My daughter Maddy is 21, has AuDHD, and is frankly one of the most capable humans I've ever met. She could book herself a flight to London, navigate the Tube solo, and find me at my hotel. But some daily-living routines that most of us run on autopilot still need real structure for her. After the rollercoaster of trying everything (IYKYK), we landed on printed 5x7 cards — her morning routine, emojis and all. Simple. Tactile. Sized for a human.
The cards were already in the printer. I didn't feel like switching the paper. So I printed a work doc on them instead.
That was it. That was the whole awakening.
Suddenly I had a quick, tactile doc I actually wanted to carry around and use. Not file somewhere and forget. The format changed my relationship to the content. I started printing everything that way.
Then I hit the roadmaps — systems-level, visual, text-heavy. The 5x7 card wasn't the move. Letter-size was cramped and miserable. I grabbed some 11x17, tried again, and could suddenly see the whole picture at once. No toggling. No mental assembly. Just — there it is.
I may have shed a tear. I'm not joking.
Turns out there's research behind why this works. Cognitive load theory says the wrong container creates friction before you've thought a single thought. Affordance theory says objects signal how they want to be used — a card says one thing, briefly, a big sheet says show me everything. Letter-size doesn't say anything. It's just... there. Like the 40-hour week. A compromise that outlived the problem it solved.
What Maddy keeps showing me — without trying to — is that neurodivergent people don't quietly tolerate formats that don't work. They find what actually works, or the gap becomes visible. What we call accommodation is usually just good design that the rest of us were too comfortable to question.
Try the big paper. Try the cards.
Notice what the format is doing to your thinking before you blame your focus.
And if you're asking these questions — you're already ahead.
— J.