It's not that the list is long. It's that your brain is trying to hold the entire list in awareness simultaneously and can't. Everything feels equally urgent, equally heavy, equally impossible. This is ADHD overwhelm, and it's a direct consequence of working memory limitations.
The working memory bottleneck
Neurotypical adults hold about 7 items in working memory. Adults with ADHD hold about 4-5. When your task list exceeds capacity, your brain can't prioritize because it can't hold enough items to compare. All tasks float at the same urgency level. That's overwhelm — a cognitive bottleneck, not an emotional overreaction.
How to shrink it
Externalize immediately. Get everything out of your head and onto paper or a brain dump tool. This isn't organizing — it's evacuation.
Choose one. Not the best one. Just one. Doing the wrong thing is almost always better than doing nothing. Starting anything breaks the freeze.
Reduce the visible list. If your list has 30 items, you're looking at overwhelm every time you open it. Filter to today only.
Overwhelm is information, not failure. It means: reduce the load, increase capacity, or narrow the scope. Respond to the limit. Don't shame yourself for having one.