Since sharing the Momentum Formula framework, I’ve been asked multiple times if it works for people with ADHD. Today I’m answering the question and sharing how ADHD helped lead to the creation of the framework itself.

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Have you ever heard the joke about starting an ADHD house

cleaning service? Now, if you do not have the same algorithm as

me, it goes something like this. Someone says, I'm going to

start an ADHD house cleaning service where I don't actually clean the

houses. I just call the person with ADHD and tell them I'm

coming over in an hour. Now, I love this joke

because it's really. It's real. When I see it,

I. I laugh. I think I feel a little attacked by this, but also I

think this would work. Now, I start off with a joke

because one, it is a representation of one of the

ways the ADHD brain works. That sense of urgency that

somebody's coming over to my house, I finally have to do the thing. But I

also think it can help to have a sense of humor around some of

the idiosyncrasies about adhd.

Because if I'm being honest, there are times when it really

doesn't feel funny. There are some days where it's

a true struggle and you're wishing things

were different and you don't really understand what's going on.

And for a long time before I even knew about adhd, I just

thought there was something fundamentally wrong with me. So there are real

consequences and real struggles for people who live with

ADHD or. Or who are undiagnosed. And a

lot of productivity advice works really well for

neurotypical brains, but doesn't necessarily work for

people with adhd. And so it makes sense that when

I started to share about the Momentum formula and a framework

that says, I'm gonna help you to take action, I get

why people were hesitant to say and ask that

question. Does it actually work for people with adhd? Because a lot of

advice just simply does not. And so

today's episode is all about adhd. It is about

the Momentum formula and its relationship to

adhd, not just how it can help, but also how

it's one of the reasons that the formula was ever

developed and one of the first things I want to

address as I start off this episode. I

want to state upfront, I am not an expert on

adhd and nor do I claim to be. Today, I am

speaking from my experience as a person who's been

diagnosed with ADHD and as someone who studied

neuroscience in university. So I do have a strong baseline

and understanding of how the brain works.

With that in mind, I want to discuss. Guys,

to take you back in time, when this understanding of the brain led me

to have an aha moment in May of

2024. I had not been diagnosed yet, but

was kind of coming to terms with it. One morning

I was journaling about some recent procrastination and

obviously I was struggling and I was frustrating. I knew what I

needed to do and I wanted to do it. But

on that morning, it was the first, first time I asked myself, is

this emotional procrastination or is this

dopamine? You see, for a really long time I took

a very binary approach to being stuck.

I assumed based on my understanding

and a framework called immunity to change, that if you were stuck, it was

either logical or psychological. Basically, if you wanted to get

unstuck, focus on skillset or mindset, it was one or the

other. And that's really the way my brain worked. But I hit a point

where I thought, this is not a psychological roadblock. I know exactly what

to do. I'm not avoiding this because of maybe emotional or

fear based reasons. I'm just straight up not taking action.

And so that was the morning I finally asked, what if it's

biological? And what if my brain won't initiate a task

because of neurochemistry? And in particular, is

this dopamine at play? And it was actually that journal

entry that motivated me to look into getting

a diagnosis. I had suspected for a couple of years. Friends who

had been diagnosed as adults who kind of gently suggested it

might work. I also do have a genetic component. It

is in my family with multiple family members. But I would always say to

myself, well, even if I have it, it's not that severe. I have

done so many things in my life and, you know, never had a diagnosis.

So what is the difference? But

remember when I said, sometimes it's not funny. I thought about all of those days,

I call them paralysis days, where I felt

frozen, just unable to do things that I know how to do,

things that are important. And I would just sit there and watch myself

do nothing and just feel overwhelmed.

So if I found out for sure whether I had

adhd, then at least it could open the door to more options

for how I could manage it. And that was really this initiating

factor. But it was also that journal entry

that got me thinking in terms of logical, biological

and psychological instead of just binary. I started to think of it in

three different ways, and that is what would later become the momentum

formula or the basis for it. So what is

happening in the brain of an ADHD person

that makes it hard to actually initiate a task?

And for this I want to come back to something. I've shared it before, but

it's the BMAP model. So the

habit expert, BJ Fogg has this model he calls

bmap. And essentially it is the behavior

happens when you have the combination of motivation, ability,

and a prompt. And if you're watching on video, I

have a visual I'm going to show, but I will also describe this

for audio. But essentially you have your motivation

levels, which can be high or they can be low, and you have your

ability levels, which can also. It can be difficult to do or

can be easy to do. And when it comes

to taking action, the P is for prompt. Something has prompted

us to take action. Whether you see something on a list or you realize, oh,

I have to do this, there's some sort of prompt that is telling you it's

time to initiate taking action. And in order to do that, you have to

just meet a threshold. You will take action. The behavior will

happen when you have the right level of motivation

to cross the threshold based on how easy or difficult it

is. So if something is really easy to do, you don't actually need a

lot of motivation and you will simply be able to just meet

that threshold and you will take action. If something's harder to

do, then you might need a lot more motivation to

cross that threshold and take action on it.

And this is a really helpful way to think about why sometimes we can feel

overwhelmed and not do it. However, in the ADHD

brain, sometimes even something that is really easy to do, you can still

just be sitting here under the threshold and just

not crossing that threshold threshold. And so the brain doesn't have

enough dopamine. That dopamine is involved with sort of

wanting and seeking, and it's part of the reward pathway of the brain.

And so this can drive behavior. And if you don't have enough

dopamine in your brain, if it's the baseline is too low, you're

not going to cross that threshold and you won't take action.

And so it's really helpful to consider what

does motivate an ADHD brain, because it's

not that you can't do anything. In fact, there's a thing called hyper

fixation or hyper focus that people with ADHD experience,

where if something is really interesting or driving

curiosity, or they're just this fascination, or maybe it's really

challenging, they can actually concentrate deeply

on something and time can just pass. They can actually get so absorbed in it

that nothing else happens. And something that is very, very

interesting, challenging, satisfying, these are the types of things that

will easily cross the threshold and Drive action.

But when something is important just

on its own, that's not enough to cross the threshold.

So I think it's a really important thing to understand where if you

are not taking action and you don't have enough dopamine, it

just, you literally, your brain is not firing enough. And so

this frustration, these paralysis days that I would experience

were happening because I was just not meeting that threshold and something

simply being important just wasn't cutting it.

And so that's where I started to really think about what do we

do when we know this about ourselves. And that's really where the formula starts to

come in. When I say that there's a biological issue

when it comes to adhd. There's literally neurochemistry in your brain.

It's not enough for you to trigger the action. And so when you

understand that about yourself, then you can say, okay, how can I adjust

how I work my mode so that I can start

to initiate action? How do I cross that threshold? And there are

multiple strategies that you can use. So the more you understand your

brain, then the more you can start to test out and experiment with what

works really well for your brain. Now, when I talk about

mode, in particular, I like to talk about biology, environment,

expectations and preferences. And let's use an example

of body doubling. So body doubling is a

productivity technique that is popular with ADHD but works for other people.

But that is being able to better focus when you are surrounded by other

people who are also focused on their work. And this can be

in person. So I love working at a coffee shop or a co working space

because other people around me are working and it helps me focus. This

could also be virtual online. I. I really love attending virtual

coworking sessions where we all just quietly work together. But it gets my

butt in the chair because I have committed to showing up for this

call. That's the thing that my brain responds to now,

expectations. I've talked a lot around this idea that sometimes when

no one else is involved, if it's just the thing you say you're gonna do,

you might put it off and you might delay it. Now, for someone with

adhd, if it's important but it's not urgent, there's no one

waiting on it, it will just keep getting shoved off to the side.

So using outer accountability, having other people be involved,

that's another way that you can cross that threshold and you can make it

not just important, but also add some urgency, add those expectations,

which can be enough to drive that behavior. And then also I

Do want to acknowledge the role of biology when it comes to

strategies like medication? This is something

you would work with a professional. I'm not giving any kind of advice.

I just know that this is an option or strategy for people with

adhd. And the way I think of medication is

that it almost just brings down that threshold. It

makes it easier to cross. And so that if something is important,

that's actually enough to cross over the threshold and take action

on it. And it's something that I've explored working with my

health care team, and I did notice a difference with

it, and it's not necessarily right for everyone, and I have to use a combination

of things. But these are all strategies that are about

understanding how you work so you can address these biological

changes. So ultimately, when someone says,

does the momentum formula work for people with

adhd? I say, yes. It is all

about understanding your brain, how your brain

works, and then having a toolkit, having strategies

that will adapt and help you to initiate and take action,

if that's what's happening now. The other thing is when you've got

yourself set up with these strategies and it's still not working well, then that

might suggest that you need to look into more

logical. Maybe it's a logical challenge where you actually don't have all the pieces

and you need to work on that. But it could also be psychological. I mean,

there are times where I genuinely am avoiding something because of

trying to avoid discomfort, trying to avoid any negative consequences.

But if I'm using the strategies that I know

work with my brain that drive enough motivation to

be able to take action, then I'm setting myself up for

success. And then any other troubleshooting around that, I can

do this. Now, something I do want to address with

the ADHD brain is that they tend to

respond well to curiosity. Like genuine interest can really drive

taking action. Challenges can be

motivating of, okay, I'm going to rise to the challenge. It kind of drives that

behavior. If something's new, some novelty is really helpful.

And then also urgency, which we already talked about.

I want to address the novelty one, because sometimes a

strategy is going to work for a while, but as it

starts to lose its novelty, then you can start to struggle.

And that's why I do also like having multiple strategies

that are available, multiple ways to troubleshoot. And depending on

the type of action you're taking, some strategies might work better than others.

And regardless of who you are, whether you have ADHD or not, I

think being curious about how you work, what

fits, what feels natural is a constant evolution

of figuring that out. Trial and error. Because when you find something that works,

you are setting yourself up to be able to sustain something,

to show up over and over again. And ultimately it

can help you to find and keep your momentum.