12/29/2025
My ADHD brain is always looking for something new, interesting, and stimulating. Unfortunately, it's as though that ambitious part of me is writing checks that future me doesn't have the funds (energy) to cash.
My ambition always outpaces my capacity.
Here's an example: The me of this weekend, being on top of things, planned out meals for the week. I even found a recipe for a salad I'd seen floating around that looked good and decided I'd make it. I managed to use all my executive functioning skills to purchase all the ingredients, but now the me of this week needs to have the energy, focus and mental processing skills that it requires to actually chop up 8-10 ingredients and mix up a dressing from scratch. Are any of the steps particularly complicated, nope. But they all take mental and physical energy, and it's yet to be determined if I will happen to have either of those available at the times I'm not working to execute making said salad. If I don't, it'll end up being another ADHD tax that I have to eat if the items end up going bad before I prepare them.
This mismatch between ambition and my capacity is a regular challenge that ADHDers face. We have a hard time anticipating how much time and energy will be available later to actually carry things out that the us in the moment decides to do.
This quote is something I've been repeating to myself lately. Some people may read it as defeatist, and that's not it at all. It actually lands for me as a realistic, helpful reminder that I need to think about whether whatever I'm planning for the future is realistic and what my capacity will be to carry it out. It comes with a sense of self acceptance. I also have acceptance that I will probably ALWAYS have more great ideas than I have the capacity to follow through on, and that's a reflection of the exorbanant number of big ideas my brain comes up with as opposed to a failing on my part. This is an important differentiation to make.
What ambitions did previous you have that current you doesn't have capacity for this week?
