The Importance (and Difficulties) of Sticking to a Plan as a Business Owner

I spent all day Sunday making a fairy house with my family. We put the leaf in the dining room table, heaped it with supplies, and followed our creative whims. I glue-gunned a tiny fairy banner, my daughter sewed a hammock, and my partner constructed itty bitty chairs. We hardly had the space to work surrounded by pinecones, paints, and burlap, but it was a pretty inspiring day.

The important part of this story is that we had never done something like this before. On a whim, I bought supplies and tried my hand at needle felting little fairies to live in our magical land. We followed an inspiring idea, didn’t come close to seeing it through, and who knows when we’ll get back to working on it. But it sure was fun! So fun, in fact, that we burnt our lasagne sauce while we were busy crafting away.

Even in our personal lives, following whims like this has hidden costs. For example, I had just started getting into watercolour painting again, but now that has been pushed back because I’ve been diverted into fairy house-making. There was a somewhat significant financial investment into supplies (though between our basement full of crafting supplies and the great outdoors this wasn’t too bad compared to other whims!), and our house (and my allergies) certainly suffered because we did exactly zero cleaning this weekend.

ADHD Makes it Harder to Finish Things (And Easy to Start Others)

If you have ADHD traits, this is likely a familiar story. Starting a new project is full of fun (and dopamine), so it’s easy to get excited about the possibilities. The learning, setting up the project, buying the supplies…that’s the exciting part. Actually doing the project may even be easy in the beginning. But finishing it? That’s another thing all together. The last 5% is notoriously hard for someone with ADHD, and for many other people, too. 

The Costs of Jumping from Thing to Thing in Your Business

Unfortunately, the same pattern can extend to your business.

Just like with my fairy house, there are costs to constant change in your business. 

Money – Most new endeavours cost money. A new course or book to learn, hiring some help, or whatever else you need to get it started. There is often a financial investment that doesn’t pay off until the project is complete. A stack of incomplete projects means no return on investment.

Time – Switching projects is incredibly time-consuming, not just for the time you’ve wasted on the previous project without completing it, but for all the startup time it takes on the new project. 

Energy – Learning new things takes a huge amount of energy and brain power. If you’re learning something new, you’re probably neglecting something else because it’s difficult to hold too much in your mind at one time. 

Opportunity – If you change to a new project before completing the last one, you miss out on whatever opportunity the first project would have awarded. When you don’t see things through, you also don’t see results.

The point, of course, isn’t to make you feel bad about whatever you’ve done before. I want to highlight that even if it feels good in the moment to switch from thing to thing, it doesn’t always serve you to do so.

Pulling Back the Curtain of My Own Project Switching

I almost always write about things that I also struggle with, and this time is no different.

This month alone for my hobbies I’ve:

• Worked on a shawl and realized I did something very wrong, so abandoned the project after 6 months of work while I figure out how to fix it
• Bought a watercolour painting class and supplies, and started re-learning how to paint flowers and leaves
• Started knitting a kind of mitten I’ve never tried before (with thrums)
• Started making a fairy house diorama
• Bought the supplies and successfully needle felted two mini fairies
• Got 3 new books out from the library (and finished two others)
• Regretted not buying a book about knitting gnomes. I’ll probably get that rectified before the end of the month!

But in my business, I’ve started exactly zero new things.

Instead, I’ve:

• Stuck with running a 30-day sprint in my community The Happy Squirrel Collective
• Continued working through an SEO course
• Progressed on reading a coaching book I’ve been working through slowly
• Completed a podcast interview and scheduled two more
• Had numerous connection calls with colleagues
• Continued to do my best possible work with my clients

The cost of project switching in my business is just too high, so I’m staying the course and seeing things through as much as I can.

Tips For Finishing Projects and Sticking to a Plan, Even If You Have ADHD

This month in The Happy Squirrel Collective, my ADHD-friendly community for business owners who want to get shit done their own way, we are doing a 30-day sprint together to make progress on a project. Last week we discussed sticking to a plan.

Here are the tips they came up with to help them stick to their projects:

• Have clear reasons why the project matters. Make sure the project is aligned to your values and leverages your strengths. Look at these from the beginning to make sure to choose the right projects from the start.
• Think about who can help you do the project, not only how to do it yourself. (Bonus, working with someone else adds accountability)
• Have a clear idea of what the end looks like, or what being finished looks like. When you make your task list, make sure all tasks are on the list so when the tasks are done, you're done.
• The last task should be to celebrate completion. Take time to fantasize about it ahead of time and get excited about completing the project.
• If you're stuck, imagine you're a consultant or someone hired to get the job done. Consultants don't have the emotional baggage...they just get shit done and do the what’s on the task list. They're objective, since they’re approaching it from the outside.

Other Factors to Finishing Projects I Didn’t Cover in This Article

This is a VERY complicated topic that is even more nuanced if you suspect you have ADHD. There’s no way this covers it all, but I hope it gives you a starting point to explore what works for you. A few other things to consider:

• It’s okay to leave a project incomplete, if that’s what makes the most sense for your situation. Sometimes we pick the wrong project and we need to cut our losses and let it go.
• There can be lots of guilt and shame tied up with not finishing projects. An added benefit to finishing things is increased self-trust and confidence. Unfinished projects can use up a lot of extra brain power, especially if there are constant reminders of that “failure”. Tying a bow on it, even if it isn’t finished, can help a great deal to get it off your conscience.
• Sometimes we abandon projects when they feel too overwhelming or hard, because it’s easier to start something new than finish that thing. I wrote a whole article here on breaking projects down into smaller steps and another one on estimating time to complete projects.
• Don’t underestimate the value of celebrating as you go!
• There are lots of little tricks you can try to feel like you have the option to start new things without actually starting them. For example, you can have a parking lot list or a “someday maybe” list to keep your ideas. You can set aside time each week to pursue new things that aren’t on the plan. You can use your new idea as a reward for finishing the first idea.
• All of this is assuming you have a plan in the first place, and assuming you’re scheduling your time effectively – both big assumptions and topics of other articles!

If you find yourself task switching too often or unable to finish projects, consider joining us in The Happy Squirrel Collective. It’s a rich source of community support from other business owners and ideas to help you thrive in your business using strategies that are unique to you. You can find discount codes and all the details at https://stephaniewasylyk.com/happysquirrel