1-for-1 Sprints for tasks that feel like torture

The wall of boreeedom 🥱

My Day Themes system has been working beautifully for managing my energy and intention. But sometimes, even the best system meets a task that feels like pure torture.

Recently, I finished a huge project for a client. All that stood between me and getting paid was writing a stack of boring reporting documents for their finance team.

For three days straight, I opened the space where I needed to work on them… and did absolutely nothing. The resistance was physical. My brain violently rejected the task. All I wanted to do was work on my ✨ digital garden ✨.

This is executive dysfunction in its purest form. Knowing you have to do something, needing the outcome (money!), but being utterly unable to start. It feels like hitting an invisible wall.

Seeking help

I was stuck, so I turned to my AI chat assistant for help (the same one that helped me build my neurodivergent glossary). I explained the situation: the boring task, the desperate need to finish it today, and the intense craving to work on my creative project instead.

The AI suggested a neurodivergent adaptation of a well-known existing productivity techniques.

1-for-1 Sprints technique as a solution

It proposed a technique called 1-for-1 Sprints. The idea builds on the famous Pomodoro Technique (25 minutes work, 5 minutes rest). But for a brain like mine, a simple 5-minute break isn’t enough dopamine reward to tackle a truly awful task. So, the 1-for-1 Sprint swaps the short break for an equal block of high-dopamine reward time.

It’s essentially Premack’s Principle, or “Grandma’s Rule”: You have to eat your vegetables (the boring task) before you get dessert (the reward task).

The rules were simple:

1. Set a timer for 25 minutes.
2. Work only on the boring task for those 25 minutes. For me it was creating the reports.
3. When the timer rings, stop immediately.
4. Set another timer for 25 minutes.
5. Spend those 25 minutes doing the high-dopamine activity. I was excited about working on my digital garden.
6. Repeat.

Breaking through

It sounded almost too simple, but grounded in psychology and common in the ADHD community, I decided to try it.

And it worked.

The first 25-minute block felt long, but knowing there was a guaranteed reward right after made it bearable. The key was framing the work sprint not as “writing all reports” but as “just type a title”. A simple, mechanical task with a clear end point.

And the 25-minute reward block? Pure bliss. I got to dive into my digital garden, guilt-free, knowing I was actually earning that time.

I repeated the cycle. Report. Garden. Report. Garden.

In less than 3 hours, I finished all the reports.

A new tool for my Personal OS

The 1-for-1 Sprint was all about respecting my brain’s needs. It turned a dreaded “push” against the wall into an incentivized “pull” towards a reward, using established psychological principles adapted for my neurotype.

This simple technique is now a proven, repeatable strategy in my ‘Personal OS’ for handling those high-stakes, low-dopamine tasks that feel impossible. It’s a reminder that better negotiation is often the best way to manage executive dysfunction.