Ok, you have to Do The Thing, you know how to Do The Thing, it’s not (currently) emotionally overwhelming to start, but you have a tough time bringing yourself to do it anyway, even though you know it’s important. Now what?

When I have spare energy, I try to put it towards prepwork or habits that make it easier to do the right thing in the moment.

• ADHD brains have trouble relating future consequences to the past or present in a way that can make developing good habits harder.
  • a reward or punishment far in the future doesn’t contribute as strongly to behavioural changes today.
  • adhd brains have steeper delay-of-reinforcement gradients
    • It’s harder for your brain to recognize “WHOA do you remember how badly it went last time? We need to start now” or “it was so nice last time!!! Do the thing it will be great!!!” in a way that turns into enthusiasm for action.
• the reward needs to feel more real in some way to compensate for this
• I swap frequently between methods. The important thing is that I’m trying something from each category at any given time. It doesn’t have to be a totally new method; something that stopped working months ago might feel novel again today.

1. Imagine the reward better

• what good feelings did you have the last time you did the thing? See if there’s a way you can feel them again.
• Some people can “just” imagine it. Others need a bit more help/structure.
  • Can you say it out loud?
  • Can you write it like a scene in a novel or enticing restaurant menu description that you can reread later (or can you record it as you describe it out loud and play it back later?)
  • Can you illustrate it?
  • Can you look at a photo you took the last time it was “done”?
  • Can you watch someone else (video or irl) doing the thing and enjoying it?
• for example, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2649942/

  “Last time when I did my homework, I got a smile from the teacher; I want that again.”

2. Remind yourself of the reward

• keep the reward in mind while doing the thing, using external reminders
• put physical reminders where you’ll see them:
  • write a reminder on a sticky note, put it on the wall
  • hang a whiteboard that you can see from where you work
• make it obvious enough (by colour or size) that you see it by accident when your eyes start to wander.

Poor working memory is common with ADHD. By offloading remembering the reward to a physical reminder, you don’t have to work as hard to sustain motivation.

3. Give yourself more immediate rewards for complex tasks

• The “big” reward may still be too abstract or far away
• give rewards at the point of performance
• I sometimes bribe myself with smaller immediate rewards for intermediate progress:
  • if I work for 15 minutes, I can chat with a friend for a couple minutes
  • if I work for an hour, I can step outside for a walk to play pokemon go
  • if I brush my teeth, I can put a cool sticker in my notebook
  • if I do X every day this week, I’ll buy myself a treat as soon as I’m done on Friday

4. Reconnect completed action to reward

An ADHD brain has a tougher time connecting actions to consequences to learn for next time, especially if something attention-grabbing happened between the action and consequence

• remind yourself what the reward is for once you receive it
• say it out loud to help your brain know how to assign credit for the reward: “since I did X, I got rewarded with Y!”

5. …or change the rules

• Is it unnecessarily hard the way you’re trying to tackle it? Motivation may not be the biggest problem here
  • can you achieve the same goals (exercise for 10 mins a day) some other way? Maybe you like ring fit more than running outside. Maybe you like dancing to music.
  • can you change how you think of the task to make it more fun or novel (gamifying? Timed challenge? New flavour or scent?)
  • can you do it less often (by delegating, by paying someone else to do it, switching jobs, etc)?

Sources

• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27469395/
  • 7-12 yo ADHD children have “steeper temporal discounting” vs neurotypical children when they need to wait longer for a reward. Experiencing the waiting results in stronger temporal discounting than imagining the waiting.

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2649942/

  the obtained preferences and discount gradients are strongly influenced by the individual’s ability to imagine these future situations, and relate them to his current desires. It is not so much a future event that is discounted, as the future self who will enjoy it.

  • the decay of delayed reinforcement is a function of number of events between the action and consequence, which is loosely approximated by actual time between action and consequence
• https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200319141044.htm “Ritalin and similar medications cause brain to focus on benefits of work, not costs.”

Speculation

Some scattered thoughts and remarks from talking to various people about their mental health that have helped me articulate and compare/contrast my struggle with those of others:

• depression: rewards aren’t as rewarding. Lack of motivation comes from the lack of reward felt afterward

• adhd: rewards are just as rewarding when they are finally experienced, but in the present, the costs seem bigger than they are and the rewards seem smaller than they really are

• motivation is when the cost of doing something seems smaller than the benefit of doing something

• learning/habit-forming/future motivation comes from being able to connect the feeling of reward to the thing you did to gain the reward

• learning disabilities/stress/poor sleep can make the true cost really high
• anxiety can make the cost seem very high
• depression interferes with the feeling of reward once you’ve done the thing, which leads to poor reinforcement
• adhd can interfere with assigning credit for the reward to what you did and underestimating the feeling of reward for something far away, independent of how rewarded you feel after having done the thing