Transcription
Hey, my name is Jesse J. Anderson. It's great to be here with you today. I'm really excited to talk about toxic productivity and specifically how toxic productivity affects our ADHD brains.
So for me, I didn't find out I had ADHD until just a few years ago as an adult, probably like a lot of you. But I knew something was different about my brain early on. I knew that things were working a little bit differently, and I was having trouble getting stuff done, and I didn't really know what to do about it.
What I found was that all my teachers knew that I wasn't reaching my potential. They didn't really tell me what my potential was or what I could do to reach that potential, but I knew I was not living up to whatever they thought I should be living up to. And the only thing I could really think of to try and live up to that was to try harder. And man, did that not work.
Trying harder is not a solution when you have ADHD. It just doesn't. Like, trying harder isn't more effective. We're still struggling just the same. In fact, even more so. Most people with ADHD are trying harder than most because we're just desperate for a solution, and we have these really good intentions, and we're just not able to make them connect with our actual action. So trying harder is really just kind of terrible advice for people with ADHD, even though that's what we naturally go to because we're just trying to make it work.
But the real problem is the systems weren't built for us. They weren't built with our brains in mind. There's a specific quote from Hamilton, the musical, that I really love, and it really just sort of resonates with me, and it's right at the beginning. Hamilton says, "He looked at me like I was stupid. I'm not stupid." And man, did this connect with me. This is so much how I felt in school. I knew I wasn't stupid. I knew that I was smart, and I was really clever at figuring things out. I was a great problem solver. I was great at brainstorming, and I had great ideas and things like that. I knew that I was smart, and I would ace tests, too. But things weren't connecting somehow.
And people would say that they thought it was stupid, or all the other labels that people with ADHD get, you know, being lazy, unmotivated, messy, all that sort of stuff was just piled onto me, and I didn't know why, and I didn't really know what to do with it. I never really did find a solution in school. I survived it because I was good at testing, and so I would end up with, you know, C's and D's enough to pass because I would ace my tests, and then I would just refuse to do any homework.
But a little while after I got out of school, I discovered the Getting Things Done movement, which was started when David Allen released his book, Getting Things Done. And then shortly after that, the blog 43 Folders came out by Merlin Mann. And though that really started the movement of productivity of getting things done in the early 2000s. You know, things were kind of revolutionary at the time, like email was becoming really important to our lives. And so there's this whole new movement of how to get things done. And I thought this was finally going to be the solution for me.
There were all these great strategies and tips, and I ate it all up. I loved it. I was going to do all the things. I did the Getting Things Done inbox, and I used the context. I even built a Hipster PDA, which if you don't know, is basically just a bunch of index cards kind of clipped together. I also tried KLOs GTD, which was sort of the predecessor to OmniFocus. And they did Inbox Zero. The whole idea being that never touch an email more than once. Once you see it, act on it, and get it out of your inbox, so you have nothing in your inbox anymore.
I did all these systems for years. I tried to make them work. I would spend weekends building up what I thought was going to be the perfect solution. I thought this was the one. This will be the solution. I'd spend a whole weekend, and it would work for maybe a few days or a few weeks or so, but eventually, it would always come crashing down. And I never really knew why.
But the problem is, these weren't built for my brain. These were neurotypical productivity systems. They were built for neurotypicals. They were built even specifically for David Allen's brain. GTD is the perfect system for David Allen, but for the rest of us, it doesn't always work out, especially when you have an ADHD brain.
And in David Allen's book, he talks about what you need, requirements in a productivity system. And the crucial requirement that you need for those systems to work is trust. And I did not have trust. I didn't know why at the time. I had no idea about ADHD, so I didn't know why I couldn't trust myself. But I knew it was true. I knew that these systems would always end up falling apart, and I never really knew why.
The problem is, I couldn't trust my own brain. And I think that really comes down to these three major flaws in neurotypical productivity. The first one is motivation. And this one really is huge. This, I think, is maybe the most important point I want to share today. And that's that neurotypicals are motivated by importance and rewards and consequences. And these really aren't motivating in the same way for people with ADHD. Like, we understand when something is important, and we obviously love rewards. Like, if we do something and get a reward at the end, that's great. That's a great way to, you know, potentially build a new habit. But if you tell us there's a big reward at the end of the road, that doesn't really give us any motivation at the beginning to get started. Even if you increase that reward, the reward could keep getting bigger, and it really doesn't bring the motivation that we need to get going.
The second major flaw in neurotypical productivity systems are distractions and shiny objects. Productivity systems are full of distractions, and anyone can get caught up fiddling with all the little bits and bobs. Like, there's so much to tweak and continue to refine, even for those that don't have ADHD. But it's especially bad for us that do. Distractions are just can be so detrimental to us. It can can completely derail us where we just can't get anything done because we're we're spending so much time tweaking the system, following all these fun trails, looking for the new shiny objects. But at the end of the day, we don't have a system that actually works for us.
And the third major flaw is overwhelm. Our brains have learned to shut down in response to overwhelm. When we have too much on our plate, we just don't do anything. There's a point where we can be flying, get a ton of stuff done, and then we hit that point of overwhelm, and you're just done. I'm gonna drop everything at once, and everything's gonna fail. And neurotypicals often give the advice of like, well, just suck it up and do the hard work. Just force yourself to do it, even if it's boring, even if it's not fun, just make yourself do it. But with an ADHD brain, we're incapable of doing that. It's not really a choice. It's not that we're choosing to sit on the couch and do nothing. Our brain is like, shut down completely. It's desperate to get dopamine working, and it knows that that's not going to give us the dopamine. So when we hit that overwhelm point, we're completely shut down, and there's no way we can just push through it to make it happen.
It reminds me of one of my favorite Jim Gaffigan lines. He talks about when he had his fourth kid, and people would ask him, "Hey, what's it like, Jim? What's it like having a fourth child?" And he said, "Imagine you're drowning, and someone hands you a baby." And that is what it feels like for our brain that's lacking that dopamine when it doesn't happen, when it's not absorbing the dopamine right. It just can't survive. It's desperate. It can't breathe. It's like it doesn't have oxygen. And you're trying to have it more and more tasks and responsibilities and stuff that it's got to work on. It's like, I can't even breathe here. I need that dopamine. I can't just ignore this basic need of dopamine to get these hard tasks done. I'm drowning, and you're tossing me a baby. You're tossing me more work and responsibilities.
And we hear this advice from like productivity gurus or experts or from books that are trying to help you get stuff done. They'll tell you stuff like, get up earlier, do Inbox Zero, be a stoic, work out two hours a day, don't eat any carbs or sugar or fat or calories, and finally, eat the frog first. And this is actually one of my favorite examples of neurotypical productivity advice that doesn't really work for most people with ADHD. It comes from a Mark Twain quote that says, "If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning." And people have taken this, and the idea is that the frog is that really ugly, that task you don't want to do, that difficult thing. The advice goes, take that thing and do it first thing in the morning and get it out of the way, and then the rest of your day will be so much easier.
I first heard this advice, and I was like, "Of course, why wouldn't I do this? This totally is logical. It makes sense to me that if I tackle this difficult task, if I eat the frog first, the rest of the day should go so much easier. Just get out of the way, right?" Another popular neurotypical productivity tip is to take a big project and break it into all of its individual steps, and then you can see what the tasks are that you need to do to get it done. And it's another productivity axiom that really makes sense. You hear that and you're like, "Oh yeah, it's hard to get going on a project if I don't know what all is going to be involved. So let me break out all those steps, and then I can throw them into my system and then know all the things that need to be done to be able to complete it."
But the problem with these is it doesn't work. It just doesn't work for us. We try to eat the frog first, but what ends up happening is we just stare at the frog for hours and feel like a failure for avoiding the frog all day and getting nothing done at all, meanwhile wondering what is wrong with you and why you can't follow this basic advice that must work perfectly for everyone else, and dread seeing that same frog waiting for you tomorrow. We get stuck on that big task. It's too much, and we just avoid it and stare at it all day and not get anything done at all.
And with the other advice, the breaking a big project into all of its steps, it sounds logical, it makes sense. But then when we try to do it, instead of breaking a big project into all of its steps, we break that overwhelming project into all of its steps. Oh wow, that is a lot of steps. I'm terrible at estimating time, so it sort of feels like this is an infinite project now with the never-ending steps. Maybe I should check Twitter or put something on Netflix, and maybe I can start this project tomorrow. Or maybe instead of that, this is what you do. You start breaking your project into steps, but eventually get so bored of steps that you think of something interesting and open 50 tabs on that topic and end up reading about the history of the space program. And did you know that Apollo 11 had to change course at the last second and landed four miles from their planned destination? Wait, what was the project I'm supposed to be working on again?
I don't say that one light-hearted. It's kind of a joke, but it's also true. I've done that, and I'm sure you have too. And so the problem with these, even though they sound like logical advice, logical tips that we should apply, they just don't work. It doesn't work for us, which results in self-blame. We start to think, "Hey, this advice is working for other people. These gurus or whoever are recommending it, so it must be working for other people. Why isn't it working for me? Something must be broken with me." You try to force it to work, which doesn't help the problem.
Another issue is great intentions and failed actions. We wonder why our actions always fall short of our intentions. People with ADHD often have really good intentions, but our actions just don't line up, and we don't know why. And following this neurotypical advice often makes that compound even worse. This makes labels like lazy or whatever even more hurtful because we know how hard we are trying to make it work, and we know that our intentions are in the right place, and it just doesn't pan out.
And the third one is shiny objects. And this is one that anyone has experienced, neurotypical people included. There are a lot of little distractions when you're building a productivity system, when you're trying to figure out tips and advice and applying things to your life to make you more productive. But for people with ADHD, these distractions are much more detrimental. Like, we can spend a whole weekend working on the project and then get nothing done, but we keep going in to tweak the system thinking that, "Oh, if I just do this little thing and that little thing, that'll be the solution." And we just get tied into all these little distractions that are available when you're working with a complex productivity system.
So what do we do about it? We need to acknowledge the problems of motivation, overwhelm, and distractions. Productivity advice normally relies on those neurotypical motivations, those importance, consequences, and rewards, and that doesn't work for us. So we need to find another way to be motivated. The way people with ADHD find motivation is through interest. Dr. William Dodson calls this the interest-based nervous system. I like to refer to it as just the four C's of motivation because I find it easier to remember. And those four C's are captivate, create, compete, complete.
With captivate, it's all about finding something that captivates your interest, something that you find fascinating or interesting, and you want to dive more into. And with create, it's all about novelty, something new, creating something new. Those creative activities, they provide dopamine because there's this anticipation of, "Oh, what is going to be the result of this creative activity?" And that motivates the ADHD brain.
The third one is compete. And a lot of us know how much we love a good challenge, a good competition. If you're anything like me, there's nothing that motivates you more than someone telling you, "Like, you can't do that. That's impossible." Suddenly, I am going to prove them wrong, and it becomes my life goal, and then that motivation shows up because I'm meeting this challenge head-on.
On the fourth one is complete. And this is all about setting due dates and deadlines, something that makes urgency show up in our lives. A lot of times, we'll have a big project and we'll avoid it for weeks, but then suddenly when it's due, when that completion date is right around the corner, then we can fly into action and get a lot of stuff done. So finding those deadlines and due dates is paramount in motivating us to get things done.
The other thing that happens when we use these four C's, when we find a task that uses captivate, create, compete, or complete, it fuels our motivation. So we're able to use the energy that we gain doing that task, and it kind of spills over into doing other work. We're building up this momentum. It's like we've got a train on the tracks, and it's not moving at all. But then we find something captivating or creative, and we start doing this project, and then that that train starts going. We start building up that momentum. And then when we want to eat the frog, it's a lot easier.
So rather than eating the frog first, we should eat the ice cream first. We need to find those things that give us that energy, that motivation, so we can build up the momentum. And similarly, with the break your project into all of its individual steps, instead, we should just break it into the first few steps, and then pick the ones that match those four C's: captivate, create, compete, complete. Which one of those steps is going to line up with one of those so that you're going to be able to find that motivation and get yourself rolling down the tracks?
So with all that in mind, I've got some strategies I want to share with you. And none of these are going to work for everyone. And even the ones that work for you, they're not going to work every time. The way our brains work, we just need things to be new sometimes, and we'll get bored of a routine that works. So take these and try them out. If they work, use it while it works. I mean, if it doesn't, put it down for a while and try a different strategy. But hopefully, this will help you put those four C's into action.
My first strategy, I like to call embracing the pivot. And this is all about knowing ahead of time that our productivity system is going to fail. We are going to lose faith in it at some point and give up. So if you know that going forward, it's okay. We don't have to feel bad when it doesn't work. But then we can know that going forward, so that when we're trying a new app or a new system, we don't pour everything into it as if it's going to be the end-all be-all solution. We know that it's going to eventually fail us, most likely. And then we just pivot to a new system, and that's okay. We don't need to feel bad about it. It's not about shame for that system failing. It didn't fail. It worked for that amount of time, and now we're moving on to something new. We just embrace the fact that our brain wants those new things every once in a while, and we pivot when the time comes.
Another strategy is Pomodoro timers. You don't have to be strict to the, I think it's 25 minutes of working, five minutes of break. I like to do maybe 15 minutes of work, 10 minutes of break. And then sometimes I'll be, I'll get hyper-focused and get into a groove. I'll still set a timer so that I don't lose track of things, but then I might say, "Okay, I'm going to go 40 minutes, and then I'll take a 10-minute break." And I just mix it up. By having those timers, I can glance down and see it, and then I know that it like provides that that urgency to get something done.
Another strategy is looking for side quests. Now, you have to be careful here because obviously side quests can derail us big time. But sometimes you're staring at a project, and it's really important, it's the one you have to get done, and you can't get rolling on it. Try and find that side angle that might be a little bit more interesting, and then you can kind of build momentum that way. Because we might be worried about distractions, it might be helpful to set a due date or a timer here so you don't end up doing side quests all day long. But it can help again to build up that momentum so that then you can tackle the more difficult aspects of that project.
Another strategy is just micro commitments. Sometimes getting started can be really hard. So if you make just a little commitment to get yourself moving, that can make a really big difference. So instead of saying, "I'm going to clean up the kitchen," or even, "I'm going to do the dishes," maybe it's just, "I'm going to go put five dishes away," or "two dishes away." Something really tiny. And then a lot of the time, that'll build up like, "Okay, well, now while I started, I can do some more." But give yourself the freedom to walk away if that's enough. Like, "You know what? I did the two dishes. I did that micro commitment, and that's enough." But getting those little commitments can help get the ball rolling for stuff like that.
Another strategy is changing your environment. We crave that novelty, something new. And so a lot of the time, I'll go work in a coffee shop, even though there's distractions, and sometimes for some work, that won't work very well. But a lot of time, the novelty of people moving around, it just sparks creativity and can get me motivated to getting some things done. Part of it might be the body doubling aspect of it, but part of it is just the hustle and bustle that can be sort of interesting, as long as it's not too distracting for whatever you're working on.
Just a few more strategies here. Another one is making tests or paperwork into like a game. And this is really, it sounds silly, but you can do stuff like, "I'm going to answer the questions in reverse order," or "I'm only going to do every third question first." Something like that, which doesn't sound like a big deal, can add just a little bit more interest to it that will help you get motivated to get things done. I know it sounds silly, but that little thing of like, "I'm going to just do every other one first," it does seem to add a little bit of that extra motivation. And you can even add that challenge or urgency to it. Set a five-minute timer and challenge yourself to see how many you can get done.
Following up on that, another strategy is to use time-based goals. So instead of saying, "I'm going to write a thousand words tonight," maybe you could just say, "I'm going to write for 20 minutes tonight." Instead of saying, "I'm going to clean the whole office," just say, "I'm going to clean the office for 10 minutes." "I'm going to do this for 15 minutes." And an added bonus of doing this is you learn a little bit about how long tasks take because we're usually not very good at estimating time. So by setting the time up front and then just seeing how much it can get done, one, you can feel accomplished, like, "Hey, I did my goal of trying to do this thing for 10 minutes." And two, now I know, "Hey, 10 minutes of work on this, this is about what it looks like."
And finally, I just want to say, change the world and make it a better place. Hopefully, you can use these strategies, put them into practice, and make a change, make a difference in the world. It's not always going to be perfect. You will fail sometimes. I fail all the time. It's a struggle. We're always going to struggle. But when you persevere and you don't blame yourself, it can make all the difference in the world. It can really make a huge impact.
Thanks for listening to this talk. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you have found something helpful. If so, I would love to hear from you. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram and TikTok, all the same username, which is just my first name, middle initial, last name, so Jesse J. Anderson. I have got the same username for all those places. You can also find my website where I've got a link to my free ADHD newsletter, and that's also JesseJanderson.com. Finally, I'm writing a book on ADHD called Refocus: A Practical Guide to ADHD. I'd love for you to check it out. It's at refocusbook.com. I'm writing it in public, so you can see on the website the current table of contents and stuff I'm working on, and you can even suggest things that you think would make sense to have in this book. And you can also sign up for the waitlist while you're there.