Last updated: 1 November 2026
These are the strategies described in the Learn tab of Gentle Steps, each with the evidence tier the app gives it and the studies it cites. The text under each heading is the text the app shows, not a summary of it. The app's own introduction to the tab reads: “A few things that help with getting started, and what the research behind each one really says. Every source here has been checked — including the ones where the honest answer is that nobody has tested it properly yet.”
The app gives every strategy one of three labels, with this key:
Strong evidence
Naming exactly when and where you will start something makes you far more likely to actually do it than deciding you will "get round to it".
An if-then plan pairs a specific cue with a specific action: "When I have finished my coffee, I will put the washing on." You are not deciding whether to do the thing — you have already decided that. You are deciding what will remind you, so starting does not depend on remembering at the right moment.
A meta-analysis pooling 94 separate tests and over 8,000 people found a medium-to-large effect on whether people actually met their goals (d = 0.65). The effect showed up in getting started, in staying on track once started, and in stopping things that were not working. This research is on people in general, not specifically on people with ADHD or autistic people.
When you write a goal on the Today screen, tie each step to something that already happens in your day rather than to a time you hope to be free. The reminder gives you the cue; the plan gives you the action to attach to it.
Established
Something you can see or hear at the moment it matters carries the load that remembering otherwise has to.
Visual supports are anything that shows you what happens next without you having to hold it in mind. The kinds the research looked at include visual schedules: the day, or the steps of a task, laid out in order where you can see them. A timer you can see running down, or an alarm at the moment a thing needs doing, is this app’s version of the same idea.
The National Clearinghouse on Autism Evidence and Practice counted 65 studies of visual supports, published between 1990 and 2017, and judged them an evidence-based practice. It covers autistic children and young adults from birth to 22, across academic, self-help, behaviour, communication, social and vocational goals. The review is only about autism and stops at age 22, so it cannot say how well this works for adults over 22. It is a review of studies, not a meta-analysis or a randomised trial.
This is what the scheduled reminders in this app are for. A reminder that arrives when the thing needs doing is doing the remembering for you — that is the point of it, not a crutch.
Strong evidence
Adults already taking ADHD medication who also learned organisation and coping skills did better than those who did not.
Structured sessions teaching practical skills: organising and prioritising, reducing distraction, and noticing and changing the thoughts that make starting harder. It is taught as a set of skills to practise, not as talking therapy about how you feel.
A randomised controlled trial of 86 adults with ADHD who still had significant symptoms despite medication. After 12 weeks, 67% of the group who got cognitive behavioural therapy were rated as responding on the ADHD rating scale, against 33% of the group who got relaxation with educational support. The gains were still there at 12 months. Everyone in this trial was already on medication, so it does not tell you how the skills perform on their own.
Worth raising with a GP or an ADHD service — this is a course of treatment, not something an app delivers.
Established
Being taught and prompted through specific organisational habits works better than being told to be more organised.
Programmes that break organisation into concrete, teachable behaviours — where things go, how a task gets recorded, what to do with it once recorded — then cue and reward those behaviours until they stick, rather than leaving someone to invent a system.
A meta-analysis of organisational skills interventions for children and adolescents with ADHD found moderate improvements in organisational skills as rated by teachers, and large improvements as rated by parents. Improvements in inattention symptoms and academic performance were more modest. The studies are on children and adolescents, so the size of the effect for adults is not established here.
The habit this app is trying to build is a small one: everything you mean to do goes in one place, at a time, with a reminder attached. Being consistent about that one habit matters more than how the list is arranged.
Established
Exercise improves attention, working memory and flexible thinking in children and adolescents with ADHD — and the kind of exercise turns out to matter.
Physical activity as a support for executive function: the mental machinery that starts things, holds a plan in mind, and switches between tasks. Sports where you have to react to what other people are doing appear to help more than repetitive activity like running on a treadmill.
A network meta-analysis reviewed 59 studies and pooled 44 of them, covering 1,757 children and adolescents with ADHD. Open-skill activities — where you respond to a changing situation, like team sports — ranked highest for executive function overall. Different activities led on different components: open-skill for inhibitory control, closed-skill aerobic for working memory, and multi-component exercise for cognitive flexibility. This is children and adolescents; it was not tested on adults.
If you are stuck on starting something, a walk is not avoidance. Putting movement in the Plan tab as a daily repeat treats it as part of the day rather than a thing you get to if there is time.
Early days
Lots of people find it easier to start with someone else present. The research is only just beginning, and does not yet show that it works.
Doing a task while another person is there — in the room, on a video call, or even a recording. They are not helping with the task. Their presence is the whole thing.
Be careful with this one. The main study is a survey of 220 mostly neurodivergent people about how and why they body double, and it is descriptive: it records what people say they do and find useful. It did not test whether body doubling improves anything, because no such trial had been done. A small later study using EEG found no statistically significant difference between body doubling and working alone, though it noted a promising trend for people with ADHD who were not on medication. Many people report this helps them; that is not the same as it having been shown to work.
Worth trying precisely because the cost of trying is nothing. If it helps you, that is reason enough to keep doing it — you do not need a study to justify something that works for you and harms no one.
Early days
Living somewhere cluttered and being in a low mood travel together. Which one is pulling the other has not been established.
Small, finishable jobs on a regular rotation, rather than one enormous tidy-up once it has become unbearable. The aim is a place that works, not one that looks like a showroom. "Wipe the kitchen surfaces" is something you can be finished with; "clean the kitchen" is a project, and a project on a repeating schedule turns into a weekly reminder that you have failed again.
Sixty dual-income couples gave self-guided video tours of their own homes, and the language was scored for words about clutter and unfinished projects. Across the three weekdays that followed, the wives whose tours scored higher for a stressful home showed increasing depressed mood over the course of each day, and flatter daily cortisol slopes — a pattern associated with worse health outcomes. It held after accounting for marital satisfaction and neuroticism. Three things to keep hold of. The effect appeared in the wives and not in the husbands. The study is correlational, so it cannot say which way the causation runs, and being low makes tidying harder at least as readily as clutter lowers mood. And none of the sixty couples was selected for ADHD or for being autistic.
The preset week in this app is a rotation of small jobs already assigned to days, so the deciding is done before you get there. The reason to expect that to help is not this study — it is the implementation-intentions research at the top of this list. A job decided in advance is one you do not have to talk yourself into on the day.
If a source here is wrong, or does not say what the app says it does, email gentlestepsapp@gmail.com.
Gentle Steps is free on Android: Gentle Steps on Google Play.
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