ADD – ADHD: Got Goals? What’s The Plan?
Your ability to reach your goals is directly related to your commitment to the detail of your plan. Now, before you throw up your hands in despair, let me explain. First, of course, I know that attending to details are not likely your strong suit. I will continue to cover strategies for working with your AD/HD in order to create and focus on the details of your plan in this newsletter and in my blog, ADDed Perspective.
For now, I want to point out that planning out all of the details of how you are going to reach your end goals allows you to break it down into manageable parts in order to keep moving forward. So, in creating a plan to be able to run 3 miles in 36 minutes by June 25th, you may decide on the times, intensity and duration of your workouts, as well as changes you will make in your eating and sleeping habits when making your plan.
If you are someone who is persuaded by research, here you go…
Statistics from the American Society for Training and Development show that the likelihood of a person completing a goal breaks down as follows:
- Hear an idea – 10%
- Consciously decide to adopt an idea – 25%
- Decide when they will do it – 40%
- Plan how they will do it – 50%
- Commit to someone else that they’ll do it – 65%
- And when they have a specific accountability appointment with the person they have committed to – 95% actually complete the goal.
Are you persuaded that you need a plan to reach your goals? If you do not have a plan, consider how far along are you toward your goal right now.
- Where would you be along the path to your goals, if you had a plan or a more specific plan?
- What steps can you take to increase the likelihood of accomplishing your goals?
Here is some more evidence from research on procrastination by psychologist Shane Owens and his colleagues at Hofstra University. They demonstrated that procrastinators who formed “implementation intentions” were nearly eight times as likely to follow through on a commitment than were those who did not create them. “You have to make a specific commitment to a time and place at which to act beforehand,” Owens says. “That will make you more likely to follow through.”
So there you have it. Are you convinced?
