Action planning - an ADHD/AuDHD coach's approach

One of the absolute most common struggles people bring to ADHD coaching sessions is taking action. Ideas, at least for many of us, are the easy part. We are full of great intentions and creative plans that light us up when we think about them.

Implementing those ideas, though, is another matter entirely. Taking those intentions and plans, and putting them into practice in a way that survives contact with the real world, is the hard part.

Setting an intention to reflect or take action is difficult because it makes a number of demands on several executive functions: future thinking, sequencing, time awareness, task initiation, emotional regulation, and memory, to name a few.

This kind of stuff is disproportionately hard and energy-intensive for a lot of ADHDers, and for those of us who experience executive functioning challenges in connection with being autistic, dyslexic, dyspraxic, otherwise neurodivergent, or chronically ill. It can also be difficult for people experiencing executive dysfunction for reasons which might be more temporary, like perimenopause, grief, significant stress or burnout, or sleep deprivation. So while executive dysfunction is arguably a defining feature of ADHD, it can show up for lots of different reasons.

I’m an AuDHD coach (and an AuDHD person!) with significant executive functioning challenges. I’ve experienced it my whole life, and none of this comes automatically or easily to me. The approaches I’m going to describe here - which I use myself as well as shaping my conversations with my clients - aren’t a quick fix, but aim to provide scaffolding to make action more accessible.

This article is long, so here is a table of contents to navigate to its different sections:

1. Quick reference guide
2. 3 core principles - a little more detail
3. Context, evidence and background for practitioners or fans of detail

Without further ado: the reference guide…

Make “why, when, where, what, who, how” plans

The evidence we have suggests that clarifying some of the conditions for your plan to take place can be helpful. This can be as comprehensive as feels accessible, but aiming for a perfect plan might backfire, so keep it fairly light-touch initially. These questions draw on several evidence-based approaches, which are listed at the end of this article. You do not need to ask or answer all of them - you can try choosing one question from each section, or just choose a couple that seem relevant, or even select just one or two at random. Every You can write your answers down, talk them through with someone else, or even try explaining them to an inanimate object (the rubber duck debugging" approach) - whatever feels simplest.

Why (do I even want to do this?)

• What would I like to have happen?
• What’s something I could do that might help me get more of what I want?

When (will I do this?)

• When could this realistically happen?
• How long do I think this will take?
  • Being absolutely honest with myself, do I actually have proof of that?
  • If not, how could I gather some evidence?
• How will I remind myself at the appropriate time?

Where (will I be when I do this?)

• Where will this happen?
  • Does that match where I’m likely to be at the time I’ve chosen?
  • Do I need to make the time or location more flexible, or change it altogether?
• Is there anything about this environment that will make the task easier or harder?

What (do I need?)

• What materials or information do I need?
• Do I already have them?
• If not, what’s the easiest way to get them, or what could work as a stopgap?

Who (could help?)

• Who could support me with this?
• Is there anyone who could help me remind myself to do this?

How (will I start, continue, and stop?)

• What is the very first step?
  • Are there any hidden “pre-steps” that actually need to happen first?
• How will I know when to stop? What does “done enough” look like?
• How do I feel about this, really?
  • Will it take more energy than I currently have?
  • If so, could I make it smaller, easier, shorter, less frequent, or more interesting?
• If this doesn’t go to plan, how would I like to pick it back up?

Plan for worse days, and consider anything else a bonus

It can be very tempting to make plans based on our best days, when we have the most energy, focus, and motivation. But those days are unpredictable, so it can be more effective to design a version of the action that would feel possible even on a difficult day. Consider at least entertaining the idea that even a version that feels way too small might still be more useful than doing nothing - if I’m wrong and acting on it feels like a waste of time, you don’t have to listen to me again in the future. ;)

For example:

• What is the smallest possible version of this?
• What is a version I could do even on a very low-energy day?
  • 30 seconds of movement?
  • One journal sentence written?
  • Opening a document or a book with no obligation to continue?
• What is the minimum frequency that would still count as progress?
• Does this need to produce a tangible output, or would reflecting, talking it through, or thinking about it be enough for now?
• How much dread is present?
  • On a scale from 0 (maximum dread) to 10 (no dread at all), where am I now?
  • What would need to change for that number to move up by just one point?

A note about dread

Note that if one of the barriers to getting things done for you is dread, it may be necessary to accept that it might not be possible to eliminate that dread entirely. It is, however, very likely that making the action smaller (or more interesting!) can reduce that dread, even if only by a little. Suffering less is usually preferable to suffering more, so all-or-nothing thinking probably will not serve us here. Take whatever improvements you can!

Do more of the parts that worked

Sometimes when a plan doesn’t go as we hoped, it can feel like we didn’t make any progress at all. This feeling is not always as accurate as it initially seems. Even plans that apparently failed nearly always contain some useful data. We might ask:

• If I managed this even once, what helped?
• Did I get anything at all out of this, even if I didn’t meet my original goal?
• Were there any parts that felt less difficult, even slightly?
• What did I do to stop this from going even worse than it did? </ul> Then the key question:
  • How could I do a bit more of that next time?

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  Context, background, evidence (optional extra detail)

  ICF core competencies

  “Designing post-session thinking, reflection, or action” is a PCC marker and falls under competency 8, “Facilitates client growth”. I've noticed that some coaching approaches may appear to assume that sufficient emotional investment means that relatively little concrete planning needs to be done to ensure action is taken after the coaching session. This is true for some people, but assumes that desire is sufficient on its own to fuel motivation and does not take into account executive functioning challenges. Coaches working with clients who are experiencing executive functioning difficulties for any reason (and remember that the list of possible reasons is a long one and goes well beyond ADHD!) may therefore wish to experiment with some of the approaches described here in a more deliberate way, and to make space in the session to do so. If a client says that they do better with less detailed plans and more time spent on emotion, however, part of partnering as a coach is to listen to that!

  Implementation intentions

  This approach draws on research around “implementation intentions” or “if-then planning”. We know that specifying the conditions (when, where, how) an action will take place in significantly increases the likelihood of completing it (see Gollwitzer, 2008; Bieleke et al, 2020), and that this also holds for people with ADHD Gavrilow and Gollwitzer, 2008. There is also some evidence to suggest that a task planned using if-then planning will be perceived as subjectively easier, and that this creates measurable differences in physiological responses (Wolff et al, 2018).

  WOOP

  Another evidence-based framework which this shares some features with but diverges from is the WOOP framework (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan). Shared features include identifying a desired outcome, anticipating obstacles, and translating intentions into a concrete plan for implementation.

  WOOP does seem to assume, however, that unidentified or insufficient desire is often at the root of inaction. I am hesitant about applying this too freely in the context of executive dysfunction because ADHDers frequently report not only that lack of commitment or desire is often weaponised against them, but that higher-level desire still does not always create sufficient motivation unless immediate reward is also present. As such, focusing on scaffolding the core components of executive dysfunction like difficulty initiating, sequencing, remembering, and future thinking seems to me to be lower-hanging fruit which is more likely to set us up for success.

  Motivational intensity theory

  This suggests that capacity for effort increases when a task feels both important and achievable (Brehm and Self, 1989. Making actions feel smaller, clearer and more attainable should hopefully, therefore, make them feel more possible to engage in. One possible challenge here is that if an action is too small it may lose importance - I have personally found it crucial, therefore, to think about the smallest possible version which still feels meaningful.

  Solution-focused tools

  Thinking ahead to a preferred future in which the task is being completed is one key aspect of solution-focused thought present here. I also use a scaling question (see, e.g., Abdulla, 2025) around dread to identify incremental shifts rather than aiming for a huge emotional change which might feel (and indeed be) impossible. Resource-finding questions to support learning from partial success are also a core solution-focused method (see, e.g. Berg & Szabó, 2005).

  Executive function informed practice

  A foundational principle here is Thomas Brown’s AFEEMA model of executive functioning in ADHD (see Brown, 2025). I assume that scaffolding these areas in particular in likely to lead to a lower barrier to entry. I also use some specific formulations from Sarah Ward and Kristen Jacobsen’s “Get Ready, Do, Done” framework (see Ward and Jacobsen, 2016), particularly around “knowing what done will look like”, identifying materials needed to complete the task, and collecting evidence for the timeframe needed if this is uncertain.