Why ADHDers Overcomplicate Everything

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If you have ADHD, you probably overcomplicate life for yourself. You might overthink, overdo, overtalk, and overdeliver on just about everything.

I’ve come to realize we do this because we really don’t know what “enough” is in most contexts. And naturally, why would we? Most of us have never felt like we were enough.

If that resonates with you, stick around. I’m about to share the mindset shift that’s been making all the difference in how I approach both life and business.

Why We Overdo Everything

Here’s what I think is really happening when we overcomplicate, overcommit, and overthink everything.

We don’t trust ourselves to deliver enough.

This comes from all the negative feedback and corrections we’ve dealt with our entire lives. Sometimes those corrections were needed, but they came with a cost—we’re always second guessing ourselves because we don’t feel like we’re doing enough.

So we overcommit and overdo because we don’t want to appear:

• Lazy
• Flaky
• Like we don’t care

We want to prove we’re capable of meeting expectations. But because our “enough meter” is out of whack, we never know when we’ve hit the right threshold. So we just keep going until we burn out.

The Perfect Example from My Business

Right now in my ADHD Business Hub membership, most folks haven’t started their businesses yet. We’re all working on building offers to launch.

The number one thing I’m seeing? A desire to overdeliver on offers.

When I ask why they want to deliver so much for so little, I always get the same response: “I’m still learning. I don’t really know what I’m doing yet. So I’m going to overdeliver, overcomplicate, and eventually burn out because this offer isn’t sustainable.”

I get it because I did the same thing. When you don’t know what “enough” is, you throw everything at it and hope whoever’s receiving it thinks it’s enough.

The Problem with External Validation

Here’s the real issue: we’re always looking for someone else to judge what’s enough.

We’re not asking ourselves what’s enough in terms of:

• The offer we’re building
• The investment we’re putting into friendships
• The work we’re doing at our jobs

We assume our boss, partner, friend, or customer will be the judge of whether we’ve done enough.

Think about it, that’s exactly what we’re trained to do in school. You learn stuff, get tested, and you’ve either learned enough or you haven’t. Someone else determines if you’re smart enough.

No wonder we carry this pattern into work, relationships, and business.

The Game Changing Question

During a conversation in my membership group, I came across an article where James Clear was quoted asking this brilliant question:

“What format could I deliver my offer in that’s highest value for my customer but lowest effort for me?”

Take a minute and think about that. What can you do that’s high value for the person in front of you—whether that’s your customer, boss, spouse, or friend—but low effort for you?

Imagine what your life would look like if it were high value to the people around you but low effort for you.

What This Looks Like in Real Life

When I really thought about this, here’s what came up for me:

• I’d stop doing things because I think people expect them (even though they haven’t asked)
• I’d do things for others because I’m inspired to, not because I need something from them
• My workouts would be more sustainable (I always feel like I need to go all out)
• I’d work less, probably make more money, and enjoy my work more
• My marriage would improve because I tend to overcomplicate things

Your Challenge for This Week

Find an area in your life that feels sticky, hard, draining, or just generally bad.

Ask yourself: What would it look like to approach this with low effort for me and high value for them?

Run a little experiment and see what happens.

It might not work 100% of the time because you don’t know what others find valuable (unless you ask). But I guarantee you won’t be expending unnecessary energy and then resenting yourself and others.

How I’m Using This Approach

In my friendships: I don’t like talking on the phone—it’s very high effort for me. But I assumed my friends considered phone calls high value. So I started experimenting with voice recordings, text messages, and funny memes instead. Much lower effort for me, and turns out my friends love it.

In my business: I asked my ADHD Business Hub members what they considered high value. They said behind the scenes content—little screen recordings of how I do things in my business. This is very low effort for me but high value for them. I’d been assuming they wanted more live coaching calls, but that wasn’t actually their preference.

Reframe “Low Effort”

Here’s your invitation: what if you reframed “low effort” so it wasn’t about laziness or failure, but about being strategic, smart, and well thought out?

What if doing less was actually doing more—both for you and for the people in your life?

If you’re ready to build systems that work with your ADHD brain instead of against it, check out my Vision to Action planner for personal planning or the Organized Business system for entrepreneurs.

The goal isn’t to do everything perfectly. It’s to find that sweet spot where you’re creating real value without burning yourself out in the process.