You sit down to work on The Thing. The one that has been on your list for weeks. You open the file, read the first paragraph, feel your brain start to warm up.
And then it arrives – a much better version.
A better angle. A sharper title. A completely different format. In your mind it arrives fully formed, already smoother than the one on your screen. The current project suddenly looks like the dress rehearsal.
So you open a new document, start jotting notes, maybe mock up a quick graphic. You will just capture it quickly then get back to the original. The current project joins the others you are definitely going back to.
What's Really Happening
For an ADHD brain, interest is the ON switch. It runs on interest, novelty, challenge and urgency – not on a calm sense of importance.
When one of those four shows up, dopamine shows up. When they vanish so does the signal to start.
New ideas hit all four at once, often arriving with urgency attached, even if that urgency is entirely self-generated.
Dr Megan Anna Neff of Neurodivergent Insights describes this as an interest-based nervous system: novelty produces a time-limited surge, then the brain settles and the signal fades.
No amount of telling yourself how important something is will reliably restart it. The half-finished project is not a moral failing. Your brain chased the next spark, it just did not factor in the bill that arrives later.
The Real Cost
Every abandoned project represents time you already spent – sketching an outline on your phone at the dentist, buying a domain at 11.30pm, paying for another month of software. The invisible cost, though, lives in your head.
Unfinished work does not wait politely. It surfaces when you try to write something else, when you open your laptop, when you see the notebook you used for it.
Each one is an open loop and each loop takes a slice out of your focus. One is manageable. Four or five start to feel like something humming in the corner of the room and yes, you can hear it even if nobody else can.
The Next Time It Pings
The aim is not to stop having new ideas. It is to give yourself a moment to decide whether to follow one now or come back to it later.
Note it. Make a note of it – paper or audio. Record what the idea is, why it feels exciting and what you imagine it becoming.
Question it. What does the current project need to reach a sensible stopping point? That might be finishing the section you are in, writing a scrappy outro or listing what still needs to happen.
Decide whether you are willing to do that before switching. You are allowed to say no.
The point is that you decide it, rather than your brain sprinting off without you.
Date it. Put a 20-minute appointment in your calendar labelled with the idea somewhere in the next two to four weeks. You are not promising to complete it; you are promising to revisit it.
This keeps the idea alive without letting it take the whole day hostage.
The Magpie Pile
Most people I work with do not have a pile – they have a cupboard full!
A folder of half-built courses, a notes app that takes three scrolls to reach the bottom, a Trello board of abandoned experiments.
ADDept describes this as “The flip side of novelty as a strength: when your brain is wired for interest and challenge, you sit at higher risk of distraction, half-finished projects and constant novelty-seeking. Every item is still open in your mind whether or not it is on your screen and starting something new always feels easier than looking at any of it.”
Use Traffic Lights
The most practical thing you can do is decide, on purpose, which things are still alive. Do an audit.
Put everything in one place - website updates, half-launched services, courses you never opened. All of it.
Mark each item Green, Amber or Red.
Green: means it gets real time in your diary this week. If it does not, it is not active.
Amber: means you are not working on it this week but want to keep it as an option. Write the current state in one or two sentences and the next two actions that would move it forward. Keep those notes somewhere you can actually find again.
Red: is the category most people avoid and the one that gives the most relief. Closed means letting it go with no plan to return. You can keep the files, use pieces elsewhere later but you are no longer treating it as something you will one day heroically finish.
Do this properly and the list usually shrinks because you stopped counting things you have no real intention of doing. That gap between what you hoped and what you are actually willing to do is where most of the mental clutter sits.
On paper this sounds simple but in practice it is heavy work - having another person in the room changes it.
If that sounds like the kind of untangling your brain needs, book a free 15-minute call: https://calendly.com/lanza-va/15m-free-call
How big is your pile right now – one project, five or have you lost count?
* Dr Megan Anna Neff, Neurodivergent Insights, neurodivergentinsights.com
† ADDept, addept.org