“This makes it difficult to accurately estimate how long a task will take, even if it’s a task you’ve performed countless times before,” Bloom said.
When you lack a strong internal sense of time, you might feel that putting away your clothes will take an overwhelmingly long amount of time and thus avoid the chore.
How should you deal with your floordrobe?
In his video, Rice offered a couple of suggestions for dealing with floordrobes, most notably one that addressed the lack of time awareness issue.
“Whenever I look at a basket of laundry, I think, ‘Oh my gosh, this is going to take forever to put away,’” he said. “And objectively, it’s not true. One of the ways that I attacked this was, at one point, I had three baskets of laundry sitting in my closet and I didn’t want to put them away. So I decided to check to see how long does it really take for me to put away three baskets of laundry. The answer — 21 minutes. I set a timer, and I timed myself while I put them away ― seven minutes per basket.”
Having the hard data about the amount of time required for a chore “helps control the emotional part” of his ADHD brain that builds up the process into something bigger than it is, he explained. Thus, the intellectual side of his brain can take over and allow him to deal with the mundane task.
Bloom emphasized the importance of starting with small changes and experimenting to find the best strategy for your personality and lifestyle.
“It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by all of the things that can feel harder due to ADHD, and I work a lot with my clients around acceptance so that they feel less defeated and more motivated to tackle the things that are most important to them,” she said. “That might mean deciding it’s OK if clean laundry never gets put away on time, as long as the clothes get washed. It’s also a lot of trial and error, because what works for one person might fail miserably for someone else.”
For example, paring your clothes down to a simple capsule wardrobe might be the perfect answer for someone who would like to have fewer clothes to wash and therefore shorten the task of laundry. But someone else may feel too constricted by having such limited options for what to wear every day.
“Similarly, someone might benefit from what’s called ‘chunking,’ or splitting a larger task up into smaller, more manageable steps and doing a little bit each day,” Bloom said. “Someone else might prefer to schedule an hour block each week for laundry and pair it with a favorite podcast or TV show — this is called ‘pairing.’ Each strategy is great, but they are totally different.”
Roberts recommended trying ADHD productivity hacks that increase accountability.
“An example of this would be body doubling — having someone sit with you while you get started,” he said. “Another strategy to make a task that is boring less boring is … to make it less boring. Look for ways to increase novelty — making a game out of it, listening to new music while you do it — or find ways to increase immediate rewards once a task is complete.”
You might allow yourself to binge one or two episodes of your new favorite TV show after tackling the laundry clutter, for instance.
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