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Free New Year Plan: One Thing Today

New Year’s Resolutions don’t work for ADHD brains. But small changes — made with purpose and realistic expectations — can add up to huge change. Here is a plan for building healthy new habits in 2021 by doing or considering just one thing each day.

By ADDitude Editors Verified Updated on April 4, 2022
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Why Do Resolutions Fail?

It’s simple: If you slip up on January 9, you are more likely to call yourself a failure and give up for the rest of the year if you feel you’ve broken a “resolution,” says Roberto Olivardia, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist at Harvard Medical School and member of the ADDitude Medical Review Panel.

If, on the other hand, you set out to make just one small daily change — an action taken, a thought considered, a resource read — then one bad day is just one bad day, and tomorrow is another chance to do better.

With that in mind, we hope you will use this daily calendar to guide you through 31 small but important steps forward as we begin 2021. Each one is designed to improve your New Year along one of seven fronts: nutrition, home organization, physical and psychological health, self-care, relationships, productivity and time management, and self-esteem.

Please also see our complementary resources and tools in the One Thing Today Resource Center.