Why Delegating Feels Emotionally Unsafe for ADHD Entrepreneurs

You hired someone good. The work was fine. You still sent the late-night Slack message, redirected the task, and checked in on something that had already been handled.

This episode looks at what the research suggests is actually driving that pattern. Not trust issues. Not a bad hire. A specific kind of perfectionism that shows up differently in people with ADHD.

Two studies help explain it. A 2016 study found perfectionism was the most common cognitive distortion in adults formally diagnosed with ADHD, endorsed by 55% of the sample. It was not close. A 2023 study then looked at what kind of perfectionism. Their findings indicate ADHD founders are not setting impossibly high standards. They are feeling the gap between what they expected and what was delivered more intensely than others. What drove avoidance most strongly was not perfectionism in the traditional sense, but the persistent feeling of falling short, even when the original standard was reasonable.

Delegation becomes the thing most associated with that painful shortfall. So the brain starts treating it as a threat.

Friday's episode covers the practical side: how to structure delegation so the gap is smaller from the start and your perfectionism has less to react to.

What We Cover:

• Why ADHD perfectionism research suggests it is not about high standards but about feeling any shortfall more acutely than others
• How the discrepancy between expected and actual output drives avoidance in ADHD founders specifically
• The two scenarios where delegation breaks down even when the team is competent and the work is solid
• Why the founder who re-enters delegated work is not micromanaging but responding to a learned pattern of emotional pain
• What Friday's episode will cover on structuring delegation to reduce that gap from the start

 P.S. Losing work because the admin layer around your business can't keep up with you? Invisible Systems is a 90-day done-for-you sprint where I (Skye) extract the processes from your head, build the operating layer, and find the right person to run it. Six spots left at the founding price, book a call at invisiblesystem.co

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

It's the feeling of not being able to let something go that has sort of your name attached to it. It's not necessarily like a trust problem. It's this sort of learned sort of fear of a launch where that gap between what you can find and what your client ends up receiving is going to be too big. And the negative feeling of missing that goal or missing that mark or like underdelivering is sort of the feeling that's drive this avoidance through hiring and delegating.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of the ADHD Skills Lab. Today we're going to be talking about delegation, founders, experience of delegation, why people with ADHD struggle to delegate and what we can do about it. But before we jump into that, Robbie actually had a thought, if you were here for the last episode that we did on encoding, about something to do with uh basically how we set up encoding in our day-to-day life with our memories. Well, for those of you who need a recap on what encoding is, basically what we found in that episode was that basically we think we don't remember, but it's actually that we're not encoding things properly at the time because we're distracted or we're not focusing. Our our ability to recall is good. Our ability to encode is not.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

I don't know how common this is. I assume it's sort of an ADHD working memory thing, so it might be more common than I think. Where you remember you need to do something, and you remember you need to do something else related to that as well. So in today's case, it was like I needed to get drinks for sort of the podcast in the fridge, and I was like, oh, and I also should get some grapes for the boys because it's run out. And I went to the computer, loaded up the shopping app, added, and and I I I do this every time. I've noticed that this is a recurring pattern where I take the thing I remembered from previously, like yesterday or the day before or last week that I haven't done yet, and I go, that one needs to be prioritized because like I clearly haven't done that one yet. So I put that thing in first, and the act of doing that shuffles the thing I just thought of completely out of my memory. And then I'm wandering back through like the bathroom or the whatever, like trying to find the like memory anchor that like started this thought. Like where like what I'll yeah, and again, that's the thing, like going into the room or the place where you had the thought, looking for the thing that triggered the thought, trying to like get that idea or memory back. And eventually I just gave up because like I because it because it wasn't triggered off anything physical. Like it sort of often it is, but in this case, it was like, no, I was just getting the studio ready and I was like, oh yeah, we don't have any drinks. And it wasn't until I came back in here and started like finishing getting it ready that I was like, oh, okay, like you know, half an hour later. But you said it was interesting, you said you always, yeah, you always try and do the one that you I'm always prioritizing the one that I have forgotten about previously that I've added on to this task. And I was thinking about that in terms of encoding. That's the one that I've just demonstrated I can recall, that I'm probably not gonna lose. I'm wondering if I'm doing the exact opposite strategy where I'm dropping or putting down the thought that just occurred to me that I haven't encoded, that I'm I'm gonna lose really easily, and I'm prioritizing the the to-do task that has clearly demonstrated that it is encoded because I've recalled it.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

And I think this is a really common meme or thing that we see with regards to ADHD is this idea of ADHD people as kind of being, you know, we're like wandering around the house, being like, oh, actually, this reminds me of this thing, and then we go and do that other thing, and then we've got like 10 half-finished projects around the house.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Yeah, I mean, I I did catch myself while I was doing it. I was like, the baby is sleeping, we should be recording, I should be prioritizing this, but I know I'm gonna forget these things again. So if I add them to the shopping list now, that's only 10, 20 seconds, and then I'm wandering around trying to find what that first thing I forgot was, and then we finally get in here to record, and I go, Oh, that's what it was. And so I go back to the room to add it to the shopping list now. So at this point, it has become a disruptive task, it has become a distraction.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

So, what recommendation would you give then for other people who are going, yep, that's me? Do you have any recommendations?

SPEAKER_01 4:00

I'll report back. On I'm gonna try and remember to put down the task that I've already demonstrated I can recall and just remember the one because it's such a common thing. Like I can think of like six recent examples where I lose, I I do the other thing that I've added to this task and I drop the thing that I just thought of. I'm wondering if I reverse that order, I'm gonna be more consistent at grabbing both and then just moving on with my life.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

It's worth trying.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Yeah, because the idea from that encoding episode was if you can demonstrate that you can recall it what three times on three seven occasions.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Yeah, and that is you demonstrating that.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Yeah, I mean, I've I've demonstrated that I can recall it at least once, sometimes several times in the last you know week. Still hasn't actually made it to the like you know, the shopping app or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Yeah, sometimes I do feel like I'm playing chicken with my tasks. You know, I have a prioritization filter, it's really amazing. We've set it up, we work with other people, you know, we we set it up for them as well. And yet sometimes I am still there just being like, I'll remember.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

I found my what's it called, like a quiche, like a breakfast quiche type thing. I found that in the microwave. I looked at the time, I was like, I'm pretty sure this is only two and a half hours old, so I can reheat it and eat it safely. This is okay. Didn't lose one.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Let's jump into we're gonna talk about perfectionism, and this is something that I have been learning about, but actually Robbie bought me a paper today that I've never seen before that really sh shook me for lack of a better, better word, when it came to ADHD imperfectionism. Yeah, yeah, 100%. So there's two different scenes here. So let me know what you relate to. So the first one is the I just can't find the right people. So the founder is overworked, their hours are unsustainable, everyone's telling them to hire, they hire a business coach, and their business coach tells them to hire, and they're like, God. If that were like I could have asked my friend, like that was the same advice as they were giving too. So they agree, they know they have to do it. They hire somebody, but it doesn't work out, the person doesn't save them time, they just give them more work to do and stress, and then also the emotional strain of like having to say goodbye to somebody. It's it's you know, it's difficult. So they try again and then eventually they're just like, look, I just can't find good people. No one else can do this the way I need it to be done. And sometimes they are finding the wrong person. Like that is true. That is very, very true. And there's systems that we use, you know, test projects, no interviews, things like that to help reduce that. But even when the person is good, the founder just cannot transfer enough of the vision for the work to land right. It just doesn't feel like it's going through and it's never what they have in their head. So that creates a lot of self-criticism. Why can't you do this? Why can't you hand this over? Like sort of the sense of no one can do it like me, I'm the best, or like maybe I suck because I can't figure out how to give this to other people, and and you're in that combo. So that's the first one. What do you think about that idea? I just can't find the right people.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Yeah, so you sort of end up with this feeling that attempting to delegate is just a lot of work, sort of setting yourself up for disappointment and failure anyway, and it's not worth the effort.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Yeah, and I think it's it's true. I see this a lot with people. It's emotionally difficult to let go. In fact, I was working with somebody the other day and they had to hire. And one of the reasons they didn't want to hire was they were like, Well, if I don't like them, I feel like I I don't I can't fire them. Like the only thing worse than hiring somebody is firing somebody. And so when people say hire fast, fire fast, or whatever they say, cool, but like that's just there's nothing more frustrating, you know, and I've been through this before. There is nothing more frustrating than going to the work and time and energy of bringing someone on in your business, and then you have to let them go, and now you still got all the same problems, and you had all of the stress and wasted time of onboarding somebody and then saying goodbye to them and they weren't happy, and they said, No, I could I could do it, you just, you know, XYZ. Like it's a real it's really stressful.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

I think especially when you kind of know that the person was good, they were competent, but like something was going wrong. And again, this is I think the brief gap episode that we did around the difficulty transferring the sort of founder's vision to the team, or in this case, like an EA or or someone that you're trying to delegate to, is gonna be particularly relevant here in terms of like why that disconnect's happening. But yeah, without knowing that that's the cause and how to solve it, you're just experiencing this this very frustrating failure at the end of a lot of work and a lot of money.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Yeah, seriously, seriously. And then the other side of it is this sort of related side where the team is good, but nothing fully leaves. So the founder has people around them, they're good people, there is delegation, but the founder is not actually letting go. And I I relate to this. I've definitely been this person before. I know a lot of people who are this person where you just send those late-night slack messages, you're redirected, redirecting work that's already in progress, you're sort of giving out questions like, well, where are we on that? And you're sort of like putting yourself back in work that has been delegated throughout the process. And it confuses the team, it feels like their rules are changed, it feels like they're on shaky ground. And it's not really about micromanaging, but it's like it's like you've you've delegated, but now for some reason you just can't let go. And everyone feels that.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Yeah, I think the important thing to emphasize with these two scenarios is that it's the it's the feeling of not being able to let something go that has sort of your name attached to it. It's not necessarily like a trust problem, but it's this sort of learned, learned sort of fear of a launch that's going to a launch where that gap between what you have in mind and what your client ends up receiving is going to be too big. And the the negative feeling of sort of missing that goal or missing that mark or like under-delivering or yeah, or or falling short of your promises is what's really like uh is is sort of the feeling that's driving that sort of resistance to delegating, this avoidance to hiring and delegating. Coming back to the first one as well, I think that was a point we wanted to emphasize is that it's when after all that delegating, the client gets something and it's not what what the founder had in their head that that sort of self-criticism kicks in and is really severe for ADHD people in particular.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Yeah, it's a brutal feeling, and it's really tied to this emotional dysregulation, rejection sensitivity, all of those conversations that we have.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Yeah, so we're gonna jump into a couple of papers on ADHD and perfectionism and how it sort of differs from neurotypical perfectionism. I don't know if that's I don't know. Neurotypical perfectionism.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Yeah. And and then we'll sort of talk about some of the pros and cons of the studies into whether they actually did uh identify this compared to people who don't have ADHD. But it's an interesting look at why this is happening. And obviously, you guys probably know by now the next episode we do that you listen to will be about the strategies that you can use and the practical takeaways that you can have for like what to do about this. But first, we wanted to really identify what is happening because it feels like what is happening is that there's just a lack of trust, or you know, maybe the team just is never good enough, you know. This person just has high standards, and that idea of perfectionism. I mean, I found it really interesting, even with everything I've read and learned about perfectionism over the years, Robbie. You still bought some papers here that I had not taken on board that really transformed my perspective on on how we're doing things. So I'm excited to get into them.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

I was just going to caveat again around like obviously delegation can go around for a bunch of reasons that aren't related to the founders' page. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

You can just have bad teams.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Yeah, yeah. You can have people who aren't sort of qualified enough for the job or aren't competent competent enough. Obviously, yeah, like obviously there's a bunch of reasons why delegation can fail, but this is one that's ADHD specific that you wouldn't necessarily know about or think about.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Exactly. This is like when the team is good, but it's still not working kind of situation.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

We know we should be, we've said we're going to, and then we're still getting late-night slack messages. You're still on top of the issue, you're like we're all wondering okay, so this hasn't been handed off. Why is it still haven't been checked into?

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Actually, to give you a sense of that, I was reading a book called Systemology this week, and he gave an example of this where he talked about he was doing an event and the whole team was running the event and they had this. And then he was like, you know what, I'll just go check out the event space and have a look at it. And he gets there on a Friday afternoon, and then the meet the event is next Wednesday, and he looks at it and he goes, Oh my god, I think this is gonna be too small. I think this room is too small. Oh my gosh, and he like freaks out and he like messages a whole bunch of people and like messages the venue and he's like, Ah, it's too small. And um finally his message gets back, because it's a Friday afternoon, to the person who's running it, and he they just go, Yeah, we we know it's too small. We had a look and we spoke to them, and we're moving to a different room, like they had done the whole thing, it's already solved, but he was like spending the whole weekend just running around, like, oh my gosh, what if it's not solved, and da-da-da, and trying to get a hold of people, and like he just needed to he's had like a unofficial, like an unplanned chicken and made a lot of assumptions without all the context. It was really funny to have been prepping for this session and then read that book because it was very, very similar to what we're talking about today. So let's get into the first paper. So this paper is by Straw Meyer and colleagues from 2016, and this was an assessment of the relationship between self-reported cognitive distortions and adult ADHD, anxiety, depression, and hopelessness. And what this paper really wanted to look at was if somebody is clinically diagnosed with ADHD, so they weren't looking at, you know, symptomology, that kind of thing, it was like DSM diagnosed with ADHD. What is the most common kind of distorted thinking that they engage in? So that can be like overthinking or, you know, black and white thinking, or in this case, you know, perfectionist thinking as well. So they defined a cognitive distortion, they talked about it based on some research, as a habitual pattern of thinking that misrepresents a situation, often in ways that create avoidance, procrastination, or self-criticism. Very crucial, that self-criticism part. But it's the idea of like, oh, this is really stressing me out, so I won't do it. You know, the reason we are not doing you put your taxes off because you're like, oh, it's gonna stress me out to do that. That would be kind of distorted thinking in this example. They've got a really nice little graph here, so shout out to them. There was perfectionism, which is the one we're talking about, emotional reasoning and decision making, which is like making decisions for emotional reasons. Then there was comparison to others, then there was emotional reasoning again, and that's the part that tripped me up. I'm not 100% sure what that is about. Then there was magnification, mind reading, minimization, jumping to conclusions, externalization of self-worth, fortune telling, and labeling. So these were some of the cognitive distortions people couldn't get. But one of these was way higher. The one that was way higher was perfectionism. So this was the most common. It was endorsed as a thing that people were experiencing by 55% of the sample. Everyone else was like a close third, fourth, you know, far, far away. So the study designed for this was they did a university-based outpatient clinic, 30 adults formally diagnosed, as we said, with ADHD. Mean age was 36, which is quite old for this group of people. So it ranges from 20 to 60. And yeah, this is what they found was that 55% of the sample were engaging in perfectionism specifically. And this was was really interesting because a lot of people will come to me and say, I'm not a perfectionist, and then they will engage in perfectionistic decision making. You know who you are. So this often comes up, and it I think I'm hearing it more and more amongst founders now. So let's just go into a little bit about like what they meant when they said decision making. I want to pull that. So one of the limits of this paper is they're not telling us as much as we would like to know now about what is going on with this perfectionism, which is why Robbie went and found another paper, which is honestly one of the most interesting papers I've read in ages on ADHD. So, do we want to jump into that one, Robbie? So this paper. We're gonna stick on because there's some stuff in here. Okay. So it's by Bo Dalski and colleagues from 2023, so pretty recent. It's uh it says low standards yet disappointed. ADHD symptoms and experiential avoidance in college students. And you know when it has an interesting title that it's gonna be an interesting paper. So basically, what this paper looked at is they said, okay, we know perfectionism is a link with ADHD. You know, you could see it in the last paper. But what kind of perfectionism? And this was how I learned that there were different kinds of perfectionism because I actually was not across that. But most people think about perfectionism as holding yourself to impossible standards. It's the classic, like you go to a job interview and then they ask you for your weaknesses, and you say I'm I'm a perfectionistic workaholic, and they're like, okay, we believe you.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

So the you know, the data is considered to be a fake wrong answer, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Yeah, it's it's it's sort of a thing. I mean, I I think I probably did something similar back in the day, but to be fair, I now run my own business. Yeah. So, you know, but the data does say something different about perfectionism because there are both what what they called like more adaptable versions of perfectionism and more maladaptive versions of perfectionism. If you are hoping for the adaptive version, then I'm sorry to disappoint you. I was disappointed. And this this matters enormously when we're talking about why delegation feels threatening, even when the person who is engaging in this perfectionistic behavior is a little bit confusing because they themselves are not perfectionistic. You know, they're a bit more on that impulsive side, but they're still doing these things that you would consider to be perfectionism, which can get really confusing. So let's get into the study design. So this was an online survey examining perfectionism as a potential explanation for why ADHD symptoms are associated with avoidance. So this was experiential avoidance, the idea that we just, yeah, don't want to do things that we don't like. So the desire to avoid situations that produce painful memories. So online survey. So keep that in mind because that's always going to be a different thing. But because of the fact that it was an online survey, they had 3,720 undergraduates from six universities. It was not a formal diagnosis of ADHD, it was just measured through the DSM symptoms checklist. And I was like, wait, people can do that. I thought we weren't allowed to just grab the DSM and and you know start handing that out, but whatever, they did it.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

They probably rewrote each as a question. They must have. Yeah. So kind of a self-reported self-diagnosis without any of the like extra checks. I'm guessing if it's an online survey, they might not have run the full 18. They might have shortened it to like nine or that's true.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

That's true. So yeah, we're talking symptomology, not a confirmed diagnosis. So keep that in mind as well.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

And then they're pretty common in this research, this kind of research. It is pretty common. It's not our favorite.

SPEAKER_00 19:44

Yeah, it's not our favorite, but it's pretty common. Although, yeah, we we don't mind it outside of things. Like if someone says I have ADHD symptoms, I feel like I have ADHD symptoms, then we're like, welcome, like join in. Like this is a safe space. But it's more, it's more when academia does it and then doesn't admit it, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

One of the things I want to look into is are there things that we sort of know about ADHD that are now not that are not currently included in the DSM criteria?

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Like more like when they're sort of the I think there's a level of hypocrisy for if you're somebody who's like, you have to get a diagnosis or you can't say you have ADHD even at all, but a lot of our academic research does not require you to have a diagnosis.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

High proof of like a high high requirement of evidence on people talking about ADHD publicly, but then very low on the studies that you're actually performing.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

That you're using that are contributing to decision making around like medication use, for example.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

It's more the double standard you object to.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

Exactly. Exactly. So this this study was looking at a perfectionism stale. It was a the almost perfect scale revised, and it had three subscales. It had the standards, so high how high a bar somebody sets for themselves. So I want to get it perfect, I want to get it exactly right. The desire for order, so neatness, organization, also associated with perfectionism. You know, the kind of person who's like cleaning as soon as they've barely finished eating and now they're washing up, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Not surprised we're not a match for that one.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

Yeah. No.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

I mean preference for.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

I mean preference. If someone else was to do it for me, then that's great. And then there's the discrepancy. So there's that's the I never quite measure up feeling. So feeling a persistent gap between expectations and actual performance. So that's not the idea that you're trying to get an A if we're talking grades. It's more like I was trying to get a B and I feel like I'm getting it's you're it's not about going for the top, it's more about just feeling like you're never good enough.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

Yeah, so it's it's the discrepancy separate from the standards.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

And then yeah, they they did a mediation, a mediation analysis to test whether the perfectionism substagale explained the path from ADHD symptoms to experimental avoidance. So, what is leading to this experience? Avoidance. So what they found was I don't like this guy. I don't appreciate this, but this is what they found. Was that we have lower high standards. So we don't, we didn't tend to set really high standards for ourselves, but we felt really bad about not hitting the standards that we did set. So we had the negative side of perfectionism and not so much the positive side of perfectionism.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Yes, we have that pain of the discrepancy between our only moderate or perhaps even low standards and the actual results. And that that's the part that could potentially leads to avoidance without the I guess it's funny, like just in just in terms of standards, standards, order, and discrepancy, I guess they're saying, at least with the standards part, if you're setting really high standards for yourself, even though it probably has a lot of other negative externalities, you are like tending towards overachieving, um, at least in the things that you're perfectionistic about.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

Yeah, it was it was a bit brutal.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

We can we can wait, but uh yeah, let's let's finish the paper. But I I am wondering, I'm like, are any of these really positive traits? Like they're all sort of part of a negative.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

That's true. I mean, I guess none of it's super positive. Some of it just I think it's just, you know, like which one would you want to say in an interview is probably the way I would put it. Like standard. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

I like to keep things organized and neat.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

Yeah. I beat myself up on a channel.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

Yeah, okay, fair.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

Yeah, exactly right. Which one could you say? And they were like, huh, that's interesting. So you don't hold yourself to a high standard. You don't feel like things should be organized and neat. But every time someone says that you didn't do a good job, you're like, oh, that hurt.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Or even just every time you feel like what was delivered. Because again, I think of this as this is often in your own head and not necessarily however other people are feeling about it. It is possible that your team was going to deliver something that the client was quite happy with, but it wasn't what you had in mind. That gap feels particularly bad for ADHD.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

So yeah, they found that the discrepancy subscale was the strongest driver of the path from ADHD symptoms to experiential avoidance. So perhaps unsurprisingly, we tended to avoid things the most because we had this really high connection to feeling like we were gonna fall short of our standards. So we had these, you know, lower personal standards and higher perfect perceptions of falling short of the standards that we had. So we engaged in what they considered the muladaptive version of perfectionism. We just we beat ourselves up a lot more than other than than we did anything else when it came to this sub-scale.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Yeah. So it's not about ADHD perfectionism demanding more of others. It's just the it's about feeling that shortfall more acutely than others.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

Which, if you go back to that example from the book, I mean, I don't know if he has ADHD or not, but it you do kind of get that feeling of like going back in.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Something drove him to turn up the chicken when he wasn't, it was it clearly wasn't a arranged chicken.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

It wasn't necessary and it wasn't an arranged chicken, but he was like, I'm nervous about falling short.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

Yeah, I really want this to do well. This event really hurt if it doesn't.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

Yeah, and then he goes to the event and he's like, Oh my gosh, it's gonna be no one, there's not gonna be enough space for everybody. It's gonna be the worst thing ever. I'm gonna like look like a failure.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Like, so that kind of you can sort of tell there, like it's not the team, the team obviously wasn't incompetent. He probably doesn't think that they're incompetent. He probably, if he stopped and thought about it and was like, because it's sort of almost an emotional space, an emotional reaction. If he stopped and thought about it, he'd be like, Well, surely I I know, I know the person I've delegated this to, they're very competent. They won't have not turned up and done a like check of the space and made sure it makes sense. I won't be the first person doing this, but that's not really what's driving it. What's driving it is I'm just really worried about this falling short. Yeah, what if what I want to deliver.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Yeah, it's that sense of it. And I think we all have that, you know, like if you you get a you get a negative review or somebody's not happy with your system, and there's this feeling of like, oh, I should just do it myself. That way I could guarantee that it's gonna be like better, but it that's not even true. Like other people will do things way better than you, but you know, there is this feeling of wanting to go small. Like we talk about that sometimes, right, Robbie? We talk about that idea of like making your life smaller, but you're gonna be like, Yeah, we've been talking about sort of minimalism versus like I guess maximalism.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

I this idea that like you're sort of trying to shrink.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

I think it kind of relates here.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

I think definitely one of the downstream consequences of this feeling is yeah, not delegate. Like you if you can't delegate, you're you're really hamstringing your ability to sort of up. I mean, again, we've talked about um ADHD having trouble with scaling. Yeah, and this will be like another part, probably I again like we talked about because that was a meta-analysis on entrepreneurship and ADHD. Very good, very, very good like entrepreneurial attitude, very good at like sort of I think taking sort of entrepreneurial action, and then the scaling part was like negative relative to the neurotypicals, and this will probably be part of it, is struggling with delegation.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

Well, I feel like with the hyper focus thing, I feel like when I am in hyper focus, I can kind of like break through a lot of that anxiety about things not going well or not meeting high standards because I'm just like in the zone, and then as soon as that's done, then all of that sort of like, but what if it's not good? And what if people don't like it? Sort of tends to come back in. And that's just my experience. I might be unique, you know.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

I think like, okay, so like at first I would check, like you relate to this feeling of like I really don't like it when my deliverable if I hand something off to someone and they do a bad job of it and that is like client-facing, or even if it's just, you know, that's my sort of performance for this month in terms of what we achieved and what we like, what we were wanting to achieve and where we actually reached that feeling, like that that's like a visceral. And then I think what you were trying to say there is you notice the absence of it while you're in hyper focus.

SPEAKER_00 28:07

Yeah. So if I'm in a hyper focus, so we when I think about things that I've done, like starting this business, building this the initial website for this business, for example.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

If you're the one that was done really fast.

SPEAKER_00 28:17

And sometimes you you say to me, like, well, why don't we slow down and think about A, B, and C? But it's sometimes it's like, let me cook, because if I stop cooking, I'm gonna start to get stressed about all the ways this could be bad and all the ways this might not work. But if I'm just like kind of going for it in one hyper-focused session, I can usually, and I don't do this as much. This is something I used to do more in the early days. I'm like, then I can just get the website up, email 10 people about it, put the picture on, it's good enough, and I'm like just in the zone of just like doing okay, you know.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

Yeah, we've kind of circled back to the it's not a high standards issue. It's you're more than happy to get like a minimum viable product out.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

And then build it to high standards in case anyone's wanting to.

SPEAKER_01 29:02

Yeah, yeah. And iterate and improve on it later. When it's you when you're doing it and you're the one, you're the one doing everything, you haven't delegated anything. And you know, because at least then if there is any problems, it's because you couldn't figure out the fix for it. For the most part, it matches your vision of what you had in mind. It's as close as you could get it, you know you've put like an appropriate amount of work into it, that's good enough, launch it.

SPEAKER_00 29:24

Yeah, but then if I was to like, if you said to me like, don't launch it, come back tomorrow and then do it again and think about it again, that's where a lot of that anxiety about falling short and things tends to come in. I guess what I'm saying is like those spurts of hyperfocus, at least for me, and I'd be really curious to to hear what anyone else does, those moments are are like they don't have the the negative side of perfectionism in them, at least for me, as much as if I'm working outside of those hyperfocus moments.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

Okay, so okay, so there's two things I want to explore here. So one is this is about you controlling everything and doing it all yourself as opposed to delegating it. But this, and then the second thing is also even if you weren't delegating it, stopping and taking time to think on it longer would also create that like that back in. Yeah. Whereas just like there's almost like a if I just worked on it all day and then launched at the end of the day and moved on to the next thing, there's no time for you to feel the sort of negative effects of this.

SPEAKER_00 30:29

We're moving too fast to feel the negative effects. And also, you know what it is actually, because it's not it's not about other people doing it, although funnily enough that is true, but that's mostly just a fact of-cause that's what we're talking about today. That's I know uh that's mostly just a factor of going fast and doing it myself because I am going fast. Like if there was somebody next to me and we were just doing it together, then awesome. We could we could do that same thing, but it's more about the fact that no one has seen it yet. It's going from zero to a hundred before other people see it. And then when other people see it, then that mullet like like that negative perfectionism kind of comes in a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

I know I'm taking us off topic a bit.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

I'm gonna split it again. So yeah, one, you just said as long as they're sitting next to me. So I'm guessing if you like did it all day, handed it off to someone in a different time zone, they did it for the next day, you're gonna have that problem.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

Yeah, yeah. It but if if someone was working next to me and we were just like shipping this thing in one day, I'm just curious to know if this is anyone else's experience because this perfectionism thing was really interesting to me.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Yeah, well, yeah, because obviously we're studying, we're looking at this as it relates to delegation, but um which we appreciate and agree with you that you should do.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

However, I was just curious about the hyperfocus and perfectionism connection as well.

SPEAKER_01 31:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you're looking at this to hyperfocus in terms of like when you really feel like you're in the flow, you're saying like the next day, if it's no longer what I'm working on, then looking at it and what comparing it with what you think what you want to get to next, or well I think I think if I'm being completely honest, and I mean it's my podcast, so I guess I will be.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

I think if I'm being completely honest, like a a lot of the things we do require a lot of pushing through like the fear of being seen or doing something wrong or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, and you know this, you've talked to me about this before. You've been like, oh my god, I can't believe you're doing this. Like I couldn't, I couldn't do this, you know. And I guess what I'm saying is sometimes because I experience the maladaptive side of the perfectionism. I do relate to that for sure. I'm like whole like having that, you know, self-criticism and that kind of thing. It it's not gone, but sometimes it's just like I can get into a zone and I can just push through it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:46

Sort of the you're almost talking about the benefit of not taking the time to talk with the demons on your shoulder, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 32:53

Kind of. There's a bit of a sense of like we're just gonna close that box and we're gonna just go for it today, and then we'll like open the box again tomorrow, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

Yeah, because obviously if you ruminate on all of the like criticisms people could make or the ways things could go wrong, or like yada yada yada, you can sort of ruminate yourself into an anxious state and then and then not execute and not do anything. I think I think this is very much a separate episode on I suppose like the benefit of not standing still, like a rolling stone gathers no mask or something.

SPEAKER_00 33:25

Maybe a minimum viable product, yeah, combo.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

It sort of comes back into that. Um I can't remember who it was saying, like uh talking about reps in terms of like uh turning up imperfectly and doing the reps that help you get to that level.

SPEAKER_00 33:41

But mostly I'm just really curious to know if anybody else experiences this. Like if you ha understand what I'm talking about, like tell us because I really want to know if this is a thing, because obviously we're working at the at the sort of bleeding edge of research right here when it comes to like the extent of knowledge on on this kind of thing. So, in some ways, when we get to the edge of like, okay, this is what it means, there is a world for us to to gather data on this podcast almost and say, Well, what do you what do you think and how am I experiencing things? Because that sort of helps add sort of colour to the data. The things that used to freak me out, like going on podcasts, for example, they're like I don't have to worry about that now. So yeah, there is a bit of like you just kind of push through it, and at least this has been my experience, you push through it when you can, and then you it gets easier, and then also to kind of le lean back into the delegation, but having somebody doing the stuff that used to stress you out, like negotiating and all of that kind of stuff, that means you don't have to engage with as many parts of it that would trigger your negative perfectionism. So actually, per delegation can be really helpful in that way.

SPEAKER_01 35:00

Yeah, there's a lot of instances where other people are going to be much better at doing a much better job on various tasks. It's it's not like you are the best person to be doing every role in your business. No, it's it's is like the answer to this is ironically like delegation, but effective delegation. And obviously that means hiring the right people, but it yeah, we'll get into later. We're sort of circling back and touching on some of the brief gap recommendations around why that delegation is failing.

SPEAKER_00 35:27

Yeah, yeah, 100%. Okay. So let's so what did these two papers tell us? We've got these uh, you know, the 2016 paper and the 2023 paper. The 2016 paper showed us that perfectionism is one of the most common cognitive distortions in ADHD adults by a lot. Most ADHD founders carry this pattern whether they recognize it as perfectionism or not. And then the 2023 paper found that the ADHD flavor of perfectionism is not high standards. It's harsh, harsh self-judgment for any shortfall and the discrepancy between what was expected and what we did. And, you know, the what this means is that we tend to want to kind of reduce delegation because we're like, what if I give it to somebody else and it's not very good? And then I will feel that self-judgment really harshly. What if, you know, I I want to do it perfectly, but I'm not gonna be able to do it perfectly. And ironically, the solution is actually delegation, because delegation can mean when you're working with good people that you don't have to experience some of the negative effects of perfectionism.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

Yeah, so the the sort of failure to delegate is downstream of the output not matching the vision, which doesn't mean the output was just bad or like again, generally speaking, it's because the vision, the communication of the vision to the person or team doing it is the tricky part, um, especially for ADHD founders. But yeah, that output doesn't match the vision. That's happened frequently enough and it's been sort of painful enough that delegation is now kind of the thing we're avoiding. It's sort of viewed as the threat, the thing that's going to cause that gap. Sort of relating back to the idea from the paper, which is harsh self-judgment, maybe related to experiential avoidance. A repeated falling short of expectations leads to avoiding the thing that's sort of perceived to be causing it.

SPEAKER_00 37:21

And like everything we talk about, this is not a you know, a personal failing. This is how we are experiencing the world with ADHD for a variety of different reasons.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

Yeah. And I think again, it can be, obviously. It like it can be mixed in with personal failings, you know, like a like there can be a lack of trust or, you know, a a tendency to micromanage, but we're just sort of carving out space for or the founder's just having a real hard time communicating what he wanted, and they are really viscerally feeling that gap.

SPEAKER_00 37:52

Exactly. And we talked a little bit about this with the brief gap. If you haven't listened to that, I highly recommend you go back and listen to that episode. If you want to know which episode that is. We will cover it a little bit though. Yeah, we will cover it a little bit. You're totally right. So, what we're gonna be doing on Friday is we're going to be looking at how to find the right person and structure the role so the gap is smaller from the start. Super useful. I actually literally used that in a session I had with the client right after I read it from you. It was a good reminder. How to make delegation real so it's not a fake handover, and then we'll review the brief gap and the tools that we can use to do double duty here. So both fixing the brief and reducing what your perfectionism has to react to, which is incredibly useful and something I use all the time. So we'll see you there. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the ADHD Skills Lab. If you liked it, leave us a five star review. It helps other people learn more about us. And thank you so much to our wonderful team for making us sound good, look good. We couldn't do it without you.