If-Then Plans: Turning Intention into Action in ADHD

“I'll look at the report tomorrow.”

I don't know how many times I have said that sentence. Every time I said it, I meant it. When tomorrow came, the intention was still in place, but the report was not opened. My intention was not lacking. What was lacking was the moment at which the intention would turn into movement.

In psychology this distance is called the intention-behavior gap. Everyone has it. In ADHD that gap is wider, more frequent and more shaming. In this article I will describe a method that touches that gap directly, whose research goes back many years but which is rarely talked about around ADHD: if-then plans.

What it means

The psychologist Peter Gollwitzer separates two kinds of intention.

The first is the goal intention: “I will write more.” “I will start exercising.” “I will pay my bills on time.” It says what you want. It says nothing about when, where and how.

The second is the implementation intention, in everyday terms the if-then plan: “If I put my morning coffee on the desk, then I open the writing file.” Here the goal is tied to a situation. What to do when the situation arrives is decided in advance. Its glossary entry is implementation intention.

The difference looks small. You add a few words to a sentence. But those few words take the decision out of the hard moment and carry it to an earlier, calmer one.

Why it works

Gollwitzer and Sheeran combined 94 independent tests on this subject in a meta-analysis. The effect of forming an if-then plan on reaching a goal was at a medium-to-large level (d = 0.65). The plans worked on four different problems: getting started on a job, protecting a job in progress from distractions, giving up a way that does not work, and saving strength for later jobs (Gollwitzer and Sheeran, 2006).

The same meta-analysis also supports two processes in how the plan works:

The situation stands out in the mind. The moment you say “when I put the coffee on the desk,” that scene turns into a kind of cue. When the coffee is put on the desk, the mind is ready to notice it. You do not need to spend extra effort to remember the plan; the situation reminds you.

The response becomes automatic. When the situation arrives you do not weigh again what to do. The decision has already been made. Researchers describe this as “delegating control to the situation.”

For me the second point changes everything. Because the place where I stumble most in ADHD is the moment of decision. When I sit down at my desk, three options appear in my mind: open the file, look at e-mail first, read something. In that three-second argument the easiest and most attractive option usually wins. The if-then plan never opens that argument.

Why it suits ADHD in particular

As someone with ADHD, most of the time I know what I should do. The problem is that the knowledge does not come into play at the right moment. From three separate places:

Remembering something to be done in the future. Intentions like “take out the trash on your way out” often drop in ADHD. This kind of memory is called prospective memory; I described it in more detail in the article on working memory and forgetfulness. The if-then plan takes the job of remembering off memory and leaves it to a situation: the moment you hold the door handle.

The distant reward. In ADHD a delayed reward loses value faster. A meta-analysis combining twenty-one case-control studies found that individuals with ADHD discounted a future monetary reward markedly more than controls; the effect was at a medium level (Jackson and MacKillop, 2016). In the glossary it appears as reward delay. A reward that stands far away cannot compete with the attractive option of the moment. The plan does not remove the race, but it opens a path where the race never starts.

The momentary impulse. Being able to stop a response before it starts is a skill ADHD struggles with. The plan places the sentence “when this happens I will do that” there before the impulse.

Four problems, four plans

When I translate the four areas of the meta-analysis into my own days, the method becomes more concrete. Each one corresponds to a different moment of stumbling.

Starting. When working on an academic text, the hardest moment is the one before the file is opened. “If I turn on the computer, then I open the text file before the browser” is a plan written for this moment.

Not leaving the road. While working my phone vibrates and my hand reaches out almost by itself. The plan “If the phone vibrates, then I finish my sentence and look afterward” does not forbid the distraction; it opens a place for it in advance.

Giving up. A little-discussed problem in ADHD is staying too long on a way that does not work. I can get stuck on a single paragraph of a strategy draft for hours, because once I am inside, getting out also requires a decision. “If I am rewriting the same paragraph for the third time, then I mark it and move on to the next” is an exit door written for that decision.

Saving strength. What tires me most at the end of the day is the accumulation of small decisions. When I will cook, what I will finish tonight, which message I will answer. Every decision made in advance leaves a little more energy for the me of the evening.

None of these four sentences requires heroic willpower. All of them amount to seeing the hard moment in advance.

Experiments with ADHD children

In ADHD this method was tested most in the experiments of Caterina Gawrilow and colleagues. I want to look at the details, because only the details tell what was shown and what was not.

Stopping an impulse. In the first study, 30 boys with ADHD and 28 boys without ADHD, aged 8 to 14, classified pictures on a screen by pressing a key. When they heard a sound they were not to press the key. Some of the children only repeated the goal: “I will not press the key on pictures with sound.” Others added a plan to the goal: “And if I hear a sound, then I will not press any key.” The children with ADHD who formed the plan reached the level of the children without ADHD in stopping where they needed to stop. In the second study, medicated and unmedicated conditions were compared with 20 boys with ADHD; the highest performance appeared in the condition where the plan and the stimulant medication were together (Gawrilow and Gollwitzer, 2008).

Waiting. In another study children made a choice forty times on a computer: click the red picture immediately and get 1 point, or wait between 30 and 60 seconds and get 3 points with the blue picture. The points were converted to money at the end. No significant difference emerged between children with ADHD who only formed the goal “I will win as many points as possible” and those who only repeated the rule of the task. The children who formed the plan “When the red picture comes up, I will wait for the blue one” waited markedly more and won more. A second study repeated this finding in both children with ADHD and children without ADHD (Gawrilow et al., 2011).

The most striking thing I see in these experiments is this: the goal alone changed nothing. Among children who had the same knowledge and wanted the same thing, only those who tied the situation to an action in advance behaved differently.

The rest of the picture

Here the excitement needs to be braked a little.

A meta-analysis combining studies in samples with mental health problems found that if-then plans showed a large effect in twenty-nine experiments (Toli et al., 2016). In the tables of the same meta-analysis, the details about ADHD draw a more mixed picture:

• In laboratory tasks the effects in children with ADHD were mostly large.
• In two school studies that extended into the classroom and daily life, the effects were much smaller.
• In adult ADHD the only data came from an unpublished doctoral thesis: 12 people in each group and a small effect.

So what we know comes largely from children, mostly boys, and from short computer tasks. I could not find a published study that tested if-then plans in adults diagnosed with ADHD, in real life, over weeks. In the general population the findings are strong. Carrying these findings over to adults with ADHD is, for now, a guess.

Knowing this, I still find the method worth trying. The reason is simple: its cost is one sentence. If it does not hold, what I lose is a piece of paper.

When it is not enough

The plan works on things you want to do but cannot do at the right moment. In other situations it has limits.

If even looking at the task hurts. The obstacle in front of an envelope that has not been opened for months is not the moment of decision; approaching the task is itself hard. I separated this in the article on procrastination or avoidance. In avoidance the plan alone is often not enough; having someone beside you does more.

If the first step is still big. The plan “If I sit down at my desk, then I write the report” looks good on paper. But “writing the report” is not an action; it is a project. The second half of the plan must be small. The two-minute rule is a good partner for this.

If it is a goal you do not really want. A plan formed for a job someone else expects from you stays weak. I will take this up, with its research, in the next article.

Using it in place of treatment. The if-then plan is a support tool. You need to talk about the diagnosis and the medication decision with your doctor. The fact that in the study above the plan and the medication together gave the best result is a reminder of this: one does not replace the other.

If your days carry a weight beyond the need to get started, if sleep, appetite or hope have also gone, the matter may not be only planning. Talking to a specialist is a good first step. If you have thoughts of harming yourself, in Türkiye you can call the 112 Emergency Call Center, and ALO 183 for social support.

I described the four-step structure that puts the plan in front of the goal in the WOOP article.

Where to start

I suggest you start with a single sentence. Choose one moment that makes you stumble in the same place every day. The moment you sit down at your desk, the moment you walk into the house, the moment you pick up your phone. Tie an action to that moment.

Write the sentence and for a week only observe. When the trigger came, did you remember the plan? If you remembered, did the action happen? The answers to the two questions most often tell which half of the plan needs fixing. If you did not remember, the trigger is too faint. If you remembered and did not do it, the action is too big. This small check is the easiest way to improve the method without turning it into an exam.

I wrote step by step how to choose the trigger, how to build the sentence and the common mistakes in the article how to build an if-then plan. I also collected examples usable at work, at school, at home and in a relationship in the article if-then plans in daily life.

The sentence “I'll look at the report tomorrow” is still said in me. But now I add a question next to it: tomorrow, at exactly which moment?