How To Create Your Life’s Roadmap When You Have ADHD (Stop Feeling Directionless)

Published on: November 30th, 2019

Do you know where you’re going? It’s common for people with ADHD to lack direction in life.

Your life’s roadmap is like the bridge that leads you from your current place in life, to the future life you envision.

This article is designed to help people with ADHD create a roadmap for life.

Before reading this article, make sure to spend some time creating a vision for your life.

You’ll need a clear vision for your life before creating a life roadmap.

After creating a vision for your life, you’re going to need a roadmap that guides you to your future life

Now you have a clear vision for what you want your future life to look like.

But you’re still living your current life.

There’s obviously going to be a gap that needs to be filled here…

You’re going to need a roadmap for your life.

Your roadmap is going to guide you through the “gap” between where you currently are, and where you expect to be in the future.

The good news is you’re probably already aware of the general direction you need to be heading towards in life.

For example…

• An aspiring world-traveler knows they need to start developing a valuable skill, and kickstart the process of applying for remote jobs

• An aspiring filmmaker knows they need to start recording videos, editing videos, and marketing videos

Knowing your life’s vision as far in advance as possible and sticking with your vision is 90% of the battle.

However, having a personal roadmap that guides you to your life’s vision is only going to help you.

Of course, life isn’t like Google Maps. There are far more than just 1 or 2 highways that will take you to your life’s vision.

There are millions of different paths you can take to arrive at your life’s vision.

The best we can do is prepare you with a personal roadmap that keeps you focused on the best processes that give you the absolute greatest odds of achieving your life’s vision over time.

Keep in mind that everyone’s roadmap is going to be unique, because everyone has a different vision for their life.

Here’s a quick example roadmap.

Let’s imagine your life’s vision is to retire relatively young, move to South Florida, and live in a condominium by the ocean. 

For this example, your life’s roadmap might look something like:

1. Acquire a high-paying job by any means necessary

2. ​Create a “side business” that you can work on in the mornings, evenings and weekends 

3. ​Start researching condominiums in South Florida

4. Start buying condominiums in South Florida that you can safely rent to reliable tenants (take out bank loans if necessary)

5. After some time, eventually move into one of your condominiums

This is a fairly proven roadmap that would allow nearly anyone living in America to achieve their life’s vision after 5 to 10 years.

Now let’s do another example.

This time, let’s say your life’s vision is to create incredible artwork that is featured in art museums for thousands of years past your death. 

This is a very exciting life vision that would require some serious commitment.

But this is still 100% achievable.

Using this example, here’s what your life’s roadmap might look like:

1. Secure any job that maximizes the amount of creative free time you’re allowed to have (like a high school art teacher)

2. Hire a world-class art instructor who has already had their artwork featured in museums (they will coach you based on their real-world results)

3. Create art during every moment of free time you have available

4. ​Attend one art show per week and aggressively network with people in the art world

5. ​Submit your artwork to art museums every month

This second example roadmap appears to be wildly different from our first example roadmap, because each roadmap leads to entirely different destinations.

One person aspires to retire in South Florida as quickly as possible.

The other person aspires to be a world-renowned artist.

However, the individual processes involved in both example roadmaps are actually very similar. In both these roadmaps, the individual processes revolve around doing anything and everything humanly possible to stack the odds of success in the person’s favor. The idea here is to design a roadmap that give you the absolute greatest odds of achieving your life’s vision.

In the case of the aspiring South Florida retiree, their roadmap relies heavily on capitalizing on labor at a relatively young age, and snapping up profitable South Florida real estate assets as quickly as possible. 

For this roadmap to work, you would have to be willing to work like a madman or madwoman for 5 to 10 years to achieve your life’s vision. Even at the expense of your social life. You would have to embrace becoming a workaholic for a little while.

In the case of the artist who wants to create perennial artwork, money has nothing to do with their life’s vision. 

They’ve optimized their entire life around maximizing the amount of free time available to create art.

In both these examples, the respective roadmaps consist of individual processes that guide the person towards the future existence they desire.

Achieving your life’s vision is all about focusing on the processes that maximize your odds of getting the outcome you desire.

If life is a game, this is how you stack the odds in your favor and play to win!

For reference, here’s my life’s vision and roadmap…

ADHD Boss Life Vision:

To help millions of people with ADHD live the best life imaginable

ADHD Boss Life Roadmap:

(These are the individual processes that give me the best odds of achieving my life’s vision within 5 to 10 years…)

1. Publish at least one blog post per day

2. Send 5 new email pitches per day for collaborations and media relations

3. Spend 15 minutes per day creating & sharing content across social media platforms

Now it’s your turn…

Now it’s your turn to create a roadmap that leads you to the life you truly desire.

It’s important to note that your life’s roadmap will likely change over time. 

Life is crazy and hectic. So your roadmap isn’t supposed to be set in stone.

Your roadmap is supposed to evolve over time.

The idea here is to maintain a flexible, personalized road map that leads you to your life’s vision.

You’re allowed to change your life’s vision and your life’s roadmap over time.

Just follow the action steps below to create a personal roadmap for your life’s vision.

Action steps:

• Write down your life’s vision

• Write down 2 to 3 individual processes that give you the absolute best odds of achieving your life’s vision within 5 to 10 years (this is your life’s roadmap)

• ​Spend the next few days refining your life’s vision & roadmap, as you will need both of these concepts when it comes time to create your Attention & Energy Grid in a later article on ADHD Boss (your Attention & Energy Grid will be used to help you focus on your life’s vision & roadmap over the long-term)

An important note about the individual processes that make up your life’s roadmap…

It’s usually best to have a few narrow, highly-focused processes for your roadmap rather than a bunch of scattered processes. 

You don’t want to overwhelm yourself. 

I recommend starting with just 2 processes that you know you can stick with over time.

In the early days of building ADHD Boss, I only focused on publishing blog content and emailing my articles to media outlets.

Publishing content & sending emails was all I did for a very long time.

And it worked fabulously!

Those 2 processes accounted for the vast majority of my success.

You can do the same exact thing.