Do you have ADHD, executive disfunction, or a chronic procrastination problem? Yeah, me too. Recently, though, I figured out a hack that helps me get shit done and not feel overwhelmed by the upcoming task(s).
Here’s the hack: when you write down a task on your to-do list: make sure that it has NO prerequisites. Sometimes it’s more challenging than one would think to detect if a task has prerequisites, so here’s something to look for: whenever you think of the task, if a thought comes up in your brain that says something like: “I first need to”, or “I can’t until”.
For example, let’s say you need to catch up on your bookkeeping. When you think about bookkeeping, if your brain says “I need to print out bank statements first”, that’s a prerequisite. And the natural (and wrong) thing to do is just tell yourself “Well, I’ll just consider printing bank statements as part of me doing bookkeeping”. But that’s a problem, because that’s how your subconscious starts feeling overwhelmed by the task because it has just grown in complexity (you’ve added a step to it: printing out bank statements).
In general, the more steps you have to hold in your brain at once when thinking of a task, the more overwhelming it feels to your subconscious. And the more overwhelmed your brain feels, the more it does’t want to do the task, so you start putting it off and procrastinating.
The well-known productivity advice is “Break it up into smaller steps”, it’s very true, but not specific enough. Because how do you define “size”? The natural thing is to assume that size of a task is equivalent to how long it’ll take to do. But that’s not really true. What matters is not the length of time but complexity. The more steps you have to hold in your working memory at once, the “scarier” the task feels.
This is especially true for us ADHD folks, because our working memory[^definition] is extra bad [^source]. How do you decrease the complexity of a task? Break it up into steps. It doesn’t matter how long a step will take, as long as it’s one single solid step with no significant sub-steps. Going with our bookkeeping example: actually entering your bank transactions into your bookkeeping software might take hours or days, but it’s a simple, single step, so your brain won’t freak out as much.
Basically, what you’re doing is breaking one task into many tasks. Keep doing it until each task is super simple. And WRITE THINGS DOWN!!! If you don’t write the steps down, you have to keep them all in your working memory, and that’s how you get overwhelmed and start procrastinating.
[^definition]: Working Memory Definition
[^source]: Psychology Today
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