Part of ADD/ADHD is that your brain simply doesn’t get motivated by reward or punishment in a normal way. Motivation comes from internal state—“being in the mood for it.”

Which may sound like you’re screwed, but the solution is right there: Do stuff that puts you in the mood.

When I need to get stuff done, I put on dance music so I’m having fun while I do it. Other times I’ll put on a podcast because that makes me restless and want to move around and do stuff, which can easily be cleaning or organizing my space.

If you have ADD or ADHD, my best advice is to stop trying to use consequences (positive or negative) to motivate yourself to do stuff, and instead find tricks that make your brain find the stuff you need to do engaging.

Also if you have people in your life with ADD or ADHD: Stop punishing them for having a brain that doesn’t connect consequences to motivation in a normal way and starting working with them to develop skills for evoking the internal state that makes getting things done easy.

Also while we’re on the topic: I’ve tried more than one gamified task manager/to-do list app, and the problem with all of them is that it relies on reward/punishment mechanisms to make the game engaging. We need an app that does for to-do lists what Pokémon Go does for walking.

That is, make *doing* the tasks rewarding, rather than *having done them*.

To start: Ask yourself what kind of mood you’re in when you find it easy to get stuff done, then right down things that put you in that mood. https://twitter.com/robertalipp/status/1275064980409208835