Support strategies
Goal setting and planning to support executive function
© 2014 Commonwealth of Australia through the Australian Government Department of Education.
This material may be used, reproduced in material form and communicated free of charge for non-commercial
educational purposes until 31 December 2018, provided all copyright notices and acknowledgements are retained.
Everything we talk about in The Adventures of You sounds easy but it's not! What's easy is forgetting your
goals and following after the first distraction that comes along. Setting goals, organising yourself, staying
on track, changing direction when you need to – that's hard and simple willpower isn't the answer. You
need tools to support your executive functions.
So here is a collection of strategies to help you overcome day-to-day challenges in managing your mental
resources.
Where to start
This resource provides simple strategies that can help you manage your time, effort and attention but they
also require time, effort and attention to implement. How do you get out of this predicament?
Start with exercise! That's the best way to build a base level of executive function. See the resource,
'Exercise: move your body to build your brain' for more information!
Goal setting
The Adventures of You is all about choices, particularly choices that lead you towards a larger goal. By
themselves goals have very little to do with executive function. A goal by itself is indistinguishable from a
wish. It's the act of reaching a goal that requires executive function: you need to keep the goal in mind
when evaluating options; you need to inhibit impulses that run counter to the goal; you need to use mental
flexibility when overcoming setbacks.
The type of goal you set is what makes it easier or harder to use your executive functions properly. Goals
that are too vague or too distant will be very hard to act on, so here are a few tips.
 Keep it simple.
Don't get too elaborate with your goals. Simple is best.
 Keep lists.
We all have lots of goals. Some big, some small. Group them with lists.
 Ask yourself why.
Many goals come at a cost. Is it worth it?
 Assess impact.
Sometimes small goals will have a big impact and big ones won't.
 Be selective.
Don't pursue every goal at once. Limit yourself.
For any substantial goal – bigger than something you can do right away – you're going to need an action
plan which we discuss later in this guide.
© 2014 Commonwealth of Australia through the Australian Government Department of Education.
This material may be used, reproduced in material form and communicated free of charge for non-commercial
educational purposes until 31 December 2018, provided all copyright notices and acknowledgements are retained.
2
Reviewing goals
Goals are not 'set and forget'. You need to regularly repeat the process of capturing, reviewing and
selecting your goals. Small goals might need to be reviewed daily, bigger ones every couple of weeks or
monthly.
Turning obligations into goals
While it's important to have your own personal goals, the fact is that many, many times in our lives we
have to achieve the goals of somebody else whether an employer, a client, a parent, a teacher or a friend.
It helps to step back and see if and how these obligations are expressions of your own personal goals.
Ask yourself:
 Why do you need to do this thing? What value does it fulfil for you?
 What does it do for the other person?
 How can you frame this obligation as a goal that achieves something for both of you?
Strategically managing lots of goals and obligations
If you're in school or at work, new goals and obligations come up all the time. Some of these are important,
some aren't. Some are things you should deal with straight away; some are things you should ignore
completely. Some things may be unimportant to you but very important to someone you care about. How
do you judge which is which, and how do you manage all the competing demands?
There's no easy answer. What's important is that you recognise that this is a problem that people struggle
with all the time, and that it doesn't just take care of itself. You need to take control of your competing
goals and obligations. You need to actively decide what is valuable, important, urgent, or can wait, and to
find the best ways to shuffle, postpone and cut competing demands.
That said, you don't need to do this alone. Asking for help, advice and perspective is almost always
valuable, even if you choose to disregard it. Talk to people about your choices.
© 2014 Commonwealth of Australia through the Australian Government Department of Education.
This material may be used, reproduced in material form and communicated free of charge for non-commercial
educational purposes until 31 December 2018, provided all copyright notices and acknowledgements are retained.
3
Planning
We humans have one big advantage over our animal friends: we can see the future! But even with this
amazing power it's easy for the present to overwhelm us. Planning is how we build a bridge from the
swirling present to a future filled with cupcakes and robots.
Planning also:
 exercises your executive function
by making you imagine the future, consider possibilities and model alternative outcomes
 supports your executive function
by relieving load on your working memory and by helping you manage your impulses.
A simple way to plan
Define a big goal like it's a destination on a map, a long way away.
Set a mini-goal closer to where you are right now, like a little town on the route to the bigger goal.
 The very first mini-goal should be easily achievable. The technical word is proximal. It means really
close.
 A good rule of thumb is a mini-goal should be something you can reach in the next one or two
weeks.
 You don't have to identify every single mini-goal right at the start but you need at least one to
begin.
Decide one or more actions small, concrete, physical steps you can take to advance towards your goal.
Now take those actions necessary to reach your first mini-goal.
Every time you achieve a mini-goal, look at your next mini-goal and have a quick review.
 Is it still the right thing to do? Or have you learned something from the last mini-goal that means
you need to change it?
 Have your values changed? Has your context changed? Have your limitations changed?
 Is the next mini-goal proximal, or does it need to be broken into smaller steps?
After you've reviewed your next mini-goal, made any changes and made sure it's proximal, then go do it.
After that, it really is a matter of repeating the same steps – action and review – learning all the way and
adjusting your plans as needed.
© 2014 Commonwealth of Australia through the Australian Government Department of Education.
This material may be used, reproduced in material form and communicated free of charge for non-commercial
educational purposes until 31 December 2018, provided all copyright notices and acknowledgements are retained.
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Why does this planning method work?
1.
2.
3.
4.
It's simple.
It can apply to any goal.
It gets you focused on one small step at a time.
It encourages you to adjust your plan every step of the way.
Planning hacks
Here are some ways to turbocharge your planning.
Get help
Everyone has limitations. Sometimes the limitations are overwhelming.
The easiest way to overcome limitations is to get help.
Who to ask? That's up to you. But it is absolutely guaranteed there will be someone you can ask for help. It
might be someone you know, like a teacher or a co-worker or a small child with magical powers; it might be
an authority in a field; it might be an organisation or service of some kind. It doesn't really matter: the
point is to stop, think, and find the person who can help you.
Be someone that people like to help
It'll be easier to get help if you behave like the kind of person people like to help. That means a few simple
things:
 Be polite and respectful.
 Show that you are serious.
 Do as much as you can on your own before asking for help.
 When you get help, use it.
 Tell the person who helped you how valuable their help was.
Follow other people's example
If you want to accomplish something, look for examples of how it has already been done and use those
examples to shape your plan. Don't limit yourself to examples that match exactly what you want to
achieve; look for examples in completely different fields. It's very rare that you are doing something so
original and unknown that there is no prior example to learn from.
Ignore other people's example
On the other hand, following too closely in the footsteps of others can prevent you from learning or
discovering new and innovative ways of doing things. Sometimes it's worth diving into something with no
idea what you're doing, and just figuring it out as you go.
© 2014 Commonwealth of Australia through the Australian Government Department of Education.
This material may be used, reproduced in material form and communicated free of charge for non-commercial
educational purposes until 31 December 2018, provided all copyright notices and acknowledgements are retained.
5
Prioritising
Whether you're in school or at work, new goals and obligations come up all the time. Some of these are
important, some aren't. Some things you should deal with straight away, some things you should ignore
completely. How do you judge which is which? You need to be able to plan and prioritise.
Figure out what the task actually is
You need to learn what's involved in doing a task. One way to do this is to make the best plan of mini-goals
that you can (based on past experience and looking at examples or getting help) and then updating that
plan as you go.
At the end of the task you should be able to compare what you thought you were going to do with what
you actually had to do, and learn from the comparison.
Develop a sense of time
If you have lots of tasks to plan, you really need to know how long each one will take. Estimating time can
be easy for some things and really difficult for others.
 Write a list of what you need to do.
 Estimate how long each task will take.
 When you do a task try to focus on it without interruption, and keep track of how long you spent
on it.
Review your estimated time against your actual time. If they are wildly different try to figure out why and
write your thoughts. You're looking for patterns. Do you tend to overestimate or underestimate? Are there
some tasks that are harder to estimate than others?
Always review priorities
In a Level Zero, Sleepwalking sort of world, the only thing that is important is whatever is right in front of
you or whatever someone is pushing on you right now. This is not where you want to be. You want to have
more control, but to do this you need to actively evaluate and set priorities.
For every task, ask yourself:
 Whose goals does this meet?
 Why does it need to be done?
 When is it supposed to be done?
 When do I really need to do it?
 What else could I or should I be doing instead?
© 2014 Commonwealth of Australia through the Australian Government Department of Education.
This material may be used, reproduced in material form and communicated free of charge for non-commercial
educational purposes until 31 December 2018, provided all copyright notices and acknowledgements are retained.
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What you are trying to do is take the time to stop, think, and keep in mind all your goals and priorities, not
just the ones immediately in front of you. Then take the right action. If it looks like you can't get everything
done, then try another way!
Track progress
For any complex set of goals, nothing will go to plan so you need to be able to keep track of progress and
make changes as you go. There are all sorts of ways to track progress – a wall chart is one of the easiest and
best because it is simple, visual and always on. Depending on your progress you may need to adjust your
schedule, negotiate with other people to change your commitments, or even find alternative solutions to
complete whatever it is you need to do. All of these require mental flexibility.
Happy accidents
A lot of what we will talk about here is about control, but let's also agree that you can't control
everything and that in fact a lot of good things in life come about from happy accidents. But you can't
rely on happy accidents – as Louis Pasteur said, 'Chance favours the prepared mind.'
Planning only takes you so far
At least half the people involved in making The Adventures of You have an uneasy relationship with the
future and don't really like planning anything beyond lunch. But nevertheless they are all moderately
intelligent and successful people. So what gives? The fact is that your planning is limited by two factors:
 you
 the world.
You are a problem, because you don't know everything there is to know so you are always planning with
limited information. You are also a problem because the thing you think you need or want to plan for may
not really be what you need or want.
The world is a problem, because it has its own agenda that has nothing to do with you. So no matter how
well you plan there will be endless things you didn't plan for that will make it harder or easier for you.
This is why it's important to keep reviewing your plan. You want to pay attention to what you are doing,
really notice what's going on, learn from it, and then change your plan if necessary. Planning is part of a
learning process.
Tips for teachers, parents and carers
Want to help your students, your child use these goal setting and planning strategies in the classroom?
Here are a few tips.
© 2014 Commonwealth of Australia through the Australian Government Department of Education.
This material may be used, reproduced in material form and communicated free of charge for non-commercial
educational purposes until 31 December 2018, provided all copyright notices and acknowledgements are retained.
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Actively promote use of management strategies
Value, model and practise the use of management strategies yourself. This means taking the time to
familiarise yourself with some approaches, introducing these to your students and regularly reviewing their
application. Do it, not just as a check for compliance but as part of a critical dialogue about what is working
and what isn't. This can't be left as an ad hoc activity; it needs to be planned into the routine of your
teaching.
Here are some suggestions.
 Review, break down and schedule tasks with students. Emphasise proximal steps and regularly
review plans on more complex projects.
 Encourage students to estimate time during their class activities. Record and review those
estimates over time so that students become better estimators.
 Help examine the purpose and priority of their tasks. Students need to learn that priority is relative,
variable and potentially negotiable.
 Track progress using wall charts or other shared visual tools, and regularly analyse and interpret
the data with your students, modelling a cycle of observation, analysis, reflection and adjustment.
Provide examples of finished work
Examples will help students manage their attention and memory by providing them with clear goals. When
you issue an assignment provide examples of good and bad outcomes and discuss the qualities of each
with students. You may need to direct their attention to specific features and offer advice and practical
steps on how to achieve them.
Note that, while examples help students by reducing the load on complex cognitive processes, it's also
important to stretch students' executive functions by providing open-ended problems that have no clear
solution or outcome. Students need to become comfortable with uncertainty.
Map rubrics to examples
Although the creation of rubrics is often standard practice, we don't always take the time to talk through
the rubric in relation to examples of finished work. Showing students how the elements of the rubric map
to good and bad examples of work can help students clarify their goals.
Special tips for primary teachers
Discuss your daily schedule with students and share the reasoning behind it.
 Have some parts of the day that can be scheduled in collaboration with the students.
 Have clear visual representations of goals, priorities and progress.
 Offer students a chance to be the class time monitor for some tasks, with the job of recording time
and tracking progress on a wall chart or similar.
© 2014 Commonwealth of Australia through the Australian Government Department of Education.
This material may be used, reproduced in material form and communicated free of charge for non-commercial
educational purposes until 31 December 2018, provided all copyright notices and acknowledgements are retained.
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Special tips for middle years teachers
In middle years students begin to work on longer self-directed projects so they need more scaffolding with
how to use their time.
 Demonstrate time boxing in class.
 Help students review their homework and after-school activity calendars to determine what tasks
need to be done when, and how they might be broken into smaller steps.
Special tips for senior school teachers
In senior school students are working on complex, multi-part projects.
 Help students work backwards from long-range goals.
 Help students reflect realistically on their progress, emphasising the difference between fantasy
and reality, and showing how to adjust plans.
 Establish a culture where students monitor their progress privately, but discuss their strategies as a
group – this shifts support from the task level to the strategy level.
Organising
One of the big themes in The Adventures of You is personal choice and direction. But it's hard to make clear
choices and stick to a direction if you can't organise yourself. Good organisational strategies free up mental
resources so you can focus on what is most important to you.
Some people seem to have an in-built preference for order while others prefer more chaos. Whatever your
preference it's unhelpful to think of yourself as an 'organised' or 'disorganised' person. Everyone can
benefit from developing strategies to help organise resources, capture information, and execute plans.
Cleaning up
It's hard to get organised if you're already in a mess. Take the time to clean up and throw out junk that you
don't need or really want. If you're thinking twice about throwing something out, put it in a box, put the
box in a storeroom and come back to it next year. If you can't remember what's inside the box, throw it
out!
Setting up buckets
Now that you have some space, you need to set up some buckets where you can put your work or anything
else you need to deal with. There are many organisational systems you can learn but the simplest is to
simply group things into to-do, doing and done. You need a place to put each of these types of work.
© 2014 Commonwealth of Australia through the Australian Government Department of Education.
This material may be used, reproduced in material form and communicated free of charge for non-commercial
educational purposes until 31 December 2018, provided all copyright notices and acknowledgements are retained.
9
Physical vs digital organisers
Most people need a combination of physical and digital organisers. Figuring out which to use when is a
fulltime job for some people.
To do: a simple tray or folder is good enough.
Everything you need to do can go in here. If you have to do something, put it in this spot. You need to
review and sort this pile regularly.
Doing: put whatever you're working on in its own space.
That can be in the middle of your desk or a folder to the side or some other bucket, but separate it out
from everything else.
Pro tip: try to work on one thing at a time. It's usually a lot easier to finish tasks if you focus on one
thing at a time.
Done: once you're done with something, either throw it out or give it a proper home.
Don't let it sit out in the open, cluttering up your beautiful brain-supporting organisational system. Just
put it in a folder, or a box or the bin.
The trick to doing this is to prepare the bucket first! Don't over-think it! Just go get a folder, stick in a
few dividers and then put it on a shelf. When you finish something, either toss it or put it in the folder.
Job done! Onto the next thing!
Prioritising and scheduling
Now this pile of tasks in your to-do bucket, whether it's digital or on your desk, is going to need a regular
review, maybe daily or weekly. You need to run through the pile and decide what is important and what
isn't, and the important things need to be scheduled which means putting them into a calendar.




Is there a deadline for this task? – put it in your calendar.
How long is it going to take you to complete this task? Can it be done in one go, or do you need to
break it up? – estimate the blocks of time you will need to complete it, and put those in your
calendar.
Is it a task you are going to enjoy doing, or are you going to fight it? – if you're going to fight it,
think about what you can do to stop yourself wriggling out of it. Maybe schedule yourself to do it in
a time or place or with someone that means you can't avoid it.
What do you need to complete this task? Do you have everything? If not, what do you need, and
when are you going to get it? – put those steps in a calendar, so you have a reminder to get them
done.
Don't try to schedule too much at once. Things move around. But make sure you know what is really
important, where the fixed deadlines are, and how much work is involved in these tasks.
© 2014 Commonwealth of Australia through the Australian Government Department of Education.
This material may be used, reproduced in material form and communicated free of charge for non-commercial
educational purposes until 31 December 2018, provided all copyright notices and acknowledgements are retained.
10
Time boxing
One way to help get control of a task, especially one you don't want to do, is to put it in a time box. This
means allocating a period of time to complete the task and then working on the task for only that length
of time. A time box can be any length of time: five minutes, five hours, five days.
Time boxing helps overcome the reluctance to estimate how long a task will take, and it can help
overwhelming tasks seem more manageable.
Resources
Related support guide on the myfuture website
 Move your body to build your brain
Supporting worksheets available on the myfuture website
 Problem solving planner
 Breaking bad habits
 Developing good controls
 My assignment game plan
 My assignment timetable
 Exercise planner
 Exercise chooser
Books
Meltzer, L 2010, Promoting executive function in the classroom, The Guilford Press, New York,
One of the most prominent authors in the area of executive function in schools. The caveat is that
much of Meltzer's work overemphasises management strategies and does not deal as well with
strategies for engaging with problems, deepening engagement and coping with ambiguity and risk.
There is an unlimited supply of books, websites and resources devoted to goals, planning and organisation.
The valuable ones will help you design and implement a system without becoming overwhelmed by the
weight of your own management.
© 2014 Commonwealth of Australia through the Australian Government Department of Education.
This material may be used, reproduced in material form and communicated free of charge for non-commercial
educational purposes until 31 December 2018, provided all copyright notices and acknowledgements are retained.
11
Sources of information
Dawson, P & Guare, R 2012, Executive skills in children and adolescents: a practical guide to assessment
and intervention, The Guilford Press, New York
Gathercole, S & Alloway, TP 2008, Working memory and learning: a practical guide for teachers, Sage
Publications, California
Kaufman, C 2010, Executive function in the classroom: practical strategies for improving performance and
enhancing skills for all students, Brookes Publishing Company, Baltimore
Meltzer, L 2010, Promoting executive function in the classroom, The Guilford Press, New York
© 2014 Commonwealth of Australia through the Australian Government Department of Education.
This material may be used, reproduced in material form and communicated free of charge for non-commercial
educational purposes until 31 December 2018, provided all copyright notices and acknowledgements are retained.
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