All-or-Nothing Thinking in ADHD

Last winter I walked fourteen days in a row. On the fifteenth day it rained, and I did not go out. On the sixteenth day I did not go out either. Three months later I was still not going out.

The only difference was one day. But that one day took the whole system with it, and only then did I realize I had lived through this dozens of times before.

In the glossary this is called all-or-nothing thinking. In me it was the cause of death of every system I set up.

Why it is so common

Performance fluctuates in ADHD. Some days are very productive, some days nothing happens. When this fluctuation goes on for years, the mind produces an explanation: either I am good or I am bad.

What actually happens is that the wide area in between has never been experienced. A medium-level day is rarely lived in a fluctuating system, and because it is not lived, it is not taken into account. The two categories in my head were these: days that went great and days that were lost. There was no category called "it'll do."

There is a second reason. An unbroken streak is something rarely built in ADHD, and when it is built it feels very valuable. Losing something of high value is heavy too. On the day the streak breaks, the whole structure becomes meaningless.

The third has to do with perfectionism. Keeping the standard high works like a defense against disorder. But when that standard cannot be met, nothing is left. I covered this link separately in the article on perfectionism in ADHD.

Missing one day is read as the failure of the system. Yet the system's durability is tested exactly there.

What it looks like

• Rebuilding the system. When an arrangement breaks, building a new one from scratch instead of repairing it. I described the most expensive form of this in the article on app hopping.
• The Monday fallacy. Waiting for the start of the week instead of starting today. In the glossary it appears as the Monday fallacy.
• Cleaning or nothing. If you cannot tidy the whole house from top to bottom, not tidying at all. This is very marked in me: not doing something that could be done in fifteen minutes because I do not have four hours.
• Starting from zero. Rewriting an unfinished job from the very beginning instead of continuing it.
• Sacrificing the rest of the day. When the morning goes wrong, writing off the whole day. Saying "today is gone" at 11.00 am has happened to me more times than I can count.

Building the middle ground

This way of thinking is one of the areas cognitive behavioral therapy works on directly. The randomized study by Safren and colleagues (2010) in adult ADHD shows that in adults on medication, cognitive behavioral therapy reduced symptoms significantly, and working with dysfunctional thought patterns is central to this approach. I described the method itself in the article on cognitive behavioral therapy in ADHD.

Let us turn it into its everyday form.

Write the small version of every system in advance. This is the most practical intervention here. The small version of a walk is five minutes. The small version of a morning routine is a single step. The small version of cleaning is a single surface.

The reason for writing the small version in advance is this: on a bad day you are not in a state to decide. The decision has to have been made beforehand.

Protect the streak before quality. A five-minute walk may not be the same as a forty-minute one. But it protects the streak, and as long as the streak is protected the system stays standing. In the glossary it appears as streak protection.

The two-day rule. Missing one day is an accident, missing two days in a row is a tendency. The rule is: never miss two days in a row. This single sentence explains most of the systems that have stayed standing in me.

Think in percentages. Missing one day is one thirtieth of a monthly system. In no area is a three percent loss counted as a catastrophe. The sentence "it's ruined" in my head actually means a three percent loss.

Know the real duration of a habit. The study by Lally and colleagues (2010) shows that a behavior becoming automatic takes more than two months on average and varies over a very wide range between people. The same study says one more thing: missing an occasional day does not markedly disturb the long-term course of becoming automatic. The review by Wood and Rünger (2016) also summarizes that habit rests mainly on the repetition of context; so as long as the context is preserved, a one-day gap does not collapse the structure.

Start today, do not wait for Monday. A system starting on Wednesday afternoon does not give a worse result than one starting on Monday. Waiting only increases the number of lost days and cools the plan you built while waiting.

There are places where it works too

I do not want to build the whole article as "this thinking is bad," because that would not be quite right.

The all-or-nothing logic really is protective in some areas. In a habit that needs to be dropped, looking for a middle path often makes things harder in ADHD: rules like "one a week" need constant negotiation, and every negotiation produces an opportunity for an impulse. There a clear boundary is cheaper.

The distinction is here: for something to be built you need a small version, for something to be dropped a clear boundary. Mixing up these two areas leads to losing in both.

Watch your own language

This way of thinking comes with certain words: always, never, completely, I ruined it, it went to waste, it no longer means anything. Noticing these words is the fastest way to catch the pattern.

When you catch a sentence, what to do is not argue with it but measure it. Instead of "it's completely ruined," "I could not do one of today's three jobs." The second sentence is boring, and that is exactly why it works.

There is one more question that helps in me: "What would I say if a friend told me this?" My answer is never "yes, the whole month went to waste."

Coming back after missing a day

This is the really hard part, because coming back feels more shameful than starting again. Starting again is clean, while continuing feels like being placed on top of something dirty.

Three things worked for me.

Do not try to make up for it retroactively. Trying to make up for the day you missed spoils the next day too. The missed day is missed, do today's small version.

Make the return easy. For the day of return, keep the goal deliberately low. Trying to walk forty minutes after a week's break produces a second break.

Keep the record, not the feeling. I mark the days I did it on the calendar. When I look at the end of the month, the gap between the feeling of "I never managed" and the real number surprises me every time. Usually twice as many days are marked as I felt.

Where this ends up

This way of thinking has not completely disappeared in me. When one day falters, the voice saying "it's over" still comes from inside.

What has changed is that the voice is no longer the authority that decides. The voice comes, and the next morning I do the five-minute version. Five minutes never feels like enough, and that is exactly why it works: because it is not enough, I do not have to quit the system.

I described the general logic of building a routine in the article on how to build a routine in ADHD, and the mechanism of habit in the article on building habits.

I told the story of the decision to stop this war in the diary: I stopped fighting myself.