ADHD Medication Tracking Part 1: Simple Table Tracker
If you are taking ADHD medication and are in the market for a tracking tool to help you understand how it’s working, it can be hard to know where to begin. There are lots of medication tracking tools available, and not all of them feel intuitive or helpful. When deciding which one one to use, it can be helpful to think about the types of features that work best for you (and your brain). When I decided to create this tracker, my hope was to create a tool that would be simple and easy to use. I tried to do this in a few ways:
Using a visual rating system with arrows (— ↑ ↓) instead of numbered scales
Built in cues for behaviour changes in addition to listing ADHD symptoms in the table
Including space to personalize the table so that it’s meaningful to your day-to-day life
Small reminders about how to make this tracker visible and easier to engage with.
Since this is a printable tracker, where you place it matters. Think about the places where you would naturally see it and use it. This might be next to your bed, on the bathroom mirror, or posting it near your workspace. It also never hurts to use digital reminders as backup in case you forget about the tracking.
Using a table to track your experience can be a great fit if you are very data driven or are someone who likes to organize information visually in categories. Also, if you’re confused about how to know if your medication is working, having a tool with built in cues can help you figure out what is actually changing.
It’s also worth noting: medication tracking isn’t forever. It’s most useful when you’re starting a new medication, adjusting a dose, or just trying to learn more about how a medication is working for you. If you tackle it from this perspective, you can gain some valuable insights without feeling like it’s another endless task.
That being said, filling out a table every day isn’t for everyone. If this kind of structured tracking doesn’t work for your brain but you still want to reflect on whether your meds are helping you, check out Part 2 of this series. In this post, we’ll explore a more flexible reflection-based approach to tracking that you can do at less frequent intervals.