I know. Writing about New Year’s goals in early January is about as original as pumpkin spice in October. But here’s the reality: my nervous system is currently lit up like a cheap Christmas tree, my thoughts are bouncing around like a pinball machine, and pretending this isn’t happening doesn’t make it stop.

Every January does this to me.

Looking back at what I accomplished (or didn’t).
Looking ahead at what I want to do.
Then trying to reconcile the gap between those two things.

For my ADHD brain, that gap feels like trying to hold water in a colander.

Right now, my list includes launching a business, transforming my fitness before I turn 50, growing this newsletter, exploring real estate opportunities, and about seventeen other things that all felt critical when I wrote them down. That’s just the big stuff. It doesn’t include the daily “wouldn’t it be cool if…” ideas that pop up like whack-a-moles and demand immediate attention.

This used to feel like a personal failure. A discipline issue. A motivation problem.

So I did what I usually do when something keeps breaking down: I went digging into the research.

Here’s the first uncomfortable truth: goal-setting isn’t just harder for ADHD brains. It’s neurologically different.

ADHD is strongly associated with executive dysfunction, which affects planning, prioritization, working memory, and time perception (Barkley, 1997; Brown, 2005). These are the exact cognitive skills traditional goal-setting relies on.

But the piece that hit me hardest came from research on dopamine and delayed rewards.

Studies show that ADHD brains have reduced dopamine signaling in reward pathways, particularly when the payoff is distant (Volkow et al., 2009). Translation: my brain does not get excited about rewards that are months away. It wants payoff now. So when I set a six-month goal, my brain politely acknowledges it and then immediately gets distracted by something shiny happening in the present.

This explains why January feels brutal.

Goal-setting season asks us to:

Those are precisely the conditions where ADHD brains struggle most.

It also explains something else I’ve lived through more times than I can count: shutdown.

Research on cognitive load shows that when people—especially those with executive function challenges—are faced with too many competing goals, performance doesn’t just decline. It collapses (Baumeister et al., 2007). What looks like procrastination is often a stress response. The brain isn’t lazy. It’s overloaded.

And then there’s novelty.

ADHD brains are wired to seek stimulation and new inputs. When a goal becomes routine, or the reward feels too far away, motivation drops sharply. This creates the familiar “all-or-nothing” cycle: bursts of intense focus followed by total neglect.

Here’s the part that stung the most: every shiny new idea has an opportunity cost.

Chasing novelty doesn’t just delay progress. It quietly charges your long-term goals as the price of admission.

I can’t make my ADHD go away. But I can stop pretending I can out-discipline my nervous system.

So here’s what I’m actually doing, based on what the research—and a lot of personal failure—suggests works better.

First: a full brain dump.
Everything comes out. Goals, ideas, half-formed thoughts, “someday” plans. Not to organize them yet, but to get them out of my head. Working memory is a known ADHD bottleneck. Externalizing information reduces cognitive strain (Sweller, 1988).

Second: ruthless limitation.
I’m choosing one or two goals per life area. Not five. Not ten. One or two. Research is clear here: goal overload reduces follow-through and increases stress (Locke & Latham, 2002). My brain does better when it knows what doesn’t matter right now.

Third: parking shiny ideas instead of chasing them.
When a new idea pops up, I write it down in a designated place and leave it there. Not forever. Just long enough for the dopamine spike to fade. If it still matters next week, I can revisit it. Most don’t.

Fourth: shrinking goals until my brain can start.
Not “launch a business.”
But “research one potential customer.”
Not “get in the best shape of my life.”
But “lift today.”

Research on task initiation shows that reducing ambiguity and task size dramatically increases follow-through for ADHD brains (Sirois, 2014). My brain can’t start on vague, massive goals. It can start on one concrete step.

Starting builds momentum. Momentum builds confidence. Confidence keeps the nervous system from catching fire.

Here’s what I’m finally accepting: my ADHD isn’t a bug to be fixed. It’s a system to be managed.

The ideas won’t stop.
January will still light up my nervous system.
There will always be more things I could do than I realistically should.

The real work isn’t setting better goals. It’s setting fewer ones, in ways my brain can actually execute.

When I stop treating scattered goals as a character flaw and start treating them as a predictable neurological pattern, something shifts. I stop white-knuckling. I stop restarting every January from zero. I start building systems that assume my brain will do what it always does.

Will I do this perfectly? No.

But progress doesn’t come from perfection. It comes from building environments and systems that don’t require constant self-control to function.

And right now, progress looks like this: fewer goals, clearer priorities, smaller steps, and a nervous system that isn’t perpetually on fire.

This may sound like another New Year’s goal-setting article. But it’s not really about goals. It’s about refusing to let the process of goal-setting become another reason to feel like I’m failing.

If January stresses you out—if your goals feel scattered, your nervous system feels fried, and your brain keeps chasing shiny things—you’re not broken. You’re dealing with a brain that was never designed for how modern goal-setting works.

And if we’re going to do big things, we’re going to have to do them in ways our brains can actually sustain.

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