least one thing from it. But I did make a mistake of introducing too many things at once, and then I couldn't figure out what was actually working for me and what actually wasn't. So maybe just pick a few things that you want to try and don't overcomplicate it. And if you can find a tool that does more than one thing, like, really like Notion because it does everything.

And when you have those tools, make sure you do explore the features, automations, integrations, and widgets, which are available there for you as well. You also don't have to spend a lot of money. So everything that I've mentioned has a free version. A lot of those free versions are absolutely sufficient for the majority of people. You do not need to spend a lot of money. There are also a lot of predatory apps out there. Like, obviously, I talk about ADHD a lot. So on my Instagram, I get adverts for apps that are, like, specifically target people with ADHD, but they're very, very, like, predatory and, like, manipulative.

And they'll give you, like, time discounts and stuff. So it's like, if you check out in ten minutes, you'll get this discount. And I'm like, you're not made for people with ADHD. I know this. So please, please, please don't feel like you need to spend a lot of money to make your life easier. You do not. And finally, accept that this will be a revolving toolkit. And by that, I mean, it is natural for something to work for you for a while, and then it might stop working. That's okay because ADHD brains needs that variety and needs that novelty. That doesn't mean that you are broken. It does not mean that the tool is broken.

Maybe just change it up a little bit. Maybe tweak how you use it. Maybe try something else for a little bit. That is absolutely okay. And if that's one thing that you take from this, please make it that one. So I'll leave you with some food for thought. Which areas of life does your ADHD impact the most? And then to address those, how can you leverage the tools that you already have? But then if they don't help, which of the tools that I've mentioned today could help with those? And I'm not gonna go through these, but this is gonna be on the slides, and it'll be in the recording description. But I've listed all of the tools I've mentioned with the guides.

With some additional tools for you. So this will all be available for you to go through, but you can also find this in my neurodiversity resource bank. So if you scan that QR codes there, that'll take you to my link tree. Please do connect with me on LinkedIn as well. I really hope I've helped. I'm sorry I'm not able to take any questions and due to the time slot, but please feel free to connect and reach out if you have any questions on anything. And the neurodiversity resource bank will have all of those. And, of course, I'm also a neurodiversity consultant, and my specialism is making systems work better for everybody, including neurodivergent people in the workplace. So if your organization wants any training, consulting, or workshops.

Then you can get in touch with me or check out my website. And thank you so much for coming. I hope it's helped, and I hope you enjoyed the rest of your conference.

Amazing. I thought that was brilliant. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And it's so clear that the lived experience aspect, fact that these things you've tried and tested and worked out, so these are really, and recognizing the fallibility of people and us, it just that there isn't this perfect solution, that things will change. I thought that was just wonderful. I know this is an area of massive passion for you, extraordinary person. Thank you. Yeah. No. Well Yeah. I have to thank you and say goodbye sadly because as you know, against the clock, you've done a great job of sticking to it. Thank you. That's the visual timer. The everyone needs to get one of these.

Nice. So I knew when I was running out of time, and I sped up a bit. So, yeah, thank you so much, and I hope you enjoy the next speakers, everybody.