ADHDers, how do you speed-up, bypass, or otherwise eliminate the "ramp-up" period required for big tasks?
I was diagnosed as an adult about 5 years ago. I'll spare my life story, but I've spent those five years doing everything I can to give myself an environment where I can achieve my goals, and I have done a great job with that.
Apart from getting meds, I've built a strong task management/journaling system, I've built mental habits that help me overcome anxiety spirals, I've forgiven my ADHD for existing, and I have healthier sleep/diet habits to keep my baseline up.
Lately, though, some new obstacles have come up with the birth of my son (now almost 4mo old). Tbf, I've been aware of these things before, but my son has definitely exacerbated them.
With the attention and care a child requires, my windows to do things are a lot smaller. Sometimes only 20 minutes. This has made things more difficult in a few different ways:
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For me to start doing a lot of things, even things I am excited to do, I have a "ramp-up" period before I can really dig into it. I think this is basically the time I need to plan, prioritize, and/or remember where I left off before I actually execute.
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When I know something will inevitably interrupt me, I avoid starting anything because interruptions like, super-duper piss me off. And I don't want to be pissed off.
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Not really related, but somewhat. In general, I would like to be able to do more in a day. I'd say my peak operating time is 9am-3pm, give or take. Outside these hours, it's a lot harder for me to do anything outside of "shut my brain off" tasks like house chores.
As many with ADHD know, an understimulated brain is unpleasant. And how shitty is it that ADHD also makes it difficult to do the things you find intellectually stimulating?
I hope all this makes sense. I've already accepted that this is my life now, and I'm okay with it. Even still, I would love some practical, actionable advice to help me make the most with what I have. Double points if it doesn't involved upping my Adderall dosage or self-medicating with caffeine. Thanks everyone!
I'm sorry that I don't have an answer but instead questions: how did you build up this journaling and task management system so that you are able to keep engaging with it? I find myself eventually overwhelmed by every task management system!
No problem, happy to help :)
I wish I had a quick solution for you, but for me, it was a long process of trying something, seeing what I liked/disliked about it, and then tinkering here and there. If you're getting overwhelmed, you're probably either trying to do too much, or fit a round peg into a square hole. Just remember, none of these tools are going to "do" or "fix" anything. They aren't prescriptive like that. Instead, think of it as "which tool is the easiest for me to use?"
I've used so many different softwares, journal systems, etc. All have had different things that I liked. Some have lasted longer than others. My current method has lasted the longest, but who knows how it might evolve over time.
My advice: start small. I have a small notebook. I write the date down, and then a small list. The list has things that I either want to do today, or ongoing things that I want to keep top of mind. For example:
If I do the thing, I cross it off. If not, I just move it over to the next list. For the journaling part, I just write a few sentences about what I did that day. I think of my journal as something someone would find in a video game. You know, like maybe a guard's log or whatever.
"Went and got groceries. Took longer than expected. Didn't have time to research geese because I didn't get home until 2pm. Was able to start my laundry, but doubt I'll fold it tonight. Probably do that tomorrow morning."
I'll usually update my journal like that once or twice a day, or sometimes not at all! Sometimes I'll go a week or two without using it, but I always find my way back to it for one reason or another.
That's another thing, don't kick your own ass just because you're not doing this stuff every single day. There's no streaks or accolades or reward for being perfect. Some days you might wake up and be perfectly content going about your day without structure. Other days, you might feel overwhelmed by what you need to get done, so a list would probably make it easier.
As far as software goes, don't get distracted by bells and whistles, and don't feel like you need to use every single feature of every single app. Remember: You're trying to find something that works for YOU, not force yourself to do another thing. The whole idea is making your life easier. And that just involves trial and error.
Sorry, got a little rambly, but I hope this somewhat helps? We're all on a personal journey and I'm far from figuring it all out. Just be patient with yourself, try new things, and don't beat yourself up because you can't make something work, because it ain't your fault.
The problem I tend to get is that my backlog of TODOs gets so damn long that looking at them almost instantly causes me to feel overwhelmed and run out of fucks. This leads to important things becoming urgent things or, worse, emergent things!
Keeping it in my head is a recipe for anxiety.
Recording it is anxiety.
Trying to find an in-between is anxiety.
I have a perfectionist streak as well. Failing in meeting my goals results in frustration leading to a sense of helplessness. It's just one of many reasons I'm working with my doctor to explore whether I have relatively high-functioning ASD. Comorbidity between ADHD and ASD are non-trivial after all.
Yes! I feel you so much on this! The amount of things I've had drop off the end of the list because keeping aware of them is too painful when I haven't made any progress on them at all in 6 months, a year, more, etc.
Eventually I throw the whole list out and start again because I can't bare to look at it. That's after avoiding the list for weeks or more.
I'm really stuck here.
I'd love an app that uses an LLM or similar to help me prioritize and then hide everything I don't need to know about.
That would be so good!
If you have trouble dealing with anxiety, deal with it first. It's not easy to get used to feeling it, acknowledging it and giving your emotions time to normalize afterwards. It becomes easier as you practice.
If you keep pushing through anxiety, you'll probably end up burned out. There is no need to hurt yourself like that.
For more optimistic outlook: https://ncase.me/anxiety/
For a lot of people with ADHD, anxiety is developed as a coping mechanism to an extent, since the fear can motivate us to get things done when the normal rewards system of our brains isn't. That doesn't mean the anxiety is good for us, but it does mean that treating that anxiety without addressing ADHD symptoms can make coping with those ADHD symptoms worse.
I don't think anxiety is normally something to treat as a disease. It's similar to fear. You don't take anti-fear pills either.
Now anxiolytics can be helpful, because they take the edge off quickly, but you still need to deal with your internal alarm system ringing the bells for some reason.
ADHD means you get to develop sensitivity and pick on negative feedback faster. Normally ADHD afflicted people are not dying because they failed to sow their fields, it's more about having problematic relationships with others.
Anxiety (like ADHD symptoms: distractability, forgetfulness, hyperactivity) becomes a disease when it is harming your ability to live your life fully. People with ADHD can develop "helpful" anxiety that eventually becomes unhealthy. I like to show people the anxiety/productivity curve to explain my own personal experience.
https://www.healthline.com/health/yerkes-dodson-law#stress-performance-bell-curve
I agree, though arousal is much more complex than just anxiety. Wakefulness and cognition also contribute, not just emotions.
You can objectively deal with anxiety surrounding specific situation by exploring it, talking about it with someone, making the decision and so on.
Like you are anxious about your finances so you make a budget. Then you are no longer anxious, because the situation becomes known and controlled. You are now anxious about the fact you cannot afford to give a gift to your family member and you worry about rejection. Then the party happens and you realize it's all good and your anxiety dissipates.
If you had to deal with that anxiety sooner, you could have talked about it with your partner and realize that quality of relationship with that particular person has no bearing on your day-to-day lives and you could eventually compensate which you decide you are going to. And anxiety goes away for the most part.
I don’t have ADHD, but I’ve found that the practice of manually copying todo items helps manage priority. If I’ve copied an item over 10 times, am I really going to complete it? Is this something that actually needs to be done, or something I feel like I should do but don’t want to? At some point it becomes impossible to do everything I want to do, that is when things start looking overwhelming. These questions help me drop items from my list.
Funny you say that! 20 years ago, at work (only), I kept a spiral bound notebook where I would write down my daily TODOs. Incomplete TODOs from the previous day would then either propagate to the current day or get dropped. However, my previous professional responsibilities and my personal responsibilities back then were smaller scale than now.
However, my personal list of TODOs include short, medium, and long term tasks/projects. Short term alone gets complicated between shopping lists, planned chores, ad hoc chores/errands, etc. Anything not short term needs to get stored and revisited periodically. Those medium and short term things pile up. Home maintenance alone is a fucking nightmare to track; the list is naturally enormous, always grows, and seems impossible to whittle down to a maintenance mode.
So, there's all of that.
As I write this, it may be possible to keep the short term task list really short. However, I tend to ignore reminders/notifications to review medium and long term stuff out of habit. The GTD weekly review "process" feels onerous to me. My ADHD resists the scheduled decision making nevermind the "face the music" of looking at long list of medium and long term tasks/projects.
Sure, I could drop things off that are medium and long term that don't have concrete deadlines. I also can see that being terrible for my marriage.
It's the backlogged stuff, that doesn't have a deadline or has a deadline in the distant future and is important but not at all urgent, that really tends to stress me out. That stuff accretes into enormous lists!
It burnses us presciousssssssss.
Check this with your SO and do not assume. If you feel they will reject you just for discussing it, try it anyway. Better get divorced before you have kids.
My wife and me, we are trying to eliminate mandatory gift giving with our extended families. Takes a lot of stress off.
I'm not afraid my SO will reject me for discussing it; she's good that way. I just don't know a way that still does the needful, so to speak. Second marriage, 10 years in, as first wife passed away 12 years ago.
Also, quite a bit too old for children now (which is a painfully sensitive topic for my wife in our marriage and a source of significant dread for me for our next couple counseling session).
That makes a lot of sense. I've tried keeping a kanban board at home for things like that, but random sticky notes inevitably fall off and become cat toys.
I also hate/automatically ignore reminders in my phone. I get way too many notifications already. This makes me lean strongly toward something low tech but I haven't yet found the right solution. Bullet journaling worked great the 5 times I tried it, until someone got sick, a vacation happened, I had an appointment at my usual review time, etc.
I think of a to-do list as in a scale I can't/plan to compete within a week or so, I didn't realize that until just now.
This sounds like a bullet journal.
I can't remember where I found this advice, and I have blended it with my own experience.
Make yourself do the first step, and give yourself permission to quit after the first step. This sounds a little counterintuitive, but I think it's worth trying.
The place I heard this from had an example where they wanted to get out of bed at the first alarm. With this advice, their first step was putting one foot on the ground. On some days, that is all they had the energy to do, and they put their foot back in bed and go back to sleep. But the important part is to still consider that a success.
In my opinion, giving yourself permission to quit is what makes it possible to take the first step. If you can be done after that first step, you don't feel the need for the ramp-up period. And then once you have taken that first step, you now have momentum to continue the project. It is kinda a way to trick yourself into taking the first step without thinking about what comes after.
Here are some examples from my life that I think illustrate the strategy better. I have been having a lot of trouble convincing myself to run recently. My previous motivation was to take out my job annoyance on running, which worked really well. Now I don't have that, so it has been difficult. I make myself take the first step: put on my running clothes. Now that I have them on, I give myself permission to go back to watching YouTube or whatever TV show I am watching. Sometimes I end up putting my running clothes on, watching videos for an hour, and changing back. But that is okay. Most of the time, the metaphorical momentum of having my running clothes on is enough to get me to run.
I am in school right now, and there have been some papers that I really didn't want to write. I have been trying to turn in things before the due date, so the usual deadline induced urgency can't help me anymore. When I have time to write but just can't motivate myself to, I set the small task of opening a new word document (well it's apple pages, but that doesn't matter), giving it a name, and writing something. Sometimes it will be 2 or 3 shitty sentences that inevitably get deleted. Sometimes all I can manage is to copy the prompt into the word document. This hasn't worked quite as well as the running example. I usually complete my small tasks, go back to braindead tasks, but in 5-10 minutes magically get the urge to start writing again. Just today I used these techniques to get a paper turned in that wasn't due until next week.
One more bonus tip: Keep supplies where they are needed. That sounds pretty obvious, but it sometimes takes thinking about it consciously to actually do it. For example, if you want to journal, keep your journal on the desk and a pen on the journal. Maybe get a journal with a pen loop to store the pen there. All of my cross stitch supplies always live in a single bag so everything is together. Back when I was more organized, my running clothes, shoes, running earbuds, and running pack all lived in a single duffel bag. I think this is good general advice for every brain type, but it is especially important for ADHD. I don't think it will help much with your current issues, but it may reduce some of the "ramp-up" steps required.
+1 as an ADHDer who uses this strategy. In general, giving myself more permission for imperfect and incomplete work has been life changing. A lot of my need to ramp up seems to be based on my subconscious anxiety about doing it wrong and need to think through every possibility associated with the big task. Forcing myself to start and being proud of myself for even doing a bit has ended up removing a lot of that negative energy and letting me just get on with it much more than I'd expect.
Huh. I like this. Another take on "baby steps". If you can make a little progress repeatedly then the thing eventually gets done.
On that note, I’m gonna go find my running clothes that have been buried in boxes since we moved house (over a year ago)
I use a very similar method to help overcome the feeling of "This is gonna take all day" that keeps me from starting large (though actually often only medium) tasks: I remind myself that I can tolerate 10 minutes of almost any task. So that's all I commit to doing. I often find that either a) the task only actually takes less than 10 minutes and my brain inflated it when I was putting it off or b) I get into the swing of it, don't quit after 10 minutes and make great progress. It doesn't always work, mostly because I forget to do it, but it's a great little tool.
I think you've just written down exactly why I struggle with some of my long-term goals that, like many things in life, simply require consistent time put in. I open my study materials, maybe I'll get a 25 minute Pomodoro session in, even feel like I have the energy to do more... and then I don't. Sometimes I open the study materials and then start browsing Youtube. Worst is when I have free time and the thought of studying crosses my mind, and I think "Yes, I really would like to put an hour or two into studying..." only to not even take the first step of moving to my work/productivity desk and open up the study materials. But that worst case scenario tends to be preluded by multiple instances of getting the first step "done" and not following through, and feeling bad about it. Heck, I put 30 minutes in and then start browsing Reddit, never to return, and consider that a failure when maybe I should have just been happy that I even bothered putting in 30 minutes, because putting in 30 minutes every day would put me way ahead of where I am now, where I might get a 1-2 hour session in once in two weeks.
Anyways, I'm here writing this after quitting my studying after yet another 30 minute session :) Will see if the mindset change helps me keep it up, I guess.
My experience is that "ramping up" is often a lie that my brain tells me to avoid doing the actual thing. If some of these pre-action actions are actually necessary, I can go back to it after starting the thing I was really planning on doing.
I can remember a time I sat down to work on an app, built out most of a new feature, then hours later went back and realized that I had planned to work on some other part next. However, I got a bunch of work done just by looking at my work, finding something that needed doing, and getting at it.
Alternatively, if it's not a freeform task and needs more planning, do the planning and organization at the end of sessions rather than beginnings. That way the next time you want to work on that task, you can just start with the first thing on the list.
As far as interruptions, I'm lucky enough to have a room I can use as an office, and I've negotiated with my wife that when I have the door closed, that's focus time for me. Obviously there are exceptions, but at least there's a better shot at having some uninterrupted time to myself.
Of course, I fail at implementing these suggestions all the time, so I also work hard at forgiving myself for that, but when it works, it works.
I tend to find "ramping up" is how the Demon of Procrastination tricks me. For instance, I ramped up on cooking and exercising today by waiting for my Vyvanse to kick in. 5 hours later...
The other side of that is that, like you, if I read correctly, initiating a task can feel daunting. And that anxiety often leads to indefinite delays.
I have someone else ask me to do it or otherwise rely on and remind me.
I try to hype myself up by telling myself everything is interesting and exciting, especially things I really don't want to do, like cleaning or going outside, or especially exercise (for chronic pain reasons, this one is literally the worst).
Eventually it'll be true, right?
And you are talking about non-chores.
Friend, that's objectively impossible. If you only have 20m blocks of time for remote job or whatever, you won't get anything done, period.
If it's about building furniture, reorganizing shelves, full-scale vacuuming and similar, those take multiple hours, packed with decisions and double checks. No way you'd keep that in your ADHD-impaired working memory, retain the momentum and finish in chunks. You need to spread those across multiple days or just don't do them until the kid is older.
If it's critical (remote job), just block-off 4h where your SO or somebody provides care to the child, drink the coffee and go. Even then, non-stop child care like that means you won't manage to get into it every time. You need to rest in order to use your higher faculties, which you are probably not able to.
As far as I know, most parents are glad they survive this phase and do not get divorced, even without ADHD.
PS: Get a slow cooker. Prepare everything cold, so that you can stop cooking at any moment and resume. Then put prepared ingredients in and turn it in. You can retrieve the food in a time window of over 8h at your leisure once it's done. Soups get better the longer you put it off. Rice cooker is similar. Get that as well.
Thanks for the reality check. I think this is what I needed, and deep down, what I already knew. Sometimes the only real solution is to be patient. Thank you for this.
Vyvanse 50mg fixes it really well for me.
Productivity systems are a way to feel useful while procrastinating. If I start some elaborate system I'll just obsess about the system and not do anything.
I do have a calendar/planner on the wall with some of my recurring tasks. It's very simple and there's not a lot on it. I mark every weekday I work on my novel. There's a 350 words minimum every weekday. They don't have to be good. This week was a huge success on that front.
So I basically just have to make sure I take my Vyvanse at the right time and write 350 words.
Lately I'm finding that Vyvanse is not great for creativity though. So next week I'll try doing my creativity writing before I take it. Vyvanse is best for editing and doing house chores.
I have a kid too. 16 months old. They way I "deal with it"? I just wait for my wife to get home so I can do my things. Trying to be productive while alone with him is a complete waste of time and energy. My mother helps sometimes. And we do have a nanny who's on vacation right now. God I love that nanny. Me and my wife are missing her dearly.
I got diagnosed a couple years ago, long after college.
In college I started using the pomodoro technique which has been a huge help for me in terms of procrastination, distraction, and that “ramp up” feeling you describe. The gist is that you schedule yourself time to work and break it up into designated work chunks and break chunks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique
Ex: if you want to work on something for 2 hours you could do four 20 minute focused work sessions (pomos) with 10 minute breaks in between.
If you’re struggling with 20 minute work sessions you could start by breaking it down more and then building up to longer focus sessions.
Ex: if you want to work for an hour you could do four 10 minute focused sessions with a 5 minute break in between.
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The key is finding a focus length that works for you and forcing yourself to commit to it. Even if you find you just can not do the work in the moment, you still sit for the duration of the focus session without distractions until the break.
The very start made me giggle at first with the phrasing:
"I was diagnosed as an adult 5 years ago". Like adulthood is a disease.
Let's be real, adulthood IS a disease.
Incurable and inevitably fatal. Symptoms include hair growing from strange places and an innate understanding of how escrow works.
If I can't be sure I'll have the time to finish something, I do my best to "lock in progress". That means leaving it in a state where I can resume later without redoing any work. Obviously the "ramping up" and reminding myself what to do etc. is part of the work, so I also do my best to leave the task in a way that it's extremely visible and obvious what needs to be done next, sometimes including a literal note to myself or a partially completed to-do list.
Good question. Poorly. That said, for things that do help - one is accountability, having relatively frequent smaller deadlines. The second is making the first deadline be for a task breakdown of the big thing that needs ramped up on in to a number of smaller, easier to initiate tasks. This is all easier said than done but is one of the things that helps with big work projects especially.