The dishes are done. You answered the messages, paid the bill, and finally dealt with the bag that has been sitting by the door. You have been busy all day. Yet when someone asks how your week is going, the honest answer is: “I’m getting things done. I’m just not sure I’m getting to the things I care about.”
Productivity with ADHD is most useful when it helps you make room for what matters to you. That includes responsibilities, relationships, health, enjoyment, and rest. A meaningful goal can give your effort direction, but it does not remove the planning, attention, or task-initiation difficulties associated with ADHD. You may need both a reason to act and practical support for taking the next step.
You can get a lot done and still feel that something is missing
There is real relief in crossing something off a list. When unfinished tasks have been following you around, getting through them can make the evening feel a little quieter.
The trouble begins when a completed list becomes the main measure of a good day. The list tells you what you finished. It cannot tell you whether the day left room for friendship, curiosity, recovery, or anything else you wanted your life to contain.
Sometimes the important work is wonderfully ordinary. Paying the electricity bill protects your home. Making a meal helps you get through tomorrow. These things count. Purpose does not require every task to feel inspiring.
Still, it helps to occasionally ask what all this effort is serving. If you have become very efficient at meeting everyone else’s needs while your own keep getting postponed, another productivity system may leave the central problem untouched.
What Randy Pausch understood about time
Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon professor known for The Last Lecture, also gave a separate Time Management lecture at the University of Virginia on November 27, 2007. His better-known lecture had taken place at Carnegie Mellon on September 18 that year.
In the time-management talk, Pausch offered a useful challenge to anyone who has spent an afternoon perfecting a task that barely mattered:
“If you do the right things adequately, that’s much more important than doing the wrong things beautifully.”
Randy Pausch, Time Management, 2007
His discussion connected using time well with having time for loved ones. Before working out how to finish something faster, he encouraged people to consider why they were doing it and what it would accomplish. The original lecture transcript provides the fuller context.
Pausch was speaking about his approach to time, rather than offering ADHD treatment advice. His perspective suggests a question to adapt to your own life: Is this task helping me build or protect something I value?
Your purpose does not have to be a grand life mission
The word purpose can sound exhausting. Perhaps you are trying to remember an appointment and get enough groceries into the house. Being asked to identify your life’s mission may feel like a particularly ambitious addition to the list.
Start smaller. You might want to feel more connected to your sister. You might want a steadier income, less tension at home, or enough energy to enjoy a hobby you have missed. Your purpose for this season might simply be recovering from a difficult year.
Values describe qualities you want your life to express. Goals give you something concrete to work towards. Connection is a value; arranging a phone call is a goal. Neither needs to become a permanent declaration about who you are.
Research on motivation offers a useful clue here. In a 1999 study, Kennon Sheldon and Andrew Elliot found that goals consistent with people’s interests and core values were associated with more sustained effort and goal attainment. Achieving those goals was also associated with benefits to well-being. This was general motivation research, not evidence that identifying values treats ADHD.
You also have permission to change your mind. A goal can be meaningful when you choose it and less relevant six months later. Revising it can be a thoughtful response to your life.
Caring about something does not automatically make it easier to do
This is where advice about purpose can go wrong. Someone says, “If it mattered enough, you would make time.” You care deeply, struggle to begin anyway, and conclude that there must be something wrong with your priorities.
An unfinished task is not a reliable measure of how much you care.
The National Institute of Mental Health’s guidance on adult ADHD describes difficulties with organization, planning, time management, and following through on tasks. Knowing that a task matters does not automatically supply the steps, cues, energy, or manageable starting point needed to do it.
Consider an important form. You want the opportunity it could open. But the form requires a document you cannot find, a decision you have been avoiding, and a login that no longer works. “Remember your why” offers very little help with the password.
Support needs to meet the actual obstacle. That might mean locating the document together, deciding which section to complete first, putting a reminder where you will see it, or asking for a clearer deadline.
Structured psychological interventions can help with these difficulties. A 2010 randomized trial led by Mary Solanto involved 88 adults and compared a group intervention addressing time management, organization, and planning with supportive psychotherapy. The structured intervention produced greater improvement in inattentive symptoms on several measures. That supports teaching practical skills; it does not establish that any single planning trick will work for everyone.
If preparation itself has become a place to get stuck, our article on the ADHD planning trap explores the gap between making a plan and beginning the work.
Whose priorities are filling your week?
It can be surprisingly hard to tell the difference between something you value and something you fear disappointing someone about.
Both can feel urgent. Both can fill a calendar.
Try looking at one commitment you keep resenting. What made you say yes? Perhaps you care about the person or the work. Perhaps you were worried that saying no would make you seem unreliable. Often, both are true.
This is not an invitation to abandon obligations. Employment, finances, disability, caregiving, and access to help affect how much choice a person has. You may need to do work you dislike because it pays the rent. Protecting housing is a meaningful reason, even when the task itself feels tedious.
The question is whether there is any room to adjust the size, timing, or standard of a commitment. Could you help for an hour? Could you ask which of three deadlines actually comes first? Could a clear, adequate response replace one you keep rewriting?
If fear of letting people down is driving many of your decisions, our discussion of ADHD and the fear of disappointing people may help you think through that pressure.
And when every task seems equally urgent, sorting priorities when your brain will not rank them is a useful companion to the bigger question of what deserves your time.
Start with one change you would actually notice
You do not need to reorganize your whole life to try this. Choose one area where a small change would make the coming week feel more like yours.
Here is a simple reflection exercise you can adapt to your own circumstances.
1. Name what you want more room for
Finish this sentence: “This week, I want a little more room for…”
Avoid an answer so large that you cannot picture it. “A better life” may be true, but it gives you very little to work with. “Some contact with my sister” is easier to recognize.
For our example, imagine two siblings who get along well but keep exchanging messages saying they should catch up. The wish is simple: have an actual conversation.
2. Choose something you could observe
What would count as a small movement in that direction? For the siblings, it might be one phone call this week. It does not need to repair every missed conversation or become a new weekly commitment.
A useful goal has edges. You can tell when it has happened, and it is small enough to fit your available capacity.
3. Find the first action and the likely obstacle
“Call my sister” may still leave several decisions unresolved. When? Will she be available? How long can you talk?
The first action could be sending a text: “Would Sunday afternoon work for a short catch-up?” Once you agree on a time, add it to your calendar.
Then ask what might get in the way. If you lose track of time on Sundays, a reminder could help. If phone calls feel too demanding after a long shift, arrange a different time or suggest a voice message. Choose the support for the difficulty you actually expect.
4. Decide where the time will come from
A calendar does not become more spacious because a goal matters. Something may need to move.
Perhaps the call replaces twenty minutes spent reorganizing a cupboard that can wait. Perhaps you decide that a simpler meal is enough that evening. Sometimes there is no spare room this week; scheduling the call for next week is a reasonable choice.
Keep the trade-off visible. Otherwise, a meaningful goal can quietly become one more demand added to an already full day.
5. Review what happened with curiosity
Afterwards, ask: Did this make a difference I cared about? What helped? What made it harder?
If the call never happened, look for information before reaching for a verdict about yourself. Maybe the time was unrealistic. Maybe the reminder arrived while you were driving. Maybe you realized you wanted quiet more than conversation that day.
You can try a different version, ask for help, or decide the goal can wait. The point is to learn what helps a meaningful intention become possible in your actual life.
Some weeks, maintaining your life is enough
There will be weeks when the available choices are narrow. A child is ill. Work runs late. You are sleeping poorly. Basic responsibilities take nearly everything you have.
A conversation about purpose should make room for those weeks, too.
Keeping yourself fed, taking prescribed medication, showing up for an essential appointment, or getting through a difficult day can be enough. There does not need to be a personal-growth project alongside it.
Rest also deserves a place without having to prove that it will make you more productive later. You are allowed an evening that is pleasant, a conversation that goes nowhere useful, or a hobby you never improve at.
When sleep is a persistent difficulty, it may deserve attention in its own right. Our ADHD and sleep information outlines support available through SaskADHD.
A plan should be sensitive to capacity. If it only works when you are well rested, uninterrupted, and unusually motivated, it may need adjusting. Needing a smaller plan says something about what is workable today. It does not settle what you are capable of over a lifetime.
Let the plan answer to your life
Before adding another app or improving another routine, pause over one question: What do I hope this will make possible?
The answer might be fewer late fees. More reliable contact with someone you love. A little space to paint. Less of your weekend spent recovering from commitments you could have made smaller.
Then choose one action and enough support to make it approachable. Give yourself a way to notice whether it helped. That is a more useful test than how impressive the plan looks.
If you understand what matters to you but repeatedly struggle to start, organize, or follow through, you do not have to solve that gap alone. Explore SaskADHD’s therapy and skills support to consider help with the everyday difficulties standing between your intentions and your life.
Frequently asked questions
Can finding purpose help with ADHD?
Knowing what matters can help you choose where to direct your effort. It does not cure ADHD or remove executive-function difficulties. Practical strategies and, where appropriate, professional treatment may still be needed.
Why can’t I start a task even when I care about it?
Starting can depend on more than importance. Unclear steps, missing information, competing demands, or difficulty organizing the task can get in the way. Identify the specific obstacle and make the next action smaller or better supported.
What if I don’t know what my purpose is?
Begin with an ordinary preference: more contact with a friend, less financial stress, or time to rest. Try one small action and notice its effect. You can learn what matters through experience without defining a lifelong mission first.
Sources and further reading
- Randy Pausch (2007). Time Management, University of Virginia, November 27. See also the lecture transcript.
- Carnegie Mellon University. Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture, delivered September 18, 2007.
- National Institute of Mental Health (2024). ADHD in Adults: 4 Things to Know.
- Kennon M. Sheldon and Andrew J. Elliot (1999). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal well-being: The self-concordance model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(3), 482–497.
- Mary V. Solanto and colleagues (2010). Efficacy of Meta-Cognitive Therapy for Adult ADHD. American Journal of Psychiatry, 167(8), 958–968.
