Pay and Pricing in ADHD: Am I Asking for Too Much?

In my diary on shame I left a question behind: "Am I perhaps asking for too much?"

After writing that question I noticed that in me the matter of pay is not explained by shame alone. Shame is one side of the job. The other side is some very familiar ADHD movements in my mind at the moment I am about to say a price.

In this article I will try to separate those two. Because the advice "gather your confidence and ask" sees only half of the job.

What happens at that moment

I build digital strategy in my own company, and giving a price is an ordinary part of the work. Even so, when the price conversation opens, several things happen in me almost in the same second.

The number shrinks. There is one number in my head, and a smaller one comes out of my mouth. In between nobody has said anything; I have done the negotiating with myself before the other side has begun.

The duration shrinks. My answer to "how many hours will this take?" almost always falls below the truth. The research behind a strategy, the cleaning of data, the discarded ideas, the correspondence... None of it is visible at that moment. The price of invisible labor is invisible too. This relates both to time blindness and to the glossary entry on the planning fallacy: estimating the duration of a job optimistically is something everyone does, and it is even more pronounced in someone who has difficulty feeling time.

"Okay" comes quickly. When the other side asks for a discount or an extra job, I say "sure, okay" without thinking. Then in the evening I work out what that "okay" cost. In the glossary there is an entry close to this: inability to say no.

The chance of a "no" grows. The two seconds of silence after I say the price feel very long. To fill that silence I immediately add an explanation, a softening, sometimes a discount. I described the reasons why rejection weighs so heavily in the article on rejection sensitivity.

Most of the time it is not the client who lowers the price. It is the me at the moment of saying the price.

The shame side: this much is not ADHD

This needs to be said honestly too, because it is easy to write everything off to ADHD.

Gender differences in negotiation have long been studied. A meta-analysis that combined forty years of studies found that women are less likely than men to initiate a negotiation; but the difference was small and depended on context. When it becomes clear that negotiating is appropriate, the difference decreases, and it also shrank over the years (Kugler et al., 2018).

Another study looked at where this difference comes from. When women negotiated on their own behalf they used more hesitant tactics and obtained lower results; when they negotiated on behalf of someone else they did better. What explained the difference was the expectation of getting a negative reaction if they appeared assertive (Amanatullah & Morris, 2010).

This finding both relieved and angered me a little. It relieved me, because it breaks the story "I can't do it": the same person can negotiate well for someone else. It angered me, because it shows the fear is not in vain, that a real social cost is to be expected.

There is also what the glossary calls the impostor feeling. Thinking you do not deserve success and that one day you will be found out. A systematic review on this summarizes that prevalence was reported across a very wide range from study to study, between 9 percent and 82 percent, that the feeling frequently occurs together with depression and anxiety, and that it was found to be associated with lower job performance and job satisfaction (Bravata et al., 2020). The thought "this job isn't worth that much money" comes in me most of the time from there.

ADHD's relation to income

I also want to look at the big picture. In a survey study in the United States with 500 adults with ADHD and 501 control participants aged 18 to 64, the full-time employment rate of those with ADHD was 34 percent, against 59 percent in the control group; apart from the 18 to 24 age group, household incomes were also significantly lower (Biederman & Faraone, 2006).

This study does not measure pay negotiation, let me say that openly. We do not know how much of the income difference comes from employment, how much from job choice, how much from negotiation. I could not find a study directly examining how adults with ADHD behave when asking for pay or giving a price. I am drawing the mechanisms above from my own experience and from known symptoms; I am not presenting them as a researched finding.

Preparing the price before the conversation

The biggest change for me was taking the price out of the moment of the conversation. That moment is the moment of impulse, of fear of silence and of the shrinking number. The decision should not be made then.

Preparing the number in writing. Before going into a proposal conversation I write three numbers: what I want, the lowest I can accept, and the point below which I will say no. In the conversation I read the number on the paper. I do not say it from my head.

Adding the invisible work to the duration estimate. When estimating, next to the job I also write what surrounds the job: meetings, revisions, correspondence, research, thinking. Knowing that my first estimate almost always falls short, I add a buffer to it. How much it will be I decide for each type of job by looking at my past jobs.

Saying the first number myself. In a study often cited in negotiation research, the side that made the first offer, whether buyer or seller, obtained a better result, and first offers strongly predicted the price reached (Galinsky & Mussweiler, 2001). The same study also shows that this advantage disappears when the other side focuses on their own alternatives and target. So the first number does not solve everything, but asking "what do you think?" and waiting for the other side's number means leaving the anchor to someone else.

Speaking in the name of the job. I translate the finding of Amanatullah and Morris to myself: I think of the price not as "my fee" but as "the resources this job requires." I speak in the name of my company, my time and the quality of the work. This small change of frame reduces the dropping of my voice.

Staying silent after the number. After saying the price I do not add an explanation. The silence feels long, but I let the other side fill it.

Not saying yes the same day. When a discount or an expansion of scope comes, my answer is always the same: "Let me look into it and get back to you." Instead of working out the account of impulsive "okays" in the evening, I make the decision before the evening.

A price card. Write the prices of the jobs you do often and what they cover on a one-page document and keep it up to date. During the conversation you look at that document, not at your memory. If a job is not on the card, your answer is "let me prepare a separate proposal for that," and the decision again stays in a calm moment.

If you are on a salary: the raise conversation

Giving a price looks like the matter of a freelancer, but for salaried employees the same knot is tied in the raise conversation.

The raise conversation has an additional difficulty in ADHD: the jobs you did through the year do not sit evenly in memory. A mistake from last week is very clear, a big problem you solved six months ago is blurry. When you enter the meeting with memory, what you have in hand are the freshest and most often the most negative examples.

For this, a file of evidence kept through the year helps. A few lines every month: what was finished, what changed, which problem was solved, which job exceeded what was expected. The invisible labor of thinking also has to be written there, because nobody will remember it for you. Going into the conversation with this file and a written number makes it harder for the number to shrink on the table.

Whether you can ask for a raise, when and through what process, varies from workplace to workplace. If it is unclear, asking about the process first is also a start: "How and when is the pay review done here?"

When the money comes

There is also the other end of the job: issuing the invoice, following up on the payment, reminding whoever is late. These are a separate ADHD area, and asking for pay correctly is not complete without collecting the money on time. I described that part in the article on ADHD and money management; let me add only this here: I try to issue the invoice on the day the job is finished, because "I'll issue it later" in me often means weeks.

Changing the question "Am I asking for too much?"

In the diary I spoke of changing the source of shame. On the pay side the counterpart of that was changing the question.

The answer to "Am I asking for too much?" is always sought in the other person's face. Instead I ask myself: "Does this number cover how long this job really took and how much thinking it required?"

The answer to this question is not sought in the other person's face. It is on the paper.