​Recently, I had the great pleasure of doing a Call for Insights with Simon Tomes, where I got to talk about having ADHD and some of the ways I was able to structure my work around my brain. Here's one aspect I wanted to expand upon a little more. 

I'm sure many of my—neurodivergent-or-not—peers are familiar with the spectre of executive dysfunction. It's sitting at your desk, knowing exactly what you need to do, exactly which steps you need to take, and being unable to bring yourself to do it. Or getting distracted by that one alert and never getting back to what you were doing. Or focusing on one thing to the exclusion of anything else.

Put succinctly: it sucks.

I struggled with this for years, long before I was diagnosed. I'd be able to do so much more if I just focused. I knew I could focus: I had moments where everything came so easily, where I could move mountains in minutes. So why couldn't I do it when I needed to? Why couldn't I just stick with something and see it through?

It even briefly got worse after I was diagnosed: after all, I knew what was up with my brain. I had therapy and medication. Shouldn't this problem be fixed by now?

It was during therapy that I learned one very important thing:

Shame is a demotivating emotion. When we tell off a child, we want them to feel ashamed so they don't repeat the same bad behaviour. And that works when they broke a vase: we don't want them to break another vase. 

It works a lot less well when they haven't done their homework. Yes, the goal is to make them stop not doing their homework, but that's a double negative too many for our brains. Instead, this kid will now link 'shame' with 'homework', and any time they get homework, they feel that shame again and are even less inclined to get started.

Adults' brains are no different. You cannot shame yourself into getting more work done because now you've associated 'shame' with 'work'.

So when you're trapped in that vicious cycle, how do you break it?

I'm not kidding: reward yourself for even the smallest things. You replied to one email? Amazing! That's one less email you have to deal with! And no, it doesn't matter that there's still twenty more that have been languishing in your inbox for a month. Right there and then, that one email is a win. 

Say it out loud, so it sticks in your brain better: "Hey, good job, you replied to that email!"

(And even when all you did was turn on your computer: good job, you were available for your colleagues and clients all day!)

It will feel ridiculous at first, but it gets easier with time. And after a while, the work in front of you stops feeling quite so daunting. For one, you're not feeling as much shame anymore when you look at it. And for another, you can expect that little 'good job!' once you've done it. 

Once you've got in the habit of doing this for yourself, it also makes complimenting others much easier, which then fosters better relationships with the people around you.

And while you're doing that…

Once again, I can't recommend Cassandra H. Leung's brag board enough. Keep a record of all the good things you did, or the nice things people said about you. Go read through it again frequently, so you can keep reminding yourself. This also has the benefit of helping with that other great ADHD spectre of rejection-sensitive dysphoria. 

(That doesn't mean ignoring negative feedback, but if you're anything like me, that negative feedback is already taking up outsized real estate in your brain anyway.) 

So in short: 

For yourself, and for others. No caveats, no 'even though you should have done this ages ago' or 'even though you had to do it five times over'. Just, 'hey, it's great that you did this!'

This little change made a huge difference in how I managed my ADHD. I still have days where the executive dysfunction strikes hard, but now I'm able to let go of them much more easily instead of agonising about them. I hope it may help some of you out there as well!