Think of ADHD as executive function

No amount of self beating and admonishment can help a person with ADHD to: remember, stay on task, inhibit impulse, resist distraction, have a better working memory, exert emotional self-control, and not procrastinate. These capacities--as well as self-directed actions and actions toward a goal--are all functions of EXECUTIVE FUNCTION. (See Dr. Russ Barkley website, Additude Magazine articles, youtube.)

I find over and over again that people with ADHD feel they just need more motivation, more self discipline, more self castigation and then! somehow! magically! they'll be able to do what they need to do to be more 'typical'. Be on time. Remember tasks that need to get done. Be better organized, and act less impulsively.

It is due to the deficits in executive function and emotion regulation that ADHD'ers have great difficulty in attaining their goals. Not because they just need to beat themselves up a little more.

What I learned from a recent Dr. Barkley seminar is that ADHD in adults (a neurogenetic disorder according to him) to principally a disorder of  self-regulation and executive dysfunction. He considers the major fix for executive dysfunction (in addition to medication) to be engineering one's environment so as to externalize executive function.