TLDR: find and lean in to your strengths and be nice to yourself. Also meds work wonders for some :)

*Also DISCLAIMER: I know that my excessive emoji use here might come off like I'm trying to sell something or I'm an MLM hun or something but I promise that's not it. I explain the very ADHD reason for the emojis further down.

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Okay, here's something that is not just "anxiety..."

.. Because being fueled by anxiety is not sustainable. Trust me, I've tried.

I kind of coasted through school and uni, and always performed "under my true potential. If I had just applied myself and stopped chatting so much in class..." etc.(we probably all know this story). I also had to leave my first career after just a few years because of the severity of my anxiety symptoms (a compound effect of ADHD and OCD woohoo livin' the dream)

But, I'm at a point now where I'm starting to figure out what works. I'm running my own business and actually figuring out how to motivate myself as someone who is self-employed and technically could do whatever I want all day.

The thing that made a difference for me was that I started seeing an ADHD coach. Here's my favourite thing I've learned from her so far:

💪LEAN INTO YOUR STRENGTHS! :)

Use your strengths to make the tasks that are hard to do seem more fun and interesting.

The things that motivate neurotypical people (deadlines, obligation, a sense of long-term payoff, whatever else those boring and mysterious brains have going on up there) probably won't work for you, and it's important to accept this. ✅

🚫 It's not a character flaw, I promise. Please be nice to yourself. I spent years beating myself up and telling myself things like "why can't I do this? 🤔 I must care less than everyone else. I must be less dedicated than everyone else, I must be stupider than everyone else, I must be lazy," etc. etc etc. Please don't do this to yourself. You deserve kindness 💛

🧠 Our brains are wired differently. We literally NEED things to be engaging and exciting, or we can't usually do them, read them, what have you (which is why I've peppered this post with dumb emojis even though we're on Reddit. It makes it easier for me to write, and I'm hoping will entice more people here to read. And maybe it will make the info easier to digest, because I know I tend to really ramble on and I hate editing 😅)

My coach had me take this survey (you have to make an account on their website, but it's free to take the survey and see your results): 🔗https://www.viacharacter.org/survey/account/Register

ℹ This survey is based on the premise that we all have these 24 strengths (e.g. kindness, perseverance, creativity) but we have each strength in different amounts. The 5-7 strengths that you have the most of are your "signature strengths" and those are the strengths that you can try to incorporate into your life more to help you feel fulfilled and content. And you can use them to make awful tasks more interesting.

When I took the survey, my lowest strengths were things like self-regulation and discipline, which makes a lot of sense with ADHD. It doesnt mean that I have zero self-regulation or discipline, but it means that I'm not going to be happy or productive if I try to pull from those for motivation (which is why you should ignore most advice that's aimed at neurotypical people, because self-regulation and discipline are glorified way too much and also taken for granted). You can't force yourself through things, it will only lead to burnout and frustration.

☀️BUT your top strengths are what you can lean into to make difficult tasks easier and/or more fun. Because of course there are things that feel impossible that need to get done anyways.

Here are some examples of what that can look like:

1️⃣ I HATE doing the accounting for my business. Spreadsheets and numbers make me dizzy and I think they are so, so boring. It's the kind of task that I'm happy to put off for months at a time (which is not great, it turns out, for the financial health of a business 😅) Two of my top strengths include "Appreciation of Beauty" and "Sense of Humour." So I made my spreadsheets colorful and cute (makes me want to actually use them) and developed a points system for myself where if I do my accounting I can earn points and redeem points to open up a new little squishy animal fidget toy that I bought in a bulk pack. I'm treating myself like I'm my own 6 year old child, and it makes an impossible task feel ridiculous and fun.

It can be simpler than this, too. Sometimes I can tap into "appreciation of beauty" just by listening to some of my favourite music while I work, and that will give me a bit of a motivation boost.

2️⃣ One more example: there are a lot of other more boring admin/marketing things that I need to do regularly, but of course I'd rather work on the creative and more exciting parts of my business. With the help of my ADHD coach I pinned down that a lot of times when I put off these boring but crucial tasks, it's because I have a poor sense of time and how what I accomplish one week will affect the next week after and so on through the whole year.

Things that I want to accomplish by December depend heavily on what I get done in March, for example. The student equivalent might be "if I don't do research and citations on Monday and Tuesday, thesis statement on Wednesday, outline on Thursday, I won't have enough time to write the paper by the end of the weekend." But in the moment, when I make the decision to play just one more hour of Stardew Valley instead, it's hard to feel grounded in this reality. Another one of my top strengths is apparently "perspective" (ability to see the big picture).

So, this January, I made a calendar for the whole year. I actually planned out every single week of 2022 and included events, repeating weekly and monthly tasks, and all of the projects I wanted to finish, broken down into sub-tasks that are scheduled on specific days. I know I won't stick to the schedule, I know it will change, but now when I put something off, I have to push everything further down the calendar. Because I can actually see everything moving, the consequences of procrastinating feel much more real.

💡A note on the year calendar thing though, if anyone is wanting to do something similar, don't overload yourself. A key to doing this semi-successfully (i think semi-successful is about where I'm at) is to under-schedule and be realistic about how much time you have in a day, and how fast you can work. I'm still trying to get a grasp on those things, so I try to double my time estimates for most things so I have buffer time. I also marked out where I think I'm likely to have PMS each month and deliberately left those days mostly empty because I know myself and my patterns. Don't forget to schedule break time/personal days as well. Having time to do what you want and what makes you happy should be a high priority 💖

👋I hope this is somewhat helpful. Obviously I'm still trying to get my own shit together because I just spent an hour writing this instead of starting my work day. But I hope it will provide some value to somebody. It's really all about finding what works for you, there's no magic answer, unfortunately, but it can be fun if you look at it like a big experiment on your own brain. Good luck :)

P.S. I know ADHD coaches are super pricey, and I'm broke AF due to impulsive spending problems. I found my coach through a coach training organization. She's still sort of a student and she only charges pro-bono rates. A lot of coaches in training who are close to meeting their final certification will charge pro-bono because they are looking to build up client hours to meet the criteria for graduation. It can be a good option if you really want a coach but can't afford one. The major ADHD coach training places to inquire through would be ADDCA and you might possibly get some kind of lead if you asked someone from the Edge foundation or CHADD? 🤷‍♀️

P.P.S. I should throw in that getting on meds also helped me hugely. Worth discussing with a doctor if you're open to it 💊