The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share how I use Toodledo to remind myself to schedule outings with family and friends on a regular basis. How many times has this happened to you?  You are with people you really enjoy, but see infrequently.  You've just had a great time together and at the end of the evening, you all say "We should really do this more often!"  That used to be a recurring refrain in my social interactions.  Almost like a goodbye greeting.  Or, the analogous hello greeting would be, "It's been way too long since we got together last!"   So, it occurred to me that perhaps in some cases this was just social niceties, but in many cases, we actually  WERE unhappy that it had been so long since we had gotten together.  And we really DID want to get together more often.  In those cases, I decided I could make that happen with a reminder system. So, I ...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll show you how I set up regular reminder emails using Google Calendar.  If you’ve seen some of my other videos, you’ll know that I use Gmail as the main single-stream communication funnel for the electronic information in my life. That means I check my email frequently.  I am also super forgetful and basically run my life on reminders.  I have lots of systems — see my plethora of videos — but many times, I would like a reminder delivered to my email inbox.  I've tried a bunch of solutions to this issue including Memo To Me and Boomerang -- some of which cost money, but I prefer to use Google Calendar since it is already a tool that I use frequently. There are two types of email reminders. The first is an Email Reminder with Appointment So, sometimes I KNOW that I’m going to forget an appointment or to do something at a specific time.  Here are a couple of e...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll share the sure fire method I use to remember to respond to text messages.  I have a foolproof way to remember to respond to and follow up on emails.  You can watch my video on that if you are interested. The problem is that more and more people are using text messaging to ask questions, make plans, and otherwise communicate things that require responses and follow up from me.  This is a problem because of the way that the text messaging app has been designed. Since I have an iPhone and iPad, like most people I use the iMessage app provided by default from Apple. Here are three of the problems I have with it.  Can’t save texts  - With email, there is a way to save important emails somewhere else, so you can delete emails out of your inbox. I get my inbox to zero once daily.  I get rid of all emails I’ve dealt with and leave emails in my inbox that i still...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll discuss how I use the AnyList app for shopping lists and errands.  This is part of a series on my ADHD brain and all of the systems I use to compensate for a lack of internal structure and organization. I'm the head procurement officer in my house.  One of my many quirks is that I absolutely HATE grocery shopping. I'd rather clean bathrooms than grocery shop -- really. Because of this, I only do it once a week. I will go to extreme lengths to avoid going more often than that.  I also have issues with running out to do a single errand. It feels like a giant waste of time. This must come from my childhood when we carefully budgeted gasoline and did our errands all at once and infrequently.  Because of these quirks, I require a good list system to remember the things we are running out of and errands that I need to run, so that I can do them all efficiently in one ru...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video I'll review all of the systems and apps that I use for reminders.  This is part of a series on my ADHD brain and all of the systems I use to compensate for a lack of internal structure and organization.   Okay -- if you've seen other videos in this series, you know that I use a bunch of systems to help me remember events, tasks and correspondence.  I rely heavily on three tools: Gmail (single stream email), Google Calendar (scheduling), and Toodledo (task management).  I commit to checking these 3 apps daily and keeping up with my commitments for each.   But even so, some things were still falling through the cracks. So, in some cases I needed additional help to plug the holes.  Timers Okay, so I'm very distractable. If I put a load of laundry in, it could be days later when I realize I haven't moved the wet clothes to the dryer. Yuck.  Partially for ...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and today I'm going to share an overview of the organizational tech systems I use to compensate for my ADHD forgetfulness and distraction.  I come from a long line of folks afflicted (and blessed) with ADHD Inattentive type. Everyone in my family of origin has some degree of ADHD and I've passed it down to both of my kids. They are, as you can imagine, eternally grateful. I've never been diagnosed and I don't take medicine for it, but I definitely have many of the symptoms: distractibility, organization problems, forgetfulness, and tragically bad working memory (or the ability to keep more than 2 things in your head at one time). Even though I didn't have a label for what I was dealing with early on, I knew I needed to compensate for my clear deficits in these areas, just to get stuff done and not be constantly apologizing for not responding, missing appointments, and forgetting things.  The wa...