ADHD

hi friend, it's not laziness - it's executive dysfunction. And it's quite difficult, thought not impossible, to work against.

Step one is realising that executive dysfunction isn't a choice - laziness is a choice, and it's supposed to feel good - if you feel guilty the entire time you're being "lazy" then that's not being lazy.

Step two is creating systems not habits to work against it. Us adhd folks either have a very hard time creating habits, or are incapable of creating them at all.

What do i mean when i say systems, not habits? i mean reflections & procedures that help you realise you're falling down an executive dysfunction hole, and then help you get out of it. The best metric i've found to understand how deep into that hole you are is figuing out how much guilt surrounds you - messy home, messy documents, unfinished projects, undone work etc. all those generate guilt, and the more guilty you feel the more overwhelemed you get.

Then you engage the systems that help you get out of it. Find your sources of energy that'll get you through cleaning and organising. For me exercise works best, even if it's just some stretching or light cardio (jumping jacks are the only thing that wakes me up when i'm tired for example lol). Address things one by one - first clean up your home, a passive source of guilt coming from your surroundings is going to be constantly dragging you down.

Once that's out the way get to work on your projects. Realise that you can't start at working 7h non-stop, but you can slowly work up your stamina for consecutive work. Push yourself to do a bit more every time, but not too hard or you'll start getting the burn out meter going up.

What helps a lot is doing things for another person or having a body-double there to keep yourself feeling accountable. Even as little as being in a discord call with another person working can get your in a mindset to do things.

And speaking of mindsets to do things - another tactic is to create task specific environments and or outfits that you associate with doing something. Going to a library to study, putting on an outfit to clean etc. You can do that digitally as well - perhaps have a seperate system account for programming and working, that'll help you keep the distractions just enough out of reach that on good days you'll easily choose continuing to work instead of video games or watching youtube.

Things i wrote above work for me, they might not work for you though. You'll need to discover and figure out what makes you tick. It might seem hard, and it can be, but it's very much worth it

21 days is one of the most blatant lies for our lot. Be it 21, 12 or 221 - some things just refuse to convert into a habit, even things you do months or years (like taking meds).

Aside from getting treatment, what’s helped me:

• know that you’re incapable of forming habits. You have to choose to do the thing every time.
• Trick yourself into hyperfixation if you can. It’s a superpower, if you can aim it in a useful direction. Find something gratifying or satisfying about the task to focus on. Sometimes watching the todo list get smaller or the inbox get cleared out does it for me.
• This one’s hard to describe, but sometimes you have to realize that the hyperfixation easy-mode motivation isn’t coming and you’ll have to draw motivation from somewhere else inside yourself. Sometimes just getting over the initial jump of starting a task makes the rest of it flow naturally.
• Break big problems into little problems.
• Simplify your life as much as possible. You only have so many executive function tokens every day, don’t waste them.
• have a todo list. Don’t make it complicated. If possible, just do the thing immediately instead of putting it on the list.
• Get enough sleep. This is not optional.
• Exercise, specifically some kind of cardio. 30 minutes above about 120bpm, 3 times per week. There are studies, it makes a big difference in a million ways.
• Give yourself grace. You’re playing on hard mode, don’t compare yourself to neurotypical people.

Edit: also it’s not laziness, not really. Lazy people are comfortable with it.

That's not laziness.

I just finished reading "How to keep house while drowning" by a neurodivergent psychologist, KC Davis. I got it as an audiobook from my library and listened to it while driving and doing house tasks. It's about building systems to help your space function for you but also addresses a lot of the self-bullying and unproductive self-talk that only leads us to do less and feel worse. I would encourage anyone who thinks they are lazy or has feelings of guilt around being "unproductive" or "messy" to read it and really listen.

What works for others might not work for you, people all develop different coping skills. What worked for me are having windows of limited time to get things done, that have hard starts and cut offs that push me to do as much as I can in that time. "Body doubling", productive time with a partner/witness has also worked for me. There are lots of possible ways for you to break out of the rut.

"The fastest way to kill motivation is to make your identity depend on the outcome. This is called " Ego Involvement" - when failing becomes failing as a person, your brain starts avoiding the whole thing. It's not because you don't care, or are lazy, but because you care too much.

To overhaul this thought process and it's resultant consequences on your life, it's important to recognize that this is what's happening, and to detach your self worth from everyday tasks/work that needs to be done.

This is part of the reason that doing for others when you can't do for yourself works.

It also sort of explains why body doubling works for some. It adds an outside pressure we care more about, and demotes the self worth aspect we place on whatever task needs to be done.

This does not mean that you'll be able to use the coping mechanisms of others to achieve your goal though, sometimes getting proper medical care and mental health care is what allows you to develope coping mechanisms that work for you.

Annoyance at others motivates me. If I put a dish in the sink? That's fine. The only person I can be mad at is me and my self worth is attached to it, but that's a problem for later me. If my husband puts a plate in the sink? I'm annoyed, both at him and at the fact that there's clutter and I'm more motivated to deal with it before it becomes a stack of plates etc.

This is a coping mechanism I have that doesn't necessarily work for other people. Maybe they don't live with someone else. Maybe they have a different dynamic and relationship with the people they do live with. But it works for us.

Another of my coping mechanisms is lists, and I have lists for everything. But I separate the lists into categories. This helps me break things down so I don't become overwhelmed.

I know for a fact that this absolutely does not work for a lot of people I have known with ADHD.

As I have gotten older I have cared less and less about what people think. Somehow this includes myself. Who am I? Why should my thoughts and feelings be any more or less valid than some random person on the street who I not only wouldn't take advice from, but also might tell where to stick it if I felt judged by them in specific circumstances?

That's not really something that you can implement necessarily using strategy. And it's probably not something that happens to everyone, certainly not to the same degree.

Sometimes for me it's as simple as recognizing that I do need help and then the problem becomes asking for help or being honest about needing it. I loathe asking for help. It feels like failure to me. In the right circumstances that's enough to motivate me to do it myself. The anxiety of having to ask for help is worse than the lost feeling of missing executive function.

I don't know how to explain how to do that for another person. I spent 40 years developing a haphazard and cobbled together house of random coping mechanisms that work for me and I'm not sure how another person would implement them.

But I will say that what you describe does sound like a disorder with your executive function and not laziness. And I will say that ADHD is not the only Neurodivergent condition that has executive dysfunction.

Because that is the case it may be beneficial to you to get a second opinion not just about the ADHD but about just having executive dysfunction and the likely cause given your medical and psychological background.

Have you tried the Buddy System?

Find someone who will hold you accountable; a study buddy who expects you to be at the library every day, a running buddy for exercise, etc etc.

The other thing is that everyone has their own way of doing things. Some people like to do 15 minutes of high intensity exercise, and others prefer to spend an hour walking or swimming. Some people can concentrate for five hours straight, and others need to take a break after 30 minutes.