The Impossible Opportunity Cost of Doing Everything
We all know the moment when we realize we’ve said “yes” too many times. Maybe it’s a blinking cursor. Maybe it’s a half-warm cup of coffee gone cold. Maybe it’s your third attempt to open the same email. But in that moment, something tilts: the awareness that saying yes to one thing has meant saying no to something else… and no one told your brain.
This week on The ADHD Podcast, Pete and Nikki crack open the economic principle of opportunity cost—not in the language of Wall Street, but in the tender, messy vocabulary of ADHD. What happens when our neurological defaults make the unseen costs of our choices invisible? When our brains are wired to chase novelty, to dodge rejection, and to overestimate time like it’s a limitless currency?
Pete revisits the metaphor of the “red line”—a hard truth learned from a boss long ago, now a framework for managing finite energy with zero-based budgeting. Nikki unpacks how ADHD minds experience the psychic toll of every task: the emotional bandwidth, the recovery periods we never account for, the cost of starting something after we finish something else. They offer not only the language for what’s happening beneath the surface—but permission. Permission to stop measuring ourselves against neurotypical expectations. To say “I’m making space for this” instead of “I’m giving up on that.”
If you’ve ever felt the heavy guilt of unmade choices, or the strange sorrow that follows a hard-earned win, you’ll find resonance here. Because at the intersection of ADHD, opportunity, and peace, there’s a small sign that reads: You can stop lying to yourself now. You’re doing just fine.
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Pete Wright:
Hello everybody, and welcome to Taking Control, the ADHD podcast on TruStory FM. I'm Pete Wright and I'm here with Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Hello, everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
What would you be doing right now if you were not podcasting, Nikki Kinzer?
Nikki Kinzer:
Good question. I would probably be checking my email and doing work stuff, like admin-y stuff.
Pete Wright:
It's all about those opportunity costs. What are you not doing today?
Nikki Kinzer:
But I would rather be here.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
So I'm actually making the right choice.
Pete Wright:
You are making the right choice.
Nikki Kinzer:
Because if I had to choose, I would rather be here.
Pete Wright:
Yes, for sure. And that is what we're talking about today. It's opportunity costs and what you need to make peace with to let go of what you leave behind with ADHD. And it's okay. And that's what we're going to talk about and I can't wait.
But real quick before we jump in, if this show has ever made you laugh, cry, nod aggressively in public, or yell, "Hey, that's me," at your phone, please consider becoming a patron. It's like buying us a coffee every month except instead of caffeine, you are fueling this ADHD fueled podcast machine. Head to patreon.com/theadhdpodcast and help us keep the mics hot and the dopamine a-flowing.
And while you're at it, swing by takecontroladhd.com. You can listen to the episode, sign up for our email list, just an email a week. We respect your inbox like a sacred, sacred precious to-do list. And find us on all the socials, Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, all the places your attention might wander. And if you really want to hang out, come join us on our ADHD Discord community. It's free, it's welcoming, and nobody will ask you if you finished that thing you were supposed to do three weeks ago. We don't judge. Visit takecontroladhd.com/discord to sign in and say hi.
All right, Nikki, opportunity costs. You came in on fire last week saying, "We're going to do this as a podcast." And I said-
Nikki Kinzer:
I have an idea.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, we wrote about that in the book and you said, "Oh my God, we wrote a book."
Nikki Kinzer:
I forgot about it, yeah. So the inspiration came from a GPS workshop and a book that we wrote.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Nikki Kinzer:
Who knew?
Pete Wright:
It all goes back to that.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, yeah. So it's interesting because we do a monthly workshop in GPS and I wanted to talk about prioritizing, but I wanted to do it in a different way. I wanted to look at it in a different angle. And so opportunity cost came up as an idea because when we're prioritizing, we have to make a decision of what we're going to do. And when we say yes to something, it means that we're saying no to something else. And that opportunity cost is what we give up when we choose to do something else.
And when I brought this up to our meeting, you were like, "Yeah, I'm all in for that topic because I talked about it. Anything that I can tie economics with ADHD, I'm in." So I got our book out that we wrote, and I was looking at the passage that you do talk about this. And I'm going to quote Pete Wright, even though he's here to say it, I'm going to quote it for him, but then I want him to talk about what the red line is.
So Pete says, "We can't do everything. We have ADHD. So we think we can do everything. We can't. We don't have enough time, money, attention, or support. Sometimes we're the ones who have to draw the red line." So Pete, this is a story that you put into the book. Tell us what this red line is. Where did this come from?
Pete Wright:
Well, the red line is from an exercise I learned from an old, old, old boss years and years ago at a consulting company I worked for. And it was this concept called zero-based budgeting, which is a sort of common budgeting academic economic exercise. And the idea behind zero-based budgeting is that when you think about traditional planning, you assume that you're going to keep doing what you've always done and you try to jam other stuff into that fixed capacity. What zero-based budgeting does is it says, hey, we erase everything from your list. And then we say, what are the must-haves that you have to do? What are the things that you'd like to do to move forward in your life? And what are the things that you are less interested in doing?
Now when you map that list, prioritized, against your capacity, then you get to see where the red line falls. Your capacity dictates what the red line is, and at some point that red line is going to fall in the middle of your list of things that you'd like to do. And just seeing the red line as a metaphor for opportunity cost is absolutely critical for me to be able to say, "This is a thing I really want to do, but I also have to support these clients so that I can eat. I have to move these things forward because people are counting on me in other areas. There are things I have to say no."
Now, it breaks the illusion of ADHD and infinite capacity because we're people pleasers and we think we can do everything, but our brains need to hear sometimes that there isn't always room for one more thing, that we live in a finite system, because that's reality. That's reality.
So the whole idea between opportunity costs and zero-based budgeting, it's all about breaking the myth that we think we can do everything, but we can't. And it's okay to realize that. And doing so allows us to avoid ADHD-flavored burnout. So drawing the line is really, really hard because it feels like saying no to potential, but you're really saying yes to the stuff that matters more by going through the exercise.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right, right. Well, and what I want to talk about a little bit is just to give people some background, too, of why or how the impact of ADHD skews your idea of opportunity costs. Like how it impacts it, right? Because we know, yes, we have to make a choice, but why is that so hard when you have ADHD?
And it's interesting because when I was doing the research, I found three different areas that I think people are going to really relate to. One is that ADHD brains are particularly vulnerable to opportunity cost blindness. Now, we talk about time blindness all the time, but what happens in the ADHD brain is they see the shiny potential of everything, but struggle to see the hidden costs of saying yes to too many things. So going back to what you're saying, it's like they just continue to think that they can do everything because they're not seeing that. They're blind to it.
Pete Wright:
That's the ADHD fog.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, that's the fog for sure. And then there's these invisible costs, and it's not just about time. Every decision costs you mental energy, emotional bandwidth, physical stamina, and relational capital. So we're not even just choosing. We're choosing where our energy goes. We're choosing based on how we feel about things, how we feel physically, or do we have the energy to do it, the relationships that are all tied into our decisions. These are invisible costs that we're not thinking about.
And then with ADHD, of course, this is no surprise, you tend to underestimate the time and energy required for tasks. That time estimation is incredibly difficult. So it's not accurate, and you get frustrated at the end of the day because you can't do all of the things that you want to do. And what I think is a good takeaway is the pain that people are feeling when making choices isn't about, it's not weakness. It's really about awareness. Because what you're feeling as an ADHDer is the real weight of opportunity costs that others might ignore. I may not feel all of those things the same way that Pete feels. And so it is definitely a higher impact for an ADHDer than a neurotypical.
Pete Wright:
There is one other concept that I really like, and I'll bring it again from another place in the book, which is the budget of the unknown. Part of the reason that we live in this space of uncertainty and we become numb to it is this ADHD fog. It's this budget of uncertainty that we just aren't good at framing. We don't do generally a good job planning how long tasks are going to take. We generally don't take tasks and break them down to a level of detail that allows us to start budgeting time against them. And because of that, there ends up being zero margin once reality sets in and we start doing work and it takes us longer to do than we thought it would, because we have no budget for uncertainty.
That budget for uncertainty says that somewhere between what a task, what we think a task is going to take and what a task actually takes is gray area that we need to plan for. Now, opportunity cost doesn't take that into account at all. We're just thinking about the root thing. We're not yet thinking about what it's going to look like in our day. And we kind of have to think of all these pieces as they come together because all of them are budget categories, they're all attention and energy and uncertainty and focus. They're all budget categories that have to be added together.
Nikki Kinzer:
For sure. It's so true. I love that you can frame it that way, that they're all budget categories. It's a great way to look at it.
So there's a couple of things. Pete and I were talking before the show started about boundaries, a little bit about boundaries. And one of the things that makes prioritizing so difficult with ADHD is we sort of can forget that those even exist. In fact, when I did this exercise with my group, the question, this member looked at me like, I don't even know what you're talking about. What are these boundaries that you're even talking about? Because everything is being taken in.
And there's some reasons for that with ADHD. One, of course, is the fear of missing out. We know of FOMO, right? There is no filter to pause and sort what is most important. Right now, everything feels important. So boundaries go out the window. We don't want to have to decide between two competing tasks. They both feel important. I don't want to make that decision.
And then RSD comes into play, which people, we know we're doing a lot more conversation around rejection-sensitive dysphoria. For those who don't know what it is, it's an intense overwhelming pain, a response to perceived or actual rejection, criticism, or failure. So how does RSD come into play when you're making decisions? It's really interesting. One of two things can happen. The RSD can drive you to avoid situations where you feel like you might get rejected and turn down opportunities and not share your ideas or avoid certain relationships.
But on the other hand, it can actually, the RSD will push you toward people pleasing and overcommitment. And we've talked about this before, where we don't want somebody to be mad at us. We're the people pleasing. And so we're going to say yes to everything. And then the lack of boundaries, saying yes, we just don't want anyone to be disappointed in us.
And then, of course, we've got time blindness. We talked about the cost blindness, but we also have the danger zone of saying yes to too many things because time feels abstract. And there's this instant relief of saying yes to someone, even though we know that in the future that may come into being more of a disappointment. And so what makes us so painful is the overcommitment ultimately leads to the very rejection that you're trying to avoid. And we feel bad.
Pete Wright:
Well, let me frame that in a way that hits me, which I think is very similar, especially when we talk about the red line. So let's just say that I have done the work. I've made a great list of my priorities. I've budgeted for my uncertainty. I know where my red line is because my capacity is fixed. And I get to work and then I finish something big that is above the red line.
What is strange about that, you would think that would be a joyous occasion, but there is a hidden opportunity cost that lies in success above the red line, because when I win above the red line, it means I now owe energy and attention to a new task. And with my ADHD brain, that activates perfectionism, fear of failure, adding this emotional toll to the cost of entry to a new task. Getting started becomes a massive, massive weight. With everything I finish, starting the next thing becomes that much harder to do.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. And I'm going to talk about that exactly, because what you're talking about is the ADHD tax. It's not just about finances. We think of the ADHD tax as this financial cost that we're losing, but it also applies to time and energy. And what's interesting is what you're talking about is something that so many ADHDers don't put into account when they're planning their day, is the cost of task switching, which is exactly what you're talking about. It's approximately 25% higher for ADHD brains.
And then the other hidden cost is recovery periods. And this is something that blew me away when we were doing this workshop, is that we talk about transition time all the time. We're always talking about giving yourself that buffer to task switch, whatever that looks like, getting outside, giving yourself a half hour in between meetings, whatever. But what we don't talk enough about is the recovery period, which is so important for ADHD. So the more intense focus and the harder the task is that you've done, the more recovery you need. And that just completely goes out the window.
Pete Wright:
That's right.
Nikki Kinzer:
And so what was so fascinating when I was doing this workshop and everybody was just like, "Whoa, wait, what?" I know I should give myself 15 minutes in between meetings, but this explains so much about why when you have a really on day, the next day isn't so on. Because you're recovering.
So we did an exercise in the workshop that we're going to put together for you in a download that you can get in the show notes. And it's very interesting because it basically is like an Excel sheet that you put down the task that you're doing and you put down how much time you think it's going to take, and then you times that by two because that's the real time. Everybody tells you to double what you think it's going to take. And then you also have to add 15 to 20 minutes for transition time. And then if the task is of intense focus and a hard task, now you have to add 20 minutes, and you get to see what the real time is compared to what you estimated.
And pretty much it's always about, I did it on meal planning and I started at 30 minutes and it ended up being about an hour and a half after you put that in. And now, of course, everything's going to change a little bit because something that isn't as intense, you're not going to need that recovery time. So that may not triple, but it may double or whatever. But it's just a really interesting exercise to see what you think you can do and what you really can't when you're incorporating these things. So yeah, I think that those are the two costs that we don't always, especially the recovery costs, that we just don't talk enough about.
Pete Wright:
Well, and I think that planning is really hard with the ADHD brain when it comes to doing that kind of estimation. And I think the worksheet is really good. The idea of taking the choice out of your brain and putting it on paper.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Just show me a rough calculation that will help me get to a general sense of how long it's going to take. And then I'll start a stopwatch and see if that lines up to me. My hunch is it will, because even when I don't plan it, it's not even just the recovery time, it's that recovery time also massages in distraction time, time when I'm looking away and not thinking about what I was supposed to be thinking about or answering the phone or something like that. It munges together all of the associated deficit time for any focused task.
And I think that's really important. I don't want to have to do that math in my head when I'm working on my calendar. Sometimes I just need an algorithm to do it, because I'll get distracted on the math and won't do it.
Nikki Kinzer:
For sure.
Pete Wright:
And I don't think you have to do it forever.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, no. This is just for awareness.
Pete Wright:
Just for awareness. Do it for a couple of days or a week and see how it hits, but just to give yourself a sense for the way it works for you.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, and I think that having this conversation, and again, going back to our book, is when you're planning, you want to know what the impact of your ADHD is. And this is what these exercises do, is they build that awareness and they give you something to think about. So you are more cautious about trying to put everything in, or if anything, feel less shame around not being able to do everything, because it's not your fault. You're putting unrealistic expectations on yourself, and really just getting that wrapped around your head.
One of the things that I find the most joy when I am talking to the members of GPS is when they can say, "I didn't get to everything and I'm okay with that." Or, "I was able to prioritize the most important thing today, and I got that done, and I feel good about that." And so we're focused on what you got done and not everything that didn't get done. So it's a mindset shift too, of being able to say, "Yeah, things are going to take me longer. And that's okay. That's okay."
We have some other mindfulness type of exercises that we'll put into the download, some awareness type of exercises, one that we did in the workshop that I got some really good response with. And again, this is just all about awareness, but you talked about perfectionism and I didn't. Do you want to talk a little bit more about how perfectionism falls into this?
Pete Wright:
Well, yeah. I mean, there is a certain expectation that we set of ourselves that is driven by ADHD and past experience, and it's that pressure that comes with the image we have of ourselves being defined of other neurotypicals, how we think they see us. And so perfectionism is driven by this need, sometimes explicit need, sometimes implicit need, to overcompensate in order to somehow keep up, get ahead, just manage our days against a baseline that is not ours, that is a neurotypical baseline, and that drives that particular variant of perfectionism.
And some people, no judgment, you're a type A, you're a perfectionist because you have excellent taste and you just want the best out of everybody that you work with. We'll call that a different thing. But when you have ADHD and you are motivated to excel by comparing yourself to neurotypical standards, that can lead to a pressure induced sort of perfectionism that causes some really maladaptive behavior, that causes a drain on all of the budgets we talked about, the attention, the energy, the focus budgets, the emotional bandwidth, cognitive energy, and most important for this conversation, decision fatigue. All of these things are impacted, and ignoring them comes at that cost that we call the ADHD tax in terms of the body and the mind.
And ultimately, it's a deflationary cycle that usually ends in imposter syndrome because you can't live up to that standard the way you've painted it in your head and you feel like a fraud. And if you take a step back and are able to take those parasympathetic breaths and realize what you're doing and go back to basics, make your list, understand your capacity, and you can make great strides toward accomplishing the most important things and letting go of the ones that aren't.
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely. Yeah, I love that. We have a, and this is just a little bit of a different angle around it. One of the exercises that we did is it's very simple. You just complete the following sentence. I won't start blank unless blank. And it just gives you some awareness around what do I feel like I have to have to start something? And is it getting in your way?
And that's where the perfectionism, from the point of view that I was talking about, is where is it stopping you from getting started? And is it true? And so yeah, we've got a couple of these different exercises that we hope you enjoy and help build some awareness around the opportunity cost.
Pete Wright:
And just the last point, though, after all of this stuff, awareness is all sort of step one, but the last part is the making peace part. It's in the title of today's show. Where does the peace come in? Because I can imagine a lot of people listening to this are like, okay, now I'm aware of all the ways that I think poorly about myself, and I use either/or thinking and negative self-talk, and I'm a perfectionist because I'm overcompensating. But when does the peace set in?
Nikki Kinzer:
I love that. And this is where more of the mindful exercises are going to come in. First of all, though, before I talk about that, I want to stress that it goes back to knowing that it's okay, that we are doing that acceptance of this is how ADHD impacts me and I'm making peace with that. It's not just accepting it, but I'm making peace with the fact that things are going to take longer. I'm making peace that I'm not going to be able to do 10 things and that it's okay. So it really starts with that. We didn't say that that's what it was, but that's what that is, right? Is making peace and coming to terms with that.
But I think it's also, in addition, actually more so, is having that compassion towards yourself. We have a compassion exercise around how do you approach this with more compassion rather than shame? How can you reframe giving up on something? So "I'm giving up on," is more self-critical, but "I'm making space for," is definitely a lot more of a positive approach. So it's also reframing how you speak to yourself. So it's that mindset of how you view prioritizing and making these decisions. And instead of saying, "I'm giving up on doing admin work this morning," I'm making space to have this great conversation with Pete Wright and I can do the admin work at another time when I have space for that. So it's also letting go of that they don't have to compete. They can both happen when they need to happen. And that's hard-
Pete Wright:
That's really hard.
Nikki Kinzer:
... to come to terms with, right? But that's what this is trying to do, is help you be more comfortable with that and more comfortable. And I think trusting yourself with your decisions and knowing that you can change your mind. I think that sometimes that black and white thinking gets so stuck where you think that, okay, if I prioritized these top three things today, that's the way it has to be, or I failed. No, no, no, no. Those three things can change. We don't know. So it's also giving yourself space and peace to know that those things can change and nothing's wrong with you when that happens.
Pete Wright:
Well, I think the last point for me, it's just a reminder that like everything that we talk about, it's a practice. And-
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely.
Pete Wright:
... just going through this process once as a sort of discernment and figuring out, oh, sure, it does take me longer to do stuff. Duh, that's not the point. The point is to be thinking about this every day that you have productive time, that you want to get things done, and to use it as a reminder that you can be productive and joyful. You can be productive and happy. You can be productive and not feel like you're running a race every single day.
And I think that's the important message for me, is that we do get stuck in either/or thinking, but once we go down this process of practicing with our incredibly creative and elastic brains, we can get to navigating those trade-offs of either/or and get to both/and and realize that through prioritization and understanding how our brains relate to time, we can think of more capacity without lying to ourselves about what that cost is. That's the point. Stop lying to yourself. That's how it hits me.
Nikki Kinzer:
Good stuff.
Pete Wright:
Good stuff. Thank you, everybody, for hanging out again. This is the last episode of our 30th season. We're going to take some weeks off. We've got some reposts that are coming of classic episodes. That'll be coming over the next several weeks. And we will be back in, I don't know, a few months. We're taking a couple months this time.
Nikki Kinzer:
Couple months. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Six, eight weeks. But there will still be activity in Discord. There'll be still some member episodes that are coming. So head over to patreon.com/theadhdpodcast if you want to get in touch with the member activities that are coming. Thank you for your patience and giving us a little time to reset and recuperate. And honestly, thank you for not leaving Patreon while we do it. We need a break.
Nikki Kinzer:
Because we'll still be in Patreon. We're still doing all the things.
Pete Wright:
Right. It's not just current production of new shows. So we appreciate your understanding and patience as we give ourselves a little bit of TLC over the next several weeks, and we will be back and very excited to do it. We've already got the first couple of months of our schedule locked in for next season. I can't wait. It's going to be great.
So thank you, everybody. We appreciate your time and your attention. If you have something to contribute to this conversation, head over to the show talk channel in the Discord server. Join us right over there, again, at patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer, I'm Pete Wright. We'll see you next season right here on Taking Control, the ADHD podcast.
