Dr. Alok 'Dr. K' Kanodia

So if I have to do a three-day task, I need to make sure that all the other stuff that I need to do over the next three days, I need to study for this test, I need to write this paper, I need to prepare for a birthday party, all these other things need to be taken care of because this thing takes three days to do.

But remember that my brain can't estimate any of those tasks either.

So what ends up happening is that when our brain overestimates,

The amount of time something takes, it becomes incredibly hard for us to get started.

The second problem that we have with this is that it also drastically alters our value calculation.

So when I sort of think about, okay, what is the value of finishing this homework?

Well, the value of finishing the homework is like, you know, it's like one piece of homework that's done.

Now, what is the cost of finishing that homework?

It's about an hour's worth of effort, right?

So that's like a pretty good trade.

Small gain, small cost.

But if the homework getting done is like a small, let's say it's 5% of my grade, but it takes three whole days to do, then my brain is like, this is not an efficient use of our time, right?

This is not worth it to do such a small thing for it to take so long.

It feels incredibly inefficient.

And when our brain feels like something is inefficient, it decreases our motivation to actually complete the task.

So we see that delays in getting started and decreased motivation both are rooted in an improper estimate of time.

And if we can fix that time estimate, our motivation will increase, our efficiency will increase, and it'll be easier to get things started very naturally.

So kind of related to this, when I work with people with ADHD, their ability to estimate how much they can get done

in a window of time is too low.

So if I ask my patients with ADHD, if I ask a neurotypical person, you know, how much can you get done in an hour?