Good Days, Bad Days — Plan for the Average, Not the Peak

Short answer: design for your typical day, not your best one — the plan you can sustain on a 5/10 day is the plan that survives

Wendy Wood's habit-formation research at USC (source) documents what behavioural economists have long predicted and ADHD readers know intuitively: plans designed around peak capacity systematically fail because peak capacity isn't the average state. The plan that works needs to fit the average day's energy — the medium-state Tuesday, not the 'finally feeling on' Saturday. Designing for average is counterintuitive (it feels like settling for less) but produces more total output across months because the plan survives instead of collapsing. The high-output days are then bonus, not the foundation. This article is life-and-tools; if your 'average' is so depleted that even minimum-viable plans don't survive, that's a signal to talk to a clinician about whether something underlying needs addressing.

Why peak-day planning sets up the collapse

On the rare good day you feel capable of two hours of focused work, a workout, deep cleaning, and an evening project. You set those as the standard. On the average day — and most days are average — you can do maybe a third of that. The gap between standard and capacity produces failure feeling, which produces shame, which produces avoidance, which produces less the next day. The plan that worked once becomes the plan that proves you can't keep a plan. The damage compounds, the plan is abandoned, the cycle restarts on the next good day. Designing for average breaks this. Most days you hit the bar; the bar feels achievable; the shame-avoidance loop doesn't start.

How to design for your average day

• Identify what a 5/10 day actually looks like. Be honest. Not the day you have when you're caught up on sleep, well-fed, no kids sick — the typical Tuesday. Energy mid-low, distractions normal, motivation in the middle. The plan you can complete on that day is the plan.

• Pick three priorities only. Not seven, not five. Three. The 5/10 day can usually handle three things if they're sized right. Two work-related, one personal — or whatever ratio fits your week. Three completed produces 'I did the plan' feeling; seven attempted and three completed produces 'I failed the plan' feeling. Same action; different label.

• Build in a fallback layer for bad days. Have a 'bad day version' pre-decided for each priority. 'Bad day version of writing: 100 words instead of 500.' 'Bad day version of workout: 10 minutes of stretching instead of 45 minutes of cardio.' The fallback is the plan when the average isn't available; you do something rather than nothing, and the habit-chain survives.

• Let good days be overflow, not expected. When a good day arrives, do more — but treat the extra as bonus, not normal. Don't recalibrate the plan upward based on it. The good day proves the underlying capacity exists; the average day decides what gets reliably done. Resist the urge to ramp the plan after one good week.

• Notice the relief, not just the output. Living with an achievable plan produces a baseline calm that planning-for-peak doesn't. The relief is a measurable benefit; people who switch to average-state planning often report that the lower stress is more valuable than the small output reduction (which usually doesn't happen anyway — sustained smaller plans produce more total output than ambitious abandoned plans).

• Revisit the average quarterly. Your average shifts over time — life phases, kids' ages, work intensity, health. Every quarter or so, check whether your current 'average day' is still what you designed for. Adjust if the underlying state has shifted. The plan should track reality, not the other way around.

Why this matters particularly with ADHD

ADHD output varies more day-to-day than neurotypical output, and the variability is largely outside conscious control — sleep quality, dopamine state, hormonal phase, emotional load all affect a single day's capacity. Planning for the peak therefore systematically over-promises because the peak is a smaller fraction of the days. ADHD-friendly planning is therefore even more strongly served by average-state design than neurotypical planning is. Many readers find that switching from peak-based to average-based planning is the single biggest reduction in chronic plan-failure shame they make in a year.

FAQ

Won't I underachieve compared to my potential?

The empirical answer is that consistently-completed smaller plans produce more total output over months than ambitious plans that get abandoned every few weeks. Your 'potential' is a peak that exists in only a small fraction of your days; the plan that captures average-day output captures much more total output over time. Designing for peak doesn't produce peak output; it produces collapse. The averaged-design feels like underachieving; it produces overachieving compared to the alternative.

What if my 'average' is really low right now?

Then design for that and don't apologise. Low-capacity periods are part of life — recovering from illness, after a baby, during a crisis, during depression-adjacent low. The plan should match the season you're actually in, not the season you wish you were in. If 'average' has been very low for many weeks without external explanation, that's a signal worth bringing to a clinician — sometimes the average has shifted because of something that needs addressing rather than just designed around.

How do I know when to ramp up the plan?

Two signals: the current plan has been consistently easy for a month (not 'occasionally easy'), and the increase you're considering is small (10-20% more, not double). Both together mean you have real capacity to add and the addition is unlikely to break the system. If either signal is missing, hold. Most people ramp up too soon based on a couple of good weeks; the abandonment that follows is the cost of the premature ramp.

Isn't this just lowering standards?

Different question: is the standard achieving the outcome you wanted? The high-stated-standard that produces three months of completion followed by abandonment achieves less than the medium-stated-standard that produces 12 months of completion. Standards are useful insofar as they produce outcomes. Outcome-based standards (consistent output, sustained habit, durable practice) often look like the lower-stated standard but produce the better result.

Smallest move today?

Look at your current plan or to-do list. Cross out everything beyond the three most important. Write the bad-day fallback for each of the three. Today, do the three. Notice tomorrow whether the plan felt different — that difference is the data. The skill is sustaining this; the experiment is one day.