So I’ve noticed a pattern in my life that I was hoping someone could empathize with.
I’ve been training for over a year for a physical test that I really want to pass. The other day I tried to do the exercises that I’ll have to do in the test and I completed all of them successfully and now I feel that I’ve lost some of my motivation to get better. It’s as if I was trying to prove that I could do it and I feel that I have, although I really haven’t since I haven’t taken the test. I’ve noticed this before. A couple years ago I tried really hard to get into a prestigious degree in a reputable university through my own merit. I managed to get in and soon after I lost interest and quit. Has anyone experienced something like this before?
Thank you for your time :)
Ps.: I’m not sure this is related to ADHD, I just figured it might be and the people here might be able to advise me.
I got into and forced my way through a degree in EE just to prove I could as a foreign student working mother. Dropped out after half the time in part due to burnout, in part due to loss of motivation.
Learned a million different things (literally from basket weaving to drone racing) all stored away or suffering from lack of time after figuring out how to do them well. These days I’m between pretty decent and almost hopeless at everything. Want a mediocre wooden bed? A fairly good bathroom with mosaic art? A vegetable garden? A small computer program?
I sometimes wonder what this ADHD thing is good for, for sure it must have some purpose? It’s like I’m waiting for the big conclusion of something that connects all the things I have been picking up throughout the years.
You will be the one to write the small computer program which allows drones carrying hand woven baskets to collect vegetables from the vegetable garden while you are walking between your mediocre bed to your fairly good mosaic art laden bathroom and life will be good.
That must be the most encouraging thing I’ve read in a while. Sounds like a fairly good future.
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My way to motivate myself: Track it in a spreadsheet.
Make graphs with Excel (or whatever) to visualize it.I tracked my push ups and pull ups to track my activity after my bike-commute. Also keeps me from not doing it.
Yeah, I think challenge can be a bit motivator for adhd folks. Once I’ve completed the main part of something, I find it really hard to care about the details, to the extent that the unfinished parts sometimes spoil the bit I had completed.
I feel like it’s the dopamine of the chase is actually what’s motivating, and challenge is a version of that. I’ll get sucked into finding some obscure game and getting an emulator working to be able to play it and all the way I’m super engaged. Then I start playing this game I was so excited about and meh, don’t care.
Maybe you could think about ways to refocus that drive? A therapist told me once that adhd people don’t get satisfaction from completing things, but are excited about new things. So, instead of feeling proud of getting into college try and immediately find the new challenge (now I want to get a prostigious internship!) if you succeed at your fitness goals, maybe you can raise the stakes see if you can beat a friend or a record or something?
There have been studies on motivation that have similarities to your descriptions. Basically, like you said, if we get a partial reward for a goal, we’re less likely to accomplish that goal.
The one I remember had ‘telling someone else your goal’ as the ‘partial reward’. At the end of a day, people who told someone their goal felt closer to accomplishing it, but less motivated to actually work on it. People who didn’t tell anyone worked on their goal longer, but also felt like ‘they still had a long way to go’.
I think the other part of it was what you said about not wanting to actually do X but prove to yourself that you COULD do X. Once I prove that I COULD… I’m done. The goal might not be what other people would consider ‘done’, but my ADHD brain doesn’t care. It got dopamine, and now we’re moving on to the next topic.
