No one launches their own business in search of exhaustion. But for so many of us with ADHD-ish tendencies, overworking, over-delivering, and over-researching often become our default—especially when our own sense of “enough” is broken or never got calibrated in the first place.
This episode goes deeper than productivity advice; it’s about safety, self-worth, and learning what sustainability truly requires.
I share the real reason our inner “enoughness meter” is so hard to find—and how you can start recalibrating it for sustainability (not burnout).
Sometimes, the pursuit of “above and beyond” is really about chasing safety, not satisfaction.
What you’ll learn:
1. Why your “enoughness meter” is so damn hard to read.
Diann Wingert explains how, for entrepreneurs with ADHD, it’s not about laziness or lacking motivation—a lot of us just genuinely can’t judge when a task is finished.
2. The two main tracks that shaped your patterns:
Are you the “overachiever” always collecting gold stars, or the “compensator” trying to cover every base (and then some) out of fear of dropping the ball? Maybe both? You’ll discover your origin story—and why it matters.
3. The “Enough Already” Framework (it has five parts!).
Get real, actionable tools—like calibration questions and the Enough Algorithm—to help you finally stop overdoing and start celebrating what’s truly “good enough.”
4. How to tell the difference between flow state and fear state.
If you keep working because you’re energized, great! If you’re pushing through out of anxiety or fear, Diann Wingert shares how to spot the signs and what to do instead.
5. How to set micro-commitments and collect EVIDENCE that enough really is enough.
Try out the practical scripts and journaling prompts, and learn to recalibrate that internal workload meter (it CAN be done!)
Mic Drop Moment:
"Enough isn't about lowering your standards. It's not about doing mediocre work, striving for the bare minimum, or simply not caring enough to do better. It is about directing your excellence strategically instead of indiscriminately."
Try It With Me
Pick your area. Make a micro commitment. Collect your evidence. And then—here’s my ask—email me and tell me what happened when you stopped at enough. I want to hear where you struggled, what surprised you, and how it felt when it finally got easier.
We’ve run past the finish line for too long, measuring our value by exhaustion instead of impact. Now’s the time to recalibrate.
And if you want the full road map, join me on ADHD-ish—I’m here every week, sharing the hard-earned lessons I’ve learned (sometimes the hard way), and cheering on every step you take towards “enough.”
Ready to try? I’d love to hear your story. Email me at diann@diannwingertcoaching.com or DM me on LinkedIn
About the Host:
Diann Wingert (she/her) is a seasoned coach, consultant, and the creator/host of ADHD-ish. Drawing from her many years of experience as a former psychotherapist, business owner, and someone who thinks "outside the box," Diann is known for her straight-talking, no-nonsense approach to the intersection of neurodiversity and business ownership.
So picture this, it's 9pm you finished the client deliverable at 6 and it was good, really good actually. But you're back at your desk at 8, tweaking the formatting because it could be better. You tell yourself just five more minutes, but you know damn well it's going to be an hour, if not more. Here's my question, when did you decide that the 6pm version wasn't enough and more importantly, based on what? If you just had that uncomfortable oh shit, I think she's talking about me moment, welcome.
Pour yourself something, get comfortable because we're about to talk about something that plagues damn near every entrepreneur with ADHD I work with. You have no idea how much enough is. I'm Diann Wingert and this is ADHD-ish. Here's what I see constantly smart, capable business owners who genuinely cannot tell when they've done enough. Enough research before making a decision, enough revisions before shipping the damn thing, enough service to satisfy the client, enough hours before calling it a day. And I want to be really clear about something, this is not about your work ethic.
This isn't about being lazy or lowering your standards either. This is about the fact that your internal meter is broken or more accurately, it was never properly calibrated in the first place. This is one of those not in the DSM features of ADHD that no one, including your therapist, warned you about. So, you end up over delivering on every project and training your clients to expect free extras. Overworking to the point of diminishing returns because you can't tell when you've crossed that line over researching decisions until the opportunity has passed you by, and over committing because you can't accurately estimate what things will cost you and the fun part?
Well, you're exhausted, resentful and burned out but everyone thinks you're crushing it because your work, it's exceptional. They don't see the 9pm formatting sessions or the fact that you've included six bonus deliverables that nobody asked for and you ain't getting paid for either. This is the thing about entrepreneurs with ADHD specifically, and by the way, I'm including the self diagnosed, the subclinical, the “I have all the traits but never got tested” crowd. We all tend to operate at the extremes. All or nothing. Everything or nothing. There's just not a lot of middle ground in our brains. If this isn't your first episode of ADHD-ish, you've probably heard me refer to it as full ass or no ass because we simply can't half ass anything.
So when it comes to effort, quality, service, research, we don't naturally land at sufficient. We blow past sufficient, wave at it in the rearview mirror and keep on driving until we run out of gas. Now, this did not happen by accident, you didn't just wake up one day and decide, you know what? I'm going to make sure I never know when to stop working. There's a backstory here, and understanding it matters because it reveals what you're actually trying to achieve when you can't stop. I tend to see two main origin tracks, and you might recognize yourself in one or in both.
First, there's what I call the overachiever track. You were the responsible kid, the reliable one, even with your ADHD, the one that parents and teachers could count on when other kids would drop the ball. Maybe you had siblings who were messier, less dependable, more chaotic. So you became the good one, in fact, it became your identity. And here's what happened next, you got rewarded for going above and beyond gold stars, praise, opportunities, scholarships, whatever the currency was in your world. So your brain learned above and beyond equals safety, value, acceptance and belonging.
Good enough? Well, that's for people that aren't like you. Except now you're 40 something running a business, and you literally cannot locate the line between excellent and excessive because they've been the same thing your entire life. Then there's what I call the compensator track. This one's different, you spent years feeling like you were playing catch up. Missing deadlines, forgetting things, losing shit, disappointing people, not to mention yourself, again and again and again. You knew you were smart, but the output usually didn't match. So you developed a strategy, overcompensate, like a mofo.
Do twice as much to make up for the inevitable ADHD fuckups, build in redundancy, over prepare, over deliver. I mean, it probably started as kind of an insurance policy. I might forget something, so I'll do a little extra just to cover my ass. But somewhere along the way, the insurance policy became your standard operating procedure. You're still paying premiums on a policy you might not even need anymore. But here's the thing both tracks have in common, you're not trying to be perfect. You're trying to be safe. Safe from criticism, from disappointment, from being found out, from being too much or not enough or just plain wrong.
And, you know, the strategy worked for a while, maybe a long while, but ultimately it's not sustainable. And I think that's why you're listening to this even if you're kind of hating me a bit right now. It's okay, I'm wearing my big girl panties and I can handle it. So let's keep going and get to the good stuff, okay? So with this in mind, I created something that I call the Enough already framework and I'm going to walk you through it today. The framework has five parts.
One, you're never enough signature, this is where it shows up most intensely. Two, your origin story so you know which of those two tracks I just described that you're on. Three, your calibration questions, which are domain specific reality checks. Four, the Enough algorithm, it's kind of like your decision matrix when you're stuck. And five, the practice, how you actually build your enoughness muscle. Now let me walk you through one section in detail so you can see how it works. And when I say detail, don't freak out. It's not that complicated, trust me.
So part one is your daily effort and output. This is where most of my clients will score the highest. Now, as I read through these next few items, I want you to rate yourself one to five. One is the lowest, five is the highest. Ready? I regularly work past the point of diminishing returns. I feel guilty ending my workday if there's still something I could do. I judge a good day by how exhausted I feel, not the results. And I struggle to celebrate completion because there's always more I could have done. If you scored fours and fives on most of these, yeah, this is your primary pattern.
Now here's where it gets practical. When you're in that moment, let's say it's 6pm the work is good, but you're thinking about tweaking it, you need calibration questions. Here are a few I recommend, what would I need to accomplish today to consider what I'm doing a professional success. And I want you to name one to three specific outcomes, did you hit them? At what point am I refining versus actually improving? Is the client going to even notice the difference? I call this one fluffing the pillows because it's something I'm in the habit of doing, but nobody but me notices or cares. If I were paying myself by the hour, which if you're self employed, you kind of are, would this extra hour be worth my rate?
This one is brutal, but so effective and what is the minimum viable version of excellence here? Not mediocrity excellence, just not the flawless version that no one expects or is paying you for. Now, these questions interrupt the automatic just a little more loop and force you to think strategically instead of reactively or just by habit. Now we're going to talk about the Enough algorithm. It's my favorite part of the framework because it's kind of a decision tree for when you're stuck in the “well, shouldn't I just keep going” spiral? Because your brain's going to always tell you just a little bit more.
So stop and ask yourself first, have I met the stated standard? And I mean the actual standard, not the one that you invented at like 11pm or 1am long after you should have stopped, the one you agreed to, quoted for, promised, and are being paid for. If no, what's the smallest next action that'll get you there? If yes, move on to question two. Second, will the next hour of effort create visible value or am I just trying to manage my anxiety? Friend, this one requires brutal honesty. Because here's the thing, most of the time we keep working not because the work needs it, but because we need the feeling of working.
It soothes something in us. It proves something to us. It's also helping us avoid something. So if you're overworking to manage anxiety, I want you to stop and use a different anxiety management strategy. Get up and go for a walk, call a friend, journal, meditate, work out, whatever. More work is not the solution and third, am I still working because I'm engaged and energized or because I'm afraid to stop? There is a huge difference between a flow state and a fear state, and many of us don't recognize it. Flow state feels like possibility, fear state feels like obligation. I want you to let that sink in and commit to practicing getting in touch with your body so that you can start to feel the difference.
Now, it's going to take time because you've had this pattern for a long time but remember, this pattern is learned. You were not born this way, and everything that is learned can be unlearned. Your nervous system will be so much easier to regulate by unlearning this pattern. If you're afraid, stop now. Because here's the thing your brain won't tell you, the fear will not diminish with more work. It'll just attach itself to the next thing that you're going to overdo. You ready for the fourth one? If this were someone else's work, would I think it's done? I mean, just pretend your colleague is showing you this exact same deliverable.
Would you say, this is great, ship it. Or would you say, shit, I think you should start over or maybe just a little bit. You would tell them it's done nine times out of ten. So if that's what you tell your friend, be a friend to yourself, it's done. Full stop. I want to give you a real client example. I have a client, let's call them Sam. Sam was creating a workshop for a corporate client. The contract specified a two hour workshop with a companion workbook for attendees. Simple enough, right?
Well, by the time Sam came to our session, they had created a four hour workshop with a 40 page workbook, a pre work assignment, a post workshop email sequence and was contemplating adding a follow up group call, I cannot make this shit up. Now none of this was requested by the client. None of it was going to be paid for by said client, Sam was doing it because they “wanted to make sure they got value” unquote. So I asked them, do you think the client will feel that they got value from a two hour workshop with a reasonable workbook?
Sam paused, “Probably, yeah”. So who are you doing this for? The pause was longer this time, “Me I guess, I'm trying to prove I'm worth what they're paying me”. There it is. I actually had to look away for a moment because I wanted to give Sam a chance to experience that truth when without feeling self conscious, even though it was me, we ended up using this framework, the same one I've been sharing with you to help Sam see they were trying to solve an internal problem with external effort. The solution wasn't more deliverables, it was addressing the worthiness and enoughness question directly.
Well, I'm happy to say that Sam delivered the two hour workshop with a 12 page workbook. The client was thrilled, gave them a testimonial and even booked Sam for three more workshops. Turns out enough was actually enough. So, here's how you can start working with this framework. I recommend that you pick one area, just one. Don't try to recalibrate your entire relationship with effort, research, service delivery and boundaries all at once. That is the same old pattern. Talking, you know, the more is better pattern. So I want you to pick the area where you scored the highest. Maybe it's daily effort, maybe it's decision making, maybe it's boundaries.
Choose one, then create a micro commitment for this week. If you need a script, let me give you this one. This week I will stop work when fill in the blank is complete even if I could do more. I want you to fill in that blank with something, something specific. Like this week I will stop work when I have completed my three priority tasks even if I could do more. This week, I will stop researching when I have input from three trusted sources even if I could find more options. I'm a big fan of three, by the way. But whatever it is, make it specific and measurable because your brain will blow past anything vague. Then, and this is crucial, collect evidence at the end of day one.
Note, what did I stop doing that I would normally have continued? What dire consequence did I fear, did it happen? What did I do with the reclaimed time or energy? Because here's what you're going to discover, the consequences you fear almost never materialize. The client didn't even notice that you didn't include multiple bonus deliverables. The decision you made with only three data points worked out fine, and the workday that ended at 5 instead of 9 actually didn't tank your business and that evidence is what starts to recalibrate your enoughness meter.
I want to leave you with this mindset shift because it's really the whole game. Enough isn't about lowering your standards. It's not about doing mediocre work, striving for the bare minimum, or simply not caring enough to do better. It is about directing your excellence strategically instead of indiscriminately. I want you to recognize that you have a finite budget of energy and attention, we all do. Every hour you spend polishing something, you know, fluffing the pillows, polishing something that's already good is an hour you don't have to spend on something that actually moves your business forward.
Every decision you delay because you think you need one more opinion or another few hours of research is an opportunity someone else is going to grab in your place. The goal isn't mediocrity. The goal is sustainability and sustainability, showing up consistently, delivering excellent work without burning out, and being in business long enough to build a reputation. That is how your excellence actually matters. You can be the most talented person in your entire industry, but if you flame out in three years because you didn't calibrate what enough really is, your excellence doesn't compound, it just exhausts you.
But it starts with recognizing that you don't have a problem with work ethic or standards or commitment. The problem is that nobody ever taught you where the line actually is. You've been running past it your entire life and wondering why you still don't feel like you're doing enough. Well, now you know and like everything else, when it comes to our ADHD, knowing is actually half the battle. Now go reclaim your right to be and do enough and I'll be back here again next week.
