ADHD

okbanger

Can I make a topic suggestion? I would LOVE to hear one on "motivation". The reason this is top of mind for me is that I recently learned that I have ADHD. I have struggled greatly with burnout and experienced motivation peaks and troughs (high prolonged peaks and devastatingly deep troughs) without realizing what was behind it.

I recently cast this on /okbanger. I'm re-casting here (comment if you're interested!) and I'm putting out a thread. 

If any of my fellow ADHDers sometimes struggle with motivation (and burnout), here are my own realizations...and perhaps find things that you can apply as well. 🧵 👇

Unabashed gaming geek. RPGs, board games, and exploring the intersection of AI, blockchain, and the pen & paper. 

2/

Some describe ADHD as a superpower. There is some truth to that, I think.

There seems to be a strong correlation between ADHD and high creativity, and we can also deliver high energy enthusiasm and be hyper-focused.

The flip side is that we’re terrible at tasks we consider to be mundane. Projects can grind to a halt - we hyper-focus and plow through the parts that we find to be interesting, only to have smaller “uninteresting” parts drag on for eternity as we find other things to distract us and provide that dopamine that we crave. 

So, it is a superpower…but it is like Superman strutting around with kryptonite in his pocket.

3/

I have a full-time job, a family, and a few side projects. 

My work day is generally a series of coping mechanisms (that I only recently realized were coping mechanisms) that keep me (generally) on-task and productive.

I’m fond of lists, prioritizing, and organizing. The night before, I make a short list of what I plan to work on and accomplish. I create Trello cards to break it down into smaller steps with more granularity.

I often will write down the top level items on a whiteboard, which keeps those items visible throughout the day.

I time-block - outside of meetings, I schedule times of the day that I open and respond to emails (keeps it from being a weak dopamine distraction), and organize the other time slots around what I need to finish.

I do keep Slack up constantly, but I consider this to be a (generally) positive dopamine hit, because most of the alerts are Trello card movement and comments, commits to the repo, etc.

4/

Some days are better than others. Any time that there is room for creativity or problem solving, I’m excited and engaged. On others (which, if I’m honest, is a fair bit), it feels like I’m dragging myself through the day. Work can often get bogged down in tedium, which can make it more problematic for someone who is dopamine deficient.

On its own, this isn’t unmanageable. Where I have been having trouble recently is how to maintain motivation after work, as I have side projects that I want to continue working on.

It is disappointing that these activities have to be fit into the margins of my life, but I see no way around that.

5/ 

Lately, I have been on the motivation struggle bus for something that I never expected - one of my favorite hobbies. I have been playing Dungeons & Dragons since I was 8 years old. I ran a weekly D&D campaign since I as 18….for 25 years.

I have been struggling to finish my work on a new D&D campaign for a new group. It also happens to be one of the side projects I'm working on:

5/ 

Lately, I have been on the motivation struggle bus for something that I never expected - one of my favorite hobbies. I have been playing Dungeons & Dragons since I was 8 years old. I ran a weekly D&D campaign since I as 18….for 25 years.

I have been struggling to finish my work on a new D&D campaign for a new group. It also happens to be one of the side projects I'm working on:

https://paragraph.xyz/editor/oM1rtMkXNEJHKL6rmqmW

6/

This isn't something I struggled with before, so I have now been asking myself "what was different". There were two things that are considering coping mechanisms - deadlines and body doubling (which equates to having someone with you, which can help to hold you accountable for producing something…strange concept, but it seems to work).

1. I was under a deadline. It sounds strange, but I was running a game every week without fail…and I didn’t want to disappoint the players (I like to come to game sessions prepared). This time,  I'm under no deadline, as I currently don’t have a weekly D&D group. Apparently, deadlines work to keep the ADHD brain on-task.

2. body doubling - Body-doubling is a fairly new concept for me, but it boils down to working with someone else who can hold you accountable for productivity.  In between game sessions, I would head to a coffee shop with my friend. We would bring our D&D stuff, get coffee, and I would work on campaign and adventure stuff.

7/

Since determining this, I have worked to add those back in to create a routine. I have started with “body doubling”, and will be setting definitive deadlines that I’m responsible for hitting (they can’t be “loose” deadlines…that doesn’t work).

8/

I have also been thinking back on my time working on my (failed) startup (9 years ago, now). This was what I had worked on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDt4LBP1ZL0

By the time I shuttered it, we had 55K users, but only 20% MAU and 5% DAU...and it wasn't enough growth to sustain further investment. Either way though, startups take A LOT of sustained effort.

I worked with a team remotely, but a couple times each week we worked out of a brewery. The space was great - good coffee, internet, and white boards (it was geared toward accommodating startups).   

These were always my most productive work days. In retrospect, I think this was due to 2 coping mechanisms - body-doubling and introducing “newness” into the routine.

9/ 

The “newness” is the easiest to understand - I was working from a different space and taking in a new environment twice a week to break up any monotony.

I think the "body-doubling" was the biggest one. Working with my colleagues was energizing, and it was easy to be held accountable to accomplishing the work for the day.

10/

So, what I have been working to do understanding the coping mechanisms available to me. Motivation to stay productive, even on things that I consider to be arduous, has been my primary focus in this. 

The latest that I'm add back into my toolset are body-doubling, setting firm deadlines, and "newness" (switching up the locations I'm working from - coffee shops always worked well for me).

Before the diagnosis, I think I was blindly trying things out, not knowing that I was compensating for something. Now, I have guard rails. I have a framework to work with, and a knowledge base to pull from.

11/

I would love to hear your thoughts, and what has worked for you!

1/ 

It has only been within the past 2 weeks that I have learned about my ADHD diagnosis. 

Since then, my intentions were to understand more about it, learn about the coping mechanisms used, and how that aligned with what I already do.

I have always struggled with burnout and motivation peaks and troughs. 

The peaks are pretty great - sustained excitement and interest, and the ability to hyper-focus on something for extended periods of time.

The troughs, which were generally from the result of sustained hyper-focus eventually running into burnout, were always rough.

ADHD is a dopamine deficiency. The baseline is significantly lower than a neurotypical. The effect of this is that we laser-focus on out what interests us, avoid tedium like the plague, and can chase dopamine hits to compensate.

Wow, super helpful, thanks for taking the time.

father, husband, css golfer, ux engineer, silently defining variables as /sdv sdv.wtf

"I'm appreciative of your openness and thoroughness in sharing your experiences"

Thanks. I almost didn't. I had originally just sent a DC to @christin, but decided that this was something that I could (and should) share...because I doubt that I'm alone in those struggles.

"the most effective one fro me has been bullet journaling"

Sunday morning is my weekly journaling (had to google "bullet journaling", but it was what I expected...and that is mostly what I do when I say I'm doing "journaling"). I only started doing that within the past few years, and I have found it to be incredibly helpful.

"I'm being more graceful to myself"

I'm working on that. When I was diagnosed, I admit that "grief" and "sense of loss" was pretty high up the range of emotions I experienced. However, I've been moving on to being more graceful to myself. Now, at least, I have a framework to work from.

"Medications have been very helpful"

I will likely try some out. I haven't gotten to the point of researching that yet.

Just want to candidly reply before I totally forget to and lose the moment:

- so much of this relates, especially on the fleeting motivation and being driven by creativity (and curiosity!) and I'm appreciative of your openness and thoroughness in sharing your experiences
- I've tried many of the tools you've mentioned, perhaps the most effective one for me has been bullet journaling. I stuck to it for almost a year and it was probably the most organized I had been. Though life was easier then too, before wife, child, and house! Still figuring out new tools and systems to keep it together but I'm being more graceful to myself (which has probably been the aspect I've neglected)
- medications have been very helpful for me, particularly bupropion (an antidepressant). It's taken away a lot of the friction of starting simple things like cleaning around the house. I had a post here over a month ago and lots of people encouraged me to try meds; thankful for them!