My Latest "Getting Housework Done" ADHD Hack

My Latest "Getting housework done" ADHD hack

This isn't anything revolutionary, it's basically just a modified pomodoro technique, but I've never tried it for housework before. I really struggle to motivate myself to do housework tasks - they just feel so unending and tedious and abstracted from immediate gains.

I find I'll often put off jobs until my house is a complete mess, then "waste" my weekend stressing out feeling I need to "catch up" on cleaning, struggling to get started because it's so daunting (executive dysfunction) and then being overwhelmed by pushing myself to clean inefficiently for hours and hours at a time.

My new method:

Begin with a leisure activity I enjoy - play a computer game! Do a craft project! This takes the stress of starting out of the equation.

Set a timer for half an hour. Decide on a single, concrete task which I will go and complete when the time is up. It might be putting on some washing or emptying the dishwasher.

When the timer goes off, do the task. Suddenly it seems less daunting, because it's only one thing, and I'm going to get to go back to the fun activity immediate afterwards. Often I find once I'm up and about, I feel like doing a few more chores - but I don't have to.

Go back to the leisure activity, set the timer again.

And crucially, this isn't a "only do at the weekend when the house is a complete mess" thing, it's a "do every day in little bursts" thing.

And I am FORBIDDEN from feeling guilty about returning to the enjoyable task. That's not allowed!