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You have a business, or several. There is the main thing you do, the course you started building in the spring, the collaboration someone suggested over coffee, the handful of domain names you have registered for ideas you have not started yet, and the new thing that arrived in the shower this morning and felt more exciting than all the rest put together.
Each of them is half-built. None of them is paying you properly. And somewhere underneath it all is a quiet worry that you are working harder than ever and your income is still unpredictable.
If you have ADHD or AuDHD and you work for yourself, this is one of the most common patterns I see. It is not a lack of discipline, and it is not a sign that you are bad at business. It is how an ADHD brain responds to ideas. Once you understand that, choosing what to focus on becomes much easier.
Why ADHD brains collect projects
Psychiatrist Dr William Dodson describes the ADHD brain as running on an interest-based nervous system. In plain English, it switches on for things that are new, interesting, urgent or challenging, and finds it hard to switch on for things that are simply important.
A new idea ticks almost every box. It is fresh, it is full of possibility, and nobody has asked anything difficult of it yet. The middle of an existing project ticks almost none. It is repetitive, the novelty has gone, and the next step is usually admin.
So starting feels like progress. You get a rush of energy, a plan, a logo, and very often another domain name. Then the energy fades at exactly the point where the work would start to pay, and the next idea is waiting.
Seth Godin has a name for that stretch. In his short book The Dip, he describes the long, unexciting middle between the thrill of starting something and the point where it starts to pay off. Most people quit in the Dip, and the ones who get through it are the ones who succeed. For an ADHD brain, the Dip is exactly where the next shiny idea turns up. Knowing that helps you recognise the moment for what it is. You are not bored because this is the wrong thing. You are in the Dip.
The hidden cost of spreading yourself thin
Every project you are running needs its own marketing, its own admin, its own emails and its own space in your head. Switching between them is not free either. Each time you pick one back up, you spend time and energy working out where you left it.
Multitasking feels productive, but for an ADHD brain it is an especially expensive habit. Running several projects at once really means switching between them, over and over, and every switch costs you focus.
Income tends to come from repetition, not novelty. It comes from doing one thing well, for the same kind of client, often enough that people know you for it and send others your way. Five half-built projects rarely add up to one steady income. More often they add up to the swings I wrote about in the feast-or-famine cycle, busy and broke in turns. And if the one thing that does pay is not paying enough, that may be a question of how you price your work rather than what you do.
You do not need fewer ideas. You need somewhere to put them.
Your ideas are a strength. The ability to see possibilities that other people miss is part of what makes many ADHD and AuDHD business owners so good at what they do. The aim is not to stop having ideas.
The aim is to separate the few things you are doing from the many things you are holding. Holding an idea costs almost nothing if it is written down somewhere safe. Doing it costs time, money and attention you may not have to spare right now.
A simple way to choose what to focus on
Write down everything you are currently working on or planning, including the things you have not admitted to anyone yet. Then ask three questions of each one.
- Do you love doing it? Notice how you feel when you imagine spending a whole week on it.
- Does it use what you are best at? Your skills, your experience, the things people already come to you for.
- Will people pay for it, again and again? Something you can repeat builds a living. Something you have to reinvent every time drains it.
One of my favourite books on this is The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. At its heart is a single question they call the Focusing Question: “What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” For an ADHD brain, that question cuts through the noise, and it is often the quickest way to spot your main focus.
Your main focus sits where the first two cross over: the work you love that also uses what you are best at. The third question tells you whether it can support you, and how. From your answers, choose one main focus. This is the thing that gets the best of your time and energy. Then choose one maybe, something you keep warm with a little time each week, and everything else goes on your ideas list. If parts of your main focus could be handed to someone else, this is a good moment to notice which.
This is where time blocking comes in, and it is something I encourage my clients to do. Protect a block of time every day for your main focus, before anything else gets a look in. It does not need to be long. Even one protected hour, at the time of day your brain works best, with notifications off and nothing else on the list, will move your main focus further than a whole day spread across everything.
Commit to your choice for 90 days, and put a review date in your diary now. This matters for an ADHD brain. It is much easier to commit to something for three months than to something that feels like forever, and the review date means nothing is lost for good.
The ONE Thing has a lovely image for why this works. A single domino can knock over another one about half as big again as itself, and that one knocks over the next, until a chain of small dominoes brings down something enormous. Ninety days of steady effort on one main focus works the same way. Spread that effort across five projects and the chain never gets going.
When a new idea arrives halfway through
It will. Probably next week. When it does, write it on your ideas list straight away, so your brain can let go of it.
Then ask one question. Does this help my main focus, or is it something new? If it helps, it might deserve a place now. If it is something new, it waits for your review date. Most ideas look different after a few weeks. The good ones will still be there, and you will be in a much better position to act on them.
As Keller and Papasan put it, success is sequential, not simultaneous. Parking an idea is not saying no to it. It is saying not yet.
When choosing is harder than it looks
Sometimes the problem is not the method. It is what choosing means. Letting go of a project can feel like letting go of part of who you are, or admitting that something you loved did not work out. Choosing one thing can also bring up a fear of choosing wrong and missing out on the thing that would have taken off.
For AuDHD readers, the uncertainty of change can make this harder still, even when the current situation is not working either.
This is where talking it through with someone helps. Not someone who will tell you what to choose, but someone who can help you hear what you already know about your business, your energy and what matters to you. If you would like to see how your business is running right now, my free ADHD Entrepreneur Chaos Audit is a good place to start.
FAQs
Why do I keep starting new projects and never finishing them?
With ADHD or AuDHD, new projects bring the interest and energy your brain runs on, while the middle of a project, where the repetitive and admin-heavy work sits, brings very little. So the pull towards starting is strong and the pull towards finishing is weak. It is not a character flaw. Making a deliberate choice about what to focus on, and parking the rest, makes finishing far more likely. My guide to actually finishing projects goes into this in more detail.
How long should I stick with one business idea before deciding it isn’t working?
Give it long enough to get past the exciting start and into the steady part, which is usually where income begins. For most people that means at least 90 days of real, consistent effort, with a review date set in advance. At the review, look at what has actually happened, not how you feel about it that week. As Seth Godin suggests in The Dip, decide in advance whether something is worth getting through the hard middle, so the decision is not made for you on a flat Tuesday afternoon.
How do I stop getting distracted by new business ideas?
You do not need to stop having them. Give every new idea a home straight away, such as a notes app or a notebook kept for ideas, so your brain does not have to keep holding it. Then look at the list on your planned review date rather than acting on the idea that day. Most ideas look different a few weeks later.
How can an ADHD coach help me choose what to focus on?
An ADHD coach helps you step back from the day-to-day and find where the work you love meets what you are best at, look honestly at what is working and what is draining you, and make a choice that fits how your brain works. Just as importantly, coaching helps you stick with that choice when the next exciting idea arrives, and adjust it when something genuinely needs to change. You can read more about ADHD coaching for business owners and the self-employed.
Considering 1:1 coaching?
If you are seriously considering one-to-one coaching for yourself, a Discovery Session is the place to start. It is a short conversation to see whether we would be a good fit to work together. Twenty minutes on Zoom, free.
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About Linda Fox
Linda is an ICF-ACC credentialled adult ADHD coach (ADHD Life & Business Coach, CALC), with lived experience of ADHD herself. She has been coaching adults with ADHD since 2000, one of the very first specialist ADHD coaches in the UK.
She works with entrepreneurs, legal and medical professionals, and others navigating demanding careers, helping them build practical strategies that fit how their brain actually works rather than fighting against it.
UK-based, supporting clients with ADHD and AuDHD worldwide on Zoom.
