Something that actually helped my ADHD girlfriend feel less defeated at the end of the day
My girlfriend and I have been together 7 years. She has ADHD and she ends most days feeling like she did nothing - when I can literally see she's been doing stuff all day. While some other times, she can't even get the simplest things done.
To-do lists made it worse. Every unchecked box was proof she "failed." Journaling never lasted more than a few days. Reminders just got ignored. At some point I came across the idea of a "done list" - instead of writing what you need to do, you just write down what you already did. I mentioned it to her and she shrugged it off. Fair enough.
I ended up building a small app around the idea, mostly because I wanted to make it as frictionless (and pretty) as possible for her. She started using it and the difference was immediate. By the end of the first day she looked at her list and said "I didn't know I did this much today." She genuinely got excited. She started asking me to add features — she wanted to see her weekly patterns, what categories she logs most, what time of day she's most active, etc.
I know this won't fix everything, but for us it's made a real difference in how she feels about her days. She's not doing more, she's just finally seeing what she was already doing.
The app is called DidThat if anyone's curious. I wasn't planning to share it here cause I know people hate self-promos, but honestly if it helps even one other person the way it helped her, that'd mean a lot.