ADHD & procrastination
Shouldn’t you be getting on with something else?
Grab your phone, jump onto TikTok and stick ‘#ADHD’ in the search bar.
Hopefully you didn’t actually do that. But, if you had, you’d have no doubt been bombarded with the same three claims on repeat:
that ADHD is a highway to boundless hyperfocus
that ADHD arms its owner with various other ‘superpowers’
that ADHD is to blame for weapons-grade procrastination
To a point, there’s truth in all three of these (if we allow, just this once, for the word ‘superpowers’ to sneak through the juvenility filter).
It’s the third of them though – that ADHD is behind some serious task-initiation issues – that we’re most interested in here. Largely because this all-too-common symptom of ADHD is so widely misunderstood.
The many faces of a common trait
In a soon-to-be published book, Dr Itamar Shatz of the University of Cambridge will argue that there are nine types of procrastination. These, he posits, are:
Worrier (delays tasks out of fear that something will go wrong)
Pessimist (underestimates the likelihood of success, making the effort feel pointless)
Perfectionist (paralysed by the fear of making mistakes or failing to meet impossibly high standards)
Dreamer (spends time fantasising about the future rather than working in the present)
Zigzagger (constantly switches between different tasks without finishing them)
Rebel (procrastinates to assert autonomy and push back against perceived authority)
Thrill seeker (waits for the last minute to enjoy the pressure of a rushing deadline)
Hedonist (chooses immediate pleasure and comfort over necessary work)
Burnout (feels too exhausted or stressed from overworking to take action)
‘Solving Procrastination: The Science of Why We Put Things Off and How to (Finally!) Stop’ promises to be a must-read for anyone who repeatedly fails to get tasks off the start line. I, for sure, will be devouring it at the first opportunity.
But it’s a book for everyone; not one that’s specifically aimed at those of us with ADHD. And, if you are indeed ADHD, I’ll bet you recognise more than one of the types in that list. Several probably. All of them perhaps? Since breakfast.
Over the years, I’ve worked with a LOT of ADHDers to help ease their procrastination. And I share here a framework for this frustrating aspect of ADHD that many of these folks have found helpful. Happily (you’ll be pleased to hear), it breaks procrastination down into just three core types – the three that I most commonly see people struggling with in their day-to-day lives.
Inevitably, each of them has shades of one or more of the procrastination types featured in Dr Shatz’s list, above. So read on and see what resonates. Because understanding ADHD procrastination a little better can be useful in recognising it when it occurs – and only then can you do the necessary work to ensure progress and achievement win the day.
1. Something’s simply too boring
This is the OG of procrastination, and the task avoidance type that’s behind the phrase ‘dopamine hits’ featuring in so many shares and posts about ADHD every day.
Somewhat incorrectly, many of these posts suggest that our dopamine levels are raised as a REWARD for what we’ve seen or consumed or experienced. In fact, they rise on the way there; the result of a growing anticipation and enthusiasm for what we might SOON come to feel, achieve or in some other way attain.
This, of course, translates to the fact that dopamine drives our sense of ‘motivation’. Too little of it, and nothing seems worthy of our time or effort – and echoes of Dr Shatz’s ‘thrill seeker’ enter the story, as we’re left failing to muster the energy to bother attending to whatever it is that really should be getting done, often tempted away by an alternative task or diversion instead.
2. There’s a lack of clarity
While ‘type one’ procrastination takes the blame for most occasions when we simply don’t get a task started, it can sometimes be the case that what’s actually going down is a state of confusion about how the task should be approached.
On the surface, the job at hand can feel too boring to bother with. It feels ‘off’. One for another day. A ‘later’ item. We assume there’s an inclination to put it off until tomorrow because it lacks the level of interest required for us to deal with it today – but in actual fact the friction is stemming from a lack of knowledge, which is the real reason we’re struggling to hit our stride.
Maybe we don’t have all the right information. Maybe we zoned out when being given the specifics of the task. Perhaps our memory is letting us down and there’s a fogginess about the process we should be following.
Sometimes, even, we’re not entirely sure what success looks like, and so (as is the case with Shatz’s ‘pessimist’), we struggle to appreciate the value of whatever it is we should be moving towards.
3. Fear of failure gets in the way
At the intersection of Shatz’s ‘worrier’ and ‘perfectionist’ types sits the ADHDer who’s failing to get started because they’re stuck in a defensive crouch.
A lifetime of criticism and rejection driven by occasions of forgotten homework, missed appointments, lapses to focus, and on, and on, can lead to a natural reticence for beginning many a task.
‘If I haven’t started it YET, no-one can criticise me for doing it wrong YET,’ becomes the logic. And the fearer of failure can convince themselves that a million other tasks are best prioritised over the actual job at hand.
A simple action… to unlock many more
The driving forces behind ADHD procrastination run so much deeper than a simple deficiency of dopamine or a distractible nature. The reality is that this is a complex and nuanced area of a complex and nuanced cognitive difference.
The good news is that by understanding your procrastination better, you understand your ADHD better – and that is the important first step in achieving transformative change that lasts. If you’re interested in exploring this through professional, experienced ADHD coaching, get in touch today. We’ll set up a free 30-minute discovery call that comes with zero pressure or hard sell.
So hit the link now. Or are you going to put it off till tomorrow?
REFERENCES
'Solving Procrastination. The Science of Why We Put Things Off and How to (Finally!) Stop’ by Itamar Shatz PhD, published by Tarcher.
IMAGE: Joshua Rawson-Harris (Unsplash)
