Stress as a Productivity Hack (and why it's a bad idea)

I'm wandering a little off-topic for a quick post about something that's been on my mind recently, as I work to identify better strategies to manage executive dysfunction.

Earlier this year, I was diagnosed with ADHD -- very common among autistics, and with many overlapping symptoms. I honestly don't know how much this post will resonate for people who are autistic without ADHD, but I'm hoping it will help some of you.

I want to start with a super-oversimplified explanation of one mechanism of ADHD:

ADHD is, in part, a result of a muted reward response in the brain. Our brains give us "reward" signals for most things that we do -- eating, talking to a friend, day-to-day accomplishments, scrolling through social media... If you feel engaged, there's a good chance your brain is giving you a reward response to whatever you're up to.

When you don't get enough reward response, your brain keeps seeking more reward sources, which is why people with ADHD may be easily distracted or experience racing thoughts or lack of focus; our brain isn't experiencing enough reward from one topic, so it seeks other content in the background or disengages. Imagine being in a doctor's waiting room; do you stare at the wall, or do you look around, flip through a magazine, check your phone...? (Okay, sometimes I stare at a wall, but eventually I'm going to look for a Readers Digest.) For people with ADHD, many things we should do feel about as rewarding (neurologically, at least) as staring at a wall, and our brain looks for something more engaging on which to focus.

This is important, because it can help us understand what's happening and build healthy coping strategies. But, sometimes, we build unhealthy coping methods, like using our own stress to force productivity.

Here's how it works: Doing our work doesn't create enough of a reward response for our brains to actually inspire motivation (on a neurological level, that is; emotionally, we may feel VERY motivated, but our brain has to agree before it matters). At this stage, there's only one potential source of reward in doing the thing: the sense of accomplishment from getting the thing done (positive reward). BUT, as deadlines approach, stress is added to the equation; now, completing the task produces *two* forms of reward: getting the thing done (positive reward), and eliminating all this stress about needing to do the thing (negative reward).

Adding a second source of reward can, for some of us, be enough to coax our brains into obedience -- or at least cooperation. If you've ever procrastinated, you know the feeling -- you just can't summon the energy or attention to do the thing until the last minute, when suddenly you're perfectly capable of sitting down and churning out a complete product. Until the deadline, the reward of doing the thing wasn't sufficient to actually get it done, but as the deadline got closer, the stress increased, and motivation was increased by the drive to eliminate the stress.

A lot of ADHDers harness that stress response and use it to our advantage. We may not even realize we're doing it. Having trouble keeping up with schoolwork? Let's add another extracurricular! Huge paper looming over you? Start a new project! Need to clean the house? This is a perfect time to sign up for 50 different volunteer opportunities all in the next two days! For some people, this is purely an avoidance tactic, but for others, it's an attempt at hacking our own brains, manufacturing stress in order to boost the potential reward of our to-do list items.

For example: When I was in highschool, I filled my schedule as much as I could: I had extracurriculars (sometimes 2 or 3 of them) every day after school; I was out of the house 6AM-8PM Saturday and Sunday participating in a conservatory's youth program; I took all the hardest classes available to me, took on leadership roles wherever I could, and generally made sure I never had a minute of down time. I wasn't bored and trying to fill my time; I wasn't trying to distract myself from my to-do list items; I was struggling with executive dysfunction, and my productivity would collapse if my stress levels dipped for one moment.

This. Is. Not. Sustainable.

For one thing, it's just exhausting and most of us (unless we're fictional characters) will eventually collapse if we try to maintain that unforgiving lifestyle.

For another, eventually we'll have something we need to do that doesn't work that way -- an easy example is graduate school, where you may spend 4-6 years on a research project that requires hundreds of hours with no hard deadlines. If you've ever tried to write an entire masters thesis the day before you're supposed to send it to your advisor for approval, you probably know how well that works (hint: it usually doesn't). Someday, we will need to have a strategy that works for us, without depending on a hard deadline or significant stress.

All of this is a really long way to say: take a moment this week to think about your productivity strategies. How are they working for you? Are they dependent on unsustainable methods? Are they based on anything that's usually not good for you (stress? fear? the looming risk of failure?)? If so, it's time to start looking for other strategies -- and, if the challenge persists, consider whether there may be an undiagnosed barrier in your way.