How To Balance Short Vs. Long-Term Goals: 5 Helpful Tips

How often does thinking about long-term goals distract you from the short-term goals you’re currently working on? You know, those immediate priorities that are important?

Do you ever struggle to balance your long-term plans with the projects that need to happen now?

It’s often challenging for ADHD brains to focus on immediate tasks when we’re distracted by the shiny allure of:

• Researching next year’s vacation spots 
• Or where to move in three years

In fact, someone from We’re Busy Being Awesome, my small group coaching program, recently brought up this topic by asking:

“How can I keep my big-picture goal (moving in 3-5 years) on my radar without making it a priority now? I get stressed and distracted by it, even though it’s not urgent.”

So relatable, right?!

How can we keep important goals on our radar without: 

1. Neglecting our current priorities
2. Completely forgetting about the goal until it’s too late

If you’ve ever wondered the same thing, I think you might love Episode 258 of the I’m Busy Being Awesome podcast.

Tune in today and discover:

• Why balancing future plans with immediate tasks is tough for ADHD brains
• How to move out of overwhelm and identify where to place your attention
• Specific strategies to achieve your long-term goals without neglecting your current priorities

https://youtu.be/b0zQg8nyjfc

You can listen to the episode above or stream it on your favorite podcasting app here.

Prefer to read? No problem! Keep scrolling for a summary of the key takeaways.

In Episode 258: You Will Discover

• Why balancing future plans with immediate tasks is tough for ADHD brains
• How to move out of overwhelm and identify where to place your attention
• Specific strategies to achieve your long-term goals without neglecting your current priorities

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Episode #258: How To Balance Short Vs. Long-Term Goals: 5 Helpful Tips (Transcript)

The inspiration for today’s topic is…

How we can balance long-term goals with our more pressing priorities today, which are most likely short-term goals?

This question was recently asked in We’re Busy Being Awesome (my group coaching program).

The main question was essentially, “How can I keep a big-picture goal, like moving back near my family in 3-5 years, on my radar without making it a priority now? I find myself getting stressed and distracted by it, even though it’s not urgent.”

This is such an important question that actually comes up often on all different levels, whether it’s big picture goals 3-5 years out, or 3-5 months out.

Regardless of the timeline, it’s important to learn how we can keep important but not urgent goals on our radar without letting them either: 

• A. Take all our energy and focus, preventing us from doing other work
• B. Fall completely off our radar until far too late

If you’re like most of us ADHD brains, this balance probably doesn’t comes naturally. Just think about it – have you ever found yourself daydreaming about some future plans, whether it’s moving to a new country, or going back to school, or making a career change, and suddenly, these plans completely consume your thoughts, pulling you away from what you need to focus on right now? 

I know if left unchecked, my excitement will have me spending hours and hours researching, rabbit holing, and spending so much time thinking about this new long-term goal despite the fact that I have much more immediate and no less important tasks that also need my attention now.

Again, if you can relate, you’re certainly not alone. These scenarios are incredibly common, especially for those of us with ADHD. The allure of future plans – especially if we have a tendency to live in perfectionist fantasies – can be so strong that it derails our productivity and creates so much additional (and unnecessary) stress in our present lives. 

But why does this happen, and more importantly, how can we support ourselves when it does?

That is exactly what we’re talking about today. Throughout the episode, we’re exploring:

• The unique challenges that the ADHD brain faces when balancing long-term goals and immediate priorities.
• 4 main reasons behind this struggle
• 5 practical strategies to help you stay focused on what matters now without letting those long-terms goals fall to the wayside. 

So, if you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by future planning or struggled to stay present, this episode is for you. 

So let’s begin by diving into the why behind it.

Why is long-term goal planning an obstacle for us?

Executive Function Challenges:

First and foremost, there’s the fact that adults with ADHD struggle with executive functions. Full stop.

As we have a hard time with executive functions, that shows up as a challenge to manage our tasks, prioritize effectively, and stay organized.

Not surprisingly, the difficulty with breaking down big projects into smaller steps, putting them in the right sequence, and prioritizing what to do first makes it much more difficult to balance our immediate projects with future plans. 

For example, if I’m not careful, I can get stuck in big-picture goals and ideas for my business. I love thinking about new courses I want to create, trainings I want to run, books I want to write, even though I have current projects on deck that need my attention now. 

For myself personally, I know my tendency is to stay in that big picture because organizing bigger projects and goals feels more manageable and exciting looking at them from far away than zooming in and dealing with the day-to-day minutia required to actually write and schedule the 12 email automations or building a new landing page and writing the website copy.

I’d much rather stay at the 10,000 foot view and imagine how everything fits beautifully together than actually have to test it. Then get down on the ground and figure out how all the pieces work together, specifically. 

So that’s one major obstacle is our challenge with executive functioning. 

Time Blindness:

If time blindness is a newer term to you, essentially, it refers to the difficulty many people with ADHD have in accurately perceiving the passage of time.

Dr. Barkley talks about those of us with ADHD being in the “now” or “not now.” We don’t have a long time horizon that allows us to look far into the future. 

When we consider this in today’s topic of long-term planning, time blindness can impact how we think about our long-term tasks. It might leave us thinking of the long-term projects far in the distance are equally as urgent as immediate tasks. This therefore creates a sense of pressure to do them now. 

For example, you might feel an overwhelming urge to start researching which school districts are the best in the new state you’re moving to, even though you won’t be moving for 3-5 years, because your brain struggles to distinguish the urgency of that task from more immediate projects.

Hyperfocus:

Mixed in with the time blindness comes hyperfocus. This state is where our brain gets intensely absorbed in a task or idea, often to the exclusion of everything else.

Now, this can be a double-edged sword, since it can make future planning seem incredibly engaging and urgent. For instance, you might find yourself spending hours reading about the top 10 neighborhoods to move – despite the timeline being 3-5 years – meanwhile putting off your current work projects because the brain has completely hyperfocused on the topic of moving. 

Trying to Prevent Overwhelm:

The last obstacle I want to mention today is a sneaky one. I’m calling it attempting to prevent overwhelm.

Some of us ADHD brains, know how uncomfortable it is to feel overwhelmed. We think that if we organize, plan and focus on the project or goal enough, it will help prevent overwhelm. This is where it’s sticky, because – on the one hand – that CAN help.

When we plan ahead, we do help think through obstacles ahead of time and set ourselves up for success.

Just as is the case with most strengths, they can be overused and turn into weaknesses.

In this situation, preemptive planning can create a paradox where the attempt to avoid future overwhelm results in present overwhelm instead.

We’re so focused on trying to avoid future overwhelm and stress that we put all of our focus there. Meanwhile, we’re avoiding the tasks with a much shorter turnaround time, those deadlines begin piling up, and all this additional stress can keep us from focusing on our current priorities. 

Now that we know the why, let’s talk about what to do about it.

How To Be Aware of Our Long-Term Goals While Taking Care of Short-Term Tasks?

How can we support our brains to create the structure and foresight to stay on track with these long-term goals, without letting them derail us from our current projects?

1. Create a flexible timeline

I begin by creating a flexible outline or schedule. It’s helpful to create that 10,000 ft. view of where we’re going move the upcoming months and years.

For example, when I was planning my move from Massachusetts to Minnesota last year, I went through a similar challenge of trying to balance short-term and long-term goals. 

To do this, I first mapped out a general, flexible plan for getting from MA to MN. I asked myself: If I want to make this happen within the next year…

• What would the timeline look like?
• What are the steps involved?
• How much time do I anticipate each step will take?
• What are the costs involved?

Of course, my brain immediately responded with “I have no idea – are you kidding me?!”

I acknowledged the fear and started breaking things down and asking around. I asked Google, I talked with friends…(If I were doing it now, I’d ask ChatGPT.) 

So I figured out a general idea of what these answers were, and again, I want to reinforce that I didn’t hold these timelines tightly. I used them as a general reference. 

Essentially, the timelines gave my brain some peace of mind.

In fact, creating them helped me recognize that there was so much I did NOT need to do right away. 

Plus, the general timeline let me pace myself so I COULD focus on the one or two things that might require more time; like saving money for the moving costs, and starting to declutter the things I knew I didn’t need nor did I want to pay to move halfway across the country. 

In other words, for any long-term goal like this – whether you’re moving, thinking about changing careers, saving for a big purchase, or wanting to travel for an extended period of time, I’d intentionally dedicate an hour or two to thoughtfully mapping out that big picture overview.

This is especially powerful now that we have things like Chat GPT and goblin.tools to help – which leads me to the next point…

2. Use AI and Habit Trackers:

Leverage tools like ChatGPT for planning and use habit trackers for ongoing routines and habits. This helps you lighten the cognitive load when you’re breaking down the big goals into smaller projects. It also helps you visually see your progress and stay on track as you go.

👉 As a side note, if you haven’t heard my episode on using Chat GPT to support your ADHD brain, I highly suggest checking it out. You can also get my free cheat sheet with specific prompts you can literally copy and paste to use immediately.

First, set aside a few hours to let your brain imagine and work through the big-picture plan. Then ask friends, Chat GPT, or Google for help with any of the questions that have you feeling stuck. 

From there, literally map those things out on your calendar. Give yourself lots of wiggle room.

Next, set up reminders or appointments in your calendar (I do recommend a digital calendar here so you know it won’t get lost) to tend to them when they come up. For example, in in January 2026, start looking at XYZ.

Writing those steps down helps your brain know it’s in the books. You’ve already taken care of future-you with a plan, so you can focus on what matters most RIGHT NOW. Then when January 2026 pops up, you can start thinking about the next thing. It’s literally in the calendar. You’ve closed the loop. 

For ongoing things like saving money for a down payment or decluttering to make the move easier, you might set recurring reminders or use habit trackers to visually remind you and track your progress. 

👉 If you’re thinking to yourself, “Yeah, right. Like I’ll actually stick to those habits” be sure to grab my free training – ADHD Routine Revamp. Whether you’re establishing a routine of decluttering, saving for your vacation, or studying to go back to school, I literally designed this free training to help you lock in your routines and make them stick. Grab it HERE!

Alright, so you’ve created an overarching 10,000 foot plan. You’ve mapped it out in your digital calendar with reminders so you’re helping future you stay on track with your long-term goals while allowing you to close the loop and focus on the present project at hand. 

I have three other suggestions to consider with long-term planning to help you stay focused on the goals without losing sight of what’s important right now. 

3. Designate Specific Time for Future Planning:

For my clients – this could be the first body double session of the month or something like that. Similarly, you could pair up with a colleague, your bestie, or your spouse and have a planning/goals check-in once per month.

Having the accountability of someone else working on their own goals, paired with deciding ahead of time when you’ll do this each month, allows you to allocate mental energy efficiently on whatever that long-term goal is for those few hours without letting that focus spread into your daily tasks and projects.

Then as that goal gets closer, and it moves up higher in the order or priority, you might move those sessions more often or start setting aside specific time for it more often throughout the month. 

Alternatively – as an aside – you could always keep that monthly check-in and planning session for ANY of your long-term goals. By dedicating an hour or two on the first Sunday or the month or the last Tuesday body double session of the month, you give yourself permission to focus on long-term plans without them becoming a constant distraction. 

You can use this in lots of ways. You might spend this time actually researching new career opportunities or planning a specific vacation. OR, you might spend that hour breaking down the next steps of the goal that you want to work on that month into smaller steps and mapping them out throughout the month to ensure you’re making that persistent movement forward. 

4. Capture Ideas In Your Brilliant Ideas List:

Building on this, I think it can be helpful to maintain an ongoing note in your notes app or what I call my “Brilliant Ideas List“.

Having one place – whether a physical notebook or app or Google doc to capture your thoughts, questions, and tasks related to long-term goals can be really helpful. 

It allows you to offload these thoughts from your mind, which both reduces cognitive load and prevents distraction, while reasurring yourself that you’ll remember it later because you’ve written it down in your ONE place. 

For example, if I think of a new course I want to teach while working on an entirely different project, I can jot it down in my Brilliant Ideas List, which allows me to acknowledge the idea without derailing my current focus. This ensures it’s there for me when it’s time to plan the next month or quarter in my business.

5. Remember Your ‘Why’:

Once we’ve written that new idea or thought or goal down, then it’s time to return to the project at hand.

How do we do this? I think one of the most helpful tools in our toolkit here – in addition to the process of breaking down steps like I talk about all the time in other episodes – is to make sure you remember why the project or goal or task you’re working on is important.

Knowing your ‘why’ helps anchor your attention and motivation. It sounds so simple, but I’m telling you, it’s so key. When you understand the deeper purpose behind your current tasks, it becomes easier to bring yourself back to the topic at hand whenever your new ideas or thoughts about the future goal pop into your mind. 

For instance, if you’re working on a critical project at work, this is where we practice the pause – for all my current and past clients – as a reminder, you’ll find the literal step by step to practicing the pause right at the beginning of the framework in your client portal. But we practice the pause and then remind ourselves of our why.

We think about this critical project and how it contributes to our overall career goals, supports our team, or aligns with our personal values. 

This deeper connection can help reinforce your commitment to the task at hand and help you resist the urge to focus your attention to long-term goals.

This is especially true when you can remind your brain that you’ve already taken care of future you by mapping things out, setting reminders for the next steps in your calendar, and committing to monthly check-ins with your bestie, your colleague, or together on our body double calls.

You’re right on track. And you’re focusing on what matters most right now. 

Let’s Recap

Alright – we made it! I know I threw a lot at you today, so let’s do a quick rundown of the action steps to help you balance long-term goals with your current priorities:

1. Create a Flexible Timeline:

Map out a general plan for your long-term goal. Outline the timeline, steps involved, and estimated time for each step. Use this as a flexible guide to give your brain peace of mind. Schedule reminders or appointments in your digital calendar for tasks related to your long-term goals. This helps you stay organized and ensures future tasks don’t get forgotten.

2. Use Tools Like ChatGPT and Habit Trackers:

Leverage tools like ChatGPT for planning and use habit trackers for ongoing routines and habits. This helps you:

• Lighten the cognitive load when you’re breaking down the big goals into smaller projects
• Visually see your progress and stay on track as you go.

3. Set Monthly Planning Sessions:

Designate a specific time each month for future planning. Pair up with a friend or colleague or join a body double for accountability. Use this time to focus solely on long-term goals without letting them intrude on your daily tasks.

4. Capture Ideas in a ‘Brilliant Ideas List’:

Maintain a dedicated note in your notes app or a physical notebook for all thoughts and ideas related to long-term goals. This helps offload your brain and ensures you don’t forget these ideas.

5. Remember Your ‘Why’:

Regularly remind yourself why the current projects and tasks you’re working on are important. Knowing your ‘why’ helps anchor your attention and motivation, making it easier to stay focused on immediate tasks.

By implementing these strategies, you can create a balanced approach to managing your long-term goals while staying focused on what matters most right now.

As a reminder, make sure to grab the following resources to help you out:

• Chat GPT Cheat Sheet
• Brilliant Ideas List
• ADHD Routine Revamp training

Final Thoughts

All right, my friends, that’s going to do it for us this week.

👉 If you’re ready to take these concepts and apply them to your life and learn how to support your ADHD in a way that’s best for you, I invite you to learn more about my small group coaching program, We’re Busy Being Awesome, as well as through 1:1 coaching.

Also, if you know someone who would love to learn more about how to make progress on their long-term goals without ignoring their current priorities, would you be a rockstar and share this episode with them?

Send them the episode in a text or share it on your IG stories. Whatever you do, please know that you’re helping me get these tools to even more people, and I really appreciate it.

Until next time, keep being awesome. I’ll talk with you soon.

Links From The Podcast

• Learn more about We’re Busy Being Awesome here
• Learn about 1:1 coaching here
• Get the top 10 tips to work with your ADHD brain (free ebook!)
• Discover my favorite ADHD resources here
• Get the I’m Busy Being Awesome Planning System here
• Get the Podcast Roadmap here
• Get the ADHD Routine Revamp here

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