How to Break the Spin Cycle (Especially If You're Neurodivergent)
How to Break the Cycle of Spinning Your Wheels (Especially If You're Neurodivergent)
by Kate Lynn, ND Works
It may be Tuesday, but it feels like a Monday. The long weekend is over, your inbox is a mess, and your brain hasn’t fully made the shift from rest to action. You meant to hit the ground running, but instead, you’ve been circling. Emails, laundry, maybe doomscrolling. Not a lot to show for it.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not lazy, and you’re not alone. You’re probably stuck in an executive function spin cycle. For a lot of us, especially ADHDers and autistic adults, it’s the most exhausting kind of work: the kind that takes energy but produces no traction.
Let’s name it clearly so we can break it down.
What Is the Spin Cycle?
At ND Works, we talk a lot about executive functioning. It’s the system your brain uses to prioritize, initiate, switch, sustain, and wrap up tasks. When that system’s under strain or poorly supported, your day can look like this:
Hyperfocusing on the wrong thing. You answer one email, and two hours later, you’re deep into rewriting your résumé, or alphabetizing your spices.
Getting pulled into every interruption. The “bing” of a phone notification, the call you didn’t plan to take, the weirdly urgent need to clean out your inbox before doing anything else.
Avoiding tasks that feel friction-heavy. This might look like procrastination, but it’s often a mix of dread, perfectionism, and unclear next steps.
Doing a lot without finishing anything. Partial progress is still effort, but without structure, your effort gets scattered, leaving you feeling unproductive.
You start the morning with a mug of reheated coffee and a plan to “finally finish the thing.” But then you’re tweaking your LinkedIn, checking the mail, suddenly deep in a rabbit hole about how long eggs last in the fridge… and somehow it’s 2:40. And the thing? Still not done.
Here’s what’s wild: In one internal client survey, 89 percent of our neurodivergent testers said they often work all day and still feel like they get nothing meaningful done. Not because they didn’t try, but because their executive function systems were running on overdrive without a map.
One client put it this way: "I don’t even remember half the stuff I did today, just that none of it was the thing I meant to do. It’s like my brain is trying to keep me busy so I don’t have to face the hard stuff."
That is the spin cycle. And it’s fixable.
So What Do You Do Instead?
Here’s a version of a framework we use with our clients. It helps people go from spinning to steady, without trying to force some impossible “balanced” lifestyle.
We call it: Must, Might, Magic.
1. Must: What absolutely has to happen today? Think minimum viable day. Eat, take your meds, send that one overdue email, show up to your shift. Start here. Don't overstack.
2. Might: What’s reasonable to attempt, but not required? This could be the stuff that feels satisfying, like organizing a folder, running an errand, or starting a small admin task that’s been hanging over you.
3. Magic: What would feel good if you had the fuel? Maybe it’s cooking a real dinner. Maybe it’s a burst of creativity, or actually finishing something from your “someday” pile. Let this be aspirational, not obligatory.
How to Use It
Each morning, jot down your Musts, Mights, and one Magic if you want.
Start with Musts only for a few days. See what changes. You might be doing more than you thought.
If your Must list is overwhelming, cut it in half. If it’s still too much, cut it again.
Don’t chase balance. Chase enough.
The goal isn’t to have a perfect system. The goal is to build days that don’t drain the life out of you. Days where effort actually turns into forward motion. And if you’re someone with ADHD, autism, or chronic burnout, that’s not a small thing.
Why This Works (When Other Lists Don’t)
Most productivity systems were built around neurotypical brains and stable, full-tank days. If you’re neurodivergent, what you need is flexible structure. Not rigid timelines, but not chaos either.
Our clients often tell us that once they started categorizing tasks by friction level (instead of urgency or importance), everything got more doable. They learned when to push, when to pause, and when to shift without shame.
And most importantly, they stopped measuring success by how many things got crossed off. Instead, they started tracking:
What got finished on purpose
What got parked without guilt
And what got started without spiraling?
Some of the most capable people I’ve ever worked with are constantly overwhelmed—not because they can’t keep up, but because they’ve never been taught how to work with their brain instead of against it.
Final Note
You don’t have to do more. You just have to stop getting stuck in patterns that waste your effort.
If you're tired of spinning in circles, start with what must happen today. Treat the rest as optional scaffolding. You might be surprised how steady things feel once you stop expecting yourself to run on full capacity every single day.
And remember: if the only system that works for you requires perfect focus, zero interruptions, and full motivation? That’s not a system. That’s a fantasy.
If you’d like support figuring out where the real friction is, and how to build a system that works with your brain, reach out. We specialize in this.