ADHD and Body Doubling: Why Is It So Much Easier to Do Things When Someone Else Is There?

Another post for ADHDers: Why another person’s presence can make a task easier

In last week’s post, I shared some tips for starting school on the right foot. Many of those ideas apply just as well outside of the school context. I wrote about awareness, things like mapping out your routes, getting familiar with a new schedule, and looking ahead at deadlines. I also suggested leaning on your support system and trying body doubling.

For some in the neurodivergent space, that term will be familiar. For others, it might be completely new. To get everyone on the same page, I thought I would write a quick summary of what body doubling is, and why it can be so helpful for ADHD.

What is Body Doubling

Body doubling simply means having another person present while you complete a task. ADHD coach Linda Anderson coined the term in 1996 after working with a client who was better able to stay on task with someone else simply sitting nearby. That person didn’t need to help him, remind him what to do, or participate. Their mere presence made a difference.

The term may only be a few decades old, but humans have probably been doing versions of this forever. We study together; we work in libraries and coffee shops; we clean when our partner is doing something else in the next room. Sometimes it just feels easier to do the thing when someone else is around.

Of course, this isn’t going to be true for everyone, and some people do concentrate much better when alone, including plenty of autistic and otherwise neurodivergent folks. Body doubling is a tool, not a universal prescription, and, of course, neurodivergence is a spectrum. But on one far side of that spectrum are those ADHDers who thrive with others casually observing them at all times.

External Motivation is Key

A handy way to think about accommodating and working through executive dysfunction is through the pillars of awareness and motivation.

In the case of low motivation: you can be completely aware that an assignment is due tomorrow. You can know that you need to start it and you can want to start it. There can still be a massive gap between knowing what should happen and what’s actually happening. These are exactly the kinds of situations in which some form of external structure, external motivation, can really help.

People with ADHD tend to have difficulty sustaining behaviour toward rewards that are more distant or abstract, and more immediate reinforcement can make a task easier. A body double can do this, in that it can make a “distant” task feel far more immediate. It provides a model for the nervous system to copy and work alongside, and provides an on-task human to copy as well. Someone else is here. We’ve agreed we’re going to use this time to focus on our tasks. They are working. I said I was going to work. The task has gained a little bit more structure and a little bit more accountability. And they don’t even have to say anything or be doing the same task.

Body doubling can be a consistent source of positive yet non-invasive support, while also implying a certain level of accountability (the motivation pillar of executive dysfunction), and constantly reminding you (the awareness pillar) of the task at hand.

And regarding awareness: a body double functions as a reminder of what you set out to get done. If you start opening new tabs or scrolling, you have an environmental cue sitting right next to you: Ah yes. We’re working. Further, and this is fundamentally important for some people, a body double doesn’t have to feel like a supervisor. The other person is just there. Doing their own thing.

Sometimes, this means doing the same task (and this comes more naturally in settings such as study groups or libraries). But you can also body double while doing different tasks like studying in a coffee shop, or folding your laundry while your roommate watches TV.

The Science

Body doubling itself hasn’t been researched enough for me to be able to say with confidence, “This is exactly what is happening in the ADHD brain when someone sits next to you.” But I have observed it firsthand. We do know that ADHD is associated with differences in executive functioning and reward processing. We know that external reinforcement can improve performance. Knowing these things, we can reasonably hypothesize some reasons why body doubling can help: it creates immediacy, adds accountability, gives additional structure, and keeps the task visible.

We also don’t need to know exactly why body doubling works in order to make use of the instances in which it does. If you’ve spent years working alone at a desk and wondering why you can’t get yourself to start that task you want to finish, there’s nothing wrong with borrowing a little motivation and accountability from the presence of another person. Why not try asking someone “Do you want to come sit with me while I do this?”

Has body doubling ever worked for you, whether or not you had a name for it at the time? Let me know in the comments, and share any other focus strategies that have worked for you.

Or, send this to someone you want to body double with!