Action Powers No. 18 of 28
They call it: Only works under pressure We call it
Also known as urgency-driven focus.
The short version A deadline turns a task your brain refused to start into something you can finally do.
Collected. 0 of 28.
Time is slippery for many people with ADHD, so a task with no deadline is a task that does not exist yet. A meta-analysis of 55 studies found real timing differences: people with ADHD judge short intervals less accurately and estimate time less precisely.Source 1 A popular way to put it: ADHD time has two settings, “now” and “not now”. A deadline drags a task into “now”. One ADHD doctor lists urgency among the four things that reliably get an ADHD brain started.Source 2
When it lands in “now”, the rocket lights. Rewards and deadlines improve performance in ADHD, and bigger, faster rewards work best.Source 3 Peter Shankman had two weeks until his book was due. He flew round-trip to Tokyo and wrote ten chapters on the planes.Source 4
No study has tested this sprint. It is what people report. What research does show: judging time is harder with ADHD.
Lived experience
No study has tested deadline sprints. Research does show that time is harder to judge with ADHD, and that rewards and deadlines help.
Running on panic works, and it costs. Sleep goes first, and the crash after the deadline can take a whole weekend.
Give a task a fake deadline three days early and tell a friend the exact hour, so the rocket has a launch pad.
Some toys only wake up when the timer is on. A deadline is that timer. When it starts, your brain wakes up and gets the job done.
Entrepreneur and author of Faster Than Normal
I knew I had ADHD, so I put off getting diagnosed for a long while.
Said in: Shankman in ADDitude
With two weeks left before a book deadline, Peter Shankman flew round-trip to Tokyo and wrote ten chapters on the planes. He says running, swimming and skydiving are how he gets his brain going.
Facts from: Shankman in the New York Post, 2024