The promise of productivity advice, found in every self-help book, app, and social media feed, your LinkedIn feed is probably full of them, is to make life easier and more efficient. Yet for those with ADHD, tips designed for the neurotypical brain can often backfire, resulting in frustration, burnout, and fuel our sense that we can't do things that seem to come to easily to others.
Here’s an opinion on some popular productivity strategies, why they often fail for ADHD brains, and the underlying challenges involved.
1. "Eat That Frog": The Hard Task First Myth
The classic “eat that frog” advice suggests doing the hardest, most unpleasant task first to clear the way for a smoother day. For many, tackling that tough task can create momentum, making everything that follows seem manageable by comparison. But for ADHD brains, mornings aren’t necessarily the time of peak motivation or clarity. Often, the most difficult task can be mentally overwhelming right out of the gate, creating a sense of dread rather than progress.
The ADHD mind, which may struggle to initiate challenging tasks on command, risks shutting down completely if it feels forced to “start big.” Rather than fuelling productivity, this strategy can turn mornings into an ongoing tug-of-war between intention and action, quickly spiralling into procrastination.
2. The 2-Minute Rule
The 2-minute rule is the idea that any task that takes less than two minutes should be handled immediately. This aims to stop small tasks from piling up and potentially clearing the mind for bigger work. For people with ADHD, however, the 2-minute rule often turns into a series of endless, distracting tasks that sideline primary goals. What started as a two minute task, may have ended up on a side mission which took you hours off track for the day.
Since ADHD brains are prone to jumping between thoughts or tasks when triggered, these "quick" items can end up fracturing focus, often eating up far more than just two minutes. The simple act of responding to a quick email or putting a paper away can spiral into unrelated tasks, leaving major priorities untouched. This advice can ultimately lead to days filled with unplanned microtasks but little progress on meaningful projects.
3. “Zero Inbox”
The allure of a zero inbox promises peace and control over the flood of digital communication. For ADHD individuals, though, chasing the holy grail of an empty inbox can turn into an all-consuming endeavour. The task itself can hijack the day, as people with ADHD may hyper-focus on sorting, deleting, or responding to every message, regardless of priority, or if they even should be contributing to an email thread in the first place.
This often brings with it a side effect: inbox-checking anxiety. Instead of a means to productivity, zero inbox becomes a source of constant distraction, as the urge to achieve “empty” becomes almost compulsive. It’s a task that can end up dominating mental bandwidth, especially if the inbox is revisited multiple times a day, turning productivity into a mirage.
4. Blocking Every Minute on the Calendar
Hyper-scheduling promises to add order to chaotic days by allotting specific times for every task, often down to the minute. But for people with ADHD, packing every slot can turn the day into a ticking time bomb. Even a small delay or deviation, which are almost inevitable, can throw the entire day’s schedule into disarray, triggering stress and self-doubt.
For ADHD brains, who benefit from some degree of flexibility to handle changing levels of motivation and energy, hyper-scheduling feels restrictive rather than empowering. Instead of keeping things on track, this strategy often fuels a sense of failure if things don’t go as planned, leading to a cascade of unmet expectations.
5. Batching Similar Tasks Together
Batching is the idea of grouping similar tasks, like responding to emails or making phone calls, to save time and minimise “context switching.”
For ADHD individuals, however, this method can feel like a mental endurance test. Spending long periods on the same type of task is challenging and can quickly drain motivation, especially for repetitive or low-interest tasks.
With ADHD, switching task types can actually refresh mental energy. Batching similar tasks without breaks or variety can lead to boredom and fatigue, causing engagement and productivity to drop off. Rather than being efficient, it’s a strategy that can breed procrastination and avoidance.
6. The “Pack It In” Pickle Jar Analogy
The pickle jar analogy encourages people to think of the day as a jar: first filled with big, essential tasks (rocks), then medium-priority tasks (pebbles), and finally quick tasks (sand) to fit in any gaps. While this approach makes sense for people who can methodically work down a list, it often creates stress for those with ADHD, as they feel compelled to constantly pack in “just one more” task, stretching mental and emotional energy too thin.
For ADHD brains, the need to fit everything in can lead to burnout, frustration and overwhelm, rather than productivity. Trying to accomplish everything in a single day can create an overwhelming sense of failure if some tasks are left undone. Instead of aiding prioritisation, the pickle jar method often becomes a constant, anxiety-inducing attempt to juggle everything at once, a constant reminder of perceived failure.
7. The To-Do List Trap
To-do lists are a mainstay of productivity advice, but they can backfire spectacularly for ADHD brains. What starts as a well-organised list can quickly transform into an overwhelming collection of unrelated, often competing tasks, none of which seem prioritised or manageable. This avalanche of “to-dos” often results in paralysis, with ADHD individuals finding it difficult to determine where to even begin.
Rather than offering a helpful overview, long to-do lists can lead to a sense of chaos, making it hard to separate high-impact tasks from low-priority ones. For ADHD brains, a to-do list can quickly lose its utility and become a source of guilt or shame for tasks that remain uncompleted.
8. Productivity Apps Overload
Apps like Trello, Notion, and countless others promise to streamline productivity, each bringing different ways to capture, organise, and track tasks. For those with ADHD, however, this sea of apps often creates confusion rather than clarity. The temptation to try new productivity tools is strong, as each app appears to offer an improvement over the last.
Yet, juggling multiple tools can create its own mental clutter. The ADHD mind may struggle to remember which app is designated for what purpose, leading to more frustration than focus. Instead of fostering organisation, a range of apps can become a tangled web that adds stress and distraction, with the result that less time is spent on actual work.
9. Daily Gratitude Journaling
Gratitude journaling has gained traction as a powerful mental health tool, but for ADHD brains, turning it into a rigid, daily habit can feel like a burden rather than a boon. Although beneficial in theory, the pressure to maintain this ritual every day can become another task on an already overwhelming to-do list.
Forcing the habit can quickly drain its emotional benefit, turning gratitude from a spontaneous, positive experience into a monotonous obligation. When it feels like just another “should,” the reflection loses its intended effect, becoming a mere box to check rather than a source of fulfilment.
10. Time Management vs. Energy Management
Traditional productivity tips hinge on time management: slotting tasks into set time blocks, prioritising, and planning. But for ADHD brains, productivity is much more aligned with energy than with the hands of the clock. Many people with ADHD find that trying to force productivity according to a schedule, especially during low-energy periods, is a recipe for frustration.
While neurotypical productivity benefits from time-tracking, ADHD productivity thrives on energy-tracking. For those with ADHD, failing to “stick to time” can often feel like a personal shortcoming, ignoring the reality that productivity is far more sustainable when it works with natural energy patterns.
Finding Productivity on Your Terms
Us with ADHD crave structure and routine, but we often end up completely lost trying to adopt someone elses system. ADHD is not a moral failing or a failure to adopt a productivity system, it is a serious developmental condition which impairs our ability to self-regulate bridging the gaps between what we know and how we can do it.
For ADHD, productivity isn’t about fitting into someone else’s formula; it’s about discovering strategies that align with individual strengths and energy. Reframing productivity as flexible, goal-oriented, and adaptive makes it achievable and sustainable. By embracing these personalised adaptations, productivity can become less about external validation and more about meeting your unique needs, ultimately fostering a balanced, fulfilling approach to work and life.
The Role of ADHD Coaching in Personalising Productivity Systems
For those with ADHD, navigating the maze of conventional productivity strategies can be exhausting. ADHD coaching offers a collaborative, supportive approach, helping individuals understand their ADHD and work to uncover and refine systems that work with their unique strengths and challenges.
Unlike one-size-fits-all advice, ADHD coaching can lead you to understand your personal rhythms, identify productive patterns, and work to build adaptive, sustainable habits.
ADHD Coaches offer more than just advice, in fact, we rarely ever give any advice unless prompted for it, we aim to prove to you that you are able to follow your own instincts and build your own systems by helping you to see yourself in the picture with ADHD. As an ADHD Coach I act as a collaborative partner, guiding clients through the process of creating self-trust and consistency, built on a foundation ramping up awareness of the true nature of ADHD and what this means to each client. With such a non-judgemental and the inquiry driven approaches used within ADHD Coaching, people with ADHD can experiment with different strategies, adapt as they go, and develop systems they know they can rely on, while being supported by someone who understands ADHD. This personalised approach helps productivity feel less like a battle and more like an achievable, self-empowering journey.
Rule number one of working with someone with ADHD in terms of productivity: don't tell someone with ADHD what to do. I was the exact same, for years fully agreeing with what others prescribed as what I should do, it made perfect sense. However, each time it would end in total failure and just compound and fuel the incorrect belief I held of myself that I'd never get organised or could build any systems around me to support me getting things done through the haze of my perception of time living with ADHD.
In the end, what worked for me was building my own ways, which only became possible by understanding ADHD in new ways and then being supported to experiment and to challenge me when I was losing faith, usually because I'd bolted five new things onto a system that was working fine until I impulsively added more.
