Finding Motivation with ADHD

One of the core difficulties with ADHD is motivating yourself to start tasks that are boring, routine or repetitive. To this I hear people say ‘but no one likes doing those type of things’ and whilst this is true, the difficulty for those with ADHD is far greater, and starting a task in this category can feel near impossible.

Understanding the main ways ADHD brains are motivated can help us to hack into these to assist in building motivation to work on tasks. Core motivators for people with ADHD are novelty, interest/passion, deadlines/pressure and competition/challenge.

So lets say you have an admin task or an assignment that you’ve been dreading doing and therefore putting off, you might like to think about:

• Ways you could use novelty like sitting in a space in the sunshine outside, or lighting a candle and having a nice drink while you do the task, or sitting with someone else while you do it (body doubling)

• Ways you could increase interest in the project itself – can you mentally relate it to something that IS of interest to you? Can you pick a topic within the constraints of the assignment that you will find more engaging or relatable?

• Ways you could create a sense of urgency and challenge, like working in ten-minute blocks using a visual timer and challenging yourself to see how much you can get done in this time

There are many ways we can work with an ADHD brain rather than against it. When we remember that we are working with an interest based nervous system with a preference for the fun and exciting over the boring and routine, we can start to incorporate more enjoyment into tasks we dread, in order to increase our motivation to get them done.

Written By: Amy Brown - Registered Psychologist