Building habits one at a time

Starting five at once is exciting and usually ends in none.

The short version: try one today

• Choose the one that makes others easier.
• Give it a month alone.
• Write the next habit down for later.

Keep forgetting the new routine? Priori has reminders and streaks to keep it in front of you. (We make it. It's free to download.)

It is Sunday night and you have a plan. From tomorrow you will wake at seven, journal, drink two litres of water, go to the gym, cook real dinners and be asleep by eleven. By Thursday you are eating cereal at midnight and all six habits are gone. Most advice on ADHD building habits skips the boring truth, which is that the number of new habits you can hold at once is usually one.

That says nothing bad about you. A new habit needs remembering, starting and repeating, and all three lean on executive function, the exact thing ADHD makes patchy. Five habits means five things to remember at once. One is a fair fight.

Why the big relaunch feels so good

Planning a new life is fun. Novelty is thought to give the ADHD brain a lift in interest and reward, so the plan itself feels like progress. You buy the planner, colour code the tracker and tell your flatmate you are a morning person now.

Then the doing starts, and it has none of that shine. Many women with ADHD also describe a perfectionist streak, often built over years of masking, where anything less than the full set counts as failure. So when one habit slips, the rest go out with it. With a single habit there is nothing else to topple.

Pick the habit that makes the others easier

Some habits sit upstream of others. If you get to bed at a reasonable hour, breakfast and a 9am lecture both get easier without extra effort. If your keys go in one bowl every time, you stop losing ten minutes each morning. Ask which single change would make three other things less hard.

• A sleep habit tends to help mornings, mood and focus.
• A ten minute reset of one surface helps cooking, laundry and finding things.
• Checking your calendar with your first coffee helps everything that has a time attached.

If you cannot decide, choose the smallest one. There is more on shrinking a habit in start smaller than feels reasonable.

ADHD building habits works better with a month alone

Give your one habit about a month with no competition. The month is not a finish line. The 2009 University College London habit study found a median of 66 days for a habit to feel automatic, with a range of 18 to 254 days. What a month does is carry you through the wobbly part, where the novelty has gone and the habit still needs propping up.

In a real week that looks dull. Monday you do it. Tuesday you do it. Wednesday you forget because your shift ran late. Thursday you do it again. The same study found that missing one day did not derail progress, so Wednesday is a blip and you carry on.

After the month, if the habit mostly happens without a pep talk, add a second one. Attaching it to the first is often easiest, which is what habit stacking is for.

What to do with the other four ideas

You will still get the urge to add things. It tends to arrive around day nine, at 1am, and it will feel urgent. Write the idea on a 'next habits' list and leave it there. Getting it on paper tells your brain the idea is safe, which makes it much easier to put down for now.

Keep the list where you will see it, like a pinned note on your phone or the inside cover of your notebook. When the month is up, pick from it. Some ideas will have lost their shine by then, which saves you the trouble of starting them.

If the one habit falls apart completely in week two, shrink it and go again. Two minutes of tidying instead of ten. A habit that survives a bad week is worth more than a perfect one that lasts four days.

Quick questions

How many habits should I start at once with ADHD?

One is the safest number for most people. Each new habit has to be remembered and started every day, and that load adds up fast when working memory is already stretched. Add a second only when the first mostly runs without effort.

Which habit should I build first if I have ADHD?

Pick the one that makes other things easier, such as a steadier bedtime or a single place for your keys and bag. If nothing stands out, start with the smallest option on your list. An easy first win makes the next habit less daunting.