What Are You Doing All This For?
Posted on December 12, 2024 by Lucy Adams BSEd MS PCC, One of Thousands of ADD ADHD Coaches on Noomii.
Do you spend each day checking off tasks without understanding how your activity is moving you forward? This article explores the value of planning.
Today, a client shared with me that she has difficulty planning. She feels like she checks off things as they come and then addresses the next thing and then the next thing, but she doesn’t have a clear idea of what her activity is building toward. It’s like she’s in a continuous tetris game fitting each shape that drops into the amassed shapes at the bottom. Lines of squares disappear from the screen as more shapes fall into play. There’s no conception of a larger design to the activity. It leaves a person feeling exhausted and purposeless.
My client expressed that she desires to make long term plans. She wants goals and to identify how what she’s choosing to do today adds up to something even greater tomorrow. Her biggest challenge she said is the fear that she’ll make a plan or set a goal that she doesn’t accomplish. “What happens then?” she said. “What does that say about me?” She added, “What if I change my mind?” In my experience as a coach, I can say for certain she’s not alone in her limiting fears.
I had two responses to this. The first response was a question for her to reflect on: What is more important to you? Managing all the things as they come at you on the daily or choosing which tasks you want to manage day to day based on how the tasks contribute to a future goal? The second response I gave was an observation: Creating a goal defines the path you’re traveling on in the present. It does not mean you are locked into that path. In fact, it leaves space for you to intentionally deviate to an alternative path if that makes sense to you and your plan.
Planning actually increases flexibility versus dampening it. It keeps you from getting lost in all the things coming at you and enables you to see past them to the future you are actively creating. A plan makes it more likely that the things you want to happen in your life will come to fruition and less likely that you will look back and wonder what you did with your time.
The turn of a new year is a natural time to set goals and practice long term planning. There are a variety of strategies for doing this, and I worked with my client on building a planning framework that fits her brain and her lifestyle. Nonetheless, there’s nothing magical about starting a new year; thus, goal setting and long term planning can begin at any point in time. Any day can be the first day of a new year. Any point can be a turning point.
How are you approaching your New Year, whenever you decide that begins?
