Process Over Results: Hacking Your Consistency
Hey Team!
I've been thinking a lot about the idea that thinking about planning isn't the same thing as planning. When we're just thinking about planning, sure, we're imagining the steps, the obstacles, the finished results, but we often get stuck in the execution gap, where we think we know exactly what we need to do, but can't actually find a way of getting ourselves to do it.
We often view planning as this rigid, formal structure, a grand design that has to be perfect or it’s not worth doing. But really, planning is just a gift for our future selves. It’s about making decisions now so that the "future us," who is more than likely tired and overwhelmed, doesn’t have to.
So today, we’re going to look at the mechanics of how we build those plans. We’ll talk about the hierarchy of goals, strategies, and tactics, and how we can stop letting the "shoulds" dictate how we spend our limited cognitive energy.
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/284
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
Let's start with a little bit about why just thinking about planning isn't the same thing as planning. For one, thinking about a successful plan still releases dopamine as if we actually did that planning. This tricks our brain into feeling like the work is already done, which in turn decreases our actual motivation to do the hard, boring work of creating a real plan.
But when we're just thinking about planning, we're also relying entirely on our working memory because the plan isn't out there on paper or a screen. It's in our brain, and our brain has to keep all the pieces in there at once, creating cognitive overload. This can mean that we loop these thoughts over and over again without actually moving forward with what needs to happen next.
When we're actually planning, it's the physical act of offloading all that mental stimulation. It's the transition from thinking to deciding while still separating that decision from the act of doing it. We're moving the information from our internal working memory to something a little bit more stable—a piece of paper, an app, a whiteboard, or whatever tool we're using. It's a set of instructions for our future selves. But before we get into the "how," I think we need to think a little bit about the "why" we even want to do any planning, because planning is something that can be very difficult for those of us with ADHD. While we often enjoy the spontaneity of not having a plan, the choice to plan or not should be at least considered.
At its core, planning is about reducing cognitive load. While our brain is great at processing information, working memory can make it incredibly hard to hold all of that in place while working through the next steps. While planning itself is an executive function, the process of planning helps offload some of the future executive functions we might need, such as deciding what to do next on a project or figuring out how much time we have to do something.
Every choice we make, from what to eat to which emails to answer, takes up some of our cognitive energy. Planning helps our future selves by taking on these decisions ahead of time. It allows us to confront the reality of the limits of our 24-hour day and avoid some of the perils of time blindness. It can help break down some of those big, scary projects into tinier, smaller steps that provide more frequent wins.
And what it really does is it allows us to be more intentional with our time—to be intentional with what we're doing so that we can do the things that we actually want to do, rather than doing the things that we impulsively feel like we should do in the moment, but perhaps don't align with our long-term goals.
And I've been thinking about this a lot recently because I haven't been doing as much planning as I'd like. Part of that comes from a failure of planning to plan, but there are also other feelings of resistance to planning coming up—feelings that I'll be boxed in by a plan and forced to do things that I don't really want to do. Let's remember that I'm talking about creating a plan for myself here; I get to choose all the things that go into it. I could make a plan to eat ice cream for every meal of the day. I mean, I won't, but I could.
But what's really built up is what I "should" be doing in my plans and what my plans "should" encompass. This is one of the reasons that thinking about planning is not the same thing as planning in our heads. We tend to build things up in ways that don't always reflect reality. When we engage in planning, reality is perhaps the most important aspect that we should consider. As I said, I could make a plan to eat ice cream for every meal of the day, but in reality, that would make me feel terrible.
When we're talking about planning, there are a number of things that go into it. We have things like goals, strategies, and tactics. Actually, one of the earliest episodes I wrote for this podcast was titled "Goals, Strategies, and Tactics." It's important that we're able to distinguish between the three of these.
Goals are the easiest to understand. It's our target; it's what we want; it's what we are trying to accomplish. Strategy is a bit more ephemeral, but it is our general approach to how we want to reach our goal. And then our tactics are the specific physical actions we're using to execute our strategy. When we're creating a plan, we're using all three to create a cohesive idea of how we're getting from A to B. It creates a structured approach to getting things done.
Now, when we start planning, it's often easiest with some kind of goal in mind. I'm more partial to focusing on a process goal rather than an outcome-oriented goal. For example, instead of a goal of completing a marathon, I'd rather have something more along the lines of "spend six weeks going on practice runs at least twice a week." The difference being that with process-oriented goals, I'm actually in control. Come race day, there could be all sorts of complications that come up with completing the run. But with the process-oriented goal, I can basically control if I'm going on all those practice runs or not.
With ADHD, we're known for being consistently inconsistent, so focusing on the process and the things that we can control makes a lot more sense when we're setting our goals. One of the most widely used goal frameworks is SMART goals, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Basically, the idea is that when we're setting our goals, we want them to be specific so that we know exactly what we're doing. We want them to be measurable so that we can easily see if we are achieving them or not, and speaking of which, we want to make sure that they are achievable. We don't want to be setting goals that we can't follow through on because they are just beyond what we're realistically able to do. They also need to be relevant, meaning that they just need to align with our long-term, broader objectives or core values. And finally, we want them to have a clear deadline or timeframe so that we can have an urgency aspect for motivation.
I don't think we really need to be too specific in the framework, but these are kind of guidelines to use when setting goals so that we are setting goals that we can actually follow through on. But as we talked about earlier, our goal setting is only the top layer of the hierarchy here. Underneath that, we want to have our strategy: the vibe and feeling of how we're going to go about doing these goals.
Now, with SMART goals, we have a lot more to work with here because we figured out a lot of these other little pieces. So if we created a SMART goal of, say, "I want to write 200 words four days a week for three months," for our strategy, we might think about something along the lines of reducing the friction of getting started. Then that would have a layered-on piece of tactics, such as having an accountability buddy, joining a writing group, or using a specific writing playlist that you only listen to when working on writing.
And of course, we can layer on all sorts of other tactics to help us get where we want to be. We don't have to just do one thing. We should also be doing things like making sure our writing time is in our calendar and anything else that will help us along in the process.
Now, before we stray too far from goals, I also want to talk a little bit about the "why" behind your goal. Often when we set goals, it’s "this is what I want," and that makes sense. But we need to go underneath and ask, "Why do I want this thing or outcome?" Because often there are goals that we set that are not really things that we want, but feel like we should want.
And this goes back to what I was talking about in the beginning regarding resisting planning because they are things that we feel like we should do or things that we feel are expected of us. But when we set goals that we don't really want, it makes it incredibly hard for us to follow through on them—which, of course, makes sense because with our interest-based nervous system, we're not getting fired up to do things we're not interested in achieving.
And so these things easily fall by the wayside. But we also have a lot of stuff that we want that still falls by the wayside because we haven't tapped into that underlying piece of why it's so important for us. If we can connect with why we really want something, it can help activate our interest in it and our desire to see it through to completion.
I'm not saying achieving these goals won't still be hard, but it gives us a little bit more stick-to-it-iveness that we sorely need with ADHD. Really, the point I want to make with this episode is that while planning can feel overwhelming and scary, it doesn't have to be. Instead of focusing on all the things that planning "should" be, we can take some of that back and just think about the parts that we can do, because that's really all planning is. It's looking at some future desire we have and breaking it down into how we're going to get there. It doesn't have to be some grand design that has everything written out. It can be simple, and it should be something that we feel like we can follow through on.
Thanks for sticking with me all the way to the end. Before you go, though, let's do a quick rundown of today's top tips.
This Episode's Top Tips
That the "feel-good" sensation of visualizing a plan can actually be a trap. When we think about a successful outcome, our brain releases dopamine as if the task is already done, which in turn kills the motivation needed for the actual execution.
Instead of seeing a plan as a set of rules that box you in, try viewing it as a way to protect your long-term desires from your short-term impulses. We want to think of planning as a form of self-advocacy rather than as a punishment.
If a goal feels like an obligation rather than a genuine interest, it will likely fail. Digging into the "Why" behind a goal can help you find a hook that activates your interest, providing the "stick-to-it-iveness" required to see it through.