5 Reasons to Use the Gym as Your Writing Space if You Have ADHD

It’s no coincidence that I started my blog within a week of committing to starting my day with a workout.

My morning workouts have been a huge component of my consistency in creating and publishing.

For the first few years, my morning routine was to go to the gym then return home to write. In the past couple of years, I’ve found I am more effective if I write at the gym, or at the site of wherever I did my workout.

Here are 5 reasons why this works well, especially for people with ADHD.

(1) Maximize Dopamine

Dopamine is neurotransmitter released into the brain that is responsible for reward, motivation, and regulating attention, among other important functions.

People with ADHD tend to have lower levels of dopamine than neurotypical people. That can create challenges when it comes to motivation, especially for task initiation, as well as focus.

Exercise is a proven method of generating dopamine.

Once you have the dopamine surge, it’s most effective to leverage it before other things get in the way and deplete it.

(2) Minimize Transitions

Transitions are a challenge for people with ADHD. They are open doors for distractions and frustration, which can zap energy and focus.

Imagine this: you have a great workout. You’re riding high on endorphins and dopamine. Your creative juices are flowing.

You pack up, get in your car to head home or to your office so you can sit down to write. Then you hit traffic. Suddenly you’re annoyed or frustrated and you’ve lost the thread and energy of your creative ideas.

Or you remember an errand you needed to run, and it’s on your way. It makes sense to stop, right? But then one thing leads to another.

By the time you get to your desk, you’ve lost your mojo.

Once I’ve done the work of exercise to generate dopamine, I want to leverage that work into creative work with as few interruptions as possible.

This is a more specific application of a general principle: always seize the moment of insights and ideas to at least write them down. You may not have time to write a full essay, but write more than a snippet or a sentence — enough to capture the energy of the moment. Don’t rely on your brain to remember what you intended or the energy you had when you had the insight.

(3) Flow Creates Flow

As I say often: flow creates flow.

Ironically, people with ADHD often focus best when we’re in a state of movement. Fidget toys can be helpful when listening to people or while sitting in class, but they don’t work as well when you need your hands to type.

In addition, have you ever tried to unleash creative ideas when your body is cold and stiff? When the body is cold, the nervous system directs energy to the essential organs to keep them functioning. And although the brain is an essential organ in some respects, higher level functions like creativity and executive function don’t count. In terms of evolution, those are luxuries.

Heating up the body with movement lets the nervous system know it’s safe to focus on higher-level brain functions.

The flow state created by a good workout can “buy” you a creative flow state that you can ride for a substantial period of focus.

And when the flow state ends — as inevitably happens — you’re in a place to easily create more. Sometimes all it takes is a few minutes on a bike or some kettlebell swings to get unstuck when you hit a wall.

It’s much harder to do that in a stuffy office, a co-working space, or even a home office.

(4) The Right Amount of Distraction to Maintain Focus

In my career, I’ve worked both in private offices and open office cubicle layouts. Both were challenging for me for different reasons. The private office setting allowed me to close my door and have quiet, but for some types of tasks it was too quiet.

In a cubicle setting, I was able to hear the individual conversations of everyone around me, which was both distracting and extremely fatiguing for my nervous system.

The main challenge for the ADHD brain is not the inability to focus, but the lack of filter. We have a brain that lets everything in. But when it’s too quiet, we can get caught up in our own inner dialogue of perfectionism and the inner critic.

I’ve found that ironically, I often focus best when there’s enough ambient noise and activity that drowns out my inner critic, but when I can’t discern individual conversations.

That’s why coffee shops and other public spaces often work well for people with ADHD. The gym fits those criteria, with the added benefit of allowing the freedom of movement that people with ADHD need, and the flexibility to sit on the floor.

(5) Better For Your Body

One of the things people think is weird about how I work is that I often prefer to sit on the floor or yoga blocks.

Some of my clients have also expressed their preference for sitting on the floor or on something low to the ground.

It makes sense.

First, humans did not evolve to sit on chairs. Sitting on the floor is actually much better for your overall posture, especially your back and hips.

Second, sitting on the floor is grounding. Creative work comes with its share of emotional hazards, including the trap of perfectionism, fear of rejection, and fear of accessing your creative side. The floor offers safety for the nervous system. We can put more of our body on it.

Third, one of the biggest barriers to creativity and productivity is physical pain. It’s much easier to write when your body isn’t screaming at you. Sitting on the floor or a block, or squatting on a box or a ball can help the body stay engaged and out of pain.

Try It For Yourself

The challenge with most “productivity” solutions is that what works for some people doesn’t work for everyone. The best way to know if this will work for you is to try it.