I had a conversation with my therapist (who has ADHD) about this, because this kind of phenomenon sometimes gets simplified to "ADHD people can't make habits", and that.... doesn't seem right. Cuz, like.
opening Tumblr every time you experience .2 seconds of boredom is a habit
clicking "Next" on YouTube or TikTok is a habit
buying a cookie every time you walk by this one store is a habit
plopping down on the couch the instant you get home and pulling out your tablet is a habit
There are lots of things we do without thinking about it. We totally form habits -- just not the habits we necessarily want.
Therapist confirms: ADHD brains are capable of habit-making. We are, however, especially prone to forming bad habits, and struggle a lot with forming good habits, for several reasons:
Forming a habit requires doing things in exactly the same way many times in a row.
This is a problem when (a) you can't remember to do the thing and (b) you can't remember how you did the thing last time
Forming a habit requires doing the thing every time a particular Cue occurs. Cues can be either events (I brush my teeth after dinner) or times (I brush my teeth at 7PM).
Timeblindness takes away half of our possible cues, and dissociation/alexythmia take away another bunch. We're left with only the possible cues that our brain is capable of noticing, which is a much smaller set to hang a lifestyle on
(perhaps most relevantly) forming a habit requires that the brain experience a sense of reward when the thing is done. People for whom brushing their teeth is a habit are overwhelming people who love the taste of toothpaste or love the smooth feeling of their teeth or who are squicked by the gross feeling when their teeth aren't clean; people for whom the gym is a habit are overwhelmingly people who get the runner's high from their workout.
We don't experience rewards for most brain actions. Therefore we are overwhelmingly unlikely to accidentally form habits around doing chores or getting dressed or paying bills. We are, however, extremely vulnerable to accidentally forming habits around the things that do manage to provide us dopamine: hence the fact that our habits are almost all around things like social media, video games, and other instant-reward type activities.
The good news is, we are weirdly susceptible to forming habits around anything that does, in fact, get rewarded. I've had the most luck with asking my partner to give me a fistbump every time I do The Thing, but chocolate chips, gold stars, and verbal praise also work really well.
TL/DR: Since ADHD people have trouble accidentally forming good habits, we have to intentionally form good habits if we want to have them (which I do 10/10 recommend because spoons). Check out The Power of Habit (paper book) (audiobook) and/or Atomic Habits (paper book) (audiobook) for step-by-step instructions, and choose "Take your damned ADHD meds" as the first habit to set up.
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