There are times when I genuinely don’t mind doing the thing I’m supposed to do. That’s what makes this so annoying.
I don’t mind taking a shower. I don’t mind going to the grocery store. I don’t mind sitting down to work. I don’t even necessarily mind leaving the house.
And yet, there are days when getting myself from what I’m doing now to what I’m supposed to do next feels significantly harder than either activity has any right to be.
I’m sitting on the couch. I need to take a shower. The shower is approximately twenty feet away. There are no known predators between here and the bathroom. And still, my brain is like: Perhaps we live here now.
If you’ve ever experienced this, the problem may not actually be the thing you’re avoiding. Sometimes the transition itself is the hard part.
We Don’t Talk About the Space Between Tasks Very Much
We spend a lot of time talking about tasks.
Starting them. Finishing them. Remembering them. Prioritizing them.
But there’s another piece of executive function happening all day long that doesn’t get nearly as much attention: switching.
Our brains are constantly transitioning from one state, environment, expectation, or activity to another.
Sleeping to awake. Home to school. Class to class. Work to lunch. Lunch back to work. Scrolling to showering. Playing a video game to doing homework. Being alone to being around people. Being around people to finally being alone.
Every transition requires your brain to let go of one set of information and expectations and prepare for another.
Most of the time, we don’t even notice we’re doing it until our brain decides it would rather not.
“Just Get Up” Is Technically Excellent Advice
This is one of those situations where the solution seems incredibly obvious from the outside.
“Just get up.”
Correct. Thank you. Groundbreaking.
The problem is that knowing the physical action required doesn’t necessarily make the mental transition easier.
If I’m deeply focused on something, my brain has to disengage from it. If I’m comfortable, I have to leave that state. If I’m going somewhere, I have to mentally shift into whatever that environment requires from me.
If the next activity has multiple steps, my brain may already be anticipating all of them before I’ve even moved.
Take something as simple as leaving the house.
You’re not just “leaving.” You’re finding your shoes. Checking whether you have your phone. Finding your keys. Remembering what you needed to bring. Thinking about where you’re going. Estimating how long it’ll take. Stopping whatever you were doing before. And then actually walking out the door.
The transition contains its own workload.
Your Brain Has to Close One Tab Before Opening Another
I think of transitions like switching between tabs on a computer.
Except my brain occasionally has 46 tabs open, three are playing music, I can’t figure out which one, and one appears to have frozen completely.
Switching tasks requires cognitive flexibility – our ability to shift attention and adjust what we’re doing when circumstances or goals change.
That sounds simple until you realize how often we ask our brains to do it.
For neurodivergent people, transitions can sometimes require more conscious effort. ADHD can make disengaging from something interesting particularly difficult. Autistic people may find changes in routine, expectations, environments, or sensory input especially demanding. Executive functioning differences can also make it harder to mentally organize what needs to happen next.
And sometimes several of those things are happening at once.
So when someone struggles to transition, it isn’t necessarily because the next activity is difficult, their brain may still be trying to exit the last one.
This Can Look Very Different in Kids
This is something I wish more adults understood about school. Think about how many transitions students make in a single day.
Wake up. Get dressed. Leave home. Arrive at school. Go into class. Stop one subject. Start another. Change classrooms. Go to lunch. Come back from lunch. Switch activities. Go to an assembly. Return to class. Pack up. Go home. Start homework. Go to an activity. Come home again.
And then we wonder why someone loses it because we said it’s time to turn off the Xbox.
Sometimes that moment isn’t really about the Xbox. It may be the seventeenth transition their brain has made that day.
Of course, kids still need to turn off the Xbox – I’m not suggesting we surrender the house to Minecraft – but understanding why a transition is difficult gives us a much better chance of helping someone through it.
The Hardest Transitions Aren’t Always the Biggest Ones
We usually think of transitions as major life events: starting a new school, going to college, getting a new job, moving.
And yes, those can absolutely take enormous amounts of energy. But small transitions happen constantly, and sometimes they’re the ones that catch us off guard.
Getting out of bed. Getting into the shower. Getting out of the shower.
Starting homework after school. Returning to work after lunch.
Ending a conversation. Putting your phone down.
Going from a quiet room into a noisy one. Going from having no plans to suddenly having plans. Even transitioning from a busy day into rest can be difficult.
Have you ever finally had nothing to do and then…not known how to relax? Your brain spent ten hours in GO MODE, and apparently nobody told it the shift ended.
That’s a transition too.
Knowing What’s Next Can Help
One thing that can make transitions easier is reducing the amount of uncertainty around them. This connects directly to something Soph talks about a lot: knowing the next step.
“Get ready” is vague. “Put your shoes on” is clear.
“Start homework” is huge. “Open your math assignment” gives your brain somewhere to go.
“We’re leaving soon” could mean almost anything. “We’re leaving in ten minutes, so finish what you’re doing and then grab your bag” creates a bridge between now and next.
That bridge matters.
Visual schedules, timers, reminders, routines, countdowns, and clearly defined next steps can all help make transitions less abrupt.
Not because people need every second of their lives scheduled.
Please don’t do that to me.
But predictability reduces the amount of work your brain has to do to figure out what’s happening.
Give the Ending Some Attention Too
We also tend to focus entirely on starting the next thing. Sometimes we need to help ourselves finish the current thing first.
If I’m focused on writing something and suddenly need to leave, my brain may resist because it doesn’t want to lose where I am.
So I can leave myself a note – Next: rewrite the second paragraph.
Now my brain doesn’t have to desperately hold onto that thought while I’m gone.
If a kid is playing a game, giving them enough warning to reach a natural stopping point can be easier than abruptly shutting it down.
If you’re working, taking thirty seconds to write down where you left off can make it easier to disengage.
Sometimes a better transition isn’t about pushing harder toward what’s next.
It’s about creating a cleaner ending for what came before.
This Is Why We Care About Transitions at NeuroLocker
A lot of executive function support focuses on remembering what you need to do.
That’s important.
But knowing when something needs to happen and what comes next matters too.
That’s why we think about calendars, reminders, tasks, and time together rather than as completely separate problems.
A reminder isn’t just there to say: “HEY. YOU HAVE A THING.”
Ideally, it helps your brain prepare for the shift.
What’s coming? When is it happening? What do I need? What should I do first?
The less your brain has to reconstruct in the moment, the easier it can be to move from one thing into another.
Not effortless. Just easier. And we’ll take easier.
Maybe You’re Not Avoiding the Thing
This is probably the biggest thing I want people to take away from this.
The next time you find yourself sitting somewhere thinking: “Why can’t I just get up and do it?” get curious about the transition.
Maybe you aren’t avoiding the shower. Maybe you’re having trouble stopping what you’re currently doing. Maybe your brain hasn’t figured out the first step. Maybe the next environment requires a completely different kind of energy. Maybe you’ve already switched gears twenty times today and number twenty-one is apparently where your brain has drawn the line.
Knowing that doesn’t magically transport you into the shower. Unfortunately.
But it does give you something more useful to work with than: “I should be able to do this.”
Sometimes the things on either side of a transition aren’t particularly hard. It’s crossing the space between them that takes the energy.
And once we recognize that space exists, we can actually start building better ways to cross it.
Talk soon,
Jill & Soph
English