Motivation for bored people

I used to hate the term executive dysfunction. In addition to it feeling, mildly, like a personal attack, its connotations just didn't seem right to me:

Ew, gross. Get a new friend.

But as you look at the list, you realize how much executive dysfunction is defined by how the world has decided to run.

For instance, what, praytell, is a reasonable amount of impulsivity and emotion?

Also, aren't most deadlines just made up? So is money. Change my mind. The only real deadline is in the name.

And c'mon—which information are we talking about recalling? What I had planned last night to do today? Sure, I'll give you that. Feeding the cat? Let's just say it's good he can meow. But you better fucking believe I will know that dentist's address from Finding Nemo until the day I deadline.

I think, in other words, to speak only of executive dysfunction is to ignore the strengths of so many incredible people.

Executive superfunctions

So, here are some things I've noticed about myself over the years that, just from making so many fellow weirdo friends, seem to echo some of the Neurodiverse Experience™.

(Please, take these as anecdotes. My only qualifications as a psychologist come from years of trying to win at competitive therapy.)

Creativity: So, so, so often the lack of motivation I feel comes down to pervasive boredom. And to get around that boredom, I venture to places that most people never need to journey to. This gets labeled as "getting distracted" or sinking time into something that doesn't matter. That is, until we go far enough—then it's lauded as creative, out of the box thinking. For me, it's just breathing.

Loose connections: Maybe due to the above, my brain is much more likely to link seemingly disparate phenomena to create meaning. I tend to bring up things in conversations that others see as non-sequiturs, until I can reason my way back to the origin (which is the hard part), at which point I'm praised for finding a new approach to solve something.

Tendency toward action: Sure, choice paralysis is a blog in it of itself, and I often get stuck in indecision. But it tends to be about whether I should do the dishes or wipe the toilet first. And while that can be its own cute mental health crisis, when I'm faced with actual stakes—say, a bunch of people at work debating over the introduction of an article—I'm able to synthesize the information around me extremely quickly and come to a decision that folks are happy with. And usually, I've already implemented it by the time I'm asked to.

Hyperfocus and root-cause analysis: When I do get focused on a problem, I begin to approach it from all sides—I have this ability to analyze the fuck out of something, to tear it up if need be. My sister calls it "the busy big picture"—that state of flow where you see all the puzzle pieces of an entire system and can move them around without losing the photo on the cover.

Improvisational strength: I'm best when I'm in a brand new situation, making up answers on the fly, connecting things as fast as my brain can go. It's an adrenaline spike, sure, but it's also what I feel my brain is built for. Whatever the visible thing is in front of me, I'm ready for it. Unless it's a test of memory.

Ethical reasoning: Neurodiverse people go existential fast. When you physically don't derive pleasure from most tasks, you have to figure out why you're doing any given thing. I find a lot of my neurodiverse friends to be extremely conscious of the ins and outs of why they make the choices they do in their lives.

Anyway, just wanted to give a list of the flip side of the above. Hopefully, if you're reading this as a neurodiverse person, you already know these things about yourself and celebrate them as the rare strengths they are. And if you consider yourself neurotypical, think about how your strengths can complement neurodiversity to make better outcomes for... well, whatever it is you're doing.

But let's be real

Okay, so all neurodiverse people are gods who should be worshiped as...

Well, no. Honestly, it's a huge struggle trying to live in this world. I could sit and say, "It's so unfair that society is set up for neurotypical workflows and" blah blah blah—sure, that's true to an extent. But also, in any utopia, if I only had the strengths listed above, I wouldn't ever get a single task accomplished. Let's be real.

There's a need to compensate.

But really, there's one compensation that's far bigger than all the others:

Motivation (finally)

Remember the title of this post? Yeah, that was a thing I wrote once with the intention of getting there. But we had to find the reasons, remember? All caught up now.

Here's the deal: for me, motivation is a four-letter word: moti—

It's been elusive as fuck in my life, like one of those specks in your eye you keep trying to look at. So many of the other challenges of my neurodiverse brain—keeping things visible, keeping things livable, working a capitalism gig and cooking myself a food thing on the same day—I've somewhat mastered. But what about motivating to do what I want to accomplish in life?

I'm referring, of course, to that list of things kept closest to the chest, shared only sporadically and then not at all with others, as the fact that I've made seemingly zero progress becomes more and more sensitive a topic. It's all those things I say I would do if I just had time to do them, and then when I have gobs of time to do them, I decide to start a marathon of the Marvel franchise, even when I have a mop bucket full of ethical problems with Disney's treatment of so many characters who should be ✨so💫 queer but instead are obnoxiously sexless, always villains, a generally deceased by the end of Act III, which leads to the idea to make my own superhero comics, but to be less about superheros and more about the feeling of being ostracized for something that some people label as a superpower but really so often drives you to despair, and then that idea gets developed a little—mostly through the raw dopamine hit of shiny-new-wow—but then, like every other idea before it, begins to get put off or maybe theorized about or maybe, just maybe it gets to the point of this sentence, being: my list of unfinished accomplishments hurts my heart.

For what it's worth, I never finished the Marvel marathon either.

Motivation (because we needed to get back to it)

The cruelest part about motivation is how others talk about it as if it's a single entity that can be summoned at will. "Oh, you're struggling to get that task done? Sounds like you need to get more motivated." Bitch, my brain picks at dopamine like a cat pawing a lemon. What do you want? Good for you and your happy chemical slut brain, but some of us have to manufacture our own.

And yet, I do (somewhat) regularly get things done. Which means I (theoretically) had to have motivation to do them. So, let's break it down. When do I get tasks done? In no particular order:

So, where does that leave us?

Motivation (I know, I know, the popcorn ran out like three headings ago. It's like a fucking Marvel movie.)

Based on the above, these are the pieces of motivation for me—aka Maslow's hierarchy of get off the damn couch:

I've tried so many times to focus on the impact I'd have if I could just finish the thing, but without the self-assurance that I could complete the project, it would fall apart. I've certainly done my fair share of people pleasing to feel a semblance of closeness to those I love, but without autonomy and alignment, those actions weren't sustainable. And so on. The 4.0-student-to-adult-in-shambles pipeline is real.

So, I went back to basics. Recently (consciously, maybe a year ago), I started over, beginning the practice of intentional enjoyment: throwing out my task systems and slowing down enough to feel the pleasure of the work at hand. Letting myself off the hook and saying, basically, that a task didn't matter unless I could enjoy the process of doing it. (For most tasks except those really life-requiring tasks: eating, having money for food and housing, etc.)

This has been, quite literally, life-changing. Not worrying about the end goal all the time—putting aside the dread of failure—has also had the side effect of building back up my decimated self-confidence. It's helped me remember just how capable I am of taking on tasks and sucking the marrow out of my all-too-short life while I have it.

A note on resentment

This, by the way, has meant no end of giving up resentment. Anyone who finds themselves a part of a minority—no matter the type—goes through some period of resentment. Finding that the world and its people have not always been kind to them based on what they need. Discovering how much was taken from them due to the misunderstanding of who they really are.

Feeling, possibly, owed.

And there's nothing illegitimate about these feelings. In the cosmic karmic scale, you likely are owed. Each of us has had our joy stolen unjustly. Each of us, our hair grayed, our skin weathered.

But to lurk in that pain beyond the ebb and flow of your grief is to perpetuate suffering. To wait on someone—anyone—else to give you what you are owed is to sit and wait for your own death.

I'm never going to be a "pick yourself up by your bootstraps" monster, but if I can point you to a coupon for even one day off wallowing in your own self-pity, then get your scissors and start clipping.

Another note, but now on recognition

Notably, recognition did not make my motivation pieces list. I think the dream of recognition—I'll win this prize, I'll be celebrated by these people—speaks most to our craving for legitimacy in a world that so often values the exact wrong things.

The person who says, like I once did, "I want to win a Pulitzer," is probably saying, "I wish I could make a living and be respected by my peers just for doing that thing that is the most me." Which is a noble hope, but if your self is unacceptable for people whose recognition you crave... well, then. External affirmation is a beautiful, extremely finite trap.

Structure, or, An ode to the graveyard of failed todo lists

Enjoyment of tasks—really, of the tiny fragments of my life—makes me face, once again, my need for structure. My need to finish things. Not that I need to finish tasks to enjoy doing them or even to grow or be who I am—outside of my most basic needs, I've learned I can be fully me while starting a million projects and never truly finishing one. My life in flux has been, mostly, a happy one.

What I mean is that I've been craving completion to get closer to those I love and to give back to a world that has given me so much. I have that list of things, remember? The one that makes me feel mortal in the truest sense—like I'll run out of my time if I don't use it well.

And, well, bringing something to completion usually takes a plan.

So we come to, possibly, the most stereotyped of neurodiverse stereotypes: the life management system that will make all the pain go away.

Like many of you, I've tried a whole dump truck of ways to give myself more structure, but as with anything else, I don't often find myself motivated to keep that structure—as in, I don't truly believe I need it, or I forget so quickly how it really feels to be adrift in constellations of ideas, unchecked.

Don't get me wrong—the idea space is gorgeous. It's something my brain can flit into so, so easily, and the ideas there, when pursued, can birth stars. Call it AuDHD if you want, but I think everyone's on a whole lot of spectrums, and my sliders just happened to be tweaked toward daydreaming.

But I still want gravity, inertia, momentum. I want to find a way not just to get more done, but to be doing and completing things that bring me contentment, satisfaction, and purpose to do and complete. To have both the vastness of the constellations and the little details, like planets with breathable atmospheres.

A foolish hope (the best ones always are)

There is in me the belief that I can make a new task system that accommodates all these learnings and, somewhat magically, start knocking things off my list at a pace I've never been able to before.

And don't get me wrong—I am, in actuality, working on a new task system that accommodates all these things and will definitely make me my first million before the time I turn [checks math] 468. But that's for another blog.

What I really hope is that I'll stop putting so much weight on any one piece of motivation—structure included—and start taking a far more complete view of why I do or don't feel like doing something in the moment.

I hope, in other words, for a little more self-kindness. I wish it for you, too.

Be well,

Alice "P. Sherman" Alexandra, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney, Australia (no, I don’t know the goddamn zip)