Sorry for the long post
I was diagnosed when I was 2nd or 3rd grade, I don’t really remember. I never struggled too much when I was in school, I struggled a lot with getting things turned in on time but I was lucky enough to have pretty understanding teachers so I always had decent enough grades. I’ve always been good at accomplishing and finishing things when other people were involved and wanting me to complete those tasks, like in a school or work environment where there’s people above me that expect something from me.
But now I’m 20 years old, I’m out of school, and have been out of a job for months. I’ve been trying to work on my own projects, mostly a YouTube channel and a website, some things like that, and along side some general house work tasks (laundry, emptying my cats litter box, etc) that’s pretty much all my responsibility at the moment while I’m looking for a job. Sometimes I have moments where I really “lock in” and get a lot done, and even outside of that I tend to get by well enough, but it usually comes with really strong and prevalent moments of feeling like “I’m not doing enough” or “this task I’m doing isn’t productive enough”, and I just hate myself for having any moment where I’m not 100% busy or dedicated to something.
I’ve tried a lot of different methods, making task lists so that I can see everything and make sure it gets done, I’ve spent a lot of time journaling and organizing my thoughts in obsidian which I think has helped me visualize some things better and see my priorities, and even asking other people to check in on me so I can have some kind of person relying on me to complete these tasks like I did in work and school situations, but it all usually comes down to me not holding myself accountable and being too lenient with myself, which is a hard thing to correct. I’ll eventually ignore my task list or not even add anything to it and things like that. I’ve also found my friends or whoever I ask to check on me to be unreliable and inconsistent so that doesn’t work.
I feel like I just live a constant cycle of starting things and abandoning them because I struggle so much with getting things done and staying dedicated. I guess I was just wondering if anyone else could relate to this struggle, and this way I’m feeling, and if anyone has any good suggestions or methods that have helped them.
It’s very common to want to quit something once the charm of learning something new fades into the chore of repetitive practice. Even more so with ADHD.
I need to subdivide to do anything complex, and sometimes I leverage that skill for motivation. I break down the task into whatever size pieces are small enough for me to take the next step. Sometimes my entire first step is ‘stand up.’