I’ve had “helpful” suggestions from so many people insisting that you just need to do something consistently for a few weeks and it magically becomes a habit, otherwise you’re just not really trying. Which translates to “Why don’t you try not having ADHD?” Yeah thanks a lot 😑
I tried to explain to someone that our (adhd) brains are literally incapable of forming habits. They tried to remind me of all my bad habits, therefore I was wrong. And that was just too much for me to unpack and explain to them (they didn’t know me or my habits, they were just talking about the bad habits that come along with adhd, but thats a whole other story)
But when someone told me habits are something you do without thinking about it. Like, at all.
I’ve never had a habit in my life. I have to think through every step of every task, no matter how many times I’ve done them before, nothing just runs of its own volition. And I could have done something literally 10,000 times and I’ll still miss a vital step and screw it up.
That fun effect is called, executive dysfunction. Yay!
Idk how it works for NTs, but unless the thing tickles my brain the right way, it’s not going to become a habit just through wishful thinking no matter how often I push myself to do it.
Even if something tickles my brain it still doesn’t become a habit. I genuinely don’t think, in my 30s, with dozens of daily systems and all things considered a damn organized life, that I have a single habit. Everything I do is painstaking. Everything is conscious thought. I do laundry every single day and I have to think through the steps. Brushing my teeth is a slog. Figuring out what to eat is so difficult I often skip it despite just eating the same things over and over. If I don’t set alarms, I will forget to feed my kid. Alarms for vitamins that I’m not allowed to dismiss until the vitamin is swallowed. I am struggling to think of a single thing that is automatic. I have to think about opening the blinds every day. I have to think about turning off the lights at night (I think about the consequences of leaving them on to decide which lights I leave on. Every night). Nothing happens out of habit.
This, 100%.
It’s funny, after I read your comment I tried to think if anything I do is purely out of habit, rather than a deliberate choice. I thought, “Falling asleep?” at first, but then remembered my insomnia. Hell, it’s 4:15am right now.
I can’t even sleep overnight “out of habit.”
I hate this. You think you’ve got a good streak going and have been doing well for weeks and weeks, then something interrupts the pattern for a day or three…and it’s like trying to start from scratch all over again.
Best part is when there isn’t anything that interrupts, but you just forget the habit
It’s so fucking hard.
Life is just a loop of scrambling to be stable, struggling to maintain it, then inevitably falling back to square one when something knocks you out of the routine.
I feel this in my soul.
I know but then it’s so easy to give up, and even if you don’t, the next time something slightly disturbs the balance, such as it being Thursday, you need to achieve a monumental life changing effort again just to do the exact same thing you did for months…? And the crazy thing is that even experts on the subject don’t seem to understand going “it’ll get easier just keep at it” my sister in Christmas, I am fourty freaking years old I don’t think I’ll suddenly be able to not randomly forget brushing my teeth
“Making it a habit” is just a big lie to fix any problem even for NTs. I don’t have ADHD and I will drop something I’ve done consistently for 6+ months in a heartbeat if I miss a single occurrence, and then it takes conscious effort for weeks to get back to it.
What’s habits precious?
“like what nuns wear?”
Precious habits, yes, the rituals we does, yesss, over and over, they can hurt us, or make our lives better, precious!
It helps is it was a hyperfixation at one point. In my case, timelieness was a problem, around the same time I was learning programming (Ruby/Rails) and needed so odd time functions to handle multi-timezone inputs. I ended up with a minor fixation on UTC, multiple clocks set to it and a scary ability to do timezone offsets in my head. Bonus, im not late for shit anymore.
I just use a neurotic fear of being late :)
I’ve had a habit for 10+ years. One day I just forgot, and it was weeks later when I thought “didn’t I use to do something at this time?”
I never managed to get that habit back.
Well, it worked for 10+ years, that’s something, isn’t it?
What was the habit?
They forgot
I actually have forgotten and it’s bothering me.
Starting habits
And what was the habit that he was trying to start with the power of starting habits habit?
The power to remember to do your habits you already started.
3 month habit? Those are rookie numbers lol. In one 3-day stint of a hospital stay, I once completely lost a habit I had developed over more than 5 years prior.
You started pissing the bed again, didn’t you?
I mean… I’m not gonna say no, but I’m also not gonna lie
The problem is that it takes someone else to remind you to do the thing often enough and with enough impetus to make it a habit
Which will only last until the first time you’re sick and can’t, and then that habit is gone
I played guitar for 3 years until I cut the tip of my finger off with a mandolin. Literally haven’t touched it since
I used to paint and draw daily every day for 5 years. Then i tried 3d. Used to do it every day for 8 years. Then i tried programming.
Does mandolin have more than one meaning? I know it as type of lute instrument, but I can’t imagine someone cutting theirself on one.
In the US atleast mandolins are also a cooking utensil that creates thin slices of vegetables by sliding them across a flat surface with a blade attached.
If you haven’t heard of Tony Iommi, he was (is?) the guitarist for Black Sabbath who cut two of his fingertips off, on his fretting hand, in some kind of shop accident at work.
Despite this, he popped on a couple of thimbles and proceeded to basically invent the power chord and was a pioneer of guitar riffage.
You only lost one, so you’ve already got one-up on him!
Django Reinhardt had pretty bad damage to his fretting hand too from a fire, and that dude shredded like no other.
like no other
Literally lol… Forced constraints and limitations are often a huge impetus for creating great art.
The right hand of V-3’s Jim Shepard was pulled into a wood planer machine, resulting in significant damage to two fingers and minor injuries to others. After being rushed to the hospital, a plastic surgeon performed multiple surgeries, including two flesh grafts and a bone graft. The recovery process was challenging, involving his hand being temporarily attached to his groin to facilitate healing. Once they cut it loose again, he resumed playing guitar with the hand still completely bandaged and released one of V-3’s finest records, “Negotiate Nothing”, later that same year.
My phone does that for me. I use a habit tracker with undismissable notifications that take only a “Yes” or “No” answer (it’s a bit more customizable, but this is how I use it), which helps keep me accountable for my habits.
Unfortunately, it’s been almost 3 months for a habit that I’m trying to nail down and I still forget sometimes.
I’ve tried something like that.
But I’m unfortunately prone to leaving my phone in my bedroom, so it never works out
When I’m trying to habituate to something by myself, I usually do okay by setting up barriers. Can’t do X because Y is in the way, so I handle Y, and eventually I’ll usually just start doing Y as part of doing X, where X is something I want to do.
It takes a few weeks but it usually does work.
Link?
Seconded, I need this!
Thank you!
That’s what the time machines are for. Gotta go back and make it a habit for your 3 year old self, so that it sticks with you more in your adult life. Basic habits like brushing your teeth before bed, washing your hands before eating, and others commonly taught to young children tend to stick better. I wonder if it’s more about the percentage of life with the habit, rather than current habit holding streak that helps keep the habit.
For hand washing, just develop a minor germ phobia from the covid pandemic. Now I wash my hands before I eat, after I get home from the outside world, and after I touch anything my mind deems “unclean”. It does of the side effects of dry hands.
That works too, with measles on the rise, maybe that’ll help more people with hand washing.
I guess I’m the exception.
I’m not medicated. The only control I have over my life is by doing exactly this; making things into habits. I’m a creature of habit and I’m on autopilot most of the time. Integrating daily challenges into that autopilot mode has changed my life.
What kind of challenges, can you please elaborate ?
I find it difficult to pull myself out of long autopilot “drifts” is what I like to call them; where I’m not consciously electing to do anything in particular, I’m just moving through the day at the whim of whatever catches my attention. This is problematic because there are things that I actually want to do during the day; things I’ve been thinking about doing for a while like making music, DIY projects, anything really.
While I’m in these drifts I’m essentially lighting time on fire. It’s almost always completely wasted time which causes a problem. Once I’m able to snap out of the drift, I realize I’ve squandered time that I needed to dedicate to the things I actually wanted to do. This causes me immense stress and existential dread. Feels like I’m actually wasting my life.
If I snap out of it early, I’m stressed to cram in all the things I wanted to do and sometimes the stress is so overwhelming that I can’t think clearly enough to get anything done and I’ll just give up and fall into doomscrolling or some other time wasting thing like that.
This ties into my habits because when I didn’t have day-to-day chores and responsibilities integrated into these drifts it would all get pushed to the next day and I’d procrastinate heavily until it became a problem not only for me but for my wife as well.
I put some deep thought into what’s going on during these weird drift times and I realized a lot of what I’m doing is actually just force of habit, some good habits but mostly bad habits. I figured that since these habits are so strongly ingrained in me to the point that I often don’t even realize that I’m doing any of them in particular until after they’re done, I thought that if I could integrate the chores and other undesirable necessities of being a functioning person in a household into these drift states, I’d likely just end up getting all this shit done without putting too much brain power into tracking and remembering to do them, let alone the effort to commit to the task.
It took me about two months of painful dedication to burning these activities into my brain as new habits. When I’d be tempted to just put them off until later, I’d stop and pep talk myself into just fucking doing the thing, no exceptions or excuses and not allow myself to do anything else until it was done. Sometimes it was stuff as simple as just taking cups from my office down to the dishwasher. Other times it was more detailed and lengthy responsibilities that come with being a husband and a homeowner.
It was incredibly difficult for a while to force myself as a round peg through the square hole so to speak. Sometimes I just wanted to cry when I realized that I couldn’t just procrastinate and that I had committed myself to doing the dishes after every single meal. Sounds silly but when your mind is racing with all these things that you’re hyperfixated on (mostly music for me), the thought of losing time with that, even for 15 minutes to do dishes, can feel catastrophic.
What’s funny is that I didn’t even realize a specific moment when these new habits just clicked. My wife said one day “Man, you’ve done a complete 180 on this stuff. The house is clean, everything is done all the time, I can’t believe it”. In that moment I hadn’t even realized that I had actually achieved my goal. All of these previously loathsome tasks that drove me nuts were just integrated into my day and I wasn’t even thinking about them anymore.
I’d think about what I did previously first thing in the morning; make a pot of coffee. Where previously I’d just stand around scrolling waiting for my coffee, I noticed in hindsight that I had actually brought laundry downstairs on my way to the kitchen, started the pot, went out side and filled bird feeders and baths, finished up a small amount of dishes in the sink from movie night the night before, and cleaned the counter tops because they needed it - all on autopilot.
This isn’t a flawless process either. It requires its own maintenance. I’ll notice every couple of weeks that I’m leaving more cups and dishes on my desk in my office than I should be, or that I put off scooping the cat litter until the morning for no real reason and have to have my own little internal pep talk again to remind myself of my commitment to myself and also to my wife; that I’m an active participant in this household with shared responsibilites with my wife and that I’m not a slave to my mind’s weird thought process. I stop and I think about what I’m doing and why and that gives me the motivation to do the things I need to do.
The best part is that this is much more efficient than just living off the cuff and at the whim of my brain’s weirdness and that despite doing more chores than ever, I have way more free time to do the things I enjoy. I consider it one of the biggest wins of my life up to this point.
That’s fantastic! Thank you for sharing. I’ve been going through some learning of my own recently, and I’m going to have a think on what you shared.
I’m medicated but I’ve formed habits unmedicated because those habits had to compensate for the meds I couldn’t afford. Diet and exercise. I’m constantly invalidated by communities like this which just isolates me further. I’ve been told my issues aren’t severe by strangers. Mental health meme communities are toxic and I can’t wait until people start realizing that. I can’t stand tHaNkSiMcUrEd because it went from pointing out “smile more it will make you happy” and how stupid that is to making fun of self help entirely.
If I don’t engage with something basically every day I just forget it exists. Doesn’t matter if it’s a friend, a TV show I’m watching or working out every morning.
The one exception is when you end up on a runaway train of thought.
You go for a walk and you see a seagull, which reminds you of the last time you went to the beach, which reminds you of coconuts, which reminds you of a silly cartoon you used to watch, which reminds you of a specific day in elementary school when a kid quoted an episode, and then you start to wonder what that kid’s up to as an adult today.
And maybe you have the thought of, “I should reach out to them. I think they added me on Facebook like 15 years ago.” But then a nearby car honks. You snap out of the thought and look around. You don’t know what car honked, but you do spot a dog. It’s an uncommon breed and you can’t remember the name of it. You then spend the next minute or so either guessing the wrong breed or going down the alphabet, hoping to trigger the right name.
By the time you give up guessing and decide to look it up on your phone, you’ve completely forgotten about that kid from elementary school. The thought has vanished back into the void whence it came.
This happens all the time to me. I’ve made a game of it, that when I land at the end of a thought spiral I work my way backwards to figure out how the hell i ended up at something weird.
GET OUT OF MY HEAD.
I feel validated…
Oh 💯
Why i gotta see this now, when I’m trying to avoid forming a habit by not going and getting a membership to the gym less than a mile away from me?
Don’t let the internet tell you what works for you. Defeatism is just more engaging than success stories.
Just a word of warning. If you don’t want to do it, you’re never going to. I don’t mean “I want to want to do it”, but actually desire to do it. I paid for a membership for years before I actually went consistently. That money could’ve been spent a million different ways that were better than paying for something I had no desire to use
think “i should do that”
pay money to do the thing
procrastinate doing the thing
guilt yourself into doing the thing
actually do the thing
⬇️ I AM HERE ⬇️
Be mad at yourself for not doing the thing sooner
I bought a treadmill and stationary bike a few years ago… weight training is less of a concern for me than cardio and getting in shape to use a bike as transport… also the treadmill is meant to make VR less nauseating for me, and I haven’t wanted to play VR since getting it because it’s so nauseating…?
I’ve used the stationary bike a few dozen times, but the treadmill is still in the box.
I want to use them… well no, I want to want to use them…. Which means I don’t.
I was right there with you for most of my life. Antidepressants changed that for me but I know not everyone is depressed/has access to psych care. Hopefully it clicks for you one day
Thanks!
This isn’t depression… I mean that’s probably some of it, but not the bulk of it. I’m actually in a much better headspace now than I’ve been for the last 15 years or so. It turns out my baseline happiness is that of a relentless optimist. Everything is going to be good, even though it really isn’t right now sort of thing. I have zero basis for that assertion, because my life is a complete shitshow, but I won part of the gene lottery on that one.
I was dx adhd at 5 (35 years ago) and pretty sure there’s a heavy dose of autism in there that wasn’t picked up because I’m AFAB and old, and getting screened for that now serves no purpose unless I want to be in a “work camp”… (American)
The problem is object permanence. Most of the time I don’t even remember I have a treadmill, and when I do, like when I see the box, I never want to set the damned thing up. It’s not pressing or important, nor is it something I want to do, so it doesn’t get done.
I just built a chicken coop tho, so I’m capable of doing things I need to do, just not things I should, but would rather not tbh, do.
