Acceptance, Avoidance, and the Tolerations Between Them

Nov 13, 2025

Dive into the world of tolerations, those pesky little tasks we tolerate that drain our energy daily. Discover how they evolve and become invisible over time, from crooked pictures to unaddressed maintenance. Explore the emotional impacts of living with these annoyances and learn how to differentiate between tolerations and avoidance. The hosts offer practical tips on creating a tolerations list, prioritizing tasks, and visualizing completion to overcome procrastination. Embrace the journey to a clutter-free mind!

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INSIGHT

Tolerations Accumulate Mental Weight

Tolerations are small, everyday things you accept that quietly drain energy and attention.
Listing them reveals their cumulative emotional weight and hidden cognitive load.

ANECDOTE

Broken Oven Knob Use Case

Pete lived with a broken oven knob for years, using pliers until the whole oven was replaced.
The toleration persisted because he habituated to the workaround instead of ordering a simple replacement knob.

INSIGHT

Future Fantasies Maintain Tolerations

ADHD brains can live in the imagined finished state, using the future vision as a dopamine hit.
That future-focused pleasure lets tolerations persist because the emotional payoff substitutes action.

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We’re revisiting a classic — and for longtime listeners, a foundational topic: the Tolerations List. These are the small, nagging things we put up with every day — the crooked picture, the squeaky door, the wrong clock time — that quietly drain our focus and energy. Pete and Nikki first talked about tolerations all the way back in episode 106, and a decade later, they’re still finding new lessons in this deceptively simple coaching exercise.

In this episode, they explore how tolerations evolve over time and how ADHD brains are especially vulnerable to letting them pile up. Nikki brings fresh perspective from her early coaching school days, where the idea originated as a way to identify and release mental clutter. They dive into how tolerations become invisible over time — from broken stove knobs and unpainted bathrooms to window coverings that never got ordered. Together they unpack the emotional undercurrent of these seemingly minor annoyances: why we live with them, how we rationalize them, and what it means to decide which ones are worth fixing versus simply accepting.

They also revisit one of their most endearing long-running debates: is it a toleration or a project? From broken dishwashers to cluttered garages, they draw the line between avoidance, acceptance, and intentional deferral. And, in true ADHD fashion, they discuss how everything feels urgent — until you realize that not everything is.

By the end, Pete and Nikki offer a practical guide to managing tolerations using the GPS Planning color system: identifying red (urgent), green (important), and blue (non-urgent) tasks, and intentionally tackling the ones that genuinely lighten your cognitive load. You’ll learn how to make the invisible visible, how to reclaim small pockets of energy, and how to let go — compassionately — of the things that no longer deserve your bandwidth.

Links & Notes

(00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast
(01:23) - Support the Show on Patreon!
(02:50) - Tolerations
(21:53) - Tracking and Prioritizing Tolerations

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★