It's a New Year! Congrats on making it!

If you're anything like me, New Years brings reminders to make plans & goals... and reminders of the failed plans & goals of the past.

So, let's talk about setting better goals, goals that work for ADHD brains. A worksheet thread

What's a worksheet thread?

It's a thread you can work through as you read. There'll be explanations and questions to help you craft goals and narrow plans.

Follow along by responding to PROMPT tweets with your answers, or write down answers in a notebook of your own.

PROMPT: What is your New Year's Resolution?

At this point your resolution can be as big or small as you like. Your resolution can be made out of excitement, hope, fear, anger. Anything really.

Two of mine this year are 1) to get fitter and 2) to grow on TikTok.

New Year's Resolutions tend to be vague, broad, and open-ended. This is a major problem because vague goals don't lend themselves to actionable steps.

This is one of the main reasons that people struggle to accomplish goals. So in this step let's be more specific!

Look at your resolution and identify any words that are vague or could mean multiple things. For example, 'healthier,' 'faster,' 'better,' 'fitter,' etc.

Try to eliminate this vague language. Let's use my resolutions as a guide.

Both "grow on TikTok" and "get fitter" are fairly vague, so let's reword these.

1) Get 150 minutes exercise each week, and improve endurance or speed.

2) Gain followers on TikTok.

PROMPT: State your resolution in a more specific way

Another problem with vague resolutions is that they are hard to measure.

This makes it hard to notice when we complete our goals, but also makes it darn near impossible to see the progress we are making along the way.

To make goals and resolutions measurable we need to know two things: 1) Where are we starting from? 2) Where are we going?

Both of these will generally need to be put into numbers. If numbers aren't your thing, representing this in other ways is going to be important!

Once again, let's use one of my resolutions as a guide.

Resolution: Grow on TikTok
Specifically: Gain followers on TikTok

Starting point: Starting from 19 followers,
Goal point: Get to 1114 followers.

So, here's the step.

PROMPT 1) Identify where you're at right now. Where is your starting point?

PROMPT 2) Identify where you would like to be. What is success?

PROMPT 3) If numbers aren't your thing, how can you represent your progress in other ways?

ADHD'ers tend towards overly ambitious goals. These ambitious goals give us motivation and excitement to get us started on projects we may not do otherwise.

Instead of destroying that energy and excitement by making goals realistic, let's make mini-goals along the way!

When coming up with mini-goals, it's important to make sure that you aren't jumping into the deep end on your first day.

This is particularly important with life-style changes or exercise goals where big changes are hard (or dangerous) to implement.

Also, success builds on success. Starting with smaller goals and building towards larger ones builds momentum and makes continuing with the goal more likely.

So, start with small goals, get some easy successes, and build to harder, big goals :)

Using my TikTok goal as an example.

From 19 followers, gain 1,095 followers on TikTok.
Mini-goal 1) Gain 5 new followers.
Mini-goal 2) Gain 10 new followers.
Mini-goal 3) Gain 19 new followers.

As I accomplish these, I'll set new mini-goals to keep myself engaged and motivated

So, developing mini-goals offers us successes early on, and gives us a checkpoint to save our progress and eliminating the all-or-nothing of success/failure

PROMPT: Restate your resolution, and add 1 goal that feels far too tiny, and 1 that feels just a little too small

ADHD'ers thrive on novelty, interest, and challenge. Over the course of your resolutions, your goals may start to become boring.

Having multiple ways of measuring progress towards the same goal can help by offering novel strategies/views throughout the year.

EXTRA CREDIT: Find at least one other way to measure your resolution and define 2 mini-goals for that as well :)

By now, you should have a specific resolution that is measurable and has mini-goals attached. I guess it's time to start acting on it then... but how?

If you're anything like me, you may have an urge to sit down and plan out every step of this goal from now until next year.

It sounds like a worthy ambition, but it does more harm than good for ADHD'ers. Our timeblindness makes long-term actions particularly hard to plan

Instead, focus on actions that you can take within your time horizon--the amount of time you can easily see ahead.

Beyond your time horizon, plans generally feel fuzzy or feel as if they carry no weight. For many ADHD'ers our time horizon is anywhere between 5 days and 2 weeks

When picking how you're going to progress on your goals, keep your time horizon in mind and review your progress and next steps at least once in that time.

More importantly, try to celebrate at least one success (mini-goal) in that time! These successes motivate further action!

PROMPT 1) How far away is your time horizon?

PROMPT 2) With this time horizon in mind, what is your first step towards your goal? Your second?

PROMPT 3) Can you reach a mini-goal in this time? When will you review next?

For me, I know that my time horizon is generally 5-7 days. Any deadlines that I set beyond that point are purely aspirational; they don't carry much weight.

So my first action is to make at least one TikTok this week (perhaps on goal setting) and then another next week.

Great! We have a plan.

Well, not so fast! Remember how I said that ADHD'ers thrive on novelty, challenge, and excitement. That's where we are right now.

Everything is exciting and new. We're feeling motivated. Next week, executive dysfunction comes back from vacation

So, what external supports can you rely on to continue towards your goals? Are there people trying to accomplish similar things to work with? Are there deadlines that feel real? Find them!

PROMPT: What supports can you rely on when motivation fails?

A final note on rewards. Many people claim that good rewards make for accomplished goals.

For ADHD'ers, they are dead wrong. ADHD'ers have a fraught relationship with rewards. If we can access the reward without the work, we're gonna do that.

Instead of building in explicit extrinsic rewards, focus on celebrating progress (not perfection) along the way.

If you aren't sure how to do this, look to things you naturally get addicted to and identify the mechanics that hook you. Use these to hook yourself on your goals

Looking for the unrolled thread? Here it is: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11DWjm6hAHMIJq3PpUQDKjNNc-O62OXngSa-nNoG1YNM/edit?usp=sharing