Why ADHDers are Exhausted (and How to Fix It)
Stop depleting your mental battery before noon. Learn the simple strategies to help you preserve your energy for what actually matters.
That deep mental fatigue that hits you by 3 PM. It’s not just in your head, it’s your ADHD brain working overtime. For many of us, each day feels like trying to run a mental marathon with weights strapped to our thoughts . Whether it’s making SO MANY decisions, forcing yourself to be productive when we “just can’t”, that guilty feeling about all the things you forgot this week, and last week, and the week before that. Each of these things (and more!) drains our energy. Some just a little, and some A LOT! This energy is not limitless (unfortunately!). We have a limited supply and keeping every ounce we can is crucial to ending up at the end of the day with at least enough to get through your nighttime routine before bed.
What if we stopped viewing ADHD as a problem of effort and started seeing it as an energy management challenge? Instead of constantly forcing yourself to keep up, what if you focused on ways that you can conserve your precious mental resources?
The Energy Economy of ADHD Brains
Our culture is stuck in hustle mode. We’re constantly being fed messages: Be a morning person! Push through! Do more! ADHD brains already struggle with inconsistent energy patterns. The “just try harder” mentality isn’t just unhelpful, it’s actively harmful. It might work in the shorter term, but more often than not we end up overwhelmed, with decision fatigue, or even possibly burned out.
By focusing on preserving your energy (or at least spending less of it), you will be able to do the same things but have some energy left over by the end of the day.
Identifying Your Personal Energy Drains
Here are some common energy drains for adults with ADHD:
- Decision Fatigue — making too many choices (What task to do first? What to wear? What to have for dinner for the 4,506th time?)
- Task Switching — the act of moving from one task to another, whether due to distraction or intention, these changes can really drain some energy
- Memory Strains — trying to remember everything, repeating it over and over again, trying to memorize it
- Emotional Exhaustion — as ADHDers we feel things deeply and over time the emotional toll adds up. That meeting where you blurted out the wrong thing? You might still be replaying it 3 days later, draining emotional energy that neurotypical colleagues have long since redirected.
Think about your day or week. What are your biggest energy drains? When do you feel the most exhausted?
Strategic Energy Conservation Tactics
- Automate decisions — reduce choices (eat the same breakfast, create a weekly meal rotation, develop a mix-and-match wardrobe of items you love, use a dice for simple decisions)
- Reduce mental load — use reminders, alarms, notebooks, anything to externalize the information so you don’t have to worry about remembering
- Set up your spaces for ADHD — Need to take meds in the morning? Always drink coffee? Put your meds by the coffee maker
- In sight, in mind — ADHDers often forget things they don’t see. Use open storage, labeled bins, or visible reminders to make important things harder to miss
Embracing the Path of Least Resistance
It’s not cheating to make life easier. You don’t get bonus points for how much you struggle. If you can find something, anything that makes your life even 10% easier, that’s more energy for the things that actually matter to you.
Energy is a limited resource, spend it wisely.
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