| I would further polish your desription - and call it a disorder of mismatched motivation. People with ADHD can motivate just fine on things that stimulate them - and have even reported 'hyperfocus', a trance-like state of emersion in something. The problem is things that are not stimulating become very challanging or even impossible. This is why bills, appointment, rules, and chores can be so difficult for ADHD people to commit to. 'Normal Type' people may find misery in these sorts of tasks, but they are able to motivate themselves to complete them - and the tasks generally don't take that long for them. A good way I've heard ADHD described is that people with the condition have no percetiption of time. If stimulated, its easy for them to loose track of how much time has passed - even forgetting to eat or sleep. If unstimulated, the misery seems to be never-ending, even if it would only take a short time to complete if the person applied themselves. As an example: Michael Phelps (who has the condition) has been very able to motivate himself to practice swimming. Swimming at his level is a very tedious sport, requiring five or more hours a day in a pool staring at the black line on the bottom. I've personally found sport (swimming and extreme) to be helpful in managing ADHD, both while doing the activity and maybe for a day or two afterwards. Also as a motivator before hand to get through tasks I find miserable to give some time for the activity. |
To put it another way: some things in life are a hassle (or a "schlep", in pg's phrasing[1]). The more motivation you have, the less this matters. The less motivation you have, the more of a problem a thing being a "hassle" will be. When you have chronically-low motivation, you avoid "hassles" as a rule, to the point that you stop even being able to lead your mind down potential avenues of thought that involve "hassles."
If you want a fictional example of what having ADHD really tends to look like, it's not Calvin of C&H, it's Shikamaru from Naruto[2].
This model, by the way, has all sorts of consequences outside of just ADHD. When people are "too hungry to decide what to eat"—that's because hunger depletes motivation, and decisions are fundamentally hassles. The hungrier you get, the less motivation you can tap to "just" decide. (You can force yourself to decide, or trick yourself into deciding, but you can't "just" decide.)
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[1] http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html
[2] Yui from K-On is also a striking example. That show's entire theme, actually, is essentially "how to succeed in life despite having ADHD", which is a real surprise for something so fluffy.