The ADHD Skills Lab

Why "Just Start" Advice Fails With ADHD (And What Actually Works)

• Skye Waterson • Season 1 • Episode 194

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0:00 | 45:24

You've probably heard it before:

"Just start."

"You'll feel better once you begin."

"Get rid of all distractions."

If you have ADHD, you've probably also discovered that this advice often doesn't work.

In this episode, Skye and Robbie unpack the dopamine transfer deficit theory and explore why ADHD brains may not receive the same anticipatory motivation signal that helps neurotypical brains get started. They explain why so much conventional productivity advice misses the mark, why dopamine detox can backfire, and how Skye developed The Dopamine Dial to work with ADHD motivation instead of against it.

Originally inspired by Skye's most-read Substack article, this episode expands on the research, the practical framework, and what you can do instead of relying on willpower.

What You'll Learn

  • Why "just start" often fails for ADHD
  • The dopamine transfer deficit theory explained simply
  • Why removing stimulation can make starting harder
  • Why rewarding the beginning of a task matters more than rewarding the end
  • How to use The Dopamine Dial to get moving without relying on motivation

Read the original Substack article:

https://unconventionalorganization.substack.com/p/an-adhd-academics-answer-to-the-dopamine

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SPEAKER_03

If you're a neurotypical, if you don't have ADHD symptoms, if you connect doing a task with a reward enough times, then when you start the task, your brain cues up that dopamine spike that you're gonna get a reward at anticipating it, yeah. Or it's gonna be like you're gonna feel so great at the end, it's gonna be wonderful, and you get that little boost, like woohoo! Like we're doing it, we're sitting down to get it done. It appears that when you have ADHD, that doesn't happen. And so that seems to be one of the main reasons why with ADHD we don't really benefit from this concept of just get started. You'll feel so much better once you get started, because our brain is just like this sucks. I don't want to start. Hello everybody, and welcome to today's episode of the ADHD Skills Lab podcast. I'm super excited because today I'm gonna be, I don't want to say teaching because I'm I swear we've talked about this before, but I'm really gonna be going through the idea of the dopamine dial, which is something that I posted two years ago on Substack that was the most popular thing that I've ever written. Before we get started, if you're a business owner making over 100k in a service business and you know that your ADHD is stopping you from getting the results that you want, then it might be time to build an operational layer. We do it for you, for your ADHD brain. We find people, install people, get operators set up. Just click the link down below to do a free business build-out with me to see if you're a fit and we'll get started. This is kind of, I would say, a culmination of all of my dopamine research that created this dial. Now, I wanted to give you a sense of why I was so passionate about this and why I brought about this dopamine dial. Because it really came out of frustration. 2024, it things, yeah, like a lot of things I do. It came out of frustration with life and why it wasn't making sense. Because at the time, it's hard to remember now because there's really been a backlash against it, but at the time we were really in the thick of like dopamine detoxing and you should just take a cold shower and grit your teeth and get through it. Like this was before the memes of my morning routine. This was when people were actually posting the I get up at 4 a.m., take a cold shower and go for a five-mile run. Like, seriously. And a lot of the advice. But the time from people, and I get why, and I talk about it in the article why I get it as well, was just don't do anything fun. And then your joke will restabilize.

SPEAKER_01

And then work will feel good by comparison.

SPEAKER_03

By comparison. Exactly. Exactly. And I am a bit of a productivity nerd. Like I started even before I knew I had ADHD. I was really big in like reading about routines. I read all the routines of all the famous people and that kind of stuff. And so I was really frustrated with this because it felt like as a person with ADHD, I knew this wasn't gonna work. I just knew for me it wasn't gonna work. I knew for my clients it wasn't gonna work, but I needed to understand one, why it wasn't gonna work, and two, what the solution was. And those were the things I wrote about as part of the dopamine dial.

SPEAKER_01

So they've done studies on kids in classrooms in sort of a distractionless sort of white box room versus in like a higher stimulation room, right?

SPEAKER_03

I couldn't tell you the results. I don't have that to hand. I do have a couple other pieces, but not that. There's researchers and thinkers that have written about the idea that too many distractions provide dopamine, which makes it hard for us to experience surges of pleasure from doing, say, deep work. Now, the problem with ADHD is that we don't get the surge of pleasure from doing deep work like they think that we do. So, at least according to theory. So this is the this is the main theory, like so they're applying neurotypical reasoning.

SPEAKER_01

They're like, the deep work is already an intrinsic reward. You've added too many other things that are competing for it. But ADHD is kind of you're not getting that like I completed a task dopamine.

SPEAKER_03

Exactly. So I will say this is a theory. We don't have as much data on this as I would like, but it has been very, very well substantiated over the years. So this is the dopamine transfer deficit theory. So it's by Tripp and Wickens. And what they've argued based on research is that while in neurotypicals you get a reward spike from finishing a task that then cues spike when you start a task. If you have ADHD, this cue back fails to occur. So basically, if you have if you're a neurotypical, if you don't have ADHD symptoms, if you connect doing a task with a reward enough times, then when you start the task, your brain cues up that dopamine spike that you're gonna get a rewarded.

SPEAKER_00

With anticipating it, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Or it's gonna be like you're gonna feel so great at the end, it's gonna be wonderful, and you get that little boost, like woo-hoo, like we're doing it, we're sitting down to get it done. Now, it appears that when you have ADHD, that doesn't happen. And so that seems to be one of the main reasons why with ADHD, we don't really benefit from this concept of just get started, you'll feel so much better once you get started, because our brain is just like, this sucks. I don't want to start.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, we don't get excited for the completion of the task at the start of the task.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01

And then we get to the end of the day, we forget all the things that we got done, and we just lament the things that were on our list because we're time blind that we also didn't get done yet.

SPEAKER_03

It's it can be a brutal existence, yes. It can be really difficult, especially if you don't understand how it works and you don't understand that that's what you're doing. You just feel like you're behind, you're never deserving of a reward, you're never deserving of a break, and it can kind of spike on and on.

SPEAKER_01

Giving yourself a reward or dopamine at the start of the task was something that you proposed for kind of replacing that. Is that part of the dopamine dial or is that part of dopamine stacking?

SPEAKER_03

It's a it's part of the dopamine dial. Yeah. So it's part of the dopamine dial, but it's more the dopamine dial is about how you do it. So, yes. So when one of the things I really have taught for many years now, and this is why I say I've taught it for many years, because like I said, I would love more research on this, and I I have looked for more research. And if you have a paper that's come out since then, please send it to me about the dopamine transfer deficit theory. There's been so much, so many people have used this and found it really helpful that, yeah, we want to solve this problem by saying, okay, let's give ourselves a reward for starting the task, not a reward for finishing the task. You could take a break at the end of finishing the task, that's a great reward. But the reward is really when you sit down. The dopamine dial is about how you dial down that reward to actually getting started. And this is really important because if you think about the dopamine transfer deficit, right? The idea that we are already not experiencing the boost of dopamine that other people experience when we start a task, and then people have the cheek trying to tell us what the problem is that we have too much dopamine, and our solution should be that we just take a cold shower and get on with it. It can be really annoying. Like, and I'm I'm not saying, by the way, that you shouldn't, you know, try not to look at your social media the second you open your eyes, but it's more about how you adjust it.

SPEAKER_01

My first thought halfway through that was I remember you talking about getting to your desk. So you're like, okay, what are we gonna do that's actually gonna get us to the desk? Once we're at the desk, it's a smaller step to then opening the task. And then once we're actually doing it, there's a good chance we'll just lock in and finish it.

SPEAKER_03

Exactly. So so this is the dopamine dial. I w and I and I'm fully aware that the dopamine dial could change. Anyway, I want to do that.

SPEAKER_01

In terms of social media first thing in the morning, it's almost a separate. I think uh I'm guessing a version of this would be social media at your desk, not in bed.

SPEAKER_03

Yes, okay. So this is this is the dopamine dial, right? So I want you to imagine that you have one of those old like elevators or um like old weight scales and it kind of ticks over, right? It like ticks ticks down. So I want you to imagine that you have a dial, one of those old school dials, and on one side of the dial is the most distracting, fun thing that you can do, and then on the other side of the dial is the most sort of least stimulating thing you can do before you did work. So if we were to think about common ones, we would say the most fun thing would be check the news, go on Instagram, like that's the most stimulating thing. Then you've angry at someone. Yeah, something like that. See if Taylor Swift has put her wedding dress out. By God, why is she not? Just tell us. Anyway, and then you've got the TV YouTube level, which is like you're watching a YouTube video, but it's not a short, it's like a longer YouTube video. Like that's kind of the dial down. Then a dial down from that is likely to be something like a podcast or maybe even an audiobook. You're like listening to people talk, but you're not watching them. A dial down from that would be chill streamer. Yeah, I love you know, listening to my watching my chill streamers in the morning. Then we have, you know, music with lyrics, then we have music without lyrics, and then we have ambient noise. And then for most people, there'll be some of some adjustments, like you can pick your yours, and some people will skip a whole section altogether. For most people, this is the dopamine dial. It kind of goes from the most stimulating activity that's kind of like coming in auditarily, visually, it's taking your attention to the least stimulating thing you can do. And so what we want to do is when you're in a position to do some work. So, say this afternoon I want to get some work done, right? We both have things we have to do after the podcast. The thing we want to think about is okay, which level of the dial do I need right now? So when I wake up, generally, personally, I don't need to go on social media. I'm not that like my stimulation needs aren't that high. I'm more on the YouTube TV, or maybe even the kind of podcast audiobook level. So I'll put on a podcast. That's kind of my the level that I'm at before I start to dial it down. So I'll give you an example, Robbie. After this, you're gonna go get some work done. What level of stimulation do you think you're gonna need to get you to your desk? And you can you can do multiple things, you know.

SPEAKER_01

I think I'll normally I'll normally sit down, open up YouTube, open up some interesting homepage recommendations, and then also go and grab some non-lyric music, no lyric music, either like some lo-fire that's been sped up or some synth wave. Yeah, I'll generally have like an hour-long video that I'm watching on and off. If I'm ever doing something where I'm having to wait for it to load or buffer or process, I'll put it back on um for a minute and then I'll turn it off again and get back to what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_03

So what you're doing is you're going up and down the stimulation dopamine dial. And and really what this is is is about is one of the biggest mistakes, so there's two big mistakes people make. Number one is that they give themselves a reward after the task, and then they never get to the task because they're like trying to get themselves wanting to do it and not realizing the reward doesn't really work as a reward in this context. And the second one is they go, okay, I'm going to do something fun, not at my desk or not where I'm gonna work before I work, and then that will give me the motivation to go to my desk to get work done. So a great example would be if you were if you said, I'm going to sit in the lounge and watch something on YouTube while I have my lunch, and then that will make me want to go to my desk to get work done. Like that doesn't count. It's a reward in a different physical space.

SPEAKER_01

So it's all about You're trying to use the dopamine to get you closer to where you're trying to Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

So you want to get to the place where you're gonna get work done, and then you want to dial down that stimulation, that dopamine level, till you are able to focus on the work that you have to do.

SPEAKER_01

I think generally speaking, it's probably another situation where more than one screen comes in handy. So my main screen will I'll open up all of the work that I need to do and I'll have YouTube on the side screen and you know, emails and whatever off to the third screen. I don't think, yeah, I don't think tricking myself into starting something is quite the way I would word it. It's more like I'm gonna put some YouTube on first, I'm gonna be listening to something interesting, and then I'm gonna start opening up what I need to work on, having a look, what am I doing next? Oh, that's right. Let's go into it, let's sort of peruse it while I'm listening to something interesting. And then at some point I'm gonna go, oh yeah, okay, I need to do this next. And I'm gonna want to just start, and I'm gonna pause that so I can get into it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. And that's exact that is exactly what you're describing. So the way you're describing this is I use dopamine. So I I I give myself a reward, use dopamine, increase my stimulation, whatever you want to do, in order to get myself to the place where I'm gonna do work. Then while I'm in that more heightened dopamine state, I support my working memory by looking at my task list, understanding what I need to do, breaking it down into further steps, all of that kind of thing. And then once I've dealt with the I don't really understand what I need to do next problem, which is usually it's too boring, it's too confusing, it's emotionally vulnerable. Those are the three reasons people don't do tasks. Then I deal with the getting into it, which is often for a lot of people the kind of emotionally vulnerable part. It's like I actually have to think about it and I have to start and all that stuff, by lowering the simulation, but not turning it off. That's the key piece. And you're naturally doing that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, well, you can't, especially if something's text-based, you can't work on it while someone's talking to you. Or at least you can sometimes, but not very well. I've seen you watch like YouTube videos and read at the same time, which is weird though. Like I'll have an aversion to a task sometimes because it's it hasn't been properly subtasked yet. So there's this feeling of probably like this intuition of overwhelming complexity that I haven't thought through yet. Like I haven't mapped it properly. I'm just curious how that fits into the three things you just listed.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so that's the it's too confusing. Let's say I don't know the standard.

SPEAKER_01

It's yeah, it's sort of in the fog still.

SPEAKER_03

So most of the time when people and this is this is why I'm so passionate about this, because ever since I have solved these struggles for myself, I have been able to do most things, even the things I don't really want to do, pretty well without feeling that feeling of like, oh, I would give anything not to be here right now. That feeling, which sucks. That's like a real, if you think about it from a dopamine perspective, you know, you've got the spikes of dopamine when you're doing something fun. It's like a real dip, you know, because again, with ADHD, we really do experience those dips. It feels almost physically painful. You know, you hit that wall of like, I would rather do anything than this. Like, where is the dishwasher? I will pack it, you know, that feeling.

SPEAKER_01

Classic exam, cleaner room time. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And with these systems, you can change from having those big spikes and peaks and valleys to kind of a, oh yep, no, this is fine. Oh, and this is fine too, because you're systematically removing the reasons not to do something.

SPEAKER_01

Like the opposite of the dub mean dial right would be I'm in bed doom scrolling and I've got to stop doom scrolling, get out of bed, get dressed, like get coffee, breakfast, whatever, get to the computer, open things up, like there's too many things in the way. And whereas if you sort of go like, no, I'm only gonna do scroll at the desk, or I'm going to you're removing all the unnecessary obstacles. Because you could add, I'm in the wrong place. The place where I'm at is more fun than the place I'm going. You're trying to get all of the fun and the place you're supposed to be aligned. And then that's sort of separate from I think like the other the other half of this is you've got your accounting in front of you or whatever you need to do. You've got your form, you've got yourself there because the fun stuff was in the same location as the work, which, yeah, by the way, is counter to a lot of advice around like mixing spaces. So like your workspace and your we'll often talk about having your bedroom and your office and your lounge separate spaces, not mixing them.

SPEAKER_03

I mean, I think that is true. There is a benefit to not being able to go to sleep in the place that you're working.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, okay, like sleep's a good pro sleep's in general probably a good idea.

SPEAKER_03

But this is an interesting one. When I've taught on dopamine.

SPEAKER_01

Because my workspace is also my leisure space.

SPEAKER_03

When I've taught on dopamine, I've often said it's a it's there's no one size fits all for what is an optimal level of stimulation to get work done by people. So I've worked with so many clients and so many people at this point, and some people are like, music, I can't do it. I have to have silence or I have to have no, you know, nothing. Some people are like, I really want to have my space be really, really fun and bright and loud. And some people, nobody wants like an empty room, but some people will want less of that. So I would say, and this is why it's the dial. This is why I call it the dopamine dial. It's a dial with those big ticking, you know, you like go between the different um spaces. It's it's about dialing it, designing it for your specific needs, but knowing that you need to be able to think through, hey, where am I at right now? I'm on the couch, I'm on my phone. It's the afternoon, I am super tired, I don't want to do anything. Right. Well, we're not gonna be able to just, by the power of will, get up, walk downstairs, and start doing a deep work task.

SPEAKER_01

You can, but you've made it harder for yourself. Like, and it's always better to remove unnecessary obstacles from the things you're trying to get done.

SPEAKER_03

Or even to be even more specific, you can, but the time it will take you to gear up to do that is longer than the time it would take you to go downstairs and start working if you used something like a dopamine dial to help you.

SPEAKER_01

Or I would have said you're going to be sort of burning unnecessary willpower. I remember listening to someone recently talking about how the idea of women's work is. Yeah, a uh myth is wrong, but like an outdated or a disproven idea.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. So I wouldn't necessarily say that you're burning willpower.

SPEAKER_01

I would say that you're another idea of you're strengthening your ability to do hard things. Just as someone who like believes in incentives and the power of incentives and like correctly aligned incentives, it does seem like structuring your life as a series of hard things to overcome doesn't seem like the correct way of getting things done efficiently, though.

SPEAKER_03

That's what I was gonna say. That it's it's this idea of yeah, okay, but who's winning at the end of the day? Because you still are the person who has to go to work. Like one of the things I often say to people is like at the end of the day, this is a voluntary exercise, especially if you're a business owner.

SPEAKER_01

And the boring forms are already pretty hard. There must be a point at which you turn the the difficulty dial up too much. And like just just that idea has to have reasonable limits, right?

SPEAKER_03

And people think that they've got this because they're like, well, I I don't do this. If there's something really hard, I'll I'll get it done. What they don't realize is their brain's really smart, and you probably got something that's super important that you need to do, but your brain has been like, ah, that's not important. I'm gonna put it on the we'll do later if I have time list. And I just never got around to it, you know. So usually what happens is not that we we go, no, I refuse to do that thing. Usually we will find ways to put it off and put it off and put it off, and and eventually, you know, the with the exception of things like taxes. Yeah, sure. Eventually you'll do your taxes because the government says you have to.

SPEAKER_01

You can put that off.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I've seen people put it off. But but there'll be a deadline. But most of the things you actually have to do, like hiring people, building your processes, designing your business rather than just working in your business, that kind of stuff, like you'll put it off forever. And this is the problem, is if we don't use something like the dial or in some way work around the resistance to a task rather than just continuing to slam into it, it's more about the fact that you're just gonna keep putting it off than that you're gonna even be aware of the fact that you're resisting this task.

SPEAKER_01

I'm just thinking like this is this seems like kind of more of a daily like depends on what your jobs are. Like so, if you're trying to get to, I'm thinking about this in the context of almost everything I do is at my desk in my office. So this is just good practice every day in terms of getting there sooner and getting started sooner, as opposed to being in a different part of the house. It's it applies to everything, not just the sort of toad tasks.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I think it's always useful. It's always useful to think about where am I on the dial? And sometimes you're pretty far down. Sometimes you're like pretty excited for this task, you pretty well know what you do, and you happen to have a lot of energy that day. So sometimes you just jump in, you maybe grab a tea, you put some music on, and you wouldn't elevate back up to next time.

SPEAKER_01

Don't elevate it back up.

SPEAKER_03

No, don't start at social media every time. Like think about where you need to start and then dial down from there.

SPEAKER_01

If you realize you're having trouble getting to your desk, just start at the top of the dial and work your way down.

SPEAKER_03

The the example that I actually use when I wrote this article was at the bottom of the article, I explain how I wrote the article using the dopamine dial, which was uh Back in the day when you and I used to walk to Play Center with the kids, and then you would go in and I would go to the coffee shop. And so I would get a coffee, like the mocha that used to have a little chocolate fish. Gosh, I missed that marker. It was so good. And um, and then I would eat the chocolate fish, Google something, because it was 2024, Google something about a topic of interest, you know, something I wanted to learn about. And then from there I would kind of finish, finish my drink while I wrote down the steps of what I wanted to write, and then write like a really super rough draft. Whenever I'm writing my first draft, I'm always like, it doesn't matter if it's bad, just keep going. You know, and I would like write a really rough draft. And then the next week, or I think it was a couple of days later, when we went back to Play Center, I would continue I would f do this again. And the coffee shop was the level of stimulation that I needed to write. That was really how I got writing done. I'm not a natural writer.

SPEAKER_01

Coffee shop's a great example of using the dopamine dial, like acknowledging that this is not something you're gonna do in your office. You need to go somewhere more fun with a little bit more happening, which I think, yeah, is a classic ADHD sort of intuitive strategy for getting things done. I think there's a lot of people who have said, like, I have to work in a coffee shop.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, a lot of people. A lot of people.

SPEAKER_01

So dopamine dials for getting getting to the place you need to be, basically for removing all the obstacles between you and sort of where you need to be with the correct things open, ready to start the task. And then I think the dopamine stacking is more about how to actually complete the task. So you've got to dial the stimulation in terms of the dopamine dial down to sort of often to ambient music to actually work on the task because most of the things you've put on the dial are very distracting. Yeah. But then you're wanting to stack dopamine in other ways that isn't as distracting during the task. So that's and it's a separate thing from the dopamine dial, obviously.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, that's a good question.

SPEAKER_01

I'm just putting them all into like coherent maps.

SPEAKER_03

So dopamine stacking, for those of you who don't know, is the idea of looking at all five of your senses, so touch, taste, sight, smell, sound, and then thinking about a dopamine activity for each of them and then stacking them together. So you might think of, okay, I'm listening to music, but I'm also like my my studio has really amazing windows, which does annoy our editor a little bit with the light, but it means we've got a great view. You know, that's another sensory stack. And if you have um a drink, then that's another sensory stack, and so on and so forth. So you're stacking sensory activities together until you reach the level of stimulation that feels right for you.

SPEAKER_01

So like comfy clothes, cake, a good view, some ambient music. Oh, yeah, okay. So like a nice perfume or scented candle or something. Okay.

SPEAKER_03

And the way I like to describe it to people when I've taught this before is if you were in a position and somebody said, Hey, can you fill out this form? You'd probably be like, Oh, I don't want to fill out a nine page form. But if I said to you, look, you do have to fill out a nine-page form, but you can fill out this nine-page form in a hammock by the ocean. It's just the perfect amount of like hot and cold for you. There's music, you're sipping a really nice cold drink, but you have to fill out this form in the hammock. You'd probably rethink it. And that's essentially what dopamine stacking is.

SPEAKER_01

Bribe yourself to do the most tedious toad tasks.

SPEAKER_03

And I would say if you were to look at the combination between dopamine stacking and the dopamine dial, the dopamine dial is just stacking things, like stacking different dopamine rewards, but then dialing down how stimulating they are. So you can use it all at once. So you could say, okay, the most, you know, at the far end of the dial, the most stimulating is like, for me personally, it's like I get MMs, I'm watching YouTube, I'm uh listening to music sometimes at the same time. Don't ask me why, and I'm like in a space where I can see things and there's lots of fun activities. Smell isn't really a thing for me. I know it is for other people.

SPEAKER_01

I would say that's interesting. I wouldn't have put so eating MMs is something you can do throughout a bad task. So like I would use those as a domain stacking tool. I wouldn't sort of necessarily I mean how bad of a task are we talking about? But like I feel like trying to bribe yourself to get to the desk should just be kind of that's where all the fun stuff is, to to get me seated there. I I mean I guess you can do both.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, you can do both, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

There are fun things that you can you can't do while you work, and there are fun things that you can do while you work. And a lot of the Dopamine stack things that we just talked about are things that you can do alongside work. It feels like they are best reserved for that lower setting, so that you're you're turning down fun things that I would normally do in a different location that I've now decided I will only do in my office because I'm trying to get to where the tasks can start. I'm gonna turn those down so that I can actually start working on them because working with these things is too distracting. I'll end up watching the video the whole time, or I'll like I'll keep starting the task and then I'll get distracted back to the video. That's not gonna work. But it was useful to get me there. As I turn this down, I'm gonna turn up, or maybe even just when I get to the lower setting, or I guess some combination of the two, I'm gonna turn up the things that I can stack that do work well alongside work. Transition times, avoiding transitions, having everything in the place where you want to keep doing the work. That's another one of your ideas that links to this network of things. So you've got the dopamine dial for getting to the place, you've got the dopamine stacking, which I don't think are dials, yeah. I think stacking is the correct way of thinking about that. You've got like a bunch of things at the location that you can stack to keep you there and to keep you from turning that dial back up. So and I think that is like Tamari Almonds, maybe even candy, depending on like and all those other things. And then the reason you have those at your desk is because you don't want to have to like go and get them. It's like you want to have your tea and whatever you need to get all the way through the task as well.

SPEAKER_03

I want to know from you, like to kind of as we as we come to the end of this example talking about the dopamine dial, and we've got a link to the article for people who want to read more about it. I want to know from you, what is your dopamine dial? Like, what is the most stimulating activity and then the other you know pieces that take you all the way down to getting started on tasks?

SPEAKER_01

I think at the top of the dial, if I separate out the stuff I can stack with work from it, and I just think about the stuff I can't stack with work that I really enjoy, like gaming with YouTube on alongside it is kind of peak.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, that's that's the thing that even if you were like, oh, I really don't want to do anything, you'd still go to your desk to do. And that's what that high stimulation level is. You're like, this is a reward on any day. Like I want to do this.

SPEAKER_01

And sometimes I'll go to my desk in the evening or the early morning with the intention to do that and then open up work at the same time and kind of go, oh, I did want to get that done first, though. Oh, that's right, that actually is quite urgent, and do it instead.

SPEAKER_03

So that would be the top of your dial. What's like in the middle? What's the I can start thinking about work and writing down steps, but I'm too distracted to be able to start work. What's that level for you?

SPEAKER_01

Just an interesting YouTube video is always on the side screen. If I'm stopping to eat, you know, it might be on the main screen, but generally speaking, YouTube's off to the side and I'm opening up other stuff, emails, whatever, like uh my task list.

SPEAKER_03

I'm getting into it, I'm I'm letting my working memory like re- you know, I'm supporting my working memory by bringing back up the steps and the labels and what I need to do next and that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and then if I'm perusing my task list and I spot something I need to do, I'm like, oh yeah, I need to get it done now. I suppose there's video content that requires your full attention. There's video content that you can kind of just listen to. It's nice to have the visual, but most of the time they're not showing you anything interesting, and then occasionally you need to look at what they're talking about. Then there's sort of music, and then below that there is music without lyrics. I think that sort of covers the spectrum of my dial.

SPEAKER_03

And if you want to see the um distraction dial that Robbie's referencing, you can go to the link and um you can see it there as well.

SPEAKER_01

And to be clear, I will turn the dial down as little as possible. So I actually I've got the dial maxed to whatever is sustainable alongside working, which I guess is a similar concept to dopamine stacking, is you only turn the dial down as far as you need to. If I'm like, I don't know, repairing something in the garage, I'm gonna have the most interesting podcast or audiobook I can find alongside it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I think I think what I would say with that is don't turn the dial higher than you need it to be. So if you're feeling good and you're ready to get some something done, don't open social media just for five minutes to help you get started. Like try and keep the dial as low as it can be. But also by the same token, don't go so low on the dopamine dial in terms of stimulation that you sort of get into a position where you're too bored and you get up and you walk away. Like that's usually a bad sign. So you want to keep it in that nice middle where you're not so bored that you're like, oh, this is crazy. There's a dishwasher I can unpack somewhere, and you like go off and do that. You know, we all think of those things. Somewhere there's a dishwasher I can unpack. Give it to me. And um, I'll find it. But it's not so high that you're sort of spending half an hour because it can take time to go down the dopamine dial, but like I always remind you guys, yes, it takes time, but how much longer did it take to get yourself to sit at the desk if you had no benefit for doing so? Probably a couple of days, if we're being honest.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I think sometimes you need to go there with the intention of not even working. Like I'll go there with the intention of gaming, and then it's still a mystery to me how it starts.

SPEAKER_03

I think normally Maybe you've just been listening to me talk for some reason.

SPEAKER_01

I'll look at the selection of games and I'll kind of be like, eh, and I'll open up my to-do list, I guess. You definitely don't want to start it too high.

SPEAKER_03

You want to get that sweet spot.

SPEAKER_01

That sort of just happens intuitively, though.

SPEAKER_03

Like you Not for everybody. I mean, I guess that's like the debate I'm having.

SPEAKER_01

I was like, I need to get to my desk. What do I need to give myself to go there?

SPEAKER_03

A lot of this has to do with permission. So a lot of times people will not give themselves. We live a very unconventional life and we're pretty, you know, relaxed about that. So we will, you know, be like, oh, what do I need to get myself there? That's fine, I'll reward myself. But for a lot of people, when I work with them, they have a lot of hangups, honestly, from you know, things that they've been taught in a more neurotypical world, like you shouldn't need anything to get work done. If a task takes two minutes, you should do it now. Like all of these things that sound helpful if you don't have ADHD, but are very unhelpful that stop them from acting in the way their brain wants them to naturally act. So when you say this feels like it's natural, yeah, 100%, because we're just validating what your brain already wants to do.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, they have a very rigid idea around rewards should own I only deserve a reward at the end of a task. But then that doesn't actually help them get started. They end up also feeling like I should have got more done today, but I like I feel really guilty about how long I spent on the couch or in bed, but I also don't deserve a reward at the start of the task.

SPEAKER_03

People will short circuit their natural desire in order to do things that they think they need to do in a specific way.

SPEAKER_01

So if I give you an example, like if I have a So again, you kind of see that with interpersonal stuff as well, where they shouldn't need X, they should just do it. And they're sort of refusing to use incentives to encourage the behavior they want because they feel like the behavior should already be there.

SPEAKER_03

We should just I have I have had clients that still say this to me. They're like, I should just be able to be a better person. And a lot of times that can be a struggle. So I'll give you an example. You know, I I've got a lot of great comments from from wonderful people on this article. And if you are one of those people, thank you very much. People have said things like, I think I've been doing this without knowing. Some people said, Oh, you put into the words the tactic I've already used to do work I am avoiding. I was feeling guilty using Netflix, YouTube, and podcasts to help focus. But now I realize it's actually a legitimate way to get me going and just accept this is how my brain works.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, which is the feeling I'm describing. I'm like, whether or not I'm doing it off the back of us talking about the strategy over the years, or it was already there in some degree, but then we've formalized it. I wonder if that also feeds into that feeling of I'm currently doing this, but I could get something done now.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, well, people said, like what this one person here said, I always felt guilty that I did these things first, falling into the trap of you can only reward yourself with something fun when you've finished. So it's bad if I do it now. When in reality I never get there anyway because I get stuck in freeze. And when I do these things, I listen to some music, I read a bit of my book, I find it much easier. That's another thing, read a bit of a book, find it much easier to move on to what comes next. Time to stop guilt tripping myself over this and start recognizing it that it is my brain and it's I'm doing what my brain needs to accomplish tasks. Yeah. And someone else said, I didn't think this method makes sense, but by thinking about it and listening to other people's examples, I get it. But it totally feels like cheating.

SPEAKER_01

But that's no prize for doing things that there's no prize for doing things the hard way.

SPEAKER_03

Like, unless you're working in an office and somebody's watching you, like then you might have to consider Well, that's why working with professionals is tricky because they don't have control of their environment. But if you're a business owner, in most cases you're working, I'm like, there's certainly Or if you're working remotely, or if you're a student for the most part, you can the studying component of it. I remember right early on, I worked with students many years ago, and I remember blowing people's minds by being like, hey, if it's cold in the morning and you have to get to your desk and you don't want to because you're cozy and it's cold, just bring the duvet with you. Change people were like, Oh my god, I went to my desk because I could just bring everything with me, and that was way better.

SPEAKER_01

So, you know, there's the full like Saturday morning cartoons mode.

SPEAKER_03

Exactly. Exactly. There's no rules. The key is that you get it done and you get it done in a way that works for your brain.

SPEAKER_01

Blanket, hot chocolate.

SPEAKER_03

You know, and some people will say to me, like, I'm trying to be healthy, so I don't wanna, I don't wanna, you know, eat too much junk food. I get that. Like my m when I'm trying to get some stuff done, you know, my thing is like gum, walking pad, music, and then I'll work.

SPEAKER_02

Being active, yeah, walking pads are good one to mention as well.

SPEAKER_01

So it's it doesn't have to just be like a sugary thing, although I mean I do both on the standing desk, walking pad, more in the stacking than the dial category, but and they're a little bit interchangeable.

SPEAKER_03

They're a little bit interchangeable, especially when you're learning about them for the first time.

SPEAKER_01

I think this also relates to this idea you have used with clients before around staying up too late and getting up in the morning, going to bed on time. I'll vaguely put my highest of mean activity, which is kind of like a somewhat related idea, I suppose, is like getting to bed on time, actually getting sleep at the end of the day, not staying up late, and then I guess getting out of bed in the morning as well, potentially. Taking that evening time activity and saying, well, it can be early morning too. And so at any point when you're enjoying it at night, if you're feeling tired, you can think, well, I could spend the next hour being tired and enjoying myself, or I could throw it in the morning and my recently getting out and getting back to my desk in the morning.

SPEAKER_03

Make it that higher level of the dopamine dial that you dialed down in the morning. Yeah, you're right. I have I have worked with clients who used to be night owls who become early birds because they just take the fun thing they were doing at night and they move it to the morning. Um, I have had many clients wake up and game.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, if you get up early enough, you get a lot of the same benefits, which is no one's there to disrespect you or bother you or make you feel bad.

SPEAKER_03

And I am fully aware that if you're a parent and your kids wake up when you do, regardless of what time you wake up, that's not always true. Outside of that, yes.

SPEAKER_01

There's always exceptions and and this is the I think you've also had clients talk about starting the day with gaming, for instance, and then struggling to dial that back down because they enjoy it so much and they get lost in it for so long.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, well, this is this is a problem that people often come to me with when it comes to the dopamine dial is they'll be like, okay, I did the high stimulation activity, but then I couldn't dial it down. To be completely honest with you, the answer to that is usually very specific to you. And so it's often something that I have to assess in the person to understand why this is happening. Because it could be a whole bunch of things. Number one, it could be they just they don't like often people will be like, Well, I went from like gaming to ambient noise, so it didn't work. And it's like, well, that was too much of a jump. Like you you needed more steps there. For other people, they might be like, Well, I'm unemployed and I'm looking for um jobs, or I'm um about to send out marketing flyers. These are incredibly emotionally, emotionally salient tasks. And so you have a lot of anxiety around them, even if you haven't necessarily acknowledged that. And so that's why you're putting it off. And we need to work with that rather than it being the issue of the gaming. There's a lot of different reasons for it.

SPEAKER_01

So like you're mistaking your own avoidance of the task for an inability to dial down.

SPEAKER_03

And that's why no matter what level of support we're providing when I work with people, I always do some one-on-one coaching regardless, because there are these like little areas in the code that are that's breaking the whole code. And when you're and my job is to go through and find them, basically. Like there's a bracket that's missing, or there's something, you know, that isn't working, and so that the code can run effectively. Because it's usually something along those lines. And when you've done it as many years as I have, you start to see the patterns. So the answer is not always, oh, the dopamine dial doesn't work because I got stuck playing video games. It could be you've never let yourself have a break for years and years and years and years, and like that happens a lot. And so you're playing video game for the first time in five years, you've never done anything fun, and your brain is just like, oh my god. And that will dissipate over time as you give yourself some real breaks. You know, that could be another reason as well. I've seen that too.

SPEAKER_01

Probably is worth caveating that some games are borderline gambling addictions.

SPEAKER_03

If you're playing a phone game, that's pretty hardcore. Like a phone phone game's pretty addictive.

SPEAKER_01

Some games are fun. Some games are loot boxes wrapped in a game. And there is probably a point where if you said I want to go to the casino as the top thing of my dopamine dial, or if I I wanna I want to gamble, you might be entering into a zone of no, that's actually genuinely hard to stop.

SPEAKER_03

Well, again, and this, but this comes back to the idea, it's like don't have a dopamine dial that goes this that high. You know, there are people who have different needs and different situations, and like I said, it everyone's dopamine dial is different, but for most people, it's gonna be like, okay, I'm gonna do like I'm gonna go on Instagram or something like that. I will say if you are somebody who really struggles with this, you can use a Freedom app or something along those lines to automatically turn it off, the social media or whatever you're doing after about 10 minutes. But in practice, because I've had a lot of people come to me and are like, I'm addicted to social media, I'm addicted to the internet, I need help. In practice, I have found that those kind of cold turkey style things don't actually work as effectively as understanding what the underlying reason for the symptom is and solving that. So I had a client who was very, very addicted to the internet, used every single cold turkey turn off the internet style thing under the sun, would jailbreak all of them, really just needed to go outside and take a break and take a consistent break that involved like they were just very active people. Uh sorry, a very active person that needed like riding their bike and and and like going for a walk and listening to a podcast while they walked, that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01

Basically, they were starving themselves. Yeah. And then wondering, yeah, okay. So they were they were dopamine starving themselves, and then wondering why they couldn't break the lowest friction habits. Like they'd removed all the fun from their schedule, but they couldn't remove their phone. And so now they were addicted to their phone as the only lifeline to dopamine that they had left, and they were using it compulsively in place of touchgrass dopamine activities. Okay.

SPEAKER_03

I just want to say as a as a disclaimer, I am not getting into the addiction side of things, like actual addictions. That's something that you have to work through with a therapist and and all of that kind of stuff. We're talking more about it in a colloquial level of like you're just you're just really stuck on something.

SPEAKER_01

I'm just acknowledging that some gaming is fun, and but you kind of get to a point where you're like, I should get some work done, and some gaming is like intentionally tapping into addictive.

SPEAKER_03

And that's why this is an experiment. You enter it with an experimentation mindset. We don't go, oh, I'm not a genius who gets everything done 100% of the time. The first time I tried this dial, it clearly doesn't work. Let's throw it out and go back to what we were doing. We want to usually go in and say, okay, well, what happened? How do we adjust? And that's that's why I often recommend that this kind of thing is a bit of a back and forth, either with us or or with somebody who understands, like, oh, well, why don't you try this and can help you with some problem solving around getting your dial dialed?

SPEAKER_01

I definitely think there's something to putting your work and your play in the same space because it does allow you to sort of use it to get there, and then also allows you to sort of have that sort of ebb and flow that I think is quite ADHD in terms of motivation and Yeah, one hundred percent.

SPEAKER_03

It's all about how you dial it. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the ADHD Skills Lab. If you liked it, leave us a five star review. It helps other people learn more about us. And thank you so much to our wonderful team for making us sound good, look good, couldn't do it without you.