Understanding our ADHD Interest-based Wiring
And a lesson on situational variability
Most of us adults with ADHD know pretty much everything there is to know about ADHD. We’ve done all the research, read all the books, watched the main influencers on the social medias and the YouTuberoonis. We had our come to Jesus moment of grief and relief as we were saddened by what we could’ve done if we only knew back then…and we feel relief to finally have an answer that isn’t “I’m a lazy piece of shit.”
And yet….and yet! Even thought we know, many of us are still not getting shit done.
If that’s you, let me try and help real quick.
I did a webinar on this and you can get the replay here if you want a deeper dive into it all: How ADHDers Can Do Shitty Things
The main thing for us to understand is situational variability. AI does a good job of explaining it, so here ya go…thanks robots!
Situational variability is a factor that can cause performance inconsistencies, and can be influenced by a number of factors, including:
Interest: Whether a task is interesting or not
Strengths: Whether a situation plays to a person's strengths
Structure: Finding the right balance of structure and flexibility
Environment: Whether a person is in a positive or negative environment
In ADHD land, what this means to me is that I may be able to do a thing one day, and the next day I’m unable to do that exact same task.
Perhaps you’ve been told in your life “But I’ve seen you do this before! Just do what you did before!”
I developed a way to deal with this, and it’s with a simple graphic that explains the relationship between interest to ADHD tool requirements.
This chart shows that to the degree we are interested in a task is the degree to which we need assistance to get started. Notice how if they interest level is high, we don’t require help. This might even be considered hyperfocus where me might actually need help stopping!
And at the bottom, where there is literally no interest in the task, we need to throw the kitchen sink at the task with as many ADHD tools as possible.
So rather than looking at tasks as “doable” or “not doable”, we have to look at who we are in the moment. Doing the dishes may require many tools, like a timer, easy point of entry, body doubling…and another day we might magically be in the mood and we require no tools.
The big takeaway from this, for me, is in being cool with myself about it. Being ok with needing a “tool” for a remedial task that is easy to do. That isn’t always the easiest thing to do. But over the years, the more I’ve accepted needing ADHD specific tools, my life has gotten so much more “doable!”
What are your UGH tasks? (Mine is anything cleaning related! Dishes are sucktastic!)