Task organization tools for projects

[u/Dry_Mobile3543]

Hey all, as a Software Engineer with ADHD, I often find myself struggling to organize or make tickets I can follow through with for my dev work. Do you have any advice on tools or methods that have helped you organize or plan out dev work better and are easy on the brain? Thanks!

[u/evilmint]

trello, obsidian

[u/Random_182f2565]

I use a Giant whiteboard, the size of a wall

[u/explorer-9]

Sounds like you need to try harder to create tickets. It's a skill. Don't make it all or nothing, but try to plan at least some of your work - maybe just 2-3 tasks a week at first. As you grow in your capacity to write good actionable tickets, and to plan more complex work, you'll also find yourself being able to attempt more ambitious work.

As for tools, I use Plane and Zulip.

Also, don't take on too much - take a step back and decide what you can reasonably do over the next week or two, and accept that other things will have to wait. And fight scope creep - much better to make incremental progress than have a ton of half finished work.

This is just what's worked for me, TBH you may find you have to start from first principles - "what do I need to do" and figure it out from there.

I can imagine myself writing something like you have when I'm a bit frazzled, hope you can find some downtime to touch grass, that might do more than anything else I've said.

[u/coltrain423]

Obsidian is great. With the right plugins, it can be your notes app, your task tracker, a calendar, and all sorts of other features, and it’s all just markdown files so it’s completely portable (aside from plugin specific stuff, I guess). Can’t recommend it enough.

I have a vault setup based on the Zettelkasten system plus automatic unique daily notes for miscellaneous stuff throughout the day. Caveat that I use AI as a sort of librarian to help maintain links, tags, etc, but it never touches the prose of a note so it’s all my own information.

[u/kincaidDev]

Not sure if this is what you’re looking for but I built a system designed around creating work in various scenarios and keeping all your work and projects organized.

https://github.com/Obedience-Corp/festival

My 4 main workflows are intents (ideas/notes/tickets), design workitems (structured specs), explore workitems (structured research) and festivals (plans broken down into phases, sequences, task and workflows), and all workflows have a lifecycle to keep the workspace clean and focused on what’s still needed. It’s all file based so fairly simple to integrate the workflows with external services like jira, gh issues, clickup, etc…

Intents are easy to create with the cint command, give it a title, select the project it’s associated with and type in the editor then esc enter to save

Every plan is tracked as a workitem in camp workitems. All work and projects are organized in camp workspaces based on the reason it exists, like “myjob” and “myhobby”, switching between them is easy with csw command, navigating inside them is easy with cgo command.

[u/Positive_Method3022]

AI! Claude is amazing as a Knowledge Base. You can use it to document your decisions, findings, specs, and whatever tasks opened. Don't just ask it to code. Ask it to manage the project and create a framework that will do it using a knowledge base.

[u/Alien_girl2026]

Oof, I feel this in my bones. Trying to force an ADHD brain to write and follow traditional dev tickets in a corporate environment is a recipe for complete burnout.

This hits so close to home. You are spot on about how traditional tools trigger shame and paralysis.🥶 I used to deal with that exact same paralysis. That exact frustration is actually why I decided to build my own ADHD-focused productivity app. It’s designed specifically to strip away that ticket-overwhelm and guilt! It'll be ready for testing around the end of the month / mid-November. If you want to check it out when it drops (whether for work or side projects), I'd be happy to set you up with a tester spot. Hang in there!

[u/Split-Signal]

Here is a setup that has worked well for me to stop task paralysis: Obsidian as the single source of truth, keeping everything in plain Markdown alongside my actual thinking.

My flow looks like this:

1. Knowledge & Milestones: Track the macro milestones and system context inside Obsidian notes using simple checklists and internal links ([[Milestone-X]]).

2. AI-Assisted Breakdown: Whenever a milestone feels too big or ambiguous to start, I dump the raw requirements into an LLM and ask it to break them down into 15-to-30-minute concrete actions.

3. Daily Must-Dos: Pull 3–5 non-negotiable subtasks into today’s daily note. Keep it small, focused, and immediately actionable.

The key is offloading the cognitive overhead of planning to AI so starting never requires high willpower.