it works for me but it's not doing little things

it's breaking up big things in a small first step and maybe get the ball rolling

to-do

make to-do system

I don't look at it like fooling myself but taking a physical first step may get the brain juices flowing enough to continue the task

it's no problem if it doesn't

Unironically the only thing that works for me is this

I miss back when I only had these problems and less task paralysis 😭

Hahaha jokes on me. I decided I wanted to secure my front end apps finally. Maybe I should read a cyber security book instead of vibing my way through the old fashion way: blind. I finally got a cloudflare acct but I believe I'm making it 100% more complicated, have you heard of zrok2?

This is the only way it works

This is not an ADHD hack. This is how literally everyone cleans a room.

We all need strategies for tasks, whether daily or occasional, whether simple or complex. And it takes practice to learn to execute those strategies efficiently.

For everyone. It doesn't come "naturally" or "for free" to anyone.

Longest haiku ever

As somebody that currently has a sink full of dirty dishes (picked up around my place), clothes that made it to the hamper (picked up off the floor), and a pile of cleaning products still on the table I ordered online... No. It just puts the mess in one spot for me to avoid. But I'm depressed currently. I'll clean up when I snap out of it in a few days. It comes in waves.

People will really attribute fucking ANYTHING to adhd.

This is a common, normal ass life experience. Everyone on the face of the earth procrastinates with things like this and "choosing a smaller version of the task" is a common technique used by millions without ADHD

10000% this.

This community suffers from the "attributing normal life experiences to Our Special Quirk" you see in many communities.

So yes you're right in general, but also ADHD specifically fucks with executive function, meaning it makes it much harder to actually put the brain into doing shit mode.

Doing something much smaller, e.g. only committing to 5 minutes of cleaning as opposed to cleaning an entire room, makes it much easier to actually start doing a thing. Half the time I end up carried by momentum past my initial commitment, so it really can be a lifesaver.

That’s just cleaning… no one goes “I will now clean this room!” then uses their mind powers to simultaneously clean all parts of the room at the same time. Pick up a thing, find its home, rinse and repeat.

That’s where you are wrong. People get so mentally overwhelmed they don’t even start

Damn it, same. I wish the was a solution for putting fuel into the body

These are the coping methods taught to ASD kids, so this is more autism than ADHD. (I have both).

It's not the overwhelm that's being attributed to ADHD. It's the anxiety, shame, task paralysis, whatever else that's stopping you from taking a first step that's attributed to executive dysfunction that's part of ADHD. The technique is used by millions without ADHD because things that work with hard-mode brains work just as well with normal-mode brains.

With my ADHD, even those smaller tasks can be too much. Sometimes instead of gathering up all the mugs and putting them in the sink, I need to start with just a mug. I can either use that momentum to keep going, or if that's still too much, I'll at least have done something.

Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.

But then it's not a "psychology hack for ADHD". It's just a normal productivity tip. Some with ADHD will find it useful, others won't, and some NT people will find it useful, others won't. Maybe on average it's more beneficial for those with ADHD, but as I wouldn't guess so. I don't have any data/research supporting either direction though.

Frankly I just have a distaste for the whimsicalness applied to ADHD in online discourse. We don't need "psychology hacks" or to describe ourselves as having "hard mode brains". It's a disorder. Cancer patients do not have "hard mode bodies". And the people with more severe ADHD in my experience tend to not resonate with a lot of these terms, it's generally only people with low level ADHD or just want to pin their dysfunction on something else who resonate with this terminology.

The mozzarella in your freezer expired in 2022

We did that for my kid: broke things down into lists of achievable tasks. Worked pretty well as long as the last weren’t too big. However he always had challenges writing his own lists, so I don’t know if you could use it on yourself

I would always just leave my clothes in the laundry basket until I discovered that I can make myself do them by dumping them on my bed, so I have to put them away before I can sleep. Yes, I could just shove them onto the floor, but I dislike my clothes being there more than doing the task of putting them away.

Big dresser drawer, separate undies/socks and shirts, into respective drawer.

I'm glad it works for you, because that's probably quite helpful.

For me saying its just the first step to get the momentum needed to do the task feels like arguing I didn't kill the guy, I simply built a ramp and engineered an axe on a cart. Sure I setup a system by which ringing my doorbell would release the death cart, and sure the ramp leads directly head level to the front door, and sure I invited him over, but I think we can all agree gravity is what killed him, I wasn't even home at the time!

And to be clear, I'm not arguing with you, I'm truly happy it works for you, this is the argument I have with myself. I suggest to myself that the nice internet people say I could maybe start with just one thing, and then I respond to myself by saying if starting one thing leads to me doing more things, then doing one thing is the same as doing all the things. Then I suggest to myself I'd have to get up pretty early in the morning to try pulling that shit on me, and that I should take myself back to lawschool.

Of course, I've never been to "Law School", nor planned on it, but I've never let that get in the way of a good line!

None of these hacks work for me, I'm too self aware of my own attempts to gaslight myself. The biggest issue and struggle I have is transitioning between 'modes'. For me it's hard enough just switching from being still, to being in motion. That alone can paralyse me. Not always, I can willpower through it when anxiety/panic/stress are firing off but over time it comes at a cost. I recently just dropped out of my job cos I just couldn't leave bed. How pathetic right? People are starving everywhere but mehhh I don't wanna work. FML. I feel insane and lost and alone.

I see what you're saying.

Add this idea to it:

Do you want to get the task done? Does the task align with your values?

If it's not for "killing a guy indirectly" but for something good. Why not take the first physical step.

When the dopamine starts flowing because your body does an action then even your frontal cortex with all it's logic ability takes a while to disable that initial dopamine.