Tl;dr: To improve task initiation, be compassionate to yourself, take things slow, and test out these strategies. Not every strategy will work well right away or on its own, but these are all solid options to improving task initiation challenges.
“Why can’t I just get started?” “I want to do it — so why don’t I?”
“Why do I keep procrastinating, even when I really don’t want to?”
“Why can’t I make myself do anything?”
“Why is it so hard to finish things I start?”
If you’ve asked yourself questions like these, you aren’t alone. For people with executive dysfunction, these challenges come up constantly… often multiple times a day! These fall under the broad category of problems with “Task Initiation,” the final step of task switching. While it may not be possible to prevent these problems from ever happening, it is perfectly possible to reduce how often they happen and how difficult they are to overcome.
I’ve collected seven of the best strategies for working on executive dysfunction. Below, you can see what they are, why they work, and how to make them easier to apply in practice. Give them a try!
- Read these tips first!
- “Micro-starts” and the 5 minute rule.
- Externalize and break down tasks.
- Make tasks into routines.
- “Reward Systems”
- Create a “Productivity Context”
- Reduce distractions.
- “Body Doubling”
1. Read these tips first!
Before diving into the first task initiation strategy, you should remember these two important notes.
First: Every single strategy will work better with more self-compassion. Try to understand and forgive yourself for challenges and mistakes, believing that you are capable of improving. It is normal to make mistakes and to have bad days, but the goal is never perfection: Just improvement. The more you can be self-compassionate, the more motivation you will have and the more effectively you will improve!
Second: These strategies can take time to work well and may need to be combined together to show serious results. Improvement takes time, and any given strategy for improvement will take time, as a result. Give strategies a few days or weeks and try mixing them together before giving up on them.
With that said, let’s begin!
2. “Micro-starts” and the 5 minute rule.
Let’s “micro-start” here! A micro-start is a simple and well-known strategy for task initiation. When approaching a task, don’t set your goal as “finish all of it”, but instead aim for only one small step. No step is “too small” for initiating. It can be anywhere from “write a single sentence” to “open the project file” to “put down the phone.” This pairs well with the “5-minute rule”: Setting a 5 minute timer where you need to commit to working seriously for that limited time. Note: 5 minutes isn’t a hard rule, but a good baseline. If 5 minutes feels like too much, try fewer. Or, if you can’t get in the flow in only 5 minutes, try more!
This strategy works by keeping your focus on a small achievable goal instead of the entire, often overwhelming task. A frequent challenge in task initiation is overcoming the “inertia” of not working. Once you have started, it is easier to maintain the “inertia” of being in a state of working. Think of it like a vehicle: You need to push the gas pedal to start, but don’t need to push as hard to keep going.
3. Externalize and break down tasks.
This strategy takes a bit of effort at first, but makes initiating larger tasks much easier. If a task is too large or overwhelming to handle, make it a series of smaller tasks. This allows you to focus on each step as an individual, more manageable task instead of thinking about the overarching goal. The way you re-organize the individual steps doesn’t have to be perfect, either. Just like with micro-starts, each individual step can be as small as it needs to be for you.
Importantly, this process of “breaking the task down” should be externalized. Externalizing it means writing, typing, or even speaking aloud or discussing the task with another person. You can also use a checklist, sticky notes, whiteboard, a flowchart, or any other organization method that works for you.
Externalizing the process also reduces interruption by intrusive or impulsive thoughts and distractions. Not only that, but it helps establish the steps more firmly in your memory. You may not even need to check your notes once you’ve written them down! In addition, working with another person also helps to keep you on track and engaged, as long as they aren’t being a distraction!
Note: Some AI tools such as goblin.tools “Magic ToDo” can help break tasks down into a series of small steps for you. However, it is worth learning to break tasks down yourself or at minimum, alter the AI-generated lists. Text AIs often make mistakes when breaking down tasks or write overly complicated notes for individual steps. Additionally, doing the work yourself improves your memory of the steps and can be a good reason to interact with friends or family members.
4. Make tasks into routines.
There are many tasks that you do regularly, such as brushing your teeth, doing laundry, doing dishes, or cooking. Instead of directly helping you initiate tasks, this strategy helps by reducing the amount of decisions and steps it takes to complete regular tasks. Since you need to make less decisions and think about fewer steps overall, you experience less decision fatigue and have more energy left to handle more challenging tasks.
As a reminder, executive functioning is your ability to self-direct and act deliberately instead of as a reaction or automatic behavior. By rolling deliberate tasks into automatic routines, you save energy to act deliberately when you need it.
A friend of mine shared their breakfast routine as a practical example:
- Start water boiling for tea (or coffee machine for coffee) and put two slices of bread in a toaster.
- Heat a pan to medium heat and fry a slice of lunch meat alongside an egg using a small amount of olive oil.
- The pan-fried meat and egg is done around the same time the toast and hot drinks are ready.
- Breakfast is served! A healthy toasted egg-and-meat sandwich, along with hot tea or coffee.
- As an extra bonus, the pan can be rinsed and placed in the dishwasher before eating so you don’t need to worry about it later. Alternatively, the pan can be soaked with soapy water for handwashing along with any dishes used for eating.
This routine is simple and efficient, freeing up time while being fairly easy to do even while sleepy. Your personal routines will be different, but these are good goals to think about while building them.
5. “Reward Systems”
A common strategy for improving task initiation is creating a system of small periodic rewards. These rewards help increase motivation and generally increase the “perceived value” of a task. They don’t need to cost much (if any) money, but they do need to be rewards you can maintain self-control over.Snacks may be a tempting reward, but it won’t work as well if you eat them outside of rewards!
The goal of this strategy is to leverage the principles of Temporal Motivation Theory, a powerful theory explaining difficulty with task initiation. By making rewards more frequent and tangible, you provide your brain more sustained motivation without needing to do too much work for each reward.
One of the most used reward systems uses a set of tokens. These tokens can be as simple as pennies or pebbles. Using these tokens, you do the following:
- Make a “bank” pool containing all of the tokens and an empty “savings” pool, using two small containers to hold the tokens.
- Completing a task lets you take 1-2 tokens from the “bank” and place them in “savings”.
- 10 tokens can be cashed in and taken out of “savings” to get a reward.
- Some examples of rewards are…
- Going out to eat.
- Hanging out with friends.
- Seeing a movie.
- Even just getting a bag of that one delicious snack food from the grocery store.
Some people find that periodic breaks work well as “rewards” for consistent work. This provides the unique benefit of training your brain to recognize “taking a break” as a reward instead of a default state. Additionally, it reassures your brain that beginning work does not mean “rest time” is over. You can organize these breaks however you like, but one well-established framework to try is using a Pomodoro timer.
6. Create a “productivity context”
This strategy involves making a “context” where you are productive in order to help initiate tasks. The context can be a specific location where you work, a particular type of music you listen to, lighting some incense, opening the window curtains… anything to indicate to yourself that it is “time to work.”
This strategy works through one of the most well-supported mechanisms of the brain that we know: associative learning. Your brain is very good at associating cues (such as sounds, smells, and sights) with information and emotional states. When you see a food you like to eat, you feel hungrier. The same principle applies by linking some state of the world around you with feeling “ready to work”.
I personally use music playlists and cups of tea to establish a “productivity context.” This establishes a system of short breaks (to get fresh cups of tea) while providing some enjoyable stimulation while working. The context that works for you will depend on your existing lifestyle and living space. In general, it should be something straightforward which does not take much decision-making on your part. If you’re having trouble, try scheduling an appointment to work with me. I can help you figure out a simple and effective context that works for you, along with other supports to make your life easier.
7. Reduce distractions.
The more distracting things there are near you, the easier it is to be distracted. The worse your executive dysfunction, the more of a problem this is. As a result, it is important to clean distractions up around your workspace while organizing that workspace to make important tools easier to access.
The reason this strategy works is fairly obvious, but not all distractions are created equal. It may be worth keeping some type of fidget toy around in case you need something to occupy your hands physically while working, even though that might seem like a “distraction”.
You can make this strategy even better by establishing a pre-work routine of cleaning up your workspace and removing any extra distractions. This can also be part of the previous strategy, by using it to set up your “work context.”
8. “Body Doubling”
“Body doubling” is a tool commonly used by people with ADHD and/or Autism Spectrum Disorder. Simply have a person such as a friend, family member, coach, or even a coworker present while working. This presence can be online or in person. Not only that, but you can schedule “body doubling” times as a way to help maintain a personal schedule.
There are two main ideas behind the benefits of body doubling. First, the presence of another person can provide an external reminder of accountability and expectation that you will work as agreed. Additionally, the other person can provide a model of calm and focused behavior, letting you imitate their behavior to maintain focus yourself.
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