Procrastination. Frustrating isn’t it? Especially when you’d like nothing more than to cross this nagging task off your list but you can’t seem to get yourself motivated to do it. And it ends up there indefinitely.
Some people think that having ADHD means you are required to naturally have a lack of motivation. Like the two terms are synonymous or something. Thankfully, they aren’t! We ADHDers have the desire. We have the motivation and the want to.
It’s other problems that lead to our struggle to get motivated with certain tasks and we often aren’t aware that they are lurking in the background of our minds, keeping us from getting things done. So we think we’re just lazy or something.
The key to getting motivated, is figuring out EXACTLY what’s keeping you from starting your task. Once you know what’s causing you trouble, you can put on your problem solving hat and find a solution!
Related: How to be a GREAT Creative Problem Solver
Here are 5 reasons why you may be struggling to get motivated.
And a few tips to help you overcome them! 😉
1. You Don’t Know Where to Start
It’s not secret that having ADHD means also having trouble with planning and prioritizing. When it comes to knowing where to start, you need both in order to identify the right place to begin. It’s no wonder that not knowing where to start derails our attempt to get motivated!
Ask yourself if this feels true of your task? Do you know exactly where to start or does that feel vague or ambiguous? Or do you know 30 places to start and that’s really the problem?
Tips for Getting Motivated
Sometimes, when I realize that this is what’s causing me the lack of motivation, I can spend time writing everything I can think of about the task out on paper and deduce a solid place to start.
Sometimes I can’t. In those times, I’ve found that the most helpful thing I can do is ask someone who’s good at planning (and a generally supportive person) to help me think it through.
Related: How to Get Your To Do List Done When You Have ADHD
2. You Haven’t broken the Task Down into Small Tasks
When you have ADHD, you tend to see tasks as one huge task and miss the smaller tasks that make up your whole project. We see cleaning the entire house and get overwhelmed by it. We tend to miss the smaller tasks like taking out the trash or wiping down the kitchen counters.
When everything is seen as one big tasks, it feels overwhelming and that flood of emotion in the brain, shuts you down. It’s much harder to get motivated to clean the entire house which may, legitimately take days.
It’s easier to get yourself motivated to do a smaller task like cleaning off the dining room table, which takes minutes.
Tips for Getting Motivated
The key to getting motivated with this challenge is breaking your task down into smaller parts and using that to get motivated. If I’m still struggling here, I’ve found it effective to look for the smallest, easiest, fastest task I can find and push myself to do that.
Sometimes that’s as simple as taking a piece of trash to the trash can. Often, once I’m up, I can do another small task.
3. Your Task Takes More Concentration than Your Current Mental State Allows
One of the defining features of ADHD is difficulty sustaining your attention. It takes up a lot of mental energy for us to focus for long periods of time and tends to leave us feeling completely drained once we’re done.
When you’re in that state, trying to get yourself to write an article, read a book, or figure out how to plan or prioritize a task that doesn’t feel 100% obvious can take more energy than you have.
And your poor brain is like “dear God woman, give me a rest!” And while that feels like a lack of motivation, it’s also a pretty understandable one.
Ask yourself if it feels like this task, or some part of it, requires a lot of thinking or focus. Does it feel like too much in this moment? Then it might be.
Tips for Getting Motivated
To help with this, I often give myself a bit of rest. I find that this is often the case when I’m trying to do something after a long day or a day where I’ve already tried too hard to focus. Then I look for a day that’s less likely to be so mentally overwhelming and try to plan it for that day.
If that day comes and my brain is still struggling, I do things that help restore my energy levels. Take a walk. Eat yummy, healthy food. Do something that doesn’t require mental energy but brings me a lot of joy or is super interesting. Take a nap, especially if I’ve gotten little sleep.
I find these things help restore my mental energy and I have a higher reserve of concentration power afterward which helps me get motivated!
Related: Natural Strategies for Improving ADHD Symptoms
4. Your Task is Only One of 500 that All Feel VERY Important
Again with the difficulty that we ADHDers have with planning and prioritizing! When you have a ton of tasks that all feel important, even when you are 90% sure that the task you are struggling with is the place to start, it can still get completely overwhelming.
It starts to feel like they are all swirling around you and you can’t nail anything down. It’s not so much that there’s a lack of motivation as it is your brain is shutting down from all the overwhelm. Though getting motivated when your in this place seems like an impossibility, right?
Tips for Getting Motivated
I’ve definitely been in this place lately and if you are here, I feel your pain! What I’ve found helpful is to list out all of the priorities that are causing the swirl. Sometimes just seeing it written down is enough to help me feel more grounded and prepared.
Other times, it doesn’t. When writing it down doesn’t lead to feeling a little better, that’s usually an indication that I really am trying to do too much. So I start looking to see if there are things on the list that aren’t urgent.
Can some things wait? I look for things that I can delegate. Who else could help with this? And sometimes I ask someone else in my life to look at the list and give me feedback on whether or not each task is as important as it feels like it is.
If these first four struggles are the story of your life and you haven’t yet found help in overcoming them, my Conquer Your To Do List Mini-workbook is exactly what the doctor ordered. Check it out:
5. It’s a REALLY Boring Task
And of course, another defining feature of ADHD is the interest based nervous system. We’ve talked about the difficulty we have with prioritizing things above but the interest based nervous system is another complication to that problem.
The interest based nervous system makes things that are more interesting feel more urgent and important. On the flip side, it makes boring things feels unimportant or at least less important. People rely on the feeling of urgency or importance to accurately prioritize their tasks. That obviously gets pretty complicated for us…
And that’s why, when a task is really boring, it’s like pulling teeth to get motivated to do it.
Tips for Getting Motivated
To get motivated when my task is really boring, I start by asking myself an important question:
What would make this task more interesting?
Sometimes that means I change up where I’m doing it. For instance, if I have to write something really boring, I want to do that task more if I take it to a coffee shop. I love getting coffee so that works for me.
Other times, I’ve found it helpful to look for a novel way of doing the boring task and that has helped me counter my lack of motivation. Ask yourself that question and try what ever comes up!
Along those same lines, I’ve also found that watching videos or reading articles that relate to the task can be helpful. So if I’m trying to motivate myself to exercise, it’s helpful for me to watch a youtube video of a cool dance routine.
Related: How to Get Motivated to Exercise
When I was struggling to clean my house, I watched Tidying up. Even though Marie Kondo methods don’t work for me, watching the show made me more interested in getting my house cleaner.
Related: ADHD Home Organization Tips that Work
It Doesn’t End With This List…
This is far from a comprehensive list of the things that interfere with getting motivated when you have ADHD. You may find that what’s creating your lack of motivation isn’t on this list.
So start with asking yourself the question: What about this task makes me feel resistant to doing it? Pay attention to what you discover. Then you can find strategies that work for you!
Connect with Me
If you’re asking yourself that question and you’ve discovered something creating your struggle to get motivated, leave me a comment with what you find!
And don’t forget to join the Facebook Group for Women with ADHD. We’d love to have you.
Hi Tia! Sorry if I’ll make some mistakes, I’m not an English speaker – I’m Italian! ?
All my life I’ve been struggling with inattention, restlessness, forgetfulness. I never cared about school in general, but since my mother was very strict I tried to be “normal” and functional – usually staying all day, and night, on a couple of pages that could be done in half the time – and got good grades. Only when I found an interesting topic I would care and dig it as much as I could, but never with a rigorous method. Same with university. I managed to get a degree with the highest score, but I felt like an imposter since I never studied like my peers (with passion and dedication), never particularly liked the subjects, and forgot everything in the first five minutes after an exam. I forced myself to continue “studying” and get a specialization, cause everyone did it to become a teacher – so I pretended I wanted to become a teacher too. The last year I had my first burn out. I couldn’t even open the books, I cried every day cause I didn’t want to do something I despised, I stopped caring for my hygiene (more than I usually did), I distanced myself from the others, who were living their dream. I developed so many psychosomatic diseases that my life, at 24 years old, was all spent at the hospital. So I went to a psychologist for the first time in my entire life (even if, having had a childhood trauma with my father trying to kill me, my mother should have sent me way before). He diagnosed me with generalized anxiety. I told him about the possibility of having ADHD but he laughed, cause “only hyperactive children have it”. But the more I read the more the symptoms seem to match with my struggles; they probably worsened considering my situation. What do you think I should do with my diagnosis? Moreover, should I pause my university “career” to recover and find my answers or just go with the flow (hurting myself some more)? I cannot continue living like this, it feels like hell 🙁
Hi Vicky,
I’m so sorry to hear of your struggles. Unfortunately, so many people (mental health professionals included) are stuck insisting on outdated information about ADHD. In terms of finding a professional who’s more versed in ADHD, you might look on social media for an ADHD support group and ask if there’s anyone who’s been diagnosed as an adult in Italy. Finding out who diagnosed them may help you find a professional that’s more knowledgeable. I wish I had more ideas for you but I’m not well versed with mental health professionals or resources in Italy. I can’t really say what you should do about your university career–without knowing you more I’m not confident that my advice would actually be right for you. What I can say is that it sounds like you may know what you feel like you need to do but may be struggle with whether or not you “should.” Do what you need, ignore the “shoulds” they are just shame in disguise.
I use the info in this article so often. It’s probably my go-to reference for dealing with attention (and emotional) dysregulation moments. Thank you for sharing your smarts and experience with the world!
Hi Dawn! I’m so happy that this has been helpful to you <3 Thank you so much for letting me know!!