I always think of the description I saw years ago: Self-imposed deadlines don't help me, because I know the person who set them, and they're full of shit.
Ok hold up because I heard a thing that makes the reward work for me.
The framing isnt " I did something good so I get a treat well I can just have the treat anyway". The treat isnt the goal. Its not about the treat.
The way executive dysfunction works, at least to my understanding, is that the brain doesnt make enough dopamine. Reward/motivation chemical. So doing stuff is hard bc the brain chemical that does stuff is lacking. Like if you dont have strong enough muscle you cant lift heavy weights. Dont have enough dopamine, cant work or shower etc.
So what you do, when you dont have enough dopamine naturally, is buy it from the store.
Meaning, other things are sources of dopamine. Treats. Praise. Listening to music. Affection.
Its not about the treat itself. The treat is a vehicle for making your brain cough up the dopamine. And to begin associating Doing Things with dopamine which helps you want to do things bc you kmow it will feel good. You just to have to remember your body isnt gonna produce enough feel good on its own so you have to keep helping it. Good brain you did the task have some dopamine heres a treat. Its the feedback loop. Its fixing the ?broken feedback loop.
It doesnt have to be a treat. My partner and I make a point of praising each other for normal difficult tasks. "Woohoo you took out the garbage, and *before* it became a pile of doom on the kitchen floor? Fantastic! Youre brilliant!" No money needed to create a bit of dopamine!
I reblogged a post yesterday where OPs family calls it "bragging on". "Come brag on me about the kitchen, its sparkly clean", and everyone comes and says wow great job you really worked so hard and it shows!!
Theres no trick. Youre not tricking yourself. Theres no gotcha haha you did the dishes and didnt even notice! Youre saying ok brain, I know you dont have enough dopamine to do this. Here is some dopamine, and there'll be more when we're done. Im on your team. I dont hate you. We're gonna work together as best we can because we're in this together.
Yes. However, the problem is that for this to work you need to be capable of starting the cycle in the first place. Which is harder if you can just treat yourself and. Not do anything for it. Praise and external support ARE very helpful for this! But if you are the gatekeeper of the reward it doesn’t do much.
If youre thinking of it as treating yourself for free, sure. You can treat yourself whenever. Its not about treating yourself though, its about supplementing for insufficient dopamine. Do also treat yourself! As much as I dont believe we can trick ourselves this way, I dont think the stick is particularly effective either, it just creates self hate and what way to live is that?
Youre not withholding treats until the thing is done. Youre adding extra treats to simulate reward chemical. Doesnt matter if youve had a billion treats today, or you start a task with treats, whatever you gotta do. When you finish the task add a treat because your brain is supposed to be doing that anyway its just struggling, so youre helping it out.
Does that make more sense?
No I do get that! And I agree! And it does help in the long term! But it requires repeated action of a sort which can be difficult to get if you’re already having trouble motivating to do the tasks in the first place. You can only do the treat to build a reward path if you’re actually getting it done at all. Which is what people of this perspective are usually talking abt ime. Like you are correct it is an effective tool when applied correctly! But when applied correctly it is solving a separate problem than it is being used for here
One thing it does is build the reward pathways over time, for sure. For me it also very much helps in the moment. I can feel the differrence in my mind, for me caffeine also helps to get started, or sometimes a strong taste, just some significant sensory input. Maybe im framing this a bit wonky bc it is very much a before task get going thing as well.
It might also be that we're experiencing slightly differrent executive dysfunctions. Im thinking, I have a little bit of experience with demand avoidance, and thats a differrent beast to lacking dopamine. And sometimes there just not knowing what the steps are or where to start, a dopamine boosts helps that feel like less of an impossibility but doesnt necessarily create the solution. And probably other stuff I dont know about.
Im sorry I couldnt be helpful for you. Its hard being a person sometimes.
No it’s okay!! This actually IS very helpful for ME!!!!! My executive functioning has improved over the year making shit Less Painful in a way where this IS really good advice for me. It’s more that I was saying this methodology requires a certain level of function as a sort of buy in and, OP and others I know, don’t have that. I preciously didn’t but I’m at a place where this shift *is* helpful and I am gonna apply it :)
Not sure if this helps, but I decided to share this post with my spouse, whose academic field happens to be the neuroscience of individual differences in learning, motivation, and reward, because he's always complaining that dopamine signalling is being misrepresented in popular discourse. This was his reply:
"So, it’s unlikely that there is simply “not enough dopamine,” and getting a treat or eating a special food is not going to magically fix that by just “adding dopamine.” Treats can trigger dopamine release, but the key issue isn’t the absolute amount—it’s how and where dopamine is signalling in the brain. What matters is the timing, location, and whether that signal is effectively received. What dopamine does can also vary depending on where in the brain it is acting.
It’s also important to note that dopamine is not a pleasure molecule. Other naturally occurring molecules in the brain (e.g., opioids—which share structure with drugs like morphine or heroin) are more directly related to pleasure. In terms of reward, dopamine levels very quickly increase (especially in an area known as the nucleus accumbens) when a reward is unexpected or surprising. However, we eventually learn that certain things predict reward (we call these Pavlovian conditioned stimuli, or cues). Once these are learned, it is the cues that trigger dopamine release, and the reward itself no longer produces much dopamine. Therefore, dopamine is a reward-learning signal, at least in the nucleus accumbens.
Now, some cues are especially attention-grabbing or meaningful. These cues can increase dopamine even more. This can happen to an excessive degree, to the point where it becomes problematic, causing us to act in certain ways even when it is not beneficial. This happens in addiction, where cues can excessively increase dopamine and motivate someone to consume drugs. It can also happen in other disorders, where cues can become overly meaningful and even evoke fear (this sometimes happens in schizophrenia). We refer to how much the brain tags something as important or attention-grabbing as its level of salience.
Importantly, just because dopamine levels increase doesn’t mean that it has any consequence. For dopamine to communicate something, the signal needs to be received. There are different types of dopamine receptors, and some of these can have opposing actions (some can be excitatory and others inhibitory). In some mental health conditions, people may not have enough of certain receptors, or the balance between these receptor types might be altered; this affects how well the dopamine message can be communicated.
In addition, the brain can be very effective at clearing away dopamine after it is released. In many mental health conditions, including ADHD, this clearance process may be altered. This doesn’t necessarily mean it is always faster or slower, but it can affect how long and how strongly dopamine signals persist. If the signal is too brief or poorly timed, it may not have much impact. So even if dopamine is released, the message might not effectively get through. Medications for ADHD can help, in part, by strengthening or prolonging dopamine signalling, making it more likely that these signals are successfully communicated.
So what is this message? I previously mentioned reward learning, but dopamine is important for other behaviours and psychological states as well. For example, in an area of the brain called the prefrontal cortex, dopamine (alongside other messengers) helps us to be flexible, switch tasks, plan ahead, and inhibit unhelpful actions. In other brain regions, dopamine helps us develop habits, where behaviour can become more automated.
Bringing this back to the original point, the issue with executive dysfunction is unlikely to be simply “not enough dopamine,” but rather that dopamine signalling isn’t effectively tagging certain tasks as important, rewarding, or worth doing. This can feel like a lack of motivation, but it reflects how the system is functioning, not just the total amount of dopamine available.
Finally, it is important to note that many of the behaviours I’ve mentioned involve acting in a certain way. Dopamine is also critical for regulating movement; this is why movement is disrupted in disorders like Parkinson’s disease, where dopamine production is lost. More broadly, dopamine plays an important role in helping us adjust our behaviour—being flexible, adapting to changing circumstances, and updating our actions when situations or goals change."
