Slowing Down: Activation Energy

Hacking Your ADHD

Hey team, we’re back at it for another episode about slowing down, but this time we’re looking at activation energy, which is the idea we’re going to need to have a certain amount of energy available to get started on a task. When we’re getting ready to get to the next thing on our to-do list, sometimes it can feel like it’s just too much, and getting started is really going to be the hardest part.

Activation energy is that minimum threshold for us to get going on that thing, and some days it just isn’t there, and so today, we’re going to be looking at ways that we make getting started a little bit easier.
Support me on Patreon
Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page
Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/131
This Episode's Top Tips

1. Activation energy is what takes us from thinking about doing something to actually doing it. It’s what can keep us on the couch when we feel like we could be doing something else.
2. When we rely on urgency being our primary mode of motivation it can make it increasingly hard to work on anything that isn’t urgent.
3. Different tasks take different amounts of energy to activate on and we can work on lower that barrier to entry or increasing our amount of available energy. We can do this by making tasks more fun, using accountability, and breaking our tasks into smaller parts.