The ASSAP Framework: A is for Anchoring and P is for Pace

Making Life Easier Without Starting Over Again

A Solo Person’s Guide to ADHD

In this episode, we talk about what comes after Structure.

If you’ve been following along, you already know:

• Overwhelm isn’t a motivation problem.
• Staying functional matters more than staying calm.
• Most frustration comes from solving the wrong problem.

Now we address the part that keeps breaking for so many people:

The reset cycle.

The new planner.
The new system.
The new promise.

And then—starting over again.

This episode explains why that cycle is so exhausting, and how to stop living from zero.

The Real Drain: Decision Fatigue

It’s not laziness.
It’s not lack of discipline.

It’s decision load.

When you live alone, you carry:

• Every micro-decision
• Every default
• Every background choice

No shared systems.
No second brain.

Anchor and Pace are the final pieces of the ASSAP framework that reduce that load.

Anchor: Reducing Decision Friction

Anchors are not rules.

They’re defaults.

Instead of:
“I’ll decide in the moment.”

You create:
“When X happens, Y is already decided.”

Examples:

• Keys always go in the same place.
• Same parking row at the grocery store.
• Low energy = no new projects.
• Avoidance = pause, not push.

Anchors don’t remove freedom.
They remove friction.

And friction—not character—is what usually breaks systems.

A Critical Clarifier

Anchors are not hacks.

If you try to apply them to emotionally loaded problems without doing Access, Security, and Structure first, they won’t hold.

This episode explains why.

Organization Isn’t the Goal — Retrieval Is

A system works only if you can retrieve what you need under stress.

Structure builds the container.
Anchors make it usable.

Pace: Continuity, Not Speed

Pace is not about doing things faster.

It’s about preventing resets.

Monitoring is not anxiety.
Monitoring is care.

If you catch problems earlier than you used to, the system is working.

Progress looks like:

• Fewer emergencies
• Smaller corrections
• Less starting over

The ASSAP Loop

ASSAP isn’t linear. It’s a loop:

• Access – What feels off?
• Security – How do I keep my thinking online?
• Structure – What problem are we actually solving? Where does it live?
• Anchor – How do I reduce decision fatigue?
• Pace – Is this working? Do we need to loop?

Smaller problems first.
Lower stakes.
Real feedback.

That’s how change accumulates instead of resets.

If This Feels Like Relief

If these episodes have helped you understand why nothing else stuck, this work may be for you.

I specialize in working with adults with ADHD—especially those who are single and carrying life without a built-in second brain.

This podcast shares the framework.
Coaching applies it to your real life.

🎁 Free Resource

Download the free audio + visual map designed to help you stay steady when your thinking starts to spiral:

👉 https://twocatscoaching.com

💬 Coaching

Learn more about working together:

👉 https://twocatscoaching.com/coaching

📬 Contact

Website: https://twocatscoaching.com
Email: christine@twocatscoaching.com

Life doesn’t get easier because you try harder.
It gets easier because fewer things need rescuing.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

If you've been listening to the last few episodes, a few things should feel clearer by now. You know that overwhelm is not a motivation problem. You know that staying functional matters more than staying calm, keeping your brain thinking. You know that a lot of frustration comes from solving the wrong problem, or sometimes even trying to solve too many problems at once. So today we're going to talk about what happens after we've done access security instruction. I'm Christine Dunlop, I'm a master's certified life coach and the two kids coaching. This is episode 31 of Solid Persons Guide to ADHD. This is a fourth of four episodes about my ASAP framework. So I want to talk a little bit about the reset cycle. Most people with ADHD don't fail because they don't try. They fail because they keep trying from zero. You know, it's time for a new planner, a new app, a new routine, a new promise to themselves. And for a while it works. Until it doesn't. And then comes the reset. Oh, I need to start fresh. I need to do this better. I need to get my act together. And that cycle is exhausting. Not because the tasks are hard, but because the decisions never stop. And decisions are expensive. Not just in dollars, which is bad enough, but also in your energy and your self-esteem. We talk a lot about motivation, but motivation isn't usually what drains people. It's decision fatigue. Every time you have to decide when to do something, how to do it, whether it matters, whether you're doing it right, you spend energy. When you live alone, you're spending all that energy yourself. You don't have shared defaults or shared systems. No one else quietly makes choices in the background. So the real question becomes: how many decisions are you making on a normal day? And how can we make that more manageable? And that's where we're going to talk about anchoring and pace. So I want to say, as I thought through this, decision fatigue is something I've been thinking about for a while. Because I'm a retired teacher. And I tell you, I'm not sure any career, I'm sure there's a few, but makes as many decisions every minute as a teacher does. And it's why we go home and collapse on the couch. Because it's exhausting. It's physically exhausting. And this is what I want to save you. Because as somebody with ADHD and all of the issues we have with executive dysfunction and time mismanagement and that kind of stuff, we're like teachers in that sense. We're making way more decisions in a minute than we really probably should be. So in my program, Structure asks, what problem are we actually solving? And where does this problem live? Is it your brain, your calendar, your environment, something else, or maybe even a combination of the above? And so now that you've gotten to that point, anchoring is what we're going to set up for you to do. It's going to be a default that saves your energy. The simplest way to think about it is simply when X happens, I do Y. Instead of deciding in the moment, making predecisions. The examples might seem small and insignificant. When I get home, my keys always go in a certain spot. I always park in the same area of the grocery store. When I notice I'm avoiding something, I take a pause. When I'm low energy, I don't start new projects or make big decisions. Anchors don't remove choice, they remove decision friction. And friction, not laziness, is what breaks systems. So I just want to be clear. Anchors don't replace access security and structure. It comes from that work. If you try to slap anchors onto emotionally loaded problems, they won't hold. And that's where ideas like hacks fail. Anchors only work when they're personal, specific, and grounded in understanding. Now, don't get me wrong, I love me a good hack. I've actually produced a few hack episodes. But if you try to use the hack in a place where you're dealing with a lot of emotion or maybe a recurring problem, it's likely not to hold. Now, if you like the sound of a certain hack, run it through the program and see if it fits. Now, here's something that matters more than most people realize. Organization isn't necessarily the goal, it's retrieval. If you have piles on your desk, but you can always find what you need, is that disorganized? And if you have perfectly labeled folders, but when you're stressed out, you don't know where anything is, is that organized? A system only works if you can retrieve what you need reliably under pressure. So the ASAP program builds the container and makes it usable. I want to tell you about something that I decided several years ago to deal with decision fatigue. This is a really little one, but when I go to the grocery store, I always park in the same row. You know, I mostly shop at the same store. And I don't want to have to remember where my car is. It's not the world's easiest parking lot to get around. When I'm doing grocery store kinds of tasks, my brain is not usually on the grocery store, it's on other things. So I am planning podcast episodes. I'm generating ideas, I might be writing something in my head. And grocery shopping, it's a low-brain activity. So I don't need to think about it. I've usually done any pre-thinking I need to do ahead of times when I make my list. And I really don't need where did I park my car on that list? Because walking around, pressing the alarm button, yeah, not so much fun. And here's the thing: I have lost my car before. Twice. Badly enough that both times I had to have security help me find it. One time I was in the wrong lot. I wasn't even in the right place. This was after a concert at Red Rocks Amphitheater. You know, I live in Colorado. We have the beautiful Red Rocks out here. It's I'm about a 20-minute drive away. But I was tired and dealing with foot pain and wasn't thinking, and I came out a different exit than how I'd entered. And I had no idea where my car was. It wasn't there. I watched everybody else drive away. I couldn't keep walking up and down, and everybody drove away, and there was no car, and I didn't know what else to do. And luckily, a security guy came along and I hopped in his car and we drove to other lots. They have about six, and we finally found my car. Another time I'd gone to a big shopping mall that has a parking garage, and I had my young niece with me, and I couldn't find my car. I thought it'd been stolen. Turns out, same thing. I come out a different exit, and it was on a different floor. This kind of thing is traumatizing. And so I knew I had to do something. And this is where these anchors come in. We're gonna put things into place to remove decisions so that your energy is available for the things that really matter. It's a honestly a great tool for everybody. You see this a lot in the big tech gurus. You know, they wear a uniform, you know, Mark Zuckerberg wearing nothing but um t-shirts and jeans. And didn't uh and didn't Steve Jobs do the same? Wear his turtleneck, right? Might sound boring, but what it does is reduce friction. Honestly, I can't tell you how often I have sat down at five in the afternoon and spent an hour or more looking at Uber Eats trying to figure out what I want for dinner. And most of the time I default to just pouring myself a bowl of cereal or making some toast. And if I have easy things to eat in my fridge, I would save both a lot of time and money and energy. And here's the deal, I do now. And I rarely go through that cycle anymore. If you no longer spent your time, money, and energy solving some of those little problems, what would you have the freedom to do instead? All right, it's time to talk about the final step, pace. This isn't about making things faster, it's about reducing how often we need to do the resets. Because honestly, as somebody with ADHD, this is going to work until it doesn't. Because that's the way our brains are. So we don't like putting things in place sometimes. So what pace means is that we want to stay connected to the system so that we don't drift too far off course. You think about it this way. You don't run out of gas because you checked the gas gauge too often. You run out of gas because you didn't even think to look at it until you stopped in the middle of the highway on empty and can't move. Monitoring is an anxiety, it's care. Early notice allows for small adjustments instead of making emergency resets. So here's one of the most important reframes in this whole framework. If you notice a problem now earlier than you used to, that means the system has worked. Catching issues while they're small is the point. Recovery isn't proof of failure, it's part of the system. Progress isn't perfection. But it might be fewer emergencies. I haven't walked through a parking lot like this for a long time now. So let me run you through ASAP one more time from beginning to end. A reminder, it's not a straight line, it's a loop that you're going to continue to rerun. So we start with access. Access is when something feels off or triggers you, and you start getting curious. What keeps breaking? What feels heavier than it should? What's really making me upset here? Security is when your capacity starts to drop. You start spiraling or crying or shutting down or you know, running away. And keeping at least part of your thinking brain online until the issue's under some control. How do you keep online? Structure is when clarity returns, figuring out what's going on, looping it through access several more times and saying, is this really the problem? What problem are we really solving here? And where does it live? Is it in my brain, my calendar, my environment, somewhere else, or a combination? And then anchoring is when we start looking at that and coming up with a decision, a small solution that will solve even just part of your problem. It's coming up with micro-solutions to these problems. The goal is to increase your capacity in the future to deal with bigger problems. So again, you're asking and anchoring, how can I reduce this and avoid decision fatigue? If X, then Y. And then pace. It's about preventing having to reset all the time, evaluating and checking in from time to time and re-looping it when necessary. Is this working? Great. No, or just kind of? Okay, let's loop back and look at it first. Remember, smaller problems first because they have lower stakes. And this is how change accumulates instead of doing resets. If you've been thinking through these episodes, and now you're thinking, finally, this explains why nothing has worked, then this work is for you. Please, you're not broken, you're not lazy, and you don't just need to reset everything. You need support that understands how ADHD actually works, what solo living actually requires, and how to do things so that life stops feeling like a constant emergency. That's the work I do. Again, my name is Christine Dunning. I'm a master certified life coach, and I specialize in working with adults who have ADHD, especially those of us who are single and carrying life without a second built-in brain. This podcast shares the framework behind my coaching work. But listening is just the first layer. If you want to actually work at applying this to your finances, your home, your energy, your decisions, it's exactly what I do with clients. If you're not quite ready for coaching yet, start with the resource free resources I've created. I have one specifically for this framework. It's a short audio designed to help you stay steady when your thinking starts to disappear so you don't undo the progress you've made. You can find all of that along with my coaching information at twocatscoaching.com. And, you know, if you'd like, schedule a sample code. It's easier to listen to this.