"Here's why people with ADD and ADHD procrastinate - how to understand it and how to work with it.
Procrastination is a primary trouble for AD/HD-ers. We can see how this trouble plagued Leonardo Da Vinci. He barely finished anything he began. However, when he did actually finish something, it was a masterpiece.
"I have wasted my hours."
~ Leonardo Da Vinci
People with ADD and ADHD have a keen sense of intuition and the states of their minds are extreme. They are prone to experiencing periods of tormenting confusion followed by moments of great clarity. When the clarity comes in it brings with it bursts of creative genius and a spontaneous awareness of exquisite solutions to problems that previously seemed insurmountable.
The Problem:
Since ADHD-ers have repeatedly experienced these unexpected moments of clarity with the accompanying spontaneous insights of pure genius, they grow to anticipate them; at least unconsciously. These moments render useless all that they were struggling to do with one fell swoop of inspiration that turns the whole problem on its head. These insights reveal short-cuts and offer questions that no one ever thought to ask.
AD/HD-ers subconsciously realize that they could struggle for hours searching for something only to discover it's been in their back pocket the whole time. But it is only the spontaneous insight that reveals this impossibly easy solution, and when that insight will come no one knows. So instead of beating their heads up against the wall, people with ADD and ADHD learn to procrastinate.
They could spend weeks on a project, pursuing a particular approach only to discover in one momentary flash of insight that all that they had done could have been completely transcended in a single move. If they had just looked at the project from this new perspective, right in the beginning, they could have done the project better and done it in days instead of weeks.
"Why bother starting the project in the first place? Why not just wait till the inspiration shows up and save the strain and effort?" the inner mind of the AD/HD-er unconsciously reasons. "Why not just relax and enjoy yourself with other distractions while you wait for that moment of clarity to come?"
The Solution:
What most procrastinators are missing is that this initial struggle is the key to the great revelations. Without the struggle, the mind has no impetus to provide a revelation!
So if you have ADD or ADHD, at sometime during the completion of your project, you will likely be struck with an amazing insight into the nature of your project that completely topples all of your previous concepts and plans for it. You will want to start your project from scratch in this better, completely new way. Realizing this, at least subconsciously, you used to think something along the lines of "Why bother beginning now, then anyway? Why not just wait for that spectacular insight and then begin. Won't that save me a great deal of struggle?" The answer is "no!"
The only way you get to have that amazing insight, that paradigm shift of thought, that out of the box solution is to engage in your project - encounter the frustrating complexities of your current approach to achieving its goals.
Only through this struggle will your limited mind grow tired and yield to your unlimited genius level mind to spontaneously take over and offer the reward, the solution to your struggle."
Garret LoPorto
CEO, Media for Your Mind, Inc.
Author of The DaVinci Method
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