Novelty and motivation in ADHD
Yesterday, we talked about how while ADHD hyperfocus isn’t something you can just turn on with a switch, there are certain things that can encourage it to show up.
Today, let’s look at one of them in more detail: novelty.
ADHD brains crave novelty. New is fun. It’s exciting! It causes a spike in dopamine, which our brains desperately crave more of.
Last week in the ADHD Discord Community, someone said…
Starting things is motivating for someone with ADHD. Finishing is not.
I personally find this to be the case as well, and I think it’s because of the novelty factor. Once a project hits that long tail of nudge-tweak-repeat near the end, it becomes repetitive and boring.
So what does this mean for you and your career?
Jobs that involve novelty are probably going to play to your strengths better than jobs that involve lots of rote, repetitive detail work.
- ✅ Good! An agency where you need to solve unique problems for clients that off-the-shelf software cannot.
- ❌ Bad… An agency where you’re building cookie-cutter WordPress themes for the same types of clients every day.
- ✅ Good! An in-house dev role where you research user needs and build out new features to address them.
- ❌ Bad… An in-house dev role where you’re nudging and tweaking the UI every few weeks to make small, iterative improvements.
Neither of the “bad” jobs are bad jobs. They’re good, important work!
They’re just also roles that are likely to leave you bored. And when you’re bored, work is physically painful, you never have a chance to let your ADHD hyperfocus shine, and every day will feel like a slog.
What if the job your in today is one of those boring, soul-sucking ones?
I’ve been in that position before! There’s a few things you can do.
- Talk to your boss. Explain what kind of tasks let you do best work, and ask if there’s opportunities for more of that.
- Just start doing it! Speak up in meetings. Volunteer for the kinds of work you want to do more of. When a client or internal user mentions a problem, jump in to fix it.
- Leave. Sometimes, a job just isn’t a good fit. I wouldn’t personally quit without something else lined up, but I would definitely start looking for new jobs.
I’m working on the ADHD Career Guide, a new course about how to use your ADHD as your unfair career advantage instead of something that holds you back.
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