Planner Too Many Boxes? Simple ADHD Page: The Dentist Chair

2026-10-23

The dental hygienist says, "Open wide," and you do what you always do in a waiting room or a chair you can't leave. You open the planner app on your phone and think about everything you haven't done.

Leo is a freelance illustrator. This is an illustrative story, so he is not a real person. But you might know him. He is lying back under a bright lamp, a little suction tube gurgling at the corner of his mouth, and he is staring at the ceiling tile with its small brown water stain.

He is thinking about the planner at home.

The planner with forty-one boxes

It sits on the shelf above his desk. It is beautiful. Cream paper, a ribbon, a gold-stamped title. He bought it in January with the quiet certainty of a man buying a new life.

Each day has a page. Each page has a gratitude box, a water tracker, a mood circle, a priorities list, a time-block grid, a "brain dump" panel, a meal row and a small box labelled "Evening reflection."

He filled it in properly for four days.

On day five he was late with a client sketch, and the planner became one more thing that was waiting for him. On day six he skipped it. On day nine he saw the blank page and felt something worse than guilt. It felt like being quietly told off by a piece of paper.

So he stopped looking at it. Some mornings he walked past the shelf the way you walk past a neighbour you owe an apology.

What too many boxes quietly costs

The hygienist hums. Leo's mind keeps going.

He has a client who needs revised files. He has an invoice he thinks he sent. He has a message from a friend he hasn't answered. He has a vague feeling that Thursday is for something, and he can't remember what.

None of this is on paper. All of it is in his head, circling like a pigeon that can't find the ledge.

Here is what nobody says out loud. The problem was never that he lacked discipline. A planner with forty-one boxes asks you to make forty-one small decisions before you've done a single real thing. For a brain that already struggles to start, that is a locked door with a lot of keys.

So he starts nothing. Then he feels behind. Then he buys another planner.

There is a drawer at home with three of them.

The waiting-room page

After the appointment, Leo sits in the reception area while the receptionist looks for a free slot in six months. There is a stack of printed leaflets on the table and a pen on a string.

He turns over one of the leaflets, a blank back, and without thinking he writes:

Today. Three things.

Then he stops, because that is all he can hold. He writes the revised files. He writes check the invoice. He writes call Mum.

Three lines. No colours, no mood circle, no ribbon.

He looks at it and something in his chest unclenches by about a centimetre.

It is not clever. It is not a system. It is just a small, honest page that does not ask him to be a different person. The thought arrives quietly, the way a good idea does when you aren't straining for it: maybe I don't need a better planner. Maybe I need a smaller one.

What a lighter Monday looks like

Imagine the version of Leo a few weeks later. It is Monday, 8:40. The kettle clicks off. He puts his mug on the desk next to one printed sheet.

There are three lines at the top. He fills them in while the tea cools. It takes about as long as it takes to find a pen.

The rest of the page is quiet. There is room to jot something down if he wants to, and nothing shouting at him if he doesn't.

By Friday afternoon he sits with a separate weekly page and looks back over what happened. Not to judge himself. Just to see it. Two of the three lines were done on most days. One week, only one. The page does not mind.

That is the difference he notices most. A page that forgives a bad day is a page you come back to.

He closes the laptop at six. The pigeon in his head has found the ledge.

If you recognise the drawer

Maybe you have your own version of that shelf, or that drawer. A planner you were sure about in January and avoided by March. A pile of good intentions printed on very nice paper.

It may not be you. It may just be too many boxes.

We made a printable planner bundle for exactly this: a top-three daily page, a weekly review, a monthly view, a simple habits sheet and a projects page. It comes as a PDF in A4 and Letter, with a Monday or Sunday start, so you can print what you need and leave the rest in the file. It is made with AI and refined by real use, and there is a 30-day money-back promise, so if it doesn't help, you get a full refund, no questions.

If you'd like to look, it's here: Printable Daily & Weekly Planner Bundle.

If not, try the leaflet trick. Three lines, any scrap of paper, tomorrow morning. See how it feels.

An illustrative story, written with AI assistance.