Struggling with goals is an extremely common problem for many humans, but ADHD makes it even more of a struggle.
this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2025
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This is what my ADHD wife says. Most ADHD struggles are normal human traits dialed up to 11+.
Couldn't you make it go to 10 and just make 10 more of a struggle
Sure that's valid!
But this struggle goes to 11.
unexpected Spinal Tap reference
What's that quote, "peeing is a normal human thing but if you're doing it 90 times in a day, it's a problem"
Yea it's one of the frustrating things about ADHD, everyone thinks they have it because everyone can relate to it but not to the severity of it.
I can relate. I pretty much only set short term goals. I don’t think there’s really anything wrong with not having long term goals. It is frustrating to feel as though I don’t really have the option to though.
As far as the learning to program thing, I’ve had the same goal before and I only ever made progress on it when I was medicated. If you’re not already, it’s an option to consider.
I've discovered that I have to go into something with a purpose in order to learn it. Taking a coding class might help in the beginning with breaking the ice, but most learning I've gained had come from "I need to make a script for this specific thing" and then starting that process.
My most recent coding adventure was while playing From The Depths and I needed to figure out how to write a lua script so my jet could have thrust vectoring.
I hadn’t considered it that way, but it’s probably the same for me. The vast majority of my coding knowledge and experience comes from modding and writing web extensions.
@Dettweiler42 100%. I’ve taken up knitting purely for the purpose of knitting warm clothes for this winter for both my kids. It’s been a week and a bit and I’ve already made a scarf for one of them which is a win.
If it’s just an open-ended “I’m going to learn this for the sake of fun/improvement” I struggle to maintain momentum past the first few weeks.
Same. I cannot do useless tasks.
I heard thats also an autism thing though, having to know absolutely everything about a process before doing it.
This is what I do at work (IT), I learn just enough to get by any given task then move on to the nest thing. But every time I go back to do the task I understand it a little better and usually learn something new about the subject. "Learn to program" is such a weird thing to me. It's like "learn to exercise". The goal should be more like "do 5 push ups", "run 10k" or whatever.
“Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”
Fuck I don’t know, if I’m still alive then hopefully with food on the table and shelter? I could be in a different country or career or anything in 5 whole years, or doing exactly the same thing.
Some people really are more “goal focused” and more power to them but it’s frustrating getting looked at funny for accepting that life is unpredictable and framing accordingly.
I hate this question as well ha. I think its meant for the super-business-line-go-up types.
it’s frustrating getting looked at funny for accepting that life is unpredictable and framing accordingly.
Yes, this! I always want to answer that you'd have to be a charlatan or delusional to claim that's knowable information.
Like when people would ask 'what do you want to be when you grow up?', and I presumed they meant 'what are you interested in at the moment?'
In 5 years? Somewhere between running the country and on the streets. Hopefully I'll be somewhere close to my current situation though.
Everything about ADHD is also something that most people without ADHD experience. The difference with ADHD is the severity and impact it has
It can be challenging and the pattern of making goals and not hitting them can be frustrating enough that you just stop trying to make goals. These are some things I find help me get stuff done.
Social pressure keeps me focused very well, so I go to gym classes. Anytime I work out alone it is a struggle to not just bail early. So I will try to integrate social pressure into things that I find important.
Setting standards instead of goals. One example was me wanting to better understand TCP/IP networking. So I set a standard of reading the textbook I had on the topic 30 minutes a day. Some days I did less some days I only read a couple pages due to poor focus. But I just stayed focused on meeting the standard every day. I ended up reading through more than half of a very thick textbook with dense technical information. Way further than I would have otherwise.
Next is to set a priority queue. It's hard to focus on 10 projects. It is much easier to focus on a single top priority and not worry about the other 9 at all.
Last is be realistic about your limitations. It is easy to set your expectations based on your best days and beat yourself up on your crap days. Also I find my "Best days" are frequently me hyper focusing so hard I have 2 crap days after to recover. Some times it's not about what you "should do" and more about what you "can do".
At my last job we had to do goals like that and I found it so frustrating. It was a constant cycle of: Have you made any progress towards [new goal]? No, I'm not interested in that anymore, I did [task] instead. Oh, okay... so what's your [new goal] then?
I mean what me and everyone else do is just make the goal something we already are doing whether we have a goal or not. Kind of defeats the purpose of goal but again, im not like a ceo who could make a goal of "gain 16 new investors by friday!" Or some shit.