Quick confession: I’m still riding the same back-to-school energy I mentioned last time. My son just started med school at 27, a dream over a decade in the making. My grandson started daycare the same week. There’s something about August that gets even the most reluctant of us checking our calendars again.
Maybe that’s you right now. Maybe June and July were your version of chasing squirrels, resting, wandering, letting your brain be soft instead of sharp, and now something’s stirring. A little itch to get back in motion.
Good. That’s exactly what we want. But momentum isn’t something you force into existence. It’s something you build, one small move at a time.
Last time I talked about setting the conditions for re-entry: scheduling first, gathering your supplies, protecting a strategic hour, trying a new time slot. This time I want to talk about what happens once you’re actually sitting down to work, because getting to the chair is only half of it. Staying in motion once you’re there is its own skill, and it’s the one high achievers usually get wrong, because we were taught that momentum means force.
Momentum Comes From Safety, Not Force
Think about the last time you white-knuckled your way through a work session. Did it feel good? Did it hold? Or did you crash by 2pm and spend the rest of the day recovering from your own productivity?
That’s not a discipline problem. It’s a nervous system problem. Your brain doesn’t move forward sustainably because you yelled at it. It moves when it feels safe enough to try.
If tapping is useful for you, notice any stuck, heavy, can’t-quite-get-going energy in your body right now. Tap through the points and say, “It’s safe to start moving again.” Not “I must” move again. It’s safe. There’s a real difference, and your nervous system knows it.
With that in mind, here are three hacks I keep coming back to.
1. Make a List (A Real One, Not a Guilt Trip)
There’s a version of list-making that helps and a version that hurts. The hurtful version is the 47-item list you scribbled at 11pm in a panic, half of which isn’t even yours to do. That list doesn’t build momentum, it buries it.
The version that actually helps is short. Painfully short. Three to five items, written in language your brain can act on right away. Not “work on project,” that’s a fog, not a task. Try “open the file and write one paragraph.” Specific enough that there’s zero ambiguity about what counts as done.
Here’s the trick for re-entry: put one embarrassingly easy item at the top. Something you could do half asleep. You’re not testing your willpower, you’re giving your brain a fast, believable win before it has to deal with anything harder. That first checkmark does more for your momentum than any amount of self-discipline.
Make the list the night before if you can. Waking up to a list is a much softer landing than a blank page and a foggy brain trying to invent one from scratch.
2. Write It Out, Get It Out of Your Head
This one’s easy to skip because it doesn’t look like real productivity. But writing it out, whatever “it” is, might be the most underrated re-entry tool there is.
Sometimes it’s a brain dump of everything rattling around before you can focus on anything else. Sometimes it’s writing out what’s actually making a task feel hard, in plain language, just for yourself. Sometimes it’s writing what you want the next hour to look like before you dive in.
Your brain can only hold so much before it starts treating everything like a five-alarm fire, all urgency, no order. Writing it down moves that content out of your head and onto a page, where it’s less overwhelming. It’s like carrying an armload of laundry so tall you can’t see over it, versus setting it on the floor where you can actually sort through it.
You don’t need to write beautifully. You don’t need full sentences. You just need it out, in whatever shape it comes out in.
3. Move While You Work
This might be my favorite one, because it pushes back against the idea that focus requires sitting perfectly still. For a lot of ADHD brains, it’s the opposite. Stillness is where focus goes to die.
Movement while working can look like pacing during a call, standing at the counter instead of sitting at a desk, tapping your foot, doodling in the margins, fidgeting while you think, walking the block while you talk through an idea out loud. None of it has to look like working. It just has to keep your body busy enough that your brain has somewhere to put its extra energy instead of spending it all trying to sit still.
If you’ve been telling yourself you need a rigid, seated, silent setup to really focus, and it’s never actually worked for you, now is a good time to let that go. Try working on your feet for one task this week. Try pacing through a problem instead of staring at a blank screen. See what happens when you stop fighting your body and start working with it.
Returning Without Shame
Here’s the last thing I want to leave you with, because it matters more than any hack on this list: returning without shame builds resilience.
So many high-achieving women I talk to treat time off like something they need to earn back with extra effort, like rest comes with interest attached. It doesn’t. You don’t owe your business anything for the break you took. You just get to come back as you are, right where you are, and start moving again.
One tapping moment, if it’s useful: notice any self-judgment showing up about how long the break was, or how “behind” you feel, or how you “should” be further along by now. Tap through it and say, “I’m allowed to come back.” Because you are. There’s no expiration date on returning to something that matters to you.
You don’t need to prove you deserve to be in motion again. You just need one small move, a short list, a page of brain dump, a walk around the block while you think. That’s how momentum actually starts. Not with force. With safety, one step, and permission to come back exactly as you are.
