“They’ll game for four hours but can’t start a ten-minute worksheet.”
That gap looks like laziness, and treating it as laziness is what keeps the worksheet blank. It’s dopamine. An ADHD brain doesn’t run on how important a task is; it runs on how interesting, novel, or urgent it feels. The game delivers all three every few seconds. The worksheet delivers none, so the same brain that just cleared a four-hour raid genuinely cannot cross the ten feet to the kitchen table. One more reminder only adds pressure, and pressure is not fuel.
You don’t have to make the task interesting. You have to change one thing about how it happens: where it happens, in what form, or under what small odd rule. Not the task, not the standard, just the doorway in. Pick the version below that fits tonight, run it once, and watch what the change alone does before you say a word about focus.