Meeting Prep for ADHD Brains
A short prep ritual that makes meetings feel manageable.
Most meetings go wrong before they start. Not because of the agenda. Because the brain arrives cold, without context, without intention, and without a clear idea of what it needs from the next 60 minutes. This template fixes that. Fill it in before, refer to it during, and capture what matters after. The whole ritual takes five minutes. The meetings it saves take much longer.
Not everything. One thing. A decision, a piece of information, a next step agreed. If you leave with this, the meeting succeeded.
The point you cannot afford to lose, even if the meeting gets derailed.
Name it. An unnamed concern is a distraction. A named one is something you can manage.
If you have three minutes before the meeting starts: re-read your one thing. Do not open email. Do not check Slack. Read your one thing and arrive with it.
Key things said. Points that land. Names attached to commitments. Do not try to capture everything. Capture what will matter tomorrow.
If you feel the meeting drifting: it is okay to say "Can we come back to the main decision here?" The person who names the drift is usually the most useful person in the room.
The ADHD brain loses meeting content faster than most. The two minutes immediately after the meeting are worth more than twenty minutes of reconstruction tomorrow. Do not skip this section.
Write it now, while it is fresh. This is the sentence you will send if someone asks what was decided.
Optional. Useful if this was a difficult meeting or one where the prep did not work as well as it could have.