University of Brighton fine Art (Painting) submission

Your brain’s sometimes useful gremlin

Sometimes I just CAN’T start a task. I’m turning the key to the motor of my brain and it’s not even trying. Other times, I’ll casually flick some dust off a table on my way past and before I know it it’s been 4 hours and I’ve cleaned the whole house, missing meetups, appointments, even dinner. 

The ADHD ‘motor’ is a tricky beast to manage, but here are some ideas to make it work for you.

1. Notice when and how the motor starts. Is your motor switch on when you’re procrastinating doing something else? Are you cognitively or emotionally tired and need something and need to switch your brain off to recover? Or are you upset or overwhelmed and you need to focus on something you love? Whether it’s a helpful burnout management tool or an unhelpful avoidance coping mechanism, the first step to managing your motor is understand its triggers 

2. ‘Name the demon’ to pull yourself out of an unhelpful motor situation. If you’re, say, doomscrollling as an avoidance strategy, stop for 10 seconds and say out loud, ‘my motor has started because of X’. You don’t have to drop everything, but pulling yourself out of your motor reverie might be enough put it on standby for long enough for you to go do the thing you’ve been avoiding. It won’t always work, but the more you bring your motor to the forefront of your consciousness, the better you can manage it

3. Kickstart your motor with a bit of pomodoro. A lot of people will have heard of this method before, but it’s essentially a 25 minute time management method that uses a timer. My need for an ‘urgent deadline’ means I can trick my brain into starting something by using the pomodoro method. I often only need one or two sets of 25 minutes and then my motor has started, my brain has turned off and I’m away! Note: the pomodoro method also works for when you need to stop your motor.

4. Achieve a task by making it your ‘procrastination’ goal. You already know you can be productive with your procrastination. So why not decide that, over the course of the week, you’ll only do a task you need as a procrastination activity. It works best if you can easily break down a task into small, relatively ‘mindless’ chunks, like taking the washing to the washing machine. If you practise, it even works on tasks you hate

Our brains are a mystery but in the end they’re always trying to help us. The ADHD motor is an unwieldy but useful tool that not only gets things done, but also protects us (or tries to protect us) from emotional overwhelm. It’s being your friend, so don’t punish it by trying to stifle it or punishing yourself – give it some tools to help instead.