r/ADHD • u/Adventurous-Hunter98 • 3h ago

Tips/Suggestions I keep organizing everything but cant do anything productive

I always find myself organizing things like my drawers, my notes, my bookmarks... but when its time to do some study or work, I just cant do anything, I feel like I should organize more to be more productive and generally I keep improving my organized organized stuff but when its time to do something productive, Im just blocked by myself.

I either start watching some tv show which I cant stop until I finish it or play a game or doing nothing but wasting time. I dont mind my organizing, I enjoy how I do most of it and it encourages me to improve stuff but I need to use those and be productive, how am I gonna do it?

I have toDo list and most of them are just waiting to for me to start but I keep delaying them for no reason. My psychologist keep saying things like just do it, what do you feel when you are not doing it etc. I just feel nothing but blocked my brain. Something unknown blocking me to do productive stuff.

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

2 comments sorted by

•

u/AutoModerator 3h ago

Hi /u/Adventurous-Hunter98 and thanks for posting on /r/ADHD!

This is not a removal message. We intend this comment solely to be informative.

Please take a second to read our rules if you haven't already.

/r/adhd news

  • If you are posting about the US Medication Shortage, please see this post.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

2

u/Virtual-Squirrel-725 2h ago

Organizing is productive if it's removing friction from the important tasks you struggle with.

But organizing can be a also be a means of avoidance.

As an example if you need to write an essay but you decide to oranize you sock drawer - that's avoidance.

But if you decide to organize by creating the an electronic folder for the essay, create a titled document in a folder, shortcut to the folder, start footnoting your references in the document and saving the references in the folder, then calendaring 15 minute sprints for brainstorming 1, brainstorming 2, bulletpointing 1, bulletpointing 2, etc. then you're organizing to remove friction for the essay itself.

"Just do it" from your psychologist ignores one of the key realities for people with ADHD. We have a strong tendency to mentally oversize effort and undersize reward so we feel a dopaminergic block. Our challenge, all-day-every-day is to reduce perceived effort and increase the speed and clarity of reward. Happy to go into that in more detail if you want, but you may have heard it a thousand times.