Breaking the ADHD Freeze: Getting Unstuck When Plans Go Sideways
QUICK REMINDER
The Procrastinator’s Plan Your Year workshop is this week!
We’ll be going through the Plan Your Extra Focus Year workbook so make sure you have that prepared for the event. Paid members can download it here.
If you have ADHD, you’ve likely experienced something like this before.
Your perfect plans for the day go awry, your routine gets upended, and even if you manage to not get angry in response (a big if), it feels impossible to get back to it and do whatever else you were planning to do that day.
You feel stuck.
What’s worse, when this happens we often become hyper aware of our “stuckness” and that awareness lets “the stuckness” take up permanent residence in our day.
Reader Strategies
I asked in the Substack chat what some of you are doing when you get stuck and I got some great responses.
::I have to say out loud, “I’m stuck!” It’s still taking me some practice, but when I do it I seem to remember the stuckness is temporary better.
Also can we add “the stuckness” to the ADHD glossary?
:The best strategy I’ve learned over the years is to acknowledge the derailment and listen to my body and brain the moment I’ve realized I’m off track.
Sometimes that means I have to go lay down for a second or just take a break.
Sometimes actually verbalizing the acknowledgment with some gentle self talk helps me be present in the moments after a distraction and disperse any gathering guilt I feel about not being productive right away.
Make a list of all of the options. Spinning in confusion is a great way to stay stuck.
Check out the rest of the chat for some more great ideas and discussion.
Some of my “break out of the stuckness” strategies
Here are a few strategies that come to mind for me. As always, I don’t expect any of these to magically work every single time.
Remember: You can’t fail a strategy! Strategies are guiding ideas that might help but don’t always work. Think of sports teams—even using the best strategy in their playbook and executing it perfectly doesn’t guarantee success every time. So why would you expect perfection for yourself? When a strategy isn’t helpful, you move on and try something else.
Strategies to break the stuckness:
One small win. Rather than getting overwhelmed with your giant list of responsibilities, try to focus on a single win just to check it off. If you get that done, great! Now find another small win. We’re talking tiny, tiny wins here: put away a single dirty dish, archive one unread email. Just something to get started.
Create a ta-da list. Instead of a to-do list, create a list of all the things you’ve already done that day, even if they are small and don’t seem like a big deal. Then check them off! This can help you feel like you’re already moving in a positive direction. Ta-da!
Highlight of the day. In the book Make Time, the authors say you should pick one thing to be your highlight of the day. Whether it’s work related or just something positive in your life, what’s the one thing that would make today a win? I find that searching for this highlight helps me reprioritize and reassess what I’m trying to do that day.
If, at the end of the day, someone asks you, “What was the highlight of your day?” what do you want your answer to be? When you look back on your day, what activity or accomplishment or moment do you want to savor? That’s your Highlight.
Start messy. Don’t worry about what the next task or project is going to look like. Just jump in like a kid using finger paint for the first time. You can clean up and refine the mess later, right now the focus isn’t on perfection, it’s on getting started! Just embrace the messy start and then keep going.
4 Cs of Motivation. This is still my go-to strategy whenever I run into any motivation difficulty. It leans into how the ADHD brain works with motivation, rather than trying to rely on importance, rewards, and consequences. Just think about how you can use the 4 Cs (Captivate, Create, Compete, Complete) to make any task more captivating, creative/novel, competitive, or urgent.
I hope these help get you started—if you have any alternate strategies, share them in the comments!
Stay curious,
Jesse J. Anderson
Omg the 'Ta-Da List'! I love that concept, and love the name even more. Keeping track of the good I've already done is super helpful, at least when I actually do it.
Outstanding post Jesse! Thank you👌