It’s called Productive Procrastination! It’s very common among neurodivergent folk, especially those with executive functioning issues, and ESPECIALLY especially among those with Executive Function Deficit Disorder (more commonly known as ADHD)***

With Executive Dysfunction, having a big looming task can feel like the crushing weight of the world on your shoulders. It feels actually impossible. So to avoid focusing all your energy on it and stressing out, your brain decides to get some lower-stress tasks out of the way, because suddenly they don’t seem as insurmountable as the Impossible Task. We distract ourselves with busywork and feel productive doing it, but more often than not, we still feel the background stress of the biggest task.

So the guy in the comic is right: if you have an even BIGGER, more immediately pertinent task with a closer deadline, your brain might see the previous task as simpler, and help you focus on that instead of the Big Scary one. Sometimes it works, but other times executive dysfunction won’t let you be productive AT ALL, but that’s tangential. If that’s the case, it might help to hack that task with a machete and make it a bunch of teeny tiny tasks that are each easier than the things you’re procrastinating with (i.e. instead of “I have to write a whole essay!” try starting with “I have to open Docs”)

So all those times in high school where you had a project due the next day and you decided to clean and rearrange your room? That was your brain protecting you from having to face the stressful task that our neurodivergent (again, mostly ADHD and autistic) minds perceive as literally impossible.





***I just like reminding people that even though it’s only been proposed by leading ADHD experts, EFDD is a WAY more accurate term for what people with ADHD actually experience, NOT just how we bother neurotypicals.

(Semi-relevant rambling ahead): *Cough* Executive Dysfunction can manifest in ways that may look like distraction and laziness or scatterbrained “hyperactivity” to a neurotypical, but that doesn’t mean the deficit is in attention – it’s a deficit in regulating your mental faculties, which results in difficulty directing and controlling attention, emotional reactions, motivation, consistency, perception of time, switching/starting/stopping tasks, and keeping your neurotransmitters (especially dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine) in balance *cough*

thank you for coming to my TED talk