From super productive to procrasti-faffing

Something I hear ADHDers talking about a lot is how frustrating they find their own inconsistency. How one day, or week, they’re focused, productive, they’re ticking things off, making great progress, firing on all cylinders, getting things done.

But then the next day, seemingly out of the blue, they’re completely unfocused, they don’t know what to do next, can’t summon the energy or motivation or brain power to do any of the things they were doing and generally just faff around not getting anywhere.

This makes them feel frustrated and annoyed with themselves because why can’t they be like they were yesterday?! They’re not meeting their expectations for themselves and that drives them bananas.

I heard a phrase a long time ago that has stuck with me:

The tension between your expectation and your experience is stress.

So, when you expect yourself to make progress on a piece of work or tick off tasks on your to do list but your experience is a lack of energy, motivation and progress, you feel stressed.

This is hard for anyone to feel but for an ADHDer it feeds into the ingrained story that you can’t rely on yourself, or be relied upon, because of your inconsistency. Because you swing from super productive to barely functioning. Because you don’t know what mood you’re going to be in and what you will or won’t be able to do from one day to the next so how can anyone else? Because you can’t trust yourself to do what you or anyone else wants or needs you to do.

Think about it for a moment, where does this expectation come from? Expectations don’t just appear from nowhere, they’re created from our learnings and interactions with the people and the world around us. So why do you expect yourself to function in the same way, day after day after day? How was this expectation formed?

Our society is built on the expectation and the assumption that you are able to and you will turn up and do the same, be the same, every day. From a few years old, for the majority of the week, you’re expected to turn up at school at the same time, pay attention in lessons all day long, go home at the same time and do homework. When you move into the workplace you’re expected to turn up day after day and work at a consistent high level for all the hours you’re paid.

This is a patriarchal, capitalist society which expects you to have the same amount of energy, for your mood to be the same day after day after day so that you can keep being productive, keep contributing, keep the wheels turning. A society that vilifies rest. This expectation is even harder to meet for women because we’re biologically built with a monthly cycle not a 24hour cycle.

In fact, there are far too many expectations placed on how women should behave, speak, sound, look, think and feel to get into here but suffice to say that they’ve informed our thoughts and feelings about ourselves too.

What we’ve been taught is that if you aren’t consistent, if your energy and mood fluctuate that is not a good thing. To divert from the expected – which has been labelled the norm – is to be different, to be lacking. This erraticism must therefore mean that you are unreliable, irresponsible, untrustworthy, lazy, careless, disordered, you’re not pulling your weight or doing your fair share.

This message is drilled in to us from such an early age we don’t even know we’ve taken it on. But it shows in the expectations we have for ourselves.

Productivity = good, inconsistency = bad.

Imagine for a moment that you weren’t given this message, that you weren’t conditioned to see productivity and consistency as good and fluctuations in energy, focus and productivity as bad. Imagine that you hadn’t been subtly and insidiously taught that your brain wiring is faulty because you find it impossible to be ever productive and consistent.

Now, without that messaging, how would you view yourself when one day you have a tonne of energy, are hyper focused and get lots done and the next day you don’t have the same motivation to continue the tasks? Without that conditioning would you berate yourself for not being in the mood to produce at the same level as the day before? Would you see this as yet another example of you failing?

Or, could you acknowledge that each day is different, how you feel and what you want or feel able to do each day can be different? Could you accept that you’re a human whose energy levels change and whose interest in a task changes?

Could you recognise that this says nothing about who you are as a person, there is no moral judgement to be made and that this change is neither good nor bad but just is? Could you trust that this ebb and flow is your natural rhythm, that it will change once again and that you can support yourself in a variety of ways to do what it is you want and need in your own way?

I get the frustration, I really do, AND I know that it is due in no small part to the expectational beliefs we have been given by our capitalist, patriarchal society which has been designed with one way of thinking, feeling and behaving in mind.

Continuing to be angry with yourself, continuing to verbally beat yourself up for not being enough, continuing to dwell in the annoyance won’t flick a focus switch. What it will do is keep you stuck in the frustration with added self-blame and shame.

Instead, consider my formula for dealing with this frustration:

• Understand that you are a unique human being who, like millions of others, doesn’t fit the teeny tiny endlessly productive box society has tried to squash you into.
• Accept that your energy, your focus, your productivity are not going to be consistent day in, day out, not because you’re faulty or failing but because you’re human.
• Care for yourself the way society has failed to demonstrate by giving yourself self-compassion for feeling this frustration, by regulating your nervous system which has been activated by all these thoughts and feelings, and by feeding your creativity and your dopamine through activities that interest, reward, nourish and restore you.

How do you talk to and treat yourself when your productivity changes from one day to the next? Can you see where the expectations for yourself were formed? If you’d like to share in the comments below I’d love to chat more about this.