The good-week version
What you would do if everything were fine. Write it, and understand that it will describe maybe one week in four. It is the aspiration, not the plan.
Chapter 17
Setting goals that survive a bad week
Standard goal advice assumes roughly consistent capacity from one week to the next. With emotional dysregulation that assumption is false, and a system built on it fails at the first bad fortnight — then the failure becomes the evidence for not trying again.
Build the floor, not the target
Every goal needs four versions written in advance. Most people write only the first.
The ordinary version
What you will do most weeks. This should be roughly half the good-week version, and it is the one the whole thing should actually be sized against.
The bad-week version
A quarter, and specified now. Written in advance so that using it registers as the plan working rather than as failure — which is the entire mechanism.
The floor
The smallest action that keeps the thing alive. Ten minutes. Opening the file. One message. The floor is what makes a bad month an interruption instead of an ending, and having one is worth more than any amount of motivation.
Restarting after it collapsed
It will collapse. What determines the outcome is what happens in the fortnight afterwards, not the collapse itself.
Do the floor version, today
Not a plan to restart. The floor, now, for ten minutes. Restarting is a decision that gets deferred; ten minutes is an action that does not.
Do not audit the gap
The reckoning about the lost six weeks is shame, and it will cost you the restart. Note the dates and move on. Nobody is marking this.
Floor only, every day
Deliberately below capacity. The objective this week is re-establishing that it happens at all, not making up ground — and making up ground is the reliable way to collapse again.
Move to the bad-week version
Still below what you could do. Building tolerance for the boredom of a small consistent thing is the actual skill here, and it is underrated.
Only now consider the ordinary version
Three weeks of small consistency beats one enormous week followed by nothing, and it is much less satisfying, which is why almost nobody does it.
Why this is different with BPD
The specific interactions between goals and dysregulation.
Why do I abandon things when they're going well?
Several mechanisms overlap here — a rising fear that it will be taken away, discomfort with an identity that is changing, and sometimes a straightforward inability to tolerate the exposure of visible progress. Naming which one it is usually reduces it.
Why can't I do anything at all some weeks?
Because capacity genuinely fluctuates, in a way that is not laziness and not fully under your control. This is exactly what the floor exists for — a plan that only works at full capacity is a plan that does not work.
Should I tell people my goals?
One person, and the floor version rather than the aspiration. Announcing the ambitious version publicly adds shame to a collapse, which makes the restart considerably harder.
What about big life goals?
Same structure, longer timescale, and stated as a direction rather than an outcome. Chapter 18's values material is the relevant part — a direction survives a bad quarter in a way a deadline does not.
How do I know if a goal is wrong for me?
If you have restarted it four times from the floor and it still generates dread rather than reluctance, that is worth taking seriously. Some goals are inherited rather than chosen.
Where does the book cover this?
Chapter 17 on problem-solving is the closest, with chapter 19 on sustainable routines and chapter 25's year-long plan carrying the longer-range version.
Educational disclaimer: this page supports book discovery and general learning about borderline personality disorder. It does not diagnose, replace individualised professional care, or provide emergency support. If you are in crisis, contact local emergency services or a crisis line — see the crisis support page.