Pete Wright:
Hello, everybody, and welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast on TruStory FM. I’m Pete Wright, and I’m here with Nikki Kinzer.

Nikki Kinzer:
Hello, everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.

Pete Wright:
Oh, Nikki, how you doing?

Nikki Kinzer:
I’m doing good.

Pete Wright:
You feeling strong? Your kung fu is strong?

Nikki Kinzer:
I am.

Pete Wright:
Little member pre-show open with some laughs about how I didn’t write a story about destroying your home.

Nikki Kinzer:
Great. Thank you for that.

Pete Wright:
That surely didn’t happen.

Nikki Kinzer:
But actually you did.

Pete Wright:
Actually I did, and it’s terrifying. Sometimes catharsis is important. And so become a member and you’ll be able to hear all about that stuff.

Before I tell you about the plug stuff, though, we’re talking about what it means to be good enough with ADHD today. And when we first put the editorial calendar together for this season, I thought, well, that’s near the end of the season. It’ll be kind of a toss-off. And then it turns out there’s a lot that goes into the emotional undercurrent of what it means to be good enough with ADHD.

Nikki Kinzer:
You bet. It’s a heavy phrase.

Pete Wright:
And we’re going to talk all about that today and try to untangle the knot of feelings that come with what it means when you say something is good enough.

Before we do get into the show, check out Patreon. That is the next step if you are a regular listener to the show, and it is a huge help to us. The deal is for you: you get early, ad-free access to every episode of this show. You get access to the member-only channels in Discord. You get a seat in the live stream recording session where you can watch the show live and ask questions directly to us and our guests as we chat. Plus, we throw in special events all along the way, and you get to join us for events across Discord and beyond throughout each month.

But honestly, the thing we hear people talk about the most is the community itself — a group of real people, all supporting one another, all living with ADHD. And if you have ever wanted to be more than just a listener, or are looking for the community of people that feels just like you, this is where it happens. Patreon.com/theADHDpodcast. That’s where you can learn more and join us. Of course, if you’re not ready for that, that’s fine too. You can find us at takecontroladhd.com, connect with us on socials, join the Discord, and sign up for the weekly email. We would love to have you wherever you land.

All right, Nikki. Good enough. What does it mean to say that, when we hear good enough with ADHD?

Nikki Kinzer:
That’s what we’re going to talk about, right? Because what does it mean? It’s a hard phrase to wrap your head around because I think you feel like, well, does good enough mean I’m settling? Does it mean that I’m not trying as hard? Does it mean that I’m giving up on something? Especially for those who tend to see themselves as more perfectionists, that could be a really hard thing to wrap their head around.

And we hear it, but we also get that message of, well, good enough — I mean, I say it all the time, good enough is progress, good enough is enough, you can leave that now. But yes, what does that mean?

And I see here that the historian of our show, Pete Wright— I’m going to call you, well, not the historian, because I see this is the history. You’re the researcher of this crew. You are researching things left and right.

Pete Wright:
I stumbled on a thing. And I think this is actually fascinating because you’re right. We hear this term often, and we hear it across fields and sectors. What is the minimum viable product? What is the bare minimum you can do to pass whatever expectation is set for that thing? Done is better than perfect. Perfect is the enemy of good. All of these things are here to inspire motion — just get you out of the cruft.

But it’s evolved. And it turns out “good enough is enough” is attributed to pediatrician D.W. Winnicott. Good Enough Mother was the work that D.W. Winnicott had produced from 1953, and it was really targeted to strung-out moms to tell them to let go of perfection in caregiving, that kids are resilient.

Nikki Kinzer:
That is so interesting. Wow.

Pete Wright:
I find that so fascinating, that that phraseology, that identity, has evolved from language that was a nod to taking care of our most vulnerable selves. And so back then— this is one of those great examples of back when a message really hit home for the right audience.

Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.

Pete Wright:
And it has evolved to the point of allowing us to be aware and critical and suspicious and all of those emotional flickers that we get when we hear that related to us.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.

Pete Wright:
But Good Enough Mother, D.W. Winnicott.

Nikki Kinzer:
That’s so interesting. It’s still true today.

Well, I think from the ADHD perspective especially, one of the reasons that makes it so difficult to wrap our heads around this is the all-or-nothing thinking that we so easily fall into.

Pete Wright:
Of course.

Nikki Kinzer:
And just for those who are not sure what we’re talking about when we say all or nothing — it’s either going to be great, it’s going to be A-plus work, or it’s an F. There isn’t any in the middle. There is no D, C, B. It’s just one or the other. If I can’t do it right, I’m not going to start it. If I can’t do it right, what’s even the point? There is no point to this.

And so the standards, the expectations, can be really high, which is actually deceiving. Because who are we comparing ourselves to? We’ve talked about that before too. Where is the “they”? Who are those people that are grading us, for example?

Pete Wright:
It spins off what we were talking about last week, which is this idea that the people who are judging us, the people we’re waiting for those permission slips from, are people who don’t exist, people who aren’t thinking about what we’re doing at any given time, or they’re people that are us with unreasonable standards for ourselves.

Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm. One of the things that we’ve talked about with Dr. Kourosh Dini, which was a transformational podcast for myself, was what it means to visit a task.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Nikki Kinzer:
And this comes to what is good enough. When we’re in that paralysis of all or nothing, the visit is something that can kind of open that door. Because when you’re in that thinking, it feels like you have no options or you just really can’t do it.

Pete Wright:
Mm-hmm.

Nikki Kinzer:
You physically cannot get yourself to open that email or whatever it is. And the task getting visited, it opens the door. What we want to do is try to keep it open without it getting slammed shut again in that paralysis.

So we have to remember that the insight around the task being visited is that just opening something, starting something, circling back to it — that matters. The brain sees it as evidence of failure when it’s actually evidence of trying. We think we’re not doing enough by just visiting the task, but we are. It’s evidence that you are still in it and you’re breaking free from that all-or-nothing thinking.

Pete Wright:
It addresses the complexities of being human. We have to live in this space where we have to keep moving things forward that are responsibilities that sit squarely on our shoulders, and we recognize that things are hard. With ADHD, they’re hard. And also we have to allow ourselves the permission not to fixate when we don’t have the attentive tank to actually fixate.

And sometimes saying good enough — you hear it, and somewhere in your body there is this real somatic response. It may look like relief, it probably looks like resistance, it’s maybe both. And that “good enough” phrase, we want it to sound like permission to be human. But not permission to let you off the hook for the responsibilities that are yours and yours alone. And also not accusing you of being the thing you’ve been accused of all your damn life, which is not trying hard enough, not caring enough, settling for less than.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
All of those concepts we own. We have to sit with them at the same time, choice to choice, context to context. Our success at living in our skin is made up of the tiny choices that allow us to move one thing forward. And I love that you brought up Kourosh Dini’s “the visit,” because again, it’s transformational for me too — the idea that we can move something forward at its just smallest, smallest increment by just touching it, by just being present with it for a moment, is good enough. Maybe for that day, it’s good enough.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
And it can feel like settling or laziness, but it’s not. And that’s a reality you get to earn too.

Nikki Kinzer:
Well, it was interesting because when I was doing my own research on this show, something came across that I thought was really interesting. Is good enough giving up? Are those the same things? Pete, you’re frozen. Am I frozen?

Pete Wright:
You’re good. Keep going.

Nikki Kinzer:
Okay. When I was doing the research on the show myself, I came across something that I thought was a really interesting phrase or question: is good enough giving up? What’s the difference between good enough and giving up? Are they the same thing? And going to your point, that’s what people have kind of embedded in their brains — that it’s less than. I’m not giving my best. So it’s kind of giving up on something.

But what I thought was so interesting when I dug a little bit deeper into this — giving up comes from defeat. Of, I can’t do this, so I’m stopping. Although I think sometimes giving up is better for you in a lot of ways, especially if it’s self-sabotaging your mental health. Sometimes it’s not a bad thing.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Nikki Kinzer:
But giving up is coming from that defeat. Good enough, and I think this is really important to understand, is coming from intention. It’s not a moment that you just sort of impulsively decided that this was enough. It actually comes from intention. This is done enough for me to move forward. I’m good with what I’ve done here. I’ve done the best I can. It’s kind of coaching yourself through it. Also reminding yourself that perfection doesn’t really exist. I’m choosing this to be good enough and for me to walk away from it.

Pete Wright:
It makes me think about the not-so-subtle differences between ending something and finishing something. “I am good enough” means I’ve reached the end of my contribution to this task. Finishing something may be different. It may be, I know in my heart of hearts, if I had more attentional fortitude, I could probably do more for this project. But I’ve reached the stage where I’m done. I am ending my contribution to it.

And I think there’s something to that. I try to think about that when I reach the point of no return on projects. Have I reached the end, or am I really finished? And which is worse? Because it’s different depending on what activity you’re doing.

Nikki Kinzer:
Well, it goes back to, I think, who are you comparing yourself to, or who are you worried about in this situation? Because when I think about — and I’ve been thinking about organizing a lot because of the declutter challenge that’s going on right now.

Pete Wright:
Sure.

Nikki Kinzer:
I’ve got this garage again. Oh my God, it never goes away.

Pete Wright:
That’s sixteen years.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. It’s still there, folks. And it’s still the bane of my existence. It’s there, always there, creeping up with stuff. But that’s the thing — when I do go to clean it up, what is good enough? I could always do more. I could probably always buy more things, containers and things like that. But at some point I have to say this is good enough because I can walk to my car. It’s good enough because I can park my car in there. It’s good enough because I can find the hammer that I need at the moment that I need the hammer.

And for us and our family, if I start thinking about, well, what if the photographers of Real Simple magazine come by the cul-de-sac and they want to take a picture of my home, and it’s not ready for that? That’s never going to happen. No one’s actually going to come in and judge how tidy everything is. It just has to be functional. So what’s good enough to make it functional? It’s giving up that idea that this is what it’s got to look like for it to be finished. What does finished mean? When can you walk away?

Pete Wright:
And this is something that in our day-to-day sort of human interactions with the stuff of our life, we don’t actually take into account. If I go into a client project, for example, I usually have some sort of a definition of the project that defines when it’s finished.

Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.

Pete Wright:
When will I know we’ve been successful? When all of the checkboxes are checked and the standards have been met. And we set that up before the project begins. And in life, we don’t often do that. So we move forward, we just start with an amorphous sort of idea of what we think would feel good at the end of this project. But because things move at the pace at which they move, we don’t actually know when that’s going to happen, because our sense of what’s going to feel good changes and evolves over time.

And that’s something that we don’t take into account when we start projects, which gets back to this: I’m ending my contribution to the project because I’ve reached this point of feeling good enough. Versus I’m finished with the project, which is something I cannot ever define if I never really defined what finishing means in the first place.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, that’s true.

Pete Wright:
And we have a choice about that. We can start every declutter project with a definition of success that says, when I’m done, this wall will be covered with storage bins, this wall will be covered with hooks, the ceiling will have the appropriate ropes and pulleys. I don’t know what you have in your garage anymore. Maybe the hole in the ceiling where you fell through it will get repaired.

Nikki Kinzer:
I don’t either. It’s still not.

Pete Wright:
It’s still not. But that’s what I’m getting to. We really could start with a project definition that says this is what finished is going to look like. And then we could work to meet that and build out the project plan to meet those. We just don’t do that. That’s not an ADHD skill.

Nikki Kinzer:
Right.

Pete Wright:
Unless your brand of hyperfocus is devouring project plans, you might be that person.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
That’s fine. Most of us don’t start our projects that way. And that is okay. That’s its own version of good enough.

Nikki Kinzer:
And I think it’s okay, too, because you brought up the ceiling when I fell through it — and it’s hard not to laugh talking about that. What’s really putting things in perspective, that’s never going to get fixed until we’re ready to sell this house. I can guarantee you that. And I’m okay with that. It’s just going to sit there like it is, and then when we need to sell this house for whatever reason, we’ll fix it then.

And that’s letting go of it having to be a certain way. It’s fine for me and my husband, and my kids don’t even notice it. They probably don’t even— well, they do remember it, especially my daughter, because she was there.

Pete Wright:
Because it was hysterical.

Nikki Kinzer:
She was there, yeah.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Nikki Kinzer:
But one thing I have to say, so people that are just listening to this — we have our Patreon members who message in Discord as we’re doing the live show. And what’s very funny is Melissa said, “Well, you have been featured in Real Simple before.” And I just have to say—

Pete Wright:
That’s true.

Nikki Kinzer:
It was not photos of my house, thank God. It was just an interview where I had to answer some questions. So anyway, just had to point that out.

Pete Wright:
Melissa is the most important thing. Melissa is the official historian of the show, and thank God she is here.

Nikki Kinzer:
She really is. She’s the historian and you’re the researcher.

Pete Wright:
Okay.

Nikki Kinzer:
We’ve got everything covered.

Pete Wright:
I really love all this, and I want to bring it back to a friend of the show, Kristin Neff, who has the three components of self-compassion that are really foundational to some of the sort of social science around ADHD: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.

And as summarized in a write-up on this on CHADD: self-compassion reduces anxiety, depression, and stress. It improves motivation because it leaves room to fall short, to redirect, and to persist. This is the foundational thinking behind the closing idea that finishing imperfectly is how you build trust with yourself.

Nikki Kinzer:
Oh my goodness, yes. Because you get to say it’s finished. You get to say that. You get to check it off. That’s beautiful.

Pete Wright:
Yep.

Nikki Kinzer:
Now what do we do? We’re like, okay, she said it all.

Pete Wright:
She said it all perfectly. And I think what’s really interesting is that when you map that to your inner sense of perfection, which is itself mapped to this inner sense of loss and shortcoming that we have grown up with, and that’s a picture we paint of ourselves — we get to realize that perfection itself doesn’t exist. It’s just another rung we haven’t been able to climb to. And once we realize that there are no rungs, that is enormously liberating.

Nikki Kinzer:
It is.

Pete Wright:
There are no rungs. There are no spoons.

Nikki Kinzer:
Guess what we do have?

Pete Wright:
I have no idea.

Nikki Kinzer:
We have a free download.

Pete Wright:
No.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.

Pete Wright:
I’m shocked, I say.

Nikki Kinzer:
We have a free download, and it’s how to decide what’s good enough.

Pete Wright:
Shocked.

Nikki Kinzer:
And there’s a set of questions. Because we always like to have those little probes, right? How do I know if this is good enough? And so this download has five questions. One, two, three, four, five. Yes, there’s five. I said that without actually seeing a number, so I’m glad I got that right.

Does it do what it needs to do? That’s the function question. Maybe not perfectly, but is it serving its purpose? Who is the perfect version for? We talked about this. Is it for you? Is it for an imaginary critic that you’re trying to silence — that permission slip, going back to who’s giving you permission? What’s the cost of waiting? Is it more time, more energy? Is it more shame? We don’t need more of that in our lives. What would you tell a friend? Wraps back up to compassion. What would you tell someone if they were in this situation? Would you tell them that it wasn’t good enough? You probably would not be mean about it. What would it feel like to call this done? Wraps back into what we were talking about with finishing — now, see, you said it like three times — finishing imperfectly. They all wrap into what we’ve talked about today.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Nikki Kinzer:
So go get that download.

Pete Wright:
That’s right.

Nikki Kinzer:
How do you decide what’s good enough? Give yourself a reminder.

Pete Wright:
Just look in the show notes. There’s a link in there. You click it. You’ll be able to get the download. It’s pretty straightforward. It’s kind of how the internet works. And the internet, it’s good.

Nikki Kinzer:
The internet.

Pete Wright:
This was satisfying for me to think about. It so happens that I’ve been doing this research project on our own archive of the show and found so many wonderful resources like Kristin Neff’s that are really great. We’ve come to a point where we’ve done so many shows that it’s a little bit muddy to remember all the people who have crossed our path.

Nikki Kinzer:
Oh my gosh.

Pete Wright:
But it turns out there’s a lot in the good enough category.

Nikki Kinzer:
Don’t ask me. I don’t know. We’ve done a lot of these.

Pete Wright:
I think we should call this show— would you call it good enough?

Nikki Kinzer:
I think so. I think it’s good enough.

Pete Wright:
Okay. I think we’re finished.

Nikki Kinzer:
I’m ready to part ways.

Pete Wright:
With intention, because this has been good enough. Go get the download. Thanks, everybody, for hanging out. We appreciate you downloading and listening to this show. Thank you for your time and your attention. Don’t forget, if you have something to contribute to the conversation, we’re heading over to the Show Talk channel in our Discord server. And you can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the Deluxe Level or better at patreon.com/theADHDpodcast. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer, I’m Pete Wright, and we’ll see you right back here next week on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast.