How to Set and Achieve Goals with ADHD
If you're neurodiverse you may struggle with executive function like I do. This can make it difficult to set and achieve goals.
Executive function skills include
organization
planning
time management
task completion
the regulation of emotions and behaviors.
This impacts our ability to understand how we can achieve our goals and maintain progress towards them. Here are a few tips and tricks that help meand I hope it helps you too.
The first tip I have is to develop self awareness and you can do this in two ways.
Figure out what you value most. Ask yourself why you want to achieve these goals and if they align with your values. Make sure that they truly align with whats important to you.
Try and identify what holds you back. Carl Jung talked about a phenomenon called retrogressive restoration of the persona. It basically means that sometimes when we start to make progress, we feel some dissonance between this new version of you and the old version of you because we're not gonna magically become a different person, o it can cause us to retreat. We sink right back into our old beliefs and habits but being aware of this helps us to combat it. Sometimes I create an idealized version of myself, but it's not exactly realistic for every season of our lives. I might want to be at the peak of my athletic performance, but it's probably not going to happen right now. I have other things going on. It doesn't mean I'm going to drop fitness altogether but I do have limitations that I need to be aware of
Then its time to write things down. I use a Hobonichi planner and Notion, but you can use whatever tool you prefer. I know I'm not going to wake up one day and have achieved everything. I'm going to need to actually take action, but how would I even know what to do if I haven't thought about the specific steps.
Sometimes I like to start with the very first step and this can be as small as just opening a book or it can be writing your name at the top of a resume.
You can also work backwards. What is the very last thing that you need to do before you've actually achieved that goal. It could be hitting the send button to an email accepting the job offer of your dreams. Then I'd establish that I need to actually write the email.
These steps are going to need to be flexible because we don't always know exactly what steps it's going to take especially if we are at the very beginning.
Then we're going to need to use some prioritization tools.
We've got the Eisenhower matrix where tasks are divided into four different categories
There's the 80/20 rule which states that 80% of the results come from 20% of the effort. This keeps me from reorganizing my schedule and responding to emails all day when I should actually be doing the thing that moves the needle the most.
You can use an action priority matrix that categorizes them by their potential impact and the effort required.
After we've established all this, it's helpful to have some strategies to stay on track.
You can use visual aids such as calendars, to-do lists, choice boards, vision boards
We can lean into our impulsivity and pick something that we're drawn to Sometimes when we have rigid guidelines for how we're going to do something and structure it ahead of time it's likely that we might avoid those tasks when they come up. When giving yourself a list of different things that you can do when you're really not feeling super motivated for one thing or another can really help.
Thanks for reading!
