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Comment by phatskat | Hacker News Reader

> I'm more describing making this important enough to you that you start looking for places to slot it into your day

I get where you’re coming from, and I think you’re missing the point. Executive dysfunction (for me at least) means I can “want to do the thing” a LOT, heck I can even have the motivation, but getting my brain and body to actually do the damn thing can feel insurmountable. There are certainly ways to work with and around executive dysfunction, it’s just difficult that one of the key aspects of it is that it makes the act of executing feel incredibly difficult.

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As someone who's been there, and now leads an active lifestyle, I'd say it's best to avoid looking at things as black and white. The ability to build habits is a skill you can learn, just as you can learn to ride a bike, program a computer, or cook a meal. It comes more or less naturally for different people, but if you can a fixed mindset instead of a growth mindset, it won't come at all.

One lever I used was self hatred. Instead of babying myself, I decided I was pathetic and worthless if I couldn't even manage to exert myself for 10 minutes every day. Maybe not a psychologically healthy viewpoint in the long term, but it creates the leverage I needed to get out of that dark place.

Sometimes, emotional leverage helps. I sometimes use anger at perceived slights. I think it's OK if you leave it on the exercise bike or treadmill and don't carry it through your day.

Yep - executive dysfunction is... difficult, you short circuit your mind in a strange loop of fighting yourself. It's like writers block or when you try to go to sleep but can't and the harder you try the harder it feels. So it's... Difficult to even do things, even when you DO want to (I have been meaning to play solo board games I bought but ... just can't... My ADHD has gotten far worse over the years compared to my youth). I think people who don't have to deal with it don't understand what it's like.

That sounds rough! I’ve only been diagnosed for a few years so it’s nice to have a label to the way my brain has worked since forever. The exercise one is hard to get going though I’ve done some here and there, weirdly one of the hardest ones for me is allowing myself to start a new tv show by myself. Can’t do it. Doesn’t matter how hyped I am, my brain’s like “nope, not allowed”. Meat bags is weird

One approach is to put your body on auto-pilot. Just do the thing for 5 minutes or whatever, without consideration for whether you want to or not. The desire and will will typically develop over time.

Get an easy win.

If I could put my body on auto pilot in the way that I want to I’d be golden. Do I sit in front of my computer for hours at a time rewriting code I don’t need to rewrite? Sure. Do I knit and listen to the same podcast until I’m falling asleep? Yep. Can I autopilot myself into walking once a day? Nahhhh.

I do get out to walk occasionally, and I absolutely love it, and nothing about that makes it “easy” to turn into a habit. I’m working on it, but it’s a slow process. The thing with executive dysfunction is that the desire and will are often there, they just aren’t making the call.

For me, my executive dysfunction makes one part MUCH more difficult than the rest: transitioning from one thing to another (especially if I have negative emotions attached to the other thing).

The 5 minutes (or even 30-60 minutes) is the EASY part. I have no problem with that. It's my brain screaming at me with every ounce of its energy that the effort of stopping what I am doing and starting something else is insurmountable. The length of the thing is mostly irrelevant.

Meditation may help. Taking advantage of windows of time when your feelings may be more neutral may help. Discarding judgemental thoughts in favor of more neutral thoughts may help.

It's a battle for most people, some more than others.

I am the same kind of person, and believe me, it's a lost battle to try to explain how impossible it is to get to do something every day. People who are normal in that sense will never understand. Their concept of laziness or of that "ah, it's going to be hard to get on that treadmill today" feeling is completely different from ours. Their brains are wired differently.

Just read the answer below

> The only thing ever stopping you from going out the door and running is putting on shoes and shorts, its easy to form a habit!

For people like us, this is akin to "if you are depressed, just cheer up!". It's ridiculous, bordering on the offensive.

Yep I replied to that one too lol. My roommate and I listened to a podcast episode the other day about the challenges of executive dysfunction and ADHD and it was validating to say the least. The podcast is called Struggle Care with KC Davis

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