Ep 132. Why Habits Feel So Hard with ADHD (and How to Make Them Stick)

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If you’ve ever thought, “I’m just not a habit person,” you’re not alone.
A lot of adults with ADHD feel like they can’t stick to habits. But most of the time, it’s not that you can’t build habits — it’s that you’ve been taught to build them in a way that doesn’t work for your brain.

In this episode, I’m talking about:
- Why we tend to start too big
- The “snowball” method that actually works
- Why celebration matters more than you think
- How to restart habits without shame
- The connection between habits and energy management
- Why you should be picky about which habits you build

This is especially important for late-diagnosed women who are already managing a lot of invisible mental load.

Habits aren’t about becoming a different person. They’re about protecting your energy and making life a little easier.

Let me know in the comments: What habit has actually stuck for you?

⏱ Time Stamps:
00:00 – “I’m not a habit person”
00:35 – Why we start too big
01:05 – The plant metaphor
01:45 – Start smaller than you think
02:10 – Build in celebration (yes, even sticker charts)
03:00 – How to restart without giving up
04:05 – Habits and energy management
05:00 – “Disciplined” people vs. habitual people
05:45 – Be picky about what you turn into a habit
06:15 – Where to go deeper

#ADHDWomen #ExecutiveFunction #LateDiagnosedADHD #ADHDSupport #OccupationalTherapy #WomenWithADHD #HabitsThatStick #NeurodivergentWomen #EnergyManagement #ADHDStrategies

Transcript

Habits Rough Edit

[00:00:00] you might think that you are not a habit person, that you don't do well with habits. You can't keep up habits . 

A lot of people with D ADHD feel that way, and it's because they have approached habits in a way that does not really work for their brain.

1. We Go Too Big

habits can be hard for a lot of people, but why are they particularly hard for people with a DHD? a couple reasons that I see a lot in myself and in my coaching calls. Number one is that we like to go really big. That's the excitement. It's this big change and this just total renovation of our lives.

And so we wanna start really big with habits. And that makes it really hard for them to stick. I think about it like planting a plant. I'm really bad at keeping plants alive, and I'm kind of bad at keeping habits alive, honestly. But I've learned to work with that.

I've not gotten any better with the plants, buteven I know that if I get a plant and I come home and I take it outta its pot and I just throw it on the ground outside, .It's not gonna live long.. Maybe I'll live for a week or not even, and it's gonna wilt and die , I've not dug out a space where it can get rooted and get strong and get established. Well, that's what we do. A lot of times with [00:01:00] habits. We might want to be somebody who runs 30 minutes. We just start running 30 minutes and it's not had any way to ramp up and get rooted and get strong.

And so we do that for maybe a week or two weeks, but inevitably it dies. this is true for everybody. This is not just an A DHD thing, But I see it a lot with ADHD we just really get super excited about these big changes, and we're quick to get discouraged because we start too big. So my advice, if you are gonna work on building a habit. You want to go small, start teeny, teeny, tiny. You have that in your head. How you're gonna start, make it smaller than that. Make the thing so tiny that you can't not do it, that it would be almost ridiculous not to do the thing. Do that for a little bit when that becomes so easy.

Bump it up a little bit. If you allow yourself to do this kind of snowball method where you're doing a little bit at a time, it'll stick. It's frustrating. So understand that if you start really tiny, if you wanna be somebody who's running 30 [00:02:00] minutes and you start with 30 seconds, that's annoying, right?

It doesn't have that same dopamine boost explosion.

Build In Celebration!

So you need to get better at celebrating that little tiny step. Long before I knew I had ADHD had an exercise sticker chart.

It had these very cute little frogs. They were so cute. And I was, I don't know, I was in my twenties I think, and I had my, um, exercise chart up on my wall and I had a friend come over and she's like, is this a sticker chart? And I'm like, yeah, those are my exercise frogs. And she was like, I have never seen an adult use a sticker chart.

And um, I felt a little silly, but what I didn't realize then, and what I realize now is that was working for me right then to give me a little celebration, a little boost, because my step was small. I was just trying to get it done most days. . You want to build those things in.

If doing that little step is hard for you because it's not good enough, it's not big enough, find a way to celebrate that tiny piece and build on it. Gradually celebrate each [00:03:00] time you build on it. Those are habits that will stick for you. if you lose habits easier than people, other people, that's okay too.

Restart By Starting Small!

This is another piece of this that matters so much when we have habits, is that we let ourself. Start again and start small again. So let's say I was doing my workout frogs. I was exercising, I had a groove going. It was habitual. I go on vacation, I'm gone for a week. I come back and I'm like, I don't exercise anymore.

I don't even know what you're talking about. It feels so foreign to me. I'm out of these habits and routines. Most of my habits are like that. If I stop doing them, they drop. And that used to really frustrate me, and now I'm just ready for it. Now I'm like, okay, yeah, that's, that's the way it is. So I ramp up the same way.

I start small. If it's hard, if it's not hard for me to do, sometimes I'll just jump right back in. That's fine. But if I'm finding it hard and I, man, it's day two, day three, day four, I still haven't been able to get back into this thing that I was doing. I go back to starting small, I go back to celebrating the tiny steps.

 I go back to the snowballing approach. And then in a couple weeks I'm doing the thing again [00:04:00] versus waiting months to do this big recharge where I'm doing the, the big thing. It makes such a difference to allow yourself that.

So starting small, allowing yourself to restart your habits small. 

Habits Help With Energy Management

 a big way of managing your brain with a DHD is managing your energy. Habits matter because they're moving us towards the things we wanna do without spending mental energy every day.

And when we make decisions to do things and we deliberate about will I, won't I do this thing? We burn energy.see, the reality for any brain, not just a DHD, is we don't make a lot of good consecutive decisions. if we've spent a lot of energy making a good decision. We're using up that energy, and if you've made a lot of those in a row, it gets harder and harder to make good decisions for future you.

You now I know you're thinking, Hey, wait. No, no, no. I, I got a guy. I got a guy, and I, I, he he's super disciplined. he makes dozens of good decisions. The reality is your [00:05:00] guy has a lot of habits. , . What I found is that a lot of people who appear really disciplined are just really habitual people, and they get, they get credit, like it's hard to build habits that takes discipline for everyone.

But once they're built, they allow us to. Downshift into that automatic mode we don't have to think about, make a decision about, even for those people who I work with who are like, Nope, there's nothing, I don't, I don't have any habits that serve me. If we start asking questions and look at their day and what that looks like, there are areas in their day.

Where things that they want to happen are happening automatically because of habits. So habits matter. For that reason, they give us an energy, a mental energy break, and they move us towards the things that matter to us. We can strategize for that and plan for that ahead of time, and then they're working for us in our day.

Be Picky- Again

There are so much to say about habits. There's such a deep dive that we can do. I do that more in my group coaching program, where we go really deep into the parts of a habit and in ways to work with our brains and all the other ways we can approach this.

If you're not a huge habit person, don't make everything [00:06:00] a habit. It's a lot of work on the front end. It's a lot of work to create a habit even though it saves you so much energy and work later. Pick the things that really matter what I would consider like a heavy hitter for you, and invest your energy. And time in setting up those things in order to help you get the things done that matter to you.

Focus on those. Be picky. Don't turn everything into a habit or, um, you're probably not gonna wanna do any of it. So that's all for today about habits. If you want a deeper dive, I will be putting out more videos about habits, but we also do that in my group coaching, uh, program as well. We have a entire couple of weeks where we're digging deep on specific habits and how to do that in a way that works for your brain.

Check that out if you're interested in it. And if you have any habit tips, share them in the comment section. 'cause I would like to hear what works for you.