I have ADHD. For 30 years, every productivity system I tried worked for a week, then died. AI is the first thing that actually gets me moving. Not as a coach. As a prosthetic for the executive function I don't have on demand. Here are 8 copy-paste prompts that do the heavy lifting. Steal them: 1. When you can't start. Don't ask AI to break the task down (choosing how to break it down is its own freeze). Ask it to DO the first three minutes for you: "I have to (task) but I can't start. Write me the literal first three minutes as instructions I just follow. One concrete physical action per minute. Make it so small there's no decision left. Minute 1 has zero choices in it. No pep talk. Start at minute 1." 2. When "first three minutes" is still too big. "This task is too big to start: (task). Don't give me a plan. Name the single smallest DELIVERABLE inside it, one thing I could finish in 30 minutes, start now, with what's already in front of me. It has to be visible or sendable when done, not 'research' or 'think about'. One deliverable, not three. Then write the first three minutes of doing THAT." 3. When you're stuck choosing. "I'm stuck between: (options). What matters to me, including petty stuff like 'least boring to set up': (your real criteria). Don't give me a balanced view. No pros and cons. Commit. First line, nothing before it: the ONE you'd pick. Then three sentences why, against my criteria. Then one line: what I give up by picking it. If it's a coin-flip, say so and pick whatever is cheapest to undo." 4. When you're stuck in hyperfocus and can't pull out. "Stop. This is a hyperfocus state check. Don't reassure me. Ask me these one at a time, make me answer each in one honest line: 1. What am I doing, and is it STILL the best use of this time? 2. Did the work actually get better in the last 30 min, or am I just polishing? 3. Body check: water, food, movement, bathroom, what have I skipped? 4. If a friend were watching, what would they tell me to do? Then give me ONE next action for the next 3 minutes." 5. When your energy and your to-do list don't match. "Here's my honest state right now: (energy, focus, mood, time, anything physical: pain, hunger, meds). Here's my task pool: (paste it). Work out the state-cost of each yourself. Tell me the ONE task that best FITS the state I'm actually in, not the most important one. One line why. If nothing fits, say so, and tell me the state-change to do first: food, water, a walk." 6. When the work is done but you're frozen on shipping it. "I need to (send / post / publish) this but I'm frozen on the exposure. What it needs to say, however rough: (dump the points). Draft it in my voice, ready to go, so my job is to tweak and send, not write. One clean draft, not three. Keep it honest and brief. Don't make it grovel or over-explain, that's the RSD talking, not good writing." 7. When you have to stop and you're scared you'll lose where you are. "We're closing this session. Write a handoff to future-me, who has a flat battery and no memory of today. - THE GOAL: the outcome I'm after, not the task. One line. - WHERE I GOT TO: one line. - NEXT ACTION: the first thing tomorrow, concrete enough to start in 3 minutes. - DECISIONS (top 3): 'decided X because Y' so I don't re-litigate. - PARKED: what I set aside on purpose. Keep it under one screen, plain markdown." 8. Run this one every single day. It's the only metric the ADHD traps can't fool: "Did anything SHIP today, or did I just build and engage? One honest line. If nothing shipped, name one tiny thing I can ship in the next 10 minutes. No pep talk." Building feels like progress. Shipping IS progress. This prompt keeps me honest about the difference. That's 8 of them. They're not scripture, tune them to your voice, but don't polish them forever. A prompt you run beats a prompt you perfect. I keep the full set, every prompt organised by the moment your brain jams, in a free library. No email needed. It's right here:

The ADHD AI Prompt Library (free)

Copy-paste AI prompts for the exact moments an ADHD brain stalls. Free, no signup. Use them today.

I've started hundreds of things. Business ideas, side projects, whole systems built to finally get my life in order. Most died in week one. So when everyone said AI would change my life, my honest thought was: great, one more thing I'll set up and never use. And for a bit, I was right. AI made my ADHD worse first. Not because it's bad. Because of what an ADHD brain does with a shiny new tool: I turned it into infrastructure to build. Days spent engineering the perfect AI setup. Actual work done with it: almost none. Here's what I had wrong. I was treating AI like a coach, something to fix my discipline. But using a coach still needs the thing I don't have on demand: executive function. AI isn't a coach. It's closer to glasses. You don't need discipline to put glasses on. You just see. So stop asking it to make you disciplined. Borrow the function instead. The one that jams: starting. Open free ChatGPT or Claude in a browser. No app. No setup. Paste this and fill the blank with the thing you've been avoiding: "I have ADHD and I can't get started on this: ___. No motivational speech, no giant plan. Just the single smallest first step, something I could do in the next two minutes, and make it stupidly easy." That's it. That's the whole first win. No system to abandon. And when you fall off for two weeks (you will, it's fine), you don't start over. You paste the same thing again. It's glasses, not a streak. Nothing decayed while you were gone. I put a pile of these, one for each moment your brain jams, in a free library:

The ADHD AI Prompt Library (free)

Copy-paste AI prompts for the exact moments an ADHD brain stalls. Free, no signup. Use them today.

Fifteen years ago I built a thing called Band4Hope. Copper wristbands, each with its own ID, meant to pass hand to hand across the world and light up a pin on a map every time one moved. The first version actually sold. Ten thousand bands. Real people, real map, real thing out in the world. Then I rebuilt it. Spent thirty grand and the better part of a dev team's year. Got it finished. And then I sat on a finished website for months. Not building it. Not fixing it. It was done. I just could not press publish. My partner at the time asked me what I wanted to do with it and I said "it deserves one more crack." That was the most honest lie I've ever told. I knew it was finished. I just could not be seen. When I finally launched, I recorded the announcement video about thirty times and showed it to everyone I knew, asking each of them if it was good enough. Posted it. Crickets. A handful of people ever used the site. Then nothing. For years I filed that under "the idea failed." It didn't. The idea shipped a version that sold ten thousand units. What actually happened is I stood in front of a finished thing and couldn't move, because finished meant someone finally got to judge it. Took me until this year, in my forties, to name it. Not laziness. Not a bad idea. A nervous system tapping out the second I might be seen. I don't sit on finished things anymore. That's the whole change. Everything else is detail.

ADHD has a funny failure mode: you can spend a week building the perfect machine to avoid a 2 minute post. Ask me how I know. Today's cure is tiny and annoying: publish the essay, post the note, walk away before it quietly expands from "small tweak" to "new operating system."

Confession: the manual is live and my first paid stranger still hasn't appeared. A blurry screenshot of the truth. The move is boring: keep showing the thing to people who might need it, until a stranger pays or the offer tells me what is wrong.

I keep wanting to build one more clever system before I sell the thing I already made. This is my brain turning fear into a spreadsheet and calling it progress. Today's job: publish the essay, post the useful comments, point people at the manual. Being seen is the work.

You've got a finished thing you haven't shipped. You know exactly which one. It's not perfectionism, it's a pain response, and you can't reason a flinch away. So change who gets exposed: let the AI be your first critic. Done means a stranger can buy it. https://blossom.primal.net':

With the stimulant shortage this year, a lot of people are learning something about meds the hard way. They sharpen the focus. They don't remember the deadline, start the task, or hold the plan while you go make a coffee. That second bit is executive function. No pill was ever going to cover it. So I built something that does. Something outside my head to carry the load my head keeps dropping.

Everyone's shipping an AI assistant for ADHD right now. Most are a fancier to-do list. About as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike. The list was never the problem. Doing the thing on it was. I wanted the opposite. Something that does the bit my brain drops. The starting. The remembering why. The holding of the next three steps. So I built that instead. Turns out it's the only kind of ADHD tool worth having.

4 hours gone, and the work stopped getting better 90 minutes ago. Hyperfocus isn't focus, it's a tunnel you can't see out of. A timer won't pull you out, you swat it like a 6am alarm. Give your AI permission to interrupt you with a body check instead. #adhd #adhdtips #hyperfocus #aitools

Unpopular opinion: you don't need to optimise your ADHD. You need to stop white knuckling it. I spent years trying to hack myself into a productive person. Better apps, better routines, more discipline. All of it fell off within a week. What actually worked was building something outside my head to carry the load my head keeps dropping. Less optimising, more offloading. The sustainable version was never about trying harder.

One week of putting this in front of real people instead of shouting into a feed. The lesson: the win isn't the read, it's the rep. A prompt you can paste in 60 seconds and feel work beats a chapter you'll save and never open. So I'm giving the prompts away. Free, no email. The whole library. If you've got the ability but can't cross the gap from knowing to done, start here.

The ADHD AI Prompt Library (free)

Copy-paste AI prompts for the exact moments an ADHD brain stalls. Free, no signup. Use them today.

Spent way too long getting this right, but the ADHD workbook is now actually fillable. Tap and type your answers straight in on your phone, iPad or laptop. Or print it and scribble. Built for the week you miss, not the streak you won't keep. On Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/4527697027/adhd-planner-workbook-ai-prompts-for

Got some news today that knocked me sideways. A professional relationship I'd built up over six months, one I was relying on, ended out of nowhere. Right when I thought it was going well. My first instinct was the one I've had my whole life. Lash out. Fire off the angry message, tell them everything they got wrong, make it their fault and burn the bridge on the way out. I've done it more times than I can count and it has never once made my life better. This time I put it to my AI before I sent anything. Not to write the angry message, to talk me out of it. It walked me back and pointed me at the boring, useful play instead: ask for the one thing I actually need to move on, say thanks, leave clean. I didn't torch anything. For the first time I can remember, a setback didn't also become a self-inflicted wound. The setback still hurts. But I used to make every bad day twice as bad by reacting to it. That's the part that's quietly changing, and it isn't willpower. It's having something outside my own head to react to before my wiring takes the wheel.

I have a to-do app with about 200 tasks in it. It is a graveyard. Opening it makes me want to lie back down. So I stopped opening it. Now my whole morning is one message: "Here's everything on my plate. I've got maybe 90 minutes and the focus of a goldfish. Pick the single thing that matters most today and tell me the first move. Don't give me a list." One task. One first step. No menu to freeze in front of. The list didn't get any shorter. I just stopped letting it be the first thing my brain has to look at.

I spent years building things nobody saw, because building felt safer than being seen. This week I did the opposite. I just showed up in the rooms where people like me already are and handed over what works. Turns out the useful thing was never the 100-page manual. It was one prompt that hands you the first move when your brain won't. The whole library's free, no strings. Link's in the reply.

My problem was never starting. It was stopping. I'd start a thing, then "just tidy it up a bit," and three hours later it's a cathedral nobody asked for and still isn't shipped. So now I paste this in before I begin: "Here's the task. Tell me what done looks like at the boring 80 percent version, the one I'd be slightly embarrassed to ship. Then tell me to stop." It hands me a finish line. I hit it. I ship the slightly embarrassing version. Funny thing about the slightly embarrassing version: everyone else just calls it finished.

ADHD reframe that actually stuck for me: every time I catch an "I should", I swap it for "I could". Sounds like nothing. It isn't. "Should" is pressure. Someone standing over you. "Could" is a choice. You're back in charge. My to-do list stopped feeling like a pile of ways I was letting people down. There's a lot of this kind of thing in the manual.

Gumroad

Running on AI: The ADHD Operating Manual

Your brain can architect a brilliant system in its head, then fail to publish one post about it for six weeks. You know what to do. You want to do ...

Yesterday I dropped my ADHD manual to a dollar and asked strangers to be my first readers. I've got nine other finished products sitting unlaunched on a hard drive, every one of them stalled at exactly this step: the part where someone might actually look. So whether anyone bought or not, I did the only thing that's ever moved any of them. I let it be seen. That's the rep. I'll keep doing it.

My psych gave me a one word swap that quietly fixed my to-do list. Stop saying "I should." Say "I could." "I should finish the chapter" is an order. You feel guilty about it at 11pm. "I could finish the chapter" is a choice. You're allowed to pick. Same task. Completely different brain.