ADHD Procrastination And Tips To Overcome It

Procrastination, defined as the voluntary yet irrational delay of intended tasks and actions despite awareness of likely negative outcomes, is arguably the most common complaint among adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Research suggests that up to 95% of adults with ADHD chronically struggle with completing tasks and responsibilities in a timely way, which significantly impairs occupational, academic, financial, and interpersonal functioning.

The high prevalence of procrastination signs among the ADHD population likely stems from the underlying neurological deficits in executive functioning skills such as organization, prioritization, working memory, and impulse control.

This article explores various reasons for procrastination in adult ADHD as well as science-based strategies to improve productivity and functioning.

What is Procrastivity?

Procrastivity refers to the common phenomenon where an individual makes plans to engage in high-priority responsibilities needed to reach a goal but instead engages in less urgent activities when faced with following through.

For example:

Imran intended to wake up early on Saturday morning to work on his taxes ahead of the looming deadline. However, once Saturday morning arrives, he snoozes his alarm, then suddenly changes plans and decides to reorganize his closet and go grocery shopping instead.

These procrastivity tasks, although useful, divert time and mental resources away from more pressing tasks, also known as “self-defeating productivity.”

Adults with ADHD frequently fall into traps of procrastivity when they hit mental barriers with primary tasks. By examining what makes procrastivity endeavors feel more readily achievable despite being lower priorities, strategies can be generated to help pivot focus back to main tasks.

Facets That Make Procrastivity Appealing

There are several elements that seem to make putting off high-priority tasks for procrastivity tasks appealing:

Familiarity – Procrastivity tasks often involve well-practiced routines around manual, clerical activities like household chores rather than new learning. Higher priority tasks usually require more cognitively demanding mental focus. Familiarity signifies competence.

Clarity – Procrastivity tasks appear simpler with clearer cause-and-effect chains. There is less uncertainty about the time, effort, and process required to complete procrastivity tasks compared to more complex priorities.

Actionability – Because procrastivity tasks tend to involve repetitive physical actions, there is a clear sense of being able to take the next step that spurs engagement. Less familiar primary tasks often lack obvious starting points.

Progress – Incremental progress tends to be easier to visually track with procrastivity tasks, creating a sense of momentum. Primary tasks often involve delayed results after sustained effort.

Endpoints – Procrastivity tasks usually have a defined stopping point, allowing a sense of accomplishment and closure within a foreseeable timeline. Necessary priorities seem endless.

These facets make putting less important things first feel more within reach. Using these features as a blueprint when tackling necessary tasks can help pivot behavior.

ADHD and Chronic Procrastination

There are multiple overlapping ADHD difficulties that set the stage for chronic struggles with procrastination. The most commonly cited reasons include:

Executive Dysfunction

• Poor organization make it hard to order steps needed to begin complex, multi-layered tasks
• Impaired working memory makes it hard to hold on to and sequence steps to follow through after starting
• Weak mental flexibility frequently derails forward momentum when inevitable obstacles arise
• Poor regulation of attention makes it hard to screen out digital and environmental disturbances.

Emotional Dysregulation

• Amotivation and hesitation to engage in tedious tasks due to learned feelings of frustration, anxiety, and uncertainty about one’s abilities
• Discomfort with mental strain and sustained expenditure of effort leads to prematurely abandoning duties
• Fears of failure or imperfection due to past difficulties establish an avoidance pattern with similar tasks

Impulsiveness

• Acting on urges for instant gratification leads to frequent derailment of work routines to pursue more pleasurable escapes
• Difficulties with regulating emotions or modulating arousal levels often facilitates rash re-directions

These ADHD deficits typically do not resolve fully with age; in fact, research indicates executive functioning impairments actually expand through the transition into adulthood.

Young adults report dramatic struggles when adolescents’ external supports around time and priorities fall away in college or independent living.

Impact on Functioning

When left unaddressed, chronic procrastination can snowball, creating cumulative problems across major domains of functioning. Common problematic outcomes include:

• Work/Career: Lateness, missed deadlines, unfinished projects, and perceivable laziness hamper job stability, promotion prospects, employability, and financial stability when individuals get fired or quit roles.
• Academics: Incomplete assignments and lack of study routines frequently cause failing grades, suspended financial aid, academic probation, and increased student loan burdens if forced to repeat failed courses. Dropping out may occur.
• Finances: Fines and fees accumulate from late credit card/loan payments, missed income tax deadlines or unfiled paperwork around insurance claims or other administrative duties. Quickly spiraling debt is common.
• Relationships: Friends and family members perceive the person as unreliable due to forgotten obligations, broken promises, missed events, or backing out of plans at the last minute due to incomplete tasks. Resentment and distrust build in relationships.
• Mental Health: Repeated failure experiences generate intense feelings of depression, anxiety, shame, self-loathing, low confidence, and despair. Burnouts can also occur.
• Physical Health: Physical self-care routines like doctor appointments, taking medication consistently, exercise routines, and healthy eating fall by the wayside when mental resources focus solely on urgent matters. Sleep suffers without routines.

In summation, chronic procrastination for those with ADHD has deleterious downstream effects that cascade across nearly all major life areas, severely reducing overall wellness and quality of life.

Methods to Overcome ADHD Procrastination

Establishing structure around how time and priorities are managed is essential to mitigate chronic procrastination. However, due to the neurological basis of executive functioning deficits in ADHD, purely behavioral interventions are rarely sustainable.

Combining cognitive and emotional regulation skills with external compensations typically has the best outcomes.

Environmental Supports

Because adults with ADHD often have limited introspective awareness around time passing and how on or off task they are, external sound, visual, and tactile cues are vital prompts to pivot focus. Options include:

• Smartphone alarms/alerts for scheduling start times, reminders of next steps, intervals for brief stretch breaks, notifications to transition between tasks and log-off times
• Visual timers showing elapsed time dedicated to a task helps gauge progress and recalibrate lagging energy. Useful for work blocks and breaks.
• White noise/music playlists helps narrow external distractions during focus times
• Wall calendars/planners, white boards, post its marked with dated to-do lists etc. all make responsibilities tangible and cued

If you work at a desk, you could put post-it notes of tasks you need to do around your monitor screen. This way, they are always in your line of sight, and you can physically remove the post-it note once the task has been completed.

Light Physical Anchors

Simple physical sensations can serve as useful anchors indicating needing to initiate a new task or shift back to work mode. For example:

• Moving to a different chair or location dedicated for work/study routines
• Putting on noise cancelling headphones or other wearable item worn just for work mode
• Sipping from a distinctive mug, water bottle or snacking from a dedicated plate reserved just for getting tasks done

Accountability Partners

Connecting with others helps to galvanize follow-through on difficult tasks. Useful approaches involve:

• Study groups to maintain motivation for academic routines
• Body doubling – have friends or even paid professionals work alongside, in person or virtually for complex projects
• Working from communal office spaces or libraries heightens social pressures to avoid non-work related internet temptations
• Sharing work calendars allows others to check on dynamic progress and provide encouragement

Managing Cognitive and Emotional Barriers

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy techniques could equip individuals with ways to dismantle mental roadblocks both before and as they arise:

Prepare for Common Rationalizations

• Predict typical self-talk patterns that enable procrastination: “I work best under pressure” or “The task is too boring.”

Address Perfectionism

• Counter notions that conditions must be “perfectly comfortable” to start through cost/benefit analyses of delays

Reframe Tasks as Accomplishable

• Break overwhelming duties down into subtasks framed as experiments lasting concentrated bits of time – “I will work solely on this report for just 20 minutes.”

Set Process Goals Over Outcome Goals

• Define highly specific next steps rather than preoccupying with a final product. Track small units of engagement. For example, instead of saying, “I want to finish my project,” reframe this to say, “I will aim to complete 1 hour of research for my project today.”

Allow Flexibility with Task Routines

• Permit shifting between subtask items to harness bursts of motivation across lower priority items when energy lulls. For example, make a list of tasks you want to do, then complete the easiest ones first to get the ball of motivation rolling.

Anticipate Emotional Triggers

• Note bodily cues, self-talk patterns, and situations that spur frustration, uncertainty, and the urge to escape difficult aspects of priority tasks.

Apply Emotion Regulation Tactics

• When negative sensations arise, use tactical breathing, mindfulness practices, taking structured pauses to self-soothe before continuing OR strategic avoidance by switching to lower stakes aspects of responsibilities.

Self-Compassion Over Self-Criticism

When setbacks occur, frame lapses matter-of-factly as information gaining about personal productively patterns rather than evidence of personal inadequacy. Analyze context clues about barriers that arose and problem-solve adjustments. Each brief re-start back to duties after distraction builds self-regulatory strength.

ADHD coach Caren Magill encourages us to reflect on why exactly we want to complete certain tasks:

“Forcing yourself to do things is something we all have to do in life to some degree, but there’s a lot of things we force ourselves to do that are unnecessary or that we just think other people want us to do or that we think we should do to be a good person and it’s really good to question those things.”

“How badly do you really want this thing?… If you were to just put it down and walk away, how would that make you feel inside? Does that give you a little sense of freedom, or does it give you a sense of self-betrayal?”

Caren Magill, ADHD Coach

Weekly rhythms

One of the key strategies that Karen McGill recommends for improving productivity and overcoming procrastination is establishing a weekly rhythm or routine.

This involves assigning specific tasks or activities to each day of the week, creating a consistent structure that reduces decision fatigue and cognitive load.

Implementing a Weekly Routine:

1. Identify your core tasks or responsibilities: Make a list of the essential tasks you need to accomplish each week, such as content creation, meetings, errands, or self-care activities.
2. Assign tasks to specific days: Allocate each task to a particular day of the week based on your energy levels, preferences, and external deadlines. For example, you might dedicate Mondays to content creation, Tuesdays to meetings, and Wednesdays to administrative tasks.
3. Be consistent: Stick to your assigned tasks each day, allowing them to become a habit over time. Consistency is key to reducing the mental effort required to initiate and complete tasks.
4. Allow for flexibility: While maintaining a consistent routine, be open to making adjustments as needed based on changing priorities or unforeseen circumstances.

By implementing a weekly rhythm or routine, individuals with ADHD can create an external structure that supports their productivity, reduces cognitive load, and helps them progress towards their goals more consistently.

References

Altgassen, M., Scheres, A., & Edel, M. A. (2019). Prospective memory (partially) mediates the link between ADHD symptoms and procrastination. ADHD Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorders, 11, 59-71. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12402-018-0273-x

Bolden, J., & Fillauer, J. P. (2020). “Tomorrow is the busiest day of the week”: Executive functions mediate the relation between procrastination and attention problems. Journal of American College Health, 68(8), 854-863. https://doi.org/10.1080/07448481.2019.1626399

Oguchi, M., Takahashi, T., Nitta, Y., & Kumano, H. (2021). The moderating effect of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder symptoms on the relationship between procrastination and internalizing symptoms in the general adult population. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 708579. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.708579

Ramsay, J. R. (2017). The relevance of cognitive distortions in the psychosocial treatment of adult ADHD. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 48(1), 62–69. https://doi.org/10.1037/pro0000101

Ramsay, J. R. (2020). Cognitive interventions in action: Common issues in cognitive behavior therapy for adult ADHD. In J. R. Ramsay, Rethinking adult ADHD: Helping clients turn intentions into actions (pp. 87–123). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000158-006