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There's a moment every ADHDer knows: you open the task manager, see the sea of red, and close it again. This week, Nikki and Pete sit with that moment — and with what it's actually telling you.

The instinct is to blame the tool. Something's wrong with the app, the planner, the notebook. Time for something new. But what if the tool is doing exactly what it's supposed to do, and the thing you're really avoiding is something else entirely?

Nikki walks through the two non-negotiables of any planning toolkit, why hybrid systems quietly fall apart in the in-between stages, and the one thing she asks every new one-on-one client to do within a week. Pete confesses to running four systems at once, lays out his tool-finding intestines on the table (his words, not ours), and makes the case for why your app isn't just an app — it's a lifeline. Plus: FOBO, task rot, the moral weight of a few simple minutes, and why the best tools are the ones that ask you to pay for them.

Stick around for Nikki's brand-new download, Your Planning Tool Finder — a short guide to the questions worth answering before you pick your next tool. Link below.

Links & Notes

• Your Planning Tool Finder (free download)
• Unapologetically ADHD by Pete Wright and Nikki Kinzer — the book behind the framework
• GPS Planning Membership — Nikki's coaching community for planning, capture, and workflow
• Support the show on Patreon — early ad-free episodes, livestream recordings, members-only Discord:

• (00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast
• (02:27) - Patreon.com/TheADHDPodcast
• (03:17) - Talking Tools

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Most productivity advice was built for brains that start on demand, stay consistent, and prioritize logically. That's not us.

This week, Brooke Schnittman returns for her third visit to the show to dig into one of the most frustrating disconnects in ADHD life: the gap between what we think we can do in a day and what our actual capacity will allow. Pete and Nikki walk through the familiar trap — fifteen red-line tasks, two hours of actual focus time, and the stubborn belief that somehow we'll get it all done anyway. Brooke names it for what it is: magical thinking backed by people-pleasing, propped up by shame.

Together they explore why ADHD brains need to plan to plan, what "sampling the no" actually looks like in practice, and how masking shows up in our task lists in ways we rarely notice. Brooke introduces her STOP framework for sorting the week — Stressful, Time-consuming, Ordinary, Passionate — and makes a case for the kind of white space most of us have been taught to see as failure.

There's also a frank conversation about burnout: what it looks like for neurodivergent people, why it lasts longer than we expect, and the 1% action that can keep momentum alive when everything else has stopped. And a reminder that if you're showing up at 40% battery, then 40% is your 100% for the day — and that's enough.

GUEST SPOTLIGHT

Brooke Schnittman, MA, PCC, BCC is a nationally recognized ADHD coach and the founder of Coaching With Brooke. She's the author of Activate Your ADHD Potential, a roadmap for high-achieving ADHDers who are tired of running fast and getting nowhere. Brooke trains ADHD coaches through her 3C Activation System and is passionate about bringing ADHD coaching into universities to support students directly. This is her third appearance on the show.

LINKS & NOTES

• Coaching With Brooke
• Activate Your ADHD Potential by Brooke Schnittman
• Support the Show on Patreon
• Dig into the podcast Shownotes Database

• (00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast
• (03:34) - Intentions Versus Expectations
• (10:03) - Productivity and People Pleasing
• (20:46) - The Complicated Question of Capacity
• (31:59) - Burnout

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This week kicks off a three-part series on planning, and it starts where every planning conversation should: with honesty about why plans fall apart in the first place. Pete opens with his own cascading construction disaster at home, where raccoon damage set off a chain reaction of disruptions that has bled directly into his work life. Nikki’s diagnosis is both simple and profound: when you make a plan, you’re trying to predict the future with the information you have right now. When that future doesn’t cooperate, the real problem isn’t the plan failing. It’s that we treat plan failure like a personal failure.

From there, Nikki walks through the full spectrum of executive function challenges that make ADHD planning uniquely hard: time blindness that operates at every scale from individual task to entire month, working memory that drops the ball the moment you turn around, prioritization paralysis where everything feels equally urgent, the cognitive inflexibility that turns one bad morning into a ruined day, emotional regulation struggles and the sharp edge of RSD when disappointing someone is unavoidable, and sustained attention that evaporates the moment your environment gets interesting. At the center of it all is what Pete calls “fantasy Pete,” the imaginary version of himself who wields time like a saber and never lets anyone down, and whom nobody would actually like at a party.

The antidote isn’t a better system. It’s moving from shame to curiosity. Nikki’s framework: instead of asking what’s wrong with you, ask what your brain actually needs. Find the friction. Learn your own flavor of ADHD. Build in margin so that when things go sideways, you have something left in the tank for recovery. The episode closes on Pete’s central paradox, the one he returns to with clients again and again: it’s not your fault, but it is yours. You didn’t design this brain. But you’re the one who has to work with it, and building that muscle, one honest conversation at a time, is exactly what this trilogy is for.

If this episode hit close to home, we made something to help it land a little deeper. Your Planning Reflection is a free companion guide—just four honest questions to help you connect what you heard to what's actually happening in your own life. No productivity exercise. No grade at the end. Just a quiet moment to start paying attention.

Links & Notes

• Lattice by Pete D. Wright — Pete’s new science fiction novella, now available on Amazon
• Unapologetically ADHD by Pete Wright and Nikki Kinzer — the planning book behind this trilogy
• Your Planning Reflection worksheet — Nikki’s four-question companion to this episode, available now!
• GPS Guided Planning Sessions — Nikki’s membership planning program
• The ADHD Podcast on Patreon — early access, Discord, and live stream recordings
• The Spanish Prisoner (1997, dir. David Mamet) — Pete’s most underrated film, home of the worry quote
• Ricky Jay — magician, actor, and unwitting aphorist: “Worry is interest paid in advance on a debt that never comes due”
• Support the Show on Patreon
• Dig into the podcast Shownotes Database

• (00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast
• (01:24) - Introducing Pete D. Wright... Struggling Author of Fiction
• (04:14) - Patreon.com/TheADHDPodcast
• (05:17) - Why do your plans fall apart?
• (10:20) - Were you taught how to plan?
• (32:00) - Today's Reflection Worksheet