ADHD, motivation, and systems
A lot of academic ADHD literature states that folks with ADHD have low intrinsic motivation and high extrinsic motivation.
Not sure what that means? Intrinsic motivation comes from your internal interests and desires, while extrinsic motivation is influenced by the presence of an external rewards.
In my personal experience, though, this is completely backwards.
When I find something boring, there’s almost no amount of external rewards that can motivate me to do it. Even a big old shiny carrot will get me moving, but then doing the task will feel like a giant slog.
Conversely, if it’s a task I find interesting, you literally cannot stop me from focusing on it (to the detriment of everything else).
So it’s not that ADHD folks have low intrinsic motivation. It’s that our motivation algorithm is programmed differently than someone neurotypical.
A big part of being productive as someone with ADHD is learning how to exploit this.
- I try to structure my work and household tasks around things I find personally interesting.
- When starting big projects, I start with the task I find most interesting, not the one that’s most important.
When you have ADHD, interesting things just get done.
For important things I don’t find interesting or am not intrinsically motivated, it’s important to create systems that force them to get done, because no amount of extrinsic motivation is going to make it happen.
I’ll talk more about that tomorrow.