When Ambition Overtakes Performance & What to Do About It

What Happens When Big Dreams Outpace Your Bandwidth—and How to Reclaim Your Energy

When ambition overtakes performance—we sprint toward every shiny opportunity without considering our actual capacity to deliver consistently.

When Ambition Overtakes Performance: Navigating the ADHD Entrepreneurial Reality 

What happens when your brain is fueled by ideas and ambition, but your bandwidth can't keep up? Diann Wingert and Meredith Carder explore the realities—and possibilities—of embracing ambition, burnout, self-acceptance, and personal evolution with ADHD.

Embracing the Ambition of the ADHD Brain

For many women with ADHD, ambition isn't just a trait—it's a driving force. As Diann Wingert and guest Meredith Carder discuss on the ADHD-ish podcast, the ADHD mind is teeming with ideas, energy, and drive. Meredith shares that even as a child, she gravitated toward "big, wild dreams"—starting small businesses and always on the lookout for her next project. But adulthood brings new pressures: careers, families, and the ever-present expectation to "pick and stick."

The ADHD brain is interest-based and, as Diann puts it, "we're either full-ass or no-ass." If we care about something, we go all in obsessively. But when novelty fades, so can our drive, leaving behind feelings of guilt for not sticking with it. This push-pull dynamic is at the heart of living ambitiously with ADHD.

The Cycle of Ideas—and Burnout

One recurring theme in both Diann's and Meredith's stories is the cycle of enthusiasm and burnout. Meredith describes her pattern: working in the corporate world, building up a need for freedom, launching a business with great excitement, doing well, then burning out and craving stability again, repeated over and over.

This is more than a lack of follow-through; it's about bandwidth. The ADHD brain is notorious for seeing more possibilities than it can ever pursue. As Diann notes, "starting a business and going after it like a sprint instead of a marathon… you're not going to be able to sustain that very long." This is exactly what happens when ambition overtakes performance—we sprint toward every shiny opportunity without considering our actual capacity to deliver consistently.

Yet the shame and societal conditioning—the expectation to pick a career, a partner, a "path"—can make every pivot or new beginning feel like a personal failure, rather than a normal part of growth.

The Weight of Shame and the Power of Radical Acceptance

With so much potential and so many abandoned ideas, it's no wonder shame looms large. Meredith admits she hesitated to try again, fearing how others would perceive yet another change. Both speakers pinpoint the problem: we've been "conditioned to feel we're supposed to pick a path and stay on it," as Diann says. And in our culture, deviation is often labeled as a lack of commitment or even failure.

But radical self-acceptance is the key to healing. Diann shares that she now puts self-acceptance before self-awareness when coaching: unless we decide "I'm okay no matter what," learning about our unique brains can feel too painful. Acceptance allows for experimentation and recognizes that being multi-passionate isn't a defect, but a feature.

Vetting Ideas: Not Every Dream Needs to Be Pursued

Both Diann and Meredith grapple with wanting to pursue every idea that strikes. The reality: not every idea deserves full pursuit, and our "considerable energy, effort, and focus" is precious. Sometimes, the struggle isn't just impulsivity, but overthinking, leading to analysis paralysis. The hosts discuss developing systems for pausing and evaluating before leaping, and accepting that some ideas are best left unpursued.

When ambition overtakes performance, we often find ourselves juggling more projects than we can realistically handle. Capacity, they note, is not just about time: it's about energy, emotional labor, and the shifting sands of life stages. Meredith now weighs the true cost of each new project, acknowledging that sometimes, stretching to accomplish something meaningful requires cutting back elsewhere.

Seasons of Life and Permission to Evolve

A powerful takeaway from the episode is the idea of embracing seasons of life, especially for women. Our interests, values, and capacity naturally change—we grow into things and out of them, sometimes faster than neurotypical peers. Letting go of paths that no longer fit isn't failing; it's evolving.

To support this, both recommend checking in with your core values, being honest about what's truly energizing, and recognizing when it's time to let go versus when it's time to stretch your capacity for a short-term goal.

Conclusion: Redefining Success on Your Terms

For women with ADHD, success looks less like following a straight line and more like a hummingbird—flitting from flower to flower, collecting knowledge, joy, and experience. By embracing self-acceptance, questioning the "shoulds," and intentionally choosing where to place your energy, it's possible to live a rich, colorful, and ambitious life—on your own terms.

Interested in going deeper? Check out Meredith Carder's book, It All Makes Sense Now and connect with her on Instagram at @hummingbird_adhd for ADHD support and community. And stay tuned to ADHD-ish for more raw, real talk about ambition, identity, and radical self-acceptance.

If you'd like to hear the full episode on the ADHD-ish Podcast, you can do that here.