If you've ever wondered why some people who make less money end up wealthier than people who make more, the answer is almost embarrassingly simple — and there's a quantum physics principle that explains why it works.
It's so simple yet few do it:
Track your money.
Don't judge. Just track.
That's the whole instruction. No spreadsheet templates, no budgeting categories, no "envelope method." Just a record of what came in and what went out, kept current enough that you actually know where you stand.
And here's what's wild — the act of tracking, by itself, changes your money. Not the budgeting. Not the spending decisions. The tracking.
The magic happens in your observation and awareness. Literally — this is quantum physics. It's called the Observer Effect: in quantum mechanics, the act of observing a particle changes the particle. You can't measure something without affecting it.
The same principle applies to your money.
You're not tracking in order to change. You're tracking because the act of observation is the change. Your relationship to your money shifts the moment you start paying attention to it, before you've made a single new financial decision.
This is why people who track their money start spending differently within weeks without consciously deciding to. They're not white-knuckling discipline. The awareness itself is doing the work.
(Also — your bookkeeper and accountant will love you.)
Here's the uncomfortable pattern: the worse off you are financially, the more you'll want to track. And the more you'll resist tracking.
For ADHD brains, the resistance is layered. Executive function makes the mechanical act of tracking — opening the app, entering the number, reconciling at the end of the week — disproportionately exhausting. Money shame makes looking at the actual numbers feel like punishment. And the avoidance loop reinforces itself: the longer you don't look, the scarier looking gets.
Most people I meet who are broke or in debt don't track.
The opposite is true for the wealthy.
Even my seven-figure clients — who already have a bookkeeper, accountant, and financial planner — become more conscious and increase financial health when they themselves track. Not just their team. Them. And when they do, things just get better.
The Observer Effect doesn't care about your income. It cares whether you're looking.
If you're an ADHDish entrepreneur and the word "tracking" already made your shoulders climb to your ears, three things to know.
Most people abandon tracking because they got bogged down trying to categorize every transaction "correctly." Skip categories for the first month. Just record what came in and what went out, in plain dollars. Categories are an optimization for people who already have the habit. You don't need them yet.
Real-time tracking (entering every transaction the moment it happens) is what productivity influencers recommend and what almost no real human sustains. Once-a-week tracking — pull up your accounts on Sunday, write down the numbers, close the laptop — is what actually works long term. Lower friction, same Observer Effect.
This is the part most people skip, and it's the most important. When you see a number you don't like, the move isn't to spiral into shame or vow to do better. It's to notice the number and write it down anyway. The shame is what makes you stop tracking, which is what keeps the problem invisible, which is what keeps it growing. Notice. Write it down. Move on.
This is the kind of foundational money habit we work on with members in House of Done — not because we're a finance program, but because the boring habits underneath your business are usually what's quietly setting the ceiling on it.
Track your money.
It'll do you and your bank account good.
❤️
Leah
Leah Fisch is the Founder of CEO Rise and philanthropist co-founder of Cultivar Cartagena — otherwise known as the Jewish Mother Dominatrix.
A self-described messy kid with "lots of potential" she never seemed to live up to, Leah spent her first decade in business as a Professional Organizer specializing in hoarders threatened with eviction in New York City. She learned, very tangibly, how to help people cut what they don't need, get clear on what they do, and make change that actually lasts — even for the people everyone else had given up on.
Today she brings that same framework to ADHDish entrepreneurs — helping them build businesses that work in their weird and wild way.
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Helping ADHDish entrepreneurs & creatives declutter, focus and grow.
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