Novelty

Our next motivator is something that is novel, or new. This can apply to tasks that we’ve never done before or tasks that feel as though they are leading us on a new, exciting adventure. This explains why ADHDers tend to have a love of learning new things, because the novelty factor motivates our brains and keeps us interested. We can use novelty to make other less exciting tasks more appealing to our interest-led brains by regularly changing the types of tasks we’re working on, trying to solve old problems in new ways, or adding something new while we’re doing a not-new task.

This could look like working from a café that you’ve never been to before instead of working from home every day or buying yourself a new notepad or stationery for your study project.

Challenge

Our third motivator is something that is challenging to us or something that involves an element of competition. This competition could be against ourselves, such as seeing how many words we’re able to write in a thirty-minute period and trying to break our record each day, or against other people, such as having an accountability partner or joining leaderboards on apps like Duolingo that encourage you to learn a new language.

Urgency

Our final motivator is when something is urgent, and has a tight, time-based deadline, which is why many of us might find that we can only get things done at the very last minute (I’m looking at myself typing out these words when my book deadline is a measly four days away [which might make you think, ‘Wow, Ellie, that’s quite tight, but at least you’re not writing it the night before!’, but, really, I go on holiday tomorrow and I want to get it finished before I go so… I told you I’m far from having it all figured out myself!]).

This could look like inviting a friend round so you’re forced to tidy up before they come, or asking your manager to set you lots of shorter deadlines to complete different parts of a project rather than having one long deadline and knowing that you’ll leave it all until the last minute.

Why getting started on tasks is hard when you have ADHD – and how to make it easier