Apologies if this veered too much off topic. I've been kicking this around for a week or two, and felt the need to add recent events and post.
It's 5am, I haven't eaten in 12 hours, had anything substantial to drink in about 8, have been sitting on the toilet for over an hour, and instead of doing something about any of those things I'm editing a comment to fix a typo.
Even tasks that are extremely complicated are made up of many small, individual tasks.
And each of those small tasks is a boulder that needs to go up and over the mountain. And there's no satisfaction for handling boulder #1, because boulder #2 has been looming the whole time. And so on. And when all of the boulders have finally been moved, the next mountain is right there. It's different than the first mountain, and all of the boulders are different. Each boulder and mountain takes more and more energy. There's no end. No reward for finishing. Just boulders all the way down. Or up, in this case.
I'm tired, man.
Moving a little rock is easier than moving a boulder. That is the point. Smaller individual task -> less anxiety.
But then you look at a gravel field and get overwhelmed to stay with your metaphorical picture. Yes, that is part of what happens with ADHD and detailed lists.