July 17, 2024
Episode Description
Are you struggling to get things done? Maybe you’ve internalized society’s narratives that you’re lazy, irresponsible, and unmotivated. One of the big reasons folks with ADHD struggle with their finances is because they lack the right motivation. In this episode, we dive into the unique ways ADHD affects motivation and explore the four types of motivation that work well for folks with ADHD. You’ll learn practical strategies to leverage these motivation types, allowing you to finally follow through on those tasks you’ve been avoiding.
Thanks for listening to Dopamine Dollars! If you enjoyed the episode, I’d love it if you could leave a review 💚
What You’ll Learn
- Why ADHD folks struggle with motivation
- The 4 types of motivation
- How to apply this motivation to your finances
- Tips for removing barriers
- How to overcome shame from past “failures”
Important Links
Grab a copy of my book HERE.
Check out the episode on gamification HERE.
Check out Goblin Tools HERE.
Grab a copy of How to ADHD by Jessica McCabe HERE.
Let’s Stay Connected!
Follow me on Instagram: @ellyce.fulmore
Follow me on TikTok: @queerd.co
Check out my website: www.queerdco.com
Stock Music provided by LevelUpMusicSolutions, SunSmileMusic, LeChuckz, goodmoodmusic, and SoundKit, from Pond5.
Transcipt
Repeat after me. I don’t lack willpower. I just have ADHD.
Hi friends, and welcome back to Dopamine Dollars, the podcast where we dive into the emotions, science, and real life impact of managing your money and your life when you’re neurodivergent.
I’m your queer AuDHD host, Ellyce Fulmore, and today we are talking about the different types of motivation for folks with ADHD.
We didn’t have an episode last week because I have been busy working on the budget template and that is still going strong and I have it all set up to launch at the end of the month. But oh my gosh, I have not put this much work into something since my book, and in terms of a digital product, it’s just so much work. But I’m super excited about it. It’s going to be so worth it and I can’t wait for y’all to get your hands on it. So it’s currently being tested by some people who volunteered to be beta testers and it will be launching before the end of the month.
Other exciting news is that if you saw my video talking about how difficult it is to get a second book published after your first book, and how I had kind of gotten some disappointing news from my agent in terms of, like, my sales numbers, where they’re at, and the likelihood of me getting a second book deal, and I actually have an exciting update.
I’m not really sure how much I can share at this moment, so I’m just gonna play it safe and not share too much. But I can tell you that I am currently working on a book proposition proposal. So despite my sales numbers still not being exactly where we want them to be, there’s some progress. And I feel really hopeful about this second book, and I personally believe that it’s going to sell better than the first book, and there’s some actual kind of tangible reasons and proof as to why I think that we have some opportunities. I’m really excited.
This proposal has been so fun to be working on, and I feel this more than I did with the first book, that this book is like it. I don’t know. Everything’s clicking while I’m working on it and I feel just so excited by it. And it’s going to be something so unique and incredible, and I’ll keep you all updated on the process, but that’s what I can tell you right now.
I briefly mentioned the four motivation types in our episode about gamification, and I promised I would do a future episode diving into motivation a bit more is me keeping that promise, because today’s episode is all about the different types of motivation for folks with ADHD.
Running a business as a neurodivergent person is challenging because there are often a lot of tasks that I need to do in order to keep things running smoothly, but that my brain really doesn’t want to do. It’s easy for me to get sidetracked by the tasks that I find enjoyable and completely let everything else in my business crash and burn.
Even right now. I was just talking about how I’m so focused on getting the budget template I’m working on out to you, and as a result I didn’t get a podcast episode out last week.
I’ve been neglecting my emails, my DM’s, and other important responsibilities in my business. And the issue is, when I’m hyper focused on something like that, it doesn’t matter how important another task is, I just have no motivation to do it.
In the chapter on ADHD in my book, I talked about how I struggled with writing my book because there wasn’t enough urgency around it. I had eleven months to write the book, and my schedule was originally supposed to be writing one chapter a month. At first I had some motivation because I had external accountability.
So my editor had set this schedule with me and I knew that I had a deadline each month. This worked out well for the first couple months and the first couple chapters, but then a few months in, my editor told me that I didn’t need to submit one chapter a month. It was okay if I didn’t submit one month, and then the next month I submitted two and that the schedule didn’t really matter as long as I got all of it in by my manuscript deadline.
And I know when they said this, they were just trying to be kind and accommodating, but what it actually ended up doing was taking away any sense of urgency and accountability, and therefore I lost my motivation.
Basically, the whole structure that we had set up didn’t exist in my mind anymore. Now it was just this open timeline of you can do whatever you want whenever you want as long as the manuscript is handed in by February 28, which was my deadline. It was a constant battle after that to get any writing done.
When little tasks would pop up in my business, I would immediately prioritize those over writing because now my deadline for writing was months away, and those little tasks, even if they weren’t that important, had a sooner deadline so they would be prioritized in my brain over writing.
This was incredibly frustrating because deep down, I wanted to write. I knew that I needed to keep sticking to the schedule or I would fall behind and get even more stressed. I didn’t want to fight with my brain every day trying to convince it that I should write, only to end up sitting at my desk and accomplishing nothing for hours and hours each day.
Now a little context on me. I have always been the type of person who works well under pressure. In fact, my grades in university got exponentially better when I stopped pretending I was the person who could write an essay weeks before it was due and instead surrendered to the fact that procrastination worked best for me.
I began to plan around this, setting aside time in the few days before a deadline to actually work on that task. This saved me from the fate that I just described with my book. Instead of actually wasting time fighting my brain to start a task whose deadline was weeks away, I used that time to focus on the most urgent deadlines.
I was essentially flying by the seat of my pants during my degree, but it worked for me and I used that to my advantage. However, I didn’t approach writing my book in the same way. I convinced myself that I could do it differently, or rather that I should do it differently, and that was my mistake. Instead of embracing the way my brain worked, I fought it every step of the way.
I ended up writing most of the book in the last three months, which I knew I would now. I am still incredibly proud of the book I wrote, and doing it in the last three months didn’t mean that I didn’t write a good book. I put so much time and energy into that book and it’s an amazing book. I’m so proud of it.
But I could have saved so much time if I had just accepted this from the start. And I also could have set myself up better for those three months. I could have approached it knowing that I was likely going to write the book in the last three months. And instead of trying to force myself to write every single day, I could focus on my business. Not really focus on the book right until the end.
But then I could have set myself up so that I could fully take those three months off of my business and have income coming in still like have a paycheck set aside for those three months. Instead, I kept trying to power through and balance all of the things right up until the very end.
So being stressed for eleven months, which resulted in so much shame. One of the big reasons folks with ADHD struggle with their finances is because they lack the right motivation. You know you should be saving money, paying off debt, and planning for the future, but you can’t seem to execute on those goals.
Even if you do have some motivation to start tackling these goals, the number of tasks involved in the process can quickly make that motivation fizzle out. You might find yourself constantly comparing your financial progress with that of others and being frustrated that you haven’t reached certain milestones. Other people are doing all of the things, so why can’t you?
This often leads to the belief that you just need to be more motivated or have more willpower. But motivation is not the problem, it’s that you’re seeking the wrong kind of motivation. Neurotypical folks can tell themselves that they should save up a safety fund or that it’s important for them to be investing for retirement and just go and do those things, which is wild to think about as someone with ADHD.
For me, even if I know something is important and I want to do it, it can still be a challenge to find the motivation to start and keep going.
Doctor Russell Barkley accurately refers to ADHD as a motivation deficit disorder. We are lacking the same motivation that neurotypical folks have and often don’t like tasks that are boring, repetitive or take a long time.
Jessica McCabe, author of the New York Times bestselling book How to ADHD, says that the defining factor of motivation when it comes to ADHD brains is that it must be stimulating and that the reason for that is because of the differences in our reward systems.
When we do something pleasurable, our brain releases dopamine. But our brain can also begin to release anticipatory dopamine before you even begin a task because it knows it will result in pleasure.
Neurotypical people can be motivated to do a boring task because they know the end result will feel good. For example, people may feel accomplished after cleaning the dishes and so their brain releases anticipatory dopamine before they even begin to wash them. This allows them to ride the dopamine wave to complete a boring task and get another hit when they finished.
However, folks with ADHD don’t always experience anticipatory release in the same way. Instead, our little dopamine deficient brain is craving an immediate hit. Why would you wash the dishes when you know that scrolling on TikTok or watching tv will give you more dopamine faster? I know this can be discouraging, but it doesn’t mean that you’ll never be able to do these tasks. It just means that you need to tap into different types of motivation.
Let’s cover the four common types of motivation for folks with ADHD and how you can apply them to your finances. The four types we are going to cover are pressure, urgency, interest, passion, competition, challenge, and novelty play.
As I’m going through these types of motivation, I want you to start thinking about which of these types might work for you. First up is pressure urgency, which is motivation as a result of the sense of pressure or urgency you feel around that task.
The reason why the long writing deadline for my book didn’t work for me was because I had no sense of urgency. This is why many folks with ADHD will procrastinate on tasks. Waiting longer will create pressure and drive for us.
You can either manufacture the urgency or tension yourself, or in some cases rely on that from others. Unfortunately, pressure from ourselves often shows up in the form of shame, anxiety, and negative self talk.
We start berating ourselves to the point that the unbearable shame is what motivates us to complete the task that we were avoiding. Internal pressure doesn’t always look like that, though.
We can also have a positive form of internal urgency where we are motivated because we are excited to get something done. You may have no issues meeting the goals and deadlines that you set for yourself because of your internal motivation.
Pressure from others can stem from your fear of failure, disappointment, or potential consequences. It can also be rooted in your desire to impress or please others. So you may feel a pressure to get something done for someone else because you’re scared of the negative repercussions that could occur if you don’t get it done. Or it could be because you genuinely want to impress them or meet their expectations or whatever that looks like.
Initially in my writing process, I had this external pressure that was rooted in my desire to meet expectations and impress my editor. This type of tension is way more up my alley than the internal type of pressure because while I will ignore my own deadlines most of the time, I hate letting other people down that I respect and that I value.
I’m also a recovering people pleaser, so that probably plays a role as well. We can also experience financial pressure, which is when the fear of your money being at risk creates a sense of urgency. That’s the whole premise behind late or cancellation fees.
Businesses are hoping that the financial repercussions of not showing up will be enough to deter that from happening. However, the degree of financial pressure will vary based on the individual’s perception of that cost.
For example, a cancellation fee of $5 is unlikely to stop me from canceling. If I needed to I’ll take the hit because $5 isn’t a lot of money for me personally. For other people, however, that $5 might mean more and they might respond differently.
Here’s how you can leverage pressure urgency motivation when it comes to your finances: first, consider whether internal or external pressure works for you.
One way you can implement internal pressure into your finances is by setting things like savings goals and debt repayment deadlines for yourself. Let’s say you want to save $500 in the next six months.
Come up with a deadline for every $50 of that $500, mark them on a visual calendar or put reminders into your phone. I find that this works for me sometimes with very specific tasks, usually only when I’m really excited about a project already.
If I’m trying to do this for tasks that I don’t enjoy, I will literally just ignore these deadlines. If you relate to that, you might want to add external pressure. Instead. Share your financial goal deadlines with a partner or friend and ask them to hold you accountable. Give them an exact date and time, and specify what you’re going to accomplish. Request that they check in on your progress, and don’t let them sugarcoat things.
If you’re recruiting outside assistants to create urgency, make sure you’re clear on what they need to do. You can also do this with your job if you struggle to meet deadlines at work. Ask your supervisor if you can set up a different system.
Request that projects get broken up into numerous deadlines along the way instead of just one end date, like in the case of writing my book, which initially had additional deadlines, but then once it was waived, it was waived.
So I think for the second book, I would just have to be upfront from the beginning and say, we need strict deadlines and you cannot let me bend on those deadlines. You also could set up some sort of check-in process that you’re held accountable to.
Another way to create a sense of urgency on a smaller scale is by setting timers. Let’s say you’re working on completing the financial audit from last episode, and one of the tasks you need to do is figure out all of your monthly expenses.
This involves the tedious work of searching through your account statements to find all the recurring bills and subscriptions. Try setting a timer for 20 minutes and see how much you can get done in that time. When the timer goes off, you can choose to stop and move on to something else or keep going. Maybe the financial pressure felt more up your alley.
One way to implement financial pressure is to invest in a course or program so that you have some skin in the game and feel the need to show up and get your money’s worth.
Another example of this could be choosing to go to a more expensive gym simply because you’re way more likely to actually show up and work out. Maybe you choose to pay for a spin membership even though it’s a lot more expensive than going to a regular gym and doing a bike workout because you know with the spin class that you’re actually going to show up, that you’re going to get a good workout in, and with the other gym membership, you might not use it at all.
Our next type of motivation is interest slash passion, which is motivation as a result of being excited and engaged in the task. Have you ever put off cleaning your house or cooking yourself a meal because you were too busy reading a good book or spending hours bedazzling a book cover instead of recording your podcast episode? That’s me.
Currently, you have no problem spending the whole day doing those tasks that excite you while simple daily tasks feel impossible. This is why it’s more accurate to say that folks with ADHD have an inability to focus their attention rather than a deficit of attention.
We know that people with ADHD can fixate for hours on end when it comes to tasks they find engaging, but often the repetitive and necessary tasks required to take care of ourselves, our living space, and our finances get pushed to the wayside.
The challenge here is to find a way to make those less riveting tasks more interesting. This can either be done by making the task itself more interesting or by adding something that interests you into the experience of doing the task.
For example, I personally have a hard time washing my face and brushing my teeth before bed. It’s just so boring. I could make the experience more interesting by using skincare products or tools that I love, or that smell really good, which I already do, but that still isn’t enough to motivate me in this case.
Instead, I will watch a show or YouTube video on my phone while I complete these tasks. So I haven’t actually changed the task of washing my face and brushing my teeth, but I’m adding interest to the process.
Here’s how you can leverage interest, passion, motivation when it comes to your finances. Think about what you could add to your tasks or ways that you could become more personally invested in them.
If you’re struggling to find your finances interesting, start with the aspects that you’re passionate about. Perhaps you’re excited to save up for a big trip to Europe. Or you love creating notion boards and you could apply that to the process of saving money. Sometimes just getting the ball rolling can build enough momentum to keep going.
One of my favorite ways to hype myself up for tasks I’m not interested in is to borrow someone else’s interest. You can do this by watching videos on YouTube or listening to a podcast of someone who is excited about whatever task you are trying to tackle.
For example, sometimes I dread planning my podcast episodes because I know they take a long time and I’m excited about this podcast. I love doing these episodes. I love recording them. But just the act of having to plan out the episode, sometimes that is like what stops me.
But if I watch videos of creators passionately telling me about a system they have created to plan their podcast episodes, I can borrow their interest, meaning that just by watching them get excited about something, that in turn can excite me.
If you can’t make the task more interesting, add your interest to it. You could body double with someone while working on your finances. This just requires having someone else around you, even if they are doing something completely different. Adding interests can literally be as simple as just listening to music you love or putting on your comfort tv show while you work on other things.
I recently did this with a savings tracker I created that was Taylor Swift themed. I took the interest I had in Taylor Swift and added it to my financial goal of saving money. Now I’m more motivated to save for this goal because I’m excited to fill out the savings tracker.
Next up is competition challenge, which is motivation as a result of the thrill of winning something or beating someone.
When it comes to the task, this can refer to competition against yourself or others. Beating your own personal best can be motivating for some. For others, they may need that thrill of competing against other people.
The challenge part of it refers to how challenging the task itself is. If it’s too challenging, it may stop us from starting, and if it’s too easy, it may not provide enough stimulation to keep going.
With this type of motivation, we are aiming to turn those tasks you’re avoiding into a competition, or increase or decrease the challenge depending on if it’s too easy or too difficult and essentially gamify the process.
Check out the podcast episode on gamification for even more tips on how to accomplish this. Competition tends to be hit or miss with ADHD folks. Either you love it or you hate it.
The challenge piece, however, often has more of an impact. I’m currently trying to teach myself to do beading with a technique called tambour embroidery and I’m struggling. It’s actually not the embroidery itself that is necessarily too challenging, but rather the process of learning it.
I am having such a hard time even finding solid tutorial videos and the issue also is that with tambour embroidery, the little embroidery hook is so tiny, like it’s like the size of a needle, but it looks like a tiny mini crochet hook.
If the video of the person doing the tutorial isn’t high quality and you can’t really see what’s going on, it’s not very helpful, right? I just struggle to even find these solid tutorials and when I do find some, I will complete them.
But then I can’t find someone talking about the next step because it’s so challenging to find these tutorials. It ultimately made me want to stop learning this hobby, which is frustrating because I’m really excited about it. I’ve been talking about it for a long time. I’ve been wanting to do it for a long time, but the perception of the challenge is weakening my motivation.
Here’s how you can leverage competition challenge motivation when it comes to your finances. For the competition aspect, your goal is to turn money into a game. An easy way to do this is obviously by competing against somebody else.
Start a savings challenge with a friend or partner, for example, see who can save up more money in the next 90 days, or who can save $1,000 first and then sweeten the pot by adding a reward for the winner. If you want to create a little solo competition, something you can do is share your financial goals online.
Even if you don’t have a lot of people on your social media just publicly going on and kind of declaring to your friends and family, hey, this is what I’m trying to achieve. And you’re held accountable kind of by the people that saw it and you want to achieve what you said. So it kind of creates that little competition for yourself.
For the challenge aspect, consider whether the task is too easy or too difficult, or just right. If it’s too difficult, how can you make it more accessible? Can you adjust the task itself or seek out some help with it? If it’s too easy, how can you make it more challenging? Again, this doesn’t have to apply to the task itself, but could be applied to the parameters around it.
Earlier I gave an example of using a timer to create urgency. You could also use a timer to create more of a challenge for yourself.
Lastly, we have novelty play, which is motivation as a result of the task feeling shiny, new and fun. You know that feeling when you buy a cute new gym outfit and suddenly you’re more excited to work out? That’s novelty motivation.
At work, your brain is stimulated by fresh and novel things, and you get a hit of dopamine from starting exciting tasks. This stimulation is a big reason why new things are so motivating. The challenge is that once that novelty wears off, you will lose that source of motivation.
This is why many folks with ADHD get excited about new hobbies or ideas, but then abandon them before they finished. We end up with a graveyard full of hobbies, tools and strategies that never quite made it. Rip to all my 70% finished projects. The key is to find different ways to keep the task fun and fresh until completion.
So here’s how you can leverage novelty play motivation when it comes to your finances when it comes to managing your money, you may get super excited to try out a new budgeting system, only to get bored of it two weeks later. It’s all about adding the fun into your finances.
You can achieve this by changing things up often and approaching tasks in a new way. Don’t be afraid to try out new techniques and do things differently than everyone else’s. Focus on how you make a task feel novel.
We covered a lot of this in the gamification episode, so I’ll just kind of briefly touch on them again. You could change up your location if you always sit down and look at your money at your desk. Maybe you do it from your couch instead.
Maybe next time you do it while you’re taking a bath, or you write out your monthly expenses while enjoying a latte at your favorite coffee shop. You could also change the information, so consume the financial education in a different way.
If you typically learn from listening to podcasts, try switching to watching YouTube or TikTok videos or joining a Facebook group, reading blogs, enrolling in a course, or reading finance books. Find new creators that you can follow and learn from. You could also change the format. If you’re getting tired of that budgeting system, switch to budgeting in a bullet journal.
Now, of course, you don’t even have to think about changing things up if those systems and tools are still working for you.
The thing is that it’s very likely that many of the tools or systems that work for you might stop working at some point when they lose their novelty, especially if the motivation you had for that task was coming from the novelty.
I always say that when it comes to ADHD, your tools are going to expire. It’s pretty much inevitable so lean into this fact and don’t be afraid to switch up your money management methods every couple of months.
What I often see is that people will have a system that’s working for them, and then it becomes no longer novel. It stops working for them. But instead of just accepting that fact and kind of switching on to the next thing, they will end up shaming themselves, feeling bad, spiraling, and instead just trying to force it to work when it’s just really not working.
And I want to remind you that just because a system stops working for you, it doesn’t mean that you failed. It says nothing about you. In fact, it’s not about you at all. First off, you had success for however long that tool worked for, which is great. And secondly, you learn something from every system you try.
The skills and systems you’ve developed don’t just disappear because it’s not working anymore. They are there waiting for you when you’re ready to try them again. That’s the upside of cycling through so many different hobbies or tools as someone with ADHD.
After time has passed, the novelty can come back. We can also raise the dead from that graveyard by finding ways to reignite the spark. So you got bored of your budget template after two weeks, but maybe you can keep the spark alive by adding something new to it.
That could be as simple as changing the colors of the spreadsheet or adding a new feature. Even equipped with these four different types of motivation, you may still experience a lot of resistance to a task. In that case, I would encourage you to consider if there are any other reasons why you might be struggling.
Ask yourself the following: do I have all the tools I need to complete this task? Do I know all of the steps involved in completing this task, or at least enough of the steps to start it? Am I clear on what needs to happen, and is the first step a bite sized step?
If you don’t currently have the tools to complete a task, consider whether you even want or need to do this task right now.
Are you getting ahead of yourself and trying to complete something that you’re not yet ready to do? Or maybe you do need to do the task now. And in that case, where can you find the tools that you need? Who could help you? Consider investing in accommodations or good tools that might help you in the future.
This might mean spending more money than you anticipated, or spending money on something that other people do for free. But these types of investments are so worth it if they are the difference between you completing a task or just shame spiraling instead for me personally paying for the Instacart subscription so that we can get grocery delivery is an accommodation and a tool that is so worth the cost because without that my partner and I would not be eating properly.
Even now, it’s still a challenge to grocery shop online and place that order, but it’s so much easier than actually having to go to a grocery store and do it. In her book how to ADHD, Jessica McCabe suggests keeping what’s called a barrier log for tasks that you seem to continually have issues with.
Use this barrier log to keep track of what is keeping you stuck so that you’re better equipped for the next time. If you’re not clear on what needs to happen or the task feels too overwhelming, spend some time breaking it down. I love using the website goblin tools for this. It’s completely free and it’s just a tool that helps you break down tasks using AIh. I’ll put the link in the show notes.
It’s a very basic site where you just type in the task that you want to break down. Then you choose what they call the spiciness level, which is just how much breaking down that you need. The spicier level that you put it at, the more it will break down the task, then you hit enter and it will give you the breakdown of like the sub tasks that make up that larger task.
From there, you can break each item down even further and further like as many levels as you want, until you have itty bitty bite sized tasks. And then when you go to begin a task, don’t think about the big picture, just focus on the first bite size step. Oftentimes the momentum from doing the first small task can help propel us onto the next one, but the overwhelm of the whole task can stop us in our tracks.
Another layer to motivation is the shame that we might feel around past quote unquote failures. Even if you can tap into the types of motivation that work for you, there might be a lack of trust in yourself. If you’ve historically always struggled with that task or let yourself down in the past, you may not have faith that this time will be any different.
Maybe you’ve also internalized the narratives that society has around motivation. You believe that you’re lazy, irresponsible, unmotivated and will never amount to anything. Sometimes I will literally sit on the couch for hours trying to convince myself to do something. I will be so angry and frustrated that I can’t just get up and go do that task.
I will hate myself for it and wear the shame of it for weeks. Then the next time I go and try and tackle that task, that wave of shame will wash over me again. And that can be enough to stop me from even attempting to do that task again.
In order to move past this shame, we need to forgive ourselves and trust our ability to do things differently. Sometimes I find it helpful to imagine my friend or my partner coming to me with the same thing that I’m struggling with and think about how I would speak to them.
For example, let’s say that you’re having difficulty setting up a budgeting system for yourself. What if I came to you and I said I completed a financial audit and my next step is to set up a budgeting system, but I’m really struggling to sit down and do it. Last time I created a budget, I couldn’t stick to it for more than two weeks and I just felt like such a failure.
I think I’m just bad with money and I will never be able to manage my finances well. How would you respond to that? You likely wouldn’t tell me that I’m lazy and I have no willpower and that I just have to try harder. So why do you speak that way to yourself? I want to remind you to be compassionate to yourself, because it’s not you, it’s the ADHD.
It’s a disability, and it can be debilitating. So even when we have the tools to succeed, there are still barriers that get in our way. And that’s okay.
Repeat after me. I don’t lack willpower. I just have ADHD. I’m not lazy. I just have ADHD. I’m not bad with money. I just have ADHD.
Just like many of the other topics we’ve talked about, figuring out how to leverage motivation for our ADHD brains involves letting go of what we’ve been taught. It’s not about trying harder or caring more about something.
Not being able to complete a task doesn’t mean it wasn’t important to us, and struggling to execute things that other people seem to do with ease doesn’t make us less than. It’s all about supporting the way that our brain works and also recognizing that those support needs will often change.
So I want you to experiment with these four types of motivation and start to figure out which ones work for you. Keep in mind that you might like different approaches for different tasks.
Next time you find yourself stuck on a task, instead of talking down to yourself, think about what’s stopping you. Maybe you need a different approach, or maybe the task needs to be broken down more.
Figuring out what’s stopping you and what things work well for you can really help you tackle the tasks that you have a hard time completing or that you’re constantly putting off.
Basically, I just want you to start getting more familiar with how your brain works. When it comes to motivation, there’s never going to be a perfect system. This is really about learning who you are and how you can support your brain.
And lastly, I want to leave you with the reminder that you can do anything you put your mind to. It just might look a little different than others around you. And in case nobody has told you this lately, you’re capable of achieving your goals.
Alright friends, that is it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening to dopamine dollars. And remember, you don’t lack willpower, you just have ADHD.
