I KNOW WHAT I NEED TO DO… SO WHY CAN’T I JUST DO IT?

Have you ever sat staring at an email that would probably take you three minutes to reply to… for three days? You know you need to do it. You know how to do it. You might even really want it off your to-do list. And yet, for some reason, you just can’t seem to start.

Maybe it isn’t an email. Maybe it’s making a phone call, booking an appointment, filling in a form, putting the washing away or finally cancelling that subscription you’ve been paying for since 2022. They’re not necessarily difficult tasks. In fact, that’s often what makes it even more frustrating. You know it shouldn’t be this hard, but knowing that doesn’t magically make your brain cooperate.

For many neurodivergent people, there can be a huge gap between knowing what we need to do and actually being able to do it. Executive functioning plays a big part in this. These are the processes our brains use to plan, prioritise, remember information, manage time, switch between tasks and, importantly, actually get started.

When those things are difficult, a task that looks incredibly simple from the outside can require a surprising amount of mental effort. It isn’t necessarily that you don’t know what to do, don’t care about doing it or can’t be bothered. Sometimes your brain just isn’t giving you access to the big green GO button.

When a tiny task becomes THE TASK

One of the most frustrating parts of executive dysfunction is that avoiding a task doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve forgotten about it. Quite the opposite. You might be thinking about it constantly.

Take that three-minute email. You remember it while you’re making breakfast. You think, “I’ll do that when I sit down.” Then you sit down and start something else. It pops into your head again while you’re working. You mentally compose half the reply. You remember it while you’re walking the dog. You think about it again when you’re trying to fall asleep.

You’ve now spent considerably longer thinking about the email than it would have taken to actually send it.

And then another problem appears: guilt.

It’s been three days now, so you can’t just reply. Surely you need to acknowledge that it’s taken you three days? Maybe you should explain. You start trying to work out how to word the apology. Suddenly, a simple reply has become A Whole Thing, which makes starting it even harder.

The tiny task has officially become THE TASK.

If you’ve ever experienced this, you’ll know how ridiculous it can feel from the inside. You’re simultaneously telling yourself, “This will literally take five minutes” while being completely unable to make yourself spend those five minutes doing it.

Why “just get organised” isn’t always helpful

The obvious solution people often suggest is to become more organised. Make a list. Buy a planner. Download an app. Set yourself a deadline. Create a morning routine.

And those things can help. I love a system as much as the next person. But a system only works if it actually works for your brain.

Personally, I think a lot of neurodivergent people have spent years trying to force themselves into systems designed around how they think they should function. Then, when they inevitably stop using the planner after three weeks or ignore the seventh reminder they’ve set themselves, they assume they’ve failed.

Sometimes we don’t need a better planner. We need to make the task easier.

That could mean body doubling with someone while you work through your admin, asking someone to help you break a big task into smaller steps, using voice notes instead of typing, putting reminders somewhere you will actually see them, or outsourcing something that repeatedly causes you problems.

It might mean doing something in a completely different way from everyone else.

And that’s okay.

“But I should be able to do this myself”

This is one I hear a lot in my work supporting neurodivergent people, and it’s something I’ve had to unlearn myself too.

“I should be able to do this.”

Sometimes you absolutely can do it yourself. But there’s a difference between being technically capable of doing something and that thing being easy, sustainable or a good use of your energy.

I can make phone calls. I can deal with admin. I can remember appointments without putting 47 reminders in my calendar. But some things require significantly more effort from my brain than others, and I’ve learned that making things easier for myself isn’t cheating.

This is something I see with my clients too. Sometimes my job isn’t to take an enormous piece of work off somebody’s plate. It might be sending the email they’ve been avoiding, reminding them that something needs doing, sitting alongside them while they start a task or turning “SORT OUT ACCESS TO WORK” into five much less terrifying steps.

From the outside, those things can seem small. For the person who has had that task living rent-free in their head for weeks, they’re really not.

What would make this easier?

One of the most useful changes I’ve made is trying to stop asking myself, “Why can’t I just do this?”

Because, surprisingly, getting annoyed with myself has never magically improved my executive functioning.

Instead, I try to ask: What would make this easier?

Do I need someone else there? Is the task actually too vague? Do I need to know what the first step is? Can I remove a step? Can I automate it? Can I ask someone for help? Can I do it in a way that suits me rather than the way I think I’m supposed to do it?

Sometimes the answer is embarrassingly simple. Other times, I still don’t want to do the thing. Neurodivergence unfortunately doesn’t come with a secret life hack that makes every boring task suddenly appealing.

But changing the question removes some of the judgement.

If there’s a five-minute task that’s been sitting on your list for three weeks, you probably don’t need somebody to tell you that it “only takes five minutes”. You already know.

You might just need a different way to get started.

And sometimes, that makes all the difference.