Decisions & Starting

Beat the freeze. Take the first step.

Task initiation paralysis isn’t procrastination. It’s the activation energy gap: ADHD brains need a disproportionately large dopamine spike to begin a task, and the bigger or vaguer the task, the bigger the gap. These eight tools close that gap — by shrinking the task, removing the decision, or lending the presence of another person.

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The apps

⚛️ The Atomizer

Paste one scary task. It shatters into 2-minute atoms. You see only one at a time. The wall disappears; the first step appears. Can’t freeze in front of one concrete action.

🚀 Leap

Shows only NOW and NEXT. Nothing else. Stuck? Hit "Decide for me" and it picks. The fewer the options, the lower the activation energy.

🎲 Just Pick

Frozen on a small choice (where to eat, which task first)? Type your options and roll. The dice make the call. Sometimes you just need the decision removed.

🎯 Triage

Two quick questions — urgent? important? — sort your tasks into a 2×2. The top-right cell hands you one clear "do this first." No deliberation required.

☀️ Trail

Run a routine one step at a time with estimated durations and a live ETA. Never lose the thread mid-morning routine because a notification appeared.

👥 Scurry

A calm breathing presence that works alongside you and checks in gently. Body-doubling — the well-documented ADHD phenomenon where another person’s presence dramatically improves focus — made available solo, at any time.

🐸 Today’s Frog

Commit to THE one keystone task that makes today a win before anything else appears. Eat the frog. One decision, made once, in the morning.

🔀 Firedrill

A 90-second guided handoff when you need to change tasks: close the last one out, prime the next one in. Reduces the cognitive cost of gear-shifting.

The neuroscience — why this pack works

Activation energy & the dopamine ignition problem. Initiating tasks requires a burst of dopaminergic signalling in the prefrontal cortex. In ADHD, the baseline dopamine level is lower, so the threshold for ignition is higher. Smaller tasks (Atomizer) reduce the required spike.

Decision fatigue and executive load. The prefrontal cortex has finite capacity for deliberate decisions. ADHD brains exhaust this capacity faster. Removing decisions (Just Pick, Leap’s "decide for me") reserves executive resources for the actual work.

Body-doubling effect. A robust finding across ADHD research: the mere presence of another person dramatically increases on-task behaviour. The mechanism is likely social accountability activating the dopaminergic reward system. Scurry replicates the signal at low cost.

Task-switching cost. The ADHD brain has a higher "switch cost" — the time and cognitive energy lost between tasks. This is linked to poor inhibition of the previous task’s working memory representation. Firedrill’s 90-second handoff ritual forces a deliberate close before opening the next context.

The 2-minute rule and initiation thresholds. Research on ADHD and motor initiation suggests that perceived task length is a key predictor of avoidance. Tasks estimated at under 2 minutes bypass the avoidance circuit. Atomizer designs every atom to fit this window.

Decisions & Starting pack — $5.99

All 8 apps in this pack. Direct Mac download. Offline license.

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