This week's ADHD Solution is: The SOP.

It’s fun to figure stuff out. Re-figuring out the same thing for the third or fourth time? Not so much. It’s extremely frustrating when you know you’ve done something before, but you can’t remember how you did it. I think people with ADHD encounter this more often than the average person. And man! Is it ever annoying.

I just finished getting ready for my year-end meeting with my accountant. (High five, anyone, for being over a month early?) As a small business owner, my taxes are somewhat complicated. But this year’s preparation was substantially easier than it used to be. Why? Because two years ago, I had the foresight to create an SOP for myself.

SOP stands for Standard Operating Procedure. They’re used in business, industry, and the army to describe any procedure that gets done in a certain way. An SOP is basically a cheat sheet that lists the sequence of steps. It removes all the guesswork. There’s no job too big or too small for an SOP. They can be created for anything. How to process payroll. All the things you review with your child after school. What you need to do in the morning, or before bed.

Following an SOP is easy. Writing one isn’t too hard either – just jot down the steps as you complete them. It doesn’t have to be pretty. The trick is being able to find the right one when you need it, and keeping it updated when things change. Some companies create manuals and keep them on a shelf. That makes me itch! The problem with that approach is that the SOPs don’t get updated when the procedures inevitably change. Once they’re out of date, they’re worse than useless, because they’re wrong. Better to store and access them electronically. You can create word processing documents, or use something like Microsoft Outlook tasks, which is what I do. I created a separate task folder that contains nothing but SOPs. I like putting them all in one place to make keyword searches easier (handy when you can’t remember if you created an SOP in the first place, much less what you might have called it). So today, all I had to do was go into my SOP folder and search for “taxes”. I had my cheat sheet in less than a second. I think my accountant will be pleased again this year!

What recurring projects do you struggle to remember how to do? Create SOPs as you work through them. It’ll be much easier next time. And, you won’t forget any important steps.

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