For individuals with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), feeling motivated can be a real problem. If you have ADHD, you’ve likely been painted with the L-word- “LAZY.” Or you may know someone who struggles with ADHD. Perhaps you have thought or shared with them just how lazy they are. What if it is something else and not lazy at all? What if ADHDers weren’t painted with the broad-stroked brush of Lazy? What if motivation could be accessed at will?

It’s a new year! A clean slate. January kickstarted New Year’s resolutions, fresh starts, big ambitions, and new lofty goals. Whohoo! Renewed interest! It’s seemingly baked into the human experience: ring in the new year equals getting started with everything you had put off or merely thought about but didn’t do last year. Many jump into a new regimen for eating healthier, exercising more, or taking the initiative to pursue a significant career goal. Others take on a more personal reboot with words of the year or well-laid-out plans for achievement. Excitement surrounds the fresh slate. ADHD brains crave interest. “Whoo-hoo! This will be the year…” Until it’s not.

As the month rolls on, excitement and interest may wane. The daily grind becomes routine, and the ADHD brain loses the spark that January 1 offered.

You may not realize how much your brain is doing to stay the course. Your brain’s executive functioning skills are crucial in keeping you on track. If you want to eat healthier, you avoid temptations with self-regulation and impulse control. If you exercise more, you lean into planning, effort, and activation. Career goals require motivation and staying power. If you are seeking “doing,” you are using executive function.

Motivation is intricately connected to executive functioning, influencing cognitive process initiation, maintenance, and adaptation. Strong motivation can enhance an individual’s ability to set and pursue goals, manage working memory effectively, exhibit cognitive flexibility, and exercise inhibitory control, all contributing to efficient executive functioning.

But what can you do when motivation falls flat?

“If I could just get motivated, I wouldn’t be so behind.”

Have you felt like this before? Perhaps it’s something you mutter regularly. You may even believe you are lazy.

Let’s challenge this thought. Are you truly lazy? Yes, it is hard to get started. Likely, you routinely lean into urgency to kickstart yourself. You are leaning into the learned habit of procrastination. Procrastination feeds a chemical reaction that kicks you into gear when interest does not. You may even believe this strategy works for you. Likely, you get a lot of sh^t done! I hate to rain on your parade, so I will ask you.

Do you like living this way? Do you want to spend the rest of your life putting things off until the nth second with the panicked feeling in your stomach, a flood of energy, the rush pushing you through? Do you want to be sleep deprived, amped on caffeine, at a heightened state, flustered, feeling stressed, leaning solely on the mentality of push come to shove?

I know, silly question. When put this way, of course, you are not jumping up and down with your hand in the air shouting, “Pick me! Pick me! That’s how I want to do life.” This sounds miserable.

Motivation is not something you can wait to have. How many people are jumping at the chance to fold laundry or make coffee? The funny thing is that I hate doing these two mundane tasks. And I get to do them on the daily. Lucky me!

So, what’s the workaround?