Setting One Sustainable Goal vs. 10 That'll Fail by February

You've done this before, right? January 1st hits and you're making this whole list — I'm talking like 10+ goals spanning fitness, finance, relationships, hobbies, productivity, maybe learning Italian for some reason. You're strong for approximately two weeks. Then Valentine's Day rolls around and you've abandoned 8 of them, feel like absolute trash about it, and decide you're just bad at follow-through. Bestie, the problem isn't you — it's that you set yourself up with a system destined to collapse under its own weight.

The Pattern You Already Know (And Why It Keeps Happening)

The shame spiral by mid-February isn't a willpower problem — it's a cognitive load problem. Every single goal you set requires executive function to maintain. Planning, initiating, following through, tracking progress — that's all executive function work. And when you're neurodivergent, that executive function is already managing like 90 other things just to keep baseline life running.

From a forensic psychology lens, what you're experiencing is decision fatigue compounded by inconsistent access to your brain's planning centers. It's not that you don't care about the goals. It's that your brain literally cannot sustain that level of cognitive juggling while also remembering to feed yourself and respond to emails and keep a tiny human alive.

So by February, your system crashes. And then you feel like you failed, when actually the setup failed you from the start.

The One-Goal Framework That Actually Works

Pick the ONE goal that reduces friction in other areas of your life. Not the most impressive goal. Not the goal that sounds best when people ask about your resolutions. The goal that makes literally everything else easier when you do it.

This might look like:

• Keeping your medication visible on the counter (reduces the daily "did I take my meds?" spiral)
• Ordering grocery delivery instead of in-store shopping (eliminates sensory overload + decision fatigue)
• Setting up autopay for bills (removes the mental load of tracking due dates)

Notice these aren't sexy goals. They're not "run a marathon" or "learn Italian." They're infrastructure goals — the kind that create space and capacity for everything else in your life to function better.

How to Know If Your Goal Is Actually Sustainable

Run it through the "bad day test" before committing. Can you do this goal on a day when your executive function has completely left the building? Can you do it while dissociated? Can you do it when you're touched-out, overstimulated, and running on four hours of sleep?

If the answer is no, it's not sustainable for an ND brain (and trust, that's most goals people set in January).

Red flags that a goal won't stick:

• Requires daily decision-making ("what workout should I do today?")
• Needs consistent energy levels (we absolutely do not have those)
• Depends on willpower or motivation (our brains don't work that way, bb)

Green flags that a goal might actually work:

• Functions on autopilot once set up
• Reduces decisions instead of adding them
• Works even on your worst days (because you will have worst days, that's just life)

The goal is to pick something so low-friction that "failing" at it is actually harder than just doing it.

Before you set any goals, see what's actually using up your capacity right now. The Mental Load Audit helps you identify where your energy is going so you're not just piling more shit onto an already-overloaded system.