Create Consistency & Find Your Rhythm - How To Craft ADHD-Friendly Routines & Habits

If you've ever seen a YouTube video, TedTalk presentation, Twitter thread, or LinkedIn story on habits and routines, you get the impression they are the quickest way to skyrocket your productivity.

In theory, you only have to spend between 14 and 256 days consistently doing one action. Then, your habit and routine magically fuse with your identity and become second nature. As a result, it's easier to do them than to avoid action, and staying on track requires much less effort. 

Unfortunately, the truth for people with ADHD is much different. 

A meditation streak of 14 weeks turns to dust once you suddenly forget about it for a day, and then you abandon any effort for seven straight months. Working out for three months suddenly halts when you go on a vacation and don't pick it up again. Habits and routines work until they don't. 

This article will offer an in-depth look at the science behind habit formation, emphasizing ADHD-friendly techniques you can use to make habits and routines work for you.

The Theory Behind Habits and Routines

Habits and routines are a type of behavior that you repeat every day or most days at least. The habits worth building are the ones that are objectively good for you and align with your long-term goals - working out, going for a walk, meditating, uninterrupted writing, gratitude journalling, etc. 

The fundamental rules and methods for habit-building include the following: 

Repetition Is King

Your brain adapts based on experiences and actions. The more you do a habit, the easier and more natural it becomes. This is why you hear advice to keep going and perform some form of the habit no matter how you feel on any given day. 

Some studies show habits gradually form between 14 and 256 days of consistent effort and uninterrupted commitment. It could be true for you as well, but many people with ADHD note that habits don't stick no matter what. There is only one way to find out what is true for you. 

Cluster Habits Together

If two habits are performed together, you are more likely to stick with them and achieve both. 

Over time, your brain begins to associate the end of one habit with the beginning of another, and it's easier to continue doing some habit if you are already warmed up and in action mode. 

For example, it's easier to wash your teeth after you've already gone to the bathroom to wash your face, or it's easier to do some yoga in the morning right after being outside to take your dog out for a walk. 

However, you should cluster habits together only if the end result doesn't require an excessive time commitment and amount of effort, which is not sustainable. Waking up, freshening up, doing your face routine, practicing some yoga, and having a light breakfast sound like the perfect morning routine, but it may not be sustainable if you are in a rush to get to work most days. 

Rituals are examples of small, manageable, and low-effort ways of creating associations and clustering habits together. 

They can also help you change your environment, how you feel in your body, and the atmosphere around you, giving you a new boost of motivation and energy to do something different.

Putting on your pajamas and brushing your teeth in the evening can signal that it's nighttime, and you need to drop work and scroll on your phone in favor of yoga, reading, and reflecting. Clicking on a motivational video from your playlist can get you the momentum to work out and bring up the association of previous times when you heard the sound and started warming up for rain. 

Rituals can resolve a very common problem with habit stacking - the fear you won't start the first action that begins the chain of habits. This can happen because you are too exhausted, lack motivation, or just feel paralyzed and unable to get started. Rituals are not a perfect solution, but they get very close because of how easy it is to initiate them. 

By creating simple and low-effort gestures that change the environment around you and how you feel in your body, you slowly get your brain used to associating the ritual with certain activities. Over time, your morning, afternoon, or evening ritual becomes a cue that automatically triggers a certain mood and action.

Build Identities

Many people believe habits eventually change you as a person. Going to the gym five times a week makes you a gym rat. Running every morning makes you a runner. Cooking meals four times a week for your family makes you a chef. 

You can speed up the process by thinking of yourself as a given identity, even if you are just beginning to practice the related habit. For example, there is nothing wrong with thinking of yourself as a gym person, even if you are just starting with twice a week.

Viewing habits through the lens of identity is one of the most helpful ways to think about it. If you work to become someone, your effort can potentially lead to a transformation, which is somewhat motivating. However, working and sticking to your habits to remain the person you already are is a much more powerful motivator. 

This is so because people often tend to be risk-averse (preferring to retain what they have rather than gaining something new) and ego-centered (protective of their identity and sense of self). Essentially, by reversing the process and focusing on identity building, you increase the chance of sticking with your habit and reaffirming it further.

Creating an identity doesn't only come from the habit you practice, the way you talk to yourself, and how you perceive who you are. For example, if you aspire to consistently go to the gym, get clothes specifically for the gum, buy some cheap supplements, put fitness-related pictures on the walls, and shift your social media feed to fitness content, it can all shift the perception towards a new identity. 

Focus On a Single Habit

Whether you like it or not, your mind desires a somewhat fixed identity because it makes everything more predictable and easier to navigate. This desire for consistency of actions and identity has nothing to do with happiness and fulfillment. That's why you could be miserable and still struggle to change who you are and your life. 

Think of identity as a rubber band. The harder you try to pull, the more effort you must consistently put in to keep it stretched. There is only so much you can stretch before it threatens to snap back in your face, especially in moments of fatigue, lack of motivation, and loss of discipline when your guard is down. 

This is why building habits once at a time is highly preferable. It allows you to put your entire effort towards a single goal, ensuring you can dedicate more attention to consistency without risking burnout. 

If you think it can be sustained, you can increase the number to 2 or even 3 if they are small habits and you tend to do them together. For instance, trying to read 100 pages a day of a book, working out for an hour, and meditating for 15 minutes may not be achievable at once. However, 20 pages a day, three sets of exercises for 10 minutes, and 5 minutes of meditation are much more feasible and manageable initially.  

Making Habits Work With ADHD

This advice sounds good in theory, but it doesn't always work in reality.

Personally, I can't maintain a routine in my life. There is always something that interrupts the structure - getting sick, going out with friends, having to stay late to study and work, boredom with repetition, feeling suffocated by the rigid structure, forgetting, not caring, etc. 

Life is mostly chaos, with a few glimpses of consistency. I have bursts of motivation during some parts of the day, and if the stars align, I will have a highly productive day once every ten days. 

The rest of the time, I feel like a passive observer in my own life, feeling out of control as I default to the path of least resistance: chasing the closest distraction, source of comfort, and stimulating activity. If I were reborn as a fly, I'd probably be the type that aimlessly goes in circles and can't help but get glued to the nearest light source, even if it could be deadly. 

In short, I am not a world-renowned expert in habits who lives up to the advice above. However, over the past few years, I have picked many nuggets of wisdom that made habit-building go from impossible to feasible. 

So, here is what you need to know to make the process more ADHD-friendly:

Different Routines for Different Days

Having ADHD means you are in a constant stimulation deficit. However, this intense craving for stimulation isn't the same every day. Some days, you feel fully motivated and packed with energy, while others, you can barely get out of bed, and your foggy brain can focus only on anything that gives dopamine.

If your motivation, energy, and alertness can vary wildly across different days, then it makes sense to have different routines - one for each situation in which you find yourself. 

This sounds terribly simple, but you are probably not doing it, and I didn't do it before as well. 

We refrain from such adaptability in our routines because mainstream productivity advice leads us to believe we must consistently put in the same or even more effort each day. This is why slogans like "one percent better every day" and "grow steadily no matter how small the progress" are so wildly popular.

You can always brainstorm, experiment, and create your own personalized system. But if this is the very first time you think of routines like this, then here is a simple structure as an example:

1. Ideal routine - You almost hop out of bed when you wake up, and scrolling on your phone doesn't plunge you into a rabbit hole until you have to get up 10 minutes before work. Taking action is easier to do, and you feel motivated and full of energy, so you can spend more time on your morning routine and add more tasks to your to-do list.

2. Average routine - This is where you will be most days. You are feeling okay but not great, and everything takes some effort to do. While in an ideal routine, you'd do 20 minutes of yoga, now that's cut to a few essential stretches for 5 mins. In perfect circumstances, you'd do your whole to-do list, journal, and meditate, but it's more realistic and sustainable to plan some of your to-do lists and ditch the other two for later if you have the time. 

3. Doomsday routine - This is the bare minimum routine for feeling physically and mentally drained with no energy and motivation. Your bed has developed a strong gravitational force, and you can't get up. The point is to do enough to survive and maintain somewhat of a routine without having high expectations. It's best to focus on meeting your basic needs - hydrating, keeping up your hygiene, having a meal, and going outside, even if for a tiny bit.

Having different routines based on how you are is a game changer.

This way of routine building reduces the shame you are likely to experience if you fall short of your expectations and goals. Adapting your routines isn't a weakness but a gesture of honesty towards yourself. ADHD creates wild fluctuations in how much you can do in a given day, so working with instead of ignoring reality helps to keep you more mentally healthy. 

Example:

1. Ideal routine - You don’t browse on your phone in the morning. Instead, you get up as quickly as possible, wash yourself, and then go for a 15-minute walk to get some sunlight. The next few hours are spent on your online work, and in between, you cook yourself a quick lunch, find the energy for a workout in the late afternoon after work, and even spend some time in the evening working on your passion projects.

2. Average routine -  You will scroll on your phone a bit in bed, have a 5-minute walk instead of 15, and drink your coffee almost immediately instead of waiting an hour to be fully alert. Lunch will be leftovers or takeaway because you are behind on work, but at least you will have a home-cooked dinner. The workout is shorter (fewer exercises and sets), but you compensate by going for a walk because it is less demanding. You are too tired at night, so you do something less demanding than your passion projects that are fun but too exhaustive. 

3. Doomsday routine - You wake up, only to feel chained up to the bed and paralyzed by your phone. The most you can do for sunlight is open up the curtains, and you only get out of bed 5 minutes before work usually begins. Workouts, passion projects, and anything else extra is out of the equation, so all you focus on is getting your mandatory work done for the day and not skipping meals. It’s far from ideal, but when you are feeling down, what matters most is to take care of your basic needs instead of trying to force yourself to do everything you’d do on a perfect day. 

It is worth acknowledging there will be days when even the doomsday routine is too much. Days where you feel completely paralyzed, highly distracted, forgetful, apathetic, and de-moralized. There is nothing wrong with this. Productivity and personal growth are not supposed to be linear with ADHD. 

You don't have to beat yourself and give up just because you missed a day, a week, or even a whole month of structured living. 

You are not a machine that has to clock in and track its performance on a daily basis. What matters is not your individual output each day but only your resilience and strength to accept setbacks and still give it another shot when you feel better. 

Focus On Values, Not Tasks

When it comes to professional work and career building, there isn't much flexibility. There is mandatory work you ought to do for your 9 to 5 and tasks you need to progress on for your side gigs, business projects, and freelancing. However, you have much more flexibility with the routines you set for yourself on personal projects, hobbies, and healthy habits.  

Imagine you want to lose weight, and you've decided to pick up running three times a week. You progress only if you stick to this highly specific activity as part of your weight loss program. If it's too cold outside, you don't feel like going out, or you are recovering from a mild injury from last time, running is not an option, and you are not making progress. 

One obvious solution would be to diversify how you stay active. One day, you will run. The other you will do bodyweight training at home. On the third day, you will do light yoga and go for a walk outside, and if you feel totally drained, you can watch a movie while slowly pacing on your exercise bike at home. 

Earlier, I mentioned the need to build an identity encompassing the habits you do instead of merely seeing them as isolated tasks on your to-do list. In this example, each type of training is not only a single isolated task but interconnected activities that all contribute toward building a common identity - being an active person. You want to be active, and those habits help support this value.

Designing your routines around values (being active, creative, competitive, informed, and others) is a way to embrace the natural curiosity of the ADHD brain without feeling restricted or suffocated in rigid routines and then ashamed for breaking them. 

Your brain likely thrives on novelty and regularly hyper-fixates on different activities, hobbies, and passions. So, thinking of them as interconnected helps to create a stronger sense of identity and accomplishment instead of feeling ashamed, lost, and inadequate for constantly bouncing between different activities.

Imagine you love storytelling and constantly go in a cycle of writing short stories for a few weeks before switching to slow but gradual progress towards your first novel. Then, after two months, you lose all interest. Once this passes, you spend half a month meticulously designing an in-depth DnD campaign, binging books, writing out your thoughts, and eventually returning to short story writing. 

Before, you would have seen this as being a trainwreck of inconsistency that only starts but never finishes anything. 

Now, you are more likely to see your fluctuations of motivation in a positive light. No matter what specific activity you are doing, you are still upholding the value of being a creative person with the added bonus of not feeling chronically ashamed since you are working with and not against your ADHD brain's craving for novelty and variety. 

Showing Up Is Enough 

Have you ever gone to the gym without the expectation of getting a workout?

It sounds odd and almost pointless at first glance. However, getting in your training clothing, packing water and a pre-workout drink, and getting yourself to the gym can actually help you get started. 

If you feel exhausted and demotivated and your brain associates the thought of working out with pressure and discomfort, getting there without the intention of working out reduces the distance you have to go through. 

It also creates a commitment. If you are already there, you might as well get started and have some sort of a workout so the effort you already put in isn't a total waste. Similarly, doing the absolute bare minimum for any other habit you can think of can help you get started. 

Have to meditate for 10 minutes but feel depleted? 

Do it only for a single minute. Feel your motivation crashing down and know you need to get some movement but feel paralyzed? Put on your outside shoes and promise yourself only to go outside and get back in. Once you get into action mode, even for the most trivial of reasons, it is easier to keep going because you already have some momentum.  

Case Studying - Creating An Exercise Routine 

The habit we will try to build is strength training. This is a type of training where you use dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells, resistance bands, cables, machines, your body weight, or anything else close to you to challenge your muscles to grow. 

Strength training has multiple well-documented physical benefits, including support of weight loss, improvements in hormonal balance, reduction in the risk of injuries due to better balance and bone health, etc.1 

Furthermore, strength training has amazing benefits for your mental health and ADHD symptoms as well. Multiple studies have shown neurotransmitters like dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, and endorphins are released during and after your workout. This can enhance your mood, reduce hyperactivity and physical restlessness, and sharpen your concentration throughout the day. 2,3

Many people call exercise the “natural medication for ADHD”, and it is often the most prescribed treatment after medication. I can understand why exercise is not the holy grail for many ADHD’ers who don’t feel that much better after running their bodies to the ground, but it is the most effective protocol for me. 

I often find myself stuck between working and resting, like I can’t make myself get started on work due to distractibility, but I also can’t properly rest because I feel restless and anxious about the pressure of work. So, I end up stuck in the middle, guilty for not working and frustrated that I can’t relax. Exercise is the only intervention that snaps me out of this unproductive trance because the intensity that I can easily access through a quick workout fully engages my brain and allows me to rest deeply afterward. 

Now, let’s implement the strategies we discussed earlier and see how they play out in the context of strength training:

1. Choose clear, easily trackable, and quantifiable goals - You need to pick a goal that you can easily track your progress toward, like doing a set amount of reps on an exercise or learning a new skill. While you can claim that you “want to build up a bit of muscle,” it’s much easier to feel motivated and consistently get a sense of accomplishment if one of the goals through which you will “get more muscular” is doing 15 reps of strict form pull-ups in a single set. Furthermore, clear goals make it easier to determine what to prioritize, put your effort into, and channel your attention towards. 

2. Rely on repetition as much as possible - The beauty of strength training is that you can have some form of a workout most days while avoiding the monotony of doing the same exercises every single day. You can train different muscle groups on different days, allowing you to always have variety in your workouts. For example, if you are following a calisthenics program centered around bodyweight exercises, one day, you will be working on pulling motions, like pull-up variations and rows, the second day, you will do push-up variations and dips, the third, you can do bodyweight squats, or train for specific skills, like a handstand push-up. The excellent thing about strength training is you can build a habit without doing it every single day because you are advised to take 1-2 days off throughout the week to give your muscles enough time to recover. 

3. Gradual progress beats sprinting - It’s fine if you are a total beginner who gets overwhelmed at the thought of crafting your program or researching the most optimal workout split online. You can start very slow by doing a single exercise for a few sets each day, like training only push-ups, pull-ups, or dip variations in a given day. Beating yourself to the ground, in the beginning is a recipe for disaster since your body will need time to adapt to the workouts. 

4. Habit building requires prioritization in the beginning - If you already have an active lifestyle, then you won’t struggle to juggle going to the gym with rock climbing, swimming, running, hiking, or any other hobby you are actively practicing. However, if you are building a new habit to be physically active through strength training, then you can’t try to do everything at once. There is only so much mental energy you can give to new activities and hobbies in a single day, so spreading yourself too thin means your structure will collapse when life gets more busy. You will always have to put in effort, but after a certain point, it becomes much easier to motivate yourself with strength training. Since you lose weight and pack muscle, you start to fear losing your progress, which can be a much stronger motivator than putting effort into potential results. 

5. Cluster habits whenever you can - It's easier to feel the momentum to exercise if it's the expected activity at a specific time during the day. You could have a short workout in the morning after making yourself coffee or right after work when you are already in the car and ready to drive to the gym. Consistency matters much more than when you are doing the workout because you allow your body to fall into a rhythm and adapt your energy levels according to your repeating schedule. You will not always do a workout at the same time, but picking habits that can be done no matter the time of day is an excellent way for robust habit clustering. For example, having the same small snack, doing the same warm-up routine, and switching to your workout clothes are all small rituals you can easily implement to create a clear transition between them and the beginning of a workout. 

6. Keep your routines adaptable and flexible - The frequency, length, and intensity of your workouts will depend on how you feel on a given day and overall throughout the week. You can cut sets and exercises if you are overwhelmed by work and university or are generally feeling down. In extreme cases, doing just a single set of exercises or skipping altogether so you can have a better workout tomorrow is perfectly acceptable. This rule applies to the way you schedule your day once you get a sense of how you are feeling today, but you can also adjust your workouts based on how busy you will be during the week. For example, working out should be easier on the weekends because you usually don’t have as many responsibilities.

Those are the golden rules you can follow to increase your chance of building a robust strength training routine. Here are a few more tips on how to make the experience more ADHD-friendly:

1. Focus on the value of the action, not the habit itself - Your current gym-centered workout program is important because you get to push yourself enough to feel good afterward and get excellent results. It’s not uniquely related to the machines and equipment you use in the gym. If you start to feel bored of going to the gym, you can easily switch to home workouts with dumbbells, kettlebells, or your body weight. The value you strive for is being a physical activity, so focus on that instead of obsessing over how you will fulfill this value. After a while, you may realize that you don’t want muscle but just the mental health boost of exercise, so you can abandon strength training altogether and focus on HIIT workouts at home, swimming, running, or other sports. Always think in terms of values because this allows you to be more flexible and follow your curiosity and desire for novelty while still getting results. 

2. Reduce executive function demands as much as possible prior to a workout - There’s no simple way to “just start a workout”. If you go to a gym, you need to find and change clothes, prepare your backpack, double-check everything you need is in there, and then go out. Of course, you can’t find a way to teleport to the gym, but you can prepare your backpack, clothes, water, snacks, and anything else you will need in advance, so you reduce the effort you need to put before you get started with a workout. If you can make the investment and have the space, you can also buy home equipment because working out in your place requires significantly less effort to get started. For example, going swimming or running outside three times a week is an excellent way to stay in shape, but if the weather is horrible on your workout day, you can go to your stationary bike and easily have a great workout without having to go outside. 

3. Make it as enjoyable as possible - ADHD brains have higher cravings for stimulation than neurotypical people, which makes it even more important to enjoy the workouts you are having. First, avoid exercises and entire types of workouts that you can’t have fun doing. If you dread doing a workout, you are much more likely to skip it or find excuses not to do it. Second, dopamine stack to get started and keep going by listening to music, a podcast, or even watching a TV show in the background. Finally, balance between optimal and productive exercises that get you results and exercises you enjoy doing. It’s okay to have exercises in your routine that you enjoy doing, even if they are better ways to get the same or even better results.  

4. Find accountability if you know the habit won’t be enjoyable any time soon - Habits have a transitionary period where you get used to the activity, slowly get better, and eventually become a bigger part of your life. For some people, the process of integration is much longer than a few weeks. I would bet that there is also a minority of ADHD’ers for whom habits like working out will never become second nature. That’s perfectly okay. You can still do the minimum amount required to be healthy and reach optimal benefits by using an accountability system. So, find someone to work with, or at the very least, get someone reliable to check on you frequently so you feel the pressure to keep up with your workouts. 

At the core of each strategy is the following mantra - experiment again and again, and keep testing out ways to make the process easier, more enjoyable, and sustainable. If it works, keep it. If it doesn't, throw it in the trash bin and try something else. 

There is no shame in the strategy you are using if it works for you since there is no right or wrong way to build habits. 

If it works, it works.

Key Takeaways

Building ADHD-friendly habits and routines requires you to tone down the perfectionist in you because you are not likely to maintain a consistent schedule for weeks at a time. 

It also requires you to adjust your expectations. Habits will require effort for the rest of your life. They become easier the more you do them, but there's no magic point where everything becomes effortless. 

Even if you miss days, take breaks, and stop for a while, that's still okay. The more you focus on what-ifs, regrets, and ruminations of what a shameful failure you were with routines, the more energy you lose that could have been used on trying again. 

Your habits and routines will collapse more times than you can count. That's life. 

It sucks, but it's not an excuse to abandon your goals, values, and duty toward yourself by stopping with all effort. 

At the end of the day, it is not about keeping your house structured and perfectly in order forever but finding the will to repair and get it functional again and again after every collapse.