Planning Your Tasks

SKILL: Reasoning

DIFFICULTY: 5/5

LEVELS: N/A

BRIEF RATIONALE: This treatment guides you through a proven method for planning and completing tasks successfully. A customized plan will be available to download at the end.

In Planning Your Tasks, you will plan a personal daily living task by completing the guided steps. There are 7 steps in the sequence.

1. TASK: Enter a meaningful, achievable task and assign it a priority (low, medium, or high). This is meant to prompt the internal question, “Is this what I need to be doing right now?” because planning and prioritization can be difficult for those with cognitive deficits.
2. ITEMS: Enter the items required to complete the task in advance.
3. STEPS: Break down the task into smaller steps to help focus on one thing at a time, reduce overwhelm, and encourage follow-through.
4. TIME: Estimate the time required for each step to practice time management skills. The total estimated duration will be calculated automatically so you can allocate enough time in your schedule and minimize time pressure. Later, you can compare the estimated times to the actual times to provide further insight into your abilities.
5. STRESS: Identify stressful steps (due to time pressure or other factors) to promote awareness of strengths and weaknesses. Having stressful or challenging steps may indicate that strategies are required to increase the chance of success.
6. STRATEGIES: List possible strategies to help you succeed. There are question prompts to assist you, including:
   • What has helped you in the past?
   • How could you simplify or modify the task?
   • What could you do differently to help you succeed?
   • What additional tools or resources could you use?
   • What parts could someone else help with?
7. PREDICTIONS: Predict what could go wrong and brainstorm possible solutions.

PDF DOWNLOAD: At the end of the treatment, you can download a custom handout that allows you to:

• Check off items as you acquire them
• Review the strategies
• Check off each step as it’s completed
• Document the actual time it took to complete each step and compare it to the estimates
• See which steps you thought would be stressful
• Answer a series of prompting questions to encourage self-monitoring during task completion
• Answer a series of prompting questions to encourage self-reflection after the task is done
• Assess if solutions were useful or not
• Write a self-reflection

FOR THE CLINICIAN:

The treatment design is inspired by multiple evidence-based treatments including Goal/Plan/Do/Review/Revise, Goal Management Training, Time Pressure Management, the Predict-Perform-Evaluate procedure, and metacognitive strategy training.

Selected References:

1. Cicerone, K. D., Dams-O'Connor, K., Eberle, R., Fraas, M., Ganci, K., Langenbahn, D., ... & Trexler, L. E. (2022). The ACRM cognitive rehabilitation manual & textbook: translating evidence-based recommendations into practice. ACRM Publishing.
2. Fasotti, L., Kovacs, F., Eling, P. A., & Brouwer, W. H. (2000). Time pressure management as a compensatory strategy training after closed head injury. Neuropsychological rehabilitation, 10(1), 47-65.
3. Goal, Plan, Do, Review & Revise (GPDR/R) Guide. (n.d.). https://www.gpdrr.org/uploads/1/2/4/6/124640728/gpdrr_guide_final_2-27-2020.pdf