If you’re anything like me, you have countless projects that you’ve started and half-finished. I’m not even counting the projects you barely started. I’m talking the projects that you put weeks or even months of your life into. Projects that at one point were the most important thing in the world to you.
That graphic design course you paid for and did a third of. The novel that you wrote 30,000 words of, only to abandon. The blog that you started that was going to change your life…only you gave up on after 6 months.
You put in real work. You showed up every day (or almost every day) and then at some point, a few weeks or months in, you just…didn’t. Maybe you missed a day or two or three and suddenly you were avoiding the project. You weren’t even procrastinating, you just couldn’t figure out how to do the work that you’d been so passionate about just a few days before.
And now it’s been added to the massive pile of abandoned projects.
Maybe it’s a folder on your desktop, or a literal folder, or a drawer in your office. Whatever form this pile takes, it becomes evidence that you start things and don’t finish them. Evidence that you can’t be trusted with your own ideas. Evidence that something is wrong with you, that has you Googling ‘why do I lose interest in projects’ at midnight, wondering if everyone else just has more discipline than you.
The thing is, the evidence isn’t pointing at you being the problem.
The Middle: Why You Lose Interest in Projects with ADHD
The problem isn’t at the beginning of a project and it’s not the end.
It’s in the middle. Or as I like to call it: The Drop.
The beginning of a project is neurologically easy for our brains, not because you have better discipline at the beginning, but because at the beginning your project is new to you. It’s full of possibility. Your vision is clear and you’re full of creative energy. You’re not having to manufacture motivation, your brain is all fired up on its own.
At the end of a project there’s a real deadline, when your boss or client or agent is waiting. Urgency produces dopamine, so suddenly you can work again (assuming you’ve made it this far).
The issue with the middle, or The Drop, is that the novelty has worn off and the deadline is too far away to feel real. The project has started to feel familiar enough that it no longer produces the dopamine that it did at the beginning. You still genuinely and consciously care about the work, but caring doesn’t generate dopamine. It doesn’t matter that the project is important to you, because importance doesn’t generate dopamine. Wanting to finish doesn’t generate dopamine either.
So your brain quietly starts to deprioritize the task because the neurological conditions that made the work feel accessible have changed.
This is the specific thing we’re trying to address. Not “Why am I lazy?” or ”Why do I lack discipline?”. No, the real question is: “Why does something that felt genuinely exciting to me just days ago, become impossible to work on? And why does no amount of willpower seem to change that?”
The answer is that “willpower” is the wrong tool for us ADHD creatives. You can’t bridge a neurological gap with willpower. You design around the gap before you even reach the middle.
It’s Not a Character Flaw
The ADHD brain runs on what neurologist William Dodson calls an interest-based nervous system. Where neurotypical brains can generate motivation from importance, obligation, and long-term consequence, the ADHD nervous system needs something more immediate: novelty, challenge, urgency, or genuine passion. When any of those is present, the ADHD brain can work with extraordinary focus and intensity. When none of them are present, our brain essentially doesn’t work at all and we get ADHD creative project abandonment.
This is why we experience such inconsistency in our work. You can hyperfocus for six hours on something that has caught your brain in the right way. You can do genuinely impressive work. And then, the very same week, you can’t make yourself do any work on the project that you still consciously care about and want to get done. The capability is there – you just proved it with that hyperfocused work session a few days ago – so what’s the problem?
The problem is that the project no longer meets the neurological threshold for engagement. Not because your brain is broken, or you got lazier, but because your brain’s conditions have changed and you have no structure in place to compensate for that.
What looks like ADHD project abandonment in creative work is almost always this: Your brain ran out of the neurological fuel it needs, with no refueling plan and no bridge across the gap.
None of that is a moral failure. It is, however, something you can actually do something about, but only if you stop treating this as a problem with your discipline, and start treating it as a work design problem.
Why You Lose Interest in ADHD Projects — and What to Fix Before You Start
Most advice about ADHD and unfinished projects focuses on what to do when you’re already stuck, and how to get back into the project you’ve been avoiding for the past three weeks.
That’s useful, and something I’ll talk about in another post, but it’s much more powerful in the long-run to intervene at the beginning, when you’re still excited and the work is still feeling easy. That’s when you build a foundation that will hold you through the middle, because you won’t feel like building anything when you reach the middle.
Here are the three things I do:
Define “done” before you even start. Do it in writing and put it somewhere visible.
I know what you’re thinking. “Well, this is stupid. I know what done looks like. It looks like a finished book, album, or course. I don’t need to write it down. It’s clear in my head.”
I’ll just say, “For now, it is.”
I know this sounds cheesy and maybe a little tedious, but before you begin any project – write down what finished looks like. Specifically. Give yourself deliverables, dimensions, a word count, the number of pieces in the series, what’s the deadline, what does “good enough” look like?
Write this down physically. I write it down in my creative notebook as well as a sticky note stuck to my monitor stand, which sits right in front of me all day while I work.
It’s important to do this now, at the beginning, while you’re still excited about the work. This is really the only time you can define what done looks like clearly. The version of you that gets stuck in the middle can’t remember why this project felt so important. And that’s why this is needed in the first place. So give it to your future self now, while you still can. The card doesn’t have to be anything special (but it can be if that’s your jam). It just needs to be specific and visible.
Bonus tip: Write down what “done” looks like each day as well. Pick one thing to get done and write it down where you work. This way, each day you start the work with a clear end goal in mind. Even better, if you don’t finish that day, the next time you sit down to work you see exactly what you are working on written down for you. This is especially helpful in coming back after you miss a day, or two, or more. No matter how long it’s been, you come back to your work and see what needs to be done next.
Build novelty back into the project.
If our projects always die in the middle because they lose their “novelty”, the fix is to structure your project so that the novelty doesn’t run out all at once. Instead of one long arc from start to finish, break your project into distinct phases, each with its own beginning and end. This way we’re shortening the middle, and turning our project into a series of beginnings and ends. When it’s time for The Drop, you’re nearly done with that phase and onto the next one. At the start of each phase, it’s like you’re starting a new mini project.
As a writer, my phases look something like this:
- Brainstorming
- Organizing/Research
- Outlining
- Rough Draft
- Edit
I repeat steps 4 and 5 until I have a draft that is 90% good enough. That’s my process. Take some time to find yours. Break down your “finished” project in a series of steps and organize these into three to five phases (or more).
Bonus tip: At the end of each phase, give yourself an external deadline. Meaning include someone else in the deadline. Rather than having the deadline be, “Draft done,” make it “Turn draft into James.” Making yourself accountable to an external deadline builds urgency in your brain, and urgency generates dopamine.
Another way we can add novelty back into a project is by changing the context of our work. Change the location, the medium, or the time of day that you work. Break free from the familiar work environment that you’re now bored of. I love to go to my local library and write. If I’ve been listening to a specific playlist lately, I’ll find a new one that’s a completely different genre. I’ll write with pen and paper rather than clacking away on my keyboard. Play around with this and see what works and what doesn’t.
One project at a time.
This is the hardest one for me, but the most impactful.
My brain is great at ideas. Especially if I’m working on a project I care about. I’m never better at coming up with new ideas than when I want to focus on a single project. That’s because ADHD brains generate ideas constantly and don’t stop.
I used to think my excitement about a new idea was a sign that I should stop working on my current project and pursue my cool, new idea. That led to me having dozens upon dozens of started and unfinished projects. The new idea is always better, according to our brains. That’s why we have to design our projects around the fact that we are constantly having new and exciting ideas.
You have to have a place where you can park those new ideas. Naturally, I call this my “Idea Garage”. It’s where I park my ideas until they are ready to be taken out for a spin. This can be a page in a notebook, an index card, or your notes app.
The reason the idea garage is so important is because your ADHD brain is incredibly good at finding reasons why your new idea is more exciting and worth dropping your current project for. The idea garage lets you capture that new idea, while not letting you derail your current project.
So when you get a new idea, park it in the garage with any extra thoughts you’re having about it. The key is getting the idea out of your head, so you can return to it after you finish your current project.
What this doesn’t fix
None of the tips I’ve discussed eliminate the middle completely. The Drop is still there; it’s a feature of your ADHD brain. Some projects will still stall no matter how well you prepare. Not every project needs to be finished. Don’t force yourself to finish a project that isn’t worth finishing. There’s a difference between losing interest because your dopamine is dropping, and losing interest because the project isn’t worth finishing. Learning to tell the difference between those two things is worth an entire post, but it’s also worth learning to trust yourself to make that call.
What you can do right now
Before you leave this post: think about the project that is most important to you. One probably came to mind immediately, right? I want you to focus on that project and picture what finished looks like. Be specific.
Write specifically what done looks like to you. That’s it.
The middle doesn’t have to be the place our projects go to die. It just has to be planned for.
If you want a practical system for managing creative projects with an ADHD brain — one that builds this kind of structure in from the start, not as an afterthought — the ADHD Analog Creative System is a free framework designed specifically for this. It covers how to capture, triage, and actually move creative work forward when your brain runs on interest, not obligation. It uses a lot of the techniques discussed here.
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