It’s tax time here in the US, and those of us with ADHD traits are paying extra! Have you heard of the ADHD tax? I’m referring to those invisible costs that affect entrepreneurs and solopreneurs with ADHD, draining not only finances but also well-being and relationships.
From late fees and impulse buys to missed deadlines and opportunities, these ADHD-related financial and time-related costs pile up. But it's not just about the money; health and relationship costs make this tax even more significant.
Hyperfocus, high energy, and boundless creativity are enviable traits for entrepreneurs that those of us with ADHD have in abundance, but the flipside is that we are paying the ADHD tax in multiple different ways, and ignoring them is creating dangerous blind spots in your business.
This fast-moving solo episode is full of relatable metaphors and analogies so you won’t forget the message, plus easy-to-implement strategies to patch up the "leaks" in our resource bucket.
We’ll explore time-saving techniques, task initiation rituals, and much more. Whether you want to protect your health, nurture relationships, or stop springing costly resource leaks in your business, I’m love to help you pay less ADHD tax and enjoy life more!
Mic drop moment:
“Now, for entrepreneurs and small business owners with ADHD, this invisible tax doesn't just drain your bank account. It taxes your well-being, your relationships, and your ability to show up as the business owner you so want to be."
Mentioned in this episode:
Now What?
Does paying less ADHD tax sound appealing? Be sure to grab my free worksheet that combines all the strategies shared in this episode. Good intentions won’t move the needle, but a PDF you can save on your desktop or print out and pin to your corkboard means you actually benefit from these strategies. Click here to get your copy.
© 2024 ADHD-ish Podcast. Intro music by Ishan Dincer / Melody Loops / Outro music by Vladimir / Bobi Music / All rights reserved.
With tax day coming just around the corner here in the US, many of us are feeling the pressure of getting those last minute financial documents in order. But today, we're talking about a different kind of tax, one that doesn't go to the government, but still costs you dearly. What is it? None other than the ADHD tax. If you've ever paid a late fee because you forgot about a bill, bought duplicates of things you already own because you couldn't find them in time, or lost out on business opportunities because you missed a deadline, then you've paid the ADHD tax.
Now for entrepreneurs and small business owners with ADHD, this invisible tax doesn't just drain your bank account. It taxes your well-being, your relationships, and your ability to show up as the business owner you so want to be. So today, I'm breaking down what the ADHD tax really costs as solopreneurs in money, health, and relationships. And for each challenge that I'll name, I'll be sharing practical strategies to help you pay less, keep more of your resources where they belong, and save your sanity in the process.
So if you're not familiar with the term ADHD tax, it's not a formal charge. It's the cumulative cost of having a brain that's wired differently than the systems our society has built. You can think of it like driving a high performance sports car on roads that are designed for sedans or maybe horse and buggy. That sports car has amazing capabilities, but it's going to hit a lot more potholes and possibly require more maintenance. Hey, let's be honest. Race cars always require more maintenance. Because guess what, the infrastructure just wasn't built with sports cars in mind, nor ADHD brains for that matter.
For entrepreneurs with these traits, this tax shows up in multiple different dimensions. For example, financial costs right? They're obvious, late fees, rush charges, subscriptions that you forgot you had, impulse purchases, and business tools that you never even used that just seemed irresistible at the time. We also pay the ADHD tax in time costs. Whenever we have to redo work, spend time searching for lost items, or recover time after hyperfocus. Opportunity costs are also part of the mix. Missed connections, overlooked deadlines for applications or proposals, unfinished projects that never generate revenue, and so much more.
from the first Neurodiversion:I've mentioned on a previous episode that a very good friend of mine has resorted to using the ghost emoji, and she just text it to me when she feels like it's been too long since she's heard from me and I have it coming. Now I wanna teach you a couple of concepts using metaphors and analogies because that's just what makes them more memorable for my brain, and I'm gonna guess for yours as well. I want you to imagine your business as a bucket collecting water. The water represents revenue, resources, and opportunities, all the good stuff. Now a neurotypical business owner might have a few small holes in their bucket, but they can easily plug them.
If you're an ADHD entrepreneur, your bucket sometimes looks like it was used for target practice. And while you may be pouring amazing creative water in from the top at high speed, because let's face it, our minds are incredibly fast and innovative, we're also losing resources through those dozens of tiny and some big holes that we might not even notice until the bucket is unexpectedly empty. The ADHD tax is essentially what's leaking out through those holes. Now the good news is, once you identify where your leaks are, you can start patching them strategically so that you don't need a new bucket.
We're gonna look at each of these leaks and how to fix them effectively. Are you ready, alright. Let's talk about the ADHD tax collectors and how to pay them less. First, the procrastination penalty. Now procrastination is no stranger to those of us with ADHD, but the problem is that we don't just put things off. I mean, for ADHD brains, it's also about initiating tasks that just don't provide immediate dopamine. So the analogy I wanna use is the cold pool problem. Starting tasks with ADHD is kind of like jumping into an ice cold pool.
Now I know there are people who swear by cold therapy, but I am not a fan. In fact, just thinking about it gives me a headache. You know if you have a cold pool, even if you believe it's going to be terrific for you, once you're in and swimming, that is, it'll feel great then. But the initial shock is something that most people would do anything to avoid. So you stand on the edge, you walk around, maybe you dip your toe in, check your phone, adjust your goggles, anything to delay the plunge. Meanwhile, the longer you wait, the more that task is costing you in stress, missed opportunities, and possibly rush fees. What's the solution? The warm water approach. Sometimes we can't force ourselves to just jump in or cannonball it.
It's about finding ways to warm up the water or maybe create a running start so that even if you don't wanna do it, that plunge is inevitable. Here are some strategies I suggest. Create a task initiation ritual so that you can signal to your brain that it's time to start. Through practice, your brain will take over most of the work by creating a neural pathway so that when it's time to initiate a task, it's much less effortful to do so. You can also try using the five minute rule. Commit to just five minutes on a specific task and promise yourself you can stop after that. Spoiler alert, you probably won't. You can also pair unpleasant tasks with something more enjoyable, like your favorite music or your special coffee or that wonderful, very boujee pen that you only use for these unpleasant tasks.
You can try scheduling body doubling sessions where you work alongside someone else, whether that's virtual or in person. This has been long known to be one of the most effective strategies for folks with ADHD who have trouble initiating tasks. Another popular technique, breaking down those intimidating tasks into micro steps that are so small, they don't trigger resistance. I've talked about the magic to do in Goblin Tools in another episode, and that does an excellent job of breaking them down if you don't know how to do that on your own. I will remind you about Goblin Tools in the show notes so you can continue listening now. External accountability is probably one of the best ways to get yourself to start when you don't want to, and that may just mean telling someone that you're going to start and when.
It all depends on you whether you want that person to follow-up with you and ask you if you started or if you're the kind of person who says, when I start, I'll send you a message. It works both ways. Now a practical tool when you're dealing with this whole cold plunge situation is the diving board technique. If you have a timer, set it for two to five minutes. And you could set this on your phone, people use time timer. I've got all kinds of little timers because if you do the same thing all the time, you might get bored. So I give myself variety. Set your timer for two to five minutes to just gather the materials you need or to set up your workspace for the task, but don't actually start the task.
Now, gathering the materials, and that could be looking for digital files, getting paper and pen, it doesn't really matter. You're telling yourself, oh, I'm not actually starting, I'm just getting ready. And a lot of us really excel at this whole getting ready business. Anyway, you don't let yourself start, you just gather things. Usually, the resistance is less because you've already told yourself, well, I'm not doing the task. I'm just setting up my workspace or I'm just gathering the materials. The funny thing is it creates momentum without the pressure of diving in. Now once everything is set up, I strongly recommend that you don't just dive in, even if you feel like it.
Take a mini break of one to two minutes, and then return and begin the actual task. I can virtually guarantee you, you will have less resistance. There's also the forgetting fee. Now I don't know about you, but my working memory has been challenged my entire life. And that means important details slip through the cracks or in my favorite analogy, Swiss cheese brain. Some stuff sticks to the cheese and the other stuff slides through the holes. And I can't predict what's gonna go where. So if you have a forgetting problem like I do, here's something you can try. Juggling invisible balls. Now you are a business owner, like me, who has ADHD traits, like me.
So you are well acquainted with the feeling that you are juggling a bunch of different balls. And frankly, some of them are invisible until just before they hit the ground. You're doing your best to keep everything in the air, but let's be honest, friend. You cannot track what you can't see. The result? Forgotten meetings, sometimes double booking, I've done it, overlooked emails, missed bill payments. And this ADHD tax comes due in a big way when you have to pay rush fees, apologize to clients, or feel the regret of missed opportunities because something slipped your radar. Solution for this is the visible juggling system. In this system, you make sure all your balls are visible and reduce how many you need to juggle at once.
This is super important because we have visual minds, and we have limited working memory. So we can't keep track of as many things as other people do, and we oftentimes need to see things to remember they exist at all. So externalize your memory using consistent digital or physical systems. They both work, you just have to do what works for you. Create a command center where all your important information lives. In my life, it is a combination of a whiteboard and things that I save on my computer's desktop. Use calendar blocking for everything. I am absolutely insistent on this. I've tried many other things.
This is the one I always come back to, and I strongly encourage my clients and podcast listeners to try their very hardest to adopt this at as well. Using calendar blocking for everything, and I do mean every freaking thing, not just meetings, but tasks as well, will absolutely reduce you paying this tax. I also suggest combining it with automated reminders that come in multiple formats, both visual and audio. Now it may sound contradictory when I say we need to create these neural pathways by doing the same thing again and again, which we do. But because our brains are easily bored, we don't have to necessarily do them exactly the same way indefinitely.
Your automated reminders, you may decide to use them visually for a while until your brain starts to tune them out, in which case, you switch to the audio version and voila, It's fresh and new. Creating checklists for recurring processes so that you don't have to rely on memory is something I have relied on my assistant to help me with, and it has been a game changer. And here's the most important one and the hardest to do. Fewer balls are easier to track, so I really strongly encourage you to be on an ongoing hunt to reduce your total commitments. I have become quite ruthless about interrogating new commitments before they make their way onto my bingo card because once they're there, I'm probably gonna kill myself trying to make sure I meet them.
Here's another practical tool, the confirmation capture habit. Now when you complete an important task and I don't care. I wanna call it all important with our brains, whether you're paying a bill, sending a deliverable to a client, scheduling a doctor's appointment, they're all freaking important. Immediately create external confirmation. I do not trust my memory for shit, and I don't recommend you do either. Now how do you create this confirmation capture habit? It could be taking a screenshot. It could be sending yourself an email. It could be noting it on a note function on your phone. I often send myself Voxer messages because Voxer is the app I use the most to communicate with clients, so I'm in it all the time, which means I'm not gonna forget I have it.
I can send myself a Voxer voice message because I'm a talker more than I am a writer, and I can't ignore it because I've set the notifications on my phone to make sure I don't. The trick here is to make it automatic. Saying you've completed a task, whether it's scheduling a doctor's appointment, billing a prescription, paying a bill, sending a proposal to a potential client, you're not done. The task isn't complete until you've captured the confirmation. This alone, this one suggestion is worth this entire episode. If you hear only one thing I say in this episode, let this be the one. Because missed opportunities and cringey apologies can really become a thing of the past when you confirm this capture habit.
Ready for more? Okay. Organization overhead. The problem with disorganization and the ADHD tax we pay because of it is really countless hours and significant frustration. So how do we address this? The archaeological dig office. Now for many ADHD business owners, finding what you need in either your physical or digital workspace or both can often feel like you're conducting an archaeological dig. And it's not gonna be one that you're gonna be able to open up a museum and get famous. It's just like, where the hell is my adapter cable? You know the moment an important document exists somewhere in the strata of papers or files or browser tabs, and you need it now, but excavating it takes precious time? That is freaking exhausting. Every moment that we spend searching is a moment not spent creating, connecting, or doing revenue generating work. You feel me?
So what we do instead is the curator approach. Instead of trying to organize everything perfectly, because that isn't necessarily going to ensure you will find it when the time comes, Instead, become a curator who selectively preserves the things that matter most. I just love the sound of that so much because even though my perfectionistic tendencies mean I want to know where absolutely everything is and color code it and label it, I'm never going to be able to do that. Now, how do you use the curator approach? I'm so glad you asked. You're going to create simple broad categories rather than complex filing systems.
This was one of the keynote talks at the conference I just went to, and people were just madly scribbling notes on it. Simple broad categories actually work better for our neurodivergent brains than complex filing systems and what works is better. We use search friendly naming conventions for digital files instead of some complicated system that you bought from some neurotypical guru. Implement a touch it once policy for incoming information, and that eliminates the circling back and going around and around and around, but not actually moving your game piece forward. Schedule regular fifteen minute reset sessions to prevent build up, and use templates to standardize where information goes in documents so that you aren't literally making it up from scratch and flying by the seat of your pants on a regular basis.
This has to be one of the most common things I see with clients who've recently hired me is they've tried to organize, especially their digital files, but they didn't have a naming convention. And God knows where documents go and this was me for far too many years. I also encourage you to leverage technology's search capabilities instead of trying to be perfectly organized. Technology just keeps getting better, especially now with AI. So the search for being perfectly organized is not only an impossible dream, it's really not the best use of your time and energy.
You can also use the parking lot method. And I love this and have talked about this on previous solo episodes. My suggestion is that you create designated parking lots for different types of items, and this can be both physical and digital. For example, a specific email folder for all receipts, all receipts. A particular drawer in your home office for important paper documents or a dedicated note taking app for all client information. The key is having few parking lots that you always know where to check. They're specific enough that you don't end up creating an archaeological dig, and it doesn't have to be perfect to be organized.
Alright. Next up is the Hyperfocus Hangover, and this is something I have experienced way too many times. Hyperfocus can be a superpower, but I really don't like to refer to it that way because it comes with some costs that absolutely add to your ADHD tax burden. There's business sprinting, which we love, but really, if you want to stay in business, it's much more like running a marathon. So many of us behave like we're in a race when actually, we need a sustainable business so that we can be in business over the long haul. Now you might be able to accomplish an incredible amount in a focused twelve hour stretch. I know I have.
But when you need three days to recover afterwards and important maintenance kind of tasks get neglected, that's not a flex, my friend. This feast or famine approach to productivity creates boom and bust cycles that destabilize your business and exhaust you physically and mentally. Most of us, when we are in both of those states, both the hyperfocus and the crash afterwards, we're not much used to our friends or family either. So what's the solution? Interval training. Now if you're not a fitness fanatic, you may not have heard of this, but it works really, really well. Athletes use interval training to maximize their athletic performance, but ADHD business owners and solopreneurs can leverage the same principles of controlled bursts of hyperfocus followed by intentional recovery. Recovery, not collapse. Timers to create boundaries for hyperfocus session.
So if you know this about yourself, you're probably gonna have to use several timers because you will ignore or blow right past the first one or two. You're also going to want to schedule hyperfocus friendly days that have fewer transitions. So you can just hyperfocus away instead of finding yourself in a state of hyperfocus on a day when you actually have multiple other things to do. Build in recovery time after intense work periods even if your brain tells you you don't need them, you do. Create maintenance systems that can run on autopilot during those recovery days. Absolute game changer. Now you can harness your hyperfocus for specific complex tasks or creative tasks, but I do not recommend you try to do so for routine work. It is not the best use of your hyperfocus energy.
That's like a concentrated laser beam where you can get a tremendous amount of creative work done, or you can get a lot of progress made on a complex task. Don't waste it on routine stuff. Just not a good spend of your hyperfocus. And lastly, use external cues to transition when it's time to shift gears. I've often said folks with ADHD only have three problems when it comes to productivity. It's just that those problems are starting, stopping, and switching gears, which covers a lot of territory. So if you are gonna use hyperfocus to get things done and then recovery time afterwards, you will need external cues when it's time to transition. Alarms, calendar alerts, you might even need a friendly knock on the door.
Hell, some people I know who work from home and have a very supportive spouse or roommate sometimes need to be physically removed from their chair, but I hope you don't. Here's another practical tool. The recovery runway. Now for every major project or hyperfocus set session, you can preschedule a recovery runway, a period afterwards that has a lighter workload and also more forgiving deadlines. I want you to protect this time as vigorously as you would a client meeting or some sacred event in your life. Now during your recovery runways, you're gonna focus on those basic maintenance tasks that don't require creative energy, and you prioritize activities that will replenish your executive function reserves.
People who do this routinely and have really understood how to make it work for them can get so much done on the right things during their hyperfocus periods, and then they get all the rest of the stuff done in the recovery periods. This is interval training at its finest for the ADHD business owner and will drastically reduce your ADHD tax. I would be remiss, especially as a former psychotherapist, in not talking about this. You know, our health, both mental and physical, and our well-being, which includes our spiritual capacity as well, it absolutely gets affected by the ADHD tax and for some people, this is actually the most significant toll.
This analogy is not one that I love, but everyone understands it, and that is the oxygen mask emergency. Running a business with ADHD can feel like you're constantly in an emergency situation on an airplane where the oxygen masks have dropped and I don't just mean the explainer video, which I had to watch. Oh my gosh. Four flights to get to Austin and back for this conference, so I had to watch the freaking video four times, which I didn't actually watch. But they tell you, put your own mask on first, we all know that. You know, sometimes you're so busy helping everyone else that you not only don't put your oxygen mask on last, you forget to put it on at all.
Eventually, you start suffering from severe oxygen deprivation, and you're no good to anyone. The constant juggling, the anxiety of missed deadlines, the shame spiral of I should be better at this by now, all create a state of chronic stress. This manifests as sleep problems, skipped meal followed by unhealthy convenience food, canceled exercise plans, neglected medical appointments, and so much more. I'm not even gonna talk about increased reliance on recreational substances and alcohol becoming part of our daily functioning when this is our lifestyle. It is a vicious cycle and becomes increasingly difficult to break out of.
What's the solution? The business sustainability approach. Not sexy, but very effective. Just as a sustainable business must protect their natural resources, ADHD solopreneurs must protect their natural resources, their mental and physical assets, because they're essential to business. Strategies that help are scheduling nonnegotiable well-being blocks in your calendar with the same commitment as you do client meetings. And when I say they're nonnegotiable, I mean that like a mofo. Maybe when you were employed by someone else, you might occasionally take a mental health day.
Well, you can take mental health breaks now that you're the boss, and you absolutely should. I strongly suggest a minimum viable self care checklist so that even when you are insanely busy, you've got a launch, you got a book deadline, you can still do the minimum amount so that it's not complete neglect because that is a heavy ADHD tax. You can also set up environmental triggers for healthier habits. Jessica McCabe was one of the keynote speakers at the conference I just went to. And an amusing part of her talk was about all of her water bottles. Water, water, water.
You do not want to try to function with an ADHD brain that has the texture of brain jerky because it's dehydrated. Our brains need to be hydrated to even do the minimum, and we're asking a whole lot more of them than that. You can also put walking shoes by the door to remind you that it's not a bad idea to move every so often. Identify your personal early warning signals of burnout and create a specific response plan. And here's one of my favorites, link your business metrics to your well-being metrics. Track how your health impacts your productivity. Now you may be really reluctant to do that now, which is probably all you need to know that you are neglecting your well-being and your self care.
Here's another practical tool, the well-being tripwire. Identify your personal tripwires. These are the first signs that your well-being is at risk. And I'm talking things like skipping two meals in a row, sleeping less than six hours a night for three consecutive nights, feeling resentful about basic things you're doing around the house or for your partner. These are tripwires, my friend. And for each one, I want you to create an automatic nonnegotiable intervention that happens when that wire is tripped. What this does is move self care from a someday maybe or an afterthought to a business continuity measure. There's also the ADHD tax that is related to relationship strain.
Something I talk about a lot as a former psychotherapist is most of us have a great deal of role conflict on a regular basis. We spend way too much time working on or in our business at the expense of everything else, including our relationships. This is a very heavy ADHD task because it affects our ability to connect with others. And if you are a follower or fan of Ned Hallowell, you will know that vitamin c or what he says vitamin k, he spells connection with a k, is one of the most important things we can do to maintain our well-being.
Here's the analogy, your relationships have something like a credit score. We'll just call it the relationship credit score. And this score goes up or down based on two things that are very challenging for folks with ADHD traits. I'm talking about reliability and consistency, ouch. Every time we're late to a meeting, miss a deadline, forget to follow-up, our relationship credit score with that person takes a hit. With our clients, it can mean losing an account. With team members, it might mean higher turnover.
And with friends or family, it often means increased tension and decreased support when we need it most. Even when ADHD entrepreneurs deliver exceptional work quality, this relationship tax from being inconsistent can undermine trust and goodwill, the very things that we need to sustain successful business partnerships and personal connections. The solution is the clear expectations contract. In order to minimize relationship strain from ADHD challenges and, frankly, the entrepreneurial lifestyle, here are some helpful strategies. Create transparency about your working style without oversharing or apologizing.
I have spent many a coaching session helping clients learn how to stop compulsively oversharing, which sounds like justifying, minimizing, and rationalizing when you're on the receiving end, and also apologizing. People don't wanna hear that you're sorry. They want to know that you're not going to do it again. So establishing clear communication protocols with clients and team members that work for your ADHD brain. For example, what are what response time frames people can expect? What are your preferred contact methods? What are their preferred contact methods? And then record that stuff where you're going to remember to look at it.
Building buffer time into all deadlines that you share externally can be an absolute lifesaver and reduce this tax. And developing standard scripts for following up on missed connections is something that I learned several years ago and now rely very much on, and there's no apologizing. I use humor and vulnerability to smooth out the tension. But what I used to do is just not follow-up when I felt that I was late because I was already too embarrassed. Don't do that anymore. You can also create relationship maintenance reminders to check-in with important connections regularly. And I've had some people say, well, if I have to schedule that, then how strong is that relationship?
I'm like, dude, do you have ADHD? If you have ADHD, it's not a matter of expecting yourself to remember simply because it's an important connection. You're not going to remember no matter how strong the connection is. So it's really a lousy litmus test to say, well, if I forgot, I guess it's not that important. That's a lie your ADHD brain is telling you, don't believe it. Here's a practical tool, the relationship repair kit. You can create a standardized step by step process for addressing situations where your ADHD has impacted a relationship. And if this is making your brain hurt just thinking about it, I strongly recommend that you turn to one of my unpaid virtual assistants named ChatGPT and Claude.
They are both generative AI programs. And when I feel like the last thing I want to do or can ask my brain to do is to create a standardized step by step process for anything, I turn to them. Now how might this look in the relationship repair kit? Well, it could include acknowledging the impact of your oversight without over explaining, offering a specific helpful solution that corrects the immediate issue, maybe sharing one concrete step that you are taking to prevent it from happening again.
Don't lie on this one because they'll be paying attention. And moving forward without dwelling or repeatedly apologizing. This is a big one because so many of us, you know, we feel like we dodged a bullet when somebody forgives us for something that we've done. But then we keep bringing it up because we keep feeling bad. In order to move forward, you name the oversight. You offer a specific helpful solution. You share one step that you're taking to prevent it from happening again, and then you move forward without continuously bringing it up.
Now having this relationship repair kit ready prevents relationship repair from becoming another task that you procrastinate on due to shame. So bring ChatGPT or any of the others into the mix. And if you want to remember to use this because you are one of those many, many ADHD solopreneurs that worries more about damaging your relationships than you worry about going bankrupt, then maybe even put it into a nice pretty format or handsome format. Use Canva, put it in a one page thing, and save it somewhere. Print it out. Stick it on a corkboard. Save it as a file on your desktop because out of sight is out of mind, and we don't wanna neglect our important relationships. That is a heavy ADHD task.
In conclusion, the ADHD tax doesn't have to be a crushing burden on your business, your health, or your relationships. And just like with real taxes, understanding what you're being charged for is the first step to reducing how much you owe. Your unique ADHD brain gives you so many creative advantages and really distinctive strengths as an entrepreneur. So the goal is never ever ever to try to get rid of, mask, or hide your ADHD. It's to work with your brain while strategically shoring up the areas where your resource bucket has a few holes. By implementing even a few of the strategies I've shared today, you can significantly reduce what you're paying in ADHD tax, and then redirect those resources toward growing your business, for example.
Or how about protecting your health, nurturing your relationships, and better enjoying your life? The most successful entrepreneurs with ADHD are not the ones who are trying to act like a neurotypical. They're the ones who have built businesses that work with their ADHD traits and tendencies. I hope you found this helpful. Please share it with someone who might benefit. And if you are keen to implement any of these strategies, be sure you grab the handout, which captures them all for easy reference at the link in the show notes. Thanks for listening, and I'll catch you next time.