Why Boring Tasks Feel Impossible With Dyslexia and ADHD

Ever sat there staring at something you have to do and your brain just goes, Nope. Not, I don't want to. Not, I'm lazy. Just nope, like the start button's missing. And then at 11 o'clock at night, you'll happily reorganize the entire garage. That's not a character flaw.

That's dopamine. And today I'm going to show you how it actually works in a brain like ours. It's Stephen from the Truth About Dyslexia. Let's get into it. Okay, so this one's a bit of a science one. Don't panic, I'm dyslexic.

I don't do textbooks. I do pictures, so we're going to do this in pictures. But I've got to say up front, this stuff changed my life more than almost anything else I've learned. Because for about 30 years, I thought I was just a bit useless at the boring bits, taxes, invoices, filing, putting the washing away, the stuff everyone else seems to just do. And then I learned about dopamine, and I went, Oh, oh, that's what's been going on. Now, quick note, some of us use medication for this.

I've talked about my journey with that before, and I'll do it again. This episode isn't about meds. This is about what's actually happening in there and what you can do about it either way. Fair? Fair. Let's go.

So here's the first thing most people get wrong. Dopamine isn't the happy chemical. Everyone says that. It's not. Dopamine is the go-and-get-it chemical. It's about wanting, not having.

It fires when your brain thinks there's a reward coming, and that's what gets you off the couch. Let me paint you a picture. Meet Nadia. Nadia is an air traffic controller. Serious job. Planes, radar, hundreds of lives in her hands.

Eight hours straight, doesn't blink. Absolute weapon at work. Nadia has not done her tax return for three years. Three years. She's got the shoebox. She's got the receipts.

She sat down to do it probably 40 times, and every single time she opens the laptop, looks at the spreadsheet, and goes and cleans the oven instead. Now here's the thing. Nadia can land a plane in a storm. She can't type numbers into a box. Why? Because landing a plane is a dopamine fire hose.

Every second there's something new, something urgent, a little win, a problem to solve. Her brain is going, Yes, yes, yes, more of this. The tax return, nothing. No reward until it's done, no urgency until the letter comes, no novelty at all. Her brain looks at it and goes, There's nothing here for me, and it literally will not release the fuel to start. That's not laziness.

That's a fuel problem. Now, why is this worse for us, the dyslexic and ADHD crowd? The way I understand it, and I'm not a doctor, I'm a bloke who's read a lot and tested a lot on himself, is our brains run a bit lower on dopamine at baseline, or we burn through it faster. Either way, the tank's a bit emptier than most people's. So a normal brain looks at a boring task and goes, Meh, but fine. It's got enough in the tank to push through.

Our brain looks at the same task and goes, Absolutely not. I need to protect what's left. And it goes hunting for something that will top up the tank instead: phone, snack, new project, reorganizing the garage. I read this idea from an ADHD doctor, Dr. William Dodson, and it stuck with me. He reckons our nervous systems aren't run by importance; they're run by interest.

Four things get us going: something that's interesting, something that's new, something that's urgent, or something that's a challenge, not important, not should. Those words do nothing to us. I could have important tattooed on my arm, and it wouldn't help me do my invoices. And here's the dyslexic twist on top: we think in pictures, right? So I can see the finished thing crystal clear: the tidy garage, the done tax return, the business up and running, and that picture is exciting. But the steps to get there, the 40 small boring bits in between, there's no picture for those.

They're just grey. So my brain gets a big hit off the dream and absolutely nothing off the doing. Which is why we've all got 17 half-finished projects and one very clear vision of how great they'd be. Let me give you another one because I reckon you'll see yourself in this. Meet Brett. Brett's a tattoo artist.

Brilliant. Booked out six months. Dyslexic, ADHD, the full spicy mix. Brett has a design due for a client on Friday. He's known about it for a month. Monday, Brett thinks about it.

Doesn't start. Tuesday, Brett cleans his machines, relabels all his ink bottles, and builds a new shelf. Doesn't start. Wednesday, Brett watches three hours of videos about tattoo history. Doesn't start. Thursday night, 11 p.

m., client's coming at 9, and Brett sits down and does the best piece of work he's done all year in four hours, flat out. Doesn't even notice the time. Now, everyone around Brett thinks he's disorganized. Brett thinks he's disorganized. But look at what actually happened.

For four days, the task had no fuel, no urgency, no novelty, no challenge. So his brain wouldn't start the engine. Thursday night, the deadline turned up. Urgency, boom. The tank filled up in about 30 seconds, and he did four days of work in four hours. Brett's not lazy.

Brett's brain is waiting for a reason, and the deadline is the only reason it's ever been given. I've done this my whole life, huh? I still do it. The trick isn't to stop being Brett. The trick is to learn how to fill the tank on purpose instead of waiting for the panic to do it for you. Right, this next bit is the one I really want you to hear because it's the bit that quietly wrecks us.

When the tank's low, we go looking for cheap fuel, and the world is full of cheap fuel right now: phone scrolling, sugar, a quick game, another coffee, another new idea, another purchase. Every one of those gives you a little hit, tiny top-up, feels good for a minute. But here's the catch: cheap fuel doesn't fill the tank. It just makes the tank bigger. So next time you need more to feel the same. I read a book called Dopamine Nation, I've mentioned it before, and the picture that stuck with me was a seesaw.

Every hit of pleasure, the seesaw tips one way, and then your brain tips it back the other way to balance out, which feels like... Flatness, boredom, meh. So the more cheap hits you chase, the flatter everything else feels, and the flatter it feels, the more you chase, round and round. I lived in that loop for years. Food was my big one. I'd eat to feel something, feel worse, eat more.

Then it was a bit of everything. I'd swap one for another and call it progress. And the tax return, the invoices, the boring stuff, it just got further and further away because compared to a phone full of dopamine, a spreadsheet's got no chance. Does that make sense? The boring stuff isn't getting harder. Everything else is getting louder.

Okay, so what do we actually do? Because I'm not here to make you feel understood and then leave you with the shoebox of receipts. Here's what works for me. Not all of it, all the time, but enough. One, stop chasing important. Chase interest, novelty, urgency, or challenge.

If a task's got none of those, ADD won. Set a timer for 15 minutes. That's urgency. Do it somewhere different. That's novelty. Race yourself.

That's a challenge. Nadia's tax return is the same task whether she does it in the office or at a cafe with a flat white and a 20-minute timer. But her brain thinks it's a completely different job. Two, pair it. Boring thing plus dopamine thing. I don't do invoices.

I do invoices with my favorite album and a coffee I actually like. My brain's not fueling the invoices. It's fueling the coffee. Doesn't matter. Engine's running. Three, make the picture.

We're visual, so build a picture of the done version and put it in front of you. Not the 40 steps, the end. Brett's client walking out with the tattoo, Nadia hitting submit, and the shoebox going in the bin. That picture is fuel. Four, body double. Just have someone in the room working on their own thing.

Don't ask me why this works. It just does. Something about another human being there flicks the switch. Half the people in Right Brain Reset swear by it. Five, and this is the big one. Protect the morning.

Don't touch the phone for the first hour. I know, I know. But every scroll before breakfast is spending tomorrow's fuel today. You wake up tanks fullish, and you pour it straight into TikTok. Then you wonder why you can't start work at nine. I go for a walk instead.

Boring? Yep. Works every time. And this is where my 80 plus 1 thing comes in. If you've heard that episode, you'll know it. If not, quick version: 80% of what gets results is boring and repetitive.

Sleep, food, walking, the same work done again. That's the 80. But if I only did the 80, I'd quit in a fortnight. Groundhog Day. My brain would rather set fire to the routine than do it one more time. So I add 1% of new every day.

A new recipe, a new route on the walk, a new tool to try. Something tiny and shiny for the brain to chase. That 1% isn't a treat. It's the fuel line. It's the thing that keeps the engine running long enough to do the 80. That's the whole game with dopamine.

You're not trying to become someone who loves boring. You never will. You're building a system that feeds the brain you've got, so it'll do the boring stuff anyway. So let me land this. If you've spent your life thinking you're lazy, you're not. If you've been told you just need more discipline, you don't.

Discipline is a fuel gauge, and yours reads differently. You've got a brain that runs on interest, not importance. On pictures, not lists. On now, not later. That brain built the podcast you're listening to. It built my business.

It's probably built some pretty amazing stuff in your life too, usually at 11 p. m. the night before it was due. Stop fighting it. Start feeding it. Because once you know what actually fills your tank, the boring stuff gets a whole lot less impossible.

You know, if this one landed, come and tell me what your naughtiest tax return is, the thing that sits there for years. Post it in the Right Brain Resetters group. Honestly, half the value of that community is finding out everyone else has a shoebox too. You can find it at rightbrainresetters. com, and there's a whole chapter on this in my book, Dyslexia and ADHD Explained from the Inside: What I Wish They'd Told Me, out now on Amazon. If this helped, send it to someone who's got a garage they keep reorganizing instead of doing their invoices.

You know exactly who. Thanks for listening. Have an epic rest of your day, and I'll be back next week.