Why ADHD Adults Have Trouble Starting Tasks
Figuring out how to get started may be one of your most pressing questions as an adult with ADHD. I see this play out with my clients every day.
You might start your day intending to work on something important. Instead, you open your email because it feels easier. Then something urgent or more interesting lands on your desk, usually because someone else is asking for it.
Before long, the task you planned to do has still not been touched. And this loop repeats again and again, with frustration building each time.
Because a sense of urgency often helps you eventually get things done, you may have decided by now that that is simply the way you work best. So now, using urgency to motivate you may be a habit, rather than an occasional strategy.
ADHD expert Dr. Thomas Brown, who sadly passed away recently, described this pattern in the following way:
Often, they will put off getting started on a task, even a task they recognize as very important to them, until the very last minute. It is as though they cannot get themselves started until the point where they perceive the task as an acute emergency.
But you also know working this way has a cost. So now you are reading this article to see if there is another way to operate.
In Part 2, I will share strategies to help you diversify your motivators. So you don’t need to rely so heavily on urgency to get started.
For now, though, let’s look at what makes starting so difficult for ADHD adults in the first place.
Do ADHD Adults Just Need A Kick in the Tush?
It’s not uncommon for prospective clients to tell me their problem with getting started is one of motivation, and that the solution is that they just need to try harder. Sometimes they even wonder whether what they are putting off is really that important.
Because, so their logic goes, if it were, wouldn’t they just do it? Thanks, Nike!
But because they can’t seem to do this on their own, they may conclude that they need someone, maybe me, to kick them in the behind. Because, according to the story they have been telling themselves, that is the kind of motivation they need.
Not only is using force not my style, but it just doesn’t work for adults with ADHD. And you probably know that already.
Think about it. You’ve likely had people try to push you into doing things, and you’ve probably even tried pushing yourself with plenty of negative self-talk, “What is your problem? Everyone is doing it,” etc.
If force really worked to get you motivated, you wouldn’t be reading this, right?
I bet more often than not, when you have felt forced, rather than feeling motivated, you have felt more resistance.
And that’s when distractions really kick in. So you clean your desk, do a little shopping or watch YouTube. Cute cat! Sound familiar?
So if your problem with getting started isn’t because of a lack of willpower or external force, then what is getting in the way?
What Is ADHD Motivation?
Let’s start by getting clearer on what motivation actually means.
Psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan define motivation as:
energy, direction, persistence, and equifinality — all aspects of activation and intention.
In other words, motivation is not a single thing. It’s made up of different parts:
- Activation — having the spark to get started.
- Intention — knowing the outcome you want
- Energy — having enough fuel to keep you moving.
- Direction — choosing where your effort goes.
- Persistence — sticking with it long enough to finish.
- Equifinality — finding different possible ways to reach your goal.
Though sometimes you may not have the clarity you need with regard to your end goal, you often have intention in spades. That is, you really want to do “the thing” because you care deeply about the outcome, even when the task itself is not intrinsically interesting.
But, as you looked at the rest of the list, it may have occurred to you that the other items are the executive function areas where you have challenges because of your ADHD symptoms.
While, of course, there are undoubtedly other reasons you may have challenges getting started, let’s unpack this definition to see how your ADHD may be getting in your way.
It’s Hard To Start With ADHD Executive Functions Challenges
To do this, I’ll introduce you to Cari. She’s co-authoring a paper with her colleague, Naseer.
And on the surface, her current task seems simple and perhaps even easy. She needs to reply to an email Naseer sent her asking about some specific data related to the paper.
As she is replying to some emails, she sees the email he sent her a week ago. She can’t believe she hasn’t responded yet, and tells herself that she should reply to him today!
Then she gets stuck trying to formulate a response. Because she remembers she promised to send her section to Naseer last week. But she didn’t. And she’s still not done with it.
Note, he wasn’t asking her for an update on her part.
Cari decides she doesn’t want to email him about his data question until she can send the promised section. She doesn’t want him to think she’s a screwup.
You Need To Be Ready To Start
Before you can start, you need to know your direction, so you know where to put your efforts. That is, you need enough clarity about what the outcome looks like and at least what the first step is.
That is where Cari gets stuck. Naseer is asking her a question about some of the data related to the paper, and she’s focused on needing to update him on her part.
She is simply focused on the wrong objective. The objective of writing the email should have been to provide Naseer with an answer to his question about the data, not where she was with her part.
So she tells herself she can’t reply until she is finished with her section of the paper.
Transitions Make It Hard for ADHD Adults To Start
Starting also entails transitioning away from a previous task or thought to the new task at hand. And, as you know, transitions are hard for ADHD adults.
One reason these can be hard for you is that you may be hyper-focused on a previous task and therefore find it hard to break for that.
Another reason is that, in the gap between tasks, distractions can hijack your attention before you ever lock in on the new one.
That is exactly what happens to Cari. She meant to reply, but as soon as she shifted from scanning her inbox to composing, the thought of her unfinished section took over in her mind.
That thought became the distraction, and she never fully engaged with the real intention of answering Naseer’s data question.
ADHD Dopamine Deficiency Gets In The Way Of Starting
This is really important to remember.
Even when the end goal is important to you and you’re clear on the objective and first step, and you’ve managed to transition into the task, you can still get stuck if the task itself isn’t intrinsically interesting.
Psychiatrist William Dodson describes adults with ADHD as having an interest-based nervous system.
In practical terms, this is the result of there not being enough dopamine available for the executive function networks to operate properly in the ADHD brain.
But if the task is interesting, perhaps because it is novel, challenging, creative or urgent, your brain can release enough dopamine to spark the reward system and help you get started.
Otherwise, without this boost or other strategies that I’ll cover in part two, trying to tackle an uninteresting task can feel like trying to move through quicksand.
Cari loves the research she’s doing and truly wants the paper published so it can help others.
But answering an email? That doesn’t make the cut. There was no urgency yet, and nothing inherently interesting about the task. For her ADHD brain, that meant no dopamine boost and no spark to get started.
It’s Harder To Start With ADHD Working Memory Challenges
Getting started can also depend on working memory. That is, you need to hold multiple pieces of information in your mind long enough to sort through them and decide what to do.
This is where equifinality comes in. As Deci and Ryan describe it, equifinality is one of the elements of motivation and means having more than one possible way to reach a goal.
When your working memory is stronger, you may have the cognitive flexibility to juggle competing thoughts and shift between them to see different paths forward.
For Cari, that might have meant that if she had better working memory, she might have been able to hold the two ideas at once, replying to the email and finishing her section later as two separate tasks.
And perhaps then she would have recognized that they weren’t contingent on one another.
With that flexibility, she could have chosen the more straightforward path of answering Naseer’s question and kept the collaboration moving. Instead, her ADHD brain locked onto only one option, and she got stuck.
You Need To Be With The Discomfort To Persist
Even the first few minutes of starting depend on persistence, which means staying with a task long enough to move past the initial friction. For adults with ADHD, that friction often feels uncomfortable, and the temptation is to escape it by turning to something else.
Persistence isn’t just about effort. It’s about being willing to stay with the discomfort long enough to see what’s beneath it and then address that.
Cari felt the discomfort rising the moment she looked at Naseer’s email. Instead of staying with that feeling long enough to sort out what was really getting in her way, she turned from it.
She told herself she would answer later and moved on, leaving the discomfort and the email behind.
Emotions Can Sap The Energy Needed To Start
As you well know, adults with ADHD can feel emotions more intensely and for more extended periods of time. And these emotions, such as shame, anxiety, and frustration, can definitely get in the way of starting a task.
In Cari’s case, we can see the weight of the shame she feels for not having sent the promised section. She feels like she’s a screw up and that she is not pulling her weight.
And because of that shame, she actually exacerbates the situation by not responding to his email about the data. Now she’s digging herself even a bigger hole.
Emotions like these can sap the energy you need to get started, if you let them.
If Cari had seen the lapse as something that she needed to fix, rather than a commentary on her character, maybe she would have handled the situation better. That is, perhaps she could have sent the email and then made a plan to work on her section.
Why It’s Hard for ADHD Adults to Start
Understanding why starting is so hard when you have ADHD is a critical first step.
Because once you can acknowledge these real obstacles, such as disorganization, transitions, dopamine, working memory, persistence, and emotions, you can see what’s getting in your way.
And then be able to consider workarounds that will help you make it easier. The strategies that you need to make getting started easier are what we’ll turn to in Part 2.
So stay tuned!
Note: This article was originally published in June 2022 and fully updated in September 2025.
