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 doc is open. The cursor is blinking. Twenty minutes, and the page is still blank.”

They say they don’t know what to write. That’s not quite it. Everything they think of sounds wrong before it reaches the page, because as long as nothing is written, they can still believe they would have done it well. The blank page is protection. Wrong drafts get edited; blank pages get defended.

A Micro-Start is an action so small it’s finished before their judgment can catch up to it. The goal is getting something, anything, onto the page.

Pick Your Moment

Run ninety seconds: staring at a blank page.

Draft mode only: they fix every sentence as they write it.

Shrink to one sentence: mid-draft, the panic comes back.

This Week's Moves

Situation 1

Staring at a Blank Page

Run ninety seconds. Set a countdown timer for 90 seconds and have them write anything. No deleting, no rereading, no spell-check. This one counts down on purpose: the hard stop is the rule-keeper, so they don’t have to be. When it goes off, they’re done, and you don’t read what they wrote.

“You don’t need to be right. You need to start. Ninety seconds, write anything, we’ll fix it later.”

When the timer stops, say “Good. That’s the start. Done for now.” Don’t read it, don’t correct it, don’t praise it. Any verdict, even a nice one, is still a verdict.

Situation 2

They Fix Every Sentence as They Write It

Draft mode only. Every stop-and-fix loses the thread. Separate the two jobs completely: tonight is drafting, tomorrow is editing. Then remove the tools that make mid-draft fixing possible.

For screen work: spell-check off, grammar-check off, the rubric tab closed. AI tools and search stay closed until editing starts; asking a bot how to phrase something is editing, and it’s not tonight.

“Tonight we’re drafting only. No fixing. We’ll edit tomorrow.”

For paper work: pencil with no eraser, scrap paper instead of the good paper, cross-outs instead of do-overs.

Situation 3

Mid-Draft, the Panic Comes Back

Shrink to one sentence. Halfway through, what they’ve written starts looking wrong and quitting starts looking safe. Drop the bar to the floor: tonight’s whole job is one sentence, any sentence, anywhere in the piece. “The main character is annoying and makes bad choices” counts.

“One sentence tonight. It doesn’t have to be the opening. Any sentence, anywhere.”

When they write it, say “Good. That’s done,” and have them close the doc. Don’t push for more. One sentence was the deal, and keeping the deal is what makes tomorrow’s sentence cheaper.

Why This Works

As long as your teen doesn’t start, the essay stays perfect and so do they. That’s what the blank page protects. A 90-second draft gets written anyway, because there isn’t time to judge something that small, and once wrong words exist on a page and nothing bad happens, being wrong gets cheaper.

You’re teaching one separation: drafting is for getting words down, editing is for making them good, and the two can’t happen at once. The day you watch your teen write a bad sentence, shrug, and keep going, you’re watching the skill they’ll need for every hard piece of writing after this one.

For Your Archetype

For Their Teen OS

Quick Summary

Stop

Reassuring them about quality. “It doesn’t have to be perfect” is still a grade.

Change

Tiny timed starts, editing tools out of reach, and a bar low enough to step over.

Impact

Pages stop being blank, and you watch them get words down without you in the loop.

What to Watch For

You'll Catch It When

Reading the 90-second draft. You’ll want to, even just to encourage. But evaluation is what the freeze is made of, and praise still counts as evaluation.

Early Signs

They draft without deleting. The blank-page stare gets shorter. You hear “I’ll fix it later” in their voice instead of yours.

If Nothing Shifts Yet

A draft they wrote and deleted still counts; writing happened. Perfectionism took years to build, and the first crack is the week’s real result. Keep the asks small and keep your eyes off the output.

Saige

Tell Saige what the blank-page moment looks like at your house and it will help you size tonight’s micro-start.