I’m sorry to be counterproductive here, so feel free to stop reading here if you don’t want an alternative, contrarian perspective.
I personally see no intellectual reason to “stay ahead”. The whole concept behind “staying ahead” or “catching up”, of goals and responsibilities, is pretty much bogus. What happens if you reach a goal? You don’t feel satisfied, you find a new goal. Repeat forever. You’re never “done”. Then you die.
I don’t know what exactly you’re trying to stay ahead of. But for me, life took an entirely new turn for the better when I stopped caring about responsibilities and goals. Of course, if you’re literally dying, that’s not quite possible. But most people have so many goals and responsibilities that are not at all, not even remotely, critical for anything. They’re self-imposed shackles.
Just for example (this may not apply to you). Who cares if there’s a pile of laundry? What does it actually impact? It’s the societal norm to not have a cloth pile lying around. Most of the time, for many people, the clothes in the clothes pile are not actually dirty. If you smell them, they smell neutral. No visible stains. Many people still have plenty clothes to wear when they do laundry. Why exactly do these clothes have to be washed now, why not when it becomes actually necessary? This is what my ADHD brain thinks. And I can just give in to it. I know that when I have nothing to wear anymore, it’ll be like “alright, now it’s urgent enough to actually do something”. It’s not as “nice” or “responsible” or “orderly” as other people do it, but it gets the job done. And there’s absolutely no stress, as long as you don’t care about what other people think. Everything just happens as it naturally would for me.
Idk, maybe I’m not making sense here. But “managing” my ADHD started going much better when I stopped managing it, and simply embraced goals and responsibilities not happening like they would for other people. Sure, I don’t get nearly “as much done” as other people… But will that really matter in the end?