I am not a fan of cold weather. I’d prefer to be on a beach somewhere than endure the harsh winters and snow of the Northeast.
But over the past few years, I’ve developed a new appreciation for winter and the snow: I’ve realized I find joy in shoveling. It’s the kind of activity that makes me lose track of time. Even when it’s cold outside.
I can easily keep going for hours at a time — which turns out to be a good thing when you have a huge driveway to clear.
The things we enjoy doing often give us clues we can apply to other parts of our lives, so I got curious about what gets me excited to shovel snow.
As it turns out, shoveling snow is the type of activity that is well-suited for people with ADHD.
Read: 5 Reasons to Love Shoveling Snow
7 Reasons Why Shoveling Snow is a Perfect ADHD Activity
(1) Shoveling snow is a good workout.
I love a good workout, and shoveling snow checks a lot of boxes on what makes for a good workout. Depending on the conditions, it’s both strength work and conditioning, but in a way that feels like neither.
In 2 hours yesterday, clearing just a small section of my driveway, I walked over 5 miles. Walking 5 miles around a track or on a path would feel boring. But while shoveling, it hardly registered.
Shoveling also involves lunges, squats, pushing, lifting, carrying, and rotational work. You can move through every plane of motion.
Depending on the snow conditions, I can get my heart rate into the zones that provide good stimulus and release dopamine.
Read: 5 Tips for Shoveling Snow Without Throwing Out Your Back
(2) Shoveling gets you outdoors.
Being out in nature is a proven way to get a dopamine boost and clear your mind. My challenge is that in winter I don’t like to be outside.
Shoveling snow is different. I dress in many layers, including snow pants, to keep warm. And because I’m moving, my body temperature rises. The work of shoveling also distracts from the cold.
(3) Shoveling is an activity with a natural goal.
Tangible goals can help people with ADHD hone focus. It gives us something to orient toward.
Shoveling snow has a natural built-in goal: to clear the given area of snow.
This removes any decision fatigue you’d normally have when deciding on a goal.
(4) Shoveling offers clear progress tracking.
One of the challenges for people with ADHD is that it can be hard to sustain enthusiasm for the duration of a project when you don’t know where the end is and can’t visually track your progress.
This is often a problem with creative work or other on-going projects.
The nervous system likes to have a clear end in sight.
Shoveling is a tangible activity that builds in progress tracking. You see the area you’re going to shovel, and how much snow is left to clear.
(5) Re-Start costs are minimal.
One challenge with big creative projects is that re-starting has a high initiation cost: you have to remember where you were when you stopped and get back into the flow of your thoughts.
Shoveling doesn’t have that problem. If the area is too big to tackle in one session, you can break it up into smaller sections and shovel one at a time.
Because my driveway is so big, I often work on it in pieces. When I return, I can see exactly what I’ve done and what’s left to do, making it easy to jump back in.
(6) Shoveling has built-in variety.
I have 3 different shovels I use to clear the driveway. Which one I use depends on the type of snow, how much there is, and what I’m shoveling.
I often use a combination of shovels because each shovel is suited to different techniques: pushing, scooping, or lifting and carrying.
I might vary my technique: sometimes lunging, other times squatting, or pushing the snow to the edge before returning to scoop it off the driveway.
This variety also lends to gamification. Sometimes I set a timer to see how much I can shovel in a given time, or I try to see how high I can build the mountain.
This satisfies my ADHD need for variety and novelty.
(7) Shoveling is repetitive and rhythmic.
Shoveling snow might not be the most cognitively engaging activity — and sometimes that’s exactly what we need to relax our overactive brains.
Shoveling snow is a repetitive activity that lends itself to a rhythm: scope and dump, or push and lift. Repeat.
Sometimes I listen to music or podcasts, but sometimes I turn off all inputs and allow the rhythm to take over. This allows the brain’s default mode network to process things in the background while I’m making progress on something tangible.
It also becomes an active form of meditation.
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