ADHD Organising Systems: Why Generic Methods Fail and What Actually Works

Generic organising systems often fail people with ADHD. Here’s why, and what actually works instead

Jo de Serrano OBE DUniv

4 min read

Last updated: May 2026

If you have ADHD and you have ever tried to follow an organising system from a book, a YouTube video, or a beautifully colour-coded Instagram reel, you will probably recognise what happens next. It works for a few days but then it stops working and you feel like a failure.

But the problem wasn’t you, the problem is that the system was not designed for your brain.

Why standard organising systems fail people with ADHD

Most mainstream organising advice is built on assumptions that do not hold for people with ADHD or executive function differences. It assumes you will consistently remember where things belong, that once a habit is established, it stays established, and that visual clutter is motivating to deal with rather than paralysing.

These assumptions work reasonably well for neurotypical brains. For ADHD brains, they create a setup for failure. The system looks good on day one, but by day ten, the demands it places on working memory, task initiation, and habit formation have overwhelmed it, and everything is back to where you began.

This is not a discipline problem, it’s a design problem.

What ADHD-friendly organising actually looks like

Systems that work for ADHD brains share a few consistent characteristics:

Visibility — out-of-sight storage tends to become out-of-mind storage for people with ADHD, so open shelving, clear boxes, and labelled containers do real work. This is a known psychological concept of object permanence and it works for anything, not just things. For example, you start watching a TV show but then forget you ever started it because its not on the first screen when you turn on the TV, or you don’t miss people when you’re not with them. That’s object permanence.

Low Friction — if putting something away requires more than one or two steps, it will not get put away. These systems need to be forgiving when the system drifts; getting back to baseline should take minutes rather than a full reset. One of those things for me is for filing. You know those concertina folders that are like a folder with a clip on the front. Number one problem – you can’t see the tabs and so you don’t know for certain whether that letter in your hand even goes in that folder and secondly, trying to file something in one of those when the flap is trying to attack you and won’t stay open just makes it all a big faff. I prefer the open ones for filing, so no lock and no flap and most importantly, all I need to do is glance and I can see exactly what is kept on each tab. That’s low friction.

Category structure also matters. Fewer, broader categories tend to outperform elaborate, precise ones. A single “stationery” drawer will be maintained more reliably than eight specific sub-categories that require a decision every time something needs to be put away. The more categories you have, the harder it becomes to remember a) where to put it away and b) where to find it again. A good example of that can be found on my ‘sticking stuff’ Instagram or Facebook reel. In that reel, I show my box that I labelled ‘sticking stuff’ and the categories of items in it, from velcro, to epoxy resin, to Gorilla Glue. They all stick stuff.

The role of executive function

Executive function is the set of cognitive processes that allows us to plan, organise, initiate tasks, and shift between them. For people with ADHD and those in (peri)menopause, executive function is often inconsistent, available sometimes, absent at others, and heavily dependent on factors like stress, sleep, and interest. If any of those apply, you will find it hard to do those tasks.

This is why I describe what I do as executive function as a service. During a session, I provide the external structure that makes decisions manageable and action possible. The goal is not to create a system you rely on me to maintain, but to build something simple enough that you can maintain it yourself, even on the days when you’ve had no sleep, you’re super stressed or the thing you have to do bores you senseless.

Working with an ADHD-friendly Professional Organiser

The practical difference between working with someone who understands ADHD and someone who does not is significant. It affects the pace of a session and the way decisions are framed, in the absence of pressure to reach a particular outcome by a particular time. It shows up in the systems that get created, which are designed around how you actually live, not how you think you should live. That means, I ask my clients questions on how they actually do X or Y and what they don’t like about Z. In that way, I can design a system that works.

I am AuDHD myself, which means I understand these patterns from the inside as well as the outside. If you have tried standard organising approaches and found them wanting, that is not a reflection of your capacity to be organised; it is a reflection of the mismatch between the system and the brain.

A discovery call costs nothing to talk through what you are dealing with and whether working together might help, so that is the best place to start. You can also check out my neurodivergent services / ADHD-friendly services.