“Oh, but I have the break coming up, so I’ll get a lot of writing done then.” Sound familiar? Every summer, every Christmas, every other break or holiday, thousands of ADHD writers tell themselves the same thing. Yet, at the end of the break, their writing is usually still exactly where it was before the break started. So let’s look at why that happens and what to actually do about it.
Why ADHD writers struggle without external structure
ADHDers have an interesting relationship with structure. Too much structure, and they get resistant: they will start to procrastinate, feel recalcitrant, and it will feel impossible to get started. A voice inside of them will say, “who are you to tell me what to do?” Even if that “you” is the plan you made yesterday. Often, we feel the solution is to not have any structure at all.
But without any external structure at all, our ADHD symptoms run rampant. Time passes without us noticing, we can get lethargic, and we can get depressed because we don’t see any momentum or forward movement.
At first, it’s only logical. You deserve a break after all. You’re resting, recovering, giving yourself permission to slow down. But somewhere around day three or four, unease sets in. Time starts moving without you. You know you want to be writing, but there’s so much summer left – today you just don’t feel like it. And then, before you’ve quite worked out how it happened, it’s already the last week.
Clearly, a lack of structure isn’t the solution either.
Yet, that is exactly what you experience during any break and holiday. Your boss or kids’ school no longer organizes your day for you, and you decide to savor that freedom. And that is especially true for summer.
The summer writing fantasy sets you up for failure
If there’s one thought that always comes back to bite us in the butt, it’s the idea of having “plenty of time.” I don’t know about you, but if I tell myself I have plenty of time before an appointment, I’m pretty much guaranteed to show up late.
Why? Because somehow – and no, I didn’t find this in the academic literature – when we think we have a lot of something, we start spending it two or three times over.
Let’s see if this sounds familiar.
Time blindness sounds like…
“Oh, I have plenty of time before my meeting at 11am.” Quickly followed by, “What should I do?”
Well, I don’t have to get ready yet, but I’ve been meaning to water the plants. I have plenty of time to do that.
While watering the plants, Look at that stack of unopened mail, I should really put that away and now I finally have time for it!
While putting away the bills, The floors really need mopping..
Each task by itself seemed perfectly reasonable. But all together, they took up way too much time and now I don’t have time for a shower before my meeting.
Now, if this happens in a two-hour gap, imagine how much you can mentally double spend your time when you have whole weeks over summer!
Everything you plan to do seems reasonable on its own. But you never step back to see the big picture, and therefore you don’t realize that you’ve way overbooked everything meaning something’s got to give.
And that something? It’s always the writing.
The ADHD-proof daily schedule
So, what can you do about it?
The main problem lies in the contradiction I set out before: our problems with both too much structure and the lack of it. Your ADHD all-or-nothing brain will want to tell you that after the structure of your normal weeks, you deserve complete and utter freedom. But the key is to find balance instead.
Yes, you deserve rest. But your brain doesn’t actually thrive when you do nothing. What’s more, you will probably start filling your time in a completely unreasonable way, setting yourself up for failure.
Things change, however, when you find the right balance between structure and freedom in your daily schedule. Yes, create an ADHD-friendly writing schedule. But, for example, give yourself a bit of a schedule in the mornings and leave your afternoons free.
Or, give yourself a 3-hour productive block after a main meal every day, but leave it up to the moment to decide which things on your list you want to tackle.
It’s by using that balance you can finally make the most of your summer writing time.
Final points on Main keywords
None of this is new information, really. You’ve known for a while that the problem isn’t passion, or care, or how much your writing matters to you. It clearly does — otherwise September wouldn’t sting the way it does.
What changes things isn’t willpower. It’s having the right structure in place before the break starts, while you still have the scaffolding to build it. That’s the window. And this year, you still have it.
Want to actually write this summer?
On 4 June, I’m running a free 90-minute webinar — Actually write this summer! — How to make progress when external structure falls away.
We’ll look at why your brain struggles with unstructured time, how to build a daily structure that holds without suffocating you, and what to do in that first week of summer before the chaos sets in.
It’s free. It’s 90 minutes. And it’s on Google Meet, so you can join from wherever you are.
