Breaking Down Projects & Goals: What You NEED to Know

Hello brains. If you've been in the ADHD community for any amount of time, you've definitely heard somebody say, "Well, if you're going to do a project, break your projects down into manageable steps. " But what does that mean? Let's talk about it.

First of all, let's talk about why this gets recommended to people with ADHD all the time. Why we get told to break projects down into manageable steps. Because our brains don't do that for us, right? If we get handed an assignment, a project, sometimes a task, make lunch, what we see is a giant block of a thing that feels daunting. This feels overwhelming and so we procrastinate. We don't do it because not because we're lazy, not because we don't care, but often because we don't know where to start, because our brains are not breaking it down for us. We have to do it manually. So that's why it's important because if I want to accomplish this thing, but I don't know what steps are involved, unless I'm Spider-Man, right? like I'm not going to be able to climb up the side of this thing. Like of course I can't get started on this. I can't get a foothold. I don't know what to do first, second, 87th. I don't know how to get from A to Z. And so it's helpful to break down this massive daunting project that again might be making lunch. It's helpful to break it down into steps. But the other part of it is because it's daunting, we're not going to do it right. We're going to procrastinate on it. which means tomorrow I'm going to feel bad about it and I'm going to start adding to my wall of awful. The longer I avoid this task, the longer I put it off, the more big and scary this task is going to be and the more likely it is that I'm going to keep procrastinating on it. You can see more about the wall of awful in this episode here. So now

let's talk about how do we break down a project into manageable steps? One of the misconceptions is that we have to break down the entire project into manageable steps. We don't. I have never in my life broke an entire project down into manageable steps. I might have a general overview of where I'm going. Um, which can help with time management and planning. Like when I wrote my book, I went, "Okay, I want to write a really good book. " And hopefully it's a New York Times bestseller. In order for it to be a New York Times bestseller, I need to have turned in a New York Times bestseller, which means I need to have time to make it good, finished it so that I can edit it and make it good, which means I need to have figured out what it is that I want to say, right? like I worked backwards and I knew the big blocks. It can be helpful to have an overview of what is needed for a project for other purposes for planning, prioritizing, all of that. Okay, quick pause because this is actually a perfect moment to talk about a tool that helps with exactly what we're discussing. One of the hardest parts of breaking a project down into manageable steps isn't knowing we should do it. It's holding multiple steps in our brains without them immediately turning into soup. This video is sponsored by XTiles, which is basically a visual workspace where you can dump the giant scary project out of your head and onto the page quickly, easily, and flexibly. What I like about XTiles is it lets you see the whole project and zoom in on just the first teenytiny step. You can create spaces where you can see your big goals, then break them into projects, then chunks, then steps. Honestly, however small you need. It's very drag and drop, very visual, very I can rearrange this when my brain changes its mind, which let's be real is inevitable. You can hide things so that it doesn't get overwhelming. And because everything lives in one place, you don't have to remember where you wrote the plan. Past you already handled it, which makes it a lot easier to pick up where you left off. Thanks, past me. If breaking projects down feels overwhelming, even when you know how, XTiles can help make those steps visible, flexible, and of course, check offable. There are even templates you can use if you don't want to start from scratch and then you can customize the templates to whatever works for you. By the way, XTiles is constantly improving and building out new tools based on feedback from this community. Let them know what you think. You can check out XTiles using the link in the description. Huge thanks to them for supporting this channel and for helping us work with our brains, not against [clears throat] them. But in terms of just purely being able to do

the thing, we don't need to break down the whole project into doable steps because we're not trying to do those steps yet. it would be a waste of time. And often things shift as we move forward with a project. So if we did break down a whole project into doable steps, probably some of that work would need to be redone anyway. If I'm trying to start on a project, I just need to break down the first two or three steps, maybe even the first one into a doable step. And that way I can start to make progress. build momentum. Okay, now what's the next step? Great. Now what's this the next step? now what's the next step and it also gets a little bit more doable as I go on because now I've gained inertia right the other thing is let's say we have

broken down our first couple of steps right we've taken this big scary project we've broken it down into doable steps and we're wondering why we can't do them like I just need to do this thing like I just have to do X I just need to do Y why can't I get myself to do it the answer is it's probably not a doable step yet manageable step. For a lot of people with ADHD, myself included, the first step often needs to be teeny tiny. It can feel ridiculous how freaking small this first step needs to be. What feels like a step we should be able to take is often still too big because we're starting from nothing. We don't have any momentum yet. Um, motivation can be really challenging. So starting out with even what feels like a reasonable size step or what should be is still challenging for a lot of us. We need to start with something even smaller. If you're trying to work on a paper, opening your laptop, opening up the word doc, formatting the paper. The first few steps should be small enough that they seem easy to do. They are doable. It is not a sign that you're lazy. you don't care. It's can't do this. It's a sign that first step hasn't been broken down small enough. Once you break that step down to where it's doable. Now you can take that first ridiculously teenytiny step and the next one and roll your eyes and be like, "This is ridiculous. Why did I think I had to do this? " But now you've gotten started and now you can start taking some of the bigger steps. So I hope that was helpful. If you are still having a hard time, um, if your motivation is shaky that day or whatever, you can also set a timer and just get started that way. Like, I'm just going to work on this for 10 minutes. I don't even know what steps I'm going to take. I'm just going to work on it for 10 minutes. Instead of create an outline for this thing I want to write, I'm going to work on an outline for 10 minutes. I have a lot of other tips and tricks for uh, task initiation, which is very, very challenging for people with ADHD. in this video here. It's where I first talk about the concept of the steps, but I wanted to talk about it in its own video because I wanted to hear what your experience is. Um, from you, the community, about what helps you break a task down into manageable steps, what that looks like for you. Some days steps have to be really, really small um, for me to be able to move forward, and that's okay. Thank you to our brain advocates and all our Patreon brains for supporting content like this so that we can all learn how to work with our brains, not against them. If you want accountability for working with your projects or goals or even just accountability for learning how to work with your brain, not against it, you can check out our Patreon. Uh there is a link at the end of this video. I think I can also put it here. Maybe we'll see. All right, like, subscribe, click all the things, and I will see you next video. Bye, brains. Thanks again to Extiles for sponsoring this video. Again, there's a link in the description below.