ADHD and the Weight of Too Many Decisions

I believe that much of the exhaustion people with ADHD describe has far more to do with decision making than it does with motivation.

The clients I work with are not stuck because they don’t care or aren’t trying hard enough; they are worn down because daily life now involves a constant stream of choices that don’t ever fully resolve. Money decisions sit alongside school decisions, work decisions, health decisions, and the low-level admin that never quite gets finished but still has to be mentally tracked somewhere in the background.

For an ADHD brain, decisions don’t stay contained – they branch off, reopen themselves later on, and compete for attention while you are trying to focus on something else. Even deciding to come back to something later has a cost, because it still has to be remembered, monitored, and re-evaluated.

This is why so many people tell me they feel permanently tired even on days where very little seems to have happened. The energy has already gone into deciding what to respond to, what to delay, what can safely be ignored for now, and what feels too risky to get wrong.

So what can help?

Sharing the load is a big one. A shared calendar at home, where everyone can see what is happening and what needs to be done, can take a surprising amount of strain away. Lowering expectations also matters; aiming for ‘done’ rather than perfect can significantly reduce pressure when capacity is already stretched. And when things start to feel unmanageable, asking for help is not a failure, it is often the most practical way to protect your energy.

These are not abstract ideas for me, they are things I use myself. My wife and I rely on a shared Google calendar so we both know where everyone is meant to be and what needs doing, and when my workload becomes too much alongside everything else, I delegate tasks to my PA. They are small adjustments, but they make daily life feel more manageable, and over time that difference really adds up.