What worked, what didn’t, and what is most important
I’m going to start with the end in mind, as they say: It works great if you take it with you.
If you’re pressed for time, and have already read the original ADHD EDC article I wrote in July of 2024, that’s the most important and valuable thing I can share with you:
Well, that and a quick apology for the click-baity title. Spoiler: I have not had supercharged productivity throughout the year.
But I havehad multiple experiences of my ADHD EDC having exactly what I needed when I needed it, even when that was unexpected.
Yes, there were still times that I forgot something — my wallet, my meds, my notebook. But here’s the thing: it was never because I’d forgotten to bring along the little satchel that holds my EDC.
No, it’s worse than that. It was almost always because I’d deliberately chosen to leave it behind. I believed that voice in my head that said “eh, this will just be a short trip — you don’t need to lug that whole bag around.”
Hence the lesson, soon to be a sticker: YOUR BRAIN IS LYING. TAKE IT WITH YOU.
Let’s talk about what “it” is, with that popular formula:
How it started:
Here’s what I had decided needed to be in my EDC a year ago:
iPhone 16 Pro Max
ESR MagSafe wallet/phone stand (with FindMy capacity so as not to get lost.
Small pill case with my afternoon meds, ibuprofen, and an “emergency” extra dose of my everyday meds.
Hardcover Baron Confidant dot-grid (about 5”x7” or A5)
A kind of ridiculous number of pens:
G7 rollerball
3-color ball point
Brush pen
2 Mechanical pencils
Elastic cord
Folding ruler
Key fob with car and office key.
Apple Watch battery charger
$10 cash
Now, this whole thing had started with a bunch of research, particularly into the YouTube world of EDCs (rabbit hole alert!).
if you’re using the acronym EDC you’re basically a low-key prepper, imagining worst-case scenarios and trying to mitigate them in the most efficient and minimalist way possible. - Me, in the above-linked article
One of the ways I differed from the EDC community, though, was intent. Many — not all, but a lot — of the EDC folks were less focused on actual needs and more, well, trying to be Batman.
“What’s that, your bike wheel is wobbly? Good thing I have these truing tools in my utility belt. Quick, Robin, the Bat-wrench!” (Image drawn by the Author in Concepts for iPad)
I didn’t want to be Batman. I just wanted to reduce the amount of emotional stress I gave myself by forgetting things, and also the stress it put on the people close to me, who often had to help me compensate for whatever item I’d forgotten.
I knew that if I tried to compensate for *everything * that could go wrong, I’d end up carrying around a huge duffel bag. I also recognized that the more things I had in my ADHD EDC, the more difficult it would be to maintain and the more likely something would be misplaced.
That list up there was what I thought was a “bare-bones” EDC. Unfortunately I was making a different mistake: not realizing the difference between realistic needs and aspirational needs.
Pack for your brain, not your mask.
I know, I know…when you’re setting up your kit, it’s really tempting to think that it’s an “opportunity for growth”, as they say. You can pack the things that you’ve been telling yourself you’re going to do, or you ought to do, like drawing (notebooks! Pens!) or meditating (incense! Bells) or the like.
Aside from drawing, I’ve tried carrying along a deck of cards, a large coin, calligraphy pens, classic literature paperbacks, cigar paraphernalia, dice, watercolor paints, art cards, and more.
None of it stuck. None of it actually turned into a habit, or a change, because I was putting that burden on the EDC. I thought if I put it in there, it would change what I did.
Resist that temptation. The EDC is not for what you want; it’s for what you do.**
If your ADHD EDC were an animal, it would be a service animal. Yes, they can be cute and adorable, but they are there for a purpose, and that’s why people are discouraged from petting them and playing with them. They have a job to do, and it’s a job they’ve spent months training for.
Likewise, a useful ADHD EDC will be the result of months of testing, replacing, and optimizing for one specific purpose: to make the world you live every day — the actual world — fit your gorgeous hot mess of a brain.*
How it’s going:
The gear you see in the top picture is the current incarnation of my ADHD EDC.
The biggest thing that you’ll see is still here is the Nutsac Speed Sling (non-affiliate link). I’ve tried many, many other bags over the year since I started, and I keep coming back to this one. It just works.
Here’s what’s still in there from before:
iPhone 15 Pro Max
ESR MagSafe wallet/phone stand (now with an added elastic band and bobby pin hack to make it carry more cards and bills.
Small pill case with my afternoon meds, ibuprofen, and an “emergency” extra dose of my everyday meds.
Key fob with car and office key — more on this later.
$10 cash
Yep. That’s the sum total of everything I got right the first time. That’s why I’m creating a process that hopefully will enable to you do it in a matter of weeks, rather than a year.
Here’s what I ended up replacing:
Wall-pluggable battery pack wth built-in lightning & USB-C cables: I really don’t have any need for a lightning cable any more, and my long-distance partner did, so I got a slimmer one (battery pack, not LDP) with only a USB-C cable. Both of us are happier!
Hardcover Baron Confidant dot-grid (about 5”x7” or A5): I love this book! But it’s just a little too big, and I don’t really need a big notebook. I’ve replaced it with a generic (aka “covered with my stickers”) 5”x6” dot-grid notebook that’s less than 1/4” thick.
The ridiculous number of pens were all replaced with a “Dr. Grip” 4-in-one + pen. It has black, red, green, and blue inks, plus a .05mm pencil and eraser built in. If Dr. Who carried a pen instead of a screwdriver, it would be this one.
Here’s what I eliminated, because I never found them actually useful or necessary:
Elastic cord
Folding ruler
Sketchbook
Apple Watch battery charger (to be fair, this is because I upgraded to an Apple Watch Ultra specifically because it didn’t need to be charged every night).
And finally, here’s what I added, and why:
A roll of Washi tape — because I have found that I enjoy saving ephemeralia (sic) like parking receipts, cigar bands, etc and pasting them in my notebook, or saving them for collage projects.
A tiny craft knife — to help with the above, as well as opening packages, cutting Gordian knots, and in general having the convenience of a blade without the trappings of fragile masculinity.
A small thumb drive (with at least a gigabyte of storage) with a USB-C adapter. Aside from general usability for work, this is particularly handy for transferring files from my iPad to the PCs at the Bodgery makerspace where I do my 3d printing, vinyl cutting, etc.
An eyeglasses cleaning cloth - because one of the strange little sensitivities I’ve noticed with my brain is that the more smudged my glasses are, the more stressed I feel. Carrying my eyeglass cloth is literally mental self care.
There’s another kind of particular sensitivity I have, which is a nice segue to what turned out to be a bigger part of my EDC than I expected:
What’s with that key ring?
If you are still reading this article, odds are you have at some point or another experimented with various key chain solutions. From the school custodians industrial ring-on-a-retractable-cable hanging on a belt to the ultra minimalist Swiss-army-knife-key-chunk-o-steel, trying to meet that balance of convenient, secure, and (for my brain, at least) not easily lost or forgotten, the amount of money and time I’ve spent on keys has been ridiculous. While I’ve not quite done things as embarrassing as Penn Holderness (link provided at the end of the article), I’ve lost, locked in the car, left behind, or even destroyed my keys more than the average neurotypical, as my partners, parents, and children can attest.
I’ve come down to three basic principles that I strive for with my keys:
As few as possible: I have a code lock on my house, so I don’t need house keys. Unless I’m actually in my car, I try to leave my key on the hook next to the front door (this would preferably be “unless I am driving but I cleverly found out that our car is old enough that you can still lock your key in the car, and I would rather be my partner’s backup). Similarly, I learned through trial and error that I need to have my work office key and makerspace fob with me at all times. But while I have many other keys — gun safe, trigger locks, various other locks and boxes and such — I keep them in a separate key box, not on my person. Which brings me to the second point:
They have two places to live: on your body, or on the hook. The way to not lose your keys is to follow this rule. They are always one of two places: on your body, or on the hook (or tray or drawer or whatever you have) in your home. If you put them anywhere else, my dear ADHD friend, you are drastically increasing the odds of losing them. Ask me how I know.
Essentials, not hypotheticals: there are a lot * of cool key gadgets out there. Wrenches, thumb drives, fidgets, fun tags, little chochkes (sp?*) that you love. I have many of all those categories, and I do love them — but they don’t belong on my key ring (see rule 1). So I only have two non-key items on my key ring (and one is likely to be retired soon):
Mr. Green portable nail clippers (affiliate link): I’ll go more into why I need this later, but this is as close to perfectly designed piece of functional steel that I’ve ever seen.
Gerber “shard”: a favorite of EDCers everywhere, this is the one that may get deprecated, at least to the nutsac. It’s one of those tools that I can go for weeks or even months not using for anything, and then right when I’m about to take it off the ring it suddenly comes in handy for some need.
If I could, I’d make a little proximity alarm that made my keys scream “help! I’m not where I belong!” any time they weren’t within a foot of my body OR on the hook in my house (makes note for future maker project). Since I’m not that clever yet, I still struggle with remembering to put my keys where they belong (and that’s why my partner had to ride her bike in the rain to let me into our locked car where my key was sitting there smugly on the seat where I’d left it).
I’ve also erred on the side of “convenience” and made it too easy to access my keys, to the point where they have fallen off the keyring and come close to getting lost. Trying to change this by using a more sturdy carabiner clip or leather belt fob proved to be too far in the other direction, as they just got in the way, and often required two hands to actually clip/unclip (I know, you’d think a carabiner or clip would be one-handed, but not the ones I’ve tried.
My most recent iteration to solve this issue is very new, so take this as more of a hypothesis than a recommendation. It’s a combination of two products from the company Nite Ize (I’m not sponsored, but these will be affiliate links):
magnetic key fob
Lockable mini carabiners.
My main concern likely is similar to yours: magnets? But it’s magnets combined with a mechanical catch mechanism, and the ad for it showed it lifting about 20lbs, so I believe it will be safe enough. Most importantly for me, I can take my keys off one-handed, leaving my other free for fending off assassins or carrying coffee or whatnot.
And the little lockable carabiners mean that it’s easy to take on and off keys as my needs may change, but they remain secure and (more importantly) are finished with a holographic anodization that just makes them look cyberpunky.
The Right ADHD EDC for you
You’ll know that you have the right gear for your life when, for a few weeks or even months in a row, things you add remain unused, and things you try to leave out (always be minimizing!) you find yourself needing it.
Unfortunately, you’ll probably find you need it at a very inconvenient time. Sorry. It’s part of the process.
And it needs to be an emotionless process, divorced from your ego.
For example, notice the nail clippers? Seems kind of a weird thing to need every day, but I get hangnails easily, and also have a strange sensitivity to my own fingernails being too long. The irritation and sometime pain of both can cast a shadow over anything else I’m doing, from cuddling with my partner to presenting to the Board, but having a simple, convenient, and reliable set of nail clippers handy makes everything just that much better.
I’ve tried leaving them home. Surely I don’t need them? It’s just vanity? I ought to be able to just wait til I get home to clip my nails…
That’s the trap. “Ought”. It’s right up there with “should” and “artificial intelligence” in the list of words that should be removed from your vocabulary.***
This is your EDC. It is not performative, it is not vain, it has no feelings. Carry what you need.
EDC don’t care.
* Not the other way around, mind you.
** That being said, it turns out there is a simple way to change a habit, but it involves taking away what you already do, not adding in something else. That’s a subject for another article.
*** As a former computational linguist - turned conceptual artist pointed out to me, it’s an LLM, dammit. Or “synthetic text.” It’s not intelligent, nor are the words generates “artificial” — they are stolen from naturally-grown human brains that bothered to actually write them.
