Midnight Motivation

0:04Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. It's 1120 at night and I'm eating a brownie, but tomorrow no more sweetss. It's zero sugar for me at exercise, all of it every day. Cleaning my house is going to be spotless Email. Say hello to inbox zero and no more TV video games, only highly enriching activities. For me.

0:38From now on, all I have to do is follow the plan. What is the plan That's not important right now. I'll figure that out tomorrow. For now, I'm going to bask in the glory of what is to come. Alright, let's get back to reality. Although I really did write that at 1120 at night, and while those may not have been my exact thoughts, they aren't that far off from ideas I've had in the past. I mean, they weren't good ideas, but. They were ideas. So today we're talking about midnight motivation.

1:14That late night urge to turn your life around. That somehow doesn't translate into the next day. We're going to be talking about why in the quiet of the night. We become these master architects of our own lives, designing sprawling mansions of productivity because we don't have to worry about the cost of materials or even the laws of physics. But when we wake up, we're no longer the architect where the contractor, or maybe even more accurately, the subcontractor who has been handed some hastily drawn out plans on the back of a bar napkin.

1:46So in this episode, we're going to be looking at why our ADHD brains love building these theoretical lives when the world is on pause, and how we can start translating those blueprints into something we can actually build during the daylight hours. If you'd like to follow along on the show notes page, you can find [email protected] slash 2 8 4. all right. Keep on listening to find out how to actually pull the bow string back instead of just thinking about how cool the arrow looks.

2:22When we typically experience this late night motivation, it's when we're done for the day, we're physically restricted in where we can go. We're at home, maybe in our bedroom, maybe in the shower. The gyms are closed, our friends have gone to bed, and it's too late to text them. It's this kind of time of day where it's this kind of, it's this kind of time of day where the world feels like it's on pause. I think this is a crucial point for what we're talking about.

2:50Because it usually means that we can't take immediate action on whatever it is that we're dreaming about. What we can do is engage in very low stakes planning, where we're dreaming big, we can think about whatever we want because we can't actually take any action right now. It doesn't matter what the plan is, so the sky's the limits. I think this is also why I will sometimes get the same kind of motivation when I'm on a trip. I'll be thinking about all the things I can do when I get back, cleaning out my closet, getting ahead on my taxes, whatever it is.

3:25It's just something that I can't easily do right in the moment because I'm not physically in that space. So I'm shoving the problem off to future me. Now, before we get too far, I think one of the things that we need to talk about is. How we're using this word motivation because we are only thinking about it in the sense of how we're driving our future selves. It's nothing about our current actions. And I want to be clear, I'm not talking about laziness or procrastination here.

4:01This is more about a mismatch of energy types. Let's think about a bow and arrow. When an arrow is pulled back on the bow, the energy from the archer's effort pulling back the arrow becomes potential energy stored in that taut bow string. The arrow is waiting to go, and once it's released, it'll be driven by kinetic energy, sending the arrow on its way. Yes, I realize this is very overly simplified, but bear with me because we're just applying the idea to this idea of midnight motivation because it's really not even potential energy that we're talking about, even though that's what it feels like.

4:43It feels like we're building up all this potential energy to do something. We've pulled back that arrow, but what we're really talking about with midnight motivation is theoretical energy. The idea of energy. Instead of pulling back the bo string, we're thinking, man, you know, it'd be awesome shooting that arrow. This is where we get tripped up. In our minds, it feels like the same thing as pulling back the arrow, but it's not. We just thought about it and the arrow remains in the quiver, the planning, the thinking, it's all in service of shooting the arrow.

5:23But if we never actually pull back that bo string, then when we go to release the arrow, it's just gonna fall to the ground. For a lot of this that translate. For a lot of this, that translates to the idea that we just can't do anything, that this is our default state of being. We tried, we pulled back the bow string, but nothing happened and we just can't do anything. but really the point here that we need to highlight is the disconnect we're feeling because we're comparing two unlike things.

5:56Thinking about doing something is not the same as doing it. Yes, that's clear enough. But often when we're thinking about doing something, it feels like we're planning. And then if we take this one step further, thinking about planning also feels like planning, And while they do feel like they should be the same thing, they're not. Now this comes back to why are we feeling this midnight motivation when we do specifically, and 'cause I'm calling this midnight motivation.

6:25But really it's any motivation that hits us when we can't do anything about it. But it's also not just a limitation of our physical space. A lot of these ideas have been rattling around on our heads for a while, things that we theoretically want to do, but we just haven't had the capacity for throughout the day, we're often in a state of continuous partial attention between work and social media and errands and texts and email and just everything.

6:53We're never in a quiet state of mind. We're continuously going from one thing to the next and never quite letting ourselves focus on those thoughts in the back of our heads. but late at night, often when I'm no longer getting hit with this constant stream of notifications, my mind is free to wander where it will, which is often those things that have been rattling around. When I hit that state of midnight motivation, it's because I've finally been able to turn down that noise.

7:22I'm not on my phone. I'm not focused on anything in particular, and I'm finally able to just let my mind be, so whatever it is under the surface is gonna bubble up. Sometimes it's a book I read 20 years ago. Sometimes it's an awkward conversation I had, and sometimes it's those really deep seated ideas about how I want my life to go and perhaps about. The dissatisfaction I have with my current status quo, and it often manifests as a sudden urge to fix everything all at once in one big fell swoop, doing all of the things and creating the perfect utopian life that I've always dreamed of.

8:06Because if not now, when? Now this certainly has aspects of ADHD impulsivity baked into it. But this is also because by this time of night, my brain is exhausted and so are my emotional breaks, my prefrontal cortex. The part of my brain that handles logic and consequences is signing off while the amygdala, the emotional center takes the wheel. There's less inhibition from my inner critic magnifying all the dissatisfaction in my life. At the same time, I'm also not seeing any problems with any of this fanciful planning I'm coming up with.

8:46This creates a profound sense of inspiration that I can do whatever I want, if I just put the right energy toward it. The ideas aren't driven by logic, but rather the underlying emotions. And with our prefrontal cortex signing off, we're also seeing a reduction in our ability to self-regulate with our executive functions. Many of us struggle with bedtime because it's oftentimes when we feel like we have the most autonomy in our lives. This is where we get that idea of revenge, bedtime, procrastination.

9:20If you had a day where you had no autonomy, you were stressed, micromanaged, or overwhelmed. You likely had to use a massive amount of self-regulation to stay professional or at least to just keep going. By nighttime, you have this emotional need to reestablish your own autonomy, but because your self-regulation is spent, you often aren't doing the things that you really want to do. You're just scrolling TikTok or binging Netflix. We simply don't have the cognitive budget left to say no to ourselves.

9:52We're prioritizing our immediate emotional comfort over our long-term physical needs. And so when you're tired, your executive functions get weaker. Because your executive functions are weaker, you stay up later, and because you stay up later, you have even more of a problem self-regulating. It's a self perpetuating cycle that pushes into the next day because we also didn't get enough sleep because we stayed up too late again, which makes getting to bed on time the next day equally as hard, if not harder.

10:25And so. I'm tired and grumpy when I wake up. And now I've got this ridiculous plan that I tried to come up with the night before and it's crap. I mean, I still want to do it, but there's no way I'm going to be able to make that happen, at least not today. And I said that earlier, and as I said earlier, if not today, then when, well, I guess never. I feel like I'm a failure. But more often than not, that plan I came up with wasn't really a plan at all.

10:56It was just the idea of a plan I hadn't even really thought through of any of the details because remember thinking about a plan is not the same thing as planning. I'm sure you've heard of the idea of keeping a notebook next to your bed to write down all those good ideas that you have at the middle of the night. I've always found that when I do that, the ideas I've written down have lost quite a bit of the luster. When I read them again in the morning, more often than not, when it's late at night, I'm not having great ideas.

11:29I'm just having ideas, and I'm unable to filter out the good ones from the bad. So when I wake up with a notebook filled with things like check the blue thing and the Yesterday Egg Logic, I don't really know what that means. What blue thing? Egg logic. Now certainly this could be a case of just needing to have written down more details about perhaps what egg Logic could be, but I do find more often than not that those late night ponderings aren't really worth what I thought they were at the time This comes back to our amygdala running the show and our emotional brain being like, yeah, let's do it.

12:11So often this is what midnight motivation look like. It's a plan in name only. It's a hastily written down note that says, run a marathon. The desire is there, but the details are pushed off to be problems for our future selves except now. It's our future self here, and I still don't know what those details are. So let's say our midnight motivation was, let's learn how to cook, and we even go the extra mile and give ourselves a reasonable goal to go along with it.

12:45One new meal a week. However, this still isn't actually a plan. It fails to consider any of the other steps that might be involved in that goal. Cooking a new meal every week also involves choosing what to cook, buying all of the ingredients, keeping a cleanish kitchen, and having time to cook built into your schedule. If we're not giving ourselves the room to think about any of those other steps, things can and will easily get overwhelming. Or just get pushed to the side because we're not considering all of our other commitments.

13:21If we don't include that in what we're planning, that's when things are going to fall off the rails. If we're planning to make a new meal on Friday and Friday night comes and we haven't done any of those other steps, we're more likely than not just going to bail on the whole thing and maybe even decide that we should abandon the project entirely. If instead we're looking at this idea of, okay, how do I include these other steps in my plan? How do I make them into something that I can follow through on?

13:53That's what we're really looking for, and I think it's a big step we need to consider for this midnight motivation. it's not laziness and it's not really us being too high in the sky. It's more that we weren't actually making a plan that would ever work with our brains. So one of the biggest issues with my Midnight motivation comes from making amorphous plans that just simply ignore the fact that I have ADHD. Ah, yes, I'll just do the thing. I won't worry about executive function or needing reminders or that I have other commitments that are going to take up a majority of my cognitive capacity.

14:32Taking account of my ADHD has been one of the most important aspects of how I've changed my ability to manage my ADHD, but it is still something that I struggle with. It may seem obvious, but accounting for my ADHD is an incredibly easy step to skip because often I'm just looking at how to get from A to B While a straight line could be the easiest way to get there, more often than not, that's not how my brain is going to operate, and so I have to plan with that in mind.

15:02I have to remember that I can't just try to outwork my executive dysfunction. Planning with ADHD is often about building external systems that support my working memory and combat my executive dysfunction. I need to break down overwhelming projects into bite-size micro tasks. By lowering that barrier for entry, it makes it easier for my brain to get started and keep going. But more than that, I need to keep my plans grounded in reality. One of the biggest issues that can come from Midnight Motivation is that I will often completely ignore all of the other commitments that I've got going on in my life.

15:40Sure, the idea of training for a marathon seems fun, but when exactly am I gonna realistically fit that into my schedule? These plans often come from a place of wishes and dreams of an idealized self that has an infinite amount of energy and time, because again, as we've talked about with the bow. When we're creating these plans, we're not building with potential energy, just theoretical energy. We're not taught and ready to go. We're still sitting in the quiver imagining what that flight is going to look like.

16:11I don't want to reign on the parade of setting goals and striving to better ourselves. These grand goals and visions we have of ourselves are often born from a good place, or at least a place where we want to be the best version of ourselves. but if we set our sight so high that we can't even imagine the steps it would have to take to get there, they become impossible to follow through on. However we can put in the work. We can pull back the BO string, but only if we actually create a real plan.

16:45The idea here is that we want to still write down these ideas and get them out of our heads, but we're also not committing to them just yet. We're not judging ourselves for not taking immediate action. We're just waiting until we've had our coffee and our meds and we've been awake for a little bit so that we can look over them with reasonable expectations. and then we're finding ways to downgrade that pie in the sky goal into something a little bit more reasonable.

17:14Our goal is to put logistics over vision. While the vision may feel good, it's logistics that get things done. With ADHD, we need to externalize our plans because our brains can struggle to keep everything in context. When we move the plan out of our heads and into the calendar, we can see when things are due. We can see our other commitments and how this all fits together because oftentimes we don't really know how much time we have. Putting it in the calendar lets us see.

17:48Oh, this is exactly where this is gonna go and this is where everything else goes. And just as a quick site note here, don't completely fill up your calendar. Leave some white space. Remember that when we talked about revenge bedtime for procrastination and the need for autonomy throughout your day. White space helps give you that autonomy, and it also builds space for when your plans need to change. Writing out what we want gives us a guide to where we want to go, and it also helps us see where we might be taking missteps.

18:23Now as we wrap up, I want to be clear that this isn't something where we're going to just be magically cured of going through this process. Earlier this week, while I was getting ready for bed, I was thinking about how I should go on more walks and my brain was like, Hey. You should really plan on walking two hours a day. That would also be a great way to get through more audio books and the books that you're listening to for doing podcast interviews.

18:48And while that's not the most pie in the sky thing I've ever dreamed of, I'm not exactly sure where I'm supposed to find that extra 14 hours a week for walking, not to mention any of the time around it, And also the fact that I'm going to be trying to spend less time outdoors right now because my allergies are trying to murder me. So I don't need any extra exposure to pollen. All of this to say that this is a process. There are going to be times that we get hijacked by our Magdalene want to conquer the world, but it doesn't have to be every time.

19:19I'm not trying to ask us to change what we can't change. What I'm asking is that we give ourselves a little bit more grace that we don't feel so guilty when we can't follow through on those larger than life ideas. But also not to abandon them all together either. If there's something that we actually really want and it's coming up over and over again, let's pay attention and let's find out that next step. that easy, let's just ease into things, steps that can get us started down that path.

19:52Thank you for sticking with me all the way to the end. Before you go though, Let's do a quick rundown of today's top tips. One, we need to understand that late night motivation isn't really potential energy, the pulling back of the bo string, but rather it's theoretical energy. We're just thinking about the bow. Recognizing this distinction is important in understanding why we never release the arrow in the morning. Because we've never actually pulled back the string in the first place.

20:22Two, while it does feel like planning, thinking about doing something isn't the same as planning and thinking about planning also isn't the same thing as planning. This is important to remember because even though it's not really planning, it still feels like we are. And when we don't follow through with those not plans, it also still feels bad. Three, we wanna shift our focus from the vision, the dopamine heavy end goal to the logistics, the boring friction.

20:54A plan isn't a plan if it isn't accounting for all those logistical pieces. If the logistics aren't there, your brain will just bail the moment you hit a hidden step. four, By moving theoretical plans into a calendar, we are better able to see our existing commitments in a visual space. We don't have infinite time, and if we want to start something new, we have to be able to fit it into our existing life. All right. That's it. Thanks for listening.

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22:53'cause they're all good buoys.