How to Find Reliable ADHD Apps (and Spot the Red Flags)

The app gold rush targeting ADHD adults

Hello, hello. This is Danielle with ND OutLoud, and we’re here talking about apps. Online apps for your phone, for your desktop, for your tablets, that are out there for ADHD and autism. There are so, so, so many of them right now. They are targeting us as a community. I saw one the other day, and I don’t remember who it was, and it made me so mad, because I’ve seen it a few times. It was targeting fat ADHD people, something around ADHD and eating disorders. I was like, are you kidding me? There are so many apps out there that are targeting us.

And it’s kind of interesting, because one of the apps, in the med tech world, which is mental health and medication help, is being sued. The CEO was just arrested. The two people at the very top were arrested for, basically, medical fraud, because they were prescribing stimulant medication and supposedly helping drug seekers. There were a lot of red flags to me when I read the thing. Done was the app that is in trouble right now. A lot of influencers were promoting it, and now we’re watching all those influencers back off. And some other med tech companies are kind of celebrating the fact that Done is getting in trouble for all of this.

Drug tests, contracts, and being treated like a drug seeker

But as an ADHDer who has been treated like a drug-seeking individual, even though I just need my medication to make me able to function as an adult, I wonder if they actually were doing something wrong, or if they were just treating us like humans instead of drug-seeking individuals. I don’t know, because I don’t use Done. But I know that even with my private health care here in the state of Oklahoma, right after Covid, they made us take a drug test before they would prescribe stimulant medication. And you had to sign this big contract that said you weren’t going to abuse it. It was the exact same contract that they give to people that have opioid addictions, or a history of one, which I’ve never had. Any kind of drug abuse, never. And it was really, really triggering.

So I’m waiting to see, obviously I don’t know, I’ve never used Done myself, but I’m still waiting to see if it comes out that they were just treating us like a human population. Because Done, from what I’ve heard, really treated our population well. So I’m really hoping it’s just a competitor being nasty.

Well, and you just never know until things get down to the nitty-gritty and get investigated. But it’s sad. If they were doing something wrong, they have set the ADHD medical treatment community back a lot. And if they weren’t doing anything wrong, and they were just getting scrutinized because they were helping so many people, well, that in and of itself indicates a very large problem with ADHD health care. So there are problems either way.

It’s really frustrating, because for those of us who are prescribed stimulant medication, it’s going to be harder to get, when there was already a shortage to begin with. There’s a shortage of doctors willing to prescribe it in the first place. We have so many issues with getting our medication as a community. Executive dysfunction, making the doctor’s appointment, remembering to make the appointment for the refill, because you can’t just do a normal refill on a stimulant. All of the things that make it so difficult for us as ADHDers as part of normal life. And now we’re maybe adding more levels of complication, because whether it’s true or not, this is going to change how they prescribe and how we get access to the health care that we need. It’s so freaking frustrating.

“We can heal your ADHD” apps and AI bots as gatekeepers

Then you’ve got other apps. You’ve got all of these planning apps that say they can solve your ADHD. I love that. “We can heal your ADHD,” by planning app. Right? Or habit building apps. Now, we have partnered with Propel, which is a learning app that helps rewire the brain for better function and focus and less anxiety, but we’re being really, really careful who we partner with here, because our community is looked at as the cash cow right now for online apps.

Well, think about this. Not only do we have these mental health med tech areas, this huge niche with lots of people in it, you also have this huge influx of AI in this area of med tech. How does that change the face of health care? And are you okay, as a neurodivergent person, talking to a bot for a certain amount of time until it escalates to a person? Because I get frustrated calling a credit card company and having to speak to a bot until I get to a real person.

I hate bots. As a neurodivergent person, I have a hard enough time navigating and getting up the confidence, getting over the RSD and frustration of making the phone call to the credit card company, to the internet company, to whoever. And then I have to deal with a bot first, where if I don’t say things in exactly the right order, I’m never going to get to a human. And now we’re seeing that in some ADHD apps. There are a couple of coaching apps that are using bots.

Now, we have gotten to work with a group of college kids who are making an AI app, and they have put so much effort and time into talking to experts. They have PhDs on their team. They have coaches they’ve talked to, and we’ve been testing it out and giving them advice on how our brains work, and they’re ADHD themselves. There are some out there that are trying to do the AI thing right and use it to our advantage. But there are so many that are just using it to take advantage, or to frustrate the hell out of us so we give up. I swear to you that the bots on some of those customer service lines are just there to frustrate you so you give up and don’t bother them.

I agree. I really think there are a lot of predatory practices for any consumer, but specifically geared toward neurodivergent consumers. Because if they make it hard enough to get to the boss level, to get to the end, there are a lot of us that will never get to that. It’s scary.

Paperwork designed to make you give up

We talk a lot about how, when people graduate high school, there’s not a lot of scaffolding at the next level. And we know that you can take your 504 or your IEP into college, into trade school, into whatever. My daughter’s 18, she’s in beauty school, a trade school, and we got the paperwork the other day. They tried to say that we didn’t disclose her disability, which I did, in the interview. So they gave us paperwork to fill out. It has to be filled out by a practitioner, and it is extremely intrusive. I read through it and I’m like, I’ll do whatever we need to do to get her accommodations, but this is problematic. And I think they set it up like this so people don’t fill it out.

That just makes me so mad. There are so many companies that are purposefully making things difficult just so they don’t have to deal with it, so that you’ll give up. And there are apps that are built like that too. Apps that draw you in with this really pretty thing, but look how much time you waste setting them up and getting them to work. And then you’re frustrated because it doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to.

Some of them are super customizable, and I really do love that, but it is a black hole for anyone that’s neurodivergent, because we will get stuck in the minutiae. It’s not a problem with the app per se, it’s just the way it’s set up. You spend a lot of time getting it set up before you can be productive.

How to vet an ADHD app before you pay for it

So how do we know what apps are safe for us to use, and what isn’t a waste of time? I remember Mint, the financial planning app, was for a while one of the best for my clients, and Mint just disappeared. Last January, all of my clients were freaking out because this app that actually worked really well for them just disappeared. And that’s an issue for an ADHDer. You get used to using something, and that transition and change, we don’t deal with it well. It’s really frustrating as an ADHDer to first find the thing to use, and then find your alternative when it disappears.

I think you can look to content creators to review and give you some guidance, because a lot of us have tried things, and a lot of us have tried things without any kind of promotional kickback. We’ve just tried things because we’re trying to survive. So if you have a content creator that you like, you can look at them, and really the whole neurodivergent social media space. Search “apps that are good for this” and tons of lists are going to come up.

But if you have an ADHD coach, a lot of times they can help you weed through all of that, because we have things that work for us. And we’re kind of a different kind of ADHD coach. We have neurodivergence ourselves, but we’ve also helped entrepreneurs, and we help teachers, and all of these things. So even though a certain app may not be my favorite, I can tell you, for all of my teacher clients, this is the one they use and really like. For my entrepreneur clients that do this, this is the one they really like. So don’t be afraid to ask. Ask. That’s really a big one.

Unfortunately, with the way TikTok is working, a lot of even the ADHD influencers you can’t necessarily trust, because they’re getting paid now to do these things. And I’ll apologize to Kelly, I know you listen to our podcast, I’m not talking about you, I swear. She does not suggest anything unless she uses it first, because she and I have had conversations about that. But I know for a fact there are a couple of influencers that have promoted things where the rest of the ADHD community looks at it and goes, are you kidding me? Why are you promoting this? This is terrible. So be really careful who you follow.

Ask your ADHD coach. Perfect example: we have a free area in our free community space where we talk about apps that we love as ADHDers. There are no kickbacks on any of the things anywhere, because we just find apps that we like. Like Habitica. That habit building app is amazing, I love it, and I use it two or three times a year. Did you hear me say that? I don’t use it all the time. I cycle around between habit apps for what works for me when I’m in certain moods. You’re going to hear that from most anybody who’s honest with you about using apps: we’re not using the same thing all the time. Why do we love this one, why do we switch around? You’ll get a really honest opinion.

I have thousands of apps on my phone that I’ve paid for myself and tested out because a client mentioned them, which is actually an addiction and a problem and I need to stop doing that, but that’s another story entirely. A lot of us get caught up in the shiny ball scenario. But if you want to save yourself some time, ask us. Ask the community at large. If you have your own social media, ask, because you probably follow a lot of neurodivergent people, and people will chime in in the comments. Even on some of the bigger accounts, where I said to be careful because they’re paid to promote, there are some really active chats where you can ask, “Hey, has anybody used this?” And being able to talk to somebody who’s actually tried it out and used it day to day for a little bit is really, really helpful. I even have apps I don’t love where clients use them happily, based on the exact things I told them I didn’t like, because those are things they would like.

Free trials, credit cards, and forgotten subscriptions

The other thing is, don’t buy immediately. If they expect you to put a credit card in immediately, don’t do it. I’m really leery about that, regardless of whether it’s a coaching app or a med health app. Everyone wants you to put in a credit card to hold your trial, but so many of us forget we have subscriptions. I need the free trial to be free. If it’s 7 days, if it’s 2 days, if it’s 30 days, whatever, I do not want to have to put my information in and get automatically charged if I go over the trial period. Because I will do it. I will go over it, because I will forget. If your product is good enough, I will come back. Have faith in your product. If it’s good and I stay engaged and I like it, great, I will use it. But if you make me put my credit card in, I will forget.

We forget about our subscriptions. As a coach, I actually send a message out to my clients about once every six weeks: have you checked your apps and made sure you like your current subscriptions? It’s something I remind my clients of often, because it’s so important.

The plainest, cheapest apps are usually the ones that work

So what apps are you finding that you do like? Well, social media is a blessing and a curse for neurodivergent people. There’s a wealth of information, but it’s very easy to rabbit hole, and unless you set a timer, I think the cons outweigh the pros. And I know that sounds like, what? But it’s true.

I’ve tried Trello. I’ve tried Asana. I’ve tried all the productivity apps. Some of them are so beautiful. I’ve tried Notion, I’ve had templates, everything. I get caught up in that. But I’m telling you, the ones that work the best are the most plain and the simplest, and they’re really the cheapest.

For me, my apps are pretty basic. I use an iPhone, so I use Siri, I use the Reminders app, I use the Notes app. I have my social media apps, obviously. Slack is one of my favorite apps for keeping in contact with my team members. And then Google, so I have a Google Calendar for everything that doesn’t go under Reminders. I try to keep it really simple. Trello is what we use for organizing as entrepreneurs and owning a business, but other than that, I try to keep it as simple as possible. What’s built into my phone. Why? Because I’m not going to change my phone brand ever, because everything works together. My phone has the same stuff as my laptop, as my tablet, as my desktop, so I don’t have to think about where things are. That right there is why I’m on Apple. And I use a Mac because I’m ADHD, I like the interconnectivity.

Whatever works for you, right? Whatever works for your brain. But there is a learning curve with Apple products, a big enough learning curve that I have Apple products and I don’t know all the cool things they do. And it’s hard to get tech support. That’s the thing: I need things to be easy. Tech support, user interface, all of the things. I need it to be simple. If I have to cancel something or sign up for something, I need it to be easy and clearly defined. Nobody has it clearly defined or easy, and that sucks.

And I think that’s a problem for a lot of us. We know we can’t rely on somebody else for help very often, because tech support, I don’t care whose tech support it is, and I was in IT for years, so hello, I was the problem, it was me, tech support sucks. We worked on Windows, we worked on Macs, I had to learn all the things, so for me it’s not that big of a deal. But there’s an app we use here that I cannot figure out for the life of me. It drives me insane. I’m a tech person and I can’t figure this app out, because it’s not intuitive, and I don’t have the patience to figure it out. That’s why I have somebody who will figure something out for me, or my husband. That’s part of figuring out what works for us: having another brain to learn from. Which comes back to everything we talk about around here. Community. Have a community you can rely on. Before you make that purchase, before you buy that thing, before you download that thing, ask somebody else.

Using AI to lower cognitive load, not to create for you

So, my favorite things that are out there right now. AI can be amazing. On our group call today, we were talking to some of the people in our community about using ChatGPT to help you with your moving packing list. Figure out how to create your travel packing list: what do I need to take on a cruise with me? Here are all of the tasks I need to do today, what order should I do them in, and what are the steps to doing them? ChatGPT is amazing for that.

So many people are using ChatGPT to write content, and there’s a whole bunch of shade out there, “you can tell it’s written by AI,” blah blah. But I’m just over here as a stressed out neurodivergent person going: I need a packing list for a 4 day vacation for a family of four, to the desert, to the beach, to wherever. And it will spit it out like nothing else. I need a to-do list, I’m getting ready to move from one apartment to the next, I need action steps. And it will spit it out. I’m over here using it for the concrete things, to make sure I don’t forget the steps. Because I can write content. I’m a creative person. What I need is something that does those baseline, cognitively expensive things, like the task list. If you just want me to sit around and create all day, I can do that, no problem.

I use it all the time. “Hey, these are all my tasks I have to do today. How do I get these done? I have eight hours and four phone calls at this time, this time, this time.” And it will actually give me the time slots and how long things should take. One time it even gave me a resource on how to do something I didn’t know how to do, because next to it in my own notes I had written “figure out how to do this,” and it gave me directions on how to do the thing. I was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing, because I didn’t have to spend the time, the executive functioning, the decision skills, and the energy to figure that out. Using ChatGPT to help you with your executive functioning is huge.

It’s the same as when you’re driving around lost, looking for something, and you turn the radio off so you can see better. That is us trying to lessen our cognitive load, just doing it unconsciously. We’re not having to listen and look at the same time, and it makes it easier to process the information we’re seeing. That’s what I’m using AI for: to lessen my cognitive load. I’m using it as a coping skill instead of a creation platform. I don’t have trouble creating. What I have trouble with is all of those little tasks that take up all my creative spoons, so that when it gets time to be creative, I don’t have anything left, because I’ve had to make five million decisions about whether to buy whole wheat pasta or whatever. It really does help to have something assist with those decisions.

So there are apps that are really amazing for us out there. And again, if you want to pick our brains, please ask questions under this podcast or video, however you’re watching this. We’re happy to answer what we use, why we use it, how we use it. But be careful about what you’re using. Go to your community before you spend the money. It is such an important part of making sure you have the support you need in a way that actually makes sense and isn’t going to be an impulse spend or a long-term financial burden, because you forgot about the thing, or it didn’t work for you, or it was never going to work for you in the first place, and then you had a lot of shame, so you put it in that little box and forgot about it.

Call out predatory practices, and celebrate the good ones

And here’s the thing. If you ever run into a company whose practices seem to be hidden, like you need to cancel something and you can’t find it, and you email them and the process is still hard to navigate, those are predatory practices, for a reason. If you sign up with our community and you can’t figure out where to go, and you email us, we’ll take care of it for you, or I’ll do a Zoom call with you and do it with you. We have Loom videos created for this stuff to make it as easy as possible. We don’t like predatory practices and we don’t want them.

If you find a company that you feel is predatory, start talking about it on social media. Talk about it. Let people like us know, so that we can talk about it and explore it, because things are not going to change unless we start talking about it. And supporting each other. The narrative needs to change. The predatory practices need to change. Because we’re impulsive spenders and we like shiny objects, companies have decided we are worth investing millions and millions of advertising dollars to target. If we don’t start speaking out against things like that, they’re going to continue to target us.

We were talking about Done at the beginning of this episode. We don’t know what the actual truth is, we’re all watching it very closely, but I really hope it doesn’t affect how we’re able to access the care that we do need. Obviously that’s something near and dear to me, and something I’m trying to change the message on by going back to school, because I’m sick of us being treated the way we’re treated.

So speak out about it. If you’re treated badly, if you’ve got something that’s predatory, if you’ve got something that’s a red flag. And again, if you’ve met one ADHD or neurodivergent person, you’ve met one. But if you struggle with it, there is somebody else out there that does too. It’s not just you, I promise. Please tell us. Please tell the world. Please tell the community, so that we can change the options out there to help us.

The only thing I ever got bad grades on in school was my excessive talking, and I truly feel that having conversations is how we change the narrative. If you don’t ever talk about it, it won’t get changed. So let us know if you find something predatory, or one you absolutely love that treated you amazingly. Oh yes, please tell me the amazing ones too. Like the social media scheduling tool we use, Repurpose.io. We paused for a while because we were forgetting to use it, and they stopped charging us while we were paused, and kept emailing to let us know we were paused. Their support has been amazing and helpful, almost instant. If you need social media scheduling for your business, they have been fantastic to us.

So tell us the good, the bad, and the ugly, so that we can change the narrative and celebrate the things that are amazing for us as a community. If you have any questions, reach out to us at ND OutLoud. You can find us everywhere, website, social, wherever. Just message us. We’re happy to help, and we’re happy to have a conversation with you. Have a good day, everyone.