Ep 91: Executive Function Skills Series #8 Planning & Prioritization

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In this game-changing episode of our executive function series, I share how to master planning and prioritization—and why the beautiful, color-coded plans you spend hours creating but never follow aren't serving your ADHD brain.

📌 Key Topics:

• My Anime Expo breakthrough: going from post-trip chaos to calm confidence
• Why the planning itself became my dopamine hit (and how to break that cycle)
• The difference between executive function that's broken vs. inconsistent
• How to zoom out and ask "what really matters this week?" when everything feels urgent
• Building unshakeable self-trust through consistent small wins
• Time awareness challenges and the game-changing power of tracking task times

🗣️ Featured Quote: "I used to make these beautiful color-coded plans that took hours to build, and then I wouldn't follow them. The planning itself was the dopamine hit. I wasn't being lazy—it was just executive function dysregulation."

💡 Strategy Breakdown:

• Focus on just ONE thing per day (not always the "most important"—just one you'd be proud to complete)
• Use "Main Intentions" vs. to-dos with built-in flexibility for unexpected things
• Master the "Would be nice if" section with intentional language that prevents overwhelm
• Break tasks down so small it's easier to do them than deal with how you'll feel if you don't
• Apply the "when-where-what" commitment strategy (91% success rate vs. 35% for good intentions alone)

🎯 Coming Up Next: This concludes our Executive Function Series—but it's just the beginning! Summer courses on Overcoming Overwhelm, Getting Things Done, and more are coming.

🔑 Key Takeaway: Your executive function skills aren't broken—they're just inconsistent. With the right system that works WITH your brain instead of against it, you can build planning and prioritization like a muscle. It takes practice, not perfection.

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#executivefunctions #adhd #planning #prioritization #adhdsupport #adhdstrategies #adhdcommunity #timemanagement #productivity #adhdplanner

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Transcript

All right welcome back guys. This is number eight in our executive function series. I've been bringing you these pretty much every other week. And today we are talking about planning and prioritization. Executive function skills are the brain's self-management system. They're what allows us to organize, plan, focus, remember things and follow through. But if you have ADHD, these skills aren't broken, they're just inconsistent.

When this skill needs work, you can find it challenging to make a plan or follow it once you make it. Prioritization might feel really challenging because everything seems equally important to you, or you just don't know where to even start. The good news is this is a skill that can be built with some simplification and some practice. Have you ever come back from a trip and felt totally overwhelmed, like you had forgotten how to adult when working with clients?

I noticed this happening again and again. They would go on a lovely vacation, or have some family time and be frazzled when they would try to get back to things. I got really curious about it what was happening. I used to do the same thing come back and not know what to do with myself. Last year we went to Anime Expo in LA for four days and normally when I get back from something like that, I'd feel lost.

Like I had to start over from scratch. But this time I woke up calm and content and it felt strange. I wasn't behind, I wasn't scrambling. I finally realized it was because I had a plan in place. By practicing a system of planning and prioritizing, I felt confident getting back to the flow of work in everyday life, and I just knew what to do.

I used to make these beautiful color coded plans that took hours to build, and then I wouldn't follow them. The planning itself was the dopamine hit. I wasn't being lazy, it was just executive function dysregulation. When everything feels urgent or interesting, it's hard to zoom out and ask what really matters this week? What will move the needle in my work or life?

That's your executive function doing big picture thinking. I like to pick just one thing that I must get done in a day. Not always the most important thing. Some days it's just something I've been putting off or something I would be really proud if I got it done. Don't overthink it. Imagine how much trust you would build in yourself if most days that thing you said that you would do got done.

So next on my list I have my main intentions. Notice that they are intentions not to do's. I intend to do them, but if my one thing takes extra time, I may or may not get them done, but I usually do get them done. There are only five lines for these. What I'm describing to you here I created in Canva.

So as I'm describing this to you later on, I'll tell you how to get this for yourself. So next we had the main intentions, right? And there's only five lines there. Sometimes I filled a five lines and sometimes I may only put three. I kind of like to leave myself some space, and I encourage my clients to do that, whether we're doing a list or calendaring.

If you leave yourself space, it leaves you the opportunity for things to pop up that were unexpected, did, or for you just to relax a little bit that day. So after the main intentions, I have five lines for my. It would be nice if section. Notice the wording though. It's very intentional. It would be nice to get these things done, but if not that's okay.

That's what tomorrow is for. Then is the would like to section. I'd like to get to these things if possible, but I'm not even looking at the section without reviewing the ones before. Lastly, I have helping others. Most of us have other people in our lives that we want to do things for. This only gets two lines so that I can prioritize my goals of the day.

First. So breaking things down to prevent or beat overwhelm. This is about reducing resistance. When your executive function is under strain, big tasks can feel paralyzing. My Getting Started video on Task Initiation is still one of the most viewed videos, because so many of us struggle with this. Your brain sees write the report and hits the panic button.

Many times people can get stuck in the why of why this is happening. I think they're under the misconception that if they understand why, it will solve the problem, but you actually don't need to know why. To start, what you need to do is break the task down into pieces so small it's easier to do them. Then deal with how you will feel if you don't.

By breaking things down into small steps, you can bypass that freeze response. Say you have a garage to declutter and organize. Likely a big task if you are 1 in 4 people in the US with a two car garage that you can't park a car in because there's so many items in there, you don't need to know the whole picture to break it down, and you'll save yourself stress and exhaustion.

What if that garage you were going to deal with was just one bag or one box for just 30 minutes? Could you do that? Does that sound long? Maybe you could do 15. Many people will argue that these small stabs at a problem won't make a difference. And it's not true. There are only so many boxes and bags in that garage, and eventually you'll get to them all.

Not only that, but there will be times that that 15 or 30 minutes was so easy that you want to keep going. This is great, you can do that. But I warn you not to overdo it. Check in every 30 minutes to an hour. Set a timer and an alarm. Ask yourself, am I tired, hungry, thirsty, anxious? Do I need to use the restroom?

We will ignore all these signals sometimes, and I know we've all felt the need to keep going for fear that motivation will not come again. But here's the truth. Sometimes the reason motivation is elusive for big tasks is because of the way you treated yourself. Last time you felt motivated, your brain remembers how you worked to exhaustion and didn't take care of yourself.

How you had to recover for a day or two, and it's doing anything possible to prevent that from happening again. So be kind to yourself when you're creating your steps and when you're carrying them out. You don't need to see the whole picture. You don't need to know every step ahead of time. Most of the time, if you're procrastinating, get curious what emotion might be hiding behind that task.

Fear of getting it wrong. Unsure how to carry out the task, thinking it will be hard or take forever. There can be a lot of big emotions behind these things. So let's talk about when this is a question my clients are used to getting from me nearly every session. When they identify things that they want to do toward what they're trying to accomplish, I want to know when exactly they may or may not hit this deadline.

That's not what really matters. What matters is they are so much more likely to do it now that they have made this commitment. So there is a 2002 study published by the British Journal of Health Psychology, and it found that people who set a specific date, time and location for a task were 90% more likely to follow through.

Meanwhile, only 35% of those who just had an intention to do it, but no specific plan followed through time. Awareness is another major executive function challenge for ADHD. We often underestimate or overestimate how long something takes. I work with clients that have some severe time blindness, so when they're estimating how much time something will take so that they can give it a day at a time, they struggle, that's okay.

We're simply collecting data at this point. Did that project take twice as long as you thought it would? That's data that we know now. Did it actually take half the time? That's okay. It's just data. For me, tracking task times was a game changer. I started timing everything I could. It used to take me two hours to get ready to go somewhere.

Once I started timing each step, I was able to question why the step took as long as it did and what I could do to streamline it. Also, timing tasks showed me that some things I thought took a really long time actually were really quick and easy to do. Just don't try to keep these things in your head.

If you time things, keep a running physical or phone list of the things that you've timed so that you can refer to it. We have to be intentional with our time though, and whether you are using a list, planner, or calendar, it's important not to overload yourself. I've actually been working on an ADHD friendly planner that I've been using myself since February, and it's designed for brains like ours.

It supports the executive function system by helping you zoom out with year and month views and focus in with daily tasks lists like I was sharing with you earlier, and manage overflow with the now not now list that I create. It's completely customizable. You can print the pages that you'll use and start small and build from there. I'm going to tell you where you can get that free in just a moment, but strengthening your planning and prioritization skills is like building a muscle.

It takes practice, not perfection. The more you engage your executive functions and learn tools to support them, the more consistent they become. So if you're on YouTube, commit in the comments your next small step and let us know exactly when and where you will do this. If you're on the podcast, comment your commitment in a story on Facebook or Instagram and tag me at Learn to Thrive with ADHD.

This is the final episode in our Executive Function series. For now, but we're just getting started. For summer, I'm going to be offering full courses that I've created. Some of them are overcoming overwhelm, getting things done. Your brain and money, organize anything with ease and more. Each one will go deeper into these executive functions. There will be action items that you can implement to grow from.

And if you've stayed with me this long as a thank you, grab your free ADHD planner at Dot. Learn to Thrive with adhd.com/planner. I'm creating a step by step video to go with that. Hopefully it's there when you sign up. Otherwise, subscribe on YouTube and hit the bell and you'll see when that comes out soon. You don't have to have a perfect plan.

You don't have to do it all. But imagine ending your day feeling calm, focused, and proud of what you got done. That's possible when you start using your executive function tools like planning and prioritization in a way that works for you. So do you want individual help? Book a strategy. Call with me so that we can evaluate your executive function skills and get you unstuck.

You can do that now by going to Learn to Thrive with adhd.com/services and book a call. All right. Thank you my friends. I will see you next week.