I’m very good at making a plan. Following the exact plan I made is a completely different story.
On one 16-day road trip, I made 17 reservations. I kept five. I’d planned dog-friendly restaurants, activities, places to stay, when we’d explore, when we’d relax, and basically every version of the trip I could think of. Then we got there and I changed an activity to a pool day because that’s what I actually wanted to do.
That’s the contradiction I wanted to understand. I’m not bad at planning. The plan was extremely planned. So why can making the plan feel easy while following it later feel like a different assignment?
Planning and following through aren’t one single skill
That’s the first thing I was getting wrong. I’d been treating “I made a plan” like proof that everything needed to carry it out should already be handled too.
But planning can involve comparing options, sequencing things, estimating time, and deciding what makes sense in advance. Following through later can involve remembering the intention, stopping what you’re doing, switching into the next thing, starting at the right time, and adjusting when real life doesn’t match the version you planned for.
ADHD research doesn’t give us a neat rule that says people with ADHD are great at planning and bad at execution. In one study of adults with ADHD, researchers separated prospective memory into planning, remembering the plan, initiating it later, and carrying it out. The biggest group difference showed up in planning, while the differences in recall, self-initiation, and execution were smaller. That study is here.
Other adult ADHD research has found differences in set shifting, which is basically the ability to move from one mental set or task demand to another. This study is one example.
So there are real processes here that can affect follow-through. What I don’t think the research supports is turning every changed plan into “my ADHD made me do it.”
Sometimes I didn’t fail the plan. I changed my mind
This was embarrassingly useful for me to separate.
When I make a reservation three weeks ahead of time, I’m making a decision with the energy, information, and preferences I have then. Later, I may be tired. Something else may sound better. The schedule may feel too packed once I’m actually living it. I may still want the trip and not want that particular dinner reservation anymore.
That’s not the same thing as forgetting the plan or being unable to start it. Sometimes Past Me made a suggestion and Current Me accidentally received it as a legally binding agreement.
I’ve started asking myself which version I’m actually dealing with:
- I forgot: the plan fell out of view or I didn’t remember it when I needed to
- I’m stuck starting: I still want to do it, but getting into the first action feels weirdly hard
- I overplanned: there are too many transitions or too much packed into the day
- I changed my mind: the plan still exists. I just don’t want the same thing anymore
- I’m still researching: I haven’t really moved into execution because I’m trying to make the plan more certain first
Those all look like “I didn’t follow the plan” from the outside. They don’t need the same fix.
A plan can change
I’m not going to stop planning. I like planning. I’m good at it, and sometimes it genuinely makes life easier.
What I’m trying to stop doing is formatting every idea like a requirement.
If something is expensive, timed, ticketed, or hard to move, that’s actually fixed. If it’s something I really want to protect, I can treat it that way. If it just sounded fun when I found it, it can stay an option without becoming another promise I’ve apparently made to myself.
That feels a lot more realistic than building a perfect itinerary and then acting shocked when the human being using it has opinions.
If your problem is less “I changed the plan” and more “I still want to do it and I can’t get myself to start,” that’s the version I wrote about in Why Is It So Hard to Start Something I Actually Want to Do?