yeah... this is a very good description of the fundamental issue.
it's why I've become extremely leery of any advice or like, Philosophy Of Doing Things that emphasizes doing things Consistently Every Day. I've been starting to think that not only was that philosophy very much envisioned by neurotypicals and not all that useful for folks with ADHD (et al), it's... pervasively poisonous? like, it feels almost like the dominant Way Of Thinking is that doing things Consistently Every Day is the best and only way to do things. and if you cannot do something Consistently Every Day, that's a moral issue. you have Failed, you are Lazy. all you need is to Build The Habit and then it takes care of itself! the hard part is starting and then it's all easy from there!
(when in reality it's like the opposite for me, lmao.)
I've been trying to move away from beating my head against that particular wall and instead focus on things like:
- how can I structure the things I want to do so that even if I don't work on them Consistently Every Day, whenever I do work on them, I make meaningful and permanent progress, or at least reap some kind of tangible improvement even if temporary?
- how do I make it easier for me to jump back into a thing after time away?
- for the stuff that absolutely has A Deadline, like work stuff, how can I space out the Bursts Of Doing Things to meet that deadline, and how can I form more realistic predictions of the time it takes for me to finish something instead of assuming that I can somehow work at breakneck ADHD hyperfocus speed on command?
- (and also how do I balance this against my manager's need for regular updates and my team's constant demands for my attention because that is unfortunately a thing lmao)
- biggest thing: learning to not take neurotypical platitudes about how things Should be done at face value and realizing that a lot of these standards are in fact really arbitrary and unrealistic, and really really internalizing "anything worth doing is worth sometimes doing."
(on that last point, something really silly I've found is that I can't convince myself to brush my teeth and floss Every Day, but I CAN convince myself to brush my teeth or floss Most Of The Days... when I'm not busy beating myself down for failing to do both. so now some days I just floss and some days I just brush and my teeth are healthier! are they as healthy as they Could Have Been? maybe not, but it's been objectively more useful for me to put my energy towards an achievable improvement than an unrealistic ideal.)
(and on the first and second points, crochet is my favorite example of this - I cannot Crochet Every Day, but like, when I crochet a row, that row stays crocheted! I'm still one row closer to finishing even if I only do one every few weeks! amazing! and I've noticed that often I'm willing to wander back to a WIP, it's just that when my brain is fretting about Oh No Which Row Was I On and How Do I Do These Stitches and Oh No What If The Yarn I Need Is Discontinued, it becomes easier to escape by starting something new - so I try to offset that with things like saving the patterns and keeping VERY CLEAR AND HARD TO MISPLACE notes on where I left off, bookmarks to tutorials I've found useful, planning out and buying exactly as much yarn as I need for a project and only that...)
I once saw someone somewhere say "if a strategy worked for two weeks, that doesn't mean it didn't work - it meant it worked for two weeks" and I guess I've been trying to keep that in mind.
(I also have a canned rant here about systems in productivity tools that punish you for not being present Every Day but that's another post)
