Tips from an ADHD Coach: When ambition doesn’t match output

Have you ever made big plans for the day but ended up doing nothing on that list? The trouble with executive function that comes with ADHD can make planning, and actually starting on those plans difficult.

ADHD coach Jaye Lin reacts to a quote on this very scenario. Listen to Jaye’s tips for managing our motivation and making progress. 

Have a challenge you’d like Jaye to talk about in an episode? Email or send a voice memo to us at adhdcoachtips@understood.org.

Related resources

• “You can’t have ADHD” (Farah Jamil’s story)

• How I beat my social media habit (and how you can too) 

• How the Five-Second Rule changed my ADHD life

Timestamps

(00:40) Farah’s quote

(02:54) ADHD and planning

(04:22) ADHD and context switching

(06:10) “The whole day” might not be as free as it seems

(09:08) What can we do to help?

(12:27) Recap

Episode transcript

Jaye: Do you sometimes make ambitious plans for you to get things done? Do you look at this wide-open day and think about everything you could squeeze into that day? Do you end up doing everything on the list? Do you end up doing anything on that list? This is "Tips from an ADHD Coach," and I'm your coach, Jaye Lin.

Today we're talking about how sometimes we get ambitious about what we want to get done, then don't seem to complete much on our to-do list. We are going to hear from Farah, who was on another Understood.org podcast, "ADHD Aha!," about when her ambitions for the day didn't match her output.

(00:40) Farah's quote

Farah: The way that I best describe it is that I felt like there was a disconnect between my brain and my body. And what I mean by that is my brain knew exactly what it needed to do to be successful, but my body wouldn't cooperate.

So, I would get up in the morning and I would have all these plans, "OK, I'm going to do my laundry. I'm going to work out. I'm going to see if I can meet up with some friends because I haven't seen them in so long or I kept canceling on them all the time because I was too tired." So, "Hey, I'm going to, like, you know, meet up with them and be spontaneous and I'm going to do some grocery shopping" like I would have in the morning all these great plans that I thought was quite doable, to be honest with you.

And then let's just say it's 9:00. It's 9:00. "OK, so I'm going to get out of bed and I'm going to get ready in the morning and I'm going to eat my breakfast. And let me just watch some TV because I need to get my brain going." I'm like, "You know, I want to do all these things, but I'm not quite ready yet mentally. So, let me just sit down here for a bit. And while I'm eating my breakfast, I'm just gonna watch some TV because that's how I relax, because my brain is always on. So, I need to relax. And I'll watch TV, and then I'll watch a show. I'm not ready yet. Let me watch another show."

"Oh look at that. It's almost 12:00. Well, it's lunchtime now, so I must eat lunch. There's no point in me like, doing anything until I eat lunch, so I'm going to eat lunch. Oh darn, I should have worked out before having my lunch, but it's too late now. But, you know, it's OK. I can do my workout later, and I should do my laundry right now. But, you know, I'm not quite ready yet. Let me just watch another show. Another show, another show."

"Now it's 3:00. Well, I guess my food has digested enough for me to do a workout. I don't know. It's only 3:00. I still have plenty of time. Maybe I'll just wait a little bit longer. It's OK," you know. And this will go on for the entire day until suddenly, it's ten, 11:00 at night, and I'm in the same place. And I've done none of the things. And this kept happening.

Jaye: When I listened to Farah's experience, I actually chuckled out loud because it's almost identical to the times I've done this in the past. Even down to the TV and meals.

(02:54) ADHD and planning

With ADHD, we can sometimes have changing levels of motivating energy from day to day, as well as levels of executive function, emotional regulation, and mental focus. As women, these things can feel even less consistent because these things tend to be greatly affected by our varying hormone levels when in our menstrual cycles, perimenopause, menopause, and pregnancy.

That describes at least half of our lives. When those hormone levels fluctuate, they can also affect the effectiveness of ADHD medication. In addition to this, even though all humans can be pretty bad at accurately planning, because of our executive dysfunction, those of us with ADHD tend to be even less reliable at it because it takes a lot of additional effort to factor in how long everything will take, what steps need to be done and in what order and how much energy each of these steps will take.

Unfortunately, what this means is that we can't always predict how much energy we have for planning ahead, and it's possible and common for our ambitions to overshoot what we have the capacity to do with our time. Let's look at what Farah wanted to do with her day: Laundry, workout, meeting up with friends for the first time in a long time, grocery shopping. These all sound like things that haven't been done in a while. She's likely going from not getting any of these things done to having ambitions, to getting everything done, going 0 to 60 without warmup.

(04:22) ADHD and context switching

And honestly, with ADHD, we often need a warmup because our executive dysfunction can make context switching harder to do so, expecting ourselves to go from not doing anything to doing all the things at full speed is not very realistic. There are exceptions to that, of course. If we are in a dopamine high state, like when we hyperfocus on an idea or if we are in goal mode right before a deadline, it's easier to switch contexts and go hard right off the bat because that boost in adrenaline and dopamine lead to a boost in executive function.

But the tasks on Farah's list don't seem to fit the category of hyperfocus excitement or things that we need to do close to a deadline. So, it's probably not easy for her to transition from waking up to doing those things. Farah admits she's not ready to get started on these things mentally, so she sits down to watch TV to wake up her brain. This is common for a lot of us. We want to get our brains working so we turn to things we find stimulating or soothing, like watching TV, checking social media, or playing games on our phones.

But are these effective ways to transition into doing our tasks? Usually not, because we enjoy the dopamine we are getting from them, and with the difficulty switching contexts I just mentioned, it's really hard to switch from doing something that gives us dopamine and mental stimulation to doing things that don't provide us with those same levels. This explains why after she watches that first show, she feels like she's still not ready to get started and starts another show and then another.

(06:10) "The whole day" might not be as free as it seems

While this is going on, another thing is happening. She's seeing the whole day as wide-open time to get these things done, but that's actually not the case. There are meals that need to happen and workouts need to happen at a certain amount of time after eating. She keeps mentioning that there's a lot of time left for her to start doing things, but that's actually not true. There's only small pockets of time she can use to do certain things, and that's not always obvious.

If a workout has to happen more than two hours after eating, the windows of time she can work out in the day are actually quite limited. She's waking up at 9 a.m. and having breakfast, then eating lunch at noon and then dinner at 5 or 6 p.m. If a shower and cool down is required after working out and eating her next meal, those windows are even smaller. She realistically only has about a half hour in the morning, two hours in the afternoon, and one hour at night to get that workout in.

Similarly, she can't put her clothes into the washing machine at the end of the night. The load has to go through a wash cycle, then get transferred to the dryer or hung up, then taken out at the end of the dry load. And this doesn't even include folding and putting her clothes away, which takes additional effort and energy and is harder to do at the very end of the day. So, realistically, she needs to get her clothes into the washing machine before dinner.

For many of the projects she has on her list, there's a certain point in the day when the first step needs to happen. But because the whole day is seen as available time, that deadline for getting started is not being acknowledged until it's too late to do anything about it. She keeps going back and forth between saying it's too late for her to start on it now and there's still plenty of time. But there's never a point where she tells herself this is the last chance she has to get this task going so she can actually finish.

And this means she doesn't actually hit that stimulation point that gets her pumped up to go and do things that I mentioned earlier. She isn't able to give herself that jolt of adrenaline and dopamine, so getting started continues to be a struggle. And since she didn't get started on anything, it's really easy to bail on those plans. She didn't reach out to a friend to meet up with later, so when nighttime comes, there's no push for her to get off the couch. She doesn't have clean, wet clothes in the washer so she doesn't have to get them dry or fold them. She ends the day doing none of the things she was ambitious about doing in the morning and probably doesn't feel too great about that.

Then, with emotional dysregulation, that disappointment in herself can create negative associations with a lot of the tasks she had felt ambitious about making it harder and harder to start on them in the future.

(09:08) What can we do to help?

So, what can we do if we find ourselves in this cycle? This is tricky because when we first recognize that this pattern is happening, it's likely that negative association has already been established. The resistance we feel to doing any of these things can already be pretty high. For this reason, I suggest starting smaller with one goal. If we are in a pattern of not doing anything, the answer is not to be ambitious about doing everything.

I usually recommend just being ambitious about doing one thing. Getting groceries or doing laundry or doing a workout or meeting a friend. Only commit to doing one thing. Then break down what that would mean, and when things need to happen in order to successfully do it in the day, with prep time included.

Meeting up with a friend is not as simple as taking an hour to meet with them in a cafe after dinner. It probably means messaging them before noon to see if they want to meet up later, a certain amount of time to get ready to leave the house, and I would also need to factor in the amount of time it would take for me to drive over to the cafe to meet with them and drive back. And even the time it would take for me to settle down after having social time with a friend.

So, I would have to message them in the morning before noon, then carve out all of my time after dinner. After we commit to doing one thing and lay out the time requirements and deadlines for doing them, we can start with the easiest thing on this list. Farah's tasks are the perfect examples for this. A lot of the things on her list have a fairly easy entry point. Tossing her clothes into the washer, adding detergent and starting the load is something that takes only a minute to do and doesn't require a lot of mental complexity.

Texting some friends to see if they're free that night would probably only take a few seconds. A funny thing can happen when we tackle the first thing on our list, especially if we allow ourselves to feel good about doing them. We get a ping of dopamine about making progress that fuels our energy to do other things. So, maybe she tosses her clothes into the washing machine and then gets the motivating energy to look in her fridge and make a grocery list. Maybe that fuels her even more and she gets her duffel bag ready for the gym.

Progress can often lead to more progress. So, getting started on something small and using that oomph to see what else we can do can be pretty powerful. The last tip is to save TV and other things our brain wants to keep doing for when we feel satisfied with what we've done for the day or when there's a clear time to stop. My days got a lot more productive when I stopped turning the TV on before my workday was done. I started only playing games on my phone and checking social media when I had 5 to 10 minutes before my next meeting because it meant that I couldn't be stuck in a dopamine stimulation haul.

With ADHD, sometimes our ambitions can outweigh what we're actually able to do in a day. But by starting small with our commitments, starting with an unintimidating, easy thing on our list, and taking the time to break down what needs to be done and by what time, we can be a lot more successful with following through and creating the momentum we need to do a little more each day.

(12:27) Recap

It's common for our ambitions to overshoot what we're actually able to do, requiring a warm-up to mentally taxing things can result in us watching TV or scrolling on social media to get mental stimulation. But difficulty context switching can actually make this harder to start the tasks on our list. And even though it might seem like we have a ton of time to get things done, we actually don't because there are points throughout the day that need to be dedicated to things like meals and other obligations.

Instead of trying to do all the things right away, we can commit to one thing on the list, then break down the time and energy requirements for it, as well as the deadline for each step. We can get started with the easiest, fastest step to fuel us with feel-good dopamine energy, which sometimes gives us the energy to start doing other things. And we can save fun dopamine things, like watching TV, for moments where there's a clear deadline to stop or after we are done with what we need to do that day.

Our energy and dopamine levels may often be unpredictable. But with these strategies, we can lean into what works for our ADHD. Thanks for listening.

You've been listening to "Tips from an ADHD Coach" on the Understood Podcast Network. If you have a challenge that you'd like me to talk about on air or would just like to say hi, you can email us at ADHDCoachTips@understood.org. You can also check out the show notes to find links to anything mentioned in the show and more resources.

This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at Understood.org/whygive.

"Tips from an ADHD Coach" is produced and edited by Jessamine Molli and Margie DeSantis. Our theme music was written by Justin D. Wright, who also makes the show. Ilana Millner and Ash Beecher are our supervising producers. Briana Berry is our production director and Neil Drumming is our editorial director. For Understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Seth Melnick. And I'm your host, Jaye Lin. Thanks for listening.