Overcoming
Perfectionism

ADHD Executive Function Tools

A structured worksheet for identifying impossible standards
and replacing them with ones you can actually meet.

Where This Tool Helps

Perfectionism and ADHD look like opposites but operate as a tight feedback loop. ADHD makes it hard to start tasks and sustain effort through to completion. Perfectionism makes the threshold for "done" so high that the gap between starting and finishing feels insurmountable. The result is not high-quality work — it is either work that never begins or work that gets abandoned when it can't be perfect. Most people with ADHD who struggle with perfectionism are not holding themselves to high standards because they want to. They are holding themselves to impossible ones because anything less feels like failure.

The standards comparison in Part 1 breaks that loop by making the gap visible. When the unrealistic and reasonable versions are written side by side, the distance between them — and how much cognitive and emotional weight it carries — becomes something you can examine instead of just feel. Part 2's perspective questions are designed to interrupt the magnification process in real time: the moment you notice you are obsessing over something, these four questions create enough distance to assess whether the worry is proportionate to the actual risk.

The steps below are structured to move through both parts in order, because the standards comparison does its real work as a reference point for the perspective questions.

How to Use This Worksheet

  1. Part 1 — Standards Comparison. In the left column, write the standard you are currently holding yourself to. Be specific: not "I need to do well" but the actual version running in your head. In the right column, write a standard that would still represent genuine quality — without the impossibility built in.
  2. Goal Classification. Sort your active goals into three columns: goals you can pursue independently, goals that need some support, and goals still developing. Keep no more than two goals in the highest-level category at once. This is not about lowering your ambitions — it is about giving each goal the right amount of energy instead of spreading yourself across all of them at once.
  3. Part 2 — Perspective Check. When you notice yourself fixating on a detail that may not warrant that intensity, work through the four questions in order. Write the answers — don't just think them. The act of writing forces a level of specificity that disrupts the catastrophizing loop.
  4. Don't rush the worst-case question. Question 3 asks for the actual worst case. Let yourself write it fully. Most people find that when they see it written out, it is less catastrophic than the version they were carrying in their head.
1

Part 1: Standards & Goals

Unrealistic Standard
Reasonable Standard

Sort your active goals — keep no more than two in the highest-level column at once.

Can achieve independently Can achieve with some support Still developing (highest level)
2

Part 2: Perspective Check

When you notice yourself fixating on a detail, work through these four questions in order. Write the answers fully — the specificity is where the insight lives.

1. Does it really matter?
2. Will this matter next month or next year?
3. What is the worst-case scenario?
4. If the worst happens, will I still be OK?
3

Before Your Next Session

Which standard on your list has been holding you in place the longest — and what has it been protecting you from?

Notes
4

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