When You Just Can't

Procrastination versus Motivation

Sometimes, you just can’t.

Period.

That’s it.

I mean it.

As adults with ADD, we tend to be an introspective lot. It starts with questions like, “What’s wrong with me,” or “Why can’t I just get it together,” and moves forward (hopefully) through a vast journey of other questions until someone, somewhere, blurts out (grin) the words, “Maybe it’s ADD.”

Along the way, a lot of other considerations get made and a lot of other theories are formed. Some of the ideas suggested are pleasant fictions, some are unpleasant realities, and there are many others in between. The thing is, that by the time you actually get diagnosed with ADHD you already have a barrel full of other things that could, should, or would be issues that you do or do not have to deal with. This vat of knowledge can overwhelm other factors that might be at play.

When you CAN’T get going on something, I mean really cannot get going, there are a lot of things to choose from.

Off the bat, you could go with depression and its coincident apathy.

You could go with procrastination.

You could also go with the old standby and blame distraction.

That’s Not It

However, with all of that ammo born of introspection, it is important to fully understand the situation before picking your metaphorical bullet and loading it up into your mental firing chamber.

Sometimes, just sometimes, it isn’t ANYTHING.

Depression is not a one day thing, nor is one day worth of hard core apathy a symptom of depression.

Procrastination is defined by the putting off of a task in order to do something else marginally more enjoyable. Not doing anything isn’t procrastination per se.

And distraction requires that something else be occupying your focus. Just staring at the computer screen and rolling your eyes at the thought of doing ANYTHING at all isn’t ADD. It isn’t depression. It isn’t distraction. It’s nothing. Nothing at all. And, it sucks.

When that happens there really isn’t anything you can do about it other than unlearn everything that you have learned since being diagnosed with ADD and go back to what you used to try and do before you knew you had ADHD. Just put your head down and try and plow ahead until that lack of motivation goes away.

As an adult who has grown more savvy in the ways of managing ADD, this can be trying. For years, just putting your head down and trying harder was a one-way ticket to Failsville. It accomplished nothing more than draining your brain of willpower and happiness. That makes trying it again in these situations tough to take. But, there it is.

A quick reality check that you already knew courtesy of my own Day of Blah. I’m a writer and I didn’t feel like writing. I just couldn’t make myself write a very easy, very due, assignment, so I wrote this. I don’t feel any better about it, but I’ve already been writing now, my fingers are already moving, and I’m already forming the intro paragraph in my mind. In other words, I didn’t exactly put my head down and write on the assingment, but I put my head down and wrote.

And it worked.

If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.