Top 10 ADHD Time Management Tools (Curated By An Expert)
Most people talk about ADHD as a limitation or problem to fix.
And I get it. Organizing things, planning your day, focusing, and simply time in general can feel overwhelming, frustrating, or impossible.
But I just want to say that you are not a problem. You are not bad or wrong. You don’t need fixing because nothing is wrong with you.
The real problem? Traditional time management tools and strategies weren’t built for your brain. It wasn’t built for the majority of us.
Instead of spending years looking for tools that’ll actually help you, I’ve spent hours scouring the internet for the 10 best ADHD Time Management Tools out there in 2024.
While I haven’t been officially diagnosed with ADHD, I have had to do quite a bit of work on my relationship with time and productivity. I use many of these tools to help me accomplish what I want while maintaining my well-being.
If you’ve been diagnosed with ADHD or you have an inkling you may be neurodivergent, this blog post is for you. With these tools, you can take your first step towards meaningful, lasting change.
1. Google Calendar
The central, foundational, pivotal ADHD management tool: a planner.
People spend hours and hours trying to find the perfect planner. Once they do? It’s used for a week or two and then completely forgotten about. Many of my clients struggle with keeping track of post-its, papers, and their tasks. What do they always have with them? Their phones or computers. That’s why I recommend Google Calendar.
Google Calendar is a free and amazing time-management and scheduling app that will help you visualize the passage and allocation of time and break down big projects into smaller tasks.
For someone with ADHD, it’s important to know you have to customize it and use it for your unique brain. After that, you’ll be unstoppable.
Pros: Free, intuitive interface, integration with Google Meet, publish calendars to the web, subscribing to other’s calendars, multiple calendars, ADHD features like color coding and notifications.
Cons: Need to know how to set it up and use it in a way that works for you, doesn’t integrate with other video conferencing platforms, multiple calendars and mobile can get visually overwhelming.
Price: Free with your Gmail account.
Overall for someone who is always multitasking like me, Google Calendar is a lifesaver and it helps me to manage my routine and time more effectively.
I love how my computer, iPad, and phone have my Google Calendar on there. The syncing is very seamless and it helps me keep track of all meetings and events.
2. Focus@Will
Music is extremely important to me and my workflow. Instead of heading over to Spotify and taking the time to pick the perfect station, Focus@will does it for me.
Focus@will is a music service based on human neuroscience designed to help you concentrate and reduce distractions. Studies show a 200-400% increase in focus time. On their website, they say that the average productivity in a one-hour focus@will session is 75%.
After logging in to their website, all you do is set a timer, choose the type of music and pace you want, and work until the timer goes off. Once your session is done, they’ll ask you how productive you were. Over time, you’ll be able to see your stats.
They also have this super cute quiz to help you find your ‘perfect flow tunes’.
Pros: Not having to think about what music to put on, tested by scientists, tracks productivity progress, channel specifically for humans with ADHD
Cons: Not that many channels, costs money, time can fly by because you’re super focused
Pricing: $7.49/mo or $52.49/year with a 1-week trial.
I need to listen to Focus@Will right now to work on Computer stuff that I don’t particularly enjoy! An then I’ll have it for Monday morning. I even cook with it. It feels as if it helps reduce my stress levels all day. I really love it and don’t want to live without it. I have tried the 60 beat per minute channels for Concentration and Study on YouTube, but I find this is much better for concentrating, focus and calmness. I am telling everyone about it….my son has ADHD so I will try to get him on it at least when he’s doing paperwork. Thank you so much for this great programme…we all need it.
This product was exactly what I had been looking to find for years! I had attempted curating my own playlists, downloading my own music and looking up the best study music…but this hands-down is the best piece of software I own! focus@will is an integral part of my small business staff!
3. Memtime
ADHD often affects a person's sense of time, causing someone to struggle to estimate how much time has passed or how long a task should take. Becoming more aware of the passage of time is extremely helpful. That’s why time tracking is often recommended. However, this presents a whole new problem.
Remembering to track your time. And remembering what you did during that time.
That’s why I love Memtime. As an automatic time tracker, Memtime records the exact time spent in every program, file, browser tab, or email for you. Then it’ll summarize and display your working day, saving you 75% of your time spent on time tracking.
Pros: Automatic, able to track any program or page you use, offline tool (tracked activities don’t leave users’ devices).
Cons: Fairly expensive, fear of data breaches, and not available as an app on phones or tablets yet.
Price: Free trial for 14 days, after that $14/mo.
“It takes the sting out of time tracking.”
Time tracking was like a part-time job. Now it only takes seconds.
4. Forest
Forest is a fun app that helps you stay focused. Whenever you want (or need) to focus, you plant a tree. Your tree will grow while you focus on your work. If you leave the app to check social media or other distracting apps, the tree withers and dies.
Over time, you turn your accumulated focused moments into a gorgeous forest, unlock new species, and even plant real trees through Trees for the Future. One of their newest features is planting trees with friends, if anyone uses their phone, everyone’s tree will die. Talk about external motivation!
They too have a short quiz to help you find your personal flower. (Maybe you can tell I’m a sucker for cute quizzes!)
Pros: Gamified focus support, supporting a mission-driven organization, personalized ‘Allow Lists’, sharing your forest with friends.
Cons: Need to remember to open the app and use it, only available on iOS and Android, designed for single-task focus.
Price: $3.99 with additional in-app purchases.
"It's great because it works like a phone game, but it's a phone game that gives you time rather than taking it away."
I am someone who struggles tremendously with studying due to my ADHD. This app gives me a time limit that has a tangible consequence for breaking, because the flower or shrub I’m growing will die if I break the rules of the app, and will remain on my forest record forever. I don’t want that to happen, so I follow the rules and do what I set out to do originally. It’s so hard to do things of my own volition, but this app helps. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing at all, so I think it’s worth the download.
5. Cold Turkey
I don’t believe in using my limited capacity to stay off sites and apps that are designed to steal my time and attention. I’d rather use a site like Cold Turkey to block them and use my energy on the things I want to be doing.
That’s why Cold Turkey is my new BFF! It blocks anything from specific websites and applications to the entire internet with a few exceptions. You can even use it to schedule breaks from your entire computer.
They also have two other products, Writer and Micromanager. Writer turns your computer into a typewriter so the only thing you can do is write. Micromanager only lets you use specified work apps and blocks everything else.
Pros: All of your settings and statistics are stored locally on your computer so everything you block is kept private, Donates to the World Wildlife Fund each 10-minute break you take, uses motivational quotes for positive reinforcement.
Cons: Some users may find the interface and settings of Cold Turkey a bit complex or overwhelming initially, primarily operates on desktop platforms (Windows and macOS), if you’re computer savvy you might be able to find a way to override the system.
Price: Free version or Lifetime Pro at $39.
I no longer feel the itching need to check Reddit or Facebook. I feel as if I've been unshackled from my computer.
This is the only thing that finally made me start writing and stop procrastinating and getting distracted all the time on reddit and twitter. I don't use the common website blocker, but the writer one that won't let you get out of the program unless you write certain amount of words, or for some minutes.
6. Chirps
Chirps is an app that will chirp to remind you of whatever you want–what time it is, medicine, meetings, and more. You can schedule 'chirps' to run every x minutes/hours at any time of day.
Pros: Widgets, minimalist interface, fully customizable.
Cons: On Apple products only.
Price: Chirps is a completely FREE app without ads!
Picking up the phone while working from home is risky, there’s SO many distractions. I’m an artist & avid nature lover. It’s absolutely essential for me to track my time and still maintain the flow of my work & immersion. Especially when my hands are covered in paint! This app is perfect for that. It’s also helpful while I hike & workout! This app helps me eliminate that & keep track time so I know when to break for dinner, pick up my kid, or need a break. I never realized how much my grandmother’s wall clock helped regulate my adhd growing up & this is the digital replacement. Thanks for making a simple, polished, user friendly app. Less is truly more—a lost concept with so many developers!
I needed an app to help me drink more water. Everything I looked at wanted to track my water or wouldn’t let me create intervals the way I wanted. This app does exactly what I needed. I set my reminder at the interval of my choosing and I get a little non intrusive buzz to drink water.
Want to know what tools will make the biggest impact in your life?
I got you.
Book a no-cost exploration call to chat with me about working together.
7. Toby
How many tabs do you have open right now? More than 5-6? Meet Toby. The browser extension over 500,000 people are using to help them organize their tabs.
Toby is a beautifully designed application that can help you search for, quickly identify, and switch between tabs. By grouping your tabs, you’ll decrease cognitive overload (super important!) and be able to focus more on specific topics or tasks.
Pros: Organize and manage your browser tabs effectively, syncs across devices and teams, visual representation of your tabs, making it easy to identify and switch between them quickly, search feature.
Cons: Designed as a browser extension for Google Chrome and Firefox, potential learning curve when initially setting up, requires an internet connection.
Price: Free plan (up to 10 spaces), Productivity Plan @ $4.50 per user/mo, Team Plan @ $6 per user/mo.
Toby has transformed the way I keep myself and my projects organized. I would recommend it to anyone who has endless bookmarks.
Toby is THE BEST at managing numerous tabs, folders, and sessions for your everyday business life. I have multiple businesses and this tool has enabled me to not go insane with all of the tabs and windows that I have open each day. This enables me to have just one window open instead of 5-7 with 5-10 tabs open in each window. Banana's right?! 🤪
8. Goblin.Tools
Guesswork is a huge part of what slows folks with ADHD down. Goblin.Tools is a collection of small, simple, single-task AI-based tools, designed to help neurodivergent people with tasks they find overwhelming or difficult.
Their tools are delightful. Some are: A Magic Todo list that automatically breaks down tasks into steps, the Estimator that can guess a timeframe for an activity, the Compiler to takes entire braindumps and turns them into actionable tasks, and the Chef, which turns a description of what ingredients and tools you have in your kitchen into a real recipe
Pros: It’s fun, can help take the guesswork out of a lot of things, has a super simple interface.
Cons: Since it’s an AI tool it’s limited in its understanding of some tasks, some of their tools don’t take into account the amount of energy you have at the time, for people who already have a decent productivity stack.
Price: Free and available to all, without ads or paywalls. $0.99 to buy as a mobile app
Neurodivergent folks rave about this app!
Goblin Tools is an AMAZING app for NDs, in particular autistic people and/or ADHDers. I happen to be both (as well as bipolar) and so the struggles with executive dysfunction and social interests are manifold. The app's many tools are all so great, some of which are quite unique. I swear, this is a to-do list app unlike any you've seen. I've tried them all. None of them are designed to tackle executive dysfunction like this.
This is quite literally the best app I’ve ever downloaded on my phone ever and thank you so very much to the developer and all your work, you have really changed my entire daily routine for the better
9. Llama Life
Founded by a human with diagnosed ADHD, Llama Life is an adorable (yet powerful!) tool that supports you in working through your lists.
This app uses a concept called time-boxing, which is setting a fixed amount of time (using a countdown timer) for each task. This creates the mental space to focus on one task at a time. Llama Life has amazing features like soundscapes, templates, and chimes.
Pros: Very nice, clean, simple interface, handy features like presets, shortcuts, and more, and integrates with popular task management tools.
Cons: Only available on web browsers.
Price: $6/month or $39/year with a free 7-day trial.
I’ve managed to finish all my work early today for the first time in days.
I just found out about Llama Life from an ADHD account on Instagram (@ADHDVision) and honestly, it’s a game changer.
10. TimeCap
Why is remembering to work out or floss so hard? TimeCap, also known as ADHD Organizer, Planner: Focus in the app store, is here to help!
This app is a free and easy-to-use habit tracker. TimeCap helps over 10,000 daily users, stay on track with their daily and weekly activities. With many different features, it’s designed with ADHD in mind. You can use it to focus, keep track of workouts, manage diverse passions, maintain essential self-care routines, minimize ‘bad’ habits, and more.
Pro: On Apple and Google, motivating reminders, visually pleasing interface, lots of customization options, easy to use.
Cons: App only.
Price: Free with in-app purchases.
They have great ratings. 4.9 out of 5 on 1.1K Ratings
ADHD approved! I have tried so many habit tracking apps and this is by far the best one. I love the way it looks (simple, sleek, minimalist, but customizable). It doesn’t overwhelm me looking at it. It also doesn’t send me unnecessary notifications”
Download this app immediately. Clean, intuitive interface. Tracks habit building and breaking. Daily task timer. It’s even become my to-do list and reminder app. Can’t speak highly enough of this app and the developer. I had nearly given up.”
How to Actually Get Started Using One of These Tools
Don’t know where to start? Here’s what I recommend: If you need help planning and organizing your day, head over to your Google Calendar. Need help building healthy habits, download TimeCap. If you're trying to nip distractions in the bud, check out Focus@will, Forest, or Cold Turkey. Feeling overwhelmed? Experiment with Llama Life, Toby, or Goblin.Tools. And if you have no idea where your time goes during the day, purchase Memtime or download Chirps.
You can also use more than one tool. I use four of these tools myself. When I’m working with 1:1 clients, I recommend starting small and slow. Pick the one thing that you need right now and build from there. It can be really easy to go overboard and have trouble committing and remembering to come back to these tools.
Approaching it this way has greatly helped them feel better about themselves, get organized, and make more space for activities they enjoy.
Remember, we aren’t born knowing how to organize and manage our time. It’s a learned skill for all of us.
I believe in you.
I’d love to help you choose which tools are right for you and start using them. And so much more.
Holistic time coaching is about revamping your relationship to time, yourself, rest, and productivity. Learn more about working with me here.