Plan First, Do Later
Separate planning from action, so if you get distracted while acting, you can return to the plans.
Three reasons to separate planning from doing:
- Different energy requirements. When you’re too tired to do, you can often still plan.
- Feedback loop. By separating them you can look back and see how useful the plan was, how much you stuck to it, and get better at planning.
- Doing generates distractions. For ADHD people, the act of doing can impair other tasks.
The Cough Drop Sign
From Driven to Distraction: a woman sees a cough drop on the dashboard and thinks “I’ll throw that away.” At her first stop she forgets. Gets back in the car, sees it again. “I’ll throw it away at the gas station.” Forgets again. This cycle repeats all day, then the next morning.
The pattern: habitually having trouble following through on plans on a minute-to-minute, even second-to-second basis. Not procrastination — it’s the busyness of the moment interrupting memory circuits. You get up to get a glass of water and forget why you’re in the kitchen.
The fix
When you notice a micro-task, don’t just do it — put it in the todo list first. Then try to do it immediately. If you get distracted halfway through, it’s still there in the list.
The Apartment Survey
When cleaning the apartment, start by walking around and noticing everything that needs fixing. Create a little task for each thing — even “move the book from the coffee table to the bookshelf.” Don’t start anything until the survey is done. Then execute. If you get distracted halfway through, you have the list to go back to.