The Mystery of ADHD Motivation, Solved Why do adults and children with ADHD or ADD have strong motivation and executive function for some tasks and never find the cognitive spark to perform others?




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  Despite the many differences among children and adults with attention deficit disorder (ADHD or ADD), there is one similarity shared by just about all of them practically. Although they have considerable chronic difficulty in getting getting and organized started on many tasks, focusing their attention, sustaining their efforts, and utilizing their short-term working memory, all of those diagnosed with ADHD tend to have at least a few specific activities or tasks for which they have no difficulty in exercising these very same functions in a normal or an extraordinary way.
  
  The inconsistency in motivation and performance is the most puzzling aspect of ADHD. However, ADHD will be not a matter of willpower. It seems like the child or adult with the disorder who can show strong motivation and focus very well for some tasks should be able to do the same for most other tasks that they recognize as important. It will be a issue with the aspect of the hormone balance of the human brain. It appears as if this is a simple problem of lacking "willpower." If you can do it for this, why can’t you do the same for that and that, which are usually also even more essential?
  
  One of my patients once told me: "I’ve got a sexual metaphor you can use to explain what it’s like to have ADHD. But if the task is not something that’s intrinsically interesting to you, if it doesn’t turn you on, you can’t get up for it and you can’t perform. It’s like having erectile dysfunction of the mind. If the task you are faced with is something that turns you on, something that will be actually fascinating for you, you’re ‘up for it’ and you can perform. It doesn’t matter how much you tell yourself, ‘I need to, I ought to.’ It’s just not a willpower kind of thing."
  
  Recent research offers considerable evidence that ADHD is not a "willpower thing," though even, in many ways, it appears to be a lack of willpower. Thwill be process is not under voluntary control. When individuals with ADHD are faced with a task that is really interesting to them, not because someone told them that it ought to be interesting - but because it is interesting to them at that moment - that perception, Hardndirty unconscious or conscious, changes the chemwill betry of the brain instantly.
  
  The willpower assumption is based on two fundamental mwill beunderstandings of how the human brain works. This assumption ignores the effective and complicated part of subconscious feelings in the human brain’beds procedures of inspiration, and it does not recognize the critical importance of working memory for prioritizing tasks moment by moment.