There's an awful lot of stuff in life that I feel pretty much zero inclination to do. I expect I am not alone in that!
I suppose we all have our different ways of approaching tasks — whether we like them or not — and that approach often is largely dependent on our personality, and perhaps our value set.
Personally, I have always felt disinclined to do anything unless there was a reward for doing it. If there is a task that needs to be done and the end result is nothing more than the task will be done, I will likely procrastinate it out of existence!
Of course, I should clarify that rewards take many shapes. I'm not necessarily talking about money. For example I've always been disinclined to go to work, but did so primarily because my "reward" was that I was not going to get yelled at and not going to get fired when I did go to work.
In the early going, I got tired of blogging very easily because even though I enjoyed writing, at the end of the day I was putting in effort, energy and brain power and ending up with absolutely nothing. Blogging got a bit easier when I started monetizing my blogs and there was actually a minimal reward from Amazon affiliate links and some Google Adsense.
I recognize that some people actually enjoy doing simply for doing's sake and the fact that they are busy with something is a "reward" in and of itself. That is never worked for me, I'd much rather spend unrewarded time making a dent on the couch.
In recent years, I have gotten to gain a better understanding that part of living with ADHD revolves around the fact that I am motivated by interests not by deadlines or threats of embarrassment.
Makes me think that the whole part of the self-help industry that revolves around people "finding their life purpose" was probably invented by somebody with ADHD!
I spent several hours today listing new items for sale on eBay, and I found it to be a heavy uphill slog. I realized, at the end of it, that that feeling of heavy uphill slog was largely related to the fact that nothing is selling these days and so it feels like I'm spending hours doing something that's not going to reward me in some way.
Similarly, I love working on my art, but it has been a long time since I have listed anything new for sale... again because what's the point of doing so if you're not going to end up with some money in the bank? Of course, I keep creating because I know there will be a reward, once we start going to holiday shows and festivals.
In retrospect, I now realize that one of the reasons that I all but stopped doing my art during Covid lockdowns — at a time when everybody else was ramping up their art work because they had extra time on their hands — was precisely that I wouldn't have any chance to sell it... it would just sit there and pile up on my table. And who cares about that?
Yes, the "reward" did eventually come when festivals and art shows resumed, a couple of years later. And that was nice.
Point being that if something feels pointless — regardless of whether it's my job, or not — I'm discinclined to do it if there's no reward at the end.
As I said, we all have our different and unique approaches, and our own feelings about the importance of something feeling like it has meaning.
I don't claim to have a cookie-cutter answer!
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great week ahead!
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2026.07.27 00:25 PDT
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