Harold Robert Meyer, The ADD Resource Center · www.addrc.org
Reviewed September 5, 2026 · Published September 11, 2026
When the options pile up, “right” is a test you cannot pass in advance. Here is the one you can.
The decision has been on your desk for eleven days. You have read everything. You made a list, lost the list, made it again. Three options are defensible, none obviously best, and you are waiting for the one that declares itself correct. That moment is not coming, and waiting for it already costs more than any of the three would.
Key Takeaway
Rightness is a property of the outcome, and the outcome has not happened yet. What you can know at the moment you decide is whether you decided well.
Key Findings
- Pooled across 37 studies (1,175 participants with ADHD, 1,222 controls), the decision-making gap is small to medium (standardized mean difference .36), and it reflects not a taste for risk but a tendency to miss the highest-value option (Dekkers et al., 2016, 2021).
- Maximizers took jobs paying 20 percent more than satisficers did and were less satisfied with them (Iyengar, Wells, & Schwartz, 2006).
- Deciding in advance when and where you will act beat intention alone across 94 tests (d = .65) (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).
“Right” is the wrong test
The word right describes how a decision turned out. You are asking for it before the information that would answer it exists, which is why deliberation never ends.
The delay is not neutral. Not deciding is still a decision, almost always the wrong one, and it hands the choice to someone else – a colleague, a deadline, a default setting, whoever moves first. It only feels different because nothing was signed.
None of this means adults with ADHD decide badly. The pooled laboratory difference is small to medium, and it reflects not a taste for risk but a tendency to miss the best-value option (Dekkers et al., 2016, 2021). Time is what complicates things: sooner rewards outweigh later, larger ones (Jackson & MacKillop, 2016), and in an open decision the reward is relief, which is why one person commits impulsively this week and stalls for a month the next. The familiar claim that a long menu paralyzes people is not well supported (Scheibehenne, Greifeneder, & Todd, 2010). The problem is not the count but having no rule for when to stop looking.
“I have watched far more people damaged by decisions they never made than by decisions they made that turned out badly.” – Harold Robert Meyer
The method, step by step
First, size the decision. Not every choice earns a process.
Meyer tip: Before making a choice, think about how important it is and whether it is worth the time and bandwidth. Will the choice change the world?
Write your criteria before you look at the options. Two or three things this decision must deliver, on paper. Do this second and every option quietly rewrites the criteria in its own favor as you examine it, and you will call that thinking.
Meyer tip: Reduce your choices to three or fewer by eliminating first, not by searching for the “best” option.
Elimination is the stopping rule. Cutting is faster than ranking because it needs one disqualifying fact per option, not a full comparison.
Set a deadline and a default together. “By Thursday at six. If I have not chosen, I take option B.” The deadline alone does nothing; the default converts drift into a decision you authored.
Sort by reversibility first. If you can undo it, decide fast: the cost of being wrong is the cost of switching back. Save real deliberation for what cannot be undone – with a deadline on that too.
Take the first option that clears your criteria. Not the best one, the first sufficient one. Maximizers in the job-search study did better on salary and felt worse about the job (Iyengar, Wells, & Schwartz, 2006). Chasing best is not free.
When two clear, take the simpler one. Occam’s razor is usually quoted about explanations, that the account requiring the fewest assumptions is the one to prefer. It transfers to choices. Between two options that both meet your criteria, the better bet needs fewer things to go right: fewer people to cooperate, fewer steps, fewer conditions outside your control. Complexity is not sophistication. Every added dependency is one more place the plan can fail.
Name the first action and when it happens. Monday at nine, I send the email. A decision with no scheduled first move is still a plan to decide (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).
Run it end to end. You need a new laptop. Worth ten minutes, not ten days. Criteria: runs your work software, under $1,200. Eleven candidates drop to three the moment you apply both. Deadline Friday at noon, default the middle one. Returnable for thirty days, so it is reversible and earns no further deliberation. Two of the three clear, so take the one that does not also need a docking station you have not bought yet. Order it Friday at nine.
Judging it afterward, which is the part that matters
When the result comes in, resist grading the decision by the result. Ask three questions instead. Did I decide on the information available at the time? Against criteria set before I saw the options? Inside a window I chose? Three yeses means you decided well, and a bad outcome means you met bad luck, which is a different problem calling for a different response.
This matters with ADHD specifically. After decades of being graded on outcomes, many adults read every poor result as fresh proof that their judgment cannot be trusted, and that belief is what freezes the next decision.
A note for clinicians and coaches
When a patient describes a decision that went badly, ask how they made it before you address how it turned out. An impulsive commitment made to end discomfort, with no criteria and no window, is a treatment target. A sound process that met an unlucky outcome is not, and treating it as one confirms the belief that the person’s judgment is broken.
The next step
Take the decision currently sitting unresolved. Before you look at the options again, write down the two things it must deliver and the date by which you will have chosen. Then pick the first option that clears both.
Synopsis
Adults with ADHD stall on decisions while waiting for certainty that one option is correct. This article argues that “right” is a judgment about outcomes and therefore unavailable at the moment of choosing, and that not deciding is itself a decision, almost always the wrong one, which hands the choice to whoever moves first. It presents the ADHD evidence without inflating it – a small-to-medium difference on decision tasks, reflecting suboptimal rather than risky choice, plus steeper delay discounting that makes relief the hidden reward in both impulsive commitment and indefinite postponement – and states plainly that the popular claim about too many options is not well supported, relocating the problem to the absence of a stopping rule. The bulk of the piece is method: size the decision before giving it a process, write criteria before looking at options, eliminate down to three rather than searching for the best, pair a deadline with a default, sort by reversibility, take the first sufficient option, break a tie with Occam’s razor by preferring the option that needs fewer things to go right, and name the first action and when it happens. A worked example runs all of it end to end. It closes on evaluating a decision afterward by process rather than outcome, which is what breaks the loop in which every bad result becomes evidence of defective judgment.
Topic: Self-Management (primary); Adults; Emotional Health Audience: Adults with ADHD; working adults; clinicians and coaches Keywords: delay discounting, Occam’s razor, reversibility, satisficing, implementation intention
Bibliography
Dekkers, T. J., Agelink van Rentergem, J. A., Huizenga, H. M., Raber, H., Shoham, R., Popma, A., & Pollak, Y. (2021). Decision-making deficits in ADHD are not related to risk seeking but to suboptimal decision-making: Meta-analytical and novel experimental evidence. Journal of Attention Disorders, 25(2), 243–255. https://doi.org/10.1177/1087054718815572
Dekkers, T. J., Popma, A., Agelink van Rentergem, J. A., Bexkens, A., & Huizenga, H. M. (2016). Risky decision making in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A meta-regression analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 45, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2016.03.001
Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601%2806%2938002-1
Iyengar, S. S., Wells, R. E., & Schwartz, B. (2006). Doing better but feeling worse: Looking for the “best” job undermines satisfaction. Psychological Science, 17(2), 143–150. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01677.x
Jackson, J. N. S., & MacKillop, J. (2016). Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and monetary delay discounting: A meta-analysis of case-control studies. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 1(4), 316–325. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2016.01.007
Scheibehenne, B., Greifeneder, R., & Todd, P. M. (2010). Can there ever be too many options? A meta-analytic review of choice overload. Journal of Consumer Research, 37(3), 409–425. https://doi.org/10.1086/651235
Resources
From The ADD Resource Center
- More Choices, More Problems: How to Decide When You Have ADHD
- When Every Choice Feels Like a Trap: ADHD and the Fear of Making Decisions
- Practical Strategies for Managing Decision-Making with ADHD
- ADHD and Decision Fatigue: Why Simple Choices Can Feel Overwhelming
Elsewhere
- ADHD Increases Risky Decision Making: Evidence from a Meta-Analysis – American Professional Society of ADHD and Related Disorders
- ADHD Evidence Project: Risky Decision Making – The ADHD Evidence Project
About the Author
Harold Robert Meyer founded The ADD Resource Center in 1993 and has spent more than thirty years translating the lived experience of ADHD into practical guidance for individuals, families, and the clinicians and educators who work with them. He co-founded CHADD of New York in 1989 and went on to serve on CHADD National’s board and executive committee, including as Vice President of Finance. He was later elected to lead the Institute for the Advancement of ADHD Coaching. An author and international speaker, he has presented at the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting, CHADD national and local conferences, NYU Langone, Mount Sinai Medical Center, and Weill Cornell Medical College. Reach him at [email protected].
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