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I want to define a few terms to help you understand my thought process and what I am trying to convey. This post will cover my definition of “capacity”.

I first will define ADHD. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder has a lot of connotations and in my opinion, was named very poorly. It may capture what is visible externally to others, but it does not even begin to describe what occurs internally. I would call it Executive Dysfunction Disorder if I were the Canadian Premier for a day.

ADHD is what I use to help give definition and context to my thinking process. I am not defined or bound by it. Rather, it helps me give context and clarity to what I struggle to understand. This helps me understand how I regulate my attention, emotions, energy, impulses and most important, my executive function.

What I need to emphasize is this isn’t a disease or weakness. It is simply what foundation I build my own personal understanding upon. In later posts, I will explain more about the foundations, scaffolding and structures I build to function as a person in my day-to-day life.

I need to also be clear that every person thinks and operates differently. There is not a neurotypical and neurodivergent label you can apply to every human on the planet. We all exist on a vast spectrum.

These definitions for myself and for the medical community will continue to change as well. The understanding of ADHD, what it is, what it is not, will only continue to evolve to meet our needs better as medical science progresses.

Neurotypical is another term that I should give a definition to: a brain or thinking process that deviates from the statistical norm. I do believe that we will one day call these terms I am using today outdated and possibly harmful. Terms like deficit, dysfunction, and disorder will possibly be harmful to future people being diagnosed and accepted. This is okay and this is what we will call societal progress.

Back to capacity now that we have the starting point laid out. Capacity is the attention, motivation, emotional and executive energy that one has access to at that time. You can give access but it only comes back after enough recovery.

You don’t have to sprint a marathon. You certainly can try to. Some people may be successful but I suspect more people will not be successful. I am continually challenged by what I call my capacity. I have realized that I need to understand my own personal capacity more and not compare it to anyone else’s capacity. This is something I want to pass along and emphasize.

I have to admit that I wrote a novella trying to come up with my own analogy of capacity. However, I have left that on the cutting room floor and will instead use the more commonly accepted Spoon Theory.

Spoon Theory dictates that a “spoon” is a unit or physical energy. Everyone wakes up for the day with a certain number of spoons. Every component of our mental state exists on a spectrum and these change not just based upon your labels, but things like sleep and circumstance. For myself, that supply of spoons changes not only daily but can also vary throughout the day. They are not reliably accessed moment to moment.

When we exert mental or physical energy on a task, we spend a spoon. For those that lean more into the neurodivergent spectrum, things like starting a “boring” task or simply switching tasks also costs spoons. Having poor regulation of attention span can quickly drain me of my own spoons in a very typical work day.

The difficult part of having poor regulation of attention span and reliable access to my own spoon supply was being called lazy or a procrastinator. For the longest part of my life, I believed that I was lazy and lacked motivation. I have begun work on changing how I see myself and instead understand that it certainly can be hard to motivate myself on tasks that lack a dopamine response. I however cannot be hard on myself when I am depleted and burnt out.

Capacity is like an emotion: we are certainly affected by these but only ourselves can dictate how we react after being affected. It is very important as well to understand that it is okay to practice self-care before and after we burn out.

Everyone has a different stamina and resistance to other people’s influence. I have given myself the label of people-pleaser and this has a very hefty cost for capacity. It is incredibly easy to give all the capacity you to everyone but yourself.

I have come to realize that I often have a frivolous disregard for my capacity when it is something of interest to me or triggers my people-pleasing response. Other times, I fiercely protect my capacity and exclude myself from things that may bring me joy.

It is important to distinguish ability and capacity. The ability and skill of someone is in fact separate from one’s capacity. You can never know what someone is thinking or feeling unless they are able to tell you. Laziness, lack of motivation and procrastination are not always what they look like from the outside. Rather, this could be lack of access to capacity in those moments.

For myself, I am certainly very able and intelligent. However, I struggle with my capacity access as it is simply not reliable. I imagine that this can really frustrate people that I am close with or that I work with. For perspective, try putting yourself in the shoes of someone who you perceive as lazy. They could facing a storm inside of themselves that you can never see.

This is true of my own brand of ADHD: starting tasks, switching tasks, prioritizing tasks, choosing tasks, distractions, emotional regulation, and masking all have capacity costs. This is all before actually putting effort and capacity into executing. For so many of us, it can be exhausting waking up and deciding where to put our capacity.

Jasper, AB March 2026