This great question on the Beeminder forum has me thinking about different phases of motivation:

Thread: Looking for tips to replenish motivation.

My thoughts on the topic are probably significantly impacted by my own particular flavor of ADHD. That said, these are some of the phases of motivation I experience, in no particular order:

• Hyperfocus

• Repulsion

• Flow

• Annoyance

• Sustainable tending

Hyperfocus

I experience hyperfocus as a kind of acute obsession. When I’m in this mode I may engage for hours without regard to other priorities. I may postpone tending to my basic needs and resent the time they manage to steal.

For me hyperfocus is not about productivity. I may or may not be effective while hyperfocusing. Often I may be productive for a while but continue pushing for hours after all enjoyment or productivity is long gone.

Hyperfocus is just as likely to be triggered by interest as it is by anxiety. Frequently I find myself hyperfocusing on one thing when another thing is a source of urgency or stress. Sometimes this might be explained by a desire for escape, while at other times it’s due to an irrational fixation on completing task A so that I will be freed to address task B, even though task B isn’t actually blocked by task A.

Repulsion

I think of this as the opposite of hyperfocus. Like hyperfocus, it can be triggered by anxiety around the object, or it may be due to a lack of mental resources without any particular emotional valence. So I don’t mean to imply disgust by the choice of the word.

Rather I chose the word “repulsion” because of the similarity of the experience to that of trying to push the matching poles of two magnets together, that immaterial yet still physical resistance. When I’m in this mode, I find my mind resists even thinking about the thing. I quite literally find myself “blanking out” when I try to engage with the thing.

Flow

Flow is a term used aside from ADHD to describe the state of being fully engaged with a task. It results from an appropriate combination of skill and challenge that avoids both boredom and frustration.

I find that, when I need to get into flow with a project, I often need to choose something easy or superficially interesting about the project first, even if that aspect of the project won’t result in meaningful progress on its own. However, by starting with these smaller tasks, I’m able to incrementally load the project into my mind, until the actually valuable parts catch my interest and I ease into productive engagement.

This is different from hyperfocus in that I’m choosing what I’m engaging with, whereas with hyperfocus I’m held captive apart from any calm intention. Also, if I’m doing this well, I’m able to maintain a healthy level of engagement without the downsides inherent in the obsession I experience with hyperfocus.

Annoyance

I experience annoyance when I’ve been committed, either by myself or some external circumstance, too aggressively to something that I’m not ready to engage with at that level. That may be due to lack of mental resources, misalignment of priorities, or the object being the perceived source of some kind of stress.

I’m a big fan of self-commitment devices (e.g. Beeminder), but I have to be careful to not over-commit myself when I’m enthusiastic about a thing. The consequence is often that later, once the frustration has reached a tipping point, I tear down the systems and precommitments I had made previously.

Sustainable Tending

This is the state I try to navigate into when there’s a priority I want to attend to over a long period of time while avoiding annoyance. It’s the result of implementing appropriate systems and precommitments that won’t result in frustration when my conscious priorities, interests, and mental resources change. It’s a balancing act, finding measures that will encourage ongoing progress while remaining resilient to changing circumstances.

I find that much of my progress in managing my ADHD has been in learning to recognize these states and then surf them in a way that minimizes the harms and maximizes the likelihood that I’ll end up in more manageable states for more of the time.

This also means letting go of the idea that I should or can control what state I’m currently in. I can’t, and if I try I only push myself further toward anxiety and burnout. They’re within my influence, but not my control.