I Know Myself, That Won't Work For Me
Productivity for Adults with ADHD is Tough!
There is a seemingly impossible curse for a struggling ADHDer to get on the other end of.
Many of us are cursed with a lifetime of productivity solutions and fixes that didn’t work. And because of that curse, our ADHD superpower is in fortune telling how any new fix won’t work.
“I know myself, that won’t work for me” is a common phrase.
Our brain will grab aspects of any new system and point directly to how that new system will fail.
“I won’t do it.” or “I know myself, it might work for a week and then I’ll forget.” or “I’ll just refuse to do it.’
In this scenario, what may end up happening is that we wait for something to spark us differently. Something to hit us in a new way that we can’t combat because it’s so new, so novel, that we can’t see it failing. Something that will put us into a fresh mindset that will motivate us. But what often happens to an ADHDer who attempts a new solution without properly managing their ADHD is that after a single hiccup the system becomes a failure, or auto-pilot kicks on and we simply forget we have a new system. That sucks.
Wouldn’t it be great to be able to do stuff without succumbing to the curse? What if we approach this productivity situation differently?
I like to view productivity solutions as simply as possible: we have shit we want to do, so how do we do that shit?
The fastest way to do shit, in my experience, is to utilize ‘other people’. But that blows to think about, right? Makes us feel weak? We’d prefer a mindset that’s all sparky and full of motivation, or an ability to hold ourselves accountable.
Perhaps while we are reading the books on how to do shit on our own, while we are journaling about how to do shit on our own, while we are having mindset conversations with ourselves in the mirror to become a person that can be accountable to themselves, and do shit on our own…maybe while that is going on, we utilize ‘other people’ for immediate results.
Here’s how utilizing other people looks
Disclaimer in the age of AI: your AI chatbot does not count as ‘other people’. It can do a lot, except it cannot hold you accountable, because letting down your AI chatbot is just letting yourself down. And we are seasoned pros at letting ourselves down. Other people means other human people.
Let’s say you are in a group of 3 other people, and all of you suck at doing certain things. One of you can’t do the laundry, one of you can’t apply for jobs, one of you can’t exercise, and one of you can’t reach out to podcasts to apply to be a guest. I’ve been all of these things at various points in my life, so they are easy examples.
On your own, for whatever reason (let’s call it ADHD), you aren’t doing your thing. What you are probably doing, however, is beating yourself up every day for being a lazy turd who should be able to do this technically easy thing. Just do the laundry! Just send out a resume! Just work out! Just send an email! Easy to say…impossible to do.
But let’s say you’re using the power of ‘other people’ now! So you all come together and declare to each other the thing you are going to do today. You are all vulnerable and willing to share because you all suck at easy things. Nobody is going to judge. That helps, monumentally!
Why does this work? Because of some extra components.
You have all agreed to meet again tomorrow. You’ve now created a deadline and added an element of urgency which helps!
You have all agreed to share if you did or did not do your thing. You’ve now created the potential pleasure point of sharing a success or a pain point to confessing NOT doing the thing. This can help!
You’ve created a rule that if you don’t do the thing, you have to talk about it…beyond ‘I suck’. Now, you’ve created opportunities to reflect, and troubleshoot. When you have ‘other people’, it’s easier to get ideas and answers during troubleshooting.
Let’s pretend this played out: tomorrow comes and you did the thing! Congrats! It not only feels good to do the thing, but it also feels amazing to be congratulated, and it feels awesome to support other people who are doing/not doing their thing. The day after tomorrow, when you don’t do the thing because you got cocky, you can immediately troubleshoot that, and iterate accordingly.
What’s the difference between this and going it alone?
With ‘other people’, if you don’t do the thing today, you still show up tomorrow (per the group arrangement) and you make another go of it tomorrow. You make a go of it daily and over time you develop confidence in yourself, you develop strategies for overcoming a multitude of productivity hurdles, and you get really good at helping others.
When you go it alone, you wait for the motivation to strike, which could take forever. That waiting gives your brain plenty of opportunity to tell you what a lazy bones you are and that feels awful. Finally, motivation strikes and you go after the thing. When it inevitably doesn’t work one day, you give up because “i know myself, and this clearly doesn’t work for me” or whatever reason we come up with…and we quit for an indefinite amount of time until we can read a new book, and/or start the cycle of hunting for a spark again.
My question to you
Who can you get with, in a non-judgmental and shame-free way, to support each other and be accountability partners to each other? Seek out your ‘other people’ and watch how your productivity improves!
Summary for ya:
Other people can make the road to being productive with ADHD fast. Going it alone can take forever, if not longer. Find your ‘other people.’ And if you don’t want to put in the work to find your ‘other people’, and you have $1.64* a day extra, then get an ADHDBB membership and we’ll be your group. We are a membership built on productivity for adults with ADHD…we are “doing the thing” every day or learning how to get over the hurdle that prevented it.
Here’s the link to learn more about ADHDBB
*$1.64 a day price is good as of 11/12/2025 - prices change sometimes so no guarantees if you are reading this in 2026+ and it’s different!