Danielle RalstonFounder, How Capacity Works · Founder of ND Hive | Building the productivity hub where work actually gets done | Execution spaces, body doubling & community accountability

Understanding Spoon Theory and ADHD Burnout

21 Feb 2025 · 1 min

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This content was created by Danielle Ralston. This content was uploaded by Danielle Ralston. This is a YouTube video titled "Understanding Spoon Theory and ADHD Burnout" (created 2025-02-21). The excerpt is a short conversational exchange between two speakers (labeled SPEAKER A and SPEAKER B) discussing the spoon theory metaphor for limited daily mental/physical energy, variability in how many "spoons" one has each day, the risk of burnout when pushing past limits, and how baseline tasks (getting out of bed, eating, showering) consume spoons—with specific reference to the experiences of women with ADHD and how they often sacrifice self-care.

And the thing, like for us, the spoons, how many spoons do you deal with? So, so this next one, I can only deal with so much in a day and that limits and varies from day to day. I will experience burnout if I push beyond this limit. So when I say I can't do anymore, I mean it. By groovy beans.
Oh my God.
There are days that I wake up with 9,000 spoons and I have 9,000 spoons to do everything. I got plenty of spoons to think through the process of taking a shower and doing all of the things. There are other days I wake up with 2 spoons. That's it. That's all I have for today. What does that mean? Where do I sacrifice the spoons to? Very often, especially for ADHD women, we very rarely sacrifice the spoons on ourselves.
I think people think that just your regular everyday baseline operations, people don't realize that those take up spoons. So getting myself out of bed and eating is a few spoons.