Why Motivation Is So Hard When You Have ADHD

I bet you’ve often said to yourself, I know what I need to do, I just need to do it! Maybe you’ve even added, What is wrong with me?

And you may have gone on to berate yourself for not doing what you see others doing with seeming ease. Yet trying to use force or negative self-talk doesn’t make it any better, right?

Maybe the only thing that has worked for you so far is waiting until you feel a sense of urgency to get going. 

And waiting until the last minute has probably come with all sorts of costs. Beyond the stress, maybe your confidence has taken a hit for not doing your best work or not following through the way you intended. 

Then, even when you do pull it off at the last minute, you may wonder, Why do I keep doing this?!

So you’re wondering, How does my ADHD contribute to this, and what can I do to turn this around?

Let’s see.

LACK OF INTEREST IN THE MOMENT ≠ NOT IMPORTANT TO YOU

Like some of my clients, when you have a hard time getting started on something, you may speculate that maybe it’s just not that important to you. What may be underneath this thinking is the belief that any reasonable person would follow through on a task if it were truly important to them. 

And after all, you too want to keep your job, care about your relationships, and don’t want your house to crumble. 

This thinking doesn’t take into consideration the impact of your ADHD.

If you did take into consideration your ADHD, you would know that, when you have a difficult time getting motivated, it does not necessarily mean the task is not important to you.

Sure, sometimes the task may not be important to you. And in those cases, it may not be worthwhile trying to do them.

But I’m sure there are many other times when completing a task is really important to you and you still don’t feel motivated to start or follow through.

In those instances, I know you are probably incredibly frustrated and bewildered. 

What ADHD Adults Can Do When Frustrated Over Lack Of Motivation

The first step is to understand how your ADHD (and other factors) may be impacting your motivation.

The second step is to accept that this challenge is part of how your brain works, but it doesn’t define what’s possible for you.

The third step is to treat yourself with self-compassion.

And only then will you be in a good place to take the fourth step, which is to figure out what kind of scaffolding and support you need to start and follow through.

Even when your mojo is just not there.

How Executive Function Deficits Affect Your Motivation

You know your brain’s executive function is what helps you plan, organize, break tasks into steps, and stay on track. And your executive function is compromised because of your ADHD, because your prefrontal cortex does not fire effectively.

This means you might know exactly what you need to do, but you struggle to both map out the path to get there, start and follow through consistently. 

This friction contributes, at least in part, to your lack of motivation, even when the task really matters to you.

How Time Blindness Affects Your Motivation

In addition, because of time blindness related to your ADHD, you might lose track of how long something will take or how much time has actually passed. 

This happens because your dopamine system also regulates how your brain perceives time. When dopamine doesn’t regulate time perception the way it does in neurotypical brains, future deadlines feel abstract and distant.

So when a project is due in three weeks, there’s no urgency pulling at you. That is, you don’t feel motivation to get started until all of a sudden it’s Friday and the project is due Monday.

Why Reward Delay Kills Your Motivation

Also, your brain is wired to respond to what feels rewarding right now, not weeks or months from now.

When something is interesting, engaging, or immediately satisfying, your brain locks in. It feels easier to focus because, in that moment, the task feels worth your attention.

But when the payoff is far away, your brain doesn’t experience that future reward as meaningful right now.

Even if you know that starting and working incrementally on that report will relieve stress later, that “later” doesn’t create any energy to start today.

That’s why urgency works. When a deadline is right in front of you, the reward becomes immediate. 

Your brain now registers the task as urgent and important, which activates the motivation and attention systems that weren’t engaged before. And suddenly, your brain treats the task as worth doing right now.

Game on.

Your Brain Is Wired for Interest, Not Importance

Though we’ve touched on this already, it’s worth saying plainly: your nervous system generates motivation based on what feels interesting, novel, challenging, or urgent, not simply on what matters most to you.

That can be painful to recognize.

Because when you don’t feel motivated to do something you genuinely care about, it’s easy to assume the problem is you.

But it also explains why you can hyperfocus for hours on something that grabs your attention, while a task that is deeply important to you can still feel incredibly hard to begin.

How Emotional Dysregulation Drains Your Motivation

The last factor I’ll mention is how your ability to regulate emotions affects your motivation.

With ADHD, emotions can come on quickly, feel more intense, and stick around longer than you expect.

Part of what’s happening is that the part of your brain that generates emotional reactions, the amygdala, is more easily activated, while the part that helps you regulate and settle those emotions, the prefrontal cortex, doesn’t step in as effectively.

So instead of feeling mildly stressed, bored, or frustrated, those emotions can feel bigger and harder to shift.

And when your nervous system is flooded like that, whether the emotion is related to the task or something else entirely, it becomes much harder to access motivation.

What To Do When You Are Not Feeling Motivated

There is no one right way for ADHD adults to be able to get started and follow through on what they need to do. 

So first, you’ll want to become curious about what is getting in your way in each specific context.

And, at the same time, you’ll want to learn more about the various strategies, tools, and processes that you can use to be able to turn this around.

Then you’ll be in a better position to feel motivated to get started and follow through when it’s important to you to do so in different situations, instead of relying on force, urgency, or random strategies.

How to Create the Conditions for Motivation

Because once you understand what’s actually driving your motivation, you can stop making it about willpower.

And start making it about building the right conditions.

That’s where things begin to shift.

In the next post, I’ll walk you through some specific ways to do that, so you can start and follow through more consistently, even when the motivation isn’t there.

ADHD and Motivation, In a Nutshell