Set insanely small goals. The inability to start often has to do with imagining the daunting tasks that lay ahead of you. The trick is to set almost pathetically small goals.
Your room is filled with messy laundry? Grab 1 shirt and toss it into a pile. That’s it. You don’t need to do the laundry, you don’t need to gather any other clothes. Just 1 shirt, tossed into a pile that it wasn’t in before. I bet there’s one within arm reach of you right now.
Used dishes in your room? Aren’t you thirsty? Sure you are! You probably haven’t drank anything in a while. Go to the kitchen and get some water. While you’re on your way, why don’t you grab 1 dish and take it with you?
Momentum is a hell of a thing. Most of the time, all you need is something small to break your executive dysfunction. If you tossed 1 shirt into a pile, you might as well toss any clothing in arms reach. Those pants are just slightly out of reach, ok maybe you get up a little to toss those… And those socks… And maybe that shirt over there too. Suddenly, all your dirty clothes are gathered into a pile and it hardly took any time or energy. All it took was grabbing 1 shirt and tossing it.
And if you finish your insanely small task and you don’t feel like doing any more? That’s fine! You already met your goal! Hell, if you’ve got something you’re struggling with and have taken the time to read this, you’re already half-way there, because now you’re thinking about what the smallest, stupidest, zero-effort goal you can set is.
Are you ready for the most important piece of life advice that no one ever tells you growing up? Anything worth doing is worth doing shitty.
Activation energy is a terrible thing.
If you don’t know where to start, organise something.
Currently on my way to work 3 hours late because of executive dysfunction.
It’s not that I can’t clean. I clean up just fine when I have a hard deadline - my girlfriend is coming over, etc. When it’s just me and my thoughts I am perfectly fine living in filth. Not happy, but fine.
coffee.
Kickass fro bro
Hey fun fact: motivation doesn’t exist. It will not materialize out of thin air. The motivation you seek is discipline.
Go do the thing.
Hey another fun fact: that don’t fly for people with ADHD. We have this thing called task avoidance. Because of issues with executive function in the brain, we literally can’t get up and start no matter how much we’re screaming at ourselves in our head to “Get the fuck up and start already!!!”. No amount of discipline will make up for a lack of dopamine in the brain.
