One of the most common productivity strategies offered to people with ADHD is to start with the hardest task.
Brian Tracy called this “eat the frog.”
For people with ADHD, this advice is a set-up for failure.
Without sufficient dopamine, task initiation is a heavy lift, even for easy tasks.
At the start of the day, when dopamine is low, people with ADHD struggle to get out of bed and put one foot in front of the other.
We aren’t yet “plugged in;” our nervous systems aren’t yet online.
Trying to do a hard task with low dopamine is a recipe for failure, frustration, and self-hatred, which causes dopamine to deplete further. Before you know it, you’re in a spiral.
But this isn’t good advice even for neurotypical people. It defies all logic and common sense.
Whoever coined the myth of starting with the hardest task never did strength training.
Nobody starts with their heaviest lift. It’s a recipe for failure — and possibly injury.
If you want to do a heavy lift, you follow a process.
You start with a general warm up to get the blood flowing.
You practice the movement pattern to groove the neural pathways.
Then you build up slowly and incrementally.
Sometimes you repeat a set at a given load before increasing.
As your nervous system adapts at each load, you increase the weight on the bar incrementally.
Along the way, each successful lift boosts dopamine. That dopamine boost increases your desire to push heavier.
The top set comes after you’ve acclimated and built up.
Workouts are the model for every other task.
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