"I'll do the report this afternoon" is a sentence you have said on a hundred afternoons.
It was not a lie. At noon you meant it. Then the afternoon arrived without a door in it: no minute was the minute, so every minute was too early, and then it was 5:30. The report is not a bigger job than it was at noon. It is one day older, and one day heavier, and tomorrow you will say "this afternoon" again.
A goal is a wish until it has a cue
The difference between a plan and a wish is one word: if.
"Do the report" names what. It says nothing about when your hands move, so your hands wait for a feeling of readiness, and the feeling does not come. "If it is 2pm, I open the doc" names a moment and an act. Psychologists call this an implementation intention, and the plain name is an if-then plan. The if is a cue you will meet anyway. The then is one thing your hands do when you meet it.
The evidence for this is unusually large for a planning trick. A 2006 meta-analysis pooled 94 studies and found if-then plans raise the odds of doing what you meant to, with a medium-to-large effect, d = 0.65 (Gollwitzer and Sheeran, 2006). Those studies were on the general population, not ADHD samples, so we say it as it is: a well-tested shape for a plan, and one worth trying on the report.
This is not about size. Small steps are their own page, and a step can be tiny and still have no door. "Open the doc" is small. "If it is 2pm, I open the doc" has a door in it, and the door opens on its own.
Why the if-then suits an ADHD brain
An ADHD brain does not start on importance, and an if-then does not ask it to.
Every plan has a moment of decision, the moment you look at the task and go. For an ADHD brain that moment is the expensive one, and importance does not pay for it. An if-then moves the decision to noon, when it is cheap, and leaves a match for 2pm instead: it is 2pm, so the doc opens. No weighing. No "is now the time". The clock decides, and the clock is not tired.
There is a study on this shape in ADHD, and it points the same way. Children with ADHD who were given an if-then plan held back their responses on a lab task as well as children without ADHD did (Gawrilow and Gollwitzer, 2008). Children, one task, one lab, so it is a pointer and not a law. It points at the report.
A second thing happens once the plan exists. In five experiments, an unfinished goal kept pulling at people's attention and hurt their work on other things, until they made a specific plan for it. Then the pull stopped, before any of the work was done (Masicampo and Baumeister, 2011). Not ADHD samples, but the shape is the one you know: the report you have not started is in the room all afternoon, breathing. Write "if it is 2pm, I open the doc" at noon, and the afternoon between is quieter. Twelve unstarted tasks are twelve of these, and the freeze they cause is its own page.
How to write one
The if is a moment you will meet today, and the then is one thing your hands do.
The if must arrive on its own. A clock time: "if it is 2pm". A thing you will do anyway: "when I sit down after lunch", "when the kettle boils". Never a feeling. "When I feel ready" is not a cue. It is the wish again with a hat on.
The then is physical, with one object. "I open the doc." "I put the invoice PDF on the desktop." "I dial the dentist." Not "I work on the report". Working is a state. Opening is an act, and acts can be started.
One per task. Ten if-thens are a list, and a list is the problem you started with. Write one for the task you have been saying "this afternoon" about, and leave the rest alone today.
Say it in full, once. Out loud or written, the whole sentence: "If it is 2pm, I open the doc." The if-then is made of words, and the words are what fire at two.
When the if passes, write a new if. Not "later". Later has no clock, and a plan without a clock is the wish again. "Not now" is allowed, as long as the next words are a time.
How Kaapi does it
Every step can carry a time, and every "Not now" is answered with "By when?"
You write the task into the dump the way you think it: "report, open the doc by 2". The model on your Mac makes it a task with a 2pm deadline and steps under it. A time you wrote becomes the if. The task wears its time left on the row, so "if it is 2pm" is a thing you can watch coming instead of a thing you have to remember.
When Timi, the pebble at the bottom right, says the task's name and you click it, a card offers Start focus. If you choose "Not now", the card asks "By when?", and the task takes the time you give it. We built it this way because "later" is the word this brain says when it has no clock, and we do not write later down. A time is an if. Later is a wish.
With "Make it a game" on, one of the offers is a dare with a clock of two minutes: "Bet you can't start 'Reply to Sam' in two minutes." The if is two minutes from now; the then is start. When you do: "Started. That was the hard part." Starting is the win, and nothing is counted back at you.
How to do this without Kaapi
Take the one task you said "this afternoon" about, and give it a door.
- Write its first physical step, with one object. "Open the doc."
- Put an if in front of it, one you will meet today anyway. "If it is 2pm, I open the doc."
- Set one alarm for the if, and make the alarm's label the whole sentence. When it rings, the plan is in your hand.
- If two o'clock passes without the doc, write a new if with a new time. Never write "later".
The report may still take an hour. But the hour now has a door, and the door opens at two whether you feel ready or not.
Frequently asked questions
What is an if-then plan?
An if-then plan, or implementation intention, writes a goal as "if [cue], then I [act]": "If it is 2pm, I open the doc." The cue is a moment or place you will meet anyway; the act is one physical thing. A 2006 meta-analysis of 94 studies found the form raises the odds of following through, with a medium-to-large effect.
Do if-then plans help with ADHD?
The large evidence is on the general population, where a meta-analysis of 94 studies found a medium-to-large effect. One lab study found children with ADHD given if-then plans held back responses as well as children without. The shape fits an ADHD brain because the cue does the deciding, and deciding is the expensive part.
How is an if-then different from breaking a task into small steps?
Small steps are about size: the first step must be small enough to see the end of. An if-then is about shape: the step gets a cue in front of it. "Open the doc" is a small step. "If it is 2pm, I open the doc" is the same step with a door. Use both on the task you keep putting off.
What if the cue comes and I ignore it?
Then write a new cue with a new time, and nothing else. Do not write "later". A plan with no time is a wish, and an unfinished task keeps pulling at you until a specific plan exists for it. Two minutes is a good size for the next if: "If it is 2:10, I open the doc."
Sources
- Gollwitzer, P. M., and Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119. doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1. 94 studies, general population; d = 0.65.
- Gawrilow, C., and Gollwitzer, P. M. (2008). Implementation intentions facilitate response inhibition in children with ADHD. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 32(2), 261–280. doi.org/10.1007/s10608-007-9150-1. Children, one lab task.
- Masicampo, E. J., and Baumeister, R. F. (2011). Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(4), 667–683. doi.org/10.1037/a0024192. Five experiments, not ADHD samples.