Research Recap: Achievement goals aren't the answer for ADHD and what to do instead

One of the things that people are noticing is that they are setting goals and then going, wait, who are these for? That is so common of like work culture and just nobody talks about it. And so they just like get away with it. I think we didn't really understand how good this paper was. This study talks about how that is sort of the key, at least for ADHD people, to actually achieving. 

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Welcome, today we are diving into the vault of our previous research to pull up a paper from episode 10, specifically focusing on goals. And the reason we've done this today is because We've been thinking about goals, obviously, it being January and what we want to do. You know, it's one of the things we're doing in the academy is setting our goals, our actual ADHD friendly goals for the year. And this paper is very much talking about that, talking about what actually motivates us with ADHD, and it has some good insight, I think, into why some goals might not work as well as others. This paper is from the Journal of Attention Disorders. always a good one. And it looks at respective reports of academic motivation among college students with high ADHD symptoms. So Sarah, do you want to take us through a little bit about what they were looking for specifically? Because they looked through a bunch of models of motivation. Yeah. So first, let's just look at the measures and the methodology a little bit, and then we'll get into the meat and the potatoes. So basically, they were just talking with first year college students. Their total sample size was 461 in the Midwest, recruited between 2019, 2020. They pretty much found these kids just at the university, enrolled in psych courses. They didn't look at any demographic information or any previous diagnosis history. They were really just measuring ADHD symptoms using common and accepted rating scales, you know, the World Health Organization. screener among others. Since they were also looking at academic achievement, they just reported what their high school GPA at graduation was. And then they also used some interesting and brand new scales to measure academic motivation. And this is really where we can get nitty-gritty. Yeah, so they were 461 of these students. And they did do self-reporting scales. Um, and I think we really focused on that when we first went into it. That's why I wanted to come back to it now, because at the time, I think we didn't really understand how good this paper was because we were very new to research recapping and we thought they were all going to be like this. And this was, it was very much not the case. So they dived into some particular kinds of theories about why and how we get motivated and then. They talked about how this works specifically for ADHD. Sarah, do you want to take us through those two main ones, the achievement goal theory and the expectancy value theory? Sure. Let's get into the deep dig of motivation theory. We're looking at achievement goal theory. Basically, that means that students will just assign themselves a purpose for achieving, whether that be to develop competence, or to demonstrate that competence to others. And so very much how somebody else perceives your performance essentially. And then we've got expectancy value theory. And this one sort of talks about how motivation is related to your expectancy that you can be successful at achieving your goal. So these are sort of two different ways to look at what motivates an individual. Yeah, definitely. So the idea of the achievement goal theory is like you said, it's what are we achieving? They do mention, you know, achieving skills, achieving mastery there as well. And then the expectancy value one is they actually had an equation for it. So the expectancy value cost model of motivation says that it's a product of a calculation that involves the expectation of outcome. So this is expectancy of a good outcome. With the value of success. So how likely is you're actually, you're going to achieve this outcome that you want and then the cost of engaging in a task, how much it's going to take from your time, from your money, from your energy, all of those things. And they argued in the expectancy value cost model of motivation that these three areas, how much you want it, how likely you think you ought to get it and the cost of engaging in it. Is what's going to lead to the motivation to do it. So for example, if you had a goal that you wanted to read a book every day, you might say, I really, really want to do it. The value of the successes may be good. It's probably a lot higher if the book is about something you're trying to say, teach or learn. And the cost of engaging in a task is probably quite a lot of time. If you're reading a whole book every day. But maybe if you were just listening to a podcast every day or a blinkist or something like that, the time involved would be way lower. So even if the value of success wasn't as high, you might be more likely to engage in it. So it's an interesting theory, interesting model in that way and something that's quite helpful, I think, for us as we go into the new year to think about how we think about the decisions and the goals that we set. Because we often... just kind of set them. We just go, I don't know, that's what I want to do. Let's do it. It's probably a big goal as well because we have ADHD. So that is the methodology that they had. What did they find, Sarah? So they sort of found what they expected to find. Students who reported higher symptoms of ADHD on the rating scales also reported lower levels of adaptive motivation. Those are things like mastery goals. the expectancy value that Sky was just talking about, but also higher levels of maladaptive motivation. So that's things like focus on cost and then also performance avoidance, which is performing to avoid your peers, sort of thinking bad on you. Which is very relatable. Yeah. I mean, you know, we were talking about this before and it's sort of like doing well on the test so that nobody sees the bad score on your paper, working really hard on your presentation for work because you don't want to embarrass yourself in front of your peers or your boss, that sort of performance avoidance. And while that will get you to do the thing, it also comes at a cost to yourself, which is why they call it a maladaptive motivator. Yeah, definitely, definitely. And I think it can maybe contribute to burnout as well. Because I've definitely experienced a bit of working really late into the night before I was diagnosed, working on the weekends and just kind of pretending that wasn't the case because I wanted to look like I was achieving at the same level as other people who I were pretty confident that they were also doing this and just not telling me. You know, that is so common of work culture and just nobody talks about it and so they just get away with it. Yeah. It's only later that I realized what was going on. So definitely, definitely maladaptive. So they found what they expected to find. And at this point you might be thinking, well, this is a bit depressing. Why are you guys making this paper or the focus? But they also found something else. So Sarah, do you want to take us through what else they found? Yeah. So the really exciting thing that they found was that when someone had medium to high levels of ADHD symptoms. If they also showed high levels of mastery, which would have been shown on like one of the reading scales, it was also associated with a high GPA for that person. It's important to say that this effect was only present when the ADHD symptoms were not low. So only sort of, like I said, medium to high. Basically... how you orient your goals, how you phrase your goals, how you conceive of your goals. If you use that mastery goal orientation, it was associated with high GPA. So that basically shows that mastery goal orientation, at least in this population, was a successful way of doing things, getting that good result. Yeah, and they sort of discussed this finding as being quite novel, which I think it is, in terms of finding something that was particularly adaptive for ADHD population, but not adaptive for other populations. Usually we're trying to compare ourselves to neurotypicals. And this was a paper where it was a specific thing that was helpful and contributed to success for ADHD specifically. So this kind of leads to a wider conversation about what goals we set ourselves, particularly What is a mastery goal? How do you do it? What is a mastery goal? How do mastery? Yeah. One of the reasons we're having this conversation is because in the Academy, at the moment we're working through the January Goals Journal and we're sort of talking a lot about what are our goals, how do they work? And a lot of people are having a lot of feelings about that, which makes sense. There's a whole self criticism section in the journal just for that. But one of the things that people are noticing is that they are setting goals and then going, wait, who are these for? And I think that's a really common experience. Yeah, definitely. I mean, it can be so easy to sort of absorb all of those things that people say to us, hey, wouldn't it be nice if, you know, when are you gonna do blah, you know, are you ever gonna learn to knit? Or is that yarn just gonna sit in the corner? Not specific at all. Yeah. And so we're drawn to that people pleasing sometimes. And so we'll set a goal to please someone else. and then get frustrated when we can't meet it because it's not something that we inherently want to do. Right, that's not something that we talk about a lot when we're talking about motivation with our clients, but inherent motivation, you know, that sort of means that you just have this internal drive to do the thing, learning for the sake of learning. This study talks about how that is sort of the key, at least for ADHD people with medium to high symptom levels to actually achieving. That's beautiful. Yeah. And I think it's something, you know, it's kind of a reminder for us as well as coaches to talk about it more because often with ADHD, we're so focused on, okay, my boss says this and my partner says that and my school said this. So I come with a laundry list of things that people want me to achieve basically. And so when you say set a goal. It's just like, right. Well, let me just pull out my list, mental or physical things. Other people want me to do better at pick one and then figure out how to make myself do it. And that is apparently, according to this study, not particularly helpful, which you're probably sitting there going, yeah, no, that makes sense. Now that you mentioned it, but until I mentioned it, did it make sense? That's kind of the problem with these kinds of things. Yeah. It's sort of like, where is the value and what is the cost? You know, are you going to get the value for achieving that goal? Because if you're not, then the cost isn't going to be worth it. Exactly. I mean, a great example is for myself personally, I had a baby three months ago. So I am very much in that kind of like I wanting to get fit, I guess again. And, you know, I signed up to an app that sort of helps you do that accountability, that kind of thing. And, um, they really wanted me to put. parameters, certain achievement goals, and that makes sense. You know, that's what they do. And I had to think about it and go, well, no, the thing I remember about exercising is that it felt really good. I do it in the morning, it's super motivating for me. It feels good. I feel like a bit puffed and that helps with my stress regulation throughout the rest of the day, really busy days. So that's my goal, is to do that and to feel that effect. It's not anything else. And so I had to kind of, in this particular case, aware of it is because I had to actively say no thank you to someone else's goals for me. Sarah I think I would have been a little bit less motivated because I would have maybe not achieved those goals. I have no idea if I'm achieving those goals because I haven't measured them. And so that might have had an effect. And instead what I'm noticing is that I feel less stressed. I feel more calm in the morning. I feel a bit more ready for the day when I do these exercises. And so I'm mastering and I'm also starting to feel the effects of mastering. fitness, getting a bit more fit than I was yesterday and all that kind of thing. That's not necessarily a new year goal, but it is a goal I had for myself. And I didn't remember this paper at the time, but looking back, I think it definitely is part of the reason why it's working. I love the focus on how you feel. Yes. Right. Cause that can't be for someone else. Yeah. And I think that comes back to a conversation we have all the time, which is mindfulness, because first response is like, how do I feel? What do you mean? I feel all things all the time and nothing. Exactly. So there is a bit of mindfulness in this. And maybe that's why it's tricky, because sometimes we can make New Year's goals very reactively. Someone says, what are your New Year's goals? Kind of like when we were a kid, what do you want to be when you grow up? pull something out of a hat. Here it is. This is my goal. Is it good? Do you like it? And sometimes you give it to yourself. Sorry, I just yesterday I watched a video of this girl who was talking about how when she was a kid in first grade, she put her New Year's resolution to be to quit smoking because that's what she saw on the daytime talk shows. Oh my gosh. That was hilarious to me. Yeah. But we do that all the time. Yeah, we do. We do. And, and it's kind of like, okay, I just wanted to check. Okay, so let's think about this. Like, say you take this research and you use it to impact your life. And that's kind of what we want to do here in these skills labs. We want to be able to do that. That is going to affect the goals that you set for yourself. But there's another side that comes in at that point. If I set myself a goal of just feeling better, feeling fitter, feeling more relaxed by exercising in the morning, moving in the morning, there's a little bit of that old self criticism that comes in. Maybe I'm too scared to achieve. Maybe it's not going to happen. And that's why I don't want it. There's a lot of like, you know, with ADHD, we have more self criticism. The research shows that. And so achievement can be kind of a way of hiding from that self criticism by going, no, look at my stuff. I mean, I have a lot of degrees, so I'm telling you right now that is, that is true. So like, look, it's this and it's that. And so when we actually pick a mastery goal, we do give up that. Sort of like you're the only one you have to prove yourself to finally. Yeah. And yeah, that can be a new experience for a lot of people with ADHD. Yeah. Or even people who don't have ADHD and still feel like they're pretending sometimes. Exactly. And so like if you, when you talk about knitting, you know, if your goal was to master knitting, to feel like you can do it while doing other things without really focusing on it, because you've kind of mastered the idea and maybe you want to make something, but it's not, the achievement is not making it. It's the mastering of it. That's harder to measure. How I would phrase that is the achievement goal would be to say like, I'm gonna learn how to knit a hat and then I should do it. The mastery goal to me is more like, my hands will remember the movements. You know, I will have developed that muscle memory around knitting, because that's what it really means to learn how to knit. Is to have that like almost meditative, like, yeah. Exactly. But no one can see that. They can't be like, Ooh, it looks like you're really like, I mean, maybe like you're in the zone. Maybe your partner will notice it, but everyone else will just be like, where's the hat? Like they'll be like, Oh, you said you mastered knitting. I'm not seeing a lot of hats. Like, Oh, we all doing on our temperature plankets, ladies. Oh my gosh. I saw some of those posts last month and somebody was like, I just finished mine from 2018. And we were all like, yay! Anyway, if you're an ADHD crafter, you should definitely join the group on Facebook. Yeah, definitely. So in terms of, I guess, setting those goals then, we do have to have a conversation. And it's the reason they're right next to each other in the journal about self criticism, because in order to set a mastery goal, you're going to have to deal with a bit of self criticism and maybe even actual criticism from other people who might not be as okay with a mastery goal. So if we were to give anybody any tips or strategies about how to do this, how do you set a mastery goal? What would you start with? So I would start with the definition of a mastery goal and that is something that you learn for the sake of learning. Something that you want to do because you want it. It's not something that you're doing for someone else. And it's not something that you're doing just to get something, just the knowledge. Yeah. And then I would probably suggest that you figure out what it is you care about in life. Is there something that you're passionate about? Are you having your current hyperfixation that you would like to set a mastery goal around? Yeah, yeah, just that little thing. What do you care about? Yeah, you need help visualizing what you care about, what even are the categories of life. You know, there are some great visualization techniques that you could do like the Wheel of Life. Yeah, exactly. I mean, we have the Wheel of Life in the in the journal to do that. We have a bit of mind mapping there as well. It is that sense of you might need to think about what you like, and that's fine. And you know what? Sometimes it's also important to think about what... you're currently satisfied with. What do you mean by that? Yeah, so if you're currently satisfied with your career and your intimate relationships and things like that, but like sleep is not feeling highly satisfied, then maybe you wanna add that to the party, right? Maybe you wanna set goals, mastery goals around sleep. You know, I'm gonna wake up feeling rested. I'm going to sleep through the night. Yeah. Although actually, no, that's an achievement goal. Yeah, it's an achievement goal. See how easy that is? So easy. I know. I was thinking like, this is a mastery sleep goal. And it is that feeling. And it's funny because you could set like a million achievement sleep goals. You can say, I want to sleep eight hours. I'm going to go to bed at this time. I'm going to wake up at this time. And you could still not wake up feeling rested. And that could matter more than all of the achievement goals. Yeah. So that's kind of what we wanted to delve into today. And we might pick up as we go on some of these papers and come back to them. If you want it. Hear the original version of us talking about this. It's in episode 10 of this podcast, but it might be useful for those of you who are currently maybe halfway through your goals, you know, or you've set them and you've forgotten about them or you've set them and now you're trying to figure out ways to avoid them to consider. Have you made mastery goals or have you made achievement goals? And do you want to think about maybe making a mastery goal? And I guess. The last question I would have, and I'm sorry to you the listener, because we can't ask, please send us your questions and we can answer them in future episodes. But for now, I'm just trying to imagine what kind of questions you would have. The last kind of question I would have is, okay, I've set a mastery goal, say a sleep goal. I wanna wake up feeling rested. How do I subtask and execute on that goal? Because, you know, I have ADHD, I can't just wake up every day. for a year and go, do I feel rested or not? I have to do some kind of movement and build some kind of momentum on its goal. So the subtasks you have to that mastery goal might be, I want to learn about sleep. I wanna learn about sleep by watching a YouTube video or listening to a podcast on sleep a couple of times a week. Or maybe I want to hire somebody to look at my sleep. Maybe I wanna do that. Maybe I wanna... look into my room and talk to my partner or, you know, have a look around and see, is it too hot? Is it too cold? It's often too hot or too cold. Just FYI, for those who are going to sleep. And so there's still objective things you can do to meet a mastery goal. It doesn't mean that we're now just in the ether talking about our feelings all the time. Yeah. And I don't even think they mean to say that we can't set achievement goals. Like, as subtasks. I think achievement goals to me sound like action steps. Exactly, we think about them as action steps. But can we draw that back to like a head mastery goal? You can say, I'm going to get eight hours of sleep this week, every night this week, and that's an achievement goal. But if the original goal is, I want to feel well rested in the morning, does getting eight hours of sleep serve that goal? And part of it might be, yeah, I want to, I want to master being asleep, being awake, all that kind of stuff. And then, yeah, I want to master being asleep. I was right there. So I guess in terms of that idea, it is the action steps being the servants of the mastery goal and not the other way around. Yeah. Beautiful. Yes. Awesome. Well, hopefully this has given you guys something to think about, something to try. If you've set goals and ignored them or haven't set them, you know, this might be your opportunity to think about what you might want to do any time of the year. It doesn't have to be January. I set the goal I mentioned before about exercising back in September. So it doesn't have to be anything particular around time, but yeah, let us know. Let us know what your mastery goals are. And if you have any trouble breaking them down, if you have any trouble figuring them out, because we still have ADHD, there's still a working memory struggles and the time blindness struggles and all those things that make it hard for us to remember to do all these things around, then yeah, send us a message and let us know how it's going. Did you have anything else to add, Sarah? Yeah, I think I just wanna say again, how important emotional self-regulation is in this whole goal setting self-evaluation process. We can be really hard on ourselves, you know, we can be our own worst critics and all of that. But recognizing that, you know, having the awareness that you are being hard on yourself is a very important step to being able to move past that feeling. Sort of you have to be aware that you're being hard on yourself in order to not be hard on yourself. So that's a win. You know, I just wanted to point that out for everybody in this. second week of January 2024, longest month of the year. Yeah, we're in the second week. This is going to come out in the fourth week. Oh, right. My bad. No, you're all good. So if somebody says that they are struggling with that, they are being hard on themselves, would you have any recommendations for them? Yeah, I would ask them, what is the source of the negative feeling? Are they afraid that they're not going to be able to meet their goal? not feeling secure enough, maybe they don't feel like they deserve to go after that kind of a goal. Maybe somebody has told them in the past that this isn't for them. Basically, what I'm getting at is whatever is preventing you, you have to sort of know that. Is it a safety issue? That sort of thing. And then you can sort of just be kind to yourself. We can start to do some of that cognitive reframing that we tend to talk about a lot. with ADHD, emotional dysregulation, you take the negative thought, I can't do this because so-and-so said so, and you sort of transform it. Yeah. If you do find yourself really struggling to do that, you might find that you have a different goal, and that is to figure out how to do that, so that you can start setting mastery goals. Sometimes it's kind of goal-ception. And we're working on it. What layer goal is this? Yeah, definitely. The top's not spinning. So, and you know, I think in terms of mastery, I mean, if you want a random example, for those of you who are still listening, I appreciate it. We had planned today to talk about three articles that had just come out, but we didn't like any of them. And so if we had set a achievement goal of this podcast is going to come on here and every time it's going to. talk about three articles, we would have just done them. But our mastery goal for this podcast is we want to provide you with practical skills and strategies that you can use that will help you in your daily life. And so we thought, we're gonna go back into the vault, we're gonna find something good and we're gonna talk about it. And I'm very happy that we did. And I think it's a testament to the helpfulness of a mastery goal that we were able to do that and that we were both on board with that. Mm-hmm. The feeling of the episode, you know, are we excited to talk about this stuff? Is there something in there for you? You know? Exactly. Awesome. Well, thanks for listening, everyone. Share your goals. I'm really excited to hear about them. Uh, we'll be talking about ours, obviously in the academy and yeah, until next time, we'll see you again. 

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