Many of us with ADHD can find ourselves either pushing relentlessly or stuck on everyday tasks and decisions.
Often, both are part of the same pattern.
Trying to stay organised and on top of everything can gradually turn into something else. More systems. More effort. More pressure to get things right. Over time, the work is no longer just the work itself, but managing how we work as well.
In that process, it becomes harder to notice what actually works. Energy, attention, and rhythm still shape how we engage with tasks, but they are often overridden by expectations, deadlines, and the pressure to keep going. We can end up responding to what is in front of us, rather than learning from what is happening.
This is often where advice like “find your purpose” becomes difficult to apply. It assumes clarity and consistency at a point where many people are already overwhelmed or disconnected from those signals.
A different way of looking at it is to reduce the scale. Start small, then smaller again. Not as a fix, but as a way of staying with what is actually happening, rather than trying to hold everything at once.
We asked Anne-Laure Le Cunff, a neuroscientist at the ADHD Research Lab of King’s College London whose work focuses on curiosity and personal experimentation how this kind of approach might help people make decisions and find direction in real-world conditions, particularly when effort and planning don’t reliably lead to progress, particularly when planning does not reliably translate into action.
In Tiny Experiments, you frame small experiments as a way of navigating uncertainty. How do you see that helping people who feel stuck trying to make the “right” decision, especially around work or life direction?
A lot of feeling stuck comes from overthinking. Designing an experiment is a way to change our relationship to uncertainty, switching from anxiety to curiosity. Just like a scientist, we ask: what might I learn here? Instead of trying to predict a specific outcome, we start with a hypothesis and simply give it a try. In that way, tiny experiments are an invitation to act, to collect your own data, to reconnect with your sense of agency. You’ll never completely get rid of uncertainty, but you can build trust in your ability to figure things out as you go.
Many adults with ADHD understand what might help, but still struggle to move from thinking to action. How does an experimental approach change that dynamic?
It’s worth keeping in mind that many factors complicate what works for one person and not another, whether that’s co-occurring conditions, life circumstances, or simply context. Not everyone has the freedom at work to time-block their calendar or reorder their to-do list however they’d like, for example. So rather than prescribing a specific strategy, an experimental approach leaves room for failure as something generative — something you can actually learn from.
This matters particularly for ADHD, where rejection sensitivity and fear of “getting it wrong” are very common. When you’ve spent years being told you should be able to do things a certain way, trying a new strategy can feel loaded, like another test you might fail. Framing it as an experiment defuses that. You’re not trying to prove anything; you’re just giving it a try. It might not work, and that’s fine. Whatever the outcome, you’ll learn a little bit more about what works and what doesn’t for you, which is ultimately the only data that matters.
One thing we often see is that context (environment, energy, expectations) shapes engagement as much as intention. How do you think this influences whether an experiment actually works?
I think this is one of the most underrated parts of experimentation. We tend to treat motivation and discipline as purely internal resources, but in practice, the context around us is doing a huge amount of the work. The same person in two different environments behaves almost like two different people.
That’s why I encourage people to treat context as a variable in the experiment. If something isn’t working, the first question shouldn’t be “what’s wrong with me?” but “what’s the setup?” For example, am I trying to do deep work in a space designed for interruption? Am I expecting high productivity at a time of day when my energy is depleted? Small changes to context can produce bigger shifts than heroic changes based on willpower. And for neurodivergent people especially, accepting that context is doing a lot of the lifting is often more effective and kinder than trying to push through.
How do you distinguish between useful experimentation and simply changing direction too quickly or reacting to discomfort?
The difference is whether you actually learned something. In my book, I share a simple tool called ‘Plus Minus Next’ that helps you extract knowledge from each experiment and decide how to incorporate it into your next iteration, whatever the outcome.
It works like this: first column, what worked well; second column, what didn’t work so well; third column, what you’ll tweak or try next. If you can fill in the “Plus” and “Minus” columns with something specific, you can then change direction in the “Next” column based on real data. That’s how you distinguish between intentionally iterating and just reacting.
In practice, how can someone tell the difference between normal friction, where something is hard but worth continuing, and deeper misfit, where it is becoming unsustainable?
It comes down to paying attention to both external and internal signals of success. Our education system and the traditional workplace have trained us to track mostly external signals: grades, metrics, KPIs, anything that fits neatly on a dashboard.
But internal signals matter just as much: how does it actually feel to do this work? Are you energised or depleted afterwards? Curious or anxious? Is your body telling you something your spreadsheet isn’t? If your external signals are all looking great but you’re completely burnt out, that’s not success.
Normal friction tends to be specific and time-bound: a hard project, a steep learning curve, a tough week. Deeper misfit is more diffuse and persistent, like a steady background hum of “this isn’t right” that doesn’t go away when the immediate difficulty passes. Tracking both kinds of signals over time (external and internal) is what lets you tell them apart.
What do you think is currently missing from public conversations about work, decision-making, and non-linear progress for neurodivergent people?
I’d love to see more strengths-based research, and more funding for it. The vast majority of research on neurodivergence is still framed around deficits: what’s wrong, what needs fixing, what needs managing. I’m currently researching hypercuriosity and feel very fortunate to have received a grant from the UK government to do so, but those kinds of grants are still the exception rather than the rule.
The other thing I’d like to see shift is the assumption that a good career looks like a straight line. A lot of meaningful, original work gets made by people who haven’t followed a linear career. We need public conversations around how we can better support those kinds of careers, starting in how we talk about success in school.
Reflections from our work at ADHD Pirates
Much of what Anne-Laure describes reflects something we see in practice: people gradually losing sight of what actually works for them, often while trying to keep everything else going.
One of the most consistent patterns is that action is not just about progress, it is how people gather information. Waiting for clarity before acting often leads to staying stuck. Small experiments, even when they do not “work”, create something more useful than intention alone: evidence.
Context also plays a much larger role than most advice acknowledges. The same person can struggle in one setup and engage in another. In many cases, adjusting the conditions has more impact than trying to push harder.
Over time, it also becomes clear that not all difficulty is the same. Some friction is part of learning or growth. Other forms of difficulty tend to build and become unsustainable. Being able to tell the difference is often more useful than trying to avoid difficulty altogether.
A lot of people are not starting from a neutral place. They are starting from pressure, fatigue, or a long history of trying to get things “right”. In that context, the issue is not always what to do, but how much is being asked at once.
Reducing the scale is not a workaround. It is often a more reliable way to stay connected to what is happening and allow something to take shape.
There is also a shift in how outcomes are interpreted. When something does not go to plan, it is easy to treat that as failure. When something does go well, it can feel like something that needs to be maintained or repeated perfectly.
In practice, most experiences sit somewhere in between. Not clearly good or bad, but still useful.
An experimental approach does not remove that uncertainty, but it changes the relationship to it. The aim is not to get it right or avoid getting it wrong, but to stay engaged, notice what happens, and adjust over time.
What this leads to is a different way of thinking about direction. Instead of trying to choose the “right” path in advance, it becomes something that emerges through repeated experience.
In practice, that tends to look less like a plan, and more like a process.
About Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Dr Anne-Laure Le Cunff is a neuroscientist, author, and entrepreneur who studies curiosity, both in the lab and in life. Her research at King’s College London explores how our brains seek, learn, and adapt, spanning areas from ADHD to AI and mental health. She founded Ness Labs, a science-based learning platform helping people live more experimental lives. Her bestselling book Tiny Experiments offers a practical guide to transforming uncertainty into curiosity, creativity, and self-discovery. Through her research and writing, she bridges science and everyday life, showing how curiosity can help people loosen control, embrace change, and uncover what works for them in practice.