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

22 Feb 2025 · 1 min

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Danielle Ralston explains spoon theory, a metaphor for daily energy that varies from day to day. For people with ADHD, basic tasks like getting out of bed or showering use up spoons fast, and pushing past your limit causes burnout, especially for women.

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.