ADHD coaching tools you can share with clients

The gap between sessions

Coaching works in the session. The question is what happens in the six days after it. A client leaves with three commitments, a plan and a clear head, and by Thursday the commitments are in a notebook they haven't opened, the plan has met a week of interruptions and the next session starts with fifteen minutes of reconstruction.

Tools don't fix that on their own. But the right one changes what the next session starts from: instead of "what happened?", it starts from what actually moved, which the coach can see because the client chose to share it.

Four jobs a tool must do

Judge any tool, including Humble, against these four. A tool that does one of them well is worth having; one that does none is a distraction.

1. Capture

A thought, an action or a commitment has to land somewhere in seconds, from wherever the client is: a browser, a phone, a meeting. ADHD working memory is the barrier here. The longer the gap between having a thought and recording it, the more thoughts are lost. Judge capture on friction: how many taps from thought to saved.

2. Visibility

The client needs to be able to see what they did this week without having kept a journal. Most clients under-remember what they've done and over-remember what they haven't, and that drives the shame spiral coaching spends so much time on. A tool that builds a record of completed tasks and attended meetings automatically gives the client, and you, the evidence.

3. Plan-keeping

The actions agreed in a session need to live where the client already looks each day, not in a document the coach emails afterwards. If the client's daily view is their calendar, the actions go there. If it's a task list, they go there. The test is whether the plan is visible without the client remembering to look for it.

4. Shared accountability, without watching

This is where most tools go wrong. Accountability helps; surveillance doesn't. A client who knows their coach can see everything stops using the tool for anything real. The tool has to let the client share item by item, keep everything else private and revoke sharing at any time. The coach sees only what's shared and can comment on it. Nothing else is visible by default.

What to avoid

• Anything that reports on the client. Activity dashboards, time-tracking, screenshots. They break trust and get abandoned. The client should be the one showing you their week, not the tool.
• Too many tools. One for capture, one for tasks, one for notes and one for habits is four places to check and four to forget. Fewer places to look is the point.
• Tools that need daily maintenance to stay true. If the task list is only accurate when the client spends twenty minutes a day grooming it, it will be wrong within a fortnight.
• Gamification as the main mechanism. Streaks and points work for some clients for some weeks. When the streak breaks, the tool often goes with it.

Set it up in the session

A tool introduced by link after the session has a poor survival rate. A tool set up live, with the client doing the clicking, has a good one. The set-up doesn't need a separate appointment; it fits into a standard session.

1. Start from a real week. Open the client's actual calendar and actual task list, not a demo. Connect the calendar so the tool already knows what their days look like.
2. Move the session's actions in. The three commitments from today's conversation go into the tool, with dates, before the session ends. That's the plan-keeping job, done.
3. Agree what's shared. Ask the client which of those actions they'd like you to be able to see. Some clients share everything; many share the two that matter. Either is fine. Decide together, and remind them they can change it.
4. Set one capture habit. One place a thought goes when it arrives. On the phone, in the browser, wherever the client actually is when thoughts arrive.
5. Check next session what moved. Open the shared view together. What got done, what didn't and what the tool showed the client that they'd have forgotten. That conversation is the tool earning its place.

Our session workflow page runs through this in more detail, with a worked example of what the coach sees and what the client sees.

Funding coaching and tools together

Where the client is in work and in England, Scotland or Wales, Access to Work is usually the route. Workplace strategy coaching for ADHD is one of the scheme's most common awards, funded as a block of sessions. Organising software goes on the same award, in the equipment and software category, and a workplace needs assessment usually recommends the two together for the reason this guide keeps returning to: the coaching builds the habit and the software is where it lives between sessions.

The client applies; an assessor recommends; DWP awards; the coach and the software are paid for or reimbursed. A diagnosis isn't required. The full picture, including what employers contribute, is in Can Access to Work fund software?.

A week between sessions

What the four jobs look like in practice, for a client who left Tuesday's session with three actions: send the delayed report, book the OT appointment, and try starting the day with ten minutes of planning.

The point isn't that everything got done. It's that the session started from what actually happened, the client saw two wins they'd otherwise have discounted, and the overdue item was a fact to work on rather than a confession.

Where Humble fits

Humble is built around the four jobs. Capture from the browser, the phone or Slack; a timeline that fills itself from tasks completed and meetings attended; session actions that live where the client's day already is; and sharing that is the client's choice, item by item, with the coach seeing only what's shared. Everything is private by default.

A coach needs only a free account to view and comment on shared items; the client's plan is £8 a month or £72 a year, fundable through Access to Work. The coaches page has the detail and the session workflow shows the shared timeline with a worked example.