Planabilibuddies Works!
The power of the right 'someone else'
We plan on Sunday. Either through a gust of motivation where we block out every hour of every day, and fill it with hopeful intentions, or we set some really vague intentions. “I’m going to try and return this thing to Target” - the task is specific enough, but the when is nonexistent. “Wednesday at noon I’m going to get some work done” - the when is specific, the but what could be a million things.
The week goes by. We already forgot what we planned on Sunday, and the things we did remember are continually put in the ‘not now’ bucket because we remembered them at an inconvenient time.
I believe there is a fast track to managing your ADHD, and it involves other people. The easy answer is 1:1 ADHD coaching, but that’s not in the cards for everyone.
So let me give you the way that we do that inside ADHDBB, and you can take this and run with it if you have the capacity and community to do it on your own.
Planabilibuddies works!
A planabilibuddy is an accountability buddy for planning your week.
Why we do it at ADHDBB is because I have found in my 1:1 work that clients mention how helpful it is to talk out their week. Verbalizing gets it out of their head and having another person (their coach in this case) asking them questions about their week can sometimes help uncover roadblocks and then you can plan for those obstacles before they happen.
A planabilibuddy that you meet on a weekly cadence will make you more likely to do the few commitments that you made, because of the power of felt accountability. Felt accountability is the subjective perception that your actions and decisions will be evaluated by someone.
If you know you will have to answer for your commitments, if you know that someone will ask you about them, you are way more likely to get it done. No guarantees in life, but oh man does it get you fast tracked to the doing.
I recommend picking only a few things to commit to during the week, because too much felt accountability could lead to burnout/stress/overwhelm/drugs/alcohol/hookers/crime sprees/jail/… stuff like that.
What I personally love about a weekly accountability partnership is that it gives you practice in ADHD skills management. You are practicing picking three things that you have predetermined are important to you to get done; three things that you will practice scheduling a time for and putting in a calendar; three things that you will reflect on and play out obstacles for.
This is why keeping it to three is crucial in my mind. Yes, we could play this out for every task, every project, and create an ornate spreadsheet to block out all of it, but doesn’t that stress you out just thinking about that?! Because it’s homework! And homework sucks. Doing a small homework assignment on a zoom call with your weekly accountabilibuddy makes it easier, makes it more fun.
If you pick 3 things, choose something you probably won’t do if left to your own devices. It doesn’t make sense to tell a planabilibuddy 3 things that you would be doing anyway. The point of this is to practice a skill that you otherwise do not have practice at. The point is to challenge yourself to overcome the obstacles to doing things that you know how to do, that you have deemed important, and yet you can’t do. If you were already going to do it, that feels like standing over the hoop and dropping the ball through the net. I mean, it counts as a basket, but what are we learning? That’s not really free throw practice.
Practice the free throws. Get better at the free throws by shooting them, sucking at shooting them, and ultimately improving your percentage of succe\sses through repetition and tweaking your ‘form’ bit by bit.
The fast path is by doing this with someone else.
Because the right ‘someone else’ doesn’t go through the all the overly critical, self-loathing, judgmental, accusatorial, bullshit reasons why we didn’t do the thing. The right ‘someone else’ can help us get on the other end of our obstacles without all that character flaw judgy bullshit.
I highly recommend getting yourself a weekly planabilibuddy. Meet once a week. Pick 3 things to commit to that week. Then reflect and make new commitments each week. Make your important things more likely to happen!
I had a conversation with an ADHDBB member who is currently participating in our planabilibuddies. If you want to hear about how it works from an actual person who is taking advantage of it, you can listen on the ADHD Big Brother podcast here.
And if you need help finding your ‘someone else’, you are invited to join ADHDBB. We have an automated way of announcing that you are open for a partner, and I offer coaching style templates to help walk you through successfully holding a weekly session with one another. I’m also available inside the community to answer any of your questions.