For the last few days I’ve been home on my own for the first time for a couple days. Normally I’m used to having someone (mostly my parents) tell me what to do, but since I don’t really have that right now I’m basically unable to do anything. I have a checklist of things I need to get done, but haven’t even managed to really look at that for the last three or so days. I’m either just sitting or lying around doing nothing or distracting myself using anything interesting like my computer or reading books. Does anyone have ideas what I could do to better focus on the important tasks I have? It kind of feels like a blockade of some sorts that prevents me from doing the tasks I don’t want to do but are important.
If there’s any other more active community on this topic please tell me.
First off, that’s fine. You aren’t a bad or lazy person for this. Sometimes you just need a day. Sometimes more. Welcome to ADHD.
You probably feel the full weight of that list so pick ONE thing and make it your only goal. Forget about the rest. Don’t worry about triage yet, pick whatever you think you’re most likely to actually accomplish.
So now you wake up in the morning and you’ve got a single goal for your next 16 hours. You probably have something you’d rather be doing…make that reward. Clean the dishes and you can game for the rest of the day.
That’s it! You can stop there if you want! But it kinda feels good to accomplish something, yeah? So maybe you do one more thing. Or maybe you just game for the rest of the day. That’s fine, too. You already hit the mark. And now you know you can do it so next time that task won’t add so much dread to the pile.
A silly thing I do when I’m having executive dysfunction is to mentally convert the tasks into a dozen trivial “steps” and narrate it to my dog. “Step 1, bring the bucket to the tub! Step 2, fill it with water! Step 3, add some soap! Yeah! Only 10 steps to go until the floor is clean!”