Location-Based Reminders for ADHD: Nudges Where the Task Happens

The reminder said "pick up prescription" at 5 p.m. You were on the bus. You swiped it away, meaning to deal with it, and remembered again at 9:40 p.m. when the pharmacy was closed. The reminder was not wrong. It was in the wrong dimension. Location based reminders for ADHD fix this by firing where the task happens rather than when you guessed it might.

Most phones can trigger a reminder when you arrive at or leave a place. Almost nobody with ADHD uses the feature, partly because it is buried and partly because nobody has said which reminders are worth placing. This guide covers both, plus the battery, privacy and false-trigger problems that make people give up on it.

Clock reminders vs place reminders: when each works

A clock reminder assumes you will be in a position to act at that time. For appointments, buses and anything with a fixed start, that assumption holds. For errands, returns, messages and small purchases, it rarely does. The reminder fires, you cannot do the thing, and the act of dismissing it tells your brain the task is handled.

• Use the clock for things that must happen at a time: the lecture, the call, the bus, the oven.
• Use the place for things that can happen whenever you are there: buy, return, drop off, ask, grab, check.
• Use leaving a place for the things that get forgotten in the last thirty seconds: the charger at work, the library book on campus, the lunch container on the desk.
• Use arriving home for the handoff between outside and inside: keys in the bowl, bag unpacked, the thing that was in the car.

The two kinds of reminder are a team, not rivals. Time-based alarms still run the skeleton of the day, as the post on setting alarms for task reminders describes. Place reminders fill the gaps the clock cannot see.

Setting up arrival and departure triggers on a phone

The setup differs by platform, and on Android it depends on the phone maker. Here is the shape of it.

• iPhone. In the Reminders app, create a reminder, open its details and turn on Location. Choose Arriving or Leaving, search the address, and drag the circle to set the radius. You can also say it to Siri: "remind me to take out the recycling when I get home." Reminders needs Location Services set to Always for this to work in the background.
• Android. Samsung's built-in Reminder app and Google Keep both offer place-based reminders, and several task apps include them in paid tiers. The assistant's own reminder features have moved around in recent updates, so check what your phone supports before relying on it.
• Both. Save your regular places under plain names (Home, Work, Campus, Pharmacy, Mum and Dad) in your contacts or maps so you can set reminders by name rather than address.

Radius matters more than it looks. The default is usually around 100 to 200 metres. For leaving work, set it large enough that the reminder fires in the parking lot, not at the first traffic light. For a shop inside a plaza, set it small and drop the pin on the door you actually use. The answer on digital ADHD tools for time, reminders and focus covers how place reminders fit with the rest of the phone setup.

Six reminders worth placing: pharmacy, campus, gym, parents' house

A good place reminder names the action and the object, and fires at the one spot where both are possible. These six cover most of the forgetting that costs money, goodwill or a second trip.

1. Arriving at the pharmacy: "Pick up the prescription and ask when the next renewal is due." Add anything else that lives there: the bandages, the sunscreen, the thing you have bought three times because you forgot you had it.
2. Leaving campus: "Library book, charger, water bottle in the bag?" A departure trigger at the building you leave last.
3. Arriving at the gym: "Locker key on the wrist. Book the next class before you leave." The second sentence stops the gap between visits stretching to a month.
4. Arriving at your parents' house: "Return the casserole dish. Ask Dad about the insurance form." The things you promised last visit and would otherwise remember in the car on the way home.
5. Leaving work: "Laptop charger. Lunch container. Pharmacy is on the way." The last clause turns a leaving reminder into a routing instruction.
6. Arriving home: "Keys in the bowl. Bag to the launch pad. Lunch box in the sink." This one does the most work, and the last section explains why.

Keep the active list under ten. A reminder that fires at every grocery store, cafe and transit stop becomes noise within a week, and noise gets muted. Place reminders are for the handful of errands with a real cost when missed. The post on the cost of ADHD forgetfulness is a useful way to decide which ones those are.

Battery, privacy and the false-trigger problem

Three things make people turn place reminders off within a month. All three are manageable.

• Battery. Modern geofencing leans on cell towers and Wi-Fi rather than constant GPS, so a handful of reminders costs little. Dozens cost more. Prune to the ten that matter and delete one-off reminders once they fire. Low Power Mode can delay or suppress triggers; if a reminder was missed on a day the battery was red, that is probably why.
• Privacy. Background location is a real permission. The built-in reminder apps keep the geofence on the device; third-party apps may send location to a server, and their privacy policies say so. Prefer the built-in app, and review which apps hold the Always permission every few months.
• False triggers. A pharmacy beside a highway fires every time you drive past. Shrink the radius, move the pin to the far side of the building from the road, and use arriving rather than leaving for shops. Indoors, GPS drifts, so an arrival at a mall may fire late or at the wrong store. Drop the pin on the parking entrance instead.

If a reminder fires and you cannot act, do not dismiss it. Snooze it to the next arrival or change its place. Dismissing teaches the brain that these alerts are optional, and the whole system depends on them not being.

Pairing place reminders with a physical launch pad

The arriving-home reminder says "bag to the launch pad." For that to mean anything, the launch pad has to exist. It is one surface by the door, a tray, a shelf or a hook rail, where keys, wallet, transit card, charger and anything that leaves the house tomorrow all live. The reminder is the cue; the pad is the place the cue points to.

1. Pick the surface. It must be between the door and everything else, so you cross it on the way in and out.
2. Put a phone charger there. If the phone charges at the pad, the phone is at the pad, and so are you.
3. Tape a short list to it: keys, wallet, card, charger, lunch. Five items, no more.
4. On Sunday evening, put next week's returns on the pad: the library book, the casserole dish, the form. The leaving-home reminder then says "take what is on the pad," which is a single instruction instead of five.

The pad does not need to be tidy. It needs to be the only place those things are allowed to land. Combined with a leaving reminder at the door and an arriving reminder at the pharmacy, it closes the loop that time-based alarms leave open.

What to try this week

• Set two place reminders tonight: one arriving at the shop you most often leave empty-handed, one leaving the place you most often leave something behind.
• Clear a surface by the door and move the phone charger to it.
• After seven days, check which reminder fired falsely and fix its radius rather than deleting it.