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If you have ADHD, you probably overcomplicate life for yourself. A lot.
You might overthink, overdeliver, overtalk, overcommit, and overdo pretty much everything. I’ve come to realize we do this because we genuinely don’t know what “enough” looks like in most contexts.
Think about it: Why would we know what enough feels like if we’ve never actually felt like we were enough?
If that hits home for you, stick around. I’m going to share a mindset shift that’s been making a world of difference in both my life and business when it comes to overdoing.
Why We Overdo Everything
The root cause: We don’t trust ourselves to deliver enough.
This comes from a lifetime of negative feedback and corrections. Sometimes those corrections were needed, but they came with a cost—we learned to always second-guess ourselves.
As a result, we:
- Overcommit and overdeliver because we don’t want to appear lazy or flaky
- Want to prove we’re capable of meeting everyone’s expectations
- Keep going and going because our “enough meter” is broken
- Burn out because we never know when we’ve hit the right threshold
The Real-World Example
Right now in my ADHD Business Hub membership, many members are building their first business offers. The #1 pattern I see? A desire to massively overdeliver.
When I ask, “Why do you want to deliver that much for that 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.”
I understand this thinking because I did the same thing. When you don’t know what “enough” looks like, you throw everything at it and hope whoever’s receiving it thinks it’s sufficient.
The Real Problem
We’re always looking for someone else to judge what’s “enough.”
We don’t ask 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 job
Instead, we assume our boss, partner, friend, or customer will be the judge.
This is incredibly disempowering, but it’s exactly what we’re trained to do.
Think about school: You sit in class, learn stuff, get tested, and you’ve either learned “enough” or you haven’t. Someone else always determines if you’re smart enough, capable enough, good enough.
No wonder early-stage business owners create complex, high-effort offers for very little money. They don’t have confidence in what they’re doing yet (which is totally normal), but they’re also not checking in with themselves first.
The Game-Changing Question
While discussing this with my community, I came across a quote from James Clear that completely shifted my perspective:
“What can I deliver that’s highest value for my customer, but lowest effort for me?”
Take a minute and think about that. What could 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 asking yourself this question before you:
- Commit to anything
- Come up with new ideas
- Take on extra work
- Plan social activities
What This Looks Like in Practice
When I really thought about this approach, here’s what I realized:
In my workouts: I often think I need to go “balls to the wall,” but that clearly doesn’t work for me.
In my work: I would work a lot less, probably make more money, and enjoy my work more.
In my marriage: I would probably drive my husband less crazy because I tend to overcomplicate things.
Reframing “Low Effort”
Here’s an invitation for fellow overthinkers and overdeliverers:
What if you reframed “low effort” so it wasn’t about laziness or failure, but rather 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?
Your Challenge This Week
Find an area in your life that feels sticky, hard, draining, or generally just bad.
Ask yourself: “What would it look like to approach this with low effort for me and high value for them?”
Then run a little experiment to see if it works.
Will it work 100% of the time? Probably not, because you have to guess what’s high value unless you ask people directly.
But here’s what I know for certain: 100% of the time, you won’t be expending unnecessary energy and then resenting yourself and others because you’re putting in high effort that’s not necessarily being received as high value.
How I’m Using This
Personal Example: I don’t like talking on the phone (very high effort for me), but I assumed my friends considered phone calls high value. Instead of forcing myself to make those hour-long catch-up calls, I started:
- Sending voice recordings asynchronously
- Texting more regularly
- Sharing funny memes and DMs
- Even flying to see them in person rather than calling
Business Example: I used to think I needed more live coaching calls in the ADHD Business Hub because “that’s what everyone wants.” But when I asked members what they actually considered high value, they said behind-the-scenes content and screen recordings of how I do things in my business—which is very low effort for me to create.
The pattern I noticed: I tend to give in areas where people haven’t asked for things, rather than finding out what they actually want.
The Mindset Shift
This approach helps you:
- Reduce overwhelm by reducing complexity
- Decide for yourself what’s low effort vs. high effort
- Find out what others actually perceive as high value
- Hit that sweet spot without burning out
Remember: The goal isn’t to do less because you’re lazy. It’s to be strategic about where you put your energy so you can sustain your efforts and actually enjoy your life.
What area of your life are you going to experiment with this week? I’d love to hear about it in the comments—and if you’re building a business with ADHD, come check out the ADHD Business Hub where we work on exactly these kinds of sustainable approaches together.
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