It’s simple, once you understand how the system works:
- There are things we want to do & things we have to do. Our brain is an energy manager; a gatekeeper for dopamine. It only wants to give you energy for the things you want to do.
- ADHD = low mental energy. Because our stockpile of mental energy coins is low, our brain doesn’t want to be generous with doling out energy when we need it; it’s very selective & only wants to let us spend our dopamine cash for the fun stuff we enjoy doing.
- Anytime you have to do anything, that’s an energy confrontation. Your brain does a quick audit at the beginning of this confrontation, when you decide you have to do something, and says this is a “have to do” task, then puts up a fatigue barrier to dissuade you from doing it. If it’s a “want to do” task, psssh, you can stay up all night surfing the net, reading a book, watching a show, or playing a video game!
Most people aren’t that sensitive to the energy confrontation, which is like a Photoshop slider for “more” or “less”. They do get tired, but can usually just decide to plow through that too. Likewise, high-energy people rarely if ever even see the energy confrontation slider on their radar.
However, when you have chronically low available mental energy from say, ADHD, then we live & die by that slider. If our brain pushes it into “needs more energy” side of the Photoshop slider for something we HAVE to do, then it’s like drawing too much power from an outlet…it trips the mental circuit breaker & we get INSTA-tired! A good way to explain the variable nature of our energy available is Spoon Theory:
The solution is fairly simple:
- Create a task list
- Create checklists for how to do the task
- Have a clean workstation with all of the tools & supplies you need ready to go
The task list must be:
- Finite
- Specific
- Arranged in sequence
So for starters, we need to create discrete assignments:
With ADHD, we can also add mousetrap actions to our discrete assignments, because our brain fights us TREMENDOUSLY:
Then we can use checklists, like “how to study” or “how to write an essay” to do each task:
This comic illustrates the challenge of doing simple things:
- https://iraprince.tumblr.com/post/631158826868031488/hey-im-kicking-off-the-adhdinvasion-hashtag-for
This comic is the best illustration of ADHD I’ve ever seen:
With ADHD, you are constantly fighting against your brain, which creates 3 effects:
- Forget
- Fog
- Freeze
First, our brain makes us forget, so we just totally space stuff. Second, we get brain fog & things get hazy & hard to grasp onto. Third, once we DO get things defined & sorted out, getting rolling on things using self-directed action can sometimes seem impossible.
Did you ever see those old Bugs Bunny cartoons where he’s operating a railroad switchtrack? That’s basically how our brain operates. If it sees a “must do” task, it switches to the fatigue track. If we hyperfocus on avoidance behavior, it switches to the “yee-haw!” track lol. It makes sense, in an irrational way: it flips a switch based on the type of work it perceives us to be doing, and afaik, there’s no way to fool it lol.
The first track that leads to fatigue is called the emotional track. The second track that leads to getting stuff done is called the logical track. By default, especially when we’re tired, emotions win…we feel clobbered by our task list. The way we switch to the logical track is to switch to using commitment-based productivity instead of emotional-based productivity:
Typically, when we have enough energy, we can “imprint” on the idea of what we’re doing & hammer away, but when we’re tired, or have a more complex or longer project, we need to take the “farming” approach:
Thus, our job is simple:
- Make a finite list of sequenced discrete assignments each day
- Make, adopt, and use checklists to get those tasks done
- Do them within clean, ready-to-go working environments and setup whatever tools & supplies you need so that you can dive directly into the “real work” you want to do
With ADHD, our brains sort of have PTSD (well, C-PTSD) about getting stuff done every day, because we know that:
- We’re going to get over-stimulated & feel overwhelmed
- It’s going to be either like a silent tension headache (ex. we get sleepy) or even painful (ex. a headache, physical body drain, etc.) because our brain has switched us to the wrong track for enjoying getting stuff done
- We’re going to have to stress about it, do avoidance behavior, procrastinate, then cram & stay up late, because we get zero dopamine from the task & zero adrenaline until the last-minute panic sets in
If we create a list of discrete assignments, and then select which ones to work on each day within our working bucket of time, and use checklists & have a nice clean environment to work in so that we don’t get distracted, then that’s a pretty great way to be able to power through getting stuff done each day! Otherwise, our brain knows the usual is going to happen & we’re going to get clobbered & then things just feel baaaaaad.