Yeah, I think challenge can be a bit motivator for adhd folks. Once I’ve completed the main part of something, I find it really hard to care about the details, to the extent that the unfinished parts sometimes spoil the bit I had completed.

I feel like it’s the dopamine of the chase is actually what’s motivating, and challenge is a version of that. I’ll get sucked into finding some obscure game and getting an emulator working to be able to play it and all the way I’m super engaged. Then I start playing this game I was so excited about and meh, don’t care.

Maybe you could think about ways to refocus that drive? A therapist told me once that adhd people don’t get satisfaction from completing things, but are excited about new things. So, instead of feeling proud of getting into college try and immediately find the new challenge (now I want to get a prostigious internship!) if you succeed at your fitness goals, maybe you can raise the stakes see if you can beat a friend or a record or something?

I got into and forced my way through a degree in EE just to prove I could as a foreign student working mother. Dropped out after half the time in part due to burnout, in part due to loss of motivation.

Learned a million different things (literally from basket weaving to drone racing) all stored away or suffering from lack of time after figuring out how to do them well. These days I’m between pretty decent and almost hopeless at everything. Want a mediocre wooden bed? A fairly good bathroom with mosaic art? A vegetable garden? A small computer program?

I sometimes wonder what this ADHD thing is good for, for sure it must have some purpose? It’s like I’m waiting for the big conclusion of something that connects all the things I have been picking up throughout the years.

I totally feel this.

So many videogames I enjoyed just ended before last boss

Decent job with lots of down time, and I desperately want to want to learn more things and give myself potential for career advancement and some job flexibility. Like I really want to be able to do it, but I just can’t bring myself to start because I don’t need to, even though I like learning new things.

Even when I complete a home project, or accomplish a life goal, it’s just kind of… Meh? Well that’s done I guess?

There’s also a constant battle of feeling anxious in most social settings, but feeling guilty/lonely without them. Almost like juggling two things you don’t particularly like, trying to find the balance where you’re least mentally uncomfortable.

It’s great having videogames, but you can only do something so much before everything starts to feel formulaic and unfulfilling.

There is always a feeling or sensation that I should/could be doing something else unless I’m hyper fixated on something

Yeah that sounds familiar. I recently did A “couch-to-5k” jogging…challenge…thing. Anyway, now I’m like, do I just keep jogging? Feels anticlimactic. I thinking checking the box off my todos than I did at the finish line lol.

I’m curious: do you pretend to be excited?

I kind of treated it like playing a sport – you take part in the Magic Circle – pretending to care about the outcome to increase everyone’s enjoyment, while knowing it’s just a game. Maybe that’s what being “a good sport” means…

I’m curious because I’ve been assuming that accomplishment isn’t so much a feeling as a performance. I do sometimes get a feeling of intense relief, when I can stop doing something painful. All the better if I’m not stopping because I’ve “failed.”

I think that’s the feeling people are after but now I’m doubting myself.

There have been studies on motivation that have similarities to your descriptions. Basically, like you said, if we get a partial reward for a goal, we’re less likely to accomplish that goal.

The one I remember had ‘telling someone else your goal’ as the ‘partial reward’. At the end of a day, people who told someone their goal felt closer to accomplishing it, but less motivated to actually work on it. People who didn’t tell anyone worked on their goal longer, but also felt like ‘they still had a long way to go’.

I think the other part of it was what you said about not wanting to actually do X but prove to yourself that you COULD do X. Once I prove that I COULD… I’m done. The goal might not be what other people would consider ‘done’, but my ADHD brain doesn’t care. It got dopamine, and now we’re moving on to the next topic.

My way to motivate myself: Track it in a spreadsheet.
Make graphs with Excel (or whatever) to visualize it.

I tracked my push ups and pull ups to track my activity after my bike-commute. Also keeps me from not doing it.

I put together a shadowbox last year for a client and had fun making it. I wrote a calculator in Python to calculate where to make the cuts so I could just fold up the walls and documented every step so I don’t have to struggle next time I make something like that again. Now the clien has come back with the same exact project and I have zero interest in doing it despite making everything dead simple. It was an unusual project for the shop I work at, very custom, and I established my self as the guy that does the weird custom projects. Now I am the guy doing the weird custom projects. :(

Maybe you need a set of rolling goals to achieve, and when you’re halfway done you add more.

That’ll keep some variety in your habits while still keeping you motivated and on task.

No, no, totally relatable. When I finished/passed my dissertation defense (zoom meeting due to Covid), I closed my laptop, put my stuff away, and thought, _ that was it?_ Zero sense of accomplishment. I had lost interest in the whole thing a year or two earlier and this was just an exercise in completion. I don’t think you’re alone with this pattern or feeling in the least.

Pretty much. I got the minimum (IT) cert requirements for my job and… can’t bring myself to actually knuckle down and study more advanced things. I really want/need to learn powershell but I just… can’t. I know enough to dabble and poke at things but that’s it.

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This is exactly how it works with me too. What has helped is caring less about completion and just going with the flow if I get bored and just find something new.