I don't know if it's an ADHD thing for me or some undiagnosed Autism thing but, for part of my life I used to make lists to try and prevent procrastination spirals. And the lists would get too big and I would fail them as the backlog grew. It makes me very wary of planning to this day. Has anyone else dealt with this in such a context?
Yes, 100%. As someone who actually loves making random lists, to-do lists are the worst because they're easily compounded and have the added bonus of regret and guilt when they aren't completed, which can lead to more stress. For me it's always been about breaking things down into smaller bits so that I can process and act quickly. Prioritizing by time, importance, and complexity helps kinda break down the overwhelm enough to pick a task and see it through. It's probably always going to be a bit of a struggle, but knowing your own strengths and weaknesses can help form a system that works best for you. Maybe just avoiding the to-do list all together is the best course of action. Might try treating it like a video game objective or something easier for your particular neurodivergence to grab hold of.
I mostly use notecards for any to-dos I have, which keeps the list to a pretty small number of bullet points that can be managed, and I rarely ever use a to-do list that spans more than a 24hr period. For work I use sticky notes and a desk calendar to help with scheduling. If something on the sticky note or note card doesn't get done the day of, it goes to the top of tomorrow's list. It seems to work for me when I'm feeling overwhelmed at where to start.
I tried this in my own particular way and I ended up losing a couple of times as a result. I couldn't even win my own game. And unfortunately, losing in life has far more costly consequences than a video game.
Ha, I meant more like breaking tasks to do into video game-esque objectives, but I can empathize with the 'losing at life' sentiment. Being neurodivergent sure is fun, isn't it?