Yes, Productivity is Complicated by Ari Tuckman, PsyD, MBA.
If you’ve struggled with productivity, you’re not alone. Almost everyone wishes they were more productive. But if you spent way too many years with undiagnosed ADHD, then you know really well how elusive productivity can feel. Or at least predictable productivity that you can call up when needed, rather than productivity that’s either panic driven or kind of random.
This is the challenge with ADHD. It’s not that you can’t get stuff done. You get a lot done. Sure, maybe too much of it is at the last minute, but there are still those magical times when everything comes together and you just crank stuff out. Why can’t that happen all the time? What’s the missing ingredient?
Productivity is complicated
After twenty-five years as a psychologist specializing in ADHD and a million conversations about (not) getting things done, I can confidently say this: productivity is complicated. There are no guarantees and there definitely aren’t any top five hacks that work for all people in all situations. Some of them don’t even do much for some people in some situations.
The problem with these simple solutions is that they can make a bad situation feel even worse. It can feel like you failed at productivity before your ADHD diagnosis, then you failed at ADHD because these “amazing” hacks didn’t transform your life. Or even last a few days. You didn’t fail-the hacks did. Complicated challenges aren’t solved with simple strategies.
Here’s the truth of it: whether you get something done or not depends on a lot of different variables, all of which make it more or less likely. Some parts of your situation reduce the friction and make it easier to get rolling. Others make it harder. The trick, in each situation, is to figure out what you can do to reduce that friction—and then keep things rolling.
Being an expert… on yourself
It might seem like this requires you to be an expert in productivity or maybe in ADHD. Sure, that helps in that you don’t need to re-invent the wheel on strategies that are generally pretty good. But really this begins with being an expert on yourself. This means having some good answers to questions like:
How do I feel about this task that I should work on now? How can I make it feel interesting or important enough to hold my attention?
How can I keep my motivation going strong when my interest starts to fizzle?
Do I know what I need to do? And how to do it? If not, how can I find out?
What’s competing for my attention? How can I dial that down, if necessary?
What’s my energy level? And how can I adjust it, if necessary?
How can I talk myself through any discomfort involved with doing the task?
The answers to these questions will change based on the situation: how are you feeling in general in this moment, how are you feeling about the specific task, what else is going on in your day and life, etc.
So, when you’re feeling stuck, your first step is to stop. Resist the reflex to just muscle through and definitely resist the well-worn habit to beat up on yourself. Instead, take a second to check in on yourself with the bulleted questions above. What’s going on here? The better you can identify what’s adding friction, the more targeted you can be in addressing it. For example, if the problem is that you’re totally dragging and can’t muster any mental energy, then getting up to move or putting on some hype music might help. But it won’t help if the problem is that you’re not really sure what you need to do and feel self-conscious about asking your boss.
Like many other things in life, firing up productivity is all about matching the solutions to the specific problems. This is where learning about productivity and ADHD can be helpful—they give you more ideas to consider, more tools in your toolbox for more situations. They give you more predictability. Productivity feels less like a mysterious alchemy where sometimes you end up with gold but too often with lead and you’re not really sure why.
So, yes, productivity is complicated. It involves a lot of moving parts. If you didn’t know about your ADHD, then some of those parts may have been partially hidden from you, so they were easy to trip over. Now you’re in a much better position to know what to do and if your medication is dialed in, it’s easier to make use of what you now know.
It’s OK that productivity is complicated. Knowing a bunch of good strategies, understanding ADHD, and tuning into yourself will make it much less of an unsolvable mystery.
Get more helpful ideas from our conversation with Ari Tuckman on the ADHD Wise Squirrels Podcast.
Ari Tuckman, PsyD, MBA is an ADHD thought leader and author of five books, including The ADHD Productivity Manual.
For guest article submissions, please visit wisesquirrels.com/beourguest
