235: Completing Tasks with ADHD – Are You Getting the Credit You Deserve?

Give Yourself Credit for the Miles You Actually Flew

Our son flies in and out of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson, the busiest airport in the world, and storm season means his flights get rerouted constantly. Checking his flight on the app one night, I watched his plane’s actual path, a chaotic zigzag of circling and detouring around weather, next to the neat dotted line the app draws for the direct route. He landed and joked, half-serious: do I get credit for all those extra miles I flew?

He doesn’t. Airlines only count point A to point B. But that question stuck with me, because it’s exactly what happens to us trying to complete a task with an ADHD brain. It’s rarely a straight line from starting something to finishing it. There’s a whole lot of flying off course in between, and none of it shows up on the flight log.

The running back problem

Think about a football running back handed the ball, sprinting hard left and right across the field, dodging tacklers, completely winded by the time he’s finally brought down, only to look up and see the stat sheet credit him with one single yard forward. All that real effort just doesn’t register on the record that matters.

That’s what a four-hour stretch of genuinely trying can feel like when you get to the end of it and can’t check a single box off your list. It’s maddeningly easy to conclude you got nothing done, even though you were working the entire time.

Fix one: track what you tackled, not just what you finished

A pending list (a brain-dump of everything you might want to do, with nothing required to actually happen) works better than a rigid to-do list for exactly this reason. But the real key is pairing it with a tackled list: a record of everything you actually did, including decisions. Deciding not to do something, deciding to break a task into smaller pieces, deciding to hand something off to someone else — all of those are legitimate ways to tackle an item, even without finishing it outright.

The tackled list is how you claim credit for the miles you actually flew. Instead of “start dinner” sitting unchecked because dinner never technically started, your tackled list might show: emptied the dishwasher, reloaded it, hand-washed extra dishes, pulled ingredients from the fridge and pantry, discovered you were missing one, researched a substitute. None of that was on the original plan. All of it was real, useful motion.

Fix two: run a mini time audit

If you keep ending days exhausted with nothing to show for it, try a recurring 15- or 30-minute timer with a notes app open. Each time it goes off, jot a quick line about what actually happened in that window. Some entries will be doom scrolling or staring into space trying to figure out where to start, and that’s honest data too. But plenty of entries will reveal genuine, forgotten progress that never got credited anywhere.

Phone calls are the classic example

A “quick call” rarely is one. Making an appointment, confirming a prescription refill, clearing up a billing mix-up — these sound like single five-minute tasks. In reality: the person isn’t available, the call raises a new question you have to research, you need more information before you can finish, the date you wanted isn’t open so now you’re digging through your calendar, or they need everything emailed instead of said aloud. Every one of those steps, the callback, the research, the follow-up note, is a legitimate entry for your tackled list, even though the original task is still technically open.

The bare minimum version

If tracking any of this feels like too much, at least build the awareness in the moment. Notice when you’re off course and name it honestly: I’m not failing at this task, I’m making a necessary evasive maneuver around a storm, and I’ll land on the other side of it.

Your practical, actionable step

Next time you close out a stretch of work feeling like you accomplished nothing, stop and actually list everything you did, decisions included. Give yourself credit for the miles.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.