The "Orange Zone" Rule (ADHD Energy Hack)

0:00Hello brains. I owe one of you an apology. If you were at Nerdy Version 2026 and I made you cry, I am sorry. And also thank you. That moment was a wake-up call for me. I'm realizing that running myself right into the red or past the red of my own capacity limits is a dangerous pattern for me and I'm not alone. Happens a lot to people with ADHD, ironically, because we don't want to let people down. A lot of us struggle with over committing until all we can do is collapse. Today I'm going to talk about why we end up at capacity or past our capacity and more sustainable ways

0:33to manage flying past the yellow. So, why do I owe one of you an apology? After 3 days of interacting with people and taking selfies with them, there was one person who came up to me and was really sweet and asked if she could have a selfie and I just did not handle it well. I didn't handle it well at all. So, at this event, there

0:55is a stoplight system with lanyards. They have green lanyards, yellow, and red. This is one of the reasons I think it's very neurodivergent friendly. You can switch out your lanyards. The green means you can approach me, I might approach you. Yellow means let me approach you. Red means I'm done. I'm not doing great or I don't want to talk. So, for most of the event, I was wearing a green lanyard. I welcomed people to come up to me because I wanted to. I wanted to take selfies with people. I wanted to hear their stories. I wanted to connect with this community. On the last day at the party, I about 20

1:25minutes in hit my limit. This was after my keynote was done, after all the sessions were done, after I finished filming the things that I had intended to film. We didn't actually film anything at this party because this was just about having fun. I got about 20 ft into the party and kept getting stopped and

1:41it sounds like I'm complaining. I'm not. I really love this. I got to talk to people who came from all over the world. Like, there were just so many cool people that I got to meet and it was so fun and I hit the point about 20 minutes into this party where I realized if I

1:55kept going, I might have a panic attack. I was really overwhelmed. I was really exhausted after 3 days of this. And I switched to a yellow lanyard, which means let me approach you. But somebody saw me sitting and talking with Danny Donovan who was like a safe person for me. I've known her a long time and they came up and they were like, "Hey, can I just have a selfie?" I checked in with myself and I was like, "You know what? I can do a selfie." I knew that that was about all I could handle, but I could handle a selfie. And we did a selfie together and then she started

2:26chatting with me and I realized, "Oh no, like I said a selfie, I can't do more than that right now." And so I cut her off. I'm sorry that that happened, but this person was super cool about it, totally understood, had seen the color of my lanyard, no harm, no foul. We had gotten to chat another day as well. So, first of all, thank you for being very understanding about that. But then Danny was like, "You've got to switch to your red lanyard. Like you are toast." So I was like, "Okay, I need to switch to my red lanyard." But I stubbornly still wanted to enjoy the party. I did not

2:51want to leave. This was supposed to be the fun part at the end of everything. And so I didn't want to miss out. I had FOMO, okay? I'm at least going to get a boba. I'm at least going to go up to one of the food trucks and get a boba. So I'm standing in line, but I'm like, "I am really not doing okay. I don't think I could actually handle it if somebody else came up to me right now." And so I did something that felt very rude. I just got my phone out and was like in my phone playing my like little phone game that I only play

3:16usually when I'm crashed out at the end of the day like exhausted. But I was just doing that in the middle of this party, you know, I was like, "I'm going to get boba. I'm going to play my phone game." I was in my own little bubble. Somebody from behind me walks around a little bit, peeks at me and says, "Hey, would it be okay if I got a selfie?" And they were so kind about it. They were so so sweet and normally I would have been like, "Yes, of course." But I had already established like I can't handle even a selfie because a selfie is not

3:42just a selfie and even if it were, I already pushed myself past my limits a little bit and so like I just picked up my I think I had my yellow and red lanyard on at that point and I just shook them at this person and was like, "No, I can't. I can't. Like, I am way past my limit." And this person burst into tears. And I felt so bad because they were being so sweet and probably had waited all weekend to get one opportunity to talk to me that didn't feel like they were inter- interrupting or intruding because like there were no sessions to get to, I

4:13clearly didn't have to go give a talk. We were just standing in line for boba. This would be a good a good opportunity usually to just chat and have a selfie. But I just couldn't. So they burst into tears and they turned and I heard them talking to their friend and I'm like, "I am such a jerk." My mind went like spinning and just filling in the blanks of like what must have happened in this situation and like what this person must think of me. And I felt so bad. And worse, I knew I didn't have the capacity to actually do anything about it. I couldn't go up to this person and

4:43apologize. I couldn't explain. I couldn't be like, "You know what? I did want a boba, but actually let's do a selfie." I couldn't do any of that even if I had wanted to. I had nothing left. I didn't even have the cognitive capacity to be like, "You know what? Why don't I just leave right now?" I was just stuck. I'm stuck in line for this boba and feeling like a jerk. And so I get the boba and I go and I make a beeline across to like inside where there's sensory friendly things and I'm like in a swing just kind of rocking in this chair. Danny Donavan found me and

5:15and was talking to me and trying to support me through it. But even on the way out like there were a couple people that caught my eye that had known from the conference that were safe people for me. All I could do was like pick up the lanyard and shake it at them. Like, I was not okay. As someone with ADHD, I and probably you slip into hyperfocus and end up past my limits, misjudge the amount of time things are going to take, and end up overcommitted, people please and end up overcommitted, want to help and end up doing more than I really have the capacity to do. I end up at my limit

5:45or past my limit a lot. And sometimes it's because the thing that I'm doing is energizing and I'm mistaking this energizing activity for having energy. I might feel energized, but it is still costing me energy to do a lot of the things that I do in my day-to-day life. And not just taking selfies, but like I don't know, playing with my kid or

6:04writing a script or shooting a video. And so if I'm doing these activities back to back to back, like I end up in the red. For as long as I can remember, like I just kind of crash out at the end of the day. And it's just I don't know, normal to me. But in this situation, I probably did push myself a little bit further than usual. Anyway, I felt so bad about what happened that I got home

6:24and scheduled a call with my therapist. We talked about what happened and I thought that I had judged well. Like I had monitored my energy, I knew what I was signing up for, I like I paid attention to my my body signals, I saw that I was getting to the point where I would have a panic attack if I kept going, I saw that I was at my limit, and I communicated that I was at my limit. And what she said is, "We've got to get you to stop a little bit sooner. So rather than when you're in this like deep orange red, where you're about to hit

6:55the red, what if you stopped it like bright orange?" She's suggesting putting a buffer in. If you stop right before red and anything else happens, now you're in red. And now you're not handling things well. Now you're making impulsive decisions, you're dysregulated, you're not fit for human consumption, and you're not going to You're not going to treat people well, you're not going to handle things well, you're going to be overwhelmed and overloaded and snap and not act in line with your values at that point, because you're just past your capacity. You can't. If I had stopped at bright orange, then I would have had the capacity to tell that person when they

7:28asked for a selfie, "Yes, I can do a selfie, but I need a break. Give me 10 minutes and then we can do a selfie." I was already in the red by the time this person talked to me, and so I didn't have the capacity. I didn't have the capacity to handle setting a boundary very well, I didn't have the capacity to apologize when it didn't go well and it hurt them. Yeah, I didn't [clears throat] have the capacity to make it right. And then it still cost me a ton of energy, right? Because now I'm having to feel terrible about this thing and then talk to people about it and

7:52process and all of that which also kept pushing me past my limit. So, it was this big aha moment. It clicked for me and I tried it. It did not go as well as I had hoped. There were many times where I noticed when I was in what I would consider like an orange yellow, like right when I'm getting into orange and I'm like, I still have the energy to keep going. Why would I stop now? Also, if I stopped now, it will cost me things that I care about. In retrospect, if I had stopped at the bright orange, I wouldn't have gone to the party or I would have gone,

8:22been there for 5 minutes and then left. So, I I asked my therapist in the in the next session, if you stop when you can keep going and it's conflicting with your values of things that matter to you, things that are important to you, how does that work? And she had a really good answer for that. She said, you plan to end your day at bright orange. Plan your day in such a way where you still have capacity left at the end of the day. You could keep going. I wasn't exactly sure how to do that, but there were a couple things that came to mind immediately, which is

8:49one, if right now I'm hitting red by the end of the day, most days, right? Not even just the conference. The conference I was like fully in the red. What would it look like if I was aiming for not getting through the day and surviving it, but getting through the day with energy left at the end of the day. It's confusing to my brain. Like it's I'm a new mom. I'm a CEO. Like what? And every once in a while, maybe even planning a day where I intentionally under commit. Cuz I do tend to either like fully commit or over commit. What if I practiced under committing? I'm not saying I'm

9:21going to live my life like that. I can't. But what if I experimented with it? Like I need to know experientially in my body what it feels like. But in order to plan my day in such a way that I didn't end up in red by the end of it, that meant I needed to actually plan my day. I'm still figuring out exactly what that looks like, but I knew where to start. If I'm trying to end at bright orange, I need some other colors in my day. I I need to start including some lower energy cost or restorative activities into my day. I'm often doing

9:47really high energy cost activities back to back to back to back. While that's exciting and feels good, uh it does leave me really depleted. I decided to try it. And because I use Sunsama, I decided to do it there. Sunsama is our sponsor for this video. It's a sponsor that I work with on a regular basis because it is a way of doing work without burning out. And it does. It helps a lot when I use it. Sunsama is a

10:09long-time sponsor for our channel. They're also sponsoring this video. Thank you. And they're also the most ADHD friendly planning system for work that I have ever come across. And one of the reasons for that is you can try it for free without even needing to put a credit card in, which is very cool, um to make sure that you actually like it and will use it. But the other reason is because it walks you through planning your day

10:30or planning your week. And it automates enough that it is helpful, but it leaves a lot of the decision making in your hands so that you are in control of your own schedule. So this is what I got done last week. I'm intentionally not trying to overload myself. Sunsama is a system meant to help you do good work without burning out. So it starts to let you know if you're getting in the yellow or if you get to the red if you've got too much planned that day. My objectives for this week are fly to LA for the podcast, support Caroline McGuire in her book launch. I know I need to

11:08just prep and film video content. Um I'm going to add one more objective, which is I really need to figure out what's going on with VidCon. I'm a featured creator at VidCon. VidCon paperwork. And touching base with the people I need to talk to. Okay, great. So those are my objectives. Not going to worry about last week right

11:24now. I'll post that to Slack so people know what's going on. And done. Okay, so now here's where this gets helpful. I can plan my week in advance here and do let's see daily planning. What do you want to get done today? Uh fill out paperwork. Film shorts. All right, let me see. I've

11:43got to I've my flight to Burbank. I also have a dinner meeting tonight. Okay. That's right. Um so that's already a decent amount of work. What else do I need to do today? I need to get to the airport. Get to the airport a couple hours early. Um it's probably going to take me about an hour. I'm already packed. I need to

12:07get to the airport. I've got my flight. See, I'm already kind of in the red here. Yeah, what can wait? Bump back tasks that aren't essential to work on today. So that's already helpful. So I'm going to bump back filming shorts. I don't need to do that today and tomorrow I've got the podcast, so probably not then, but I can decide that tomorrow. So I've got to fill out paperwork. I've got to get to the airport. I've got this dinner meeting. Oh, I also need to research the podcast I'm going to be on. I need to actually listen to it. By planning this stuff out in advance, I can quickly see

12:35that I'm going to be in the red by night time if I don't adjust this. None of these tasks are too too intense for me, so I think I'll be okay. But I'm going to add a lower energy task just in case. Meditation. Yeah, I'll go that personal. This is a green task. This will help me recharge. So I'm going to add that. One of the things I wanted to show you about Sunsama really quickly. I'm going to be out of the office for most of the day today, but if I were to start planning, let's say I'm going to research the podcast now. First of all, it shows up

13:10over here. It kind of bumps it in or it kind of puts it into my schedule. It also naturally builds in a little bit of buffer. I tend to plan things back to back, but Sunsama is really great at automating in little breaks. I've got little 5-minute breaks in here. Which is nice. Um but then when I go to start work, I can I can start that. It tells me how long

13:32it's been since I've started doing it. Exit full screen. I can minimize this, and then I can still see what I'm doing and how long it's been. And even see my other tasks without having to open the app again. This is a new feature, which is super cool. I can also create a new task right from this bar, which is so nice because sometimes, um, even just the act of opening, uh, a piece of software that I'm supposed to be using can be intimidating. So, just being able to easily access it from the menu bar is awesome. If you'd like to try Sunsama, again, you can for free. You don't even

14:07need to put in a credit card. Just go to sunsama.com/a/jessica from How to ADHD. Check it out. Let me know what you think because I think all of us deserve to plan work in a in such a way that we feel good about what we got done, and we're not burning ourselves out. I don't have this all figured out. I'm just experimenting. The planning part, while I think is the key, is a little bit more complicated. I think I will do a separate video on that. But before I finish this video, I just wanted to share a trick that I learned from our director of operations, G2, which is for

14:35those of us who already wear hair ties on our wrists a lot of the time. She got different colored hair ties just to help build some mindfulness around where she was at. I ended up ordering some hair ties in yellow, red, orange, and green so that I can start to identify where am I. Am I in green right now? Am I in yellow? Am I in orange? And rather than waiting until I need to switch to red, as soon as I feel like I need to switch to orange, that being the point where I stop. Again, I think it is going to be better when I am able to plan my day in

15:07such a way that I end up bright orange so that I'm not having to like stop in the middle of something that really matters to me. But even that will be helpful. Like creating that mindfulness around where am I and can I stop now? My therapist pointed this out. You might still plan your day in such a way that you're like, "Yep, I'm being red by the end of the day. I'm going to crash at the end of the day, and that is worth it to you because what you're trying to do is in line with your values. You know you can handle it." But, what I'm trying

15:32to aim for with that and what I'm encouraging you to aim for with that is not every day. Not every day. And be mindful about it. So, which activities are worth pushing into the red for, and is there a way where you can plan your day in such a way that you won't have to be in the red for that activity. If I had known this before, I could have planned that day where I knew that that party was going to be important to me. I knew that that was going to be the last opportunity to connect with people from the community. I knew that I wouldn't

16:01want to have to tell anybody no when it was their last chance to talk to me and get a selfie with me. I would have probably done some restorative yoga in the middle of the day. I would have missed a session. Would I wanted to miss the session? No, but it would have been better for me to miss a session in the middle of the day than to have to miss out on that opportunity to take that selfie with that person. If that was you, I am so sorry. I feel terrible, and I also want to thank you because that

16:25moment really was a wake-up call to me. I didn't have the opportunity to be in line with my values in that moment, and because of that I had to say no to you in a way that was probably jarring and harsh and felt like I was pushing you away. And I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.

16:43Woo. Okay. I know I'm not the only one in this community that that over commits, that ends up in the red, that ends up pushing past their limit. I know I'm not the only one who's dealt with burnout. I know this is something that other people are struggling with as well. So, this is my strategy. This is my solution that I'm sharing with you that my therapist helped me figure out. But, let me know what yours is. What helps you manage your energy and avoid pushing into the

17:06red? Let me know in the comments below. Thank you to our brain advocates and all our Patreon brains for supporting the work we do, for making going to these conferences possible, um supporting work like this. I really, really appreciate you. Like, subscribe, click all the things, and I will see you next video.