How AI tools like ChatGPT can combat ADHD paralysis

The toughest part of a project, for me, is sorting through overwhelming chaos in my mind to take the very first step. I’m not a firbolg cleric, I’m a person with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) aspiring to role-play in Dungeons & Dragons as one, and before I called on OpenAI’s ChatGPT for help I was frozen, staring at a blank character sheet and unsure where to begin.

ADHD, a condition estimated to affect 4.4 percent of U.S. adults, typically is characterized by a cluster of issues: inattention, impulsive behaviors, and hyperactivity. I was diagnosed earlier this year, in my late 30s, with the inattentive type, and I’m constantly fighting with myself to avoid side quests.

My diagnosis was made just as generative AI tools like the ChatGPT chatbot became accessible to the public and the world clambered to explore their uses. While browsing the r/ADHD subreddit for ideas on how to work with my brain a little bit better, I saw a few people praising the chatbot’s potential as a tool to improve executive function — using ChatGPT to sort through email backlogs and generate professional-sounding responses, organizing prioritized to-do lists, and overcoming ADHD paralysis, a common symptom of ADHD marked by an inability to function effectively.

To test this out for myself, I prompted ChatGPT to help me complete a task I’ve been putting off: creating an original playable character for a tabletop role-playing game.

Rolling with a ChatGPT advantage

While I knew I wanted to create a firbolg cleric and had given thought to themes and motivations, I was overwhelmed by the prospect of producing a comprehensive character sheet that tracks everything from the character’s name, to the items they carry, their individual attribute scores, and other important details that make the game come alive. I’ve had trouble concentrating on this undertaking even while using online character builders like D&D Beyond. Although this is a task I have done before, I found myself preferring to retreat back into the comfortable zone of vaguely imagining the outline of this character, rather than actually doing the work of making them playable in a specific campaign.

ChatGPT was most helpful when I asked it to help me organize my thoughts and stay focused while brainstorming my character’s basic outline, taking each field one at a time. When I asked the chatbot to detail relevant domains for my cleric (vital characteristics related to abilities, spells, and areas of influence) with pros and cons for each choice, the result was a basic but accurate list that more or less aligned with my own previous research. ChatGPT asked me good, if generic, questions that served as writing prompts for this character, which allowed me to give focused thought to how I might represent them within the mechanics of the game.

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The end result was a perfectly serviceable sketch of a firbolg nature cleric who was struggling to understand the conflicting values of two beloved mentors. ChatGPT was even able to conduct a short but cogent dialogue role-play with me, with the AI serving as a Game Master (GM), so that I could try out a couple personality choices and dialogue styles.

At this point, I felt better prepared to complete creating the character, ideally in conversation with a real human GM, having made some key decisions and given some thought to how those choices might translate into the game itself. But when I asked ChatGPT to help me deepen my research on firbolgs, a fictional race of giant-like creatures with a culture that draws substantially from Celtic folklore, the chatbot briefly lost its “mind.”

A disappointing history check

After talking through my character with ChatGPT, I asked, “I’d like to research the real-life inspiration for the firbolg character. Can you give me some sources I could read or contact about the role of Celtic culture in Dungeons & Dragons?”

For its first attempt, ChatGPT provided me with a list of five suggestions, including articles that appeared to be misidentified or inaccessible online. The first suggestion pointed to a scholarly publication I could not track down, which, upon further prompting, ChatGPT clarified was a book, not a journal — but I could not find any published work matching the citation provided. When I asked ChatGPT for links to the resources it recommended, including an Atlas Obscura article and a piece from the official Dungeons & Dragons site, I was provided with a series of dead ends, including broken links and titles of out-of-print materials.

When I repeated my initial question, regenerating responses several times, the results were somewhat better. Not every recommendation appeared to be fully accurate information, but the chatbot did point me to a few readily available reference books on Celtic folklore, and listed some relevant scholars. However, in one manual Google search, I was able to find a collection of much more helpful, pertinent articles and resources.

Generative AI generates. When you struggle to overcome the terror of a blank sheet, tools like ChatGPT can be enormously helpful in opening the gates to creative work. But as many others have noted, tools like ChatGPT have not demonstrated that they deserve your trust.

Getting to the encounter

Generative AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard are the center of conversations these days about the future of tech, ranging from professional applications, to the arts, to travel, accessibility, and more. Said conversations are evolving as fast as the technology itself, with evangelists promoting hype about how generative AI is about to revolutionize and dominate everything from education to creative expression to software development, and others warning against rushing to give these brand new tools critical responsibilities.

Indeed, many of the central problems of the current tech landscape (including bias and exploitation) appear to be simply replicated in this newest generation of technology. And, there are huge privacy issues with using a bot — designed to absorb and share data it’s provided — to handle sensitive medical information. Still, experts see some potential in these tools for people with ADHD, so long as there’s an understanding of what they can and cannot do.

“Probably the most powerful aspect of it related to ADHD is going to be in overcoming procrastination,” said Lara Honos-Webb, a clinical psychologist who specializes in Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and ADHD and is the co-founder of a startup aimed at helping those managing ADHD. Honos-Webb said that she’d been playing around with ChatGPT herself, and believes that it could have beneficial applications for some with the disorder, particularly with the inattentive subtype. 

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In addition to organizing thoughts, Honos-Webb said, ChatGPT might also come in handy as a memory device, since the tool can log past conversations and generate a topical label for them. So you could, for instance, brainstorm in a chat with ChatGPT as if you were talking to a friend or a peer in your industry. The chat itself would then become your conversation notes.

Using it might also help reduce distractions, Honos-Webb added. As someone whose tab count on my phone’s browser has long read “99+” I can see the appeal of having one single interface for looking things up. The problem is, that information isn’t always going to be correct, relevant, or complete.

For Brayden Motion, a 23-year-old software developer with ADHD who dabbles in music and creative writing, ChatGPT has been a helpful assistant for generating ideas and how-to guides. People with ADHD can struggle to stick to new activities, Motion noted, especially when excellence at a hobby or career choice takes planning and work — as most do. 

“You can ask ChatGPT how to accomplish something such as writing a novel or creating a successful company and get an outline of the entire process,” Motion said. “I have also used ChatGPT to find what jobs or careers would best suit me based on my individual needs and ADHD symptoms.”

He’s found ChatGPT to be really useful, but only as a guide. “When I realized I could use ChatGPT to break down tasks for me, I expected a huge shift in my life,” he said. “But it turns out you still need to put in the work in your daily life! Who would’ve thought?”

Clearing the way for my own spellcasting

There is another, particular risk for people with ADHD leaning too hard on tools like this — the temptation to push procrastination even further. Before getting to step one of my firbolg design process, I was distracted time and time again: I was thirsty, so I grabbed a glass of water. On the way back to my seat, I noticed that the stairs needed to be vacuumed. As I cleaned, I began to think of all the other things I needed to do: plant flowers outside, update my insurance information at the pharmacy… Where did I put my water glass?

As Honos-Webb noted to me, many people with ADHD like to test limits — how long can I delay starting on this task and get away with it? ChatGPT may provide the illusion of a solution here, by producing outlines, direction, and even full essays for, say, that term paper due in 12 hours. While the ChatGPT answer might sound good, these tools repeatedly have been caught in the act of making up academic sources and confidently stating nonsense as fact. And that’s not even getting into the chatbot’s potential for facilitating plagiarism.

That said, when I leaned on ChatGPT for a prioritized to-do list to organize the tasks cluttering my brain, it was extremely helpful in breaking through the chaos to allow me to take action on each of these items. But the most important limitation — the one I kept asking myself while endlessly searching for ADHD “hacks” and hoping for a nice, focused day after one conversation with an AI bot — was one that my many conversations with ChatGPT never brought up: Just what is ChatGPT “improving” about someone with ADHD anyway?

Honos-Webb’s research has focused on the strengths of the condition, the flip sides of struggling with emotional regulation, factual memorization, and attention to detail, to name a few common symptoms of ADHD. Tools like ChatGPT might help a person struggling with related tasks to stay on track, save time, and work within the systems that govern many workplace and interpersonal interactions, but that leaves it far from being a cure-all. 

“When you think about AI, it’s going to help patch up the weaknesses of people in the realms of inattention, lack of focus and organization, and procrastination,” she said. That could go a long way in clearing a path that allows a person with ADHD’s gifts to shine.

Honos-Webb emphasized the connection between people with ADHD and creativity, emotional intensity, and sensitivity as one that can be embraced as benefits that balance the struggles with executive function. AI, she noted, cannot really replicate any of these things.

As tempting as it is to think of ChatGPT as a path for self-actualizing a chaotic brain, that framework assumes that the most valuable human skills are the ones that AI can augment through structure and lists. But humans are so much more than a tool to be optimized.

In addition to medication, I use a growing arsenal of technologies and tactics to manage my ADHD: a Kobo reader for taking and organizing notes, project management tools, and synced calendars to try to stay on track, among others. I could see ChatGPT, or tools like it, becoming a part of that mix, to help people like me complete routine tasks that can become burdensome or overwhelming, and to overcome paralysis by generating starting points for creative thought.

However, its middling attempts at replicating some of the things I’m good at, like idea generation and in-depth research, are clumsy at best and problematically inaccurate at worst. Instead, the most helpful thing ChatGPT could do for me is to clear the fog of ADHD paralysis, then step aside and let the human creativity flow.