ADHD Brains are different - so some advice that works for non-ADHD brains may or may not work.

In general, being present and meditation (in whatever way that works for you, but, generally the practice of observing your thoughts as they go by but not reacting to them) are helpful for ‘strengthening’ your thought patterns. Becoming aware of things and building up that muscle is how you can have more of that willpower.

Habits can be very difficult to build, don’t get discouraged. Find things that work for you and ways to incentivize or motivate yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/@HowtoADHD/ Here’s a great youtube channel

90% of willpower is preparation. Arrange your life to make the things you should do easier and the things you should avoid less convenient.

Example: To avoid sleeping in, or worse, dicking around on my phone instead of sleeping or getting up, I put my phone to charge on the other side of the bedroom.

Another: I put a speaker in my kitchen to listen to music when I wash dishes. A lot easier to wash just those last few pots, even if I feel like I’m ready for a break, if I want to finish the song.

If you have ADHD, forget combating it with willpower. You need to reduce distractions.

But most of all, get diagnosed properly and then a psychotherapist can help you further, as might the appropriate meds.

The Science of Self Control is an excellent book about willpower and, well, self control. It goes into the science of it and how to use that to your advantage.

One thing I do is to reduce friction. You are more likely to do something if you make whatever it is easier to do. Conversely, if you want to stop doing something, increase friction (make it harder to do). Two examples:

You want to go to the gym in the mornings? Go to bed a bit earlier, get everything ready the night before, and maybe even sleep in your gym clothes.

Your want to stop eating cookies? Put them somewhere you’re less likely to walk past them or see them.

In your case, maybe try removing things that are distractions, e.g. put your phone on the other side of the room.

When I was in grade 2 I had an old substitute teacher tell us a story about how he trained his willpower by setting an alarm every night at 3 am and when it went off he’d do 10 jumping jacks.

I tried it that night, got out of bed and did 2 jumping jacks before realizing this was the dumbest thing ever. If I had the willpower to get out of bed in the middle of the night to exercise I already had the willpower in the first place.

But weirdly enough ever since that night I’ve been able to get out of bed on the first alarm

There is some good advice in this thread, but if you do have ADHD, then the advice is only as good as your ability to carry it out, and saying “just do the thing” will only end up demoralising you.

From my perspective (42, diagnosed with ADHD four years ago), it’s been damn near impossible for me to noticeably improve myself. It’s only when I reflect on my progress that I begin to notice positive changes.

Ultimately, it’s about training your perspective on a task. Are you failing to do things, or are you choosing to prioritise other tasks instead. Do those other tasks have positive outcomes (however tenuous they may be)? If this is the case, then you could work on choosing to prioritise the tasks that are expected of you.

In terms of my working day, my job is an issue for me, as it doesn’t really have a set form, and is almost entirely self-led. If I don’t do what’s expected of me, no one really notices, and that’s actually a problem for me, because left to my own devices I’ll gladly spend all day fucking about online, then feel like shit because I’ve not been productive*. So I’ve learned to tackle this by physically writing myself a To Do list first thing in the morning, that I then input into a daily timetable spreadsheet. Then I use an app called Cold Turkey to block access to websites of my choosing for a period of time. Only then am I able to focus on the tasks at hand.

In time, your brain will (hopefully) begin to mould itself around a different way of being, and while it will not likely become second nature to you, it will become easier to recognise when your distraction has taken control.

*of course, almost all of the problems we face are as a result of being forced to exist in a capitalist society, where we’re all trained to assign our personal worth to the worth of the work we produce. If we neurodivergents were able to live outside that paradigm, we’d be fine.

In most cases it is not a lack of willpower but rather an exhaustion of the same. Try to arrange your daily routine around things you WANT to do and limit the things that burn attention and mental energy (doom-scrolling social media, ….).

It’s all about managing your (dopamine) resources economically.

Meditation. It’s scientifically proven to help with ADHD.

Dr K at Healthy Gamer has a tonne of really great advice for dealing with this and especially for ADHD sufferers. He talks about urge-surfing and how to develop and strengthen the parts of your brain that end up giving you back control in terms of decision making, willpower and responding to habits. Here’s a short on urge-surfing but have a dig thru the rest of the channel https://youtube.com/shorts/SUgJdsTCs0E?feature=share

Close this tab right now and promise yourself never come back to see if someone gave you an easy answer…

I have found it useful, even healthy in stressfulness work situations, to allow myself the distraction - but only for a little while. This works fairly well for me.

Do one other thing. Play only one round of Minesweeper (yes, that’s me). Read only one thing on Lemmy. Pick one of those. Then get back to work. For a while, anyway.

Well, the research says that therapy is great, but only after you’re on meds. You don’t lack willpower, it’s a physiological problem that needs to be addressed by medical care.

What is it you are distracting yourself from? The low motivation could also be that you are not really believing in a goal or you are not enjoying a task because you would rather do something else with your time. As others already said if you “suspect” you have ADHD you could also try therapy.

This is going to be funny, but … edging yourself during masturbation.

I always get myself to do things I don’t want to by thinking “Future-me is going to be much happier when he finds that present-me did this already.”

Helps me find the motivation to exercise, make myself a good cup of coffee instead of a kcup, do the dishes after dinner, lots of things. And past me is such a bro, saved me from present-me having to do those things.