Ep 88: Practical ADHD Gadgets for Daily Life

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In this practical episode, Mande reveals her carefully curated collection of ADHD-friendly gadgets that go far beyond the typical fidget spinners found on Amazon. Discover real tools that address the everyday challenges of adult ADHD and can transform how you manage your symptoms.

📌 What You'll Learn:

• Why typical "ADHD gadgets" miss the mark for adult needs
• 14 practical tools that address time blindness, organization, and focus
• How color-changing smart bulbs can create seamless transitions in your day
• The desk bike solution for hyperactive energy
• Simple laundry hacks that eliminate decision fatigue
• Key organization systems that ensure you'll never lose your keys again

🗣️ Featured Quote: "There's nothing. There is basically fidget spinners, and so I put together this list of items that I actually use that I think would be super helpful for people with ADHD."

🔗 Useful Links Mentioned: 

Free ADHD Tools Guide: http://www.learntothrivewithadhd.com/gadgets-and-tools 

Website: https://www.learntothrivewithadhd.com/ 

LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/learntothrivewithadhd 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/learntothrivewithadhd/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/learntothrivewithadhd/

💡 Remember: The right tools can make all the difference in managing ADHD symptoms. These aren't random gadgets—they're carefully selected solutions that address real challenges like time awareness, organization, and focus.

#ADHDGadgets #ADHDTools #TimeManagement #ADHDHacks #ProductivityTools #OrganizationTips #ThrivingWithADHD

Click Here for full show notes

CLICK HERE for more resources. We're on this journey together!

Transcript

This week I thought I would do something a little different, and I actually found that there was a need for this. Have you ever gone onto Amazon and searched for gadgets for ADHD adults? There’s nothing. There is basically fidget spinners, and so I put together this list of items that I actually use that I think would be super helpful for people with ADHD.
I'm gonna do the best for the podcast to explain these things to you. The first one is the sunrise alarm clock, and it will gradually wake you up with brighter and brighter light. You can have gentle sounds; you can have loud sounds.
There’s a wind-down option where you press a button and it will actually simulate a sunset, and so that's perfect for people that need sensory transitions. The next one I’ve talked to you guys about so many times, which is the visual timer. The visual timer is so good for working on your time awareness.
It’s so good for focus. When you don’t want to miss an appointment, you can completely focus because you know that alarm’s going to go off when it’s time—especially if you set it a little bit ahead of your appointment. Now, these tend to be a little bit cheap, and by cheap, I mean they can break easily, or you have to make sure your batteries are changed often, but they’re definitely worth it.
Next would be the TRMNL e-ink Companion. This is a dedicated display for calendars, to-do lists, customizable visuals. You can even program this if you would like to. It depends on what option you choose, but you can make it completely your own and you can put it wherever you need it.
There is a three-month charge on it normally, but I opted for the six-month charge, and this is going to be our family calendar that goes on our fridge. Next would be the TUL planner, and this is a disc-bound planner.
I love that it lets you rearrange pages. I use it for a notebook and I use a TUL planner, and a lot of the stuff that they put in the basic TUL planner I just didn’t like and didn’t use, so I pulled that stuff out immediately. I actually have created my own system. I use the TUL cutter and a little bit heavier paper to make my monthly plan in my TUL planner.
I created my own completely customizable thing. What I love about the notebook version is I can write all over my notebook—like there are different colored pages in my notebook. I can go in there and take my notebook and completely rip out the things that aren’t important to me anymore (and that happens to end up being a lot of things), and I can transfer over the things that are still important into my Trello board system, add more paper whenever I need it, and add whatever type of paper I need—whether it’s a to-do list or graph paper or dotted paper or lined paper. Completely customizable notebook, and I love it.
The other thing is color-changing smart light bulbs. Now, mine is sitting in my bathroom, but I bought this pretty little lamp—and I got this from a client. Her name was Paula, and what she would do is she would have this color-changing light bulb that would signal when it was time to get ready for bed.
I think she had other transitions that it would signal for as well, but it helps keep track of time without having to use a clock—without having to be alerted out loud in some sort of way. It was just a very nice transition for her and it’s something that I’m going to start using myself. The next option here is the desk bike.
I got myself this for Christmas. I am ADHD, hyperactive. If I sit at a desk for too long, I get crazy. They do have the little ones that just go underneath your regular desk and you can pedal. My 18-year-old really likes that. But for me, it wasn’t enough movement. I also used a walking treadmill, and I found that I felt like I was gonna fall off the thing all the time if I wasn’t paying full attention.
I also found that I had to raise up my computer in order to even use it—it was much easier than raising up my whole desk. This desk bike is very, very sturdy. I keep it in front of my TV, so if I want to watch TV, I can do that while I’m working. It’s sturdy, it’s helpful, and it’s great.
I can’t say enough good things about it.
Another thing that I’ve talked about before, but I wanted to bring it up again, is the Brick app. You can brick your phone so that you can only use certain apps. I think Apple has something like this, but I know a lot of my clients don’t tend to actually use it. I don’t know if it’s not user-friendly.
I don’t know what the problem is there—maybe it’s just a matter of getting it set up—but I heard about it on the podcast My First Million. What he does is he would brick his phone for the gym and he’d only be able to use—actually, it wasn’t for the gym, I’m sorry, that’s what I was going to use it for.
He would brick his phone when he was gonna go for a run, and so he could only use his music app or his podcast app when he was going for a run. But you can see a lot of wonderful applications—especially bricking your phone for bedtime. That was one of the things. Now, this is for iPhone only right now, but definitely a really cool tool.
Alright, next we have the AM/PM pill sorter, and I use this for my supplements. My vitamins happen to come in an AM/PM pack, so that’s nice. But I fill this up once in a week—I’m set for seven days. I don’t have to worry about it anymore, and it’s really nice to have that just once a week.
The time that you’re taking care of that, it lets you know if you’ve forgotten as well.
Laundry counter. This sounds kind of silly, but if you have a side-by-side washing machine and dryer like I do, the counter makes a huge difference. One thing I make sure I do is the counter has to be completely bare. All my laundry detergents and stuff like that are up in a cabinet. But you know, if you don’t need it to be bare completely, then it’s completely up to you. What I like is my biggest change with laundry—with the not wanting to do it, with letting it pile up—was starting to fold things right out of the dryer.
By doing that, I can just have everybody’s clothes in their respective piles; they can come get their laundry, and it’s very, very efficient that way. It’s a small hack because what happens is there are actually lips on the edges on the side and the back, and so when it’s just a washer and dryer that you’re trying to fold on, you drop socks off, things fall down.
This just makes a really big difference.
Another laundry hack is I had my husband install—underneath my cabinet—a curtain rod is what it is. It looks kind of like an industrial-type curtain rod. I put hangers there so that I have no excuse not to hang up clothes right out of the dryer.
The hangers—I went with velvet hangers and slick hangers—and they are all the same color. I don’t know if it makes your brain crazy to look in your closet and have tons of different colors of hangers, but it does mine. I have made a decision ahead of time what hangers are for what. The slick hangers are for t-shirts. The fuzzy hangers are for, you know, blouses or my husband’s work shirts.
You can kind of make that decision on what’s going to fall off the hanger and what’s not.
Okay, next—bracelet key rings. Or there’s a clip here as well if you’re watching on YouTube. That way your keys are always on you. So many people talk about losing their keys. Now, not only do you want to have the same place you put your keys every time when you get home, but when you’re out, there’s no chance of setting down your keys.
Small filing cabinets. The smaller your filing cabinet, the less you can put off taking care of, say, getting rid of last year’s papers and resetting your cabinet for the new year. I have this exact version actually in white. These two—sorry, for the podcast, I’m not explaining this well—but what it is is a small filing cabinet that will fit under my desk. The top two drawers are not very deep, and the bottom is where your hanging files would go. That makes very little for you to deal with each year.
And I think for those that would argue, “Well, I need more space than that,” you might not if you’ve worked on digitizing things a little bit more.
The next item is a long charging cable. I think these were 10-foot charging cables is what I put here in this image. And it’s funny, because I would have a client—a few clients, actually—whose sessions would just drop off. What would happen is they didn’t have a good way to charge their phone when they went to bed at night, and so they just never got around to charging it.
And we’d forget, and then we’d have our session, and then the phone would drop off. And we found out that the cable just didn’t reach where this client used the phone at night. So it was just a simple matter of getting a really long charging cable.
Okay, so a count-up timer. We talked about timers, but these count-up timers are really nice. The digital component of this timer is great, and these don’t tend to break as easily as the others. It does all the features, but I really like it for the count-up option when I’m having my clients time their activities.
It’s great for when you’re doing boring activities and you want to set a timer and race against the timer, but it’s also great for timing activities so that your time awareness gets better. Not just your time awareness, but just knowing how long things take—it starts to build that muscle.
Okay, so this is a brand new one. I put this on right before I made this episode. This is a clock that I actually thought I would hang on the wall, but what I ended up doing was just keeping it right on my desk. My awareness of what day it is is not that great, and I love that this is a...
Let me go back. So what this is is a 7-inch digital clock with the full day and time, and it’s telling you when it’s morning, when it’s afternoon. It also will dim later in the day. It’s meant for dementia patients and it has timers that go off when they’re supposed to take their medications.
Us ADHDers can use that timer for anything. What I noticed is I’d get really mixed up in my days. I would maybe think it was Wednesday all day—even though I got on my calendar and I met with clients and clicked on the proper day—I still would get it in my head that it was a different day.
So this gives you the date, it tells you what time of day it is, and the full date and the day.
So this is a new one that I added that I thought was super helpful. I’d like to know—what are your ADHD-friendly gadgets or gizmos that have really helped you? I’d like to know in the comments if you’re listening on the podcast.
Just go to www.learntothrivewithadhd.com and I think at the very bottom are all my socials. Just find me on a social and tell me what gadget is your favorite. I also had a list created of all these items with the links, so just look in the description to find that list.
Alright guys, I hope you have a great week.
Thanks.