GTD works — until the day plan doesn’t
Elien likes Getting Things Done. Capturing everything, keeping a full list of open loops, deciding next actions — the method makes sense. With ADHD, though, it gets overwhelming fast, and the failure point is very specific: the daily plan.
Elien manages a team and several programs at work and has a full family life at home. The master list lives in a spreadsheet: about six categories, around twenty items each. Every morning, too much of it lands on the day's plan. By early afternoon the plan has fallen apart, and the question becomes what now?
Unfortunately, my ADHD brain tells me that everything is high importance. Elien, on choosing priorities
The fix isn't a different method. It's separating three layers that GTD tends to blend: the full list, this week's focus, and today.
Layer one: a master list you don’t have to look at
Keep everything, but out of sight. In xTiles, that means one project for work and one for personal life, with a page or a tile for each category: projects, calls, errands, and so on. Each item is a task.
A task only shows up in your planner once it has a date. So the back burner stays where it is — on the master list — instead of greeting you every morning. Work and personal stay apart, too, because they live in separate projects.
If your master list already lives in a spreadsheet, you don't have to retype it. Connect Claude or ChatGPT to xTiles, share the list, and ask it to create a project with a page per category and each line as a task.
Layer two: pick five, then two
Once a week, look at the whole master list and choose. The framework that fit Elien best comes from ADHD coach Steve August: brain-dump everything, pick the five things that matter most this week, then narrow those to the two that really can't slip. His reasoning is in why the dopamine desert explains why your to-do list doesn't work.
Write the five at the top of your weekly page and mark the two as high priority. Everything else stays on the master list. When your brain insists that something else is urgent, the weekly five are the answer to compared to what?
Layer three: a day, not a time
Elien's goal is to stop overcommitting to specific hours. So give this week's tasks a day, not a time slot. Put two of them on Wednesday, one on Thursday, and they appear on that day's list in your planner, with no clock attached.
If Wednesday doesn't go as planned, open the week view and drag the task to Thursday. Moving it is a decision, not a failure, and the week view makes it obvious when one day is carrying too much.
Capture stays quick
GTD depends on getting a thought out of your head the moment it arrives. In xTiles, that's the inbox: open the mobile app, type the thought, and it's waiting on your desktop later to turn into a task or move onto a page. The GTD checklist covers how to process it.
When it’s two o’clock and you don’t know what’s next
Elien already pays for Claude and ChatGPT, and this is where they earn their place. With xTiles connected, Claude can read your planner. At two o'clock, ask it to look at today's tasks and this week's five and tell you which one to do next. It answers from your own list, not from a generic productivity tip.
At the end of the week, ask it to review what you actually finished — work and personal separately — and log the result on your weekly page. That's the look-back Elien wanted: what got done, and where the week went sideways.