Ever find yourself surrounded by clutter, paralyzed by the idea of organizing, and then completely overwhelmed at the thought of creating a plan to fix it? If this sounds all too familiar, you’re not alone.
Society leads us to assume organization and planning skills are basic. Just make a list, right? But for many neurodivergent adults, these are among the most frustrating and misunderstood executive function challenges. While organization is about creating order and assigning a place for everything, planning involves strategically deciding how to use time and resources to achieve goals.
This post will help clarify what organization and planning actually are, why they can be especially tricky for neurodivergent individuals, and how recognizing the difference can make both more manageable.
For many of us, “planning” and “organizing” seem like interchangeable words—especially if you struggle with both. I used to lump them together and see them as one blurry, intimidating skill set. That made it difficult for me to understand what was actually going wrong, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this.
It’s painful to find yourself stuck between the deep desire to get organized and the chronic stagnation of not knowing where to begin—the optimistic effort to create a plan that quickly gives way to total overwhelm. If this sounds like you, you’re not alone.
It’s important to recognize that organization skills are not planning skills, and vice versa. I’ve learned to understand them cognitively as distinct processes, and understanding their differences helps me grow. Let’s break down their definitions:
Organization means “The act of assigning a specific place to each item, whether physical or mental, to create order and reduce clutter.”
Organization is fairly static and underpins planning skills. It’s about realizing there’s only so many items to put somewhere, and there’s only so much space to work with. It involves knowing what resources you have and making strategic decisions so you can find things when you need them.
Successful organization relies heavily on memory and repetition, not strategy.
Example: You purchase a new blender at the store. Once you get home, you decide to put it on the counter. If you consciously decide to place it there, that was an organized decision. If you place it there without thinking and without being guided by an underlying plan of where household items go, that’s a disorganized decision. Both involve deciding where the blender gets placed, but one is more intentional than the other.
Planning is “the process of organizing tasks, resources, and goals by considering their interrelationships and making strategic decisions based on time constraints, priorities, and efficiency to achieve desired outcomes.”
Planning is more strategic and takes place once you’ve done some basic organizing. It looks at the relationships between the items, tasks, and goals involved and arranges them in time and space to achieve the desired outcomes more efficiently.
For example, moving the blender into the kitchen might be part of a larger planning decision, especially when you consider where other appliances are located. It’s a decision based on the best way to achieve efficiency—putting similar items together for ease of access.
Now that we’ve sorted out these two skills conceptually, let’s now explore some common misconceptions people harbor about underdeveloped organizational and planning skill sets:
This is a painful misconception, especially for those with executive function challenges. Discipline evokes thoughts of punishment for wrongdoing, or the idea of “setting someone straight.” Discipline is only effective once a system is already successfully put in place, and discipline alone won’t fix a foundational problem of underdeveloped skillsets. Viewing this as a discipline issue labels it as something more akin to a character flaw, when really, the structural systems in the brain need extra support and scaffolding to cope with life’s demands.
Labeling someone as lazy is harmful and does nothing to address the root cause of the challenge, and what’s worse—it mislabels the problem as one of identity. This causes internal pain and does far more harm than good, as it further discourages the individual from seeking better systems and maintaining a sense of hope in future outcomes.
The moment organizing or planning feels overwhelming, many people assume failure is inevitable. But that’s not the case! This has to do with another executive function skill, perseverance, which (you guessed it) can also be underdeveloped with neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. Emotional pain from past disappointments can further reduce a person’s perseverance, causing an individual experiencing overwhelm to abandon and then avoid similar future situations all together.
There are countless other misconceptions I could mention, but what ties them all together is not just that they are false, but that they can be deeply damaging to a person’s psyche, self-esteem, and sense of self-worth.
By letting go of these misconceptions, we open ourselves up to healthier strategies and can begin developing systems that align with how our brains naturally work.
Starting fresh with these clearer definitions of organization and planning allows us to look at our spaces with a new perspective. We can appreciate that our previous systems, though imperfect, have gotten us this far—and we should honor that. Most importantly, we can begin to see ourselves as capable individuals, ready to move toward a more effective and sustainable executive function future.
Organization is about memory and repetition. If something gets put in on the floor in the bathroom, organization (versus disorganization) is about remembering that it was put on the floor in the bathroom.
Planning, on the other hand, is more about problem solving and creative thinking. If you have self-awareness of how you think and how your mind naturally plans and behaves, you might immediately know that you tend to put new items on the floor of the bathroom so you go there and low and behold, there it is!
Both skills rely on working memory, task initiation, and time management—areas that are often particularly challenging for people with ADHD, autism, and other neurodivergent profiles. What trips people up, though, is when the two skills are conflated and people begin trying to plan out an organizational system without first organizing the items before them. It’s easy to get overwhelmed when both skills feel like they need to be done at once.
Recognizing that these challenges are not personal failures but natural parts of neurodivergence can also be incredibly liberating.
Make a conscious effort when carrying or moving items around. When you habitually shuffle things from one place to another without thinking, it becomes harder to break the cycle.
Start by being present in those moments when your mind tends to wander. When you get up to move from one room to another, pause to think about the items you choose to take with you and those you leave behind.
If you spot trash on the table, take a moment to throw it away. If there’s an empty dish, bring it to the sink. The key is to do these tasks intentionally. By making these small decisions mindfully, you reduce the mental burden of remembering where things are later—especially helpful for those who struggle with working memory.
Start by observing the items around your space. What similarities and differences stand out? Do you notice any patterns that suggest an area of your planning system that might need more structure?
Perhaps you have a collection of craft supplies but no designated space for them. Or maybe you have a stack of half-used sheets of paper that you can’t bring yourself to recycle, even though you end up grabbing a fresh sheet every time you need to write something down.
There’s no need to act on these observations immediately—just take note of them. By becoming aware of these patterns and areas of disorganization, you’re laying the groundwork for creating a planning system that works for you, even if you’re not quite ready to implement it yet.
Organization and planning skills are often misunderstood, especially for neurodivergent individuals. By understanding the difference between organization and planning, you’ll gain the foundation needed to apply strategies more effectively in your daily life.
In the next post, I’ll share tools and techniques to help you make the most of these insights and move past the overwhelm.
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