How to ADHD: An Insider's Guide to Working with Your Brain (Not Against It)

by Jessica McCabe

One off day shouldn’t ruin your week, let alone throw off the next three months. Time management shouldn’t take the spontaneity out of your life or the joy out of your work. The truth is, if you have to optimize to that extent, you have too much on your plate. You’re going to burn out. Or, like me, rebel.

Most of my life has been a battle between me, who knows this thing is important, and my brain, which doesn’t want to do it.

What matters is whether or not my brain feels like doing it.

Sometimes I can excite and engage my brain, only for it to completely lose interest, forget what I was doing, or get stuck at the first confusing obstacle. (I have a lot of half-knitted blankets and half-finished degrees.)

left to actually complete it. If something became urgent enough, I’d kick into gear. Everything else fell away while I finished a paper, or scrambled to get to class on time, or apologetically rolled into Jiffy Lube six months overdue for an oil change because I was about to go on a road trip. The things that were important to me but never became urgent? Like finishing my novel, learning to meal prep, or hosting a murder mystery dinner party? I just never got to them.

In fact, there’s even a term for our tendency to escape and avoid the distress that a delay causes us: delay aversion. ADHD brains often turn to the more immediate reward of doing something fun now—or escaping the distress of facing something tedious—even when we deeply care about the goal.

So, what does motivate an ADHD brain? Things that are: urgent new or novel (the right level of) challenging of personal interest

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that motivates and reinforces behavior. When something is pleasurable, dopamine, along with other feel-good neurotransmitters, is released and makes its way to its respective receptors in the brain. This signals our brain to remember what led to feeling good: that felt good; do it again!

Evidence suggests that ADHD brains don’t release anticipatory dopamine the same way neurotypical brains do. Reuptake—the reabsorption of the dopamine—may also happen before it makes it to a receptor. When this happens, our brains don’t “learn” that a behavior like filling out tax forms will lead to anything good.

There are two types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic.

Intrinsic motivation happens when you do something because it is enjoyable and satisfying in and of itself.

Extrinsic motivation happens when you do something because of the external consequences of doing (or not doing) it.

In practice, those extrinsic consequences—both positive and negative ones—often feel too far away to be motivating, especially when they’re competing with the more immediate rewards of playing video games or partying now. This is due to temporal discounting, where we perceive a desired result in the future as less valuable than one we could have now.

much that a reward is far off in the distance. In fact, there’s arguably a benefit to not relying on extrinsic motivation; research has shown that adding extrinsic rewards can actually decrease intrinsic motivation.

What we often forget to consider when talking about motivation is that there is always motivation not to do The Thing, too—and that this motivation can be stronger than the motivation encouraging us to do it. Filling out a decisional balance worksheet (see this page) can help you understand what is motivating you to head in one direction or the other.

When we do a “simple” task—say, making a phone call—we’re not just dealing with that task. We’re also dealing with an emotional barrier that has been built from past failures with the task.

Some of the most common emotions that come up for those with ADHD include overwhelm, discouragement, hopelessness, fear, and confusion.

To make matters even more complicated, ADHDers typically have relatively weak working memory (see this page to learn more).

“Learning how to identify what’s causing your mental resistance makes it easier to find or create a tailored solution that addresses those specific feelings.”

fact, it often happens in reverse: action can generate motivation. Here are some examples:

This is the idea behind what psychologists call behavioral activation. You don’t have to feel like going for a bike (or motor scooter!) ride to go for a ride. You just put on your gear. You check the air in the tires. You get on the dang thing. And then see how you feel.[*2]

Whatever it is we want to be motivated enough to do, it helps to know our behavior—the actions we take—can increase (or decrease) that motivation. Behavior precedes motivation.

might not be where the problem is. Consider these possibilities: A skill gap: You don’t entirely know (or remember) how to do The Thing or the steps involved. A lack of resources: You don’t have what you need to get The Thing

done. For example, you might not have enough time, supplies, or energy. Perfectionism: Perfectionism, and the anxiety that goes hand in hand with it, can keep you from getting started or keep you stuck in mental loops. Overly optimistic thinking: You might assume that you can get to something tomorrow without checking to see if you’re giving yourself enough time to do it. (This is known as positive illusory bias.) Forgetfulness: Thanks to ADHD-related memory challenges (see “How to Remember Stuff,” this page), you might not remember what your goals even are. An unrealistic goal: The goal you chose isn’t attainable—or sustainable.

“The main way I get things done is by having structure forced on me from an outside source, like a job for instance, where the potential shame of failure is compelling enough to pull me through the wall. With anything else, though, I just don’t do it until I literally have no choice (all of my dishes are piled up in the sink so I can’t eat) or the deadline is so close that I can ride the panic-induced adrenaline rush of, for example, having to write an entire essay in one night.”

1. FILL IN THE MOTIVATIONAL PLANKS Think of motivation as a bridge that helps us go from wanting to do a thing to actually getting it done. Those with ADHD often don’t have as many “motivational planks”

Add urgency. Invite a guest over if you want to get yourself to clean. Sign up for a class with a friend if you want to get started exercising.

Turn a marathon project into a series of mini sprints so you can get started before it’s almost due.

Find the right level of challenging. If something is too easy, it might be too boring; if it’s too difficult, it can be too frustrating and discouraging to keep going.

Tie a task to a personal interest. When you’re doing something you don’t want to do but need to do, ask yourself this: Is there anything interesting about this? You can also incorporate your personal interests into a task. You might have to make the final draft of your paper sound professional, but who says you can’t exclusively use Dungeons & Dragons metaphors to get the first draft done?

Add novelty. Doing boring or repetitive tasks in a new location, with different people, or with a new tool can make them interesting enough for us to complete them.

2. REDUCE FRICTION AND GREASE THE WHEELS The more barriers between you and a task you can remove, the less motivation you’ll need to get started—and stay started.

Do what you can ahead of time. Sleep in your gym clothes, book classes in advance, or make yourself a checklist.

Remove physical obstacles and other barriers. If something is in the way of the piano, it’s going to make it harder for you to play the piano. If a task is overwhelming for sensory reasons—for example, there’s something about it that is too bright, too noisy, or too icky—find a tool that helps you avoid the unpleasant experience. Use gloves while washing dishes, earplugs for noisy trips, or sunglasses for running errands outside.[*4]

Invest in tools you enjoy using. Many of us have negative associations with tasks partly due to the tools we associate with the task. Choosing ones that feel good and look nice is a great way to “grease the wheels” toward doing The Thing.

Tap into your “why.” There’s a reason you’re doing The Thing. What’s the reason? It might not be about the task itself. There’s a sweet example of this in an episode of The Simpsons. When Homer went back to work after Maggie was born, he papered pictures of her over a foreboding sign from his boss that read “Don’t forget. You’re here forever.” The baby pictures covered enough letters so the sign now read “Do it for her.”

Ride the wave. If you feel like tackling an important task that you usually don’t like doing, take care of it now. Strike while the iron is hot—or, more accurately, while the friction is low.

Eat the ice cream first. This one came from Jesse J. Anderson, a friend and author of Extra Focus: rather than trying to eat the frog first, it can help to eat the ice cream first.

Accountability helps shorten the distance between the action we need to take and the consequences of taking (or not taking) it.

Decide on what you’re doing—and not doing. Sometimes, all we need in terms of accountability is to get clear on what we’re doing and what can wait. If you need support with figuring this out, coaches, therapists, and even a friend or co-worker can help you make (and

Find productivity partners. There are a lot of groups designed to help people connect and support each

Shorten the feedback loop. Sometimes we have trouble finishing a project because we get stuck on one part of it; sometimes it’s because the deadline is too far away to kick our brains into gear. Either way, asking for shorter deadlines and/or more frequent check-ins can help. Those check-ins can be with your boss, colleagues, or random friends: “Hey, this Friday, can I show you what I’ve got on my project so far?”

Make it a competition! There are apps, programs, and competitions that gamify productivity, but you can also keep it simple.

Procrastinating is common for those with ADHD—and for good reason. The sense of urgency we feel as a deadline approaches kicks our brain into gear. Starting closer to a deadline instead of well ahead of time, as many of us have learned, can save us a lot of time and mental energy. But how you procrastinate matters. Research suggests that those who engage in what is called active procrastination—the “wait until your brain kicks into gear” or “put off homework until the night before it’s due” form of procrastination—experience similar performance and outcomes as non-procrastinators. On the other hand, those who engage in passive procrastination—the “head in the sand” form where you avoid even thinking about The Thing—are more likely to experience negative outcomes such as poor grades, missed opportunities, and—I don’t remember what else. Ironically, I keep procrastinating on revisiting the research. Even so, active procrastination has its costs. You might still have to blow off something important as you try to get the more urgent task done. Your efforts might affect how well your brain will function the next day. Sometimes these costs are worth it; sometimes they’re not. The takeaway? It’s unrealistic to expect anyone, especially someone with ADHD, not to procrastinate at all. But if you’re going to procrastinate, procrastinate mindfully.

MAKE REWARDS MORE SALIENT Make sure rewards are motivating to the person you’re trying to motivate (who is you).

Pick a reward that is meaningful to you. Different people respond differently to different rewards.

Scale a reward strategically. Think economics. If a reward is too big, it floods the reward market and inflation happens.

Make the reward more immediate. A reward that happens right away is one that is more salient. Immediate positive feedback is a great example.

Give yourself the reward for doing The Thing. Rewards don’t work as motivational fuel if you give them to yourself regardless of your efforts—or don’t give them to yourself at all.

TO STICK WITH THINGS Hang with me here. A lot of the time, we start a new venture without an end date. We might assume this new habit, job, hobby is the one, and we’re going to do it forever. We understandably get frustrated and disappointed when it doesn’t turn out that way. Instead of expecting we’ll magically be able to stick to things despite all past evidence to the contrary, it’s often more helpful to plan for the variability in interest and motivation inherent to ADHD.