37: An ADHD Friendly Way to Set Goals for the New Year – Part 2

ADHD-Friendly Goals, Part 2: Aspirations and the Four Burners

Continuing the walk through building ADHD-friendly New Year goals, modeled loosely on Gretchen Rubin’s 22-for-22 concept with a personal twist I call WHAT IF. The “if” stands for intentionally flexible, and “what” breaks down into want-tos, have-tos, aspirations, and things already tackled. Having already covered want-tos and have-tos, today is about the A: aspirations.

Why “aspirations” instead of “habits”

The word habit carries a lot of baggage if you’ve struggled with consistency before, it implies daily upkeep and the guilt that comes with breaking a streak. Aspiration works better because it keeps something meaningful in view without the pressure of “I have to do this every single day.” These are still meant to be finite and doable, just with enough shape to avoid scattering in a hundred directions at once.

Borrowing the four-burner method

Greg McKeown’s book Essentialism describes life as four burners on a stove, friends, health, family, and work, and argues you can really only give full attention to two at a time without something getting burned. Thinking through where “home” fits into that framework, it turns out home threads through all four. A home you’re not embarrassed to invite friends into supports connection. A home that brings you peace rather than stress is genuinely a cornerstone of health. A home that nurtures rather than drains your family strengthens that bucket. And for anyone managing a household, home is essentially its own form of work, whether or not you also work outside it.

Two aspirations per burner

With eight remaining slots in this goal-setting structure, the idea is to pick two aspirations for each of the four burners, friends, health, family, and work, optionally tied together with an overarching word for the year if that appeals to you.

A personal example: the word “strengthen”

Approaching a milestone birthday myself, and having let some health habits slip over the past couple of years, my word this year is strengthen. Not tied to a number on a scale, but to an actual sense of physical strength, prompted by a doctor’s note that muscle mass is one of the strongest indicators of aging well. But the word extends further than health alone: strengthening friendships that faded during recent isolated years, strengthening the parts of my business that get neglected in favor of more immediately rewarding work, strengthening whichever burner needs the most attention right now.

Keeping the tasks finite, not habitual

The key is framing these aspirations as concrete, one-time actions rather than daily commitments. For health, instead of committing to track food and protein intake every day indefinitely, a genuinely finite task might be reorganizing the kitchen so it actively supports better eating instead of working against it, a one-time project with a clear end point, not an ongoing habit to maintain forever. The same logic applies to work: rather than an open-ended commitment to “be more organized,” a finite task might be bringing in help long enough to build a system, then simply using that system going forward.

Choosing where to start

When mapping out eight aspirations across four buckets, it can help to prioritize one burner first, ideally one that naturally supports momentum into the others. Starting with health, for instance, can create energy that carries into tackling family, friends, or work goals next.

Your practical, actionable step

Pick your own four burners, or use friends, health, family, and work as a starting framework, and write down two finite, one-time aspirations for each, avoiding anything that requires daily upkeep to succeed. If it helps, choose a single word for the year to tie them together.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.