Happy New Year! It’s the perfect time to explore the next in our series of highlighted executive functioning skills: planning.
The natural ability to plan requires having a brain that can think futuristically and track complex, multi-step tasks that must be worked on over time.
Life situations that require planning include vacations, applying for college or jobs, completing degree programs, saving money, and finishing projects for school, home or work. A deficit in this skill is one of the primary reasons adults seek out the Seeing My Time curriculum. They are having problems setting and achieving goals, missing deadlines and are often in trouble at work, home or both.
The Dreaded G-Word
I happen to love January. Starting a new year with possibilities for lots of successful executive functioning. My routine is to sit down with a blank piece of paper, draw a little picture of myself in the middle and then draw little icon images for different aspects of my life, under which I write yearly goals for each area. This kind of activity reflects my brain’s strengths in the executive functioning realm of planning.
While this type of future thinking is in my happy zone, many of my clients with executive function challenges want to flee when confronted with such a task. I know this because, in the final unit of my Seeing My Time course, I ask everyone to draw their future with goals they would like to accomplish.
The full force of this resistance hit home with one of my recent young adult clients. When asked to draw their future, they froze, quietly staring down at the blank page. Finally they said, “I have a problem with the “G” word.”
I paused and thought, “G word? What is the G word?” When nothing came up for me I asked, “Please explain the G word.”
“Goals,” they said. “I always fail at meeting goals. It goes back to 6th grade when I had a teacher who made us write SMART goals each week. When I didn’t make progress I had to stay inside at recess to work on them. I almost never made it to recess.” Ahh… Her story made me sad, because the whole concept of SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound, came from the adult business world. It was never intended for adolescents whose brains lack the executive function skills required for such a sophisticated strategy.
How to Set Goals for the New Year
Of course that incredibly bright and creative 6th-grader would fail in setting realistic goals and thus tragically concluded that they were incompetent at reaching any goal. Hearing their story made me wonder: how many other folks experienced major avoidance when asked to set goals because they were anticipating inevitable failure? I am guessing a lot.
If you are one of those people or know someone who is, remember that external tools can help support your brain when it comes to planning. But more importantly, you must move beyond your fear of setting goals. Here are my top 3 tips to do that.
1. Write Goals in Pencil
Pencil? Yes. Why? Because goals can, and often do, change over time. That is ok. That is normal. When you write a personal goal you are not chiseling it into stone. At this point in your goal-setting, you are writing about possibilities. You are planting a seed in your brain for possible future actions. I have NEVER accomplished all the goals I have written down on January 1st. I don’t beat myself up about it. Other things got in the way. Sometimes I just changed my mind about the value of that goal. Fine. I did other things instead.
2. Set Goals For Different Aspects of Your Life
Separating goals into categories helps to balance your life so you can see progress in multiple areas. Here are some examples:
- Home: Paint the bedroom
- Health and wellness: Annual checkup, exercise three times a week
- Social connections: Invite friends over for dinner four times this year
- Finances: Make an appointment with a financial planner, get help setting up a budget
- Family: Vacation plans for summer, visit my older sister
- Learning: Complete one online course to learn something interesting
- Work: Take a Saturday morning to clean out my office shelves
- Community involvement: Volunteer for neighborhood trash pickup
3. Keep Your List Short
Avoid the temptation to create a massive list of goals or New Year’s resolutions. Under your headings add just one or two things, keeping an eye on the big picture. If you have a truly big goal, like selling a home and moving into a new one or you know that you’ll be expending a lot of energy to help an ailing family member, or you are involved in a huge project at work, you will NOT have a lot of extra time to work on other projects no matter how much you want to do them. By keeping your list small, you are increasing the odds of success.
Remember, your brain is motivated by success, rather than failure. Setting achievable goals is critical. Success builds momentum to start and finish the next goal.
This month I encourage all of you to take some time to consider goals for the future year using the tips above.
Write them on a piece of paper that you post and reference throughout the year. If you use the Seeing My Time Adult Planner System, there is a page dedicated to recording annual goals. As you move through the year look back to those goals of January. You will be surprised to find that some will have already been completed, which is the magic of actually writing down a goal. (Happy brain!) Glancing at the remaining list, evaluate what is the next best thing to accomplish going forward. Your Happy Brain will be motivated to take the next step for the next goal.
Happy Planning!
PS: But wait, some of you are thinking: It’s easy to write a list. How do I actually “do” any of it? That, my friends, is another executive function: Prioritization. I will write about that one next month.
