How to Plan Unstructured Time: ADHD-Friendly Strategies for Using Free Time More Productively
How to Plan Unstructured Time (Without Wasting It)
Time management strategies for when you have large chunks of free time
Have you ever looked at a big chunk of free time on your calendar and thought, “Finally!”—only to spend that time scrolling social media, unsure where to start?
Whether you're an entrepreneur, a college student, or a professional with lots of autonomy, planning unstructured time can feel surprisingly overwhelming, even if you have a clear to-do list of what needs to get done.
A podcast listener reached out on Instagram asking, “Do you ever talk about struggling with big blocks of unstructured time?” And the answer is: absolutely. This is something I talk about with clients all the time.
I’ve worked with college students who have entire afternoons free between classes, professionals with few meetings during the week, and entrepreneurs trying to make the most of flexible schedules. Big blocks of free time sound amazing in theory—but in practice, they can make it harder to get started on anything at all.
Why Big Chunks of Free Time Can Be So Hard
For most of us, unstructured time isn’t something we were taught how to navigate. If you grew up going to public school, you were used to structure: classes, activities, assignments, deadlines. Then you get to college—or the working world—and suddenly have all this freedom.
And with that freedom can come decision fatigue, overwhelm, or even avoidance.
Some people thrive with long, unscheduled days. I am not one of those people. I’ve tried the “CEO day” method where you block off a whole day with no meetings, thinking you’ll do deep work. Instead, I find myself flip flopping between tasks not finishing any of them. I’ve learned I need some structure to stay focused. And I’ve seen this with my clients with ADHD, too much freedom can lead to paralysis.
The Key Strategy: Separate Planning from Action
One of the best time management strategies to plan unstructured time is separating the planning from the doing. If you wait until your free time starts to decide what you’re doing, you're more likely to waste that time figuring it out.
What works better? Planning in advance, even lightly. When I see a big open morning on my calendar, I give myself a few options ahead of time. For example, I might say, “If I feel focused, I could record a podcast. If I’m more low-energy, I’ll write a newsletter or do admin tasks.” That way, I don’t hit that blank slate panic.
Creating little “menus” of tasks for different moods or types of energy is one way I help clients plan ahead. It gives future-you some structure to work from without feeling rigid or boxed in.
Find Your Goldilocks Zone of Structure
Some structure is good. Too much can feel rigid and keep you stuck. Here’s how to hit the sweet spot:
Structure: Use categories or menus to guide your choices. Instead of just listing tasks, you can categorize them based on the type of effort they require. For example:
Work Menus:
High-energy, focused work: Writing reports, deep brainstorming
Low-energy, admin work: Responding to easy emails, organizing files
Home Chores Menus:
Low-energy tasks: Tidying for five minutes
High-energy tasks: Vacuuming, washing dishes
Flexibility: Choose what to do based on your energy, mood, or dopamine needs.
Build in Anchor Points
Anchor points add gentle structure to your day and help [why they matter]:
Start your day with a scheduled meeting or coworking session.
Plan a walk, lunch, or class to give your day rhythm.
Use time blocks or energy blocks to organize tasks.
Even a few intentional anchors can give your brain something to latch onto—so it’s not all just floating.
Change Your Environment
Sometimes the best way to reset and get moving is a change of scenery:
Work from a coffee shop or library.
Sit in a different spot in your home.
Add a routine (even a light one) to help your brain know what to expect.
This helps you get out of stuck mode, where you ruminate over what to do but don’t actually get done.
The most important piece to navigating big blocks of timeimportantly—take the pressure off. You might not get everything done. That’s okay. Notice what did happen. Make a Done List. Celebrate the progress.
There’s No One-Size-Fits-All
Whether you love giant chunks of free time, struggle with them, or fall somewhere in between, the most important thing is finding what works for your brain. The goal isn’t perfection—it’s progress.
Start by noticing how you feel during different parts of your day. What kinds of tasks feel doable when you’re feeling energized vs. sluggish? When is it easy to get started, and when is it hard? Use those insights to create flexible plans for your free time so it’s easier to take action when the moment comes.
Curious about working with an executive function coach?
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Sarah Lovell (00:01)
When you have a big chunk of free time, do you struggle figuring out what to do with it? Maybe you have so many options, it feels impossible to prioritize. Or the idea of getting started on something is paralyzing even for things you want to do. Do you spend your free time trying to figure out what to do with it? And then by the time you make a decision, all of your time has been wasted?
Whether you're an entrepreneur or a professional with lots of autonomy in your work schedule, a college student with three hours between classes, or someone who finds yourself doom scrolling for 45 minutes at night instead of doing something that you actually want to do, this episode is for you.
This episode feels super exciting for me because it was a podcast listener request, this topic. So a podcast listener sent me a DM on Instagram. ⁓ She'd been listening to the podcast for a while, had been following me for a while. And she said, is this something you ever talk about? Like I have tons of work to do, but I struggle when I have an unstructured day or big chunks of free time. And basically,
feel like I can't get things done or I can't get started on things or I waste the time. And so first I felt very excited that to just hear that someone was listening to this podcast, it connected with them and enough to reach out and be like, hey, would you talk about this? ⁓ And this is something I talk about all the time with clients, especially professionals, entrepreneurs and college students, or honestly anybody who has big chunks of free time. ⁓ But those,
those categories of people tend to have big chunks of free time in their Monday to Friday, not just weekends. So if you're somebody who your work schedule is pretty autonomous, maybe you don't have as many meetings and you are in charge of your own schedule or you set your own deadlines, it can be really hard to figure out how to use big chunks of free time. And college students,
have the weirdest schedules. So I've worked with students who finished class at 10 a.m. and have the rest of the day free. I've worked with students who have six hours between classes, sometimes a full day or two days off, and lots of work to do. And you have to figure out how to use your free time. So this is one of my favorite things to talk about. I talk about it all the time.
And if you have other topics that you're like, ⁓ would Sarah talk about this? Send me a DM on Instagram or an email. I would love to hear what topics you want me to talk about on the podcast. That's really energizing for me. ⁓ But this is something that I also struggle with. I struggle with big chunks of free time. ⁓ So I had a business coach one time tell me that I should have an entire day free or she said,
preferably two days free where I don't see any clients. I don't have any meetings. I don't lead any workshops, no Zoom. And that way I can do lots of deep work, like basically a CEO day, because that's what's worked for her. And that's what lots of other entrepreneurs and business owners do. And that does not work for me. ⁓ I need more structure. If I have a
totally free day, I ironically get less stuff done. So I'm somebody, I definitely need a mixture of structure and flexibility. can't have, I'm not like time blocking my day, that does not work for me. ⁓ But I have always like known this about myself, like when I'm busy, I do better. And in past, in past periods of my life, this has led to me
over scheduling myself, basically being like, how can I be more productive? How can I get more done? How can I not waste time? And so in college, in grad school, in my twenties, I basically crammed my schedule because I would get more done work wise. And I also would like hold myself to making other play like social plans. Like I was, was burning myself out essentially.
So I know that about myself. Like I do better when I have a little bit more structure. I do better when I'm a little bit busy. It's finding that, you know, mid mark of I'm busy enough, but I'm not overwhelming myself. ⁓
I'm sharing this because I think it's an important example of, know, just sharing my own personal example. This is not true for everybody. Some people do really great, like the business coach that I worked with in the past, having two giant free days in her schedule. She was like, I get so much done in those two days when I have no other responsibilities. Like I can just do deep work on projects or I can just do, you know, check things off my to-do list, right? So.
Whether you fall into the, love giant chunks of free time, I struggle with giant chunks of free time, or you're somewhere in the middle, I promise there's going to be a takeaway for you in this episode. ⁓ But basically, for anybody who struggles with free time, part of it is that most of us have had quite a bit of structure in our lives ⁓ historically. So if you went to K through 12,
public school, ⁓ you had a class schedule, you had maybe after school activities, you had homework, right? Like you had a very scheduled life up until 18. And then if you went to college, that was kind of for many people the first time that there was some freedom. And that's when I work with college students, they do not know what to do with that freedom. ⁓ Like in terms of, I have plenty of time. ⁓
And yeah, there's plenty of time, but you can't wait till the last minute on big assignments, studying. It's all different than in high school. And then when we enter the workforce, kind of like pre-COVID, most of us had pretty structured jobs, not everybody, but set work hours, meetings, deadlines. I personally feel like there was more structure in many workplaces pre-COVID, for better or for worse.
But even in seeing my clients, like how their workplaces have changed, because I work with lots of different people, now there's more flexibility in many places, in workplaces, in college, if you're an entrepreneur, there's a lot of flexibility there. And so our brains, if you were given...
Like here's what the plan is, here's what the schedule is, here's what the routine is. Some people, that works really well. Some people, their brains push up against it, right? Again, finding that mixture of structure and flexibility. But we don't typically have, historically, when we were growing up and when your brain was forming, many of us did not have giant chunks of free time. And so this is something that we have to learn how to navigate. And I love supporting college students on this.
⁓ and entrepreneurs and adults, professionals, but college, like around your 20s typically is the first time that you have some freedom and flexibility. So I'm gonna share some strategies that you can use wherever you fall on this spectrum of structure, flexibility, freedom, rigidness, wherever you fall on this, pick and choose ⁓ what fits for you, adjust.
adjust what I'm about to share to fit for you and your brain. ⁓ Nothing I share is ever like the right answer or the perfect solution because that does not exist. It's about tweaking it to fit for you. ⁓ So one of the things that I help clients with when they come to me with this challenge is separating out planning and action. And so what I mean by that is if you get to a
a giant chunk of free time and you don't have some options for yourself or an example of a plan that you could pick up, it can be really hard to go from kind of a blank slate, even if you're like, I have a giant to-do list. I know what I need to do. And so basically like giving future you a light plan to get started or some light
⁓ suggestions can be really helpful. ⁓ And so one way that you can do this is kind of pre-planning or pre-writing out some menus, outlines, and clear starting points for different projects, different tasks. ⁓ So I'll give an example from my own life. So today, I only had two meetings.
and there this afternoon. And so I knew, okay, I have until one o'clock today to figure out what I want to do with it. And so I looked at that earlier in the week and said, Ooh, look, a giant free morning. And I gave myself some options of, that might be a good day for me to record some podcast episodes if I get to that day and I'm in the right headspace. Or,
If I don't feel like recording podcast episodes, maybe I'll want to do some newsletter writing. ⁓ Or I could use that time for, right? And I have all of these menus of options of different projects that are on my radar. ⁓ And within that, you've heard me talk about this before, if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, I categorize things by energy type too. So, ⁓
if I, you know, if I have creative projects or I have projects that require problem solving. So it's a way for me to create a mixture of structure and flexibility of, here's a project I could do. Here are the different options of tasks or starting points. And I can choose based on my energy, based on my mood and based on what happens in my life. ⁓ cause sometimes we get to this giant chunk of free time.
and life has lifed and there are other things popping up, right? So it allows me to kind of go with the flow, but still have a light plan to look at. And the reason that separating out planning and action is really helpful is because what I was describing earlier, if I woke up today and was like, all right, I have until the afternoon, what do I want to do with it? That's where...
For me personally, I get a little paralyzed with going into that planning mode and using all of this decision-making energy, prioritizing all the executive functioning that goes into planning. And then by the time I've made a decision, especially when it's a work-related thing, I'm a little bit tired, I'm a little bit drained. And so it's like, okay, now I'm gonna do this thing, but I used some cognitive power to make that decision. ⁓
So separating out planning and action can be really, really helpful. That's something that I work on with clients in coaching sessions. Like that's exactly what a coaching session is, is we're doing some planning, we're doing some light structuring, we're coming up with some systems and options that future you can choose from. ⁓ And so that can be a check-in question for yourself is what is my Goldilocks effect for structure and flexibility today?
⁓ Do I need to or want to create some more structure in this giant chunk of free time? ⁓ And that might be looking at your categories and menus. And then the flexibility is you get to choose what you're gonna work on. So I'm a huge fan of structure and flexibility combo. Another thing that can be really helpful when you have a giant chunk of free time,
is creating some anchor points for yourself. So for me, my meetings, my coaching meetings, my one-on-one coaching, my workshops, my small group coaching, all of those meetings can be some anchor points for me when I have a day like today. So I know, okay, I need to wrap up my projects and work.
by this time to task switch. There's this really cool, I don't know if cool is right word, I guess I'm a nerd. There's this, oh, the dog's barking, hang on one second.
Woof! Woof!
Okay, we're back. It's real life when the dogs bark. ⁓ So there's this really cool concept, theory called Parkinson's Law, which is basically that it's not related to Parkinson's disease. ⁓ It's this theory that the amount of time that you have available is the amount of time your brain will take to do the thing, which we all experience that.
⁓ you know, we wait until the deadline, right? Like as the deadline is approaching, we got to start doing it. Right. So if you have an anchor point, like for me today, one o'clock, I have a meeting that shortens my Parkinson's law of, okay, I'm going to work on my podcast. I'm going to respond to emails and I want to get it all done before 1230. That way I'm ready for my one o'clock call. ⁓ so having some anchor points can be really helpful for you.
It does not need to be a meeting. It could be something like a lunch break. It could be going for a walk. It could be basically something that you're putting in for yourself at a specific time. A lot of my clients love focus mates and co-working as a way to create a little bit of accountability and structure, and it's like a nice anchor point for them. ⁓
That's something that I offer each week in my coaching membership. have a weekly co-working session, a two hour cameras off co-working session. ⁓ And I love it because that's where I do basically all the things that I'm like, ⁓ you know, I could keep pushing off the Parkinson's law things. ⁓ It's like, no, I'm going to give myself a designated time to work on it. ⁓ As an entrepreneur myself.
I never stop thinking about work. Work could continue. I could work all hours of the day. There's full flexibility, which is a blessing and a curse. I love what I do, but it can sometimes be hard to shut off my brain or to be like, okay, when is my day actually going to end? So for me, going to a yoga class at the end of the day is a really nice way to bookmark. My work brain is shutting off. Like,
My personal life is kicking in. ⁓ So sometimes an exercise class can be a nice way to bookend or start your day. If you're somebody you're like, I don't have anything to do today until 3 p.m. getting started with ⁓ an exercise class or a focus mates or an accountability or meeting anything like that kind of again, that mixture of structure and flexibility. ⁓ Another way to create some anchor points during your day
is time blocking or like personally for me time blocking is too structured. If you're somebody that loves structure, go for the time blocks. For me, it's just too rigid. If I say I'm gonna start something at 11 and 1105 rolls around, like, I guess I'm not gonna do it. ⁓ So I personally will create like just blocks, like kind of like flexible blocks of like, before lunch,
here are two projects that I want to touch, or here's something that I want to get started on. So sometimes it can be just like looking at blocks during your day, but it can also be thinking about your energy during the day. So for me, I do my best problem solving, critical thinking, tough stuff in the morning. That's not everybody, but so for me, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do all of this type of work in the morning.
And then in the afternoon, I'm going to save my lighter lifts, my creative projects, the things that just match my energy better that way. So that's another way to kind of like provide some light structure again with that separating out of planning and action. Another thing that can be really helpful if you have a giant chunk of free time specifically related to work. Basically today I've been mostly talking about work. I'll do another episode on self care because that's a whole different thing.
⁓ But changing up your scenery can be really, really helpful, ⁓ especially if you're somebody that works from home. ⁓ Obviously, sometimes it's not always possible to leave where you are, but if you can work in a different space, even changing up whether you're standing or sitting, if you can go to a library or a coffee shop, changing your scenery really does create a nice break for you.
in those giant chunks of time. And then I think another important piece of this is taking the pressure off yourself. I personally put a lot of pressure on when I have a free day or a giant chunk of time to be like, ⁓ I should be able to get all of this stuff done or wouldn't it be nice if I could X, Y, Z. And anytime we hear a should, right, it's a little red flag.
that we need to check in with ourselves on our self-talk. What are you telling yourself? ⁓
That type of pressure to be like, should be able to get more done because I have a giant chunk of free time is not very helpful because it creates that shame and blame and guilt, which then when you have another chunk of free time, your brain automatically goes back to that feeling of like, ⁓ I wasted that time before. So I think it's really important to practice this new way of thinking, this new framing.
that it's okay if you get less done than you expect, or that then you want to get done, that's okay. Because your brain is gonna autopilot to the things that you didn't accomplish, the things that you didn't finish, or that you didn't use the time in the way that you wanted. And so a way to shift that thinking, like a gentle reminder, is to look back on that chunk of time.
and say, okay, what do I want to give myself credit for? What are things that I did do or start that I'm proud of? Even if it's making a decision to start something, right? Like that took effort. That is executive functioning. Making a decision is executive functioning. So one strategy that I share with clients is it's called a done list. It's the opposite of a to-do list. It's basically looking back for
how you can give yourself more credit. So it's giving yourself credit for the things that you wouldn't normally put on a to-do list. It's giving yourself credit for ⁓ looking at all of the things that you did do, essentially. ⁓ And the more that you practice giving yourself credit, even when there's stuff that you didn't get to, or even when that chunk of time didn't feel good because you didn't use it the way you wanted to.
The more that you practice that kindness with yourself, the easier it is for your brain to do that moving forward. And then your giant chunks of free time are going to feel better. Like this is a practice, it takes repetition. ⁓ So this was just a few strategies that you can try when you have a giant chunk of free time. ⁓ This is something that we talk about all the time in Stuck to Started. ⁓
Many, many, many people struggle with this. So if you feel alone with this, please know that you're not. ⁓ So I will provide you with a little challenge as we wrap up this episode together today. I want you to think about your week ⁓ or look at your calendar for when you have a big chunk of free time coming up. So it might be, you know, ⁓
a chunk of free time. might be, you know, every Thursday, you have this huge chunk of free time between meetings, or it might be free time after work. It could be the weekend. ⁓ Although I didn't talk about self-care this episode, I promise I will do a self-care episode. ⁓ But I want you to think about a time that is coming up that you have a big chunk of free time. And I want you to...
mix and match, pick a couple of different strategies from this podcast episode that you want to try. And I know I rapid fired these out. ⁓ And if you're not necessarily soaking them up because you're multitasking this podcast with walking the dog or driving or washing dishes, whatever it is you're doing, if you're a visual person or if you want a written summary of what I talked about in this episode today,
There is a blog version on my website. I will put the link in the show notes. ⁓ I create a blog summary. It's kind of like a skimmable version of the main takeaways of each episode, each solo episode that I do. And those live on my website. So you can read a summary of what I talked about today on the blog. Thank you so much for being here and take good care.
