Why do I abandon all the planners I buy?
Why do my projects never get finished?
How come I can't stick with anything?
Why does nothing keep my attention?
Why can't I just be disciplined enough?
If you're tired of repeatedly asking yourself these questions, this brief blog post might be just what you need. (Or if you're one of my patients to whom I've sent this link, so I don't need to type and email it - hi.)
Both I and a significant portion of my patient caseload have ADHD. Being productive is challenging enough with ADHD, but sustaining that productivity is even harder. We often start off well, full of motivation, enthusiasm, and good intentions... and then it all unravels. It's incredibly frustrating. Some of us have more endurance than others, and some have a higher tolerance for pushing productivity out of ourselves. However, especially when it comes to tasks that require multiple sessions over several days to complete... they never seem to get finished, do they?
From what I've observed during my years as a therapist to ADHD individuals, most neurotypical individuals find their preferred productivity methods early on and stick with them. After literally years of pondering, I realized that no single technique works for people with ADHD because it's not the technique that's crucial; it's the novelty. Thus, varying the technique to introduce "newness," excitement, joy, and curiosity is what's important. I also discovered that not all my friends and patients have conducted an extensive amount of research into motivation and productivity techniques as I have, (hello, special interest) so I've compiled a list of methods, in no particular order, that I've heard from patients, found online, and developed myself.
Eat the Frog: Do the hardest, most unpleasant thing first. Accomplishing the most difficult task first will make everything else seem easier by comparison and hopefully make the rest of your day a downhill slide.
Commit to 5 minutes: Bargain with yourself to engage in the task for a minimum of 5 minutes. In the worst-case scenario, you accomplish five minutes of work, and in the best case, this initiates a momentum of capability that boosts motivation to achieve more.
False Deadline: ADHD loves an impending deadline. How many times did you complete big school projects at the last minute? That's right. Create a deadline to race towards; for example, work on it until the laundry is done and your fancy washing machine sings its little song, or until it's time to leave for dinner.
Start at the end and work backwards: Pretty self-explanatory, but this is one technique you can apply to tasks and assignments that are more rigid, like homework assignments.
Start small: Do a small thing first. Make it a game to do the smallest step you can: Just draft the email. Or just find the phone number for the place you need to call. Do several of these for several projects, with the hope that once you do all the smallest part, you'll have to move to the second smallest things on projects, and the progress will snowball as you continue to work on tiny, manageable pieces.
Just inject novelty: No particular technique, just do it in a new weird way. Do it in a new place/way/time; for example, do it outside on your laptop outside, or do it in the bathtub, full dressed, do it listening to music in a brand new, niche category, or do it on paper when you usually do it on the computer or vice versa. Get weird with it. One of my hacks to making a difficult phone call is to do it in my car.
Pomodoro Timer: Italian for tomato (why Pomodoro, I don't know. Someone tell me and I'll update this.) This is a system of work intervals and breaks, usually 25 minutes of work followed by 5 minutes of rest, with longer breaks after several consecutive work sessions. don't be afraid to adjust the work-to-rest ratio to suit your needs better. Here's a cute webapp for Pomodoro work with customizable settings. https://pomofocus.io/
Eisenhower matrix, aka Urgent-Important Matrix, is a time-management and decision-making tool named after the former president. Items are labelled as either Important-Not Important, and Urgent-Not Urgent. Here, this little graphic explains it better than text can.
Whole-a** one thing: Pardon my french, but this one works. If you're stuck, identify what you need to do, and do that one thing wholeheartedly. If you need a break, put your phone down, close your eyes, and meditate. If you're snacking aimlessly but hungry, get away from the work and make an actual meal and eat it mindfully. If you need to have rest, stop taking halfhearted breaks and losing focus - pause your work and go take a nap and again, no scrolling. Actually rest. Then, when you return to work, put away distractions and get 100% into it.
Perfect is the enemy of good: For my fellow perfectionists, this might be familiar. Remind yourself, getting started and making 5% progress is better than waiting and repeatedly rearranging and optimizing and making 0% progress.
Body doubling: This technique uses the presence of another person, either in-person or virtually, to gentle pressure yourself to stay on task. I sometimes use friends on video chat for this, but more often, I use online groups and services specifically devoted to this: various discord groups, Flow.com, Deepwrk.com, or Focusmate.com
Accountability buddy: a distant relative of body doubling, this involves involving someone else that you provide a task list too, and progress updates. My partner and friends provide this outlet for me often, and some of my clients who particularly struggle with ADHD have agreements with me to provide accountability reports.
Break it down into smaller tasks: related to "Start small", listed above, this is an organizing step done before starting on the task. Turn it into a game of how ridiculously small the steps can be: Go to the website; Find the portal; log in; draft the message; send the message.
Problem solve: Those of you familiar with DBT or H.A.L.T might recognize this one. Identify potential blocks to you sustaining your attention, and remember to go back to basics. Am I cold? Tired? Did I drink actual water or eat a real meal recently? (Iced coffee and your meds do NOT count as a real meal, friend) Am I stressed about another personal issue and perhaps need to attend to that first?