YOUR ADHD GAME PLAN

Strategy 1

Change the Context

YOU ARE HERE

Strategy 2

Let Them Design It

Strategy 3

Make the Deadline Real

Strategy 4

Make It Harder

Strategy 5

You're Not in Trouble

Strategy 6

Drop the Command

STRATEGY

OF 6

Micro-Starts

“The washer ran three days ago. The clothes are still in it.”

“Do your laundry” sounds like one job. It’s five: gather, wash, dry, fold, put away, and each one needs its own start. For a brain that struggles to begin things, that’s a project with no entry point, and a project with no entry point doesn’t get started. A Micro-Start makes the entry point so small there’s nothing left to decide. One step, two minutes, nothing more.

This week you stop asking for the laundry and start asking for one piece of it.

Pick Your Moment

One Step Is the Whole Job: they agreed to do it, and nothing happened.

Clean or Dirty: clean and dirty live in the same pile.

Lower the Folding Bar: you’re about to demand folding.

This Week's Moves

Situation 1

They Agreed to Do It, and Nothing Happened

One Step Is the Whole Job. Find the step that stalls most often in your house and make that the entire ask. Do not attach the next step. Completing one start makes the next one cheaper, and that’s the skill being built.

“Laundry isn’t one job. It’s five tiny ones. Today, just move your clothes to the dryer. That’s the whole job.”

Don’t add “and then fold them.” That’s step six. We’re on step one.

If starting still isn’t happening, do the step next to them and say almost nothing. Your presence lowers the cost of beginning.

Situation 2

Clean and Dirty Live in the Same Pile

Clean or Dirty. Every “is this clean?” moment is a decision, and decisions are where their brain stalls. Replace the gray area with two states and nothing else.

Two baskets: one clean, one dirty. Wrinkled but clean still counts as clean.

The floor is neither. That’s the whole boundary.

Don’t add a “worn once but not really dirty” category. You’d be putting the decision back in.

Situation 3

You’re About to Demand Folding

Lower the Folding Bar. If “done” means folded, sorted, and put away, the bar is high enough that nothing starts. Redefine done to match what they can do now. The higher bar comes back once the lower one runs on its own.

“This week, done means clean clothes in your basket in your room. We’ll add folding later.”

Hold three non-negotiables and flex everything else: nothing lives in the washer overnight, clean and dirty stay separate, the floor stays clear.

Socks in a bag and shirts wrinkled but wearable counts. Function first.

Why This Works

Starting is the expensive part. Most teens can do laundry once it’s moving; what they can’t do is generate the push to begin five separate times for one chore. Every micro-start you hand them is a start they complete, and completed starts are how the pattern of beginning gets built. Lowering the folding bar isn’t lowering your standards. It’s removing the tax that was keeping the whole task from happening at all.

The quiet payoff: the first time they move the clothes because the washer beeped, and not because you spoke, you’ll know the system has become theirs.

For Your Archetype

For Their Teen OS

Quick Summary

Stop

Asking for all five laundry jobs in one word.

Change

One step is the whole job, and done matches current capacity.

Impact

You watch them start without you, and starting was the thing they couldn’t do.

What to Watch For

You'll Catch It When

Folding it all yourself while they’re at school. The household runs and the skill never builds. Fold your own things next to them if your hands need the job.

Early Signs

Clothes move within an hour of the beep instead of three days later. One step happens without a prompt.

If Nothing Shifts Yet

The ask is still too big. Shrink it again, smaller than feels reasonable. Clean clothes in a basket, findable and wearable, is a win this month. The rest is later.

Saige

Tell Saige which step stalls in your house. It will help you size tomorrow’s ask.