Out of sight, out of the system
Salima uses xTiles for day-to-day tasks and for organizing projects: what comes first, second, third. The setup was an ADHD-friendly template with several pages. It worked sometimes, and sometimes it didn't, for a reason that has nothing to do with the template's design: the pages that weren't open simply stopped existing.
The same thing happened with the planner. It was there, just never in front of Salima at the moment it mattered.
It's so out of the way that I just kind of forget that it exists sometimes. Salima, on the planner
This is the most common way ADHD systems die. Not a bad layout, not a lack of motivation, but a system that depends on remembering to look at it. Every extra page is one more thing to remember.
The fix: one view that comes to you
Instead of checking several pages, check one. In xTiles, any task with a date, in any project and any space, shows up in My Planner on that day. Your dog's vaccination in a personal project, groceries in another, a work task in a shared space: all of it appears in the same day's list, next to your Google or Outlook calendar events and a space for notes.
So the template's pages can stay where they are. The tasks inside them come to the planner on their own, and the planner becomes the only page you have to remember.
Step 1: make the planner the first thing you open
Give every task a date
A task without a date stays in its project. The moment you add a date, it reaches My Planner. When you add something to a template page, date it, even roughly.
Open the day view first
Start each day in My Planner rather than in a project. The day shows the tasks, the calendar and your notes in one place.
Use the week view to move things
If today is too full, open the week and drag a task to tomorrow. Moving it is a decision, not a failure.
Step 2: start the timer from where you are
Salima asked about the timers. xTiles has a built-in Pomodoro timer in the top-right corner of the header: click the clock to start a 25-minute focus session. Because it lives in the header, it keeps running while you move between the planner and your projects.
Optional: let the day open and close itself
Salima doesn't use AI tools yet, and the planner works without them. On our call we showed what the next step can look like, using our own setup: Claude or ChatGPT connected to xTiles, running two short routines.
- Morning: it reviews yesterday, moves overdue tasks to today, and writes a short brief from your inbox, calendar and meeting notes onto today's page, so the decisions about what matters are made before you sit down.
- Evening: it writes a reflection on what you did and what to prepare for tomorrow, and adds work you finished but never wrote down as completed tasks.
The point is the same as the planner itself: fewer places to check. If you want to try it, start with an evening reflection that writes itself.