ADHD and Productivity: Learning to Embrace Energy Cycles and Accomplish More
This is how I’m feeling…
At least it has been how I’ve felt for the last week or so. I’ve been keeping my house tidier than usual, keeping up with some regular chores, and even taking on some organizing projects. I feel great! But a small part of me is dreading when this burst of motivation goes away again.
For the last several months, I’ve felt stuck, constantly starting and stopping with habits, and making very little progress in the areas of life that I’m always working to improve. It’s been exhausting and frustrating. But all of a sudden, about a week ago, it felt easy to just do the things that I needed to do.
If you have ADHD, you might be familiar with this phenomenon.
After a long period of telling yourself you need to “do the thing,” all of a sudden, you just do it, and you aren’t entirely sure why. It almost feels like magic.
Before being diagnosed, I treated these periods as my new normal. I would think “okay, this is what things are supposed to be like, I finally figured it out and now it’ll be smooth sailing.” But, of course, as suddenly as the motivation appears, it also disappears with no warning. I would be left feeling like I had failed or messed up somehow. This led to not appreciating what I had accomplished and hesitating to embrace the motivation when it came along again.
Since learning about ADHD, I’ve come to recognize that energy and motivation come in cycles. It’s totally normal to have these bursts of motivation. The problem comes when we expect ourselves to always function at this higher level. It feels like we can’t get stuff done unless we’ve been visited by the productivity fairy. But sometimes, it can be a very long time until it shows up again. In the meantime, it feels like everything is crumbling around me, with the kitchen in a barely functional state, laundry piling up, deadlines getting missed, and budgeting forgotten.
One thing that has greatly helped my mindset is realizing that these bursts of motivation are not what my baseline energy should be, and that they aren’t required to get things done. Sure, I can get a lot more done when I’m feeling that way, but knowing that I can still get things done, even when it feels hard, has been really important. I know I’m never going to get rid of this cycle; there will be days with more energy and days with less.
These bursts of motivation are not what my baseline energy should be, and they aren’t required to get things done.
As I work on self-improvement, my real goal is to bring up my baseline. So now, what I consider messy is not nearly as bad as it was five years ago. Another thing I have learned to do is to harness the motivation in a way that has lasting effects. My kitchen very regularly gets too messy to use. As things improve, I hope those times will be less frequent, but I doubt I will ever reach a point where it doesn’t happen. I have developed a process to get it back to a functional level. This is a regular occurrence for me, so when I’m feeling extra productive, I *don’t* clean my kitchen or do any of the basics, at first. I know that I will get to those things, even if purely out of frustration.
I use the heightened energy to tackle projects that will make my day-to-day life easier or better. For instance, this weekend, I took on the task of reorganizing a hall closet because I needed to make room for storage containers that were sitting in my living room. This was a project that required more energy than typical chores, and I absolutely had to get them put away somewhere.
Now I might go ahead and clean the kitchen with my extra motivation if it’s the prep work for clearing out some cabinets and reorganizing the kitchen. But I’m not going to waste the magic on something that I know will get done sooner or later. I try to get every bit of productivity out of these times as I can, and I don’t feel guilty or ashamed when I’m not in those phases.
In the past, it was like I was speeding on an unfamiliar road, driving right off a cliff and crashing down below. Getting back on the road was difficult, especially when I didn’t know why I crashed in the first place. Now, it’s like I’m driving on the interstate, and I take an exit to a slower county road. It’s nice to go faster for a little while, but I’m still moving forward, even if it’s at a slower speed. Somewhere along my journey I’ll hop back on the interstate, but I can’t always know how long it will take to get to the next exit. Every so often I might get caught in traffic, or I may have to take some detours, and deal with road construction, but I still keep going, and I don’t blame myself for the traffic and road work.
To sum it up, if you have ADHD, you might experience bursts of motivation and energy that seem to come out of nowhere, but don't beat yourself up when those periods end.
It's totally normal to have ups and downs, and it's important to recognize that you can still get things done even when you're feeling less motivated. Instead of wasting your extra productivity on basic chores, try tackling bigger projects that will make your life easier or better.
And most importantly, be kind to yourself and recognize that progress is progress, even if it's slower than you'd like. Just keep moving forward and don't let the occasional roadblock or detour stop you from reaching your goals.
