DMing a Campaign with ADHD: The Trials and Tribulations

Since DMing on a regular basis is a hobby that requires a substantial amount of focus, organization, and consistency as you plan each session, in my experience, it does not get along with ADHD. So I just wanted to vent a bit about some of the ways this has sucked for me and what I've learned from each challenge. Hopefully some of you fellow ADHDDMs can relate to this struggle or benefit from any of the tips that have personally helped me. Most of my thoughts revolve around DMing a homebrew adventure or campaign.

TIP #1: PLAN "EPISODES" WITH END POINTS
As much as ambitious DMs get excited to run an epic, ongoing saga of a campaign storyline, I have found it far better to plan more episodic, self-contained storylines. This doesn't mean you can't have a long-term plan for a more detailed storyline or overarching villain further down the line. However, if you don't have "end points" spread throughout your campaign, you might succumb to what I call "cliffhanger anxiety". I first experienced this when I ran Curse of Strahd (Hot take: I find CoS cool but far too long.) and continually felt guilty for taking any substantial breaks from DMing. I kept thinking "Fuck, I can't stop now because the party's still waiting to finish this or that."

My solution to this problem is now to plan episodically. I consider an "episode" of a campaign to be an adventure with a beginning, middle, and end that the players can complete in roughly 3-5 sessions. By the end of each episode, the party will have hopefully either defeated a big baddy or resolved some major problem. This accomplishes the following things...

A) It allows the players to feel like they're regularly accomplishing important things instead of waiting to accomplish something at the very end of the campaign.

B) It creates "end points" where I can take time to recharge from DMing without feeling like I've left the party unsatisfied.

TIP #2: IF POSSIBLE, PLAN ONE SESSION AHEAD
I specify to do this "if possible" because everyone's schedules and energy levels are different, but ideally I find it best to have session 1 and 2 (or at least a rough draft of it) planned out before I even run session 1. The reason I prefer this is because I find having to scramble to come up with a session entirely from scratch each week to be a significant source of anxiety, especially as a serial procrastinator. This is why I've tried to train myself to plan at least a bullet point outline or overview of what the session after next session will be so I don't pass the whole buck down to future me.

Alternatively, it may also be beneficial to just take as much time as you need to plan the details of the whole episode out from start to finish. This might seem daunting, but the advantage is that you'll actually be able to just play the game when the adventure starts without worrying about anything else. The downside of this if you're a procrastinator is that it might become one of those "too big to start" tasks that you put off so beware of that risk.

TIP #3: DON'T TRY TO ACCOUNT FOR EVERYTHING
Initially, I found myself trying to plan a fantasy sandbox where I kept thinking "what if the players go this way or that way" and so I kept trying to put something interesting in every direction. As a result, I learned the following...

A) D&D IS NOT SKYRIM, YOU DO NOT NEED TO DO THIS. I learned this the hard way after burning out from trying to accomplish this. I essentially thought I needed to simulate a whole-ass open world RPG. You are a human, not a computer.

B) HAVING ONE PLOTLINE AND FOLLOWING IT IS NOT RAILROADING. It is completely fine to just tell the party "There's nothing of note." about something. I used to feel like this was a disappointing answer to give or that it would seem like I'm railroading if I couldn't think of something to add, but not every path leads to an evil wizard's dungeon. Sometimes, it just leads to some trees or a wheat field and the party can just turn around and find the shit that's actually important.

Hopefully this proves at least a little bit helpful to anyone dealing with similar issues to mine. I'd also love to hear any other thoughts or advice y'all have on this topic.

TL;DR: Break your storylines down into smaller, digestible pieces. Regularly wrap up cliffhangers so you can take guilt-free breaks from DMing. Don't try to simulate D&D like it's an open world video game. Odds are 99% that you will burn out.