Julie and Jel Legg explore the concept of body doubling, a common ADHD coping strategy where the presence of another person helps one complete tasks that feel overwhelming or unappealing when done alone.
They clarify that body doubling isn’t teamwork—both people don’t have to be doing the same thing. Instead, it’s about having someone nearby as a form of gentle accountability and moral support, which can reduce distraction and increase focus. Julie and Jel share personal anecdotes, and reflect on how many people may have been using this strategy instinctively without having a term for it.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Definition: Body doubling is when another person’s presence (not necessarily their help) makes it easier to complete a task. This can be done in person, remotely or by being in group environment with a common focus.
- Not Teamwork: It’s not about co-working on the same job, but rather about supporting focus and reducing avoidance or procrastination.
- Accountability Boost: Even a silent partner nearby, or a virtual presence (via video call), can create a sense of accountability.
- ADHD-Friendly Motivation: Especially helpful for mundane or repetitive tasks that don’t naturally engage the ADHD brain.
- Unconscious Use: Many people may already be using this technique without realising—like inviting a friend over for moral support when tackling a new project or task.
- Emotional Comfort: Beyond productivity, body doubling offers emotional ease—it feels less lonely and reduces the intimidation of big tasks.
LINKS
- Julie Legg – The Missing Piece: A Woman’s Guide to Understanding, Diagnosing and Living with ADHD
- Contact ADHDifference
TRANSCRIPT
JULIE: I’m Julie Legg, author of The Missing Piece and diagnosed with ADHD at 52.
JEL: And I’m Jel Legg diagnosed at 55.
JULIE: Welcome to ADHDifference. In this episode we’re going to be talking about ADHD and body doubling. You may have heard of the term. It’s a strategy that’s used by ADHDers and neurotypicals as well and basically, it’s being accountable to another person or yourself to assist in getting through some boring or arduous tasks. So, we’ll be talking about body doubling. And some examples that may spring to mind, things like someone sitting beside someone doing paperwork, maybe filling out a complex form, even though they’re not necessarily helping them, they are just by being in their presence. They feel like they’re not necessarily tackling that by themselves. And the same could be applied to homework. In a previous episode on Organizing the Chaos, which was with a professional organizer, she talked about decluttering. And things like when it’s time to tidy up your wardrobe, it’s best done with a friend or with someone there. Not necessarily to help you but to help motivate you because it can be quite an overwhelming task otherwise.
JEL: Yes. It isn’t from what I understand, it isn’t both doing the same job. Yeah, which is more like teamwork. So it can be a bit tricky to sort of get our heads around exactly what body doubling is. And the more we think about, thought about it, the more we went through some examples, the more we realize perhaps we did it automatically or have done it automatically over our lifetime.
JULIE: An example is it’s not a shared job necessarily. It’s not a two-man job. So you know how you need… you need to carry something, you need two people to carry it. It’s not like that. It’s a task that one person can do but with the assistance of the presence or the environment of someone else makes you more… maybe more focused and less prone to being distracted which we’re very good at. Yeah.
JEL: So let’s start with an example what we’ve done today for example. We’re blessed in that we live in a house with a very large garden. But also, at the same time that… well I mean that suits us because we like nature and so on. We can’t complain but it does need a fair chunk of work. It needs looking after. Gardens don’t look after themselves. Obviously the rewards are fantastic with nature and so on and it’s great for our ADHD. So I had in mind it was quite important that I got out and cut some hedges today. And there’s a few more days of it to do, it’s that time of the year where you have to do it before you go into winter. Is it fun? I wouldn’t call it the funnest thing I do. There’s a lot of other things I’d rather do. And with the idea of this body doubling we’re generally talking about tasks we find arduous or we’re not particularly excited about doing. So I get through these things primarily by the satisfaction, with the satisfaction of knowing at the end it’s done for another couple of months, and it looks great and that’s awesome. But what I find is that generally I go out and do that because Jules isn’t so good on stepladders and things like that. But Jules volunteered today to come out and help. Right, so back to this help thing. Actually, the bit that Jules was going to do is about 5% of the job, which is dragging away the debris as you work along the hedge. So really in terms of helping me get through it faster, it doesn’t make any real difference if it’s directly helping because most time Jules will be standing around waiting for me to cut lots of hedge, fill up the sheet. But the doubling part that works really well and was great today is that Jules is out in the garden with me rather than inside.
JULIE: Yeah, so I was doing a completely separate job and in fact, I wouldn’t even thought to do it. I was clearing up some fallen branches and pulling a few weeds in an area of the garden that I wouldn’t normally go to. So I wouldn’t have even thought to have put that on my task list. But just the fact that Jel was out there working hard I felt inspired to do the same. And it was double the reward really because the hedges are done and we’ve got a tidy part of the garden that we don’t visit much.
JEL: Yeah, I just… it’s hard to explain perhaps to someone who doesn’t have ADHD but it hugely helps with my motivation to get the job done and get it done quickly. And I was very hyperfocused on getting it done today. And I really appreciate that because it felt like team work and though I’m not a team player. I’ve always known I’m not a team player but it just felt the whole lot was a lot easier to do. It was… yeah it just worked really well. And it’s not the first time that’s happened and we’ve done that.
JULIE: So talking through the body doubling, is it a task that Jel could have done by himself? Yes. Was he motivated to do it? Yes.
JEL: But grudgingly. Grudgingly. I could have easily said no. Look it’s one of those things where yeah… [See that fits into the onerous.] It does. It does because it’s Sundays and I never cut hedges or do garden work on a Sunday. It’s a sacred day for me to go and absolutely do whatever I want to do. Hasn’t, doesn’t have any earning income, any value. It’s just a day not to… a relaxing day. But for various reasons with time scales at the moment I really really need to get it done. And so it did fall into the onerous patch today, really.
JULIE: Yeah. So anyway, so that was a win. That was a win for us. Another example is, I can imagine because I don’t but I used to, and that’s go to the gym. We used to have a walking machine in the garage and it sat there gathering dust probably for about 8 years. Then I started putting things on it and it became a really cool shelf. But ultimately, it’s gone. Never got used. And it’s yeah, so I think the idea of going to the gym doesn’t excite me but once you’re there and you’ve got your shoes on and you’ve got your gym gear on, everyone’s working hard and sweating and exercising. And maybe that environment is like a body double, not just one but multiple body doubles. You feel more energized and focused that you’re there to do a job and you go and do it. And when you leave you go ah I might not have actually exercised for an hour if I was left to my own devices at home.
JEL: Yeah it’s not that you’re being watched to see whether you’re doing the job properly or putting the effort in but you sense that you could be being observed and so maybe by that sense of being observed you’re a little bit more motivated not to slack off. Yeah. There is such a thin, such a thin line between body doubling and sometimes working as a team or together on something. An example, I used to work in an… I’ve worked in several environments full of neurodiverse people, not diagnosed neurodiverse people but looking back yeah neurodiverse people, generally very high-end physicists and engineers who are very interesting people. And I would sometimes, because I was motivated under tight deadlines, do 36 hours straight at work and I’d work through the night. And I was highly motivated. Was that kind of environment where you were rewarded well to be motivated and it was awesome. So what I found was often I’d be on my own in a you know, a work environment, not at home but in a work environment through the night. But I don’t think I ever truly was on my own. I’d often find there’d be another couple of engineers in another part of the building who couldn’t sleep and have come in to do something. And it was a really nice feeling knowing there was someone else in the room, or in the building, and I wasn’t being completely odd and weird. That there was quite a sense of motivation with that, that it’s okay to be here at 2:00 in the morning doing this. It’s not the strangest thing. Perhaps to you it does seem a bit strange but you know, I quite like the feel of that looking back actually. And Sundays in another job I would often work on a Sunday, and it was surprising how many people would be in that… a university environment on a Sunday. It wasn’t actually a university, it’s part of a university. But the number of people working very hard on their PhDs, week in, week out, and so forth. And it always felt like it was okay to go to work on a Sunday. I wasn’t going to be completely on my own even though I’m only dealing with my work. No one’s helping me with the work. No one’s involved with what I’m specifically doing but it just made it quite inspirational to know that I wouldn’t be on my own all day. There’d be someone I could go and have a coffee with or say hello to.
JULIE: On the work front as well, we’ve both worked from home, a number of years. Jel for decades, me not so much but I don’t know, 7-8 years? Yeah. Any which way, the idea of… I work well at home. I can be really focused however that’s not always the case for ADHDers. And sometimes they feel they get a bit lost or too distracted at home. And so, the idea of going to a work hub or the office for a period of time to get a certain task done can be really good too. And it’s… so it’s that change of environment. It sort of echoes this or mirrors this body doubling when you when you go into a hub and there are other people sitting at sort of hot desks working hard and you do the same. And you go in there and you print off what you need to. Likewise, would be a library I imagine when studying. Yes, you could study at home but in a library, there are a whole bunch of other people studying as well and you feel that maybe that’s a better environment. Not necessarily as quiet you know, because libraries don’t always have to be quiet. [Can be distracting if they want to be.] It’s not necessarily to go to a library because they’ve got books there. It’s actually just extracting yourself from a place that is known maybe that can get you off focus for a bit and go somewhere else.
JEL: Let’s pull it back to the simple fact is our ADHD likes to be distracted by everything and anything so a library can be just as distracting as the middle of a high street. You know, it’s what we allow ourselves, or our brain doesn’t or wants to be distracted by, you know. It’s not necessarily allowing ourselves. We can be as distracted with our own inner thoughts in the middle of an echo chamber. I could still be distracted if I wanted to be. I think going back to the hub thing, the difference between… okay so let’s say you work in an office and you’re allowed to work at home two or three days a week, and maybe that just really works well for you. It certainly would for me because I don’t have all the constant interruptions of work and so forth, people yeah calling you to meetings and wanting to come and chat and disturbing you. So you’re faced with the idea that I can go into the office or I can go into one of those hubs. The big difference is in the hub you don’t know anyone or in theory you shouldn’t know anyone. And you’re not any… there’s no one in there on your team and your company, and there’s no one you’re working with so you’re still on your own. It’s just an environment where you look around and people are working away and you’re thinking well you know, have made the effort to come here and they’re working so maybe I could focus a bit more. And they’re not getting up every 5 minutes to come and water-cooler talk with you and disturb you. And you can, if you want, you can spend all day sat there on your phone on social media but you know that’s harder to do in this sort of body doubling environment than it is perhaps at home when you’re completely on your own.
JULIE: And talking of which, so body doubling it’s being, it’s having someone with you. Now it doesn’t necessarily have to be sitting right beside you. It could be, as we’ve discussed, it could be someone in another room. It could be someone in another part of the building all together. But it’s just the fact that you know and that you, it’s… it can be done remotely as well. So, what I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t have to physically be someone beside you. There are apps, body doubling apps that you can basically arrange that right I’m doing my accounts at 1:00 and you’re being accountable saying yep I’m going to be doing that and someone knows that after an hour you know, you might stop and have a cup of coffee or check in with each other. And just knowing that there are… there’s more than one person doing a job. It’s not so lonely. Not, as I said, not a shared job but working on projects, separate projects.
JEL: Well maybe it’s because we as humans innately, whether we have ADHD or not, we are team players. We are social. We engage and work together. We are not solitary creatures and yet our ADHD of course in an environment with lots of other people who are free to engage with us and we’re free to engage with them without limits, then of course the odds are we’re not going to get much done. I’m not going to be very focused. Particularly, particularly if we have a job we have to do that’s really arduous. And I’ve been… so many times I can think of an environment working with you know, people in environments who great people that I would regard as great friends, and I’ve got an odious job to do, it’s almost impossible if I’m engaging with them. Which is… therefore so I take myself home and do that job and be more productive. But you can’t… well I… even though I’ve spent over 20 years working on my own, it’s never never totally in isolation. It’s never in a box. I’ve always been in a network of people and that network I would get to know those people quite well. And so you are in a team. You are satisfying that human side of things but you’re doing it at your pace in your environment. There was a very interesting case, I remember one time, it was a situation for some reason I ended up in… Jules was working in an office, in a regular setup, and for some reason I ended up spending most of the day in that office which was highly unusual. And I packed my laptop and I had some work to do for a completely different client, although I did occasionally work for Jules’ company. Was a completely different client and I remember being so incredibly efficient and focused on that job the whole day. I got it done twice as fast as I would have done just sat at home. And this was before I was diagnosed too. And I think it’s that sense of oh if that’s Jules’ boss, perhaps that’s my boss, and they’ll be watching if I’m just nipping off to read the news or mess around on social media. I was so focused on it. It was… and I thought as I walked out, I thought hmmm that shows them I do work really hard. And when I do do a job, did do a job for Jules’ company and it would be her boss ultimately I was doing it for, she could see that yeah, I was a good sort of … [A good efficient worker.] Yeah I charged that much time and did that much work.
JULIE: So there’s no research saying that body doubling actually works but anecdotally we agree that it certainly can help us and lots of stories and people swear by it, that it really does. Another small example, Tina Hazen was the lady that I interviewed a couple of weeks ago, a professional organizer, she said and one… one of her clients, it was literally to be there as they opened their mail. So obviously opening mail, it must have been building up. It was a task that they found boring or arduous, and so she didn’t open a single envelope. She didn’t tell them what to do. She was there by the kitchen bench, probably with a cup of tea, while the other person, or well her client, opened the mail. And it’s just as simple as knowing that you’re not facing it alone in a strange way.
JEL: One more example. I sometimes… I don’t tend to go out a great deal. It’s terrible isn’t it. I don’t go out much. But you know, my world is here and I’ve got everything I need here and I don’t need to go out a great deal. But occasionally I might need to go out to collect a whole range of rather complex different bits and pieces from hardware stores and all sorts of different things. And I’m perfectly capable of getting in the car and driving to a shop and buying something and coming home. Perfectly. A whole lifetime of doing that. But I do find the whole process is a lot less arduous and a lot more rewarding if Jules accompanies me. And we go and do it together. And whilst I’m making 99% of the choices of what we’re buying and it’s me that’s got the little parts list of stuff, just the idea of having Jules with me. Now that doesn’t mean Jules is holding my hand all through the shop. We’ll go into a big you know like hardware store and I said right, I need this, that, and that. And go, that’s to the left and Jules says well I’m going to the garden centre, I’ll go to the right and come back with loads of plants. So we’re at opposite ends of the shops but, the shop, but I just find the process more focused and more motivating. [Which is the whole idea with body doubling.] Yeah.
And making the right decision. Sometimes it’s hard to make a call on a certain thing you need for something and it’s nice to have a little bit of input. So I could just take a photo and phone her up. We used to do that. But actually, the process of doing it together just feels yeah better, easier, more efficient and less likely to trigger any aspects of my ADHD. Is a body double sometimes like a safety net, do you think? You know, it’s like if I’m going into a shop I know where the service is poor but I have to use that shop then I might thinking well I might have to wait for someone and to cut some wood to fit in the vehicle or something, just knowing Jules is hanging there helps. Because you help with my patience with things like that because I’m liable to go “Oh, stuff this,” and drive home. I can’t be bothered waiting. They said “Did you get what you need?” No, but you stop me doing that which is good.
JULIE: Yeah so maybe by default we’ve been using body doubling for ever. Maybe that’s how we coped. [I think so.] And now it’s just got a name.
JEL: Yeah, yeah. I think that’s a thing that’s for me emerged as we’re heading towards… well there’s 50, nearly 50 episodes in this now, however a lot of them are, well most of them are interviews. We’ve done a fair chunk. I don’t how many we would have done. Maybe 20 or so. But a lot of things we chat about are words that I sometimes haven’t heard about, things like body doubling. I hadn’t. And there’s been a few things like that we chatted about. And we look back in our 50s now and realize, with a lifetime of ADHD, we’ve naturally done these things. So… but if you’re 30 years younger than us, these words can make a huge difference because they give you a tool to go forward. Yeah. But don’t be surprised if you’re in our age group, and you’re listening, and go “Well nothing new about that,” well it might not be new. You might have found it yourself but it’s certainly an amazing tool. And so if you are good at practicing that and then you know someone younger diagnosed with ADHD, it’s… these are the sort of things that you should be sharing with them to help them, I think.
JULIE: And procrastination is another thing that can hit us with ADHD, just delaying the inevitable but, because it seems the task is too hard or too boring and all those things, and knowing body doubling is a thing now, that’s a good opportunity to say “Right, on Tuesday I’m doing XYZ and you know what? I might call my friend and see if they want to come over and assist, or help, or sit with a cup of tea while I fill out my passport.” Or just hang.
JEL: You know but again it’s not yeah… there’s a good one filling in forms. Some people really struggle with that, especially real complex forms. But it’s not them helping in the way holding your hand every second of the way. It’s just hanging and being there. Yeah I mean there’s a good example like yeah, I’ve got to do something on Tuesday. Ask a friend to come over. “Hey do you want to come over and have lunch and just hang for a bit while I’m doing this, this job.” Yeah, oh yeah cool.
JULIE: Another example, and we won’t go on and on, but another one is my accounts. I know, I know that I could chip it away month by month, and then the end of year tax won’t be such a pain in the butt, but I don’t. I save it all up and I wait to the last few days before deadline going “Oh no. I’ve got to do it.” Knowing that you’re in the house…
JEL: Primed to answer questions and drop for those two or three days whatever I’m doing. [Yeah, or even…] Answer a question will help with it but not sit with you side by side, ever. I wouldn’t know how to do the accounts.
JULIE: But even, or even just check in every hour and we stop and have a cup of tea or whatever it may be. It’s just that check in knowing that I’m not doing it alone. If you were… if you were gaming for the days in which I did my accounts I’d probably feel that you’re having way more fun than I am,
and maybe more likely to distract myself feeling that I need more balance in my life. But yeah, just being accountable, someone else, having their support, checking in with them. You’ve made a commitment. You’re going to start the project and you’re not the only one who knows that. Someone else does as well and I think that’s all good and healthy.
JEL: It’s interesting. My last thought on it is that accountability to someone else. Ultimately you’re accountable to yourself but it’s just you’re offloading it onto someone else to help you, yourself concentrate and it’s generally body doubling was an arduous task. Interesting. I did think of an example, whether it’s relevant or not, I used to for years play in a band. And I would never ever ever ever ever, not once rehearse my parts. I was a bass player. Ever outside of rehearsals, which were every week or two weeks. But for… you know, every two weeks we’d get together for 5-6 hours, I’d really focus and concentrate, make sure everything was the best I could do. But I could have been much better if I then went home and rehearsed those parts. But I found it… being in the band wasn’t arduous but playing bass on your own I found quite an arduous thing. It’s really boring. But being in the band’s awesome. I don’t know if that’s relevant to this but being part of something, a component oh that’s more teamwork really isn’t it.
JULIE: But we’re talking about people body doubling with other people, or a person, but we’ve also talked about the environment, and that the people could be strangers.
JEL: I’ll use that as an example as where you know, you may struggle with this, I did a little bit, is working out the difference between teamwork and body doubling and having your hand held for something or taught or educated or guided or instructed. You’ll have to work it through, have a little think of yourself what parts your life fall into the body doubling and what parts are just straightforward teamwork really.
JULIE: I think team work is when you’re working on the same project [yes] together. Body doubling is when you’re working on separate projects. Yeah. The garden example, for example, we could say “Ah we were doing that together,” but we weren’t. You’re on the hedges and I was 200 metres away in a forest. So was it the same task? No, very very separate.
JEL: It is in my opinion a slightly confusing area and that’s okay to say that and accept that. I think it’s like some of the examples we’ve given I’m sure more you can find they are valuable, very valuable. [And if it works for you, why wouldn’t you do it?] So.. use it. Yeah if it works. Yeah, absolutely. Well it’s worked for us, seemingly.
JULIE: So boring, boring or arduous tasks, if you have one on your to-do list you might want to consider body doubling to help you through. Thanks for listening.