Tips from an ADHD Coach: How to create morning momentum

Are mornings hard for you? Do you try to start working right away, only to find yourself stuck — even when it’s something you’re genuinely excited about?

This week on Tips from an ADHD Coach, Jaye explains why mornings can be harder for ADHDers. And she shares tips for following through with our intentions when mornings are tough. 

We love hearing from our listeners! Email us at adhdcoachtips@understood.org. 

• Waking up is hard to do 

(00:43) Sandi’s listener letter

(02:17) Why can mornings be hard with ADHD?

(05:57) Do we need to do intense mental work in the morning?

(08:30) Strategies to help do mental work in the morning if necessary

(12:23) Recap

Jaye: Are mornings hard for you? Do you try to do thoughtful, meaningful work first thing in the morning, then find yourself unable to get started on it, even though it's something you really want to do?

This is "Tips from an ADHD Coach," and I'm your coach, Jaye Lin. Today, we're talking about how ADHD can make mornings harder for us than other people, and what we can do to be more successful with following through when mornings are tough. The following is a letter we received from one of our listeners, Sandy, where she shares with us a challenge she's facing with following through on her morning intentions.

"I just watched one of your videos for the first time today and really enjoyed it. I do have a question that would be great if you can answer it. It's about switching modes, but it's also a problem of getting going in the mornings. I know that I wanna do some mental work first thing in the morning. I wanna spend some time reading, setting intentions, going over goals, praying, meditating, et cetera. But when I first get up... I don't want to do anything."

"I make myself a cup of tea and sit down to do the internal mindset work that sets me up for a great day when I actually do it, but it's hard to get myself to start. I've had some success with using momentum. I will unload the dishwasher, get dressed, make some breakfast, and with every task, I gain momentum and actually start getting going. But then I don't want to stop and go sit down to do internal work because it feels good to get these basic everyday chores done earlier rather than later."

"The mornings that I discipline myself to wait to do anything else before I get the internal work done, I will be hours in my pajamas until I finally get enough motivation to get going. I'm not a morning person, and I wake up slowly. But if I start doing chores first, I rarely will go back and do these things that I have deemed as important. I can't seem to find a happy medium of doing just enough chores to get myself awake and moving, and then doing the internal mental work that I have deemed important."

"It sounds so silly when I describe it. I think, 'Why can't I just make a decision and do it, but for some reason, it feels really hard in the moment."

Thanks for writing in, Sandy, because this is a really common struggle for so many of us with ADHD. And to answer your question of why can't you just make a decision and do it. It has a lot to do with how ADHD can affect our brain function, motivation, and ability to switch gears. So, first off, mornings tend to be hard for many of us with ADHD, especially for those of us who are night owls or have a harder time falling or staying asleep.

But even for those who sleep early or sleep just fine, mornings can feel less productive because we are transitioning from complete rest to a state where we are moving and thinking. We tend to have our lowest stimulation levels first thing in the morning. This goes for non-ADHD people, too. There's a reason why coffee and tea are seen as morning beverages and why so many people are easily annoyed and say that they can't have conversations, make decisions, or do anything productive until they have their first cup of coffee.

But with ADHD, because our neurotransmitter and stimulation levels tend to be lower overall, our morning stimulation levels can be really, really low, which can make being productive early in the morning a lot harder. Because of this lower stimulation level that many of us are in first thing in the morning, it's not the best time for us to do things that require executive function. The lower our stimulation levels, the lower our executive functioning tends to be.

That's why so many of us can get overwhelmed with decision-making in the mornings, like what to eat for breakfast, what outfit to wear, and what things to pack to take with us for the day. This is especially the case when we have to decide on our breakfast out of all the ingredients in our kitchen, an outfit out of our entire closet, and what things to pack out of everything we have in our home. Lower executive function in the morning can also make it hard to switch gears, which explains why so many of us have a hard time getting going in the mornings.

Sandy says she's not a morning person, and she wakes up slowly. Even going from asleep to awake and functioning is a transition. So, with lower executive function to transition and get started, it can be harder for us to even get out of bed and do the things needed to get to a higher stimulation level, like take our ADHD medication, make and consume our breakfast and morning beverage, take our morning shower, et cetera.

So, when Sandy forces herself to sit down with her tea and do mental work before she's able to do anything else, it's easy to understand why she isn't in the head space to do things like read, set intentions, go over goals, et cetera, because those require calm focus and decision-making, which is much harder to do when we are understimulated. If we try to force ourselves to do this kind of work where we don't have the brain capacity at the moment to do them, it's really common for the result to be what Sandy experienced, not being able to do anything for hours and then not having anything to show for the time dedicated to doing it.

This doesn't feel great and also doesn't give us any dopamine at the end that motivates us to do it again next time. But on the other hand, when she tries to gain momentum from doing chores, she isn't able to pause what she's doing to sit down with that mental work because the dopamine she gets after tackling each chore makes it less enticing for her to stop. To put it simply, when Sandy does chores to gain momentum, she's gaining momentum to do more chores. The chores she described tend not to require too much decision-making or calm focus to do. So, it's actually a huge shift, brain-wise, for her to go from mid-chores to quiet mental work.

So, what can we do if we aren't morning people, but want to get our day started with more intention, like Sandy? Well, first, I have to ask why it's so important for this mental work to be done early in the morning. I get it. I've heard from so many self-help and success-maximizing gurus that doing this kind of intentional focus work before they do anything else in the day is the key to their success. But it's important to keep in mind that those who are able to successfully do intentional work first thing in the morning might not face the same challenges that we do. And we need to decide what's best for us based on our own strengths and limitations.

If it doesn't make sense to do that intentional work first thing, it's very possible that shifting when we do that work will make us more capable of regularly doing it. The reason why a lot of us try to do that mental work first thing in the morning is because we wanna make sure we set ourselves up for success for the rest of the day. If I know what my intentions and priorities are for the day, it's more likely that I can follow through on them. It's less likely that I will spend my time working on something that isn't urgent or important if I do this mindful work first. That's true, but also, when does that mindful work need to happen?

I would argue: not first thing in the morning. There are plenty of maintenance things that we have to do every day, and we would still have to them, even if we did our prioritization first. Sandy mentions getting dressed, making herself breakfast, making herself her morning cup of tea, unloading the dishwasher. These are all things that have to get done anyway. It's OK to do those first. Sandy talked about how it was hard to transition from mid chores to doing focused mental work. Yes, that's true. But what about when those initial maintenance chores are done? It's much easier to transition from one task to another after the first one's complete.

If we can't get ourselves to do that prioritization and intention work in the morning, we could do a lot of the heavy lifting and brainstorming the night before, when many of us tend to have more motivation for those kinds of tasks. I will say that sometimes our intentions the night before don't match our intentions the next morning. So, if we are setting intentions the night before, it's important to take a little bit of time in the morning to reassess and rearrange if necessary, which tends to be a lot easier to do in the morning than setting intentions from scratch.

If it's really important to do that higher executive function work first thing in the morning, there are some strategies that can help us get to a higher stimulation point faster. The first is to do something that is very stimulating. Think about the mornings when we're really excited for the first thing planned. Like it's the first day of a new job or we're going to Disneyland. The dopamine and adrenaline of excitement on those days makes it really easy to spring out of bed and get going on what needs to be done because we're starting the day in a more stimulated state.

This is not really a goal for us to shoot for regularly because that stimulated excitement probably also made it a lot harder to get restful sleep, too. I'm just using it as a way to show that when we are stimulated early on in the morning, our executive function and motivation can start working earlier too. Sometimes it's possible for us to raise our stimulation levels by doing physical movements. Studies show that cardio workouts can raise our dopamine and executive functioning for hours.

But if you're like me and don't have the dopamine motivation to go for a run first thing in the morning, it's possible to get a little bit of extra stimulation by doing a lighter, shorter physical activity like 10 jumping jacks or punching the air. We can also drink our coffee and or take our stimulant medication earlier on in the morning, or we can say what we're thinking and what we want to do next out loud. Verbal processing, what we are thinking and feeling can sometimes make it easier to focus and raise our stimulation levels.

Sometimes we can get ourselves into a higher executive function head space by putting ourselves in environments we associate with higher executive functioning work. Sandy was trying to do her mental work with her first cup of tea in her pajamas. We don't typically associate wearing pajamas with doing deep focused work, and typically, neither do our bodies. For many people, the act of changing out of their pajamas and into their work or outside clothes can shift their brains into a more stimulated, productive head space.

Sitting down with her mental work after getting changed and ready for the day might make Sandy more able to focus on it. We can also make sure our momentum on-ramp is going toward this higher executive function work. So, if Sandy wanted to go over her goals, maybe she listens to a short podcast episode on goal setting. And on-ramp can also mean doing a very small first step without committing to all of it all at once. Many of us have demand avoidance and it's harder for us to do something when someone is making us do it, even when that someone is ourselves.

It gets even harder for us to get ourselves to do something if we feel like it's a lot of effort and we're required to finish it. So, if Sandy is setting intentions, she might feel a lot of resistance to getting started because she feels like she has to get all of her intentions written down or else. Removing that commitment factor could make it easier for her to get started, which can build momentum for us to keep going. Usually, the first step is to just get reacquainted with where we are in the process or gather the materials we would be using to make our decisions.

Maybe the first thing to do is to look over what intentions she set for herself on previous days. She doesn't have to commit to setting her intentions today. She only has to re-familiarize herself with the process. My guess is that after glancing at her past intentions, exploring what her intentions are today would feel more fun and interesting. Our brains tend to be curious and wander, so sometimes we can do a lot more when we aren't forcing ourselves to do so much.

Mornings can be hard for us, but we don't have to be so hard on us. Being understanding and self-compassionate with where our brains are first thing in the morning could make the things we've been trying to do early in the day feel less dreadful and more enjoyable, which actually makes it more likely for us to do them.

Mornings can be harder for us with ADHD because we tend to have our lowest stimulation levels and dopamine first thing in the morning, while we transition from sleep mode to active mode. And that transition itself can even be more difficult due to our lower executive function when we're understimulated. This low executive function can make decision-making and doing focused mental work feel overwhelming and hard. But if we try stimulating ourselves with drastically different tasks, we can end up creating momentum to keep doing those other tasks and find it hard to return to calm, focused work.

But if we start with the maintenance tasks that we have to do no matter what, it might provide us with more stimulation to start our mental work afterward. We can also raise our stimulation levels by taking our stimulant medication or caffeinated beverages earlier in the morning, doing some physical activity, and talking out loud.

We can put ourselves in environments and clothing we associate with higher executive function work, and we can create an on-ramp to doing the work we intend to do by engaging in an exciting or low-commitment tasks that will allow us to transition easier to doing that focused mental work, which can capitalize on our curiosity and interest and make getting started on that kind of focused mental work less dreadful and more enjoyable.

You've been listening to "Tips from an ADHD Coach" on the Understood Podcast Network. You can check out our show notes to find links to anything mentioned in the show and more resources. This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at Understood.org/give.

"Tips from an ADHD Coach" is produced by Jessamine Molli and Margie DeSantis. Jesse DeMartino edits the show. Video is produced Calvin Knie. Our theme music was written by Justin D. Wright. Samiah Adams is our supervising producer. Briana Berry is our production director. And Neil Drumming is our editorial director. For Understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Seth Melnick. And I'm your host, Jaye Lin. Thanks for listening.