Make boundaries specific and keep them visible
An easily-excitable ADHD brain forgets vague boundaries the moment a tempting offer arrives, and 'do less' has no defined limit so you drift back to doing just as much. Make boundaries specific and measurable ('two talks a month', not 'less'), and keep them physically visible so an exciting email can't quietly override them.
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A boundary only holds if the brain can’t talk its way around it, and two things make boundaries easy to override. Vagueness is one: ‘I’ll do less’ has no defined limit, so there’s nothing to breach — you simply drift back to doing just as much without ever noticing a line was crossed. Being out of sight is the other: an easily-excitable brain with an unreliable memory brushes a boundary aside the instant a more exciting opportunity lands. The countermeasures mirror a SMART-goal framing. Make the boundary specific and quantified — ‘two talks a month’, ‘nothing under this fee’, ‘seven days’ notice’ — so there’s a concrete limit you can actually tell has been hit. And keep it physically present: written down somewhere you’ll see it, a wall, a lock screen, a note, so a tempting message can’t make you silently rewrite it in the moment. A concrete, ever-visible rule resists the impulsive override that a vague, out-of-mind intention never could. Where the impulse is especially strong, this pairs with handing enforcement to someone else who isn’t feeling the pull.
