eli5 – Can someone explain ADHD? Specifically the procrastination and inability to do “boring” tasks?
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A lot of the answers in this thread talk about specific examples that hone in on the “lack of focus” aspect of ADHD, which is notably the most obvious and relatable thing to express about ADHD symptoms, but the biggest aspect for me that I feel gets left out is the inability to prioritize *literally anything* properly.
Every single task that needs to get done throughout the day, from simple tasks, like brushing your teeth, to complex ones with many smaller steps, like cooking breakfast, has the same level of **maximum priority**, making it incredibly difficult to complete tasks without getting pulled away. This is why focusing on one thing until it is completed feels impossible to us; nothing feels like it can get broken down into manageable pieces because every single aspect demands our full attention the moment we think about it.
Imagine if the moment you thought of a task that you had to complete that day you immediately feel an overwhelming urgency to get it done, even if it is interrupting something you’re currently working on.
Another aspect that compounds on this urgency is having terrible memory. Oftentimes things like names/dates/task due dates are difficult for us to remember (probably for a variety of reasons), so we often get called lazy or told that we “don’t care enough”, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
Because we forget things so frequently, there’s a sense of “I *must* do this thing the moment I think about it, otherwise I’ll just forget to do it later”. Most people can supposedly “put a pin in it” and come back to a task later, but that feels impossible for some people with ADHD.
The list goes on and on for various symptoms, and everyone experiences it differently, but the lack of being able to effectively prioritize things makes basic task management and living extremely hard.
tl;dr: Having ADHD can effectively “break” a person’s ability to prioritize things, making their squirrel brain want to jump tasks even if it means they leave many things incomplete.
It’s not just the inability to do “boring” tasks. Executive disfunction happens even for thing I want to do. Things I find incredibly fun. I do homebrewing and I absolutely love it. I’ll have a brew kit or something and I’ll just be sitting there on my day off, ready to start brewing, I literally set the day aside for it and I physically can’t get up to do it. It’s incredibly frustrating to not be able to do something you enjoy and you feel like you’re just pissing the hours away.
I’m no neuroscientist but I remember hearing of a study were they deprived rats of dopamine and they wouldn’t even get up to eat or pull the lever for stimulation (I think it was a drug that provided dopamine iirc) they would just lay there doing absolutely nothing, only eating if they put food directly into their mouth. They couldnt even motivate themselves to do something they know would make them happy and feel better. (Get up and pull the dopamine lever) That’s what it feels like. Just a complete lack of motivation. I want to do this stuff. I enjoy working out, i enjoy cleaning my apartment, I enjoy cooking, I enjoy playing video games. But sometimes I physically can not get up to do any of that. Yes even playing video games becomes a chore.
On the flip side hyperfocus does the same thing but you can only do that one thing. Last night I went down a rabbit hole of trying to make kombucha from scratch and trying to find how the first ever kombucha was made. The most oddly specific information to seek out. Well I researched it for 6 hours until 4 am (I go to sleep at 12 and wake up at 8) I physically couldn’t sleep. I’d set my phone down and just think about the topic for an hour awake. Then to get some sort of relief I’d go back to searching. I eventually got so exhausted I fell asleep with my phone in my hand. Thank God too. I’m on bed rest right now so I absolutely need the sleep.
TLDR: Brain no want do a work good; You can’t control what most people can. It’s called executive disfunction.
“Executive Functions” is the psychology term for the mental processes you need to control your behavior.
5 basic executive functions are:
1) Attentional control: The ability to choose what you focus on
2) Cognitive inhibition: The ability to tune out external information (like background noise)
3) inhibitory control: The ability to ignore your base impulses.
4) Working memory: The ability to temporarily remember information
5) Cognitive flexibility: The ability to mentally transition between tasks.
ADHD is a disorder where, for one reason or another, your brain is unable to commit to these processes correctly.
Typically, this is caused by a deficiency in neurotransmitters. If your brain sends signals via mail, neurotransmitters are the paper. ADHD is the brain having a chronic paper shortage. Most symptoms can be described as either “looking for more paper”, or “writing tiny to save paper, but too tiny to read correctly”.
So for example, dishes! Few people like doing dishes (those of you that do, God speed), but the brain does love death-scrolling through Twitter. Social media is a Dopamine factory, and Dopamine is an important neurotransmitter.
So when the time comes to do the dishes, you’ve gotta perform multiple executive functions to do so.
You’ve gotta ignore what you want to do to get off the couch
You’ve then gotta direct your attention to the new task
Then you’ve got to mentally switch gears from “Twitter Mode” to “Dishwasher Mode”
And then, you’ve gotta remember to not leave the faucet on for the 5th time this week, Johnny!
Those with untreated ADHD will routinely fail at these tasks; They just don’t have the hardware necessary to do them all perfectly without help
ADHD means you’re chronically low on feel-good chemicals. You seek out things that give you the feel good chemicals. If you know a task won’t give you those feel good chemicals, then you really, *really* don’t want to do them. It can feel physically impossible to do it. You know you NEED to do it, but you’re pinned in place mindlessly scrolling through reddit or Facebook or tiktok because it’s giving you tiny little hits of dopamine.
To outsiders, it looks like procrastination or laziness. We want to do the thing, too, but we don’t get the “yay I did it!” dopamine hit that a normal person does when they complete a task. So it makes it very, very hard.
Is ADD pretty much the same thing, but without the hyperactive component? I’m chill AF, diagnosed ADD in High School, never stayed on meds because I hate feeling like a zombie. I’ve always been smart though and completed projects and papers at the last minute because of the pressure. My main motivation to get things done around the house is to avoid disappointment from my partner who is more focused and type A. If I had the choice to fuck off all day, I would, and sometimes do. WFH has just made it worse and being in front of a computer all day makes it impossible not to get distracted with other things; hence me typing this now during work hours. I somehow have managed to produce good work and meaningful contributions and have direct reports now. Some days I literally do an hour of work and other days, I am so busy, I am mentally exhausted at the end…like there’s really no balance. But, I’ve just accepted that’s how my brain works and I don’t want to be on meds.
I’ll give my experience, it feels less like I’m procrastinating, and more like I keep “falling asleep”, like how you don’t realize you’re falling asleep on the couch until you jerk your head up suddenly.
I’ll be trying to watch a training video and realize that I’ve picked a random object up off my desk and have been studying an obscure feature of it for 10 minutes.
The explanation I’ve heard is that ADHD is actually a lack of “brain energy” and so your though process has a brownout and restarts, but it doesn’t restart on the same task because that pointer is lost in the restart. Instead your brain picks up the first thought it has and runs with it, until you either realize you’re off task or it happens again.
Hyperfocusing is like enabling a “gaming mode” on a computer to boost your performance (or in this case to be able to continuously run on low power without the brownout) and so your brain stops doing a lot of functions, like making you aware of the fact that you’ve had to pee really bad for almost an hour. There is no in-between for my brain. I am either hyperfocused, or my brain is spiraling through thoughts so rapidly that if you ask me what I’m thinking about I’ll have no idea how to answer.
That’s what it’s like for me anyway.
You see me ignoring work I should be doing or not focusing on a task at hand and you think to yourself “why can’t he just do that? its so simple?”
What you don’t see is me in my head going “JESUS FUCK WHAT THE SHIT IS WRONG WITH YOU. JUST DO THE FUCKING TASK. ITS RIGHT THERE. YOU WILL FEEL SO MUCH BETTER WHEN ITS DONE. AHHHHHH DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT” and then my brain/body STILL not doing it anyway.
Have you ever played Legend of Zelda Ocarina of time? Imagine trying to play through that game without the Z-targeting system. That’s kinda what ADHD can feel like sometimes, you know something is important and you need to focus on it, but whatever mechanism your brain is supposed to have that keeps you locked onto it just isn’t working. You can still handle it, but it takes a lot more “intentional aiming” is the best way I can think to put it.
On the flip side, there’s hyper focusing, where the Z-targeting locks onto something and you can’t break focus from it. Sometimes it’s fine, it’s something you needed to focus on anyways, other times it’s some random thing like a spot on the wall with a weird shadow.
Best ELI5 I have for explaining ADHD, or how to explain it to someone who doesn’t have ADHD.
Imagine yourself sitting in a room, in a chair. Surrounding you are a dozen people in chairs. They’re all talking to you. They all want your attention. When you turn to one, the others are annoyed you have stopped paying attention.
It’s exhausting, and eventually your brain is easily distracted by … well .. staring at a wall.
For me personally, my ADHD symptoms are far better in the morning than at night.
you know how doctors tell you that eating mcdonalds and smoking are bad but it feels like a distant abstract future thats too far away to spur any real concern? thats how we feel about everything, no matter how major, until the last hour. term papers, documentation deadlines, bills, you name it. thats it really.
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