We Can’t Do It All

We’re repeatedly told throughout our adult lives that we can’t do it all, and I think that’s deeply unfair. Not only because they say this in one breath, and in the next they’re wondering why we aren’t doing more, but because my own brain is echoing the same sentiment. Why am I not doing more?

It never seems like there are enough hours in the day or days in the week. Inevitably, things fall through the cracks left and right. There is always something—or, in my case, many somethings—left undone. Things I need to accomplish that instead sit unfinished and mocking me.

But there I go using that word again. Need.

My therapist and I recently had a long discussion about that word. Well, really, the conversation was about my tendency to throw that word around quite a lot. I need to pick up the toys in the living room. I need to clean out the refrigerator. I need to reorganize my daughter’s craft supplies. I need to try that new bread recipe I found online.

All of these tasks take up equal space in my brain. Each one scrambling for my attention. The weight of everything I need to do presses down on me at all times. One thing after another gets added to the pile, increasing the pressure until it’s near crushing in its weight.

This is probably why I’ve had Surface Pressure from Encanto on repeat in my car for weeks. Louisa, girl, I feel you.

This feeling of pressure and feeling overwhelmed is what I’ve been discussing with my therapist for the last few sessions. I feel like I’m always failing. If I’m finally getting it together in one area of my life, it’s falling apart in another. I’m perpetually failing because I’m not able to accomplish all of the things I need to do.

After listening to my rapid mental spiral—with a surprising lack of judgmental staring—my therapist asked me a very important question: Do those things need to get done, or do I just want them to get done?

The question threw me. Obviously, I’ve heard of the whole needs vs. wants thing as a general concept, but usually—at least in my experience—it’s been in reference to my tendency to impulse buy and overspend. I may want that gorgeous new set of metallic markers, but I don’t actually need them—hard as it is for my brain to accept. I never thought about this concept in the context of my ever-increasing to-do list.

Obviously, there are things on my mile-long list that are genuine needs. As a general rule, people do need to eat to live. So, grocery shopping to make sure my family has food to eat is an absolute must. Laundry is another, even less desirable, task that goes in the need column. As it is largely frowned upon to wander around in public naked, making sure there are clean clothes to wear is another must.

I probably also need to pick up the toys conveniently left in hazardous locations around the house. As I’ve repeatedly reminded my kids, the top of the stairs is not the ideal location for them to keep a soccer ball or baby stroller. I’m half convinced at this point that the placement is intentional and that they’re actively trying to kill me. But, I digress.

As for the rest of the toys, do I need to pick them all up every day? My heart—and my anxiety---say yes, but in reality, probably not. The world isn’t going to end if I leave my son’s calculator collection scattered over the dining room table or my daughter’s book tower on the floor of my office.

Similarly, nothing catastrophic will happen if I don’t get around to cleaning out the fridge right away. Sure, it’s probably best to clean it out before things start to smell, but no one is going to die because I let the bag of spring mix start to liquify…again.

The whole system sounds so simple in theory. The problem is that my brain refuses to accept where these tasks lie on the need-want spectrum, and somehow has less than zero idea how long tasks will realistically take to complete. These two blind spots team up to ensure I walk around in a perpetual state of guilt.

Because, after all, if I can’t complete every single task on my list, I’m obviously a failure. At least that’s what my brain tells me. Judgmental asshole that it is.

And, it’s frustrating. We’re always told not to compare ourselves to other people on the internet, but it’s so hard not to feel like an utter failure as a human being when you see that Susan is over there in a spotless house that looks like something straight out of Better Homes & Gardens despite the fact that she works full time and is constantly doing creative and enriching activities with her perfectly clean children. Oh, and she always has the time to make sure there is a healthy, five-star worthy meal on the table at precisely six o’clock every day.

Meanwhile, I’m over here, a stay-at-home-mom in a house that looks like a toy store exploded all over my living room, splatter from last night’s pasta sauce still crusted on the stove, kids literally running in circles—one of whom is growling like a wild animal—while I attempt to get something halfway nutritious on the table at some point before bedtime.

Susan is crushing it, so why can’t I?

The answer, I’ve come to realize, is that either Susan is inhuman and therefore not subject to the same limitations as us mere mortals, or that what Susan posts on social media may not show us the full story. After all, don’t believe everything you see on the internet. Because it’s just not possible to do it all. Anyone who says otherwise is probably selling something.

No matter if you’re neurotypical or neurodiverse, doing it all is an unachievable dream. One invented to make people feel shitty. At least that’s what I’ve come to understand over the years.

Though I do have to admit that, personally, having ADHD has provided its own specific challenges with respect to doing it all. Or doing…. anything, really.

I’ve struggled my whole life with keeping it together. When I was younger, it seemed impossible to stay on top of everything. Between school, homework, extra curriculars, chores, family time, and friends, I was constantly in a state of panic trying to succeed in every area of my life. And, at that point in my life, it wasn’t just my own internal voice telling me I was failing. I had other people verifying that fact for me.

I struggled to remember to complete homework assignments, and had even more trouble keeping track of them. My room was a mess. And when I say “mess”, I don’t mean I left a few things lying around. I mean, for a solid few months in high school, I had to jump from the hallway to my bed because the floor was such a disaster. Then there were the chores I got in trouble for not completing.

Almost none of my friends seemed to have the same issues staying on top of things like I did. They got their assignments done on time, their rooms were casually messy, and—after the prerequisite complaining—they always got their chores done. Once again, comparing myself didn’t do me any favors.  Only this time, it’s not Susan From the Internet I was comparing myself to. It was real live people that I knew and interacted with, and I never measured up.

It wasn’t until I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was nearly thirty-one years old that some of these struggles started to make sense. In fact, most of them are pretty common amongst those with ADHD. Difficulty staying organized, short term memory issues, time blindness, task-paralysis, executive dysfunction—it was all…normal. Though, knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to overcome.

What it does is give me is a different framework to operate within. Knowing that my brain works differently means knowing I might need to go about common tasks in a different way.

One common issue for those with ADHD that I struggle with is understanding how to prioritize tasks. My brain doesn’t immediately know how to categorize things under those need and want labels. It’s common for me to prioritize either the task I know will give me the biggest dopamine hit or the task I most recently thought of—regardless of their actual level of importance.

Logically, I’m aware of the fact that ‘feed my children dinner’ is of higher priority than ‘bake that cake I saw on Pinterest’, but I’m not always able to make that call in the moment. My brain rationalizes that dinner can wait a little bit while I quickly whip together this cake. The recipe may claim that it will take several hours, but I’m sure I can manage it in thirty minutes, tops. Next thing I know, it’s three hours later and I still haven’t started dinner. And that’s how things like having cake for dinner happen.

If you need any further proof that time has no meaning to me, just ask my husband. Any time we go out somewhere, I always claim I can be ready in ‘twenty minutes’. Spoiler alert: not once have I been ready in twenty minutes.

I tell myself I can totally shower, brush my teeth, get dressed, dry and style my hair, do my make-up, change the kids, get them cleaned up, pack the diaper bag, switch over the laundry, unload the dishwasher, and achieve world peace all in twenty minutes.

Somehow my brain is convinced I can cram an impossible number of tasks into any small amount of time. This is the main reason I am forever running late. It’s also one of the reasons I start each day with a to-do list as long as my arm and never manage to finish it.

Oh yeah, and another reason I never make it through my to-do list? Kids.

Between having two pint-sized agents of chaos occupying the same space I’m trying to clean or accomplish things in, and the constant interruptions—nine out of ten of which are snack related—it’s a wonder anything gets done at all.

Some days, it seems like the whole world is working against me. Everything from my own ambitions, to my neurodivergence, to my kids. Everything is stacked against me, willing me to fall short of my own expectations. And when I do the guilt is suffocating.

But, we can’t do it all. Even if you’re neurotypical. Even if you don’t have kids. There will always be something. We can’t do it all and we shouldn’t have to in order to feel like valued, contributing members of our household, or even society as a whole.

My therapist has the right idea, I think. Learning to separate the things in our lives that demand our attention into needs and wants can go a long way toward easing the burdens we place on ourselves, and the guilt of failed expectations.

It will be a long road, I’m sure. Re-framing how I think about tasks and their importance won’t be easy. Change never is. Even positive change can be slow and painful. But, it will be worth it in the end; being able to step back and breathe throughout the day without the accompanying feelings of failure.

I just need to remember this:

My kids don’t need a spotless house or five-star meals. They need a mom who is mentally healthy and present.

At the end of the day, that’s what really matters.