Staying Motivated When You Don’t Feel You’re Making Progress
You know, as an adult with ADHD, when a task isn’t intrinsically interesting, like doing your taxes, exercising, searching for a job, building a business, or decluttering your home, it can be hard for you to start, never mind persist and complete it.
And what can make these kinds of tasks even more difficult is when you don’t feel you’re making progress, even when you actually are. Remember, these are all activities where you need to put in a significant amount of effort before it can seem like much has changed.
But the progress may be too incremental for you to notice, or the final payoff may be too far into the future. As a result, you may conclude that you’re not making any progress at all. In part, this is because your brain may not be experiencing your effort as rewarding.
So, when that happens, staying engaged with the task can become much harder, even though you’re objectively moving closer to your goal.
The problem isn’t that you’re not making progress. The real problem is that you can’t feel the progress you’re making.
Why It’s Hard to Start a Project That Isn’t Interesting
Let’s start at the beginning.
You may already know that adults with ADHD have what Dr. William Dodson describes as an interest-based nervous system. That means even though you genuinely want the outcome a project will lead to, if the next step isn’t interesting, novel, urgent, challenging, or personally meaningful in the moment, you may struggle to engage with it. You may understand exactly what you need to do and even know how to do it, yet still find yourself stuck.
This is one of the defining challenges of ADHD and helps explain why getting started requires much more than good intentions.
In contrast, neurotypical adults are generally better able to activate based on importance, consequences, or future rewards. For many adults with ADHD, simply knowing a project is important isn’t always enough to get started.
Getting started, however, is only half the battle.
Long-term projects aren’t started just once. Whether you’re working on your taxes, searching for a job, building a business, or training for a marathon, you have to come back and engage with the project again and again until you reach your goal.
And that’s where another, often-overlooked challenge comes into play.
Why It’s Hard to Persist Once You Start
Every time you return to a long-term project, you face another decision: Is it worth investing more effort?
There are many reasons you’ve probably heard about that make it difficult for adults with ADHD to persist. You may not know exactly what to do next, become overwhelmed by the size of the project, get distracted, or feel frustrated, discouraged, or mentally fatigued. All of these can make it difficult to continue.
But there’s another reason that’s talked about far less, and it has to do with how rewarding you experience your progress to be.
Think about what happens each time you sit back down to work on the project. The payoff may feel too far away. The progress you make today may seem too small to matter. So you may not be convinced that today’s effort will meaningfully contribute to the result you’re hoping for, or even that you’ll achieve it at all.
When those things happen together, it’s much harder for you to stay engaged and invest in the next step.
Let’s take the example of looking for a job, something I’ve helped many people do over the years. They may spend hours tailoring a résumé and writing a cover letter, only to submit the application into what feels like a black hole. Eventually, when they don’t receive feedback that their efforts are paying off, they may lose steam, which makes perfect sense.
The same thing happens with exercise. You may need to work out for weeks or months before noticing any meaningful change, making it easy to question whether your effort is accomplishing anything at all.
The problem isn’t necessarily that you’re making too little progress.
The problem is that you aren’t experiencing that progress as rewarding enough to reinforce continuing. The less rewarding your progress feels, the harder it becomes to stay engaged.
That’s one reason many adults with ADHD describe themselves as losing motivation. When what they’re really losing is the reinforcement that helps them keep coming back to the project.
What Steps Constitute Progress for ADHD Adults
One reason you may not be experiencing your progress as rewarding is because of the way you’re defining progress in the first place.
I’ve come to define progress as any forward motion that gets you closer to your goal. But many adults with ADHD only count the time they spend doing what they consider the “real work.” As a result, they overlook many of the steps that are just as important because they make the real work possible.
Thinking is progress. Clarifying is progress. Preparing is progress.
For example, the first step may be finding and organizing the supporting materials, whether that’s related emails, documents, or notes. Other times, the first step is getting clear on your objective before you ever begin working. Those steps may not look like the project itself, but they reduce friction and move the project forward.
When I started writing this blog post, I didn’t immediately begin writing paragraphs. Instead, I spent time getting clear on my thesis, what I wanted you, the reader, to understand by the time you finished reading it. That wasn’t time away from writing the blog post. It was progress because it made the writing that followed clearer, easier, and more focused.
The next time you find yourself gathering information, organizing materials, clarifying your objective, or mapping out your approach, don’t dismiss those steps as “not really working.”
If they move you closer to your goal, they count as progress.
How Much Time Do You Need to Spend on a Task for It to Count as Progress?
Just as the way you define progress can affect whether you experience it as rewarding, so can the amount of time you think you need to spend on a task before it “counts.”
Many adults with ADHD fall into the trap of believing they need a substantial chunk of uninterrupted time before it’s worth working on something. Unfortunately, that all-or-nothing thinking may prevent you from taking small but important steps that continue moving the ball down the field, so to speak.
While you don’t need to fill every spare minute of your day, if you have 15 minutes between meetings, you could spend that time looking for and organizing the emails you’ll need to start a project. You don’t even have to find all of them. Maybe later that day, you spend another 10 or 15 minutes looking for a few more.
It can be eye-opening to realize how these seemingly small tasks, which may feel insignificant in the moment, add up over time.
By the end of the day, you may have everything you need to take the next step tomorrow. Instead of thinking, “Oh right, I should start that project… But first I have to find those emails,” you’ve already removed one more barrier to moving forward.
The more often you allow these smaller investments of time to count as progress, the more opportunities you have to recognize that you’re moving forward.
Why ADHD Adults Need to Be Careful of False Productivity
There may be times when you’re actively doing something productive, but it’s actually a form of procrastination. Instead of working on your highest-priority or most cognitively demanding task, you find yourself doing other productive chores that are easier to tackle.
Think of the times when you should be writing that report, but instead you’re cleaning the bathroom, pulling weeds, or doing the dishes. These activities are productive, and they often provide a clear beginning, middle, and end. They’re also generally more manual and require much less cognitive effort.
This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as procrastivity.
Part of the reason it happens is that these types of tasks provide more immediate rewards. You finish the dishes, the sink is clean. Or you pull the weeds and the garden looks better. You get immediate evidence that your effort paid off.
Of course, you may avoid the more difficult task simply because it’s harder. Maybe you don’t know the next steps, don’t have the resources you need, or feel overwhelmed by the project.
But another reason you may drift toward procrastivity is that the immediate rewards simply feel more compelling, while the payoff for the higher-priority task feels too distant or too uncertain to keep you engaged.
Why Celebrating Small Wins Matters for ADHD Adults
One way to bring some of those rewards into the present is to intentionally celebrate the progress you make along the way instead of waiting until you reach the finish line.
Many of us only celebrate when we’ve completed a big project, gotten the job, bought the house, finished the degree, or reached some other major milestone.
The challenge is that those moments may be weeks, months, or even years away. If that’s the only time you acknowledge your progress, you’re missing countless opportunities to reinforce the effort that’s moving you toward your goal.
As the Chinese proverb says, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” I’d take that one step further. A journey of a thousand miles is completed one step at a time.
When you pause to notice those steps, you’re reminding yourself that today’s effort mattered and that you really are moving forward, even if the finish line is still far away.
That’s why celebrating small wins isn’t just about feeling good. It’s about recognizing and reinforcing the many small investments that eventually make the larger achievement possible.
How ADHD Adults Can Celebrate Small Wins
Recognizing and celebrating small wins starts with noticing them.
When you’ve gathered the materials you need, clarified your objective, removed a roadblock, or spent 15 focused minutes on a project, pause for a moment and acknowledge that you just moved the project forward.
Another helpful strategy is to make your progress visible. Keep a running list of the steps you’ve completed, track the time you’ve invested, or use a whiteboard, spreadsheet, journal, or task manager to record your progress. If you use an electronic task manager, consider leaving completed tasks visible for a while instead of immediately archiving them. The goal isn’t to admire your productivity. It’s to remind yourself that your efforts are adding up.
It can also help to intentionally reward yourself along the way. Maybe after a focused work session, you treat yourself to your favorite coffee, take a walk, catch a matinee, or spend a little time doing something you enjoy. It doesn’t have to be a big reward. It just needs to be something you look forward to.
Share your progress with someone else. Tell a friend, your coach, a colleague, or a family member. Sometimes hearing someone say, “Nice!” or “That’s awesome!” is all it takes to give you that little boost that makes it easier to come back tomorrow.
To recognize the value of what you accomplished today, at the end of a work session, ask yourself:
- What progress did I make today?
- What obstacle did I remove?
- What’s easier now than it was before I started?
Instead of only focusing on what’s left to do.
An Investment Mindset Can Help ADHD Adults Persist
In addition to celebrating the small wins, adopting a dollar-cost averaging mindset can also help you follow through on your long-term goals.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, dollar-cost averaging is an investment strategy in which you contribute money on a regular basis, regardless of whether the market is up or down. And you trust that consistently investing over time gives you the best chance of reaching your long-term goal.
I think many worthwhile goals work the same way.
Whether you’re building a business, training for a marathon, earning a degree, or tackling years of back taxes, there will be days, even weeks, when you might not make a lot of progress.
But just as investors don’t stop investing because the market has a bad day or a bad week, you don’t want to abandon your project because you’ve had an off day or even an off week. Though you may decide to refine your process, you continue working toward your goal.
And, when you have an off day, ask yourself: Am I still heading in the right direction?
If the answer is yes, then hopefully, over time, each time you engage with the project will help bring you closer to the finish line.
Create Support to Help You Persist
Sometimes the reward you need doesn’t come from the task itself. Sometimes it comes from the people around you.
Working alongside someone else, checking in with a coach, participating in a mastermind group, or using a body doubling service such as Focusmate can all make it easier to continue. These kinds of support don’t simply create accountability.
They also provide encouragement, recognition, and a sense that someone notices the effort you’re putting in, even when the final result is still far away.
You don’t have to persist entirely on your own. Sometimes borrowing another person’s belief in your progress is enough to help you continue until you can feel that progress for yourself.
Think of Failure as Progress
Also, one of the easiest ways to lose momentum is to think that every unsuccessful attempt means you’ve fallen behind.
Instead, try looking at failure as another form of progress. Every attempt teaches you something. You discover an approach that didn’t work, a strategy that needs refining, or a problem you hadn’t anticipated. That information makes your next attempt more informed than your previous one.
Progress isn’t always measured by getting the outcome you wanted. Sometimes it’s measured by increasing your understanding of what will move you closer to that outcome.
Taking Care of Yourself Gives You the Energy to Persist
Finally, remember that persistence requires energy. It’s much harder to stay engaged with important work when you’re mentally exhausted, chronically stressed, or physically depleted.
Making time for sleep, exercise, good nutrition, downtime, mindfulness, hobbies, and the people you enjoy isn’t separate from accomplishing your goals. It’s part of the process. These activities replenish the mental and physical energy you need to continue making investments in the future you’re trying to create.
The finish line is rarely reached through determination alone. It’s reached by repeatedly showing up with enough energy, support, and reinforcement to keep taking the next step.
Bringing It All Together
If you’ve struggled to persist toward important goals, don’t be too quick to conclude that you’re lazy, undisciplined, or simply unmotivated.
For many adults with ADHD, the challenge isn’t a lack of desire. Sometimes it’s because you are not receiving enough reinforcement along the way to stay engaged.
You can influence that.
By redefining what counts as progress, celebrating small wins, creating more immediate rewards, building support, and viewing each step as an investment in your future, you can make it easier to keep showing up.
You don’t have to wait until you reach the finish line to experience the rewards of making progress.
