I just completed a 30-day solo dance challenge. Fifteen minutes a day. That’s it.
By week 3, I was angry.
Not because it wasn’t working, but because it was working too well.
In three weeks, I'd made more clear progress than in the entire year before.
I should have felt great. Instead, I kept thinking:
If 15 minutes a day could do that for a hobby, what had I been leaving on the table everywhere else?
I've struggled with consistency my whole life. But here’s what I finally figured out.
Visualize the ADHD Focus Train
It wasn't the 15 minutes that mattered. It was the never fully stopping.
Jesse J. Anderson describes ADHD momentum in Extra Focus like a train.
Getting a train started from zero requires enormous energy. But keeping it going takes much, much less.
We think doing four hours one day and nothing for five is “getting more done.” It
isn't. We're just building up the startup cost every day we stop.
Stopping for too long doesn't just pause the work. It resets the engine.
Real Life Strategies to Keep the Train Moving
For ADHD brains, focusing isn't actually the hard part.
The goal isn't to do more. It's to reduce the friction of starting and stopping.
1. Add a challenge. 30 days is perfect for habit formation.
Lay down 30 days of train tracks ahead of time, to save the cost of decision-making. Define exactly what you're doing, when you're doing it, and for how long.
Do 1-2 interview prep questions for 1 hour a day every Mon-Fri at 7 pm.
Do 10 pushups every day for 30 days straight, right after lunch.
For maximum accountability, make the challenge bite-sized and ask a friend to do it with you.
2. Set time-based goals, not completion-based ones.
ADHD time blindness makes it easy to overestimate or underestimate how long a task will take. The uncertainty of how long something will take can cause enough stress to avoid starting at all.
Instead of "I'll work until I finish this project," try "I'll work for 20 minutes."
You don't need more motivation to “finish,” you just need more motivation to continue.
3. Stop in the middle on purpose.
Leaving a task half-done means you know exactly where to pick up next time. Stopping becomes a little bit harder at first, but it lowers the restart cost to almost zero.
Instead of overworking to wrap up a project to “get to a good stopping point,” leave the last few pieces for the next morning.
It’s counterintuitive but it works.
4. Defeat all-or-nothing thinking.
Forward progress is progress, even if you don’t feel like it’s “enough.”
You don't have to start working at the top of the hour.
If you only have 17 minutes between meetings, that’s still a couple emails or messages you could knock out.
Missing a day in a 30-day challenge, doesn't mean failure. Pick it back up the next day, or find a way to make that one day up.
Doing something is better than doing nothing.
5. Warm up the engine first.
Don’t try to get the train immediately to 100 miles per hour if it’s currently at 20. Instead, define some no-brainer warmup tasks.
Clear off your desk.
Open Google Chrome.
Check your email for 5 minutes.
High stakes are more likely to trigger avoidance and stress. Start small to build momentum for the large tasks. Then ease into the larger tasks.
6. Inject novelty into your routine.
I'm not going to lie, consistency gets boring. ADHD brains will eventually rebel against boring. But you don’t have to do things the same way every time. Try these:
Switch up your environment. One ADHD person tried working from her bathtub, and had her most productive week yet.
Turn anything you can into a game. Another ADHD person made an online spin-the-wheel to randomize his breaks.
7. Make your progress visible.
ADHD brains have a hard time remembering how much progress we made.
It's like looking out the back of the train, only seeing fog, and feeling like you only moved a mile. When in reality, it’s been over 100 miles—you just couldn’t see it.
I'm very visual and tactile, so I like sticker charts and color coded habit trackers.
A simple spreadsheet with a log of what you did works just as well.
Reverse time-block your calendar. Record events to mark completed focus time.
Reality check your progress. Make it tangible. See that you’ve come a long way.
This Week: For You
I’m applying all these strategies myself, starting with keeping this newsletter consistent. But first, I need to know what works for you.
Be honest - How often do you want to hear from me?
Hi, I’m Kat! Welcome to my newsletter—your weekly dose of strategies to work with your extra-interesting brain, not against it.
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Thanks for reading!
— Kat