Have you ever felt so overwhelmed that you just… feel paralyzed? The dishes pile up, the emails keep coming, your brain feels like it’s buzzing — and no matter how hard you try to get going, you just can’t. You start wondering, “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just do the thing?” This is what it’s like to be stuck in procrastination, and ADHD can make it even worse.
But here’s the truth — nothing’s wrong with you. Your nervous system is just overwhelmed and it’s hitting the gas and the brakes at the same time.
In this video, I’ll show you 5 small, practical nervous system shifts to help you get moving again, gently, without shame. Whether you have ADHD, depression, burnout or whatever is stopping you, you can get out of procrastination. We’re going to take a nervous system-friendly approach to getting started and getting stuff done.
When ADHD Overwhelm Feels Like Survival Mode
Let’s talk about what’s going on in your nervous system. If we look at the polyvagal ladder, feeling overwhelmed is when you’re stuck in anxiety, the sympathetic or activated state AND the shut-down state. It’s like your foot is on the gas and the brakes at the same time. And because you’re in a fear state, you can’t pressure yourself into thinking more clearly.
You can’t think your way out of a dysregulated body. Your emotional brain can’t tell the difference between a mountain lion and an inbox full of emails. Its job is survival, so it shuts down your problem-solving circuits and pumps out stress hormones to get you to fight, flee, or freeze. (which is how we got stuck here)
A lot of people shame themselves! “I should be able to do this!” but the more you pressure yourself, the more fear you feel and the harder it is to move up the ladder into action.
So you’ve got to regulate first and problem-solve second. Let’s talk about how to do that.
How to Get Motivated by Changing Your Nervous System
Instead of pressuring yourself to be different, you need to show yourself that you are capable and safe. You need to change the state of your nervous system before you change your tasks. Lemme give you an example.
One morning my 6-year-old wouldn’t get out of bed for school, she was frozen in bed with dread. I was short on time and sleep-deprived, and I started feeling irritable. I didn’t want to yell, or be all angry so I thought “How can I make this fun?” So I said, “We can do this the robot way, the Dee Doo way, or the angry way.” The robot and the Dee Doo way are games we’d played before. So I was shocked when she chose the angry way. But because I had already framed this as a game, when I said, in an exaggerated, loud, angry voice, “Grace, you have to get dressed right now!” she giggled. Then when I grabbed her legs, she laughed even more. Doing things in an angry way as a game made the whole thing fun for both of us, and pretty soon she was moving and getting dressed.
Making it a game shifts your state from fear to play and helps you get activated instead of frozen. We’ll talk more about gamifying later, but what’s important here is to do it in your nervous system, in your body. But your self-talk matters.
Restoring safety when overwhelmed
A. You’ve got to restore safety with your self-talk.
Instead of saying, “I’m so overwhelmed! I’m such a loser! Why can’t I just get it done!”, you might say, “There is no fire. I’m not a bad person. I’m just having a hard time prioritizing right now.”
Now let’s talk about how to change state in your body:
Somatic tools for regulating the overwhelmed ADHD brain
ADHD brains often get stuck because they’re under-stimulated or over-stimulated. Anxious brains often get stuck because they’re flooded with stress chemicals.
So before doing anything, let’s provide the body an opportunity to change states. Anything that provides more action or more sense of safety helps.
Here are some things to try:
B. One is slowing down your body and taking a breath.
C. Add some vibrations. Tapping your face, humming or singing can help send a message to your nervous system that you are safe. Or even just talking to yourself can help. If you have a cat, let him sit on your chest and purr.
D. One of the interesting things about the Polyvagal Ladder is that, most of the time, we have to move through activation to regulate. So for me, I’m usually able to calm down only after some kind of movement, like going for a short walk or doing 10 jumping jacks. When you move your body, it helps your nervous system shift from shut-down to the activated state.
E. You can also try sensory stimulation- drinking cold water, or putting on some high energy music. Maybe it would help to change environments, like work from a coffee shop or the library.
You’re not lazy — your brain needs a state shift to unlock action. So regulate your nervous system first. Your brain is like a child; it listens more to what you do than what you say. So show your nervous system that you are safe and capable by doing something with your body and your senses. This isn’t about just getting calm, it’s about taking your foot off the brake so that you can do some action.
OK, on to problem-solving!
Stop Procrastination by Externalizing Your ADHD
Whether you’ve got too many projects at work, or your ADHD brain is on fire, or you’re a post-partum parent with a cranky baby causing sensory overload and sleep deprivation, your mind might be firing off a million things you should be doing.
This literally feels like a survival threat and triggers the fight/flight/freeze response. Too many things to remember and pay attention to overwhelm your ability to sort and process. You can’t hold everything in your head at once. Multitasking literally feels like a threat.
If you think of your busy brain as a pen with 10 colors, being overwhelmed isn’t laziness. It’s like your brain is trying to push down all 10 colors at once, which means none of them work.
Your brain freezes because it’s trying to do everything at once.
And that pressure is stressful, which adds to your overwhelm, and you feel more stressed.
(stress→overwhelm→ stress)
And when you’re stressed, emotions turn down the thinking and prioritizing part of your brain. ADHD can also make it really hard to filter tasks.
The recipe for overwhelm is:
Overwhelm = Too many tasks + Lack of clarity.
Every time you replace “I’m overwhelmed” with “I need to decide what matters most and go slow,” your brain stops firing alarm signals and starts organizing information again. So talk to yourself nicely. In order to shift states, we need to increase our clarity around a task. You don’t need more pressure, you need more clarity: “Which color should I start with?” Clarity reduces anxiety more than solutions do.
So, to support our processing, we need to externalize everything, meaning that you get it out of your head.
Do this:
- Dump your to-do list onto paper.
- Next, cross out anything that’s not actually required.
- Then circle just three actionable things.
If this feels overwhelming, write down everything on a piece of paper, then just write down the one task you’re going to do first on a post-it note. Hide the piece of paper with the list. If you get the post-it note done, today is a success.
You’re not trying to make the perfect plan—just turn noise into a list. The brain hates confusion more than work.
Trying to remember everything and process it in your head just fuels stress, which makes it harder to think. You’ve got to make it physical, make it visual, and choose what is most important.
In the long run, create external systems to help you remember and organize stuff, like visual calendars, using whiteboards, or setting reminders on your phone.
Lessen ADHD Overwhelm by Shrinking the Task
The next step to getting out of overwhelm is to shrink the task until it’s almost embarrassing.
There is a popular book titled “Eat that frog” that basically says, do the hardest thing in your day first. Eat that frog. But for people who are paralyzed with stress or ADHD, that might lead to endless overwhelm and procrastination. Eating the frog is not helpful. Instead, start with the smallest task first, get some momentum.
And guess what. It doesn’t matter if you start with a task that looks ridiculously small and easy to everyone else.
When you’ve done a tiny task, you gain confidence, which fuels momentum for the next task.
- Not “clean the kitchen” → “put one plate in the sink”
- Not “start the report” → “open the document”
- Not “exercise” → “put on shoes”
Getting a little momentum can help your nervous system shift from “I’m helpless” to “I can do this”.
Once you start taking action on the first task, it’s going to help your nervous system feel safer, more capable, and that can help you get out of that freeze/overwhelm state.
And, the way dopamine works is that action actually fuels motivation, not the other way around.
You might have to limit your sensory input to do this (Again the pen example). KC Davis, the author of How to Keep House While Drowning recommends closing doors to messy rooms in your house, or covering up the dishes in your sink with a towel so that you can decrease that overwhelm and work on one tiny area at a time.
- Put one sock away.
- Title the document.
- Write literally one sentence.
Instead of “eat that frog”, just get moving. Remember that movement leads to motivation.
And don’t make yourself do the hardest things first. Do the hardest tasks when you’re most motivated.
Also, celebrate tiny wins with checkmarks. Check off everything—even the tiny stuff. Every checkmark gives a dopamine boost → momentum builds → you feel more capable.
How to Get Yourself to Do Stuff: Gamify
ADHD isn’t a motivation problem, it’s a dopamine regulation problem. Boring tasks feel physically painful to ADHD brains. You don’t need more “self-control”. You probably need to make the task more interesting. Again, we’re shifting states- by making them more intense.
So ask:
- How can I add novelty?
- Could I gamify this?
When I was a kid and had to mow the lawn, I would imagine there was an Olympic sport of efficient lawnmowing. How fast could I do it while also doing it well? This meant making the edges of the mower line up perfectly with the last row I’d mowed.
Gamifying is an awesome way to shift states and make tasks more fun.
Christi Newrutzen does this by filming herself, timing herself, dancing, doing it with friends. BTW, when she notices how long it takes (not that long) and writes it down, that actually reinforces to the brain that tasks in general are surmountable.
Dani Donovan has some amazing ways to do this in her Anti-Planner Planner. Here’s a few of my favorites.
- Use your microwave timer as a countdown clock. Put a warm drink or your leftovers in there for 2 minutes and race to see how much you can clean in the kitchen in that time.
- Procrastination Blackjack: write down 3 small tasks you’ve been putting off for a while. Play blackjack with yourself. If you hit a perfect 21, you don’t have to do any chores–yay! If you score 18 to 20, you do one task right away. If you score under 17 you do two tasks. If you go over 21, you have to do all three!
Body doubling is another great way to add novelty, interest, support, motivation. Do your tasks with another person. I do this with gardening or other deep cleaning chores that I avoid. We schedule an hour a week together and take turns working at each others’ house.
My ADHD therapist friend KJ offers virtual body-doubling over Zoom. Even just texting someone or talking on the phone with them while you clean your toilet can help. KJ also helps me out with Live Calls for my members. My membership has 10 courses to help you regulate your nervous system, work through anxiety or trauma and build up your emotional processing skills.
OK, last way to make tasks more interesting, stop letting yourself distract yourself (TikTok will always be more interesting than your work. – let yourself get bored and angsty (have your mom/wife/friend be in charge of your screen time password) (you’re going to hate that one).
How to Stop Procrastinating with Time Boxing
Planning time to work on a task feels overwhelming because it requires predicting energy, focus, and mood (which ADHD makes unreliable).
Instead try time boxing. Set a 10–20 minute timer and work until it ends, even if you don’t finish the whole task. This reduces Fear of endlessness, Perfectionism, and Burnout cycles.
Honestly, it’s easier to get things done when you only have a few minutes or hours to do them.
In grad school I would just rotate through dreary tasks: 30 minutes reading research, 30 minutes biking, 30 minutes writing an essay, 20 minutes to eat dinner, 30 minutes reading, etc. Mixing things up can really help.
But so does forcing yourself to commit for 20 minutes at a time. I’ll use a pomodoro timer to help with this. When I can tell myself, “I only have to work on this for 20 minutes”, a task that feels so overwhelming often turns out to not actually take that long anyway. For example, my taxes have been sitting in my inbox for a week. It feels awful to look at them, but when I make myself do it, it turns out it only took a few minutes.
Sometimes tasks actually do take a long chunk of uninterrupted time, so I block that into my calendar. What you’ll find is that, like a lawn mower, getting it started takes most of the effort.
Moving from ADHD Procrastination to Action
When you’re stuck in overwhelm or ADHD Paralysis don’t just “Try harder and be more organized.” Do these 5 steps instead:
- Regulate your nervous system state
- Externalize everything
- Shrink the task
- Make the task more interesting
- Time box
OK, did I give you too many ideas? Pause the screen and do this:
- Do 20 jumping jacks
- Write down the first task
- Make it tiny-er
- Tell your friend you’re getting started
- Set a 10-min timer
As with making any change, you’ve got to start small enough that you can make it happen. I know you’ve got this. I’d love to hear in the comments one thing you did to start building momentum.
