I once ran a paper planner for nine days straight.
Nine good days. Boxes checked, tasks migrated, the whole system working exactly the way the book said it would. Then I forgot the planner existed. Found it weeks later under a stack of client folders, still open to day nine, and added “can’t stick to anything” to the running list of evidence I’d been keeping against myself since my twenties.
Twenty-three years in business. A Master’s in performance psychology. Around twenty coaching clients at any given time. And a planner that beat me.
The planner was built for a brain that stores things. Mine doesn’t.
That’s the part most productivity advice gets wrong about ADHD. The advice assumes the hard part is the work. For a lot of us the work is the easy part. The hard part sits on either side of it: starting, choosing, tracking time, and remembering what we already decided.
AI is the first tool I’ve used that takes those four jobs off my plate instead of adding a tenth one.
Below are the prompts I actually run, organized by the executive function each one covers. Copy them. Change the details to match your business. None of them require a subscription you don’t already have.
What makes an AI prompt work for an ADHD brain
The short version: a prompt works when it ends with a decision instead of a menu.
Most prompts fail neurodivergent operators for the same reason planners do. You ask a broad question, you get twelve good options back, and now you have a new decision to make on top of the one you were already avoiding. More input on a brain that’s already flooded.
So every prompt below is built on two rules.
Rule one: give it your context once, on purpose. The tools are only as useful as what they know about your business. Before any of this, write one paragraph covering what you do, who you serve, what you’re working toward this quarter, and what you’re bad at. Paste it at the top of any chat, or store it as a saved instruction. That paragraph is the highest-leverage thing you’ll write this month.
Rule two: make it choose. Ask for one answer, not a list. Tell it to pick, and to tell you why it picked.
Prompts for task initiation (when you can’t start)
Starting is where the days disappear. The task isn’t hard. Opening it is.
1. The two-minute entry point
Here’s what I need to get done: [task]. I have ADHD and I stall at the beginning. Give me the single smallest physical action that starts this, something I can do in under two minutes. One action only. No list.
2. The bad first draft
Write the worst acceptable version of [deliverable]. Deliberately rough. I edit far better than I originate, so your job is to give me something to react to, not something good.
3. The talk-it-out
I’m going to describe [project] out loud and it’s going to be disorganized. Don’t clean it up yet. Ask me the three questions that would fill the biggest gaps, one at a time.
I run this one as a voice memo on a walk with my dog. By the time I’m back at the desk there’s a draft waiting. The finished work stopped waiting on a better version of me and started waiting on a two-minute walk.
4. The re-entry
I stopped working on [project] eleven days ago. Here are my notes: [paste]. Tell me where I left off, what the next action is, and what I was clearly avoiding.
Prompts for prioritization (when everything feels equally urgent)
5. The forced ranking
Here are the nine things on my list today: [paste]. Rank them by impact on [current quarter goal]. Then tell me which three I should delete outright, and defend the deletions.
6. The hourly-rate sort
Sort each of these tasks into $10 work, $100 work, and $1,000 work for a business like mine. Then tell me which single $1,000 task I should protect time for tomorrow.
Craig Ballantyne taught me that exercise long before AI could run it. Most entrepreneurs find sixty to seventy percent of their week sitting in the bottom two tiers. AI just made the sort take ninety seconds instead of an afternoon you’ll never schedule.
7. The addition filter
I’m considering taking on [new client, offer, tool, or commitment]. Based on what you know about my business and my capacity, tell me what would have to come off my plate to make room for it. Name the specific thing.
8. The one-decision-only prompt
I’ve been going back and forth on [decision] for two weeks. Here are the facts: [paste]. Pick one. Give me your reasoning in three sentences. I’m not asking for options.
9. The Sunday triage
Here’s my calendar for the week and my open project list: [paste]. Tell me the one outcome that would make this week count, and what I should cancel to protect it.
Prompts for time blindness (when an hour and four hours feel identical)
Time blindness is the one nobody outside the ADHD world takes seriously, and it’s the one that quietly wrecks pricing, deadlines, and family dinners.
10. The honest estimate
How long does [task] actually take for someone doing it carefully, start to finish, including setup and revision? Give me a realistic range, and then tell me what I’m most likely underestimating.
11. The reverse calendar
[Deliverable] is due [date]. Work backwards and give me the dates each piece has to be finished by. Assume I will lose two working days to things outside my control.
12. The scope check
I told a client this would take three hours. Here’s the actual scope: [paste]. Tell me if three hours is real, and if it isn’t, tell me what to cut so it becomes real.
13. The container
I have ninety minutes and this project: [paste]. Tell me exactly what portion of it fits in ninety minutes, and where to stop.
Prompts for working memory (when the details leave before you do)
I had a client call end at 4:15 on a Tuesday and by 4:20 I was standing in my kitchen with no idea what I’d committed to. That was a normal Tuesday for about fifteen years.
14. The call debrief
Here’s the transcript from my call with [client]: [paste]. Give me four things: a short summary, their core challenge, what we committed to, and the three questions I should open with next time.
15. The pre-call brief
Read my last three sets of notes on [client]. Tell me where we left off, what they were struggling with, and what I promised. Two paragraphs.
I stopped opening calls with “remind me where we left off.” That sentence had cost me more credibility over the years than any mistake I’d actually made.
16. The decision log
We just decided [decision]. Write it down as: what we chose, what we rejected, and why. Keep it to five lines so future me can read it in ten seconds.
Prompts for follow-through (when the last ten percent never lands)
17. The loop sweep
Here are my notes and emails from the past two weeks: [paste]. Find every commitment I made that I haven’t closed. List them by who’s waiting on me.
18. The subtraction audit
Here’s everything I’m currently paying for and everything I do weekly: [paste]. Find the overlaps. Tell me what I can cancel, combine, or stop doing entirely without breaking anything.
That last one paid for itself the first time I ran it. I went line by line through my software and cancelled over $400 a month inside thirty days. The money was the small part. The real win was removing the switching, because ten tabs to finish one task is a specific kind of poison for a brain that loses the thread every time it changes context.
The test any of this has to pass
A system you have to maintain daily is a system that will eventually catch you on a bad week and punish you for it. I ran that experiment for fifteen years with planners and lost every time.
The bar is this: the best system is one you’re allowed to ignore for a week, and it still works when you come back.
These prompts clear that bar because there’s nothing to maintain. No streak to protect. No app to open every morning at the same time. You use one when you’re stuck, and being stuck is the only trigger you need.
Where to start
Don’t take all eighteen. Taking all eighteen is the same instinct that bought the planner.
Pick the one executive function that costs you the most this week. Starting, choosing, tracking time, or remembering. Run the two or three prompts under it. Keep whichever one you use again without being reminded.
There’s a gap forming right now between two kinds of business owners. One group is using AI to produce more of the work that’s already burning them out. The other is using it to remove that work. The gap between those two groups is about to get very wide.
Your brain was never the problem. The tools were built for a different one.
Pick one prompt. Run it today. Delete the rest until that one sticks.
Galel Fajardo is a business coach, digital marketing consultant, and fractional CMO. He holds a Master’s in performance psychology and works with high-performing entrepreneurs, many of them neurodivergent, who have built businesses that look successful from the outside and feel like a prison from the inside. Follow him on Instagram for more advice on how to leverage AI to get back your time and energy.
Galel Fajardo
Galel lives in Orange County, California with his wife Emily, their two children, and their chocolate labrador retriever named Mikey. He holds a Master’s degree in Performance Psychology, which has helped him coach fellow entrepreneurs and professional athletes. When not on Zoom calls, you’ll find Galel on the beach with his family, traveling in their RV, or umpiring a baseball game. Galel is passionate about helping coaching clients build systems to reduce stress and anxiety, boost sales revenue, and skyrocket their fulfillment and happiness.
