Task Initiation ADHD - Why we struggle to get started

I talk a lot about following through on goals on this channel but I don't think I've ever addressed starting and task initiation which is a huge issue with adhders so if you have ever found yourself procrastinating on things that need to get done like taxes or things that you want to do like writing a book then this video is for you and if you're new here my name is Karen McGill I an ADHD coach and Creator and I'm here for the busy ambitious brains that want to get know all done but they don't know how

to initiate the task until today let's get into it now getting started on tasks can be hard for it de but not all the time in fact sometimes we are really good at getting started at things like new hobbies and passion projects and starting new careers like raise your hand if you're really good at starting some things but not others definitely me so why is that why is it that some things are hard to to get started while other things are so easy to get started in fact too easy that we do it over and

over again well the first thing is that when something's easy to get started it's probably because there's a lot of dopamine in that thing it's something that you want to do or that you're intrigued by so enter the rabbit hole you go and get started on something the problem is that your interest level starts high but then you get into it and you realize wow this is kind of boring and I don't really like doing this stuff and how badly I really want this anyways and then there goes your momentum so that's what happens when

something's really easy to start but difficult to maintain now contrast that with something that is not easy to start but is either something you have to do or that you really want to do let's start off with a thing that you have to do and let's use taxes as an example because unfortunately that's something that we all have to deal with why is it that we struggle so much to get started on taxes now I know every neurotypical person that ever watches this video is going to say but we all struggle getting started with taxes

I want you to understand that that struggle is a Continuum and some people struggle a little bit and some people struggle to the point of being absolutely Frozen in space and can't move those are the folks that I'm trying to help today so if you want to tell us all how ADC doesn't really exist and we all suffer with these things you can go ahead and send an email to we don't want to hear about it at gmail.com and I will make sure that nobody reads it moving on why is it that taxes are so

hard to start even though you have it on your to-do list and you just keep pushing it from day today today well the first thing is that if you're trying to start before it's urgent that in and of itself can be a roadblock for us because urgency tends to be a real motivator for us but energetically speaking that's not exactly a sustainable way to live so we have to build compensatory methods to make sure that we're not getting into the urgency Zone with every single thing that we have to start and we will use taxes

as the example for that but before we do the other reason I think that is really hard for us to initiate something like taxes when it's on our to-do list as a task because doing your taxes is not a task it's a project and a gnarly one at that because even if you Outsource your taxes which if this is something you struggle with I highly recommend you do that but even if you do Outsource it to an accountant or a bookkeeper there are still pieces of it that you have to do you have to Wrangle

all of your employment paperwork and all your tax deductions and your donations and all of these things from a myriad of different places and that in and of itself can be really overwhelming and if you hire an accountant to do it and the accountant wants to get on the phone and have a phone call and you hate being on the phone is just even worse so what do we do when we're in a situation where we have to do something like taxes but we don't know where to start well the first thing that I want

you to do is realize that taxes are not a task they're a project which requires planning and forethought Captain Obvious right but it's really important to start there because if you list do your taxes on your to-do list and expect yourself to complete said task in one sitting then you're already setting yourself up for failure instead what you need to do is think about all of the things that are involved in tax preparation and we know this because we do them every year whether it's always a chaotic experience or not when you think about it

there's a lot of different categories of paper work you've got to pull together one task might be setting up a basket or a physical place in your house where you can put all of the tax information that comes in by mail another task would be setting up a digital folder in your inbox for all of your digital receipts that come in for the following tax year so that number one you know where all of your material is coming in from and before that you might even need to have a task of what are all of

the things I need to collect in order to have all of my paperwork ready for myself or my accountant to actually do the taxes so those are three tasks we've already identified before you ever even get to the point of doing the taxes themselves the next thing you want to do is get really honest with yourself about whether or not this is something you can do year after year by yourself and that is always the first question I ask anyone when they're struggling with task initiation is this something you have to do or is it

something that you agreed to in a heated moment and now you regret doing and you need to gracefully back out or is it something you just think you need to do but you don't really need to do actually starting by asking yourself this question is a huge eyeopener because very often we are putting pressure on ourselves to do things that are not actually essential and even if we are postponing doing things that are not essential the cognitive load of having that thing in your brain I know I have to do this I know I have

to do this but you're not actually doing it and you don't even have to do it that's a cognitive load that you do not need so ask yourself when it comes to anything that you are delaying or having a hard time initiating is this necessary when it comes to your taxes yes sorry but you have to do your taxes or you have to hire somebody to do it the next question is is there a software I can use to help me is there a skilled person in my social group that I can use to help

me is there a mid-tier tax firm I can enlist to help me or do I have my own accountant that can do this for me and once you've answer that question for yourself the next step is probably very clear you either are getting in contact with somebody or you're planning the next step in your own tax preparation which let's say for example putting time in your calendar is another task and a very important one and to that end I highly recommend getting a body double which can be an online group it can be your best

friend who also hates doing taxes it can be your spouse actually that's a really bad idea you just need to make sure that you are anchored to the energy of other people around you and get those things done and to plan it out so that your taxes are actually completed and ready to mail prior to the actual deadline and one more tip that I would give you in that instance is to create either Rewards or penalties to ensure that you get it out when you want to a reward might be that you buy yourself an

iPad if you get your taxes out 2 days before it's due and a penalty might be that you have to donate a 100 bucks to a organization that you completely disagree with if you don't get your taxes done in time having those structures in place is fundamental and then when you get the taxes done the one last task on your list is to create a checklist of everything you need to do next year because sadly we have to go through this process every year and make sure that you're putting that list somewhere in your digital

calendar or your manual calendar that you can see it at the appropriate time next year when you need to start thinking about Taxi season again so that is the process of getting started on something when it's really hard to get started you got to break it down into small tasks you've got to make sure that you have the support and infrastructure you need in place to get it done you want to set up rewards for yourself and when you've completed the task you want to celebrate that win and then you want to write down everything

that worked and reminders for you to have a better experience next year and don't assume that you'll just remember cuz trust me you won't so that a recipe for breaking down something that you don't really want to do and getting it done when it's a very linear process and the one thing I didn't address there is that sometimes we don't want to initiate a task not because we don't know what to do but because there's an emotional block like for example if it's doing your taxes you might not want to look at how much you

made last year or how much you owe the government there's a lot of emotion especially when it comes to money so while that recipe is great for actually doing tasks and getting things done if you have emotional BL blocks you need to go a step further to truly understand what is it that I don't want to see that's holding me back and you might want to do that with a trusted friend or a therapist if that's accessible to you or a coach or just journaling what's going on with me right now why is it that

I am avoiding this like the plague I know what to do what's underneath this procrastination what am I feeling about this what's the fear what am I afraid to see or afraid to do and once you can actually admit that to yourself realizing it is half the battle now let's talk about things that are hard to initiate and get motivated with when is actually something you want to do and I will actually read a reader question that came in recently that I think is a perfect example of this the reader writes my job requires a

lot of writing and paperwork I also want to publish books that I write however I find it hard to get motivated to do these things do you have any suggestions on how to motivate myself to get started on these things is there a starting ritual that you can provide well I already gave you that recipe for things that are linear right breaking things down into their smaller parts putting it on your calendar making sure you have the support you need making sure you have a body double making sure that you have everything you need lined

up in order to get started but when it comes to creative process there's a lot more Nuance there I coach a lot of writers entrepreneurs and also fine artists that also struggle with getting started and very often that is not a linear process so when you're working on something like a book that is a massive project that is not only hard to get start initially but every time you close that book down after working on it and walk away from it it's also then challenging to come back into it and start again the next day

because if you're a writer you know writer right and if you want to write a book you've got to consistently show up at your desk and write every single day or else you'll forget the context of everything you've written so far and the further you get away from that project the harder it is to get back in again so in those situations the first question again you want to ask yourself is is this something I have to do and with writing a book if it's just a passion project you don't have to do it but

it's clearly something you want to do then you want to look at what is holding me back from getting started so if writing a book is your goal but you can't seem to get started on that goal you want to get really clear about why is it that you can't get started is it that you're afraid you're going to fail is that you're afraid you can't commit to it is that you're afraid you're not good enough like get very clear about what those fears or limiting beliefs are because if your limiting beliefs exceed your desire

to write a book the book will not get written so the desire has to be up here and the limiting beliefs have to be brought down and you can manage those but that is work that is your work to do before you actually get started on actually initiating the task so once you've gotten past those fears and I don't want to blow past that as though it's a very easy thing to do but it is going to be critical in this process of writing a book once you have accepted the fact that the fear and

the unworthiness and all of those self judgments are there and they're not going to go away but your desire to write the book is greater next thing you want to ask yourself same as what the tax is is do I need to do this myself or can I delegate or can I get some help and in your case if you're ready a book chances are you probably want to do it yourself but that doesn't mean you have to do it alone I have a client who is currently writing a novel and she's about halfway through

and she has ADHD and she has a business that keeps her busy and a life that keeps her busy but the reason she is able to keep moving forward on that goal of being an author is number one her desire to be an author is greater than her fears of being an author number two she's very skilled at building her own structure and Scaffolding so she has an ADHD coach to help her get past her ADHD roadblocks but she also has writing teachers writing Mentor she's part of writing groups she's got writing buddies she's got

a ton of infrastructure and some of those things are paid and some of those things are free that she's just developing on her own she also goes to writing Retreats so she can submerse herself in the writing experience she embodies herself as the identity of an author and because she has that identity it makes it easier for her to come back to the page time and time again so what can you do to build structure around this idea of writing a book the other thing you want to think about if you're trying to uh initiate

a big task like writing a book is outlining the actual structure of it so you're taking that project again and you're breaking it down into smaller parts I have started a book but I've gotten about two chapters in and I haven't gotten any further because that became less of a priority as my year went on this year but I was able to start the book and make some pretty good progress on it because I broke it down chapter by chapter and I created a template for every chapter each page has prompts to help me think

about the points that I want to make in that chapter how it should start what the middle should include and all of the little extra bits and pieces that I want to include in that chapter so that they're almost little books in and of themselves and that's the way I've been thinking about that process and I'm halfway through chapter 3 at this point and I will pick it up again next year and it'll be easy for me to pick it up because and this is the next tip for you I've left breadcrumbs and this is

how you come back to projects and restart them again and again breadcrumbs is a way of reminding yourself of where you left off in the process the last time you were working on a project so for example with this book when I finish writing at the end of the day what I might do is ask Ai and that's built right into notion and I will leave a link to notion below I will ask the AI feature in notion to do a quick summary of everything I've written so far so that when I go into it

the next day all I have to do is read that quick summary and go oh yes I know exactly where I am because if I had to go into that document and read everything I had written previously to refresh my memory I might not want to do it because it's going to seem like a bigger and more ominous project so I love using AI to summarize work that I've done so far so that I can remind myself where I left off making it easier to jump back into the process the next time and to that

end whenever you're working on a big project if you don't quite know where to start why not put the project into chat gbt and say this is what I'm working on this is what I want the outcome to be this is the things that I'm struggling with how would you create an outline around this project it doesn't have to be a book it can be a project of any kind and see what chat gbt breaks down for you that can be your little neurotypical buddy that can spit out all the boring information you need to

actually get started on a task because sometimes all we need is someone to frame things for us and when we have a framework we can then take all of our thoughts and put them into something and start to make sense from them so don't underestimate the power of AI to help you organize your thoughts or help you start something by building out Frameworks for yourself the one other thing I want leave you with in terms of getting started with projects is that very often we know what needs to get done but because our executive function

is impaired meaning things like organization and prioritization and seeing things across time can be very difficult for us then it makes us hard to understand where we should start especially when a project is not linear when it comes to taxes you pretty much know that you need to start with Gathering paperwork but when it comes to writing a book or working on an oil painting you might not know where you want to dive in so if you want to get start in on something and you have a list of things that you've perhaps brain dumped

out but you don't know where to start start with the lowest hanging fruit first sometimes all we need to do is get started on the smallest thing because once you start on something you get a little squirted dopamine and that gives you enough dopamine energy to move on to the next thing and the next thing and momentum can be a magical thing cuz all you need to do is start and the rest will naturally seem to evolve from there the hardest part is getting started but if you can start with the lowest hanging fruit or

the easiest thing like getting the basket ready for your tax paperwork to come in or just getting your paints ready before you start to paint just getting your environment ready getting your mindset ready getting your energy ready is going to give you a little bit of dopamine to move you forward to the bigger and bigger t tasks so I hope that was in some way helpful in terms of getting started on tasks and always remember start with the question is this something I have to do and if it is something you have to do do

you have to do it alone and if you don't have to do it alone then start looking for resources and if you do have to do it alone then break down everything you have to do start with the lowest hanging fruit and build from there so once again guys I hope that was helpful please hit like and subscribed if you like this video and I will see you in the next one bye for now