I’ve been working on this episode for quite a while now and was worried it would never be finished, but I managed to salvage what was useful and polish it up quite a bit.
Today, we're discussing long-standing goals and how we can create systems that help us achieve them. I’m really interested in exploring this topic at length, so I expect this won’t be the only episode we have discussing systems.
In this episode, we'll explore the tools and strategies that make our ADHD work for us, not against us. I'll share some of my own experiences developing these systems. We’ll also examine how we create systems and what really goes into making them work the way we want them to.
I recently unearthed a bunch of old notepads from about a decade ago and found some of my old to-do and goal lists. While reading through them, I certainly felt embarrassed about what I wanted and felt was important enough to write down in my 20s, but there is also a lot of useful information in there.
It is a bit surprising to read through some of my old work and see stuff that is still reflected in my current thinking, but there is also a lot of stuff that no longer resonates with who I am. That makes a lot of sense in that I am a different person than I was in my 20s, and having kids has certainly realigned a number of my outlooks on life. I’m also quite amused by some of the solutions I journaled about with no reference to ADHD. I was diagnosed at that point, but I certainly didn’t have the knowledge about it that I do now. Live and learn.
But one of the things that has got my noodle going are the goals that I had 10 years ago and still have now. The things that I still want to follow through on.
This has got me thinking about how we keep up with those goals that we want for the long haul and how we keep these things on our radar. Because it’s one thing for me to have not followed through on my goal of learning Japanese (mainly for being able to watch anime, I believe), but I also had goals around exercise and keeping my house relatively clean—okay, so my old list said “super clean house” that’s no longer a goal because I understand how unrealistic that is, but the idea still lives on in spirit of not being a complete disorganized mess.
I can’t help but think that it would have been fantastic if I had been able to do the work to follow through with those intentions. Yet, here I sit ten years later, thinking about those same problems. Now, first off, I want to be clear that these are not insignificant issues to deal with. I don’t want to make the mistake of looking back with rose-colored glasses and assuming that I didn’t follow through just because I was lazy. I mean I know it wasn’t laziness because these are things that I want to do but have a huge amount of trouble following through on because of executive dysfunction. As I mentioned earlier, while I was diagnosed at this time, I also was not implementing really any strategies to mitigate my ADHD struggles.
But now that I am implementing these strategies, it should be a simple thing to just follow through on my intentions, right? I wish (sigh).
I can’t help but wonder how things would have turned out if I had been able to stay consistent with some of these goals. But that’s a trap. I’m not trying to say we shouldn’t strive for some form of consistency (I mean, we do tend to be consistently inconsistent), but it’s only a step away from a judgemental look at our past that is entirely unhelpful. It’s a what-if scenario that only assumes positive outcomes. I might as well ask what my life would look like if everything went as I planned the first time out? Which, of course, also assumes that those first plans were good. And let’s be honest, I’ve had a lot of plans that, let’s just say, have been less than stellar.
I don’t want to say that these were bad goals to have. And in all likelihood, it would have been great if I could have followed through with at least part of my intentions for them. But I also can’t change the past, I can only learn from it and I think one of the most important lessons to take is looking at the systems I developed (or rather, didn’t develop) for following through with those goals.
So, let’s talk about systems for a little bit.
I have spent a lot of time wrestling with defining what a system is because, for example, take this definition from Wikipedia:
A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole.
While accurate, that is less than useful because it is a bit too abstract for me to really latch onto. And I think the definition part is really important here because if we want to work on building our own systems, we need to understand what exactly it is we’re doing. The first thing I want to mention here is that I’m mostly talking about productivity systems—what we do to try and get more done. Because, of course, the reason the above description isn’t terribly useful for us is that it’s talking about systems in general, and in regards to this episode, we are only going to be talking about the systems that are going to be helping manage our ADHD.
What I’ve come up with for now is a system is your tools and how you use them. It still feels a bit abstract but I think it’s workable.
So, let’s explore this idea. Let’s start by discussing tools. I know it’s clear that I love defining things, but it's easy to get lost unless we properly unpack these ideas.
Our tools are anything that we use to get stuff done. These include physical things like timers, calendars, and other gadgets that keep us organized, as well as ideas like time-block planning, journaling, or even accountability partners. You could even include things like meditation and exercise as tools that are part of your system.
We put together those tools to build our system. But more important is how we implement those tools. For example, it doesn’t matter how great my calendar is if I’m not filling it out or if I’m never checking it.
I feel like what I’m presenting is still too abstract, so let’s start with an example.
Recently, I got a summons for jury duty, and I wanted to make sure that I didn’t accidentally miss my summons date. While writing this, I got a bit curious about what would happen if I ended up missing it. It sounds like I’d just get another summons, and if I miss that one, then I’d get a fine of some kind. And while that isn’t all that bad, I’d like to avoid all that, and I’d hate to find out I was wrong. So, I had to set up some systems to make sure that I was ready for the summons. The first thing is that I have to make sure that this gets on my calendar, and really, this is the only step that is going to be critical to get done because if something doesn’t exist on my calendar, it basically doesn't exist at all (at least as far as my brain is concerned).
The next part for me, though, is that I wanted to ensure that I know this is coming up when the date actually approaches because while I will eventually see it on my calendar, I’d prefer to see it at least a bit before the day I’m supposed to be going. This is as easy as just adding a few reminder notifications on my Google calendar - I set it to give me a notification 10 days before, 4 days before, and one day before. The reason that I want to have these reminders is that this task is so outside of my usual mental planning horizon. While I do try to mostly work from my calendar, there are also times when I just push things around in my head ad hoc. I’ll be mentally planning to do something on Friday without first actually checking if I have the time because I usually don’t have anything specific I do on Friday afternoons. And it probably wouldn’t be anything particularly important, but I might be thinking, oh, I can skip doing this thing on Wednesday because I’ll have time on Friday to finish it. Then come Friday, and oh, yeah, now I have to crunch on finishing this thing because I didn't realize what was actually on my calendar - hence all the reminders to keep this fresh in my brain.
Of course, it would be better if I checked my calendar more often before deciding to move things around, but I also know I won’t always do that. And that’s, I think, a key piece that needs to be kept in mind while we’re talking about this subject. Often, stuff is falling off our radar because we’re not using our tools in the best ways. And I’m not trying to shame us by saying that or even saying that we should just use our tools in the right ways.
I’m saying it because if we’re not using a tool in a particular way, it means we might have to do things differently to ensure that we’re still getting the benefit of using the tool. As I pointed out with the calendar, I need to have those reminders in there so that I can try and keep things fresh in my brain,
What I’m trying to say is that when we’re planning out our systems and how we want to keep on top of things we have to keep our plans in the realm of reality. While it’s easy for me to think about what I should be doing and how I should be using my tools, what’s more important is how I actually use.
For me I know that I have a propensity for doing quick planning in my head and then moving things around in my calendar later. I know this is not the best way to do things, but nonetheless, it is how I tend to do things. This means I should be planning with these tendencies in mind. Pretending I’m going to be on top of checking my calendar when moving things is how I mess up - but if I use a messy system that works, well, that’s a lot better.
It can be hard to embrace this kind of thinking because it actively fights against our inner perfectionists. In my head, I want to be doing things in the most efficient way possible. But the reality with my ADHD is that I’m rarely going to be doing things in the most efficient way; in fact, more often than not, I’m going to be fairly inefficient.
Now at the same time, I’m also not trying to advocate for just throwing our hands in the air and saying screw it. Because clearly, that’s not what I’m doing with my calendar example; instead, I’m finding workarounds that help work with my brain.
Ultimately, we want our systems to be simple and easy to use. They need to give us structure while being flexible enough that when pushed, they bend but don’t completely break down. The more complexity we put into our systems, the more points of failure we create. Of course, it’s also important to remember that being a person is also kind of complex in itself, so we are never going to have a perfect set of systems.
It’s also important that we’re looking at what our systems are trying to solve because that is really what we’re after - putting forth a series of tools to make something happen. We need to be clear on exactly what we want out of our systems because it can become easy for them to get bogged down in things that may appear important but really don’t need to be part of the process. We always have so many “shoulds” in our lives that when we slow down and examine, we realize that they don’t need to happen or could happen differently.
For example, let’s take what I was talking about earlier: flexibility. It can feel like the goal when we’re developing these systems is perfection—keeping our house spotless, answering every single email, completing every task on our to-do lists. But we don’t have to do all of those things; in fact, we’re putting the system in place so that we don’t. By putting the system in place, you are creating a loop that will bring you back to that thing when it needs to get done, and if it doesn’t get done the first time around, then maybe it’ll be in the second or third time.
We often get caught up in the fact that with our ADHD, we know that there are pieces that get left behind. I feel like I need to make my house spotless because I know how easily it can fall into complete chaos, and I don’t trust myself to not let that happen.
And that’s perhaps the most important thing that we can work on building into our systems: trust. But I’m not going to pretend that isn’t hard. We’ve all had times when our systems have failed us (or we’ve failed our systems), and something big has fallen through the cracks. Or when a system gets too unwieldy and we give up on it. That’s why I have those old to-do lists—they got too big and I decided I needed something simpler to keep me on track.
Trust is built through using a system consistently, and that means we need to make it as easy to use as we can make it.
As we look at implementing new systems, we need to understand that we’re only capable of so much change at a time. Looking back at those lists from 10 years ago, I can see that I could never follow through on those intentions because I was trying to do too much. I was trying to dive in head first and make all the changes simultaneously. I was trying to make up for lost time through intensity. And while that intensity may have worked in the short term, it also meant that I was never going to be able to keep up with those changes. It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing how I feel right now is how I will always feel. This is part of the hot-cold empathy gap that I’ve talked about in other episodes, where it’s hard for us to predict how we’ll act in the future, especially when we’re in a different emotional state.
So it’s incredibly important that we’re thinking about how we’re lowering that bar of activation when we’re thinking about our systems. I know I have to have a system that will at least function when I’m not at my best because, honestly, being not at my best feels like that’s actually most of the time. But often, when I’m planning and building the systems, I’m in a fairly good state, so I can’t rely on myself being in that state if that’s the only way I will get through my system. I think this is why I often have so much trouble with email - I haven’t yet built a system that lets me easily deal with it when I’m struggling, and then because email builds up, even when I’m doing pretty well, it has now become overwhelming.
It’s also important to realize that our systems will always be imperfect and need maintenance. Just because we set up a system one way does not mean that it is always going to be the best way for it to function. We can always work on figuring out what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to get a little tweaking.
Especially important is the understanding that we are never going to build a system that solves our ADHD. I see this trap in myself all the time; perhaps if I just got organized enough, if I just had the right number of reminders, and if I knew exactly which steps I should always be taking, my ADHD wouldn’t hold me back. This is a refrain I try to add to a lot of the podcasts because I don’t want people trying to build the wrong thing, and if we think we can build a system that “fixes” our ADHD, then we’re going to have a bad time.
Systems can be incredible at keeping us on track, but we need to understand that they are just composites of our tools and how we want to implement those tools. By leveraging those tools and making them part of a bigger system of habits, we can greatly improve our ability to manage our ADHD. However, without building in time for maintenance, they will break down, and we’ll ultimately lose our trust in the system. This is an idea that I want to explore in more depth at some point, so expect some more episodes on this topic in the future.
This Episode's Top Tips
Plan with your natural habits in mind rather than striving for unrealistic perfection. Work on developing systems that you can rely on, even when you're not at your best.
Avoid overly complex systems that can create more points of failure. Remember that executive dysfunction affects our ability to follow through with our best intentions. By simplifying our systems, we can lower the bar for entry and make it easier to get started.
Understand that no system will be perfect, and it is important to adjust and maintain it as needed. No system is going to “fix” our ADHD, and that shouldn’t be our goal when building our systems.