Lesson 02 · 12 min
Make the Doorway Smaller
You don't start tasks. You start movements. The smaller and more physical the first step, the less ignition it needs.
Listen first
Listen first: the doorway principle
Spoken introduction · read aloud in your browser
'Sort out my finances' is not a task. It's a category. Nobody has ever started a category.
'Open the banking app' is a movement. A movement is small enough that your brain doesn't bother arguing with it.
This lesson is the mechanical heart of the course: taking stalled things down to doorways you can actually walk through.
The mechanism
Entry cost decides everything
Every task has an entry cost — how much clarity, energy and decision-making the first step demands. 'Write the report' has a huge entry cost: where do I start, what's the angle, is it good enough.
'Open the document and type the worst possible first sentence' has almost none. Same task. Different doorway.
ADHD brains are exquisitely sensitive to entry cost. That's not a flaw to train away — it's a specification to design around.
Rule
If you can't start it, the doorway is too big. Shrink the doorway, not yourself.
Course tool · Lesson 02
Shrink One Doorway
Take one stalled thing down to a first movement so small your brain won't bother arguing.
If the movement still feels heavy, it isn't the first movement yet. Cut it in half and rewrite.
Try this
The six-word doorway
Take one stalled thing and write the first step in six words or fewer. It must describe a physical movement.
- Do my taxesFind the envelope with the P60
- Email the landlordOpen email, type his address
- Get fitPut trainers by the front door
If the step still feels heavy, it isn't the first step yet. Cut it in half again.
Pick one
What keeps your doorways too big?
Use an ADHDier tool
What's the Actual First Step?
Find the movement hiding inside the task.
Open the toolQuick win · 2 min
The open-tab trick
Before you finish for the day, open the thing you'll need tomorrow — the document, the form, the email draft — and leave it open. Tomorrow's doorway is now one click wide instead of ten decisions wide.
“I stopped trying to do things and started trying to open things. It sounds like nothing. It changed everything.”
Keep this
Three things to take.
- 01You start movements, not tasks — write doorways as physical actions.
- 02Entry cost, not importance, decides whether you begin.
- 03A step that still feels heavy isn't the first step yet.
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