How do you avoid the "getting started" loop?
Does anyone else find themselves in the loop of always starting a new project? Of looking up tips and tricks to clean their room but then never get around to the actual cleaning? You want to buy just this one extra thing and THAT will change everything (spoiler: it doesn't). If I could just make a schedule for myself, then I could...
That's the "getting started" loop. Where you're always looking for the newest, so-called solution without enacting any of them.
Disclaimer: I have diagnosed ADHD and take Vyvanse Monday-Friday. But ADHD meds aren't a magical panacea. I'm a less anxious person. I'm able to get my work done. I've got the basics covered. But my personal life is really...neglected? I'm certainly not thriving. I don't have a good role model for what "adulting" looks like. Yknow the people who have thriving social lives, who can do their laundry without procrastinating, who get their butts into the gym without overthinking it.
I have so many hopes and dreams from being able to finally cleaning up my room and keeping it organized to wanting to stream and make videos for Youtube. I want to go back to school. But I am so afraid of change and not doing a good job, of not doing it perfectly, that I just don't start anything.
How do you avoid the loop?
This might be really bad advice, it's kind of the opposite that a lot of people give, but it works for me. I find a book or a podcast to listen to and then I just do stuff, without trying to force it too hard. Like I'll start on the dishes and then if I get distracted and start reorganizing the pantry and then halfway through that I start doing some stretches and then instead of going back to the pantry I start putting away laundry, that's all just fine. I don't need to accomplish any particular thing, I just need to be doing stuff. Everything does eventually get finished usually, but there are also a lot of half done chores around my house at any given time, and that hasn't been a problem. What is a problem is if I'm caught up on all my podcasts and I can't find a good audio book. This method only works if enough of my brain is occupied that I don't get bored or overthink what I should be doing. It's also a problem if I get too into a really long TV show or a video game because I can't clean as well or at all while I'm doing those things and this method is very time consuming.
My partner and I do the same thing when cleaning. There's no rule that each room needs to be Platinum Trophied before going on to the next one. So each of us will pop in our headphones and listen to something while we just let loose whatever energy there is to get things done. I'll sweep half the house then start scrubbing baseboards, she'll start cleaning bathrooms and end up reorganizing our closet.
Our house gets cluttered but clutter is easy to deal with. The upside is that things are clean where a lot of people don't actually clean very often. So we can get our house in showroom order just by putting things in their place rather than dedicating a weekend to it.
This doesn't work so well with bigger projects. I also struggle with the "getting started" doing projects on my racecar.
So I'll share what worked for me and maybe it will work for you.
I struggled working out consistently my entire life like so many people until my coworker gave me a great approach.
Find something, no matter how small, that you can do every single day. You're trying to change a behavior and that's the hardest thing to do. His example was an exercise bike. Just take a 5 minute class every day. Too much? Just get on the bike or just clip in the shoes. It doesn't matter how small, just find something you can do every day.
So for me, I have fitness equipment at work, so my thing was just walk on the treadmill for 5 minutes, the shortest class we have, every shift I work. That grew to 10 minutes, then 15 minutes and now I'm at 20 minute classes every day I work. I now also occasionally work out at home, but I'm not hard on myself if I don't do it because I still have that baseline every week.
I have now worked out consistently for 25 weeks, the longest in my life and I'm 40.
So I took this approach to around the house. I started just doing one thing to clean. Empty dishwasher, vacuum, throw out a piece of trash, whatever. Now I clean most of the house on my day off, but I put away dishes or take out recycling. Something.
So for you, find one small thing you can do every single day. Is it take one piece of garbage out of your room or sweep or wash the dishes? Just do one thing no matter how small. It's all about developing good habits, not how much you accomplish.
Echoing this… do the bare minimum for you to believe you’ve technically done it. Often times just doing that will open the floodgate to doing more.
You want to workout every day? Start with 1 pushup, or 1 jumping jack. Maybe wash and fold 1 shirt. That was easy, right? I mean what’s 1 more on top of that? If you make your goal to do 1 rep every day you’re going to realize it’s easier to do way more. And when the goal is so low it’s easy to skip the analysis paralysis and just do it.
This has basically been my approach, and it's worked pretty well. I also started working out 5 minutes a day about 3 years ago, and I actually still just work out about 5 minutes a day, 5-6 days a week. It's not entirely optimal, but they say that the best workout is the one that you do. Even if it's less than half of my max, 5 pullups a day 6 times a week is still 30 total reps of pullups. Keeping it at roughly 5 minutes means I can squeeze it in almost anywhere, but I try to do it while my coffee is brewing. If I miss that, I'll try to do it before taking a shower. I'm not exceptionally strong or fit, but I'm stronger and fitter than most people my age, so I'm pretty happy that I've been able to keep up a workout habit for so long.
For me, one difficult part of creating habits is managing emotions. If I miss a session there's a lot of shame or anxiety or other negative emotions, and if thinking about something makes me feel bad, I'm less likely to show up the next time. You mentioned increasing those habits over time, which has kind of worked for me in the past, until I miss a session or don't do as much time as I did last time. So one thing I've had to work on is forgiveness and getting back to it. So far the best strategy for me has been something like "do 5 minutes the next time," or perhaps "get back to work." The main goal is not to have an unbroken chain of successes or increase my time spent on the activity, but to get back on the horse after I've missed a session or had a short break due to a vacation or something. Doing 5 minutes of something is easy, but doing 5 minutes of something while feeling guilty about having missed the last session is hard. OP talks about not being able to get started, and starting is hard skill to learn, but it's a skill one can get better at.
This has worked to a "good enough" level for chores like workouts and yardwork and such. For things like work, it has been ok. Just having the goal of starting to work on something often seems to get me through it. For other personal projects... well, I guess if you start often but the time doesn't escalate on its own due to interest, maybe it's time to explore other things to spend your spare time on.
I've got ADHD, and Im on medication for it as well (Adderall, every day), but it still is a problem with me.
I've managed to have a pretty successful career by playing to my strengths and trying to work around my weaknesses. The way ADHD manifests for me is that I'm very, very bad at follow through.
If someone offered me a million dollars as long as I did a page of writing every day for a year, or 10,000 dollars to write 100 pages right now, id take the 10k without even thinking about it, because I know I would just flat out not get the million.
Im really bad with things that require me to remember to do things consistently over a long period of time. I have almost a superpower when it comes to focusing on a single thing I'm interested in for hours upon hours. If I enter a flow state, I will stay that way until something breaks me out of it. I won't eat, I won't drink, I won't go to the bathroom.
I managed to teach myself the basics of piano from never touching one over a 12 hour session one night. I've written massive pieces of documentation or applications at work in gigantic multi hour chunks. I know I'm good at working that way.
The key has been structuring my life in such a way that most of my critical tasks play to my strengths, and I work around my weaknesses.
I have two days where I work from home and try to have zero meetings. On those days, I sit down and spend hours reading any email I may have missed or ignored. Then I spent hours turning those emails into notes or to do list items. Then I do every single one of those to do list items I possibly can.
The rest of my week is pure chaos, I'm in meetings constantly, and some of the time in those meetings I comitt to things that I would instantly forget about. I try to write those commitments down.
In jobs where I've had direct reports, I make sure to hire at least one person who is the exact opposite of me. Someone who is consistent, who always comes to work at the same time and leaves at the same time, who never forgets anything and keeps meticulous notes. That person usually becomes my #2 and I task them with keeping me and the team on track as I deal with all of the absurd work requests, last minute emergencies, political conflicts, and delegation of work, all of which I'm excellent at dealing with.
Around once or twice a month, I devote an entire day solely to unfucking my house. That means doing maintenance I've neglected, cleaning up little areas I always procrastinate about, calling service people that I need to call and so on.
If I need to study for something, I gulp down four cups of coffee and just force myself to read the book for 6 hours.
Unless I focus and have dedicated distraction free times to do these things, I just will not do them.
When I do have that dedicated time, I find that I get more done in an hour than most people get done in 3 or 4, because I just don't have that gene that allows me to do productive things in the middle of a normal human day. I do them all at once like a deranged meth-head, or not at all.
My life is still a mess at times, but it's sustainable, I have a nice house, I have a successful career as a cybersecurity executive, I have a great relationship.
I used to hate the way my brain works, but I've been able to leverage the positives. Maybe you will too eventually!
I don't know or particularly care if I have ADHD but this mirrors me in a lot of ways. I've taken up a similar practice of looking at each week as meetings are getting put on my schedule and identifying the days that I can keep empty for flow state work. The rest of the days I just bounce between meetings and doing small jobs. It's helped a lot.
This has been something my partner has learned to appreciate. I need one unstructured day a week. That's when things happen. She used to stress out because she thought we'd "waste the weekend" until she learned that time is when things get done. Not just chores but impromptu hikes, bike rides, etc. After years of living together she commented recently that she wishes I didn't need to work because all the cool stuff happens when I'm given a blank slate.
I struggle with this a lot myself (also ADHD and on Vyvanse) and I definitely don't have any solutions for you. One tactic I tend to take advantage of is creating an external deadline. We hired a lady to come do some cleaning (which, fwiw, is way cheaper than you'd think and can really help if keeping up with certain regular cleaning tasks is too much for you) and since she can't clean the floors when there's a giant pile of laundry, I now get the deadline-based motivation to do at least enough that the rest fits comfortably in the hamper. Inviting friends over also works, since I usually do a panicked rampage of basic cleaning right before they come over.
Is this the most sustainable tactic? No. Is it still a useful tool to have on your belt? Yes.
It's hard not to want to keep finding new projects, so I don't try to stop, BUT I try to build a buffer in or set rules.
For example: Want to learn some new thing? Great! Spend an hour looking at it, then wait a few days or a week. If the urge pops up, try to do some more research, find someone who has done it, make a list of practical reasons the skill would be useful, etc. If after a week or so the burn is still there and I have a good list, then plan it into my life in a reasonable way (this fights all the urges to just spend 36 hours straight trying to cram the knowledge).
For actually getting work done, I try to build a routine so I do it at a specific time (even if not every day, I look at what I have to do and say "at 10am I'm doing this" and set an alarm. This works for some things, but if I realize I'm resisting something, I just set a focusmate session and do it then. 90% of the time that works because I set an appointment with someone to work on my own stuff.
I start with something very small, and often adjacent to what I want to work on / accomplish. Often, the satisfaction and energy of completing that very small thing (way less friction / hurdle to get over) gives me the inertia to keep going and do more.
The things that work for me are
Just start doing it. Even if you think you're doing something in a suboptimal way, the only way you're finding out for sure is to do it the "obvious" way first, hitting a block, and working around it.
To not be down on yourself for not being on top of everything 24/7. Even the most diligent people need a cheat day when things get too much and they just want a greasy takeaway and not do anything. Just try again tomorrow with no judgement.
The problem I have is with swapping activities. If I can just get into an activity, then I will keep going until it's either done (sometimes past done...) or until I can't stay awake any longer. But this hyperfocus has a huge drawback, which is that once I get into a headspace, it is very hard to switch into a different headspace. Sleep is my only reliable reset.
Unfortunately, my brain usually registers preparing for an activity as different from doing an activity. For example, picking things up in preparation for vacuuming is quite different from actually vacuuming, so it's very hard for me to vacuum after I've picked things up.
I have two workarounds for this:
I give in to my hyperfocus and dedicate each day to a single task. Instead of picking things up and vacuuming in the same day, I'll pick things up one day and then vacuum the next day.
If it needs to be done in the same day, I look for some kind of bridging activity to trick my brain into switching gears. And for me, the most effective one (as stupid as this sounds) is to watch someone else do the activity that I am about to do. So after I've picked things up and I now it's time to start vacuuming, I'll go on YouTube and watch a video of someone vacuuming.
A few tricks that can help:
I'll probably think of more...
It can actually help with many types of tasks. I don't think there is a perfect way to do anything though. So I don't have a mind set of "I will do this when I have a perfect plan".
Instead I think: I really don't want to do this right now, and I don't even know where to start. So I make a Google doc or something, I get very specific and have a numbered list of steps. I do research and write the steps as if I am writing them for a child. I revise and simplify and reread the instructions. Eventually I am more excited and antsy to get started than I am scared. Then I just follow the steps, its usually easy as there are no more decisions to be made, no executive function necessary.
Like you mentioned, I have to avoid the trap of buying some gadget to use. It's always tempting and sometimes it makes sense. But usually it's just an excuse to get that dopamine hit of buying a thing, plus I often have to wait for it to come, which helps me delay actually starting the task.
If I'm tempted I write down a strategy with and without the gadget so I can get an idea of how much it really helps.
Like for example if you want to do streaming you may be tempted to buy equipment. You can write that into your plan. First write up how to do it with the bare minimum of stuff you already have. Then have a step like: "After I have streamed 5 sessions revisit my equipment based on my experience so far".
Overall I think documenting things is key for me. If I try to plan in my head I can go in circles forever and never get anything done. If I type I all out then every time I come back to that task I can make small forward progress.
With some tasks, like exercise or cleaning, anything where you are trying to change your habits, you just have to start by doing the smallest chunk of work possible. Exactly like Wafik said in his post.
I suspect everyone is faking it at least a little. No one's life is as well put together as it seems from the outside. Just keep working and learning. Don't be so hard on yourself.
In the past year I've been using ChatGPT to start any project or task. It helps get the brain going, may suggest a possible solution, or start the research process that I was going to do anyways. I don't want to over complicate it really, but as someone with ADHD this is really huge for me.
I used to be really bad with this, and figured out a few personal rules that kept me on a better track with the stuff I wanted to be doing. I'll share those, with the caveat that I'm not sure whether they'll all be applicable to anyone else - just see what you think, I suppose.
One thing I try to do is answer a question for myself - "what do I want to accomplish?" The more precisely I can answer that question, the better. For example, if my goal is "cleaning", what, specifically do I want cleaned? Am I thinking, "my room", "the whole house", etc. I do that so I can think something more concrete/practical than "I want things clean". I can say instead, "I want this room to be clean", which gives me something that is both, easier to imagine and easier to plan for. By taking a moment to be more specific with myself, I can avoid getting caught up making plans, because the more precise I am the less planning is realistically necessary.
Another one is "don't talk about it", or perhaps "talk about results". I rarely share plans if those plans don't involve other folks or if the results won't affect them. That's because at least personally it's been easy for me to feel too satisfied with the act of explaining a good plan. It is really satisfying to do that, and the feedback exacerbates that effect by making me feel like I did something when what I did isn't actually serving the goals I had. I try to constrain myself to talking only about what has been done, or what progress has already been made, as a way of working that sort of reward mechanism into something which gets me closer to my goals.
On the note of goals, if I'm pursuing more of a hobby interest, I try to set one for myself and when I reach it, stop. This works similar to what I already wrote - I try to be specific, precise, so that what I'm doing has an end point. More practically, that means if I decide something like "I want to read more books", I will try to pick one that seems interesting and think to myself "I want to read that book". Now I have an end point, and when I reach it, I'm done. I try not to think about it broadly, and just go from thing to thing, because the broad goals have no ends and it's tough to measure progress. If the activity is something new to me, I try to find a specific thing I would like to make, or a thing I want to learn how to do, and that will be my end point.
What I try to avoid is getting stuck in a sort of meta-pattern of evaluating something like "am I being productive". If I just go, thing to thing, I can trust that something like that is being met. I don't need to be thinking about it. If what I'm doing is more for leisure, I don't measure progress as much, because the point is to have fun. It's led to me abandoning some ideas I felt were harmful, like seeing my library of games as a "backlog" (I have no obligation to play a video game), or my bookshelf as an embarrassment (I ended up reading just about everything on it when I stopped thinking about all the things I hadn't yet read). At the end of the day, with respect to what I'm doing on my own, there is no standard but that which I set for myself, so I try to set a standard that is achievable, something I can reasonably accomplish with the time I have and resources at my disposal. The closer I can get to that, the less I experience a loop of starting stuff and not getting far - I'm not caught up in the broader thoughts about what it means or who I am, I'm just going from thing to thing and it all comes together later.
I struggled with getting started on stuff when I was younger, mostly because I was on some level afraid that I wouldn't do whatever it is well, or well enough. Eventually, and I don't remember where I heard it, but I heard someone say "the only moment you get anything done is right now.". It stuck with me.
Like others have said, if you begin a task then get distracted, that's okay. You got more done than you would otherwise. There is a dangerous space here where you begin one task just enough to make a mess and then wander off to the next one, never to return. My way of combatting this is with checkpoints. If I'm doing the dishes, it's okay if I don't get everything done. But I won't stop until I clear one of the two sides of the sink, or maybe whatever dishes are on the counter. Similar with laundry. It's okay if I don't wash, dry, and fold everything in one go, but I refuse to leave wet clothes in the washer or clean clothes on the floor. It's okay if there's stuff left in the hamper or dryer.
Basically I set an easy to attain minimal goal. If I get past that, great. If I'm tempted to move to something else, or someone else wants my attention, then it has to wait for me to reach that min goal. This means I'm late for shit sometimes, or my kid has to wait to play with me outside, etc, but it's served me well enough to get through grad school, buy a house, get tenure, etc.
I’ve struggled with this a lot in the past (also ADHD, medicated with Guanfacine), but recently I’ve improved significantly, mostly due to my GCSEs acting as a catalyst, forcing me to get decent at doing things consistently.
The method which I find to be the most successful for me in helping me focus is to take things literally a single step at a time. For example, if I’m watching youtube and know I should be doing some revision, the first thing I’ll do is make a simple movement, I’ll rotate my chair, sit up on the sofa instead of lying. Just to get my self into a position in which I’m more “active”. Then, when the video finishes, or it’s been a minute, or at another arbitrary point, I’ll stand up. Then I’ll walk to the door and by this point I usually have enough momentum to start doing the thing.
Whenever I get distracted from the activity, I just do something simple, like getting a glass of water. Then my brain seems to feel as if I’m done with the new activity and can return to the useful thing (or a new useful activity). I do this for a while until I need a break, then repeat.
I’m not sure how useful this would be for most adults however, as it requires a good amount of free time to waste, which I am lucky to have.