Blog

ADHD energy and the voltage curve

You've probably heard of spoon theory. The idea is that you wake up each day with a finite number of spoons, each task costs one, and when you run out you're done. It was originally created by Christine Miserandino to describe life with chronic illness, and it's since been picked up widely in the ADHD world. Useful metaphor, but I think there's a better one.

Spoons are fungible. A spoon at 9am is worth the same as a spoon at 9pm, and you can spend them whenever you like, in whatever order. That is not how ADHD energy works.

Voltage, not batteries

Fernando Borretti, a software engineer with ADHD, proposed a different way of thinking about it. Voltage.

Some machines need a certain voltage to run. Below that threshold they don't just slow down, they stop entirely. The motor won't turn, the circuit stays dead. Borretti argues that mental energy works the same way, where different tasks need different thresholds to even get started:

High voltage. Things you're averse to. The email you don't want to send, the form you've been avoiding, the conversation you keep putting off. Anything that brings up painful or uncomfortable emotions.

Medium voltage. Creative, open-ended work like writing, designing, or building something. Hard to start, but once you're in it the threshold drops and you can ride the momentum.

Low voltage. Simple chores. Laundry, washing up, tidying. The stuff your body does on autopilot.

When you wake up your voltage is at its highest, and throughout the day it drops. Here's what makes this different from spoons: with spoons, you could theoretically save up all day and tackle the hard thing at 10pm. Bank now, spend later. With voltage that's not possible. By evening, certain circuits just will not fire. You might still be able to hoover the flat or organise a shelf or do the dishes, but the threshold for emotionally loaded tasks closed hours ago. It's gone, and no amount of willpower brings it back.

This is why someone with ADHD can do fifty easy things at 9pm but can't write one email.

[Visual: a simple declining curve across the day, with horizontal threshold lines for high/medium/low voltage tasks. The high-voltage line is crossed by mid-morning, medium by afternoon, low by evening. Title: "The voltage curve"]

The neuroscience is starting to agree

A 2026 paper from Freie Universität Berlin proposed something called "Energy Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder," or EDHD, which reframes ADHD not as an attention problem but as an energy regulation problem. The argument is that the brain's metabolic supply in ADHD is unstable, and the regions responsible for planning and self-regulation don't receive sustained energy. So performance doesn't just fade gradually. It drops off a cliff when the metabolic supply can't keep up with what's being asked of it.

The researchers also found that stimulating tasks temporarily optimise the brain's energy allocation, whilst boring ones drain reserves without giving back the arousal feedback needed to keep things running. Which explains hyperfocus rather neatly. It's not some strange paradox or secret superpower, it's the brain finding a task that sustains its own energy loop.

And here's the bit that really backs up the voltage idea: the researchers argue that restlessness and impulsiveness aren't failures of discipline, they're compensatory strategies. The fidgeting, the pacing, the sudden need to get up and walk around the room for no apparent reason. That's your system scrambling to keep the voltage from dropping out.

Working with the curve, not against it

If all of this is true, then the common productivity advice of "do the most important thing first" turns out to be accidentally correct, just for the wrong reasons. You shouldn't do the hard thing first because it's important. You should do it first because later it might be literally impossible.

Borretti lays out his day roughly like this:

Morning. The dreaded thing, whatever you've been putting off, the task that makes your stomach turn when you think about it. This is when voltage is highest and you need to get it done before the window closes. There's a compounding effect too: put it off until late morning and you'll push it to the afternoon, then the evening, and by evening your voltage is too low to even consider it. So tomorrow. And round it goes.

Mid-morning to afternoon. Creative work. Projects, writing, building. You've dealt with the dreaded task, which lifts a real weight, and now you can actually think clearly about things that matter.

Late afternoon. Reading, learning, lighter intellectual work. You're losing the ability to generate new ideas but you can still absorb and take things in.

Early evening. Exercise, chores, low-energy admin. Let the body take over while the brain rests.

Night. Here's where it all falls apart. The dopamine-seeking behaviour kicks in. Borretti's solution is interesting. He takes melatonin at 8pm, not as a "go to bed now" instruction but as a preference-changer. Thirty minutes later he wants to sleep more than he wants to scroll. The desire itself shifts, which means willpower stops being part of the equation.

I like that as a principle that goes well beyond sleep. Sometimes the best move isn't to try harder, it's to change the conditions so that trying isn't required.

Two traps worth knowing about

Treating all tasks as equal. Your to-do list doesn't know the difference between "send the scary email" and "buy milk," but your brain absolutely does. If you plan your day without thinking about voltage you'll nail the easy stuff and consistently fail at the hard stuff, and then beat yourself up about it.

Waiting for the right moment. "I'll do it when I feel more up to it" is one of the most dangerous things an ADHD brain can tell itself. The right moment was probably this morning, and the next one is probably tomorrow morning. It is almost never later today.

A different way to see yourself

Here's what I think makes the voltage model genuinely useful beyond just scheduling.

Spoon theory, for all its value, carries an implied message: you have less. Fewer spoons than other people, less to give. It's a deficit model, and while it's good for explaining your limits to someone who doesn't get it, it can quietly reinforce the feeling that you're fundamentally insufficient.

Voltage reframes things. You might have the same total energy as anyone else, but yours is time-locked in a way that neurotypical energy isn't. You've got a narrower window for certain kinds of task, and if you miss it, that task becomes impossible. Not because you're weak or lazy but because the circuit needs a voltage that's no longer available.

That's not a deficit, it's a constraint. And constraints can be designed around. That's literally what engineering is. Nobody looks at steel and feels bad that it has a tensile limit. You design the bridge to work within it.

[Visual: two side-by-side diagrams. Left: "Spoon theory" showing a flat bar depleting evenly. Right: "Voltage model" showing a declining curve with task threshold lines. Same total area, different story.]

So what do you actually do

Track your voltage for a week. Write it down. When does creative work feel doable? When does it feel impossible? When can you face the hard, emotionally charged stuff, and when can't you?

Your curve won't look like Borretti's. Maybe you're a night owl and your peak voltage hits at midnight. That's completely fine. The point isn't to copy anyone's schedule, it's to find your own and then guard it.

Because the worst outcome with ADHD isn't failing to finish a task. It's trying to do a high-voltage thing in a low-voltage window, failing, and deciding that means something is wrong with you.

Nothing is wrong with you. You were just running a high-voltage circuit on low power.

Inspired by Fernando Borretti's Notes on Managing ADHD. The EDHD research is from Mohammad Dawood Rahimi's 2026 paper in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.