If a task is not “interesting” (whatever that means) it’s like pulling teeth to start.

However, if a task is interesting, it’s like pulling teeth to stop.

Waking-up thought today: with ADHD, it’s like I’m stuck stuck in a perpetual depth-first search. (I would’ve called it a shower thought but it hit me right as I woke up).

When I start a task I want to finish it. Like ender from enders game finish it, finish it for good and never have to do it again.

If I cook, I cook enough for a week.
If I start a task at work, I’m like a dog with a bone til it’s done – having to stop for bathroom breaks or approval from my boss or assets from the art department or food or the end of the workday or cuz my body is exhausted irks me.

Context switching, or switching my focus from task to task, is … expensive for my brain, in terms of processing power/energy. I detest regular “maintenance” tasks that are small and performed on a regular basis. Like, most of adulting.This causes me various problems. A shower only costs five minutes of my time, but proportionately it costs a lot more of my limited executive function’s energy budget. I would rather take 30 showers all at once every 30 days, but obviously that wouldn’t work very well for my body and the people around me. However, since I work from home, that explains how I once went NINE days without a shower, but if you’d asked me how long it’d been I’d probably have said “about two or three” 😅 (the only reason I knew how long it’d been is I started writing down the date of each shower because I got curious).

This applies to literally everything. I would rather take out the trash when there’s 5-6 bags piled up. I do dishes when I no longer have any clean ones, and then I do all of them. I do laundry when I run out of clothes. I buy groceries when I run out of food, but I buy enough for a month or two. I can’t be bothered to change my sheets or go through my mail or brush my hair until there’s enough work to do that I can really focus and the context switch cost is made up for by the amount that gets accomplished. Doing a small task for me (like running a small errand) is like paying $15 shipping to buy a $4 item online – it just doesn’t make economical sense.

Until a task becomes big/important enough, the consequences grave enough to be “sufficient motivation” (not being able to eat, social stigma of leaving the house undressed, female company coming over, tax penalties, skin sores, being able to smell myself, etc), I just can’t / won’t focus on it.

So where does this leave me?

I’m not sure yet. Medication can help reduce the cost of context switching. Therapy and figuring out how to stretch the energy budget further by lowering energy costs can also help (putting important information in my visual field, more tracking of things on my kitchen whiteboard).

But the most important part is, I’m not lazy and I’m not broken. “Just trying harder to remember/be organized/make a list” doesn’t work unless I remember the list exists and where I put it ;). I’m neurodivergent, and knowing more about how my brain actually ticks, I can put my considerable ingenuity and problem-solving skills towards finding or creating solutions that actually work.Knowing is half the battle, or something. It doesn’t matter how quickly you climb the ladder if the ladder is leaning on the wrong wall.