Taming ADHD Chaos With a Brain that Can’t Say No

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I recently received this comment from a listener of the podcast:

I’m trying to figure out how to better distribute my energy to sustain a manageable level of harmony in all areas of my life (career, parent, wife, self-care, friend, home owner) as a time blind ADHDer with poor time management, planning and organizational skills, constantly chasing shiny objects and feeling tugged 50 directions at once. I run so hard every day but feel like I have nothing to show for it, or maybe I feel good about the state of one segment of my life, but I look back at the trail of chaos in all the other areas and it takes the wind out of my sails.

I don’t know about you, but this struggle feels all too familiar. I call it – managing the ADHD chaos, and it’s taken me years to understand how to get in front of it. If you struggle with a similar issue, keep reading.

The Root of ADHD Chaos

Here’s the truth — The only way to manage chaos and overwhelm is to address the source—which is your need to chase novelty, and your lack of clear priorities. I speak from experience here, as I’ve struggled to manage “all the things” because they all seemed equally important, while also wanting to add more and more to my plate, because why not?

The reality is that you were born with an interest-driven brain that craves novelty and hates the same old same old. And while that is 100% not your fault, it is 100% your responsibility to manage it.

Understanding The Chaos-Making ADHD Brain

Your brain is not broken. It’s just different than a neurotypical brain (think Ferrari performance vs. Toyota predictability). The overwhelming issue I see with most ADHD’ers is that their capacity meter is faulty. Your “capacity meter” is your ability to discern how much of anything is enough. This is challenging for us because we are so unpredictable. On a good day, we’re capable of doing more than most people, but on a bad day, getting out of bed might be completely unrealistic.

So we constantly take on too much, and then we end up dropping things, forgetting things, being late for things, not taking care of things or staying on top of things – because there is just too many things. Literally and figuratively.

Managing ADHD Chaos: The Solution

Managing ADHD chaos is easier said than done. This isn’t something that comes easy or natural to me, but I’ve found the following strategy helpful for minimizing the chaos in my own life:

1. Accept that you have a faulty capacity meter
2. Design your life to manage that awareness
3. Keep coming back to it and making sure you’re not slipping back into old ways

Strategies for Taming ADHD Chaos

Now let’s break that down into actionable steps and some real life examples.

1. Know Your Priorities

Understand what your priorities are at any given time and let your energy go where you decide you want it to go. Balance is a myth. Life is always in flux. So you need to constantly be asking yourself – what matters most right now? Is it your kids? Your job? Your husband?

By recognizing that you can’t give every area of your life equal attention all the time, it acts as a forcing function to help you prioritize what you’ll focus on most from day to day.

The tricky thing is that prioritization is an executive function, which is often impaired when you have ADHD. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t do it – we just have to pause, and take the process out of our heads and onto paper (or voice it aloud).

This is why journaling, weekly planning, weekly reviews and coaching is so vital for ADHD brains. It gives us the structure we need to pause, reflect, and decide what to focus on next.

2. Block Out Distractions

Make a concerted effort to block out shiny object distractions. Where are they coming from? Instagram? Friends? TV? Patch that hole immediately. It might mean deleting some apps off your phone, or avoiding the mall on Saturday’s, but in the long run, it will save you the pain of feeling chaotic all the time.

Spend some time thinking about where your shiny object syndrome is most easily activated, and do your best to avoid those triggers. Your future self, who is no longer running in circles, will thank you.

3. Manage Your Inputs

This is basically a deeper and longer-term application of the point above. You’ve always got to be managing the inputs into your life – the things that take up space in your mind and on your calendar and prune what needs to go. Examples of how I manage my inputs:

• I don’t follow home DIYers on IG (because I want to do every project I see)
• I don’t follow fashion bloggers (because I’ll buy everything I see)
• I avoid most short-form content (except for a few dog accounts)
• I don’t have TikTok
• I don’t watch the news
• I have a set of podcasts that I listen to while cleaning or working out
• I don’t watch a lot of TV
• I don’t try new recipes that require ingredients I’ll never use.
• I don’t have an expansive wardrobe – mostly activewear and a few date night outfits.
• I don’t have a ton of extracurriculars (because I can’t keep up with them)
• I try to limit appointments (I find them incredibly distracting)
• I don’t buy books—I only borrow digitally from the library (so I have no guilt about not finishing whatever seems boring)
• I avoid chaotic people (this has truly been a game-changer for me)

4. Remember that you don’t always have to push yourself

This may seem like an odd thing to add here, but it’s actually something that’s very important. Very often we take on too much because we’re stuck in “push and grind mode” and we forget that we can turn that off sometimes. Maybe it’s just me, but I have to remind myself that life is not a race, nor a competition, and there’s no prize for running yourself into the ground trying to do, be, and have all the things.

If you tend to berate yourself for feeling behind in life, ask yourself if you’re comparing yourself to other people’s highlight reels? We’ve all got successes and failures – but we only tend to share the good stuff publically.

It’s far more useful to compare yourself to who you were in the past to ensure you’re growing the way you hope to. I found these 11 questions from Dickie Bush to be incredibly helpful and eye-opening:

1. What problems am I facing today I would have once begged to have?
2. Who am I talking to today that I once greatly looked up to?
3. What am I doing without strain today that I once found extremely difficult?
4. What opportunities am I turning down today that I would have once immediately taken on?
5. What habits am I doing on autopilot today that I once struggled to stick with?
6. Who am I no longer speaking to today that I once spoke with daily (because I’ve outgrown the relationship)?
7. Whose opinions am I ignoring today that I once got caught up thinking about?
8. In what situations am I reacting rationally today that I once found overwhelming?
9. What areas did I used to be clueless about that I now have vast knowledge?
10. What am I okay not having today that I once put on a pedestal?
11. What do I have today that I once yearned to have?

Embracing a Focused Life

Now that I’ve come to realize everything I just shared, I have become far more productive, focused and even successful. By crafting my life to minimize noise, I have the time, energy, and capacity to do the things I want to do.

From the outside, this may sound like a boring, or small life. But I assure you, it’s not. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on the latest TicTok trend, and I don’t care to follow influencers that want me to buy more stuff so they can get a commission. Most importantly, my life is no longer chaotic, my energy isn’t pulled in a million directions. Today, my world is designed to optimize for my interests and values and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Turning ADHD Chaos Into Calm

I’ll be honest – some of this growth has come from years of personal development, but it’s also a realization that comes with maturity. As you get older, you realize that all those shiny objects you were chasing were for nothing.

Overall, through my ADHD journey, I’ve come to accept that I am highly susceptible to being pulled in a million directions because I love novelty and I want to do all the things. So I’ve created intentional containers in my life to ensure I’m doing what I want to do (not what sounds interesting in the moment, or what I believe is expected of me) and I’m no longer getting distracted by random ideas.

I hope this was in someway helpful!