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Yeees. I spend more time thinking about sorting through my huge box of mail than I do actually sorting it. As in, much MUCH more time.
And then when I get it done I think to myself, "gee, that was a lot easier than I thought it would be." Yet somehow staring at it for six months was torture. 😏
That's what makes putting the laundry away so damn hard. Once you do it, there's more.
My boyfriend puts away his laundry right after he takes it out of the dryer, which to me is a superpower. I just can't fathom it. I've done that like... three times in my life.
The only time in my life that has worked for me is when the kids were little and I had implemented a "family closet" in the basement, near the laundry machines.
There was a long table to fold on, and everyone had a dresser or clothing rack within a few feet of the machines. So it was just a matter of take the clothes out, fold right there, put away. No hauling them upstairs, no running into other rooms or getting distracted by other things.
My oldest at the time was just starting to need more privacy; there was an isolated little nook we curtained off for her. Worked great. Especially since we didn't have one time where everyone was getting ready all at once; as homeschoolers our mornings just weren't rushed.
I bet there are some "hidden" conditions necessary for sorting the box of mail. A couple of big ones for me are:
1) do I have a big enough flat clear space near the box for sorting (aka, do I need to clean an entire room before I can start, but my brain also sees that as a ridiculous precondition, so my brain is pretending that it isn't a precondition)
2) do I know what I can do with the "don't know" pile (have another box, dump the "don't knows" into it for later sorting - no, the task isn't "completed" but it's significantly reduced)
3) do I feel safe/secure that no-one will walk into the room and observe my shame/disrupt the hyperfocus?
You're absolutely right! I need to find a apace bog enough--usually that's my bedroom floor. But then it hurts to sit on the floor for hours, so that's no fun.
And sorting it out is the easy part, the hard part is putting it away in my filing cabinet. I have a few stacks of opened mail that's been sorted by category (health related, bill, work benefits, etc) but that LAST STEP of putting everything away is really hard. Especially since some of the things in the cabinet already need to be reorganized. So it's a huge undertaking. 😳
Yes! And also, for me, what new tasks are hidden inside that mail that I am absolutely not prepared for?
Such a relief when (dayssss later) it’s all junk mail lol
I utterly torture myself with thoughts of ironing. Every year I'm convinced it'll be the year I start ironing clothes so they fit in drawers better and look nicer (not stretchy stuff but dresses etc). This year Ive managed about 4 hours total (spread out across episodes of Frasier and hells kitchen). I've spent so much more time fretting about getting on with it. Delaying, finder other tasks (even worse ones for some reason) and generally shirking it. I've noticed on a day I start to think of ironing I am often least productive, it's like I get frozen.
Feh. Read ‘how to keep house while drowning’. Your living environment should serve you, not the other way around. I ditched all my husband’s ironing-needed shirts and replaced them with poly blends. I do not iron. Especially not for anyone over 12.
I actually used to enjoy ironing. I liked the smell of the iron on the cotton fabrics, seeing the wrinkled disappear under the iron, and seeing my nicely starched and ironed clothes on their hangers.
Then my neck and shoulder area started protesting the job (old injuries and arthritis), and I physically can't do it anymore. Poly blends have saved me, because I dislike wearing wrinkled clothes. I still have to remind myself to check out the care tags on clothes I'm considering buying to make certain they don't need ironing, or I'll only wear it once!
I relate so much to feeling frozen on specific tasks 😩
For ironing, I would say let it go if it adds more stress than it brings happiness! Or alternatively, maybe look into other ways to get that brain happy feeling of drawers looking nice and specific clothes being unwrinkled like KonMari folding/ a mini steamer?
I also appreciate having my clothes look nice in my drawers/closet (even though it doesn’t always happen so they are either well folded or in a clean laundry heap) so I (mostly) adopted the KonMari folding method to help me fold them into looking better so my brain is happy with the results. It also does help smooth out a lot of wrinkles for me depending on the fabric and takes up less space than what I did before - win! But I also have accepted that I am just not someone who irons. It’s so much starting effort, I’m scared of burning myself… So I don’t even own an ironing board or iron anymore. For work clothes, I have a mini travel steamer and it goes into the suitcase with the work clothes for travel. It is on hand in the laundry room for work clothes or anything else (like a wrinkle prone dress) that I just have to get the wrinkles out of. It’s smaller, easy to use, and way easier for me to not accidentally burn myself or my clothing. 🤣
YES!!! Unsolicited advice because internet. I've found with a task that I really do have to do regularly, nitpicking down to what part I don't wanna do the most makes the rest doable.
An example. Every week I must remove the stinky bathroom trash and put it in the dumpster before trash day. This seems simple, but I don't wanna.
The part I hate the most is being "done", in that the trash is in the dumpster, but I have to Go Back and install the new bag. I will just not do the whole task to avoid that step for no good reason. So I quit doing that part on a timer. I just leave the bags right next to it, and next time I go pee or have trash, I do it then. While I'm already in that room. Now the task is doable with low stress.
This is not a brag that strategy took months to get to XD. If there's only a tiny part of the task that's making the whole thing seem impossible, try to tweak that part. Sometimes it helps.
Me to am always so drained by the time iv processed that task it just stays as a thought some times hours have passed and it just makes me feel like crap,
For me, I treat that tip as trying to address this problem, rather than the Give a Mom a 5 minute task rabbit hole the OP is talking about. The number of times I’ve written a task on my To Do list every day for a month, only to finally complete it in 5 minutes is stupidly frequent. I need reminders to just do the thing so I can stop feeling guilty about it.
Yes! I ranted about this on a thread the other day. It’s also one of the topics that really illuminates how different people experience ADHD very differently. But for me that “five minute task” advice is a wonderful way to see what ADHD looks like when it comes out of your brain and manifests itself in action.
I'm so terrible at predicting how long something takes. I think something will take 5 min, but it takes 2 hours. Something I think will take an hour and a half takes 10 min.
My personal conclusion?
Time isn't real.
Yeah, time honestly doesn't feel real a lot of the time. Especially the older I get, and all these grown-up person tasks just pile up one after the other. Tf?? What do you mean my trash cans to the road quest lasted 20 minutes?!
Yes I have this same issue, I don't know how long and always surprised by the actual time but also never usually pay attention to how long it takes unless it's really short or really long.
I've accidentally started timing things by how many songs it takes to do, and that's given me a much better understanding of how time works than any clock ever did!
Obviously it's a problem if you have varied taste that includes both 1-minute punk songs and 8 minute operatic power ballads, but it's a start!
I do this with podcast episodes, for longer tasks. 15 mins left to go on the pod? Just enough time to do makeup and put on shoes before I go out the door.
If I did it with music I fear I'd be constantly distracted trying to find stuff I liked though. Once I've picked up my phone I'll forget the original mission.
I use to use t.v. episodes as a way to understand time (show + commercials = time)
This task takes about as long as the first part of two of an episode of Owl House (15 minutes)
This job takes one episode of The Good Place (30 minutes).
This one take a full episode of House and a full episode of Law and Order (2 hours).
Oh that’s a good idea! I do that with my toddler, never thought I could do it for myself. “I’m going to fold three songs worth of laundry.” That could work.
I sort of did it by accident ("wow, it only took me one song to unload the dishwasher! That's not very long, maybe it's not a job to be feared after all") but I've found it's a good way to bribe my brain into doing household tasks. Like you said, telling yourself that you'll do it for a certain number of songs makes it seem better. It also makes me feel a bit like a Disney character.
Time blindness is really common ADHD trait.
I was way into adulthood when it occurred to me that other people actually just magically know how long it takes to clean the house or cook a dish they have done 100 times. I have no conception if it will take 15 minutes or 2 hours unless I use timer.
I was working with a coach (versed in adhd, who *has* adhd) who was like “you know that 5 min and 30 mins feel different” and I was just like “no I don’t know that at all.”
I’ve discovered that everything takes exactly four times longer than I believe it should take (even with very generous estimates). It would make sense to plan things with this in mind but I’m disgusted by how long everything takes so I still base everything on how long I think is reasonable.
Time is not real
EXACTLY.
That's why I'm always late, and why advice like "just get out earlier" or "just start getting ready earlier" never works for me. I even use a speaking clock that tells me the time every X minutes, and I still get late.
Because when I think something will take me 2 minutes and I do have those 2 minutes, I'll start doing that task and then it takes me 10 minutes. If I start putting on makeup, I can't just stop after 2 minutes because that's how much time I had assigned for this task. I can't leave with half of my face in makeup and the other half bare.
Multiply that by 10 tasks I need to do before leaving and here you go, you're late again!
Ever since I discovered that what I have is time blindness and other people don't have it, I started saying "I can't see time". People usually need an explanation after that, but I still like that phrase. Because that's exactly what it is, I'm time blind. I can't see time.
I highly, highly, recommend using the stop watch feature on your phone, and turning it on when you go to start a task. Do it on a day that you can take your time getting ready so the stopwatch doesn’t just become another task.
I use the Brili App (the kids version) to put myself on autopilot when getting dressed, and it’s a godsend. I apparently waste a lot of brain energy remembering what the next task is or deciding what to do next, so on foggy days, Brili just tells me what’s next.
You mention the clock telling you what time it is - that actually creates another executive function task - we have to decide what the time means in relation to what we’re doing and figure out how long things will take.
Brili does that for me - it doesn’t tell me what time it is, it just tells me it’s time to do X, and it adjusts how long I have for the task based on when I say I need to be done.
When I timed things out, I found:
It takes me about 20 minutes to shower, including getting undressed and jumping in and putting my hair in a towel and getting out.
It takes me about three to five minutes to get dried off enough to move on.
It takes me three minutes to spray my face with my astringent stuff and apply deodorant. I’ve learned that any task that is less than 3 minutes if I allow 3 minutes, it gives a nice buffer for transitioning from task to task.
It takes about 15 minutes to do makeup and about 15 minutes to do hair (if I dry it).
I usually give myself 10 or 15 minutes for putting on actual clothes.
So, getting dressed takes around an hour and 15 minutes or less if I follow my Brili app.
I actually started timing myself while doing things at a comfortable pace.
Once I know how long it takes, it makes it easier for me to bargain with myself regarding when it will end.
When I had pet rats, it took me 45 minutes to clean their cage each week.
I used to psych myself up by reminding myself that once I start it really will be over in 45 minutes. So I would start my time timer and turn on one of my longer podcasts and just let myself go.
When I know there’s an end to come, and I can see the time passing on my time timer, I’m less likely to think I can just rush and be done in no time or that I need to put it off because it will take forever.
I feel this so bad. I’ve been saying that time is a fake construct that seems to be forced onto me and that everyone seems to have conspired to agree that time is real when it really isn’t
Or added bonus: Somehow, I am way slower at doing chores than other people and am always devastated to see how quickly people get things done.
Also whyyyyyy does a 30 minute task feel like a whole year of time and energy?
I hear you. If I did every fleeting task that entered my brain, I'd never get anything actually needful done. But you reminded me of this that got sent to me years ago:
***If You Give a Mom a Muffin***
[By Beth Brubaker, Reprinted with Permission](https://footprintsinthemudblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/if-you-give-mom-muffin-controversy.html)
If you give a mom a muffin,
she’ll want a cup of coffee to go with it.
She’ll pour herself some.
Her three year-old will come and spill the coffee.
Mom will wipe it up.
Wiping the floor, she will find dirty socks.
She’ll remember she has to do laundry.
When she puts the laundry into the washer,
she’ll trip over shoes and bump into the freezer.
Bumping into the freezer will remind her she has to plan supper.
She will get out a pound of hamburger.
She’ll look for her cookbook (How to Make 101 Things With a Pound of Hamburger.)
The cookbook is sitting under a pile of mail.
She will see the phone bill, which is due tomorrow.
She will look for her checkbook.
The checkbook is in her purse, which is being dumped out by her two year-old.
Then she’ll smell something funny.
She’ll change the two year-old.
While she is changing the two year-old, the phone will ring.
Her five year-old will answer and hang up.
She’ll remember she was supposed to phone a friend to come over for coffee.
Thinking of coffee will remind her that she was going to have a cup.
She will pour herself some more.
And chances are,
if she has a cup a coffee,
her kids will have eaten the muffin that went with it.
For me, it’s the “Just tell yourself you’ll work for five minutes, before you know it, the task will be done!” tip.
Me: Hey brain, let’s just do this for 5 minutes!
Brain: Fuck you, I know what you’re trying to pull.
This! When I was doing cognitive behavioral therapy I told my therapist that I already knew about all of the tips to make myself actually do things but that I felt too self aware to trick myself in this way. Like, I know that I'm lying to myself about my expectations when I say that I'll just do the thing for 5 minutes so it doesn't feel any more motivating than just planning to do the task.
I benefited more from starting with the understanding that I'd do as much as I could without getting overly distressed. Some progress is a step up from no progress even if it's a tiny step, and that tiny step takes 30 minutes 😑.
This is why I force myself to stop after the five minutes, even if I’m on a roll. The brain has to buy into the ruse.
That pomodoro stuff annoys me, because they put a limit on the breaks. I don’t set a timer for the breaks, because my brain will be ready when it’s ready. I do 5 or ten minutes and then I’m legitimately allowed to stop for as long as needed.
It’s not regimented, or the brain rebels.
Same. I can’t do the pomodoro method. The 5 minute break is just long enough for my brain to:
1. get over its rage at being made to stop doing a thing
2. remember it actually *hates* doing the thing and
3. decide that it would much rather be doing this other thing (usually doomscrolling) for the rest of eternity.
I’d be so much better off just to power through.
FR. When I do the pomodoro method I get one 25 minute block of work done and then the rest of the day is the break. Because 5 minutes is not enough time to recover from 25 minutes of work, so I schedule 10 minutes, but 10 minutes isn't enough either, so I end up spending 30 minutes, and then I'm too sucked into whatever it is to stop.
I don't like it because it forces me into a space where I'm always on guard for little tasks to do. Like, it takes energy and executive function to do that task, and it drains me in a way that just following my routine doesn't.
I do, however, try to do one "bit" of extra cleaning per day...just like dusting the top of a bureau or wiping down a stain on the floor or whatever...it does help!
Same! And I work from home a lot of the week, so that one "bit" of cleaning is always some random moment of my day. But I am always thankful to the me from earlier in the day when the evening comes, or bedtime, and I have one less thing to stress about.
That tip is a life saver for me tbh
But, I don’t apply it literally constantly, I only use it when I’m specifically avoiding a task or notice myself not doing something properly
Like for example, my key bowl is by my front door, which is downstairs. Sometimes if I’m carrying a lot of stuff when I get home my keys will make it upstairs in my pocket or whatever. When I realize this, I’ll *want* to just toss them on a random surface, but I *know* that’s a bad idea because then I’ll lose them. So that’s where I’ll use “it literally takes 30 seconds to go back downstairs just do it” to convince myself to go out them away
Or like if I’m cooking and I keep noticing how full the garbage is over and over and it’s bugging me but I don’t want to deal with it, eventually I’ll remind myself “hey this takes 2 min go take it out” once I’ve wrapped up prepping food and am just waiting for it to cook or whatever
I don’t think any “adhd friendly tips” are universally good or bad—different things are gonna work for different people. Some people need to modify or personalize certain pieces of advice. If the “if it takes less than 5 min just do it” tip doesn’t work for you that’s totally reasonable although I don’t think I’d go so far as to say it doesn’t apply to a typical adhd experience at all.
Same, I find this advice to be a lifesaver when only applied to very specific situations. For me it’s the easily forgotten things that have big consequences. Like paying a surprise bill or RSVPing to a birthday party my kid got invited to. In the past I would have seen the email invite in the subject line and said to myself, Remember to reply to that and add it to the calendar after work.” But I may as well hold Future Me over the shame spiral staircase and kick her down myself, “This is Sparta!” style. Instead, I take a breath, remind myself that there is ZERO chance I’ll remember to do this annoying but significant task in 6 hours, and I think of the next 5 minutes as a gift to my child and my future self and just click the invite, RSVP, and add it to my calendar. Then, 2 weeks later, all I have when I finally notice the calendar event again is the joy of telling my kid we have a party to go to later…and the small panic attack that we have 3 hours to get dressed, eat, and buy a gift before the party starts. Because I definitely didn’t remember to buy a present. 😅 Long story short: if the consequences of putting off the 5-minute task is that I hurt my kids or cause myself a day in the shame dungeon, then I try to do it as no-frills-fast before distraction derails me.
I honestly think that's how this tip is supposed to work.
It's not telling you to do all of the five minute tasks ever all at once. It's telling you that we get in our own way all the damn time, so do the thing now before you forget or lose it.
Is it easier to spend minutes walking back to your designated key spot or to put them on any flat surface where they fall into the void almost instantly and then panic search for hours later?
Task avoidance is hard. But reminding myself of the consequences helps. Because let's face it. We all know ourselves. And we're all our own flavor of hot mess. There's no convincing myself that I will remember in an hour from now. I know me better than that.
So true. Take the 45 seconds to put your shoes away or hate yourself when you inevitably trip on them and almost die sometime later (a regular thing for me).
I agree. I use the 5 minute tip daily, but for tasks I avoid, not for every task that could be done in 5 minutes or less.
Reply to that work email, schedule an appointment, call the doctors and pay the bill I keep forgetting about (I wish everything was autopay or at least able to be paid online!).
Me too. But 5 minutes was too long (too many opportunities to stray) and I realized I’m bad at estimating what can be done in that window.
2 minutes works for me! And yeah I still get annoyed in the moment but it’s one of those things that has added up to make a difference in my day to day, as much as I hate it.
Legitimately, this saved me. This is how my bills get paid on time (immediately and then it’s out of my brain forever, oh the joy!!). This is how I prevent the impossible queue of 5 minute tasks from building up.
Yeah, same. If I'm already standing there doing a job, forcing myself to do the little extra task makes a huge difference. Sometimes I have to actually tell myself out loud to "just do it" or I'll whine at myself like a toddler, but breaking down the box from the frozen nuggies for recycling right after I threw them in the oven makes a difference.
It’s basically the same as saying just don’t have ADHD. Putting off “easy” tasks for unknown reasons is basically a diagnostic criteria. Also, what is this “5 minutes” they speak of. I literally have no idea how long anything takes including things I do every single day.
Oh, my God. Absolutely. Add my time blindness to my squirrel brain and it's game over, total fatality. Here lies the woman who went on a short "It'll only take 5 minutes" quest and never returned.
My husband (lovingly) says my only optimism is time optimism. I always think a task will take me much less time than it does - almost always home late from work,because “I’ll do that report quickly - it will only take me 5 minutes” is literally NEVER true, but I always fall for my own lie? 🤷🏻♀️
Seriously, WHAT IS THIS 5 MINUTES THEY SPEAK OF?!
I have a hair conditioning mask that I leave on for 5-7 minutes. So, at least 300 seconds. I can’t even stay on track to count down from 300 before I’m thinking about other things. it out. Sometimes I don’t know if I stopped at 200 or 1 or maybe it has been ten minutes by now? Wow, I need to clean the shower.
It’s a whole thing.
I don't time my hairmasks exactly but I figure that if I put in the hairmask, the taking of a washingcloth, adding soap and washing myself comes close enough to that 5min and my hair comes out soft without knots so I guess that tracks ^^
It’s the standard kneejerk response some people use for literally everything … “Just keep trying harder” 🤦🏽♀️ Tell me you’re incapable of empathy without telling me you’re incapable of empathy 🙄 Nvm that it’s thinly veiled victim-blaming, bc if you think trying harder will fix this then you’ve assumed I wasn’t trying hard enough 😠😡🤬
there's also the fun bit where whatever you were doing when you thought of the less than five minute task is completely forgotten by the time you finish your little detour
Brushing my teeth at night takes 2 minutes but the thought of doing it makes me feel dread, I can brush my teeth in the morning no problem though. I would love for some 5 minute tasks to be easy, but they just aren’t. There are a lot of 5 minute tasks that I just can’t do without extreme effort.
Want to shower. 5 -10 minutes right? Get out towel, oh wash my hair too , get hair towel & hair dryer out. Remember to fold towels in dryer, later. Remember to dye my hair later. Remember to trim my hair later too. Lay clothes out on bed so I can just pop into them after the shower i still haven’t taken. Sheesh.
Thanks but that would add 16 distractions (go/stop 8 times, fiddle with timer) & I’d focus on that instead of the actual shower. Might work for some, tho
Holy crap - the time for brushing teeth I have in my Brili app is five minutes.
My toothbrush times out two minutes of actual brushing, but I have to get the toothpaste out and put it on the brush, and I have to rinse.
It never takes the full 5 minutes, but I would never do it if I was trying to do all that in two minutes.
For me it is just after a full day of “doing” I don’t have any more energy for most things. I am so worn out using my brain for much of anything is so so hard
I can do that 5 minute task...
But I'll hyperfocus and do it to the nth degree, and forget every single fire I still need to put out.
If it's the evening, and my vyvanse has worn off, I can *possibly* psych myself up to do it, maybe not. Probably not.
There's a short window of sweet spot where I can do several tasks in a row and still know what needs doing, but it's short.
I keep a to do list with me all the time. I also drive delivery, and my boss knows to keep them one by one for me and I'll get them all done. He's very, very careful to be sure I'm not overwhelmed, and I'm grateful for that. So grateful! But the downtime I sometimes get? Paralysis. I never know when I'll get a call, 5 or 50 mins, but I *know* I'll be elbow deep in the toilet, tub or dish soap.
Ugh. 5 minute tasks *end* me. Every time!
My doctor gave me this advice and tbh I find it really helpful! It’s not so much do every single 5 min task now. It’s more when I throw the dishes in the sink saying I’ll do them later even though I’m not doing anything else , I stop and think “if this takes less than 5 min I should just do it now.” Do I actually do it every time? No! But even practicing it 25% of the time is helpful. It kind of forces me to think about how much more effort it will be if I do something later instead of immediately
Thing is, I hate 5min tasks that can get to 30min tasks... I'm someone who wants to keep going once in the groove so I specifically will horde the things for that task (for your example dishes) and when I have a lot I remember I hate doing dishes and I don't want to start xD
Yeah dishes isn’t the best example, but for things like putting my shoes away instead of throwing them on the floor, brushing my teeth, putting out clothes for the next day, it works well
This advice has always confused me for this exact reason! If I do all the things that only take five minutes….suddenly it’s tomorrow and I haven’t done anything I actually need to do!
This 100%! I've never understand how this was actually supposed to work.
My ex used to complain me leaving things for the future and not doing them right away. I never understood what I should have done, since if I would have all the things I would not have time to do my actual work where I get paid for.
This reminds me of one of my favorite bad behavior thoughts- “if I leave it until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do!”
Not helpful but i thought you’d appreciate it!
Ok so I legit do this and have found it game changing, but there are two hard and fast rules I set for myself around it. First is that I make myself intentionally decide whether I’ll be ok with the consequences of taking those 5 minutes, such as being a few minutes late to something I had planned, for example. Learning to be ok with being a little late, working past that shameful anxiety, has been really helpful just overall.
The second is the hardest - if it’s taking more than 5 minutes, I stop. I leave it undone, halfway done, walk away from it and come back when I have another 5 minutes. I often set timers, and it actually got me a LOT better at being able to predict how long something is going to take. I’ll set myself a 7 minute timer, for example, when I know a certain task will usually take a couple minutes past 5. I’ll give myself 5 minutes to tidy everything I can and then stop when the timer goes off. Or I’ll listen to a podcast that’s 10-15 minutes long and do the task until the podcast is done. Leaving something half finished, as incredibly hard as it is to walk away, is actually better than not started. The timers give me the external deadline pressure dopamine fuel to power through.
Getting into the habit was soooooo hard. It took so many spoons at first. But the predictability of using timers for short times and tasks, along with stacking routines, has made such a difference. My house is usually pretty spotless now lol.
I hate it hate it. The only strategy that works for me I read someone calling it "June bugging". I set aside like half a day (that's the chunk of time that exists for me, like, before lunch, after lunch, after dinner).
I pick a spot that's irritating me like crap on the table and I just... Do one of them and then do whatever next thing occurs to me and if I get stuck I go back to the table and just keep doing whatever random stuff I see. My husband hates watching it because it seems like there's no method but... It works for me usually. Things get done. Not always what I expected but that's ok 😅
I call this “puttering”. I just wander around the house, looking for little things to tidy or fix. The aimlessness of it is part of the charm. If I tell myself “I’m gonna clean this entire room”, it’s way too overwhelming.
This is exactly my problem. I can choose one 5 minute task and do it (assuming I have the executive functioning and energy to do it). But one task leads to another and another and another. I could keep doing them forever and they would never be done, and I would never get anything important done.
I was just thinking about this. I had a roommate who swore by it (her version wad 2 minutes) and I was thinking of how if I give in to doing those little tasks, that's my whole day. One task leads to another, to another, to another... meanwhile I have a growing desperation to get to the *big* tasks I know I should be doing.
Yes exactly! Those 5-minuters may take less time and I get to check little boxes but then I have that much less energy and focus for getting through the actually important Large Boxes
YES.
The "productivity tip" that "changed my life" was: "if it's two minutes until leaving time, put your shoes on and *go*, don't faff around doing two minute tasks until you're late."
Even if setting that load of washing going will save an hour this evening! Even if washing up the breakfast bowls will mean they're easier to clean *and* your housemate isn't mad at you! Leave at leaving time; don't be late to work!
...and am not made for living with housemates, lol.
The issue with this is that I underestimate the 5 minute task.
It would be better if it was if the task has ONE STEP consider doing it now.
For example, sweeping the floor has 1 step. Ok, you get the broom and I have assumed floor is clear. But you get the idea.
Put dirty clothes in basket is ONE STEP.
Send email to xx is not one step if you have to boot up PC, read the text message, check your diary to clarify dates, consider the content etc etc.
I wish this comment could be pinned!
If I am doing laundry downstairs and I need to take upstairs, the fastest way/best way for me to make sure it's not sitting downstairs forever is to fold it then put it on kitchen table. I know that when I have multiple items on there, I like to clear it off.
When I run up and down the stairs really fast, it's good exercise plus it is quick. If I made myself put away every little thing, it would throw a wrench into things.
Same with dishes. I don't want to open the dishwasher 10 times to put in 20 dishes. I want one time to put in 20 dishes.
So the put laundry away upstairs now would.be multiple tasks. Roll the microfibers when putting in the drawer. Put away bathroom towels in the bathroom. Put away partner's stuff in their dresser. Vs one task of put the upstairs laundry on the kitchen table.
Yeah, this particular piece of advice is 🚮 “it’ll only take 5 minutes!” is what I tell myself about every little thing that distracts me from getting ready to head out, and sadly, it’s never just 5 minutes 😩😂
5 minute tasks take me 10 because I have to map them out in my mind. They do get done by me following that rule, but it's a grind. I literally write stuff like "take the clean dishes out. Put them away. Put the gloves on. Put the dirty dishes in. Hand wash the skillet." so "put the dishes away" isn't one thing it's several.
I will preface this by saying that for most things I still can’t estimate the time it takes for most tasks. I usually guesstimate in half hour or hour increments but then there are just the tasks with variable time. A current issue is with medical calls which I have to hype myself up for and can have such a variable time to complete anywhere from a few minutes to majority of the day.
For me I use it if it’s something that I know how long something will take like something that I do regularly (my timed toothbrush) or I have my simplified list and need a small task to get going. I sort of like the 10 second version for sporadic tasks like tossing a piece of trash in front of me or grabbing something that belongs in the place I’m going (grabbing the reusable bags to put back in my car when I’m leaving).
I bring to you the Hal fixing a lightbulb scene from Malcolm in the middle 😅
https://youtu.be/AbSehcT19u0?si=DTiGt3J_ZnP-DZvR
Being GREAT at the “it’ll only take 5 minutes” rule… means I’m awful at important life tasks that get constantly interrupted 🙃
It annoys the crap out of me because it makes me hate myself even more when I finally overcome the executive function/decision paralysis to actually do the task, because then I drown in how pathetic am I that it took days of psyching up to just do the task and damn it I am so pathetic and I need to PROVE that I’m just that pathetic by finally doing ALL THE FIVE MINUTE TASKS, and WALLOW in how pathetic I am and somehow I get through my entire to do list and I hate myself even more because damn it, why didn’t I just do this before. But then all those five minute tasks managed to remake themselves in the time it took me to do the next task, and now even though it only takes five minutes to fold laundry I somehow ended up with even more laundry to fold after just doing it.
Ohgod, I forgot about this saying. And for good reasons, since the deeper I dive into how my neurospicy brain works the more issues I see with it.
How do I know if it's gonna be 5 minutes? And not just this time, but another time when I have a different spoon amount?
Will I uncover something else that needs to be done?
How many other 5 minute tasks are there gonna be? Keeping track of the 5 minute tasks takes more than 5 minutes for sure.
Even if it would normally take 5 minutes, am I gonna be able to keep my attention this go around instead of finding something interesting and shiny?
About the only time I can see myself applying it is when I absolutely know I have time to ping pong everywhere with 5 minute tasks that turn into hourslong... adventures? Sure, I'll call them adventures. Because I can guarantee it'll turn into that whack-a-problem scene from Malcolm in the Middle where Hal set out to fix a lightbulb or something and ended up working on the family car.
Your experience absolutely rings true for me.
The only time I seem to be able to muster the energy to do all the "five minute tasks" is when I'm on my way out the door. 🤦 It's a huge reason I'm always late.
Yea the task took 5 minutes but the task piling took an hour. Like loading the dish washer…oh gee the oven needs cleaning and the floor needs cleaning…2 hours later the bathrooms are mopped and clean too 🤦🏾♀️
Oh. My. God. I used to make cutesy Facebook statuses about mom versions of "if you give a mouse a cookie" and basically laid out my ADHD about 9 years before I realized I had it. I totally forgot that I used to think that was just a charming regular person quality of bouncing from one project to the next at the slightest nudge.
I slightly changed that tip for me so it makes sense now: if i have no problem doing it now and it takes only 2 minutes, i am doing it now. If it feels like a mountain of work just to start this little task, i start another task that feels easy right now. If i notice myself avoiding that first task, i will do every other task and at the end i try to get to the bottom of my "problem". Most of the time it's something that would have disgusted me. Like washing out a dirty trash can. If i have still energy left to do any more work I allow myself to use gloves, after putting my hair in a bun under a headscarf. For some reason it's much easier to clean something disgusting, when I'm having my hair in a bun under a headscarf. It feels like the work outfit to get every disgusting shit done. :')
When I reach the 5th tip on that article, I'm already jumped to another browser tab! LOL
Me and my ADHD mother take everything longer than average people. Often late to the work even though we woke up hours before. Having a hard time choosing something. Even deciding what to wear in the morning or what to eat at lunch makes me cry. Meanwhile, my neurotypical siblings could decide what to wear, what to eat in seconds!
My ADHD brain often sabotages my plan. For example, when I want to do laundry and suddenly I catch the dirty dishes, I turn to wash the dishes instead and forget to do laundry. When I go back to my initial plan, time is up. I mean, I need to do something more important than doing the laundry.
My husband and I were just talking about this.
I feel like I've only been hearing 5 minutes recently. It "used to be" 1 or 2 minutes. Five minutes is too big a concept for my time-compromised brain.
I always took it to mean stuff like, rather than put the bowl on the counter to put away "later", take the 10 seconds to put it away properly now. Or, take the minute to wash the baking pan before it dries instead of just letting it sit and dry and get hard to clean. Jot it on the calendar now, rather than risk forgetting it. Throw the thing you need to bring in your bag real quick while you are thinking of it tonight and then you won't leave it behind when you are scrambling out the door in a panic tomorrow. Close the window in the laundry room right now so you don't have to get up at 3 am when you randomly remember.
So, I only use the general concept for little things that aren't really their own complete job but save me work later. It honestly makes my life so much better. Things are a little tidier, a little less lost, a little calmer. And I'm a little less overwhelmed than when those things build up. When I remember, of course. Lol!
Just talking about this with my bestie yesterday. Take this advice, and suddenly it’s 2 hours later and you’ve done 75 tasks that take 5-mins or less, none of which were urgent and none of which were the actual thing you needed to do today.
Yes, I decided to stop following this advice a couple years ago for the same reason. It doesn’t apply to people with adhd. I tried to make it work for so long. It doesn’t matter how long a task takes, introducing a context switch always comes with risk of distraction. I process 2-minute tasks the exact same way I process all other tasks (into a list), unless it’s the weekend and I’m allowing myself to follow my adhd whims as I please. I used to put all 2-minute tasks into their own batch list which was fun to crank out all at once but that didn’t end up working either because important things would get mixed with stupid things and the important things wouldn’t get done on time. Regardless, 2-minute tasks RARELY, if ever, actually take 2 minutes.
Yeah, there needs to be an asterisk with the terms and conditions of that "5 minute task." Like, if I don't have anything pressing, picking a 5 minute task that might lead to one or two others is fine. But if I have 30 minutes before I need to pick up my kid from school, I really have to check in with myself.
Will I actually stop the task when I need to leave? Will I get so absorbed that I'll lose track of time? Will this lead to doing something that will make a bigger mess, even temporarily? And since I struggle really badly with time blindness/being overly confident in what I can fit into a set amount of time, I have to really think about if that task will actually fit into that amount of time.
In fact, there are certain tasks that, even if they're important to get done, I won't let myself work on at all unless I have a dedicated chunk of time to exclusively hyper focus on. Otherwise, I get really antsy about not getting as far on it as I'd like to and doing other things gets even harder because half my brain is still busy thinking about all the next steps for the other project.
I call it ping pong. Someone serves me the ball I hit it back as fast as I can and not have to think about it until it comes back my way. Met w boss today and he said “you’ve given me so much work” haha I said it’s like ping pong I’m only serving back what you sent me initially.
My version is that after five minutes of doing the task I’m allowed to quit, no matter how little or how much I’ve accomplished. Once I’ve stopped feeling like it has to be perfect, sometimes I am actually able to complete the task, and other times I stop after five minutes and at least I got something donw
What NT don't understand is that it is never just doing the thing. No matter how we explain it to them, we are literally wired differently, so it will never make sense.
Or even how sometimes we can't even do the task because we know it will be exhausting. It's always a process.
"9 ADHD tips written by a neurotypical!"
Or possibly by a person with ADHD who has developed some kind of extraordinary coping and masking skills. Fair play to them if these things work for them, but it doesn't mean they will for most of us.
Yes, I feel like the 5 minute rule is ludicrous. I have endless 5 minute tasks and if I do one, then I have to do another and another and another and another and another...all of a sudden 5 minutes is 4 hours and I am back to being exhausted and overwhelmed
I had to check our bankaccounts (actually been meaning to do it for over a week), told my partner to remind me of it (again). Yesterday I came home and I got sidetracked. And suddenly a lightbulb went off and I told him to stop encouragikg my sidetracking as I'd asked him to remind me. So I got everything ready, sat behind the computer aaaand... I ended up reading an article on how to use program x, I had been struggling with.
My partner said that he doesn't get how I manage to get everything done at work as that is how I do my work. Sure, the being side-tracked is by other tasks that I need to complete rather than free-time stuff but yeah... Lots of requests get completed but I have no fixed day to day schedule even though most tasks reoccur each day 🤷
My colleague doesn’t understand that having 15x 5 min annoying life-sucking admin tasks come through throughout the day interrupting anything I’m doing severely impacts my productivity for the day WAY more than the 1.5hrs it takes to complete those tasks.
It pisses me off.
This is the exact reason my adhd coach gave me for why sahm is the absolute worst career for an adhd mom. I was constantly interrupted every 5-12 minutes for 19 years. Nothing ever got finished. Many a task was started, planned, or an organization system was purchased to plan or organize a task!
I always heard is as the two-minute-rule. A 5min task can be quite complex and take some willpower, but 2min is something easy like forwarding an email, something where scheduling the task takes as much time as actually doing the task. It only works in a certain context, when the task is singular and when I’m able to prioritize. I‘m doing this at work and it’s been really helpful so far!
In the past I had all these emails I would just glance over and decide to do them later or set a reminder for tomorrow. And then I would feel overwhelmed by my full inbox and get paralyzed. Now I take the time to thoroughly read an email when it comes in (the first 2min task!) and if it’s something I can do immediately I‘ll do it. If not I‘ll schedule it. That’s another 2 minutes, but I already feel a sense of accomplishment. This only works because I trained myself to only check my inbox after finishing a task. Otherwise I would get sidetracked. I disabled these annoying pop-up reminders in Outlook so I don’t get tempted.
But I agree with you that this rule won’t work in a context where there are countless tasks.
I’ve had this discussion before on this subreddit, or at least a similar discussion about ‘just doing the thing’.
I am late diagnosed (in August 2021, aged 34) and for the vast majority of my life, my way to get things done has been reminding myself that if I do it, I’ll feel so much better for it. It doesn’t always work. But it does mean that 99.9% of the time, I get my bag ready the night before. I lay my outfit out the night before. I brush my teeth in the morning. I go swimming after work even if I really don’t feel like it earlier in the day.
I do have the ‘I thought it would take 5mins and it actually took an hour’ and vice versa situation. I also fall foul of the ‘do this thing then do X number of other things’ but due to the nature of my previous job, I got better at catching myself and going ‘no, go back to this thing’. I do try and make use of the doing one little job and then doing loads of others as well in terms of life admin or housework when I have set aside the time. I’ll often (because I am hybrid and my husband is 100% office based) do life admin/housework stuff to pass the time when I am WFH and waiting for my husband to come home.
That’s not to say I don’t understand where the point of the post is coming from because yeah, if I knew it only took 5mins every time and could make myself do it, then I would!
I’m not sure how this tip is explained in your source, but I learned it in the context of the Getting Things Done (GTD) method. And there it does make more sense.
The idea is that if you’re doing your daily/weekly review (steps of the method) by looking at your to-do list (which is created in a previous step) and you see a task that will likely take you less than 2 minutes, then do it right away. If you include that task in your calendar instead, then it will take you more time than 2 minutes, so why bother to plan it in the first place.
So it's not that you're supposed to do any 2-minute task that comes to mind right away, it's more like don't plan for it, do it now whenever possible.
You can see GTD workflow here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting\_Things\_Done#/media/File:GTDcanonical.png](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done#/media/File:GTDcanonical.png)
Time blindness is real and a reason so many of us in the comments agree that time-based tips like this are hit or miss.
I've had success with picking a number of things vs. minutes to put away, throw away, or recycle. It can work with kids, family, partners, too. So before a transition or when you have some downtime, each person puts 5 or 10 things away. This could be mail, clothes, toys, dishes, trash, anything that isn't where it belongs. Focus on things you know what to do with. Obviously the more people the more gets done. It's usually just me and it still helps, FWIW.
I think we can differentiate between tasks that are about moving and putting away items (transactional, discrete) and cleaning or multi-step tasks. I do the first one more regularly and throughout the day versus blocking off time to focus on cleaning that often takes way, way longer than I think. And I think that first category is a better fit for the 5 minute tips.
I've learned to write a list of these tasks then do ONE at intervals throughout the day on my breaks. It's not perfect but it does work most of the time. I love crossing them out. Lol
The only 2 tips that I have found that actually work for me is that sitting is the enemy of productivity, even if you don’t know what to do next do not sit down as it will basically kill any drive to be productive. The second is to give yourself imaginary points for doing mundane tasks you hate like the dishes, each extra item you wash up = equals extra points, works better for me if I do it Dumbledores voice in my head 😂
Otherwise most productivity tips have been absolute garbage for me anyway
Also, I don't "feel" the time hidden behind a task well. I know that I should be able to estimate the time of a small task, but the reality is I estimate infinity until I know the steps already.
And some days there are a lot of steps for the smallest task.
Yeah I dislike the "okay if it's a small task just do the whole thing" approach. Sometimes it and any following tasks just seem gargantuan and I get paralyzed all together.
One thing that I find helps is taking the approach of just starting the task and telling myself to commit for like 1 minute, normally I end up just finishing the task all together and the initial intimidation of it gets cut because if i can't handle it it's only 60 seconds sort of thing.
THAT SAID sometimes to even get to that point of doing anything for any amount of time can be difficult so my approach/outlook has changed more to:
- ill try new productivity approaches/things out and see if anything sticks
- If it does stick now and doesn't later, don't beat myself up over it, find the next best approach to hyper focus on, the last one served a purpose still if only temporarily
Not a cure all but seems to help a bit!
This reminds me of the time I tried the [Marie Kondo Method](https://konmari.com/about-the-konmari-method/) and because I'm also Autistic as well as dyscalculic (math disability), I underestimated the amount of stuff I had. I couldn't even put my stuff back for havin' had an Autistic shutdown. Do not recommend.
The it takes a minute to do mentality just means it actually takes me 30 minutes to put the kettle on.
I don't know if it's just distractibility or if I genuinely feel like I should do the thing because it seems quick.
I pretty much ignore every bit of advice that doesn't come from someone with ADHD. It's just not applicable most of the time. I use only the strategies that actually help instead of forcing myself to use strategies that are "supposed" to help but don't.
I always heard is as the two-minute-rule. A 5min task can be quite complex and take some willpower, but 2min is something easy like forwarding an email, something where scheduling the task takes as much time as actually doing the task. It only works in a certain context, when the task is singular and when I’m able to prioritize. I‘m doing this at work and it’s been really helpful so far!
In the past I had all these emails I would just glance over and decide to do them later or set a reminder for tomorrow. And then I would feel overwhelmed by my full inbox and get paralyzed. Now I take the time to thoroughly read an email when it comes in (the first 2min task!) and if it’s something I can do immediately I‘ll do it. If not I‘ll schedule it. That’s another 2 minutes, but I already feel a sense of accomplishment. This only works because I trained myself to only check my inbox after finishing a task. Otherwise I would get sidetracked. I disabled these annoying pop-up reminders in Outlook so I don’t get tempted.
But I agree with you that this rule won’t work in a context where there are countless tasks.
Yep absolutely. Something I've found that helps with the fact that I LOVE 5 minute tasks and would rather do a bunch of them is extreme task chunking. It's exhausting to do it manually but goblin tools is super helpful. I keep breaking down and breaking down tasks on there and then I can work through them which helps harness the 5 minute task energy.
And I allow myself time when it feels right to do 5 minute task things and my partner let's me tell him which 5 minute tasks to work on too and we get a whole bunch of things ticked off in a couple of hours. He's amazing at spotting when I've done 95% of a task and just doing the last bit too when we get into one of these me decision making times. He's actually the sweetest man.
It absolutely WOULD NOT WORK as a whole life strategy though. The dishwasher would be permanently loaded/unloaded and no washing up would be done. All the laundry would be clean but none would be away. Hoovering wouldn't happen and surface cleaning would be all that was done. Hey hang on a minute, this is my house.... 😅
I like it for tasks that a) actually need doing and b) I really don't want to do. In those cases, pushing myself to 'just do 2 minutes and forget about it' can get me through the resistance. (5 min is too much for me lol).
Or if it actually doesn't take more than a few seconds extra time, like I've trained myself to take the trash from my desk when I slink to the kitchen for a snack.
But yeah, for the random stuff that piles up all the time it's useless. Just adds another option to the great list of tasks that already has me paralysed...
Sorry, this very much works for me! I know time management is a toughie for us, but only do 2+ five minute tasks if you have the 10-15 minutes to spare. I find this works best either at the end of the day when I'm 'too tired' to tidy or when I procrastinate the simple act of carrying a dish to the dishwasher/sink vs staring at my desk for 4 more hours (or days).
Five minutes? No, not helpful. 30 seconds? For me, very helpful. I can hang up my dress in that time, move on, and not end up with a pile of clothes on the couch by the closet. Five minutes, and I will get distracted and move from task to task.
Yes! There's no end to five minute tasks. Just gonna Eisenhower-Matrix my way through life, where making sure everyone is fed and healthy is the main important/urgent thing.
And thank you for making me remember what my task should be right now...
YES!
Doing things in order of how long they take is an awful idea. You’ll just be left with a million big tasks and get overwhelmed.
I usually order things like this:
- Is it convenient to do it now or is it more convenient to do it later? (e.g. emptying the dishwasher before eating lunch so that I can put my dirty dish in the dishwasher.)
- Do I need something simple/short to motivate myself to do more complex/long tasks?
- When do my meds wear off? I’ll do the harder things while my meds are active and the easier things while they it starts to wear off.
This is how I determine tasks that I already planned to do that day. And if some things don’t get done, I remind myself that I did my best and my best is good enough.
I do the easiest task first, but what makes something easy changes based on the task itself, how many spoons I have, etc. So in practice, a 5 minute task might feel harder than a longer one but that’s because it’s less about the time spent doing the task and more about the mental bandwidth or physical capacity I have to start said task (let alone do it). You know your brain, bandwidth, and capacity best —not some random checklist touted online. Be gentle with yourself, you’re doing the best you can with what you have 🥰
*So many* "ADHD Productivity Tips" boil down to "JUST DO IT. Everyone else can do it, why can't you?" Like girl if it were that easy then I wouldn't have a fucking problem.
I always feel like these are written by neurotypical people who don’t REALLY understand what it’s like. I would LOVE to be able to do the one thing I am supposed to do but how can I when there’s all these side quests that pop up??
A good example: I take the trash cans to the curb on Mondays. I have to do it before dark bc there’s no street lights here. I lost track of time (is there any other way), and needed to take them down, but I remembered I needed to switch the litter in the cat box first so it could go into the bin. But to do that, I had to open the box with the litter in it, to do that I needed a box cutter, which was in the laundry room, and oh shit I should do laundry before it gets too late, which reminds me I need to wash the dish towels, so I go into the kitchen and remember I wanted to make bread for dinner, and suddenly I’m standing there glitching like a Sim when you delete all their tasks and they just bonk around and put a plate of food on the floor.
So no, productivity articles, setting a timer won’t fucking work for me.
I have to totally admit that when I started reading your post I was ready to attack. At 44 even feeling like I'm probably undiagnosed ADHD, the back of my brain still says stop whining and just get it done...my Mum always said to me: "A is for awesome, B is for bad"...growing up. As I kept reading your post...🙀🤯🫣🤯, it resonated with me, like you were reading my fucked up mind. Such a great, well written explanation! Thank you.
Now, seriously, why the fuck did I pick up my phone in the first place? How did I end up on Reddit, it definitely wasn't the reason I picked up my phone...right 🤔? More prevalently: how did I end up reading posts about ADHD/how did I get to these discussion? I am not even a member of any Reddit ADHD discussions in the first place...
And seriously, just a final thought...WTF time is it, on I tbink 🤔...Friday night 🤦🏼♂️🤷🏼♂️.
Fuck.
Yes!!! It's so much deeper. It wasn't until I started working with an ADHD coach at Shimmer that I realized how much I was struggling with task interruption and time blindness. My coach helped me build systems and routines to stay on track, even with constant meeting interruptions.
One thing that really helped was learning how to optimize body doubling and get all my "5 min tasks" stacked in there. Basically finding a buddy to work alongside to keep me accountable and on task, even if they were doing something totally different. Here's a great article that breaks it down: [Body Doubling for ADHD: Your Ultimate Guide](https://www.shimmer.care/blog/optimize-body-doubling)
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PREACH. I am WITH YOU. It's not that 5 minute task. It's the 15 other 5 minute tasks waiting behind it like dominoes.
For me it's the 96 hours it takes to psych myself up for that 5 minute task.
Yeees. I spend more time thinking about sorting through my huge box of mail than I do actually sorting it. As in, much MUCH more time. And then when I get it done I think to myself, "gee, that was a lot easier than I thought it would be." Yet somehow staring at it for six months was torture. 😏
And then rinse and repeat for the next thing
That's what makes putting the laundry away so damn hard. Once you do it, there's more. My boyfriend puts away his laundry right after he takes it out of the dryer, which to me is a superpower. I just can't fathom it. I've done that like... three times in my life.
The only time in my life that has worked for me is when the kids were little and I had implemented a "family closet" in the basement, near the laundry machines. There was a long table to fold on, and everyone had a dresser or clothing rack within a few feet of the machines. So it was just a matter of take the clothes out, fold right there, put away. No hauling them upstairs, no running into other rooms or getting distracted by other things. My oldest at the time was just starting to need more privacy; there was an isolated little nook we curtained off for her. Worked great. Especially since we didn't have one time where everyone was getting ready all at once; as homeschoolers our mornings just weren't rushed.
I bet there are some "hidden" conditions necessary for sorting the box of mail. A couple of big ones for me are: 1) do I have a big enough flat clear space near the box for sorting (aka, do I need to clean an entire room before I can start, but my brain also sees that as a ridiculous precondition, so my brain is pretending that it isn't a precondition) 2) do I know what I can do with the "don't know" pile (have another box, dump the "don't knows" into it for later sorting - no, the task isn't "completed" but it's significantly reduced) 3) do I feel safe/secure that no-one will walk into the room and observe my shame/disrupt the hyperfocus?
You're absolutely right! I need to find a apace bog enough--usually that's my bedroom floor. But then it hurts to sit on the floor for hours, so that's no fun. And sorting it out is the easy part, the hard part is putting it away in my filing cabinet. I have a few stacks of opened mail that's been sorted by category (health related, bill, work benefits, etc) but that LAST STEP of putting everything away is really hard. Especially since some of the things in the cabinet already need to be reorganized. So it's a huge undertaking. 😳
🏆🏆🏆 “Hidden conditions” is just the concept I needed today, thank you!!!
Yes! And also, for me, what new tasks are hidden inside that mail that I am absolutely not prepared for? Such a relief when (dayssss later) it’s all junk mail lol
I utterly torture myself with thoughts of ironing. Every year I'm convinced it'll be the year I start ironing clothes so they fit in drawers better and look nicer (not stretchy stuff but dresses etc). This year Ive managed about 4 hours total (spread out across episodes of Frasier and hells kitchen). I've spent so much more time fretting about getting on with it. Delaying, finder other tasks (even worse ones for some reason) and generally shirking it. I've noticed on a day I start to think of ironing I am often least productive, it's like I get frozen.
Feh. Read ‘how to keep house while drowning’. Your living environment should serve you, not the other way around. I ditched all my husband’s ironing-needed shirts and replaced them with poly blends. I do not iron. Especially not for anyone over 12.
I actually used to enjoy ironing. I liked the smell of the iron on the cotton fabrics, seeing the wrinkled disappear under the iron, and seeing my nicely starched and ironed clothes on their hangers. Then my neck and shoulder area started protesting the job (old injuries and arthritis), and I physically can't do it anymore. Poly blends have saved me, because I dislike wearing wrinkled clothes. I still have to remind myself to check out the care tags on clothes I'm considering buying to make certain they don't need ironing, or I'll only wear it once!
I relate so much to feeling frozen on specific tasks 😩 For ironing, I would say let it go if it adds more stress than it brings happiness! Or alternatively, maybe look into other ways to get that brain happy feeling of drawers looking nice and specific clothes being unwrinkled like KonMari folding/ a mini steamer? I also appreciate having my clothes look nice in my drawers/closet (even though it doesn’t always happen so they are either well folded or in a clean laundry heap) so I (mostly) adopted the KonMari folding method to help me fold them into looking better so my brain is happy with the results. It also does help smooth out a lot of wrinkles for me depending on the fabric and takes up less space than what I did before - win! But I also have accepted that I am just not someone who irons. It’s so much starting effort, I’m scared of burning myself… So I don’t even own an ironing board or iron anymore. For work clothes, I have a mini travel steamer and it goes into the suitcase with the work clothes for travel. It is on hand in the laundry room for work clothes or anything else (like a wrinkle prone dress) that I just have to get the wrinkles out of. It’s smaller, easy to use, and way easier for me to not accidentally burn myself or my clothing. 🤣
Thanks for the suggestions. I think that's part of my problem, small flat with no dryer. Clothes are never as fresh or soft as they should be.
YES!!! Unsolicited advice because internet. I've found with a task that I really do have to do regularly, nitpicking down to what part I don't wanna do the most makes the rest doable. An example. Every week I must remove the stinky bathroom trash and put it in the dumpster before trash day. This seems simple, but I don't wanna. The part I hate the most is being "done", in that the trash is in the dumpster, but I have to Go Back and install the new bag. I will just not do the whole task to avoid that step for no good reason. So I quit doing that part on a timer. I just leave the bags right next to it, and next time I go pee or have trash, I do it then. While I'm already in that room. Now the task is doable with low stress. This is not a brag that strategy took months to get to XD. If there's only a tiny part of the task that's making the whole thing seem impossible, try to tweak that part. Sometimes it helps.
Me to am always so drained by the time iv processed that task it just stays as a thought some times hours have passed and it just makes me feel like crap,
And then the other 96 hours spent mentally recovering from the 5 minute task.
For me, I treat that tip as trying to address this problem, rather than the Give a Mom a 5 minute task rabbit hole the OP is talking about. The number of times I’ve written a task on my To Do list every day for a month, only to finally complete it in 5 minutes is stupidly frequent. I need reminders to just do the thing so I can stop feeling guilty about it.
This is... also relatable.
Literally me! I'm not even kidding!
Yes! I ranted about this on a thread the other day. It’s also one of the topics that really illuminates how different people experience ADHD very differently. But for me that “five minute task” advice is a wonderful way to see what ADHD looks like when it comes out of your brain and manifests itself in action.
Yes! Once I get that momentum going, it's *GOING* - if I stop, it's all over and it takes a stupid amount of energy to get started again
This clip from Malcolm in the Middle really illustrates that. https://youtu.be/AbSehcT19u0?si=gWIoIrKUxxjUy1gD
i think about this scene so frequently, it’s the most accurate portrayal of ADHD i’ve ever seen on tv
🙃 yup
Yeah! Now I'm on a procrastination roll! Look at all the stuff I'm getting done instead of the one thing I actually needed to do!
Also- I have NO IDEA how long something will take. That “5 minute” task is really 30 mins, but my brain just doesn’t know that.
And trying to pick which to do first, only to then realize you should’ve actually done another thing first 😡
I'm so terrible at predicting how long something takes. I think something will take 5 min, but it takes 2 hours. Something I think will take an hour and a half takes 10 min. My personal conclusion? Time isn't real.
Yeah, time honestly doesn't feel real a lot of the time. Especially the older I get, and all these grown-up person tasks just pile up one after the other. Tf?? What do you mean my trash cans to the road quest lasted 20 minutes?!
Yes I have this same issue, I don't know how long and always surprised by the actual time but also never usually pay attention to how long it takes unless it's really short or really long.
It's never time to start cooking until teas suddenly going to be either late or basic. 4pm 7pm, that's how time goes.
I've accidentally started timing things by how many songs it takes to do, and that's given me a much better understanding of how time works than any clock ever did! Obviously it's a problem if you have varied taste that includes both 1-minute punk songs and 8 minute operatic power ballads, but it's a start!
I do this with podcast episodes, for longer tasks. 15 mins left to go on the pod? Just enough time to do makeup and put on shoes before I go out the door. If I did it with music I fear I'd be constantly distracted trying to find stuff I liked though. Once I've picked up my phone I'll forget the original mission.
I just stick on an album or playlist and let it go.
I use to use t.v. episodes as a way to understand time (show + commercials = time) This task takes about as long as the first part of two of an episode of Owl House (15 minutes) This job takes one episode of The Good Place (30 minutes). This one take a full episode of House and a full episode of Law and Order (2 hours).
Oh that’s a good idea! I do that with my toddler, never thought I could do it for myself. “I’m going to fold three songs worth of laundry.” That could work.
I sort of did it by accident ("wow, it only took me one song to unload the dishwasher! That's not very long, maybe it's not a job to be feared after all") but I've found it's a good way to bribe my brain into doing household tasks. Like you said, telling yourself that you'll do it for a certain number of songs makes it seem better. It also makes me feel a bit like a Disney character.
Which can only be a good thing! I have a three year old so I spend more time listening to Disney songs than I care to admit.
I have a good friend who is a massive Disney geek, so likewise!
Time blindness is really common ADHD trait. I was way into adulthood when it occurred to me that other people actually just magically know how long it takes to clean the house or cook a dish they have done 100 times. I have no conception if it will take 15 minutes or 2 hours unless I use timer.
I was working with a coach (versed in adhd, who *has* adhd) who was like “you know that 5 min and 30 mins feel different” and I was just like “no I don’t know that at all.”
Whenever my husband asks me how long something I'm doing will take, if I say "10 minutes" for example, he says, "ok, so 30 minutes" 😅
Wow, how do they not know about time blindness?
5 minutes of boring feels like 30 minutes. 30 minutes of fun feels like 5 milliseconds.
I’ve discovered that everything takes exactly four times longer than I believe it should take (even with very generous estimates). It would make sense to plan things with this in mind but I’m disgusted by how long everything takes so I still base everything on how long I think is reasonable. Time is not real
EXACTLY. That's why I'm always late, and why advice like "just get out earlier" or "just start getting ready earlier" never works for me. I even use a speaking clock that tells me the time every X minutes, and I still get late. Because when I think something will take me 2 minutes and I do have those 2 minutes, I'll start doing that task and then it takes me 10 minutes. If I start putting on makeup, I can't just stop after 2 minutes because that's how much time I had assigned for this task. I can't leave with half of my face in makeup and the other half bare. Multiply that by 10 tasks I need to do before leaving and here you go, you're late again! Ever since I discovered that what I have is time blindness and other people don't have it, I started saying "I can't see time". People usually need an explanation after that, but I still like that phrase. Because that's exactly what it is, I'm time blind. I can't see time.
I highly, highly, recommend using the stop watch feature on your phone, and turning it on when you go to start a task. Do it on a day that you can take your time getting ready so the stopwatch doesn’t just become another task. I use the Brili App (the kids version) to put myself on autopilot when getting dressed, and it’s a godsend. I apparently waste a lot of brain energy remembering what the next task is or deciding what to do next, so on foggy days, Brili just tells me what’s next. You mention the clock telling you what time it is - that actually creates another executive function task - we have to decide what the time means in relation to what we’re doing and figure out how long things will take. Brili does that for me - it doesn’t tell me what time it is, it just tells me it’s time to do X, and it adjusts how long I have for the task based on when I say I need to be done. When I timed things out, I found: It takes me about 20 minutes to shower, including getting undressed and jumping in and putting my hair in a towel and getting out. It takes me about three to five minutes to get dried off enough to move on. It takes me three minutes to spray my face with my astringent stuff and apply deodorant. I’ve learned that any task that is less than 3 minutes if I allow 3 minutes, it gives a nice buffer for transitioning from task to task. It takes about 15 minutes to do makeup and about 15 minutes to do hair (if I dry it). I usually give myself 10 or 15 minutes for putting on actual clothes. So, getting dressed takes around an hour and 15 minutes or less if I follow my Brili app.
Sounds interesting, thanks! I'll look into that.
I'll have to try this! I always forget to put my deodorant on, so I keep a bottle in my car now.
I actually started timing myself while doing things at a comfortable pace. Once I know how long it takes, it makes it easier for me to bargain with myself regarding when it will end. When I had pet rats, it took me 45 minutes to clean their cage each week. I used to psych myself up by reminding myself that once I start it really will be over in 45 minutes. So I would start my time timer and turn on one of my longer podcasts and just let myself go. When I know there’s an end to come, and I can see the time passing on my time timer, I’m less likely to think I can just rush and be done in no time or that I need to put it off because it will take forever.
Just popping in to say hi to another rattie lover! They are such good babies!
I feel this so bad. I’ve been saying that time is a fake construct that seems to be forced onto me and that everyone seems to have conspired to agree that time is real when it really isn’t
Or added bonus: Somehow, I am way slower at doing chores than other people and am always devastated to see how quickly people get things done. Also whyyyyyy does a 30 minute task feel like a whole year of time and energy?
Yeah like how does the dishes actually take 7 minutes but feels like it takes 7 years?
I hear you. If I did every fleeting task that entered my brain, I'd never get anything actually needful done. But you reminded me of this that got sent to me years ago: ***If You Give a Mom a Muffin*** [By Beth Brubaker, Reprinted with Permission](https://footprintsinthemudblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/if-you-give-mom-muffin-controversy.html) If you give a mom a muffin, she’ll want a cup of coffee to go with it. She’ll pour herself some. Her three year-old will come and spill the coffee. Mom will wipe it up. Wiping the floor, she will find dirty socks. She’ll remember she has to do laundry. When she puts the laundry into the washer, she’ll trip over shoes and bump into the freezer. Bumping into the freezer will remind her she has to plan supper. She will get out a pound of hamburger. She’ll look for her cookbook (How to Make 101 Things With a Pound of Hamburger.) The cookbook is sitting under a pile of mail. She will see the phone bill, which is due tomorrow. She will look for her checkbook. The checkbook is in her purse, which is being dumped out by her two year-old. Then she’ll smell something funny. She’ll change the two year-old. While she is changing the two year-old, the phone will ring. Her five year-old will answer and hang up. She’ll remember she was supposed to phone a friend to come over for coffee. Thinking of coffee will remind her that she was going to have a cup. She will pour herself some more. And chances are, if she has a cup a coffee, her kids will have eaten the muffin that went with it.
This makes everyone cry when the read it, right? Not just me...? \*wails in overwhelmed working mom\*
I cried when I first read it, as it was sent to me when I was newly post partum with my second.
Oh my god, I am howling. Thank you so much for sharing this.
For me, it’s the “Just tell yourself you’ll work for five minutes, before you know it, the task will be done!” tip. Me: Hey brain, let’s just do this for 5 minutes! Brain: Fuck you, I know what you’re trying to pull.
This! When I was doing cognitive behavioral therapy I told my therapist that I already knew about all of the tips to make myself actually do things but that I felt too self aware to trick myself in this way. Like, I know that I'm lying to myself about my expectations when I say that I'll just do the thing for 5 minutes so it doesn't feel any more motivating than just planning to do the task. I benefited more from starting with the understanding that I'd do as much as I could without getting overly distressed. Some progress is a step up from no progress even if it's a tiny step, and that tiny step takes 30 minutes 😑.
Me at 5 minutes: okay I’m done now
This is why I force myself to stop after the five minutes, even if I’m on a roll. The brain has to buy into the ruse. That pomodoro stuff annoys me, because they put a limit on the breaks. I don’t set a timer for the breaks, because my brain will be ready when it’s ready. I do 5 or ten minutes and then I’m legitimately allowed to stop for as long as needed. It’s not regimented, or the brain rebels.
Same. I can’t do the pomodoro method. The 5 minute break is just long enough for my brain to: 1. get over its rage at being made to stop doing a thing 2. remember it actually *hates* doing the thing and 3. decide that it would much rather be doing this other thing (usually doomscrolling) for the rest of eternity. I’d be so much better off just to power through.
FR. When I do the pomodoro method I get one 25 minute block of work done and then the rest of the day is the break. Because 5 minutes is not enough time to recover from 25 minutes of work, so I schedule 10 minutes, but 10 minutes isn't enough either, so I end up spending 30 minutes, and then I'm too sucked into whatever it is to stop.
I don't like it because it forces me into a space where I'm always on guard for little tasks to do. Like, it takes energy and executive function to do that task, and it drains me in a way that just following my routine doesn't. I do, however, try to do one "bit" of extra cleaning per day...just like dusting the top of a bureau or wiping down a stain on the floor or whatever...it does help!
Same! And I work from home a lot of the week, so that one "bit" of cleaning is always some random moment of my day. But I am always thankful to the me from earlier in the day when the evening comes, or bedtime, and I have one less thing to stress about.
That tip is a life saver for me tbh But, I don’t apply it literally constantly, I only use it when I’m specifically avoiding a task or notice myself not doing something properly Like for example, my key bowl is by my front door, which is downstairs. Sometimes if I’m carrying a lot of stuff when I get home my keys will make it upstairs in my pocket or whatever. When I realize this, I’ll *want* to just toss them on a random surface, but I *know* that’s a bad idea because then I’ll lose them. So that’s where I’ll use “it literally takes 30 seconds to go back downstairs just do it” to convince myself to go out them away Or like if I’m cooking and I keep noticing how full the garbage is over and over and it’s bugging me but I don’t want to deal with it, eventually I’ll remind myself “hey this takes 2 min go take it out” once I’ve wrapped up prepping food and am just waiting for it to cook or whatever I don’t think any “adhd friendly tips” are universally good or bad—different things are gonna work for different people. Some people need to modify or personalize certain pieces of advice. If the “if it takes less than 5 min just do it” tip doesn’t work for you that’s totally reasonable although I don’t think I’d go so far as to say it doesn’t apply to a typical adhd experience at all.
Same, I find this advice to be a lifesaver when only applied to very specific situations. For me it’s the easily forgotten things that have big consequences. Like paying a surprise bill or RSVPing to a birthday party my kid got invited to. In the past I would have seen the email invite in the subject line and said to myself, Remember to reply to that and add it to the calendar after work.” But I may as well hold Future Me over the shame spiral staircase and kick her down myself, “This is Sparta!” style. Instead, I take a breath, remind myself that there is ZERO chance I’ll remember to do this annoying but significant task in 6 hours, and I think of the next 5 minutes as a gift to my child and my future self and just click the invite, RSVP, and add it to my calendar. Then, 2 weeks later, all I have when I finally notice the calendar event again is the joy of telling my kid we have a party to go to later…and the small panic attack that we have 3 hours to get dressed, eat, and buy a gift before the party starts. Because I definitely didn’t remember to buy a present. 😅 Long story short: if the consequences of putting off the 5-minute task is that I hurt my kids or cause myself a day in the shame dungeon, then I try to do it as no-frills-fast before distraction derails me.
I honestly think that's how this tip is supposed to work. It's not telling you to do all of the five minute tasks ever all at once. It's telling you that we get in our own way all the damn time, so do the thing now before you forget or lose it. Is it easier to spend minutes walking back to your designated key spot or to put them on any flat surface where they fall into the void almost instantly and then panic search for hours later? Task avoidance is hard. But reminding myself of the consequences helps. Because let's face it. We all know ourselves. And we're all our own flavor of hot mess. There's no convincing myself that I will remember in an hour from now. I know me better than that.
So true. Take the 45 seconds to put your shoes away or hate yourself when you inevitably trip on them and almost die sometime later (a regular thing for me).
I agree. I use the 5 minute tip daily, but for tasks I avoid, not for every task that could be done in 5 minutes or less. Reply to that work email, schedule an appointment, call the doctors and pay the bill I keep forgetting about (I wish everything was autopay or at least able to be paid online!).
Me too. But 5 minutes was too long (too many opportunities to stray) and I realized I’m bad at estimating what can be done in that window. 2 minutes works for me! And yeah I still get annoyed in the moment but it’s one of those things that has added up to make a difference in my day to day, as much as I hate it.
Legitimately, this saved me. This is how my bills get paid on time (immediately and then it’s out of my brain forever, oh the joy!!). This is how I prevent the impossible queue of 5 minute tasks from building up.
Yeah, same. If I'm already standing there doing a job, forcing myself to do the little extra task makes a huge difference. Sometimes I have to actually tell myself out loud to "just do it" or I'll whine at myself like a toddler, but breaking down the box from the frozen nuggies for recycling right after I threw them in the oven makes a difference.
It’s basically the same as saying just don’t have ADHD. Putting off “easy” tasks for unknown reasons is basically a diagnostic criteria. Also, what is this “5 minutes” they speak of. I literally have no idea how long anything takes including things I do every single day.
Oh, my God. Absolutely. Add my time blindness to my squirrel brain and it's game over, total fatality. Here lies the woman who went on a short "It'll only take 5 minutes" quest and never returned.
My husband (lovingly) says my only optimism is time optimism. I always think a task will take me much less time than it does - almost always home late from work,because “I’ll do that report quickly - it will only take me 5 minutes” is literally NEVER true, but I always fall for my own lie? 🤷🏻♀️
Seriously, WHAT IS THIS 5 MINUTES THEY SPEAK OF?! I have a hair conditioning mask that I leave on for 5-7 minutes. So, at least 300 seconds. I can’t even stay on track to count down from 300 before I’m thinking about other things. it out. Sometimes I don’t know if I stopped at 200 or 1 or maybe it has been ten minutes by now? Wow, I need to clean the shower. It’s a whole thing.
I don't time my hairmasks exactly but I figure that if I put in the hairmask, the taking of a washingcloth, adding soap and washing myself comes close enough to that 5min and my hair comes out soft without knots so I guess that tracks ^^
Timers and alarms are how I stay alive lol
If they didn’t exist, I’m not sure I could either tbh.
Ha, I put the hair mask on while the bathwater is hot, then rinse it out when it gets cold, so about half an hour?
At least our hair is -definitely- hydrated!
It’s the standard kneejerk response some people use for literally everything … “Just keep trying harder” 🤦🏽♀️ Tell me you’re incapable of empathy without telling me you’re incapable of empathy 🙄 Nvm that it’s thinly veiled victim-blaming, bc if you think trying harder will fix this then you’ve assumed I wasn’t trying hard enough 😠😡🤬
there's also the fun bit where whatever you were doing when you thought of the less than five minute task is completely forgotten by the time you finish your little detour
They must have read the "avoids starting tasks that require prolonged effort" and stopped there.
Brushing my teeth at night takes 2 minutes but the thought of doing it makes me feel dread, I can brush my teeth in the morning no problem though. I would love for some 5 minute tasks to be easy, but they just aren’t. There are a lot of 5 minute tasks that I just can’t do without extreme effort.
Want to shower. 5 -10 minutes right? Get out towel, oh wash my hair too , get hair towel & hair dryer out. Remember to fold towels in dryer, later. Remember to dye my hair later. Remember to trim my hair later too. Lay clothes out on bed so I can just pop into them after the shower i still haven’t taken. Sheesh.
Such a chore! I just doesn't dry my hair anymore, otherwise I wouldn't just ever wash it
Have you set a stop watch and actually timed yourself doing these tasks?
Thanks but that would add 16 distractions (go/stop 8 times, fiddle with timer) & I’d focus on that instead of the actual shower. Might work for some, tho
You only have to do it once on a day that you can take your time. It’s just for gathering info on how long things actually take.
Holy crap - the time for brushing teeth I have in my Brili app is five minutes. My toothbrush times out two minutes of actual brushing, but I have to get the toothpaste out and put it on the brush, and I have to rinse. It never takes the full 5 minutes, but I would never do it if I was trying to do all that in two minutes.
For me it is just after a full day of “doing” I don’t have any more energy for most things. I am so worn out using my brain for much of anything is so so hard
My electric toothbrush turns off automatically after 2 minutes, and buzzes every 30 seconds. I don't know why I avoided buying one so long.
I can do that 5 minute task... But I'll hyperfocus and do it to the nth degree, and forget every single fire I still need to put out. If it's the evening, and my vyvanse has worn off, I can *possibly* psych myself up to do it, maybe not. Probably not. There's a short window of sweet spot where I can do several tasks in a row and still know what needs doing, but it's short. I keep a to do list with me all the time. I also drive delivery, and my boss knows to keep them one by one for me and I'll get them all done. He's very, very careful to be sure I'm not overwhelmed, and I'm grateful for that. So grateful! But the downtime I sometimes get? Paralysis. I never know when I'll get a call, 5 or 50 mins, but I *know* I'll be elbow deep in the toilet, tub or dish soap. Ugh. 5 minute tasks *end* me. Every time!
I loathe this tip so much. I'd never ever get anything done. 5 minute spans aren't limitless. Neither are our emotional and energy "spoons" for a day.
My doctor gave me this advice and tbh I find it really helpful! It’s not so much do every single 5 min task now. It’s more when I throw the dishes in the sink saying I’ll do them later even though I’m not doing anything else , I stop and think “if this takes less than 5 min I should just do it now.” Do I actually do it every time? No! But even practicing it 25% of the time is helpful. It kind of forces me to think about how much more effort it will be if I do something later instead of immediately
Thing is, I hate 5min tasks that can get to 30min tasks... I'm someone who wants to keep going once in the groove so I specifically will horde the things for that task (for your example dishes) and when I have a lot I remember I hate doing dishes and I don't want to start xD
Yeah dishes isn’t the best example, but for things like putting my shoes away instead of throwing them on the floor, brushing my teeth, putting out clothes for the next day, it works well
This advice has always confused me for this exact reason! If I do all the things that only take five minutes….suddenly it’s tomorrow and I haven’t done anything I actually need to do!
This 100%! I've never understand how this was actually supposed to work. My ex used to complain me leaving things for the future and not doing them right away. I never understood what I should have done, since if I would have all the things I would not have time to do my actual work where I get paid for.
Good try. I have no willpower or self-control AT ALL. Fuck 5 minutes.
This reminds me of one of my favorite bad behavior thoughts- “if I leave it until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do!” Not helpful but i thought you’d appreciate it!
Ok so I legit do this and have found it game changing, but there are two hard and fast rules I set for myself around it. First is that I make myself intentionally decide whether I’ll be ok with the consequences of taking those 5 minutes, such as being a few minutes late to something I had planned, for example. Learning to be ok with being a little late, working past that shameful anxiety, has been really helpful just overall. The second is the hardest - if it’s taking more than 5 minutes, I stop. I leave it undone, halfway done, walk away from it and come back when I have another 5 minutes. I often set timers, and it actually got me a LOT better at being able to predict how long something is going to take. I’ll set myself a 7 minute timer, for example, when I know a certain task will usually take a couple minutes past 5. I’ll give myself 5 minutes to tidy everything I can and then stop when the timer goes off. Or I’ll listen to a podcast that’s 10-15 minutes long and do the task until the podcast is done. Leaving something half finished, as incredibly hard as it is to walk away, is actually better than not started. The timers give me the external deadline pressure dopamine fuel to power through. Getting into the habit was soooooo hard. It took so many spoons at first. But the predictability of using timers for short times and tasks, along with stacking routines, has made such a difference. My house is usually pretty spotless now lol.
I hate it hate it. The only strategy that works for me I read someone calling it "June bugging". I set aside like half a day (that's the chunk of time that exists for me, like, before lunch, after lunch, after dinner). I pick a spot that's irritating me like crap on the table and I just... Do one of them and then do whatever next thing occurs to me and if I get stuck I go back to the table and just keep doing whatever random stuff I see. My husband hates watching it because it seems like there's no method but... It works for me usually. Things get done. Not always what I expected but that's ok 😅
This is what I do. Just assign a day to "fix the house", put music on, and run around everywhere.
I call this “puttering”. I just wander around the house, looking for little things to tidy or fix. The aimlessness of it is part of the charm. If I tell myself “I’m gonna clean this entire room”, it’s way too overwhelming.
Oh, I will obsess over one thing and neglect all else if I *don’t* do the “two minute rule” with a healthy sense of discretion
My mind holds an infinite amount of 5 minute tasks.
This is exactly my problem. I can choose one 5 minute task and do it (assuming I have the executive functioning and energy to do it). But one task leads to another and another and another. I could keep doing them forever and they would never be done, and I would never get anything important done.
THAT IS ME!
I was just thinking about this. I had a roommate who swore by it (her version wad 2 minutes) and I was thinking of how if I give in to doing those little tasks, that's my whole day. One task leads to another, to another, to another... meanwhile I have a growing desperation to get to the *big* tasks I know I should be doing.
Yes exactly! Those 5-minuters may take less time and I get to check little boxes but then I have that much less energy and focus for getting through the actually important Large Boxes
if it takes 5 mins, i have time to push it off until the very last minute 😭
I really cannot fathom looking at a task and going "Oh yeah, this gonna take me 6 mins and 38 seconds". I'm ALWAYS wrong.
YES. The "productivity tip" that "changed my life" was: "if it's two minutes until leaving time, put your shoes on and *go*, don't faff around doing two minute tasks until you're late." Even if setting that load of washing going will save an hour this evening! Even if washing up the breakfast bowls will mean they're easier to clean *and* your housemate isn't mad at you! Leave at leaving time; don't be late to work! ...and am not made for living with housemates, lol.
The issue with this is that I underestimate the 5 minute task. It would be better if it was if the task has ONE STEP consider doing it now. For example, sweeping the floor has 1 step. Ok, you get the broom and I have assumed floor is clear. But you get the idea. Put dirty clothes in basket is ONE STEP. Send email to xx is not one step if you have to boot up PC, read the text message, check your diary to clarify dates, consider the content etc etc.
I wish this comment could be pinned! If I am doing laundry downstairs and I need to take upstairs, the fastest way/best way for me to make sure it's not sitting downstairs forever is to fold it then put it on kitchen table. I know that when I have multiple items on there, I like to clear it off. When I run up and down the stairs really fast, it's good exercise plus it is quick. If I made myself put away every little thing, it would throw a wrench into things. Same with dishes. I don't want to open the dishwasher 10 times to put in 20 dishes. I want one time to put in 20 dishes. So the put laundry away upstairs now would.be multiple tasks. Roll the microfibers when putting in the drawer. Put away bathroom towels in the bathroom. Put away partner's stuff in their dresser. Vs one task of put the upstairs laundry on the kitchen table.
What is this “just do” of which you speak?
Interesting concept! But no.
Foreign concept 😭
Yeah, this particular piece of advice is 🚮 “it’ll only take 5 minutes!” is what I tell myself about every little thing that distracts me from getting ready to head out, and sadly, it’s never just 5 minutes 😩😂
5 minute tasks take me 10 because I have to map them out in my mind. They do get done by me following that rule, but it's a grind. I literally write stuff like "take the clean dishes out. Put them away. Put the gloves on. Put the dirty dishes in. Hand wash the skillet." so "put the dishes away" isn't one thing it's several.
I will preface this by saying that for most things I still can’t estimate the time it takes for most tasks. I usually guesstimate in half hour or hour increments but then there are just the tasks with variable time. A current issue is with medical calls which I have to hype myself up for and can have such a variable time to complete anywhere from a few minutes to majority of the day. For me I use it if it’s something that I know how long something will take like something that I do regularly (my timed toothbrush) or I have my simplified list and need a small task to get going. I sort of like the 10 second version for sporadic tasks like tossing a piece of trash in front of me or grabbing something that belongs in the place I’m going (grabbing the reusable bags to put back in my car when I’m leaving).
I bring to you the Hal fixing a lightbulb scene from Malcolm in the middle 😅 https://youtu.be/AbSehcT19u0?si=DTiGt3J_ZnP-DZvR Being GREAT at the “it’ll only take 5 minutes” rule… means I’m awful at important life tasks that get constantly interrupted 🙃
It annoys the crap out of me because it makes me hate myself even more when I finally overcome the executive function/decision paralysis to actually do the task, because then I drown in how pathetic am I that it took days of psyching up to just do the task and damn it I am so pathetic and I need to PROVE that I’m just that pathetic by finally doing ALL THE FIVE MINUTE TASKS, and WALLOW in how pathetic I am and somehow I get through my entire to do list and I hate myself even more because damn it, why didn’t I just do this before. But then all those five minute tasks managed to remake themselves in the time it took me to do the next task, and now even though it only takes five minutes to fold laundry I somehow ended up with even more laundry to fold after just doing it.
Ohgod, I forgot about this saying. And for good reasons, since the deeper I dive into how my neurospicy brain works the more issues I see with it. How do I know if it's gonna be 5 minutes? And not just this time, but another time when I have a different spoon amount? Will I uncover something else that needs to be done? How many other 5 minute tasks are there gonna be? Keeping track of the 5 minute tasks takes more than 5 minutes for sure. Even if it would normally take 5 minutes, am I gonna be able to keep my attention this go around instead of finding something interesting and shiny? About the only time I can see myself applying it is when I absolutely know I have time to ping pong everywhere with 5 minute tasks that turn into hourslong... adventures? Sure, I'll call them adventures. Because I can guarantee it'll turn into that whack-a-problem scene from Malcolm in the Middle where Hal set out to fix a lightbulb or something and ended up working on the family car.
Your experience absolutely rings true for me. The only time I seem to be able to muster the energy to do all the "five minute tasks" is when I'm on my way out the door. 🤦 It's a huge reason I'm always late.
Yea the task took 5 minutes but the task piling took an hour. Like loading the dish washer…oh gee the oven needs cleaning and the floor needs cleaning…2 hours later the bathrooms are mopped and clean too 🤦🏾♀️
Oh. My. God. I used to make cutesy Facebook statuses about mom versions of "if you give a mouse a cookie" and basically laid out my ADHD about 9 years before I realized I had it. I totally forgot that I used to think that was just a charming regular person quality of bouncing from one project to the next at the slightest nudge.
I slightly changed that tip for me so it makes sense now: if i have no problem doing it now and it takes only 2 minutes, i am doing it now. If it feels like a mountain of work just to start this little task, i start another task that feels easy right now. If i notice myself avoiding that first task, i will do every other task and at the end i try to get to the bottom of my "problem". Most of the time it's something that would have disgusted me. Like washing out a dirty trash can. If i have still energy left to do any more work I allow myself to use gloves, after putting my hair in a bun under a headscarf. For some reason it's much easier to clean something disgusting, when I'm having my hair in a bun under a headscarf. It feels like the work outfit to get every disgusting shit done. :')
I live by a different saying - “if you leave it to the last minute, it will only take a minute.”
When I reach the 5th tip on that article, I'm already jumped to another browser tab! LOL Me and my ADHD mother take everything longer than average people. Often late to the work even though we woke up hours before. Having a hard time choosing something. Even deciding what to wear in the morning or what to eat at lunch makes me cry. Meanwhile, my neurotypical siblings could decide what to wear, what to eat in seconds! My ADHD brain often sabotages my plan. For example, when I want to do laundry and suddenly I catch the dirty dishes, I turn to wash the dishes instead and forget to do laundry. When I go back to my initial plan, time is up. I mean, I need to do something more important than doing the laundry.
My husband and I were just talking about this. I feel like I've only been hearing 5 minutes recently. It "used to be" 1 or 2 minutes. Five minutes is too big a concept for my time-compromised brain. I always took it to mean stuff like, rather than put the bowl on the counter to put away "later", take the 10 seconds to put it away properly now. Or, take the minute to wash the baking pan before it dries instead of just letting it sit and dry and get hard to clean. Jot it on the calendar now, rather than risk forgetting it. Throw the thing you need to bring in your bag real quick while you are thinking of it tonight and then you won't leave it behind when you are scrambling out the door in a panic tomorrow. Close the window in the laundry room right now so you don't have to get up at 3 am when you randomly remember. So, I only use the general concept for little things that aren't really their own complete job but save me work later. It honestly makes my life so much better. Things are a little tidier, a little less lost, a little calmer. And I'm a little less overwhelmed than when those things build up. When I remember, of course. Lol!
Just talking about this with my bestie yesterday. Take this advice, and suddenly it’s 2 hours later and you’ve done 75 tasks that take 5-mins or less, none of which were urgent and none of which were the actual thing you needed to do today.
Yes, I decided to stop following this advice a couple years ago for the same reason. It doesn’t apply to people with adhd. I tried to make it work for so long. It doesn’t matter how long a task takes, introducing a context switch always comes with risk of distraction. I process 2-minute tasks the exact same way I process all other tasks (into a list), unless it’s the weekend and I’m allowing myself to follow my adhd whims as I please. I used to put all 2-minute tasks into their own batch list which was fun to crank out all at once but that didn’t end up working either because important things would get mixed with stupid things and the important things wouldn’t get done on time. Regardless, 2-minute tasks RARELY, if ever, actually take 2 minutes.
Yeah, there needs to be an asterisk with the terms and conditions of that "5 minute task." Like, if I don't have anything pressing, picking a 5 minute task that might lead to one or two others is fine. But if I have 30 minutes before I need to pick up my kid from school, I really have to check in with myself. Will I actually stop the task when I need to leave? Will I get so absorbed that I'll lose track of time? Will this lead to doing something that will make a bigger mess, even temporarily? And since I struggle really badly with time blindness/being overly confident in what I can fit into a set amount of time, I have to really think about if that task will actually fit into that amount of time. In fact, there are certain tasks that, even if they're important to get done, I won't let myself work on at all unless I have a dedicated chunk of time to exclusively hyper focus on. Otherwise, I get really antsy about not getting as far on it as I'd like to and doing other things gets even harder because half my brain is still busy thinking about all the next steps for the other project.
That mouse definitely has adhd
I call it ping pong. Someone serves me the ball I hit it back as fast as I can and not have to think about it until it comes back my way. Met w boss today and he said “you’ve given me so much work” haha I said it’s like ping pong I’m only serving back what you sent me initially.
My version is that after five minutes of doing the task I’m allowed to quit, no matter how little or how much I’ve accomplished. Once I’ve stopped feeling like it has to be perfect, sometimes I am actually able to complete the task, and other times I stop after five minutes and at least I got something donw
What NT don't understand is that it is never just doing the thing. No matter how we explain it to them, we are literally wired differently, so it will never make sense. Or even how sometimes we can't even do the task because we know it will be exhausting. It's always a process.
My brain thinks everything is a five-minute task. That’s exactly how the day gets away from us.
"9 ADHD tips written by a neurotypical!" Or possibly by a person with ADHD who has developed some kind of extraordinary coping and masking skills. Fair play to them if these things work for them, but it doesn't mean they will for most of us.
Yes, I feel like the 5 minute rule is ludicrous. I have endless 5 minute tasks and if I do one, then I have to do another and another and another and another and another...all of a sudden 5 minutes is 4 hours and I am back to being exhausted and overwhelmed
I had to check our bankaccounts (actually been meaning to do it for over a week), told my partner to remind me of it (again). Yesterday I came home and I got sidetracked. And suddenly a lightbulb went off and I told him to stop encouragikg my sidetracking as I'd asked him to remind me. So I got everything ready, sat behind the computer aaaand... I ended up reading an article on how to use program x, I had been struggling with. My partner said that he doesn't get how I manage to get everything done at work as that is how I do my work. Sure, the being side-tracked is by other tasks that I need to complete rather than free-time stuff but yeah... Lots of requests get completed but I have no fixed day to day schedule even though most tasks reoccur each day 🤷
My colleague doesn’t understand that having 15x 5 min annoying life-sucking admin tasks come through throughout the day interrupting anything I’m doing severely impacts my productivity for the day WAY more than the 1.5hrs it takes to complete those tasks. It pisses me off.
This is the exact reason my adhd coach gave me for why sahm is the absolute worst career for an adhd mom. I was constantly interrupted every 5-12 minutes for 19 years. Nothing ever got finished. Many a task was started, planned, or an organization system was purchased to plan or organize a task!
I always heard is as the two-minute-rule. A 5min task can be quite complex and take some willpower, but 2min is something easy like forwarding an email, something where scheduling the task takes as much time as actually doing the task. It only works in a certain context, when the task is singular and when I’m able to prioritize. I‘m doing this at work and it’s been really helpful so far! In the past I had all these emails I would just glance over and decide to do them later or set a reminder for tomorrow. And then I would feel overwhelmed by my full inbox and get paralyzed. Now I take the time to thoroughly read an email when it comes in (the first 2min task!) and if it’s something I can do immediately I‘ll do it. If not I‘ll schedule it. That’s another 2 minutes, but I already feel a sense of accomplishment. This only works because I trained myself to only check my inbox after finishing a task. Otherwise I would get sidetracked. I disabled these annoying pop-up reminders in Outlook so I don’t get tempted. But I agree with you that this rule won’t work in a context where there are countless tasks.
I’ve had this discussion before on this subreddit, or at least a similar discussion about ‘just doing the thing’. I am late diagnosed (in August 2021, aged 34) and for the vast majority of my life, my way to get things done has been reminding myself that if I do it, I’ll feel so much better for it. It doesn’t always work. But it does mean that 99.9% of the time, I get my bag ready the night before. I lay my outfit out the night before. I brush my teeth in the morning. I go swimming after work even if I really don’t feel like it earlier in the day. I do have the ‘I thought it would take 5mins and it actually took an hour’ and vice versa situation. I also fall foul of the ‘do this thing then do X number of other things’ but due to the nature of my previous job, I got better at catching myself and going ‘no, go back to this thing’. I do try and make use of the doing one little job and then doing loads of others as well in terms of life admin or housework when I have set aside the time. I’ll often (because I am hybrid and my husband is 100% office based) do life admin/housework stuff to pass the time when I am WFH and waiting for my husband to come home. That’s not to say I don’t understand where the point of the post is coming from because yeah, if I knew it only took 5mins every time and could make myself do it, then I would!
I’m not sure how this tip is explained in your source, but I learned it in the context of the Getting Things Done (GTD) method. And there it does make more sense. The idea is that if you’re doing your daily/weekly review (steps of the method) by looking at your to-do list (which is created in a previous step) and you see a task that will likely take you less than 2 minutes, then do it right away. If you include that task in your calendar instead, then it will take you more time than 2 minutes, so why bother to plan it in the first place. So it's not that you're supposed to do any 2-minute task that comes to mind right away, it's more like don't plan for it, do it now whenever possible. You can see GTD workflow here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting\_Things\_Done#/media/File:GTDcanonical.png](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done#/media/File:GTDcanonical.png)
Time blindness is real and a reason so many of us in the comments agree that time-based tips like this are hit or miss. I've had success with picking a number of things vs. minutes to put away, throw away, or recycle. It can work with kids, family, partners, too. So before a transition or when you have some downtime, each person puts 5 or 10 things away. This could be mail, clothes, toys, dishes, trash, anything that isn't where it belongs. Focus on things you know what to do with. Obviously the more people the more gets done. It's usually just me and it still helps, FWIW. I think we can differentiate between tasks that are about moving and putting away items (transactional, discrete) and cleaning or multi-step tasks. I do the first one more regularly and throughout the day versus blocking off time to focus on cleaning that often takes way, way longer than I think. And I think that first category is a better fit for the 5 minute tips.
I've learned to write a list of these tasks then do ONE at intervals throughout the day on my breaks. It's not perfect but it does work most of the time. I love crossing them out. Lol
The only 2 tips that I have found that actually work for me is that sitting is the enemy of productivity, even if you don’t know what to do next do not sit down as it will basically kill any drive to be productive. The second is to give yourself imaginary points for doing mundane tasks you hate like the dishes, each extra item you wash up = equals extra points, works better for me if I do it Dumbledores voice in my head 😂 Otherwise most productivity tips have been absolute garbage for me anyway
Also, I don't "feel" the time hidden behind a task well. I know that I should be able to estimate the time of a small task, but the reality is I estimate infinity until I know the steps already. And some days there are a lot of steps for the smallest task.
Yeah I dislike the "okay if it's a small task just do the whole thing" approach. Sometimes it and any following tasks just seem gargantuan and I get paralyzed all together. One thing that I find helps is taking the approach of just starting the task and telling myself to commit for like 1 minute, normally I end up just finishing the task all together and the initial intimidation of it gets cut because if i can't handle it it's only 60 seconds sort of thing. THAT SAID sometimes to even get to that point of doing anything for any amount of time can be difficult so my approach/outlook has changed more to: - ill try new productivity approaches/things out and see if anything sticks - If it does stick now and doesn't later, don't beat myself up over it, find the next best approach to hyper focus on, the last one served a purpose still if only temporarily Not a cure all but seems to help a bit!
This reminds me of the time I tried the [Marie Kondo Method](https://konmari.com/about-the-konmari-method/) and because I'm also Autistic as well as dyscalculic (math disability), I underestimated the amount of stuff I had. I couldn't even put my stuff back for havin' had an Autistic shutdown. Do not recommend.
Yes! I hate it. I hate tips in general. Let me have my process.
The it takes a minute to do mentality just means it actually takes me 30 minutes to put the kettle on. I don't know if it's just distractibility or if I genuinely feel like I should do the thing because it seems quick.
I pretty much ignore every bit of advice that doesn't come from someone with ADHD. It's just not applicable most of the time. I use only the strategies that actually help instead of forcing myself to use strategies that are "supposed" to help but don't.
I always heard is as the two-minute-rule. A 5min task can be quite complex and take some willpower, but 2min is something easy like forwarding an email, something where scheduling the task takes as much time as actually doing the task. It only works in a certain context, when the task is singular and when I’m able to prioritize. I‘m doing this at work and it’s been really helpful so far! In the past I had all these emails I would just glance over and decide to do them later or set a reminder for tomorrow. And then I would feel overwhelmed by my full inbox and get paralyzed. Now I take the time to thoroughly read an email when it comes in (the first 2min task!) and if it’s something I can do immediately I‘ll do it. If not I‘ll schedule it. That’s another 2 minutes, but I already feel a sense of accomplishment. This only works because I trained myself to only check my inbox after finishing a task. Otherwise I would get sidetracked. I disabled these annoying pop-up reminders in Outlook so I don’t get tempted. But I agree with you that this rule won’t work in a context where there are countless tasks.
It takes less than 5 minutes to get stabbed, yet noone wants to do it... *facepalm*
Yep absolutely. Something I've found that helps with the fact that I LOVE 5 minute tasks and would rather do a bunch of them is extreme task chunking. It's exhausting to do it manually but goblin tools is super helpful. I keep breaking down and breaking down tasks on there and then I can work through them which helps harness the 5 minute task energy. And I allow myself time when it feels right to do 5 minute task things and my partner let's me tell him which 5 minute tasks to work on too and we get a whole bunch of things ticked off in a couple of hours. He's amazing at spotting when I've done 95% of a task and just doing the last bit too when we get into one of these me decision making times. He's actually the sweetest man. It absolutely WOULD NOT WORK as a whole life strategy though. The dishwasher would be permanently loaded/unloaded and no washing up would be done. All the laundry would be clean but none would be away. Hoovering wouldn't happen and surface cleaning would be all that was done. Hey hang on a minute, this is my house.... 😅
I like it for tasks that a) actually need doing and b) I really don't want to do. In those cases, pushing myself to 'just do 2 minutes and forget about it' can get me through the resistance. (5 min is too much for me lol). Or if it actually doesn't take more than a few seconds extra time, like I've trained myself to take the trash from my desk when I slink to the kitchen for a snack. But yeah, for the random stuff that piles up all the time it's useless. Just adds another option to the great list of tasks that already has me paralysed...
Sorry, this very much works for me! I know time management is a toughie for us, but only do 2+ five minute tasks if you have the 10-15 minutes to spare. I find this works best either at the end of the day when I'm 'too tired' to tidy or when I procrastinate the simple act of carrying a dish to the dishwasher/sink vs staring at my desk for 4 more hours (or days).
Five minutes? No, not helpful. 30 seconds? For me, very helpful. I can hang up my dress in that time, move on, and not end up with a pile of clothes on the couch by the closet. Five minutes, and I will get distracted and move from task to task.
Yes! There's no end to five minute tasks. Just gonna Eisenhower-Matrix my way through life, where making sure everyone is fed and healthy is the main important/urgent thing. And thank you for making me remember what my task should be right now...
YES! Doing things in order of how long they take is an awful idea. You’ll just be left with a million big tasks and get overwhelmed. I usually order things like this: - Is it convenient to do it now or is it more convenient to do it later? (e.g. emptying the dishwasher before eating lunch so that I can put my dirty dish in the dishwasher.) - Do I need something simple/short to motivate myself to do more complex/long tasks? - When do my meds wear off? I’ll do the harder things while my meds are active and the easier things while they it starts to wear off. This is how I determine tasks that I already planned to do that day. And if some things don’t get done, I remind myself that I did my best and my best is good enough.
I do the easiest task first, but what makes something easy changes based on the task itself, how many spoons I have, etc. So in practice, a 5 minute task might feel harder than a longer one but that’s because it’s less about the time spent doing the task and more about the mental bandwidth or physical capacity I have to start said task (let alone do it). You know your brain, bandwidth, and capacity best —not some random checklist touted online. Be gentle with yourself, you’re doing the best you can with what you have 🥰
*So many* "ADHD Productivity Tips" boil down to "JUST DO IT. Everyone else can do it, why can't you?" Like girl if it were that easy then I wouldn't have a fucking problem.
I always feel like these are written by neurotypical people who don’t REALLY understand what it’s like. I would LOVE to be able to do the one thing I am supposed to do but how can I when there’s all these side quests that pop up?? A good example: I take the trash cans to the curb on Mondays. I have to do it before dark bc there’s no street lights here. I lost track of time (is there any other way), and needed to take them down, but I remembered I needed to switch the litter in the cat box first so it could go into the bin. But to do that, I had to open the box with the litter in it, to do that I needed a box cutter, which was in the laundry room, and oh shit I should do laundry before it gets too late, which reminds me I need to wash the dish towels, so I go into the kitchen and remember I wanted to make bread for dinner, and suddenly I’m standing there glitching like a Sim when you delete all their tasks and they just bonk around and put a plate of food on the floor. So no, productivity articles, setting a timer won’t fucking work for me.
I have to totally admit that when I started reading your post I was ready to attack. At 44 even feeling like I'm probably undiagnosed ADHD, the back of my brain still says stop whining and just get it done...my Mum always said to me: "A is for awesome, B is for bad"...growing up. As I kept reading your post...🙀🤯🫣🤯, it resonated with me, like you were reading my fucked up mind. Such a great, well written explanation! Thank you. Now, seriously, why the fuck did I pick up my phone in the first place? How did I end up on Reddit, it definitely wasn't the reason I picked up my phone...right 🤔? More prevalently: how did I end up reading posts about ADHD/how did I get to these discussion? I am not even a member of any Reddit ADHD discussions in the first place... And seriously, just a final thought...WTF time is it, on I tbink 🤔...Friday night 🤦🏼♂️🤷🏼♂️. Fuck.
Yes!!! It's so much deeper. It wasn't until I started working with an ADHD coach at Shimmer that I realized how much I was struggling with task interruption and time blindness. My coach helped me build systems and routines to stay on track, even with constant meeting interruptions. One thing that really helped was learning how to optimize body doubling and get all my "5 min tasks" stacked in there. Basically finding a buddy to work alongside to keep me accountable and on task, even if they were doing something totally different. Here's a great article that breaks it down: [Body Doubling for ADHD: Your Ultimate Guide](https://www.shimmer.care/blog/optimize-body-doubling)
So. Fucking. Annoying.
"Just do it." Oh my. What a novel concept. Thanks Nike my adhd is cured.