The ADHD Skills Lab

If you have ADHD (and especially if you run your own business), you probably know this cycle: push hard to hit a deadline, get it done, then do the same thing next week. It works often enough that you keep relying on it, until the week it doesn’t and you’re running on nothing. Dr. Tracey Marks is a board-certified psychiatrist with more than 25 years of clinical experience. Skye and Tracey talk about why pushing through is so hard to give up and what it costs your attention and energy over ti...

You're posting consistently, growing your audience, and putting hours into marketing your business. People are watching, liking, and following. But they're not buying. Kyrus Keenan Westcott, known as The Vibe With Ky, has built an audience of more than two million across Facebook and TikTok while working full time as a director of paid media. Diagnosed with ADHD at 35, he's learned how to turn content into a business without making every post a sales pitch. In this conversation, Ky and Skye u...

You hired people so you wouldn't have to do everything yourself. So why are you still the one remembering every deadline, chasing every handoff, and checking whether things actually got done? Skye Waterson and Robbie Waterson explain why delegating tasks doesn't always mean delegating the mental load, especially when you have ADHD. Research shows that working memory challenges can make tracking tasks, priorities, and deadlines harder. And when everything lives in your head or gets buried in S...

With ADHD, creative ideas are often the easy part. Starting one is harder. So is the project you were sure about, set down just short of finished, and the shame that follows. In this special episode of the ADHD Skills Lab, Skye Waterson shares a conversation from the ADHD Channel for Women, created by Understood.org. Host Cate Osborn talks with Adam Reid, an Emmy Award-winning writer, director, filmmaker, and producer, in front of a live studio audience. Adam didn't know he had ADHD until he ...

With ADHD, a quick client callback runs long, you lose track of time, and the work you meant to do is still sitting there. Dr. Jessica McCarthy stopped taking those calls. Dr. McCarthy is a licensed clinical psychologist and clinical neuropsychologist, and the founder and clinical director of Elements Psychological Services, a two-location assessment and therapy practice in New Jersey. She has ADHD and runs the practice around it. She walks Skye through what she handed off, what she kept, and...

You finally hire people to get some time back. Then somehow you have even more to keep track of. What did you delegate? Is it getting done? What did you tell them was most important? Where is everyone actually spending their time? For ADHD business owners, growing a team can make it feel like the systems you spent years building for yourself suddenly stop working. Skye Waterson and Robert Waterson look at why. Working memory was already carrying too much when you were managing your own tasks....

You are working every spare minute, and the business still is not growing the way it should. Amy Marie Hann spent 10 years hustling in a sales business that never really scaled. She worked constantly, burned out, and eventually realized that more effort was not going to fix the way the business was built. Amy is the creator of Master the Mundane, a book and membership community for mothers with ADHD. In this conversation, she explains why people with ADHD can stay with the wrong thing for too...

You start an email, remember a purchase, open another tab, and suddenly five tasks are each 20 percent done. For adults with ADHD, working memory problems don't necessarily disappear with age. Skye Waterson and Robert Waterson unpack a 2013 meta-analysis of 38 studies on working memory in adults with ADHD. The researchers expected older adults to perform better. Instead, the review found adults with ADHD performed moderately worse on both verbal and visual working memory tasks, with age not c...

Rejection sensitive dysphoria gets talked about constantly in ADHD spaces, but there isn't much research behind it yet. In this Research Recap, Skye and Will unpack a small study that tried to measure what happens when people with ADHD symptoms experience social exclusion. Using a deliberately unfair ball-tossing game, researchers compared how rejected participants said they felt with changes in their heart rate and blood pressure. The results didn't line up the way researchers expected. This...

You hired help. You still find yourself taking things back on. Kara Kushnir built A Work of Heart Counseling and Wellness from a part-time practice into a fifteen-provider team. But growing the team meant learning that she couldn't keep doing everything herself. In this episode, Kara talks about the temptation to say yes to everything, the burnout that follows, and how she learned to delegate, ask for help, and build a team she trusts enough to tell her no. What We Cover Why trying to do ever...

ADHD treatment works. But does it keep working the same way eight years later? In this Research Recap, Skye and Will dig into the MTA study, one of the largest and most influential ADHD treatment studies ever conducted, and what researchers found when they followed the same kids over eight years. They unpack why the strong early treatment gains had disappeared by year eight, why medication use dropped dramatically over time, and the surprising finding that even the group still taking medicati...

You know what you want in the future. You still can't make yourself do the boring task today. Skye and Robbie break down the goal setting system Skye actually uses, adapted from Dan Martell's framework. It works backward from a 25-year vision to one specific goal this year, then down to one daily non-negotiable that makes that goal inevitable. They also get into what happens when you miss a day, why trying to focus on five goals at once backfires, and how immediate rewards can make the thing ...

You know what needs doing. You have the ideas. So why is actually finishing the thing so hard? Jason Chatfield has written and drawn the syndicated comic strip Ginger Meggs for sixteen years, writes for The New Yorker, and built a career across cartooning, comedy, and writing. But he learned he cannot rely on his brain to generate ideas and execute them at the same time. Instead, Jason built physical systems that separate thinking from doing: external deadlines, index cards, a wall calendar, ...

You built the business because you were good at the work. Nobody warned you that promoting it might be harder than doing it. New research on neurodivergent entrepreneurs found that maintaining a social media profile was the most commonly reported self-employment challenge. Ahead of work-life balance, unpredictability, and financial pressures. In this episode, Skye and Robert unpack why social media has become such a difficult part of running a business, what else neurodivergent entrepreneurs ...

Carlos Gutierrez spent 25 years rising from sales representative to CEO of Kellogg, then served as U.S. Commerce Secretary. He did it all without knowing he had ADHD. When he was diagnosed later in life, Carlos began looking back at his career differently. The disorganization, procrastination and impulsivity he had treated as personal flaws finally had a name. So did some of the traits that helped him succeed, including intense hyperfocus, intuition and an ability to connect with people. In t...

Waking up exhausted after eight hours of sleep isn't just bad luck. In this Research Recap, Skye and Will break down a meta-analysis on hay fever and ADHD, including the finding that people with allergies are significantly more likely to also meet the criteria for ADHD. They talk through how swollen sinuses can disrupt sleep, how that can show up as brain fog and forgetfulness, and why the researchers still can't say which condition comes first. Want more of Will's work? Visit HackingYourADHD...

You hit a growth ceiling and your first instinct is to change what you're doing, not fix how you're doing it. Matt Verlaque has coached founders past a million in revenue and sees the same pattern over and over: something works, the novelty wears off, growth stalls, and suddenly a new marketing channel, AI tool, or strategy looks like the answer. Matt and Skye unpack the “pivot chaser” trap, how to tell when a strategy is genuinely broken versus when you've simply gotten bored of executing it...

Tom Reber built successful businesses while privately believing he wasn't smart enough to fight for his own ideas. That belief followed him from childhood special ed into business ownership, where he went bankrupt once and later sold another business for far less than he believed it was worth. Tom, founder of The Contractor Fight and a former Marine, explains where that belief came from, how it affected the decisions he made, and what changed when he finally stopped confusing not knowing some...

You spent real money on a system nobody uses. Skye and Robert Waterson see this problem regularly working as fractional COOs with ADHD business owners. The owner gets excited about a new system, the team agrees to the change, and a few weeks later everyone quietly slips back into the old way of doing things. The problem usually isn’t the software. It’s how the change was handled. In this episode, Skye and Robert break down the six phases they use to move a team onto better systems without los...

Most people don't struggle to put themselves out there because they lack ideas. They struggle because they're afraid of what people will think once they see the real version of them. So they post the safe version instead. The version nobody remembers. Chris Do, Emmy-winning designer and founder of The Futur, has spent more than 20 years helping creatives build businesses by becoming more visible. He believes a brand people care about isn't built on sharper positioning. It's built on being wi...

Most ADHD interventions only work if you actually stick with them. So what happens when the intervention is something your brain actually wants to do? Skye joins Will to unpack a systematic review of 22 studies on virtual reality interventions for ADHD. They look at surprisingly high adherence rates, what the research suggests about attention and working memory, and whether improvements inside VR actually carry over into everyday life. They also dig into the different ways VR is being used, f...

You’re guessing how long things take. That guess feels reasonable. It’s just wrong, over and over again. In the last episode, we broke down why ADHD time blindness happens. This one is about what to do about it. Because the real problem isn’t planning. It’s relying on estimation at all. In this episode, Skye and Robert walk through how to replace your internal clock with systems that actually hold up in real work: why you can’t “get better” at estimating timehow to use past projects instead o...

You can be successful on paper and still feel stuck. In this episode, Skye talks with entrepreneur and investor Kassidy Warren about leaving the corporate “safe path,” taking real risks, and the identity shift required to stop playing small. They unpack rejection, procrastination, reinvesting before results, and what it actually means to turn pro — especially with an ADHD brain. If you’ve built something stable but know you’re capable of more, this one will hit. What we cover: The hidden cost...

Click the link below to see which founder type you are! https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com/adhd-founder-types You keep solving the same business problems, but they keep coming back in different forms. After reviewing more than a dozen research episodes on ADHD founder struggles, four recurring founder patterns emerged: the Last Minute Hero, the Overwhelmed Architect, the Vision Caster, and the Pivot Chaser. These aren't random quirks. They're recurring ways ADHD can show up as a bu...

You've read the books. You've tried to think your way into a better mindset. But the changes never seem to stick. In this episode, Mick Hawes shares why he believes that's because mindset isn't something you change directly. Drawing on more than 35 years coaching business owners in high-complexity industries like custom home building, he explains why your mindset is the result of the systems, environment, habits, language, and other external influences shaping your daily life. Skye and Mick e...

You start medication or therapy, things get better, and then a few years later the old struggles creep back in. You wonder if you did something wrong. This week, Skye Waterson is joined by Will Curb from Hacking Your ADHD for a Research Recap on the MTA study, the largest and most influential ADHD treatment trial ever conducted. Nearly 580 children were followed for 8 years to understand what happened after the initial treatment period. Together, Skye and Will unpack why the early differences...

You've probably heard it before: "Just start." "You'll feel better once you begin." "Get rid of all distractions." If you have ADHD, you've probably also discovered that this advice often doesn't work. In this episode, Skye and Robbie unpack the dopamine transfer deficit theory and explore why ADHD brains may not receive the same anticipatory motivation signal that helps neurotypical brains get started. They explain why so much conventional productivity advice misses the mark, why dopamine de...

If you've ever tried to overhaul your finances in one weekend only to abandon the system a few days later, you're not alone. According to Diane Gardner, that's exactly why most financial systems fail for ADHD business owners. Diane Gardner is a Mastery-Level Profit First Professional, certified tax strategist, certified cash flow strategist, and bestselling author who helps home service business owners build stronger cash flow and lasting profitability. In this conversation with Skye, Diane e...

Why does your ADHD feel manageable in one situation but overwhelming in another? In this episode, Skye and Robbie explore a little-known 1997 review paper that challenged the traditional view of ADHD. Instead of seeing ADHD traits as fixed deficits, the authors argued that traits like attention shifting, hyperactivity, and impulsivity can become strengths or struggles depending on the environment. Together, they unpack what the research actually says, why these ideas never became mainstream, ...

You meet someone, become instant best friends, and a few months later they're gone. Then it happens again. Most ADHD advice focuses on productivity, but Caroline Maguire believes we're missing something just as important: friendship. Caroline is a certified ADHD coach and the author of Friendship Skills for Neurodivergent Adults. In this conversation, Skye and Caroline explore why ADHD brains often rush into friendships, why traditional friendship advice falls flat, and how to build relations...

Meditation is one of the most common ADHD recommendations—but what does the research actually say? In this Research Recap, Skye Waterson and William Curb examine two studies on mindfulness and ADHD. The first explores an 8-week mindfulness program for primary school children, while the second compares mindfulness with structured psychoeducation for adults with ADHD. The children's study found improvements in attention and psychological wellbeing. The adult study found something just as intere...

Every founder with ADHD has wondered whether they quit too early. A 2024 foraging study unexpectedly suggests the opposite may sometimes be true. Researchers built an experiment expecting ADHD traits to be a disadvantage, and instead discovered the average person stayed too long. Skye and Robert explore what that means beyond the lab, why ADHD may be an advantage during the exploratory stage of entrepreneurship, why pivoting is not always a flaw, and why the same trait can become either a str...

She stared in the mirror one night, still wearing the workout clothes she'd put on that morning, and realized she couldn't remember if she'd had a sip of water all day. Years before being diagnosed with ADHD, Sharon Pope was successfully leading startups while privately struggling with the basics of everyday life. So she built the tool she wished she'd had: an AI task manager that follows up like a person instead of another notification. In this conversation, Sharon shares how that breaking p...

You keep rereading the same task on your list. You know it matters. You still haven't started. If that sounds familiar, it probably isn't a motivation problem. It may be because you're treating a project like it's a task. In this episode, Skye and Robbie unpack why hidden complexity makes seemingly simple tasks feel impossible, why the ADHD brain mistakes importance for urgency, and how giving tasks a trusted "home" can dramatically reduce overwhelm. They also share practical strategies for b...

If planning your week, remembering the small stuff, or keeping up with admin feels harder than the actual work, you're not imagining it. This week, Skye sits down with Mike Legett, an ADHD coach and executive functioning specialist who was diagnosed with ADHD as a child. Mike studied molecular genetics at Emory before leaving graduate school when its vague, paperwork-heavy demands became unworkable. She went on to build a career as an internationally recognized swing and blues dance instructo...

Everyone says people with ADHD have "time blindness." But what does that actually mean? In this Research Recap, Skye Waterson and Will Curb review a decade of research (2012–2022) on time perception in adults with ADHD. Rather than treating time as one skill, the research separates it into three: estimating how long something will take, reproducing a duration, and managing time day to day. One finding stands out: many ADHD struggles begin with inaccurate time estimation. If your brain can't r...

You don't need another productivity hack. You need systems that still work when your brain doesn't. Cas Aarssen built the Clutterbug Method, hosted HGTV's Hot Mess House, and grew a global brand by stopping the fight against her ADHD and designing her home and business around how she naturally works. In this conversation, she shares the hard lessons that came from burnout, why traditional organizing advice kept failing her, and how building systems around real habits instead of ideal ones cha...

You've been told you pivot too fast. This research suggests your timing might be right. A 2024 Royal Society paper tested how long people stay in a depleting resource before moving to a new one, using a model from ecology called the marginal value theorem. The prediction was that ADHD traits would cause people to leave too soon. The data found the opposite. ADHD participants left patches closer to the mathematically optimal point and ended up with more total reward. Skye and Robbie break down...

You get bored with the offer that's working, so you go build a new one. James Wedmore has run the same program and the same live event for ten years and says that's the entire reason it grew. He explains the difference between a real "this isn't working" and a feeling that just shows up the moment things get hard. He also breaks down why he became a bottleneck in his own business, what changed when he got specific about role clarity, and why he keeps his identity and worth separate from his r...

You're exhausted all day, then suddenly wired at 10pm. That's not random. Research suggests it's tied to a delayed circadian rhythm that's common in ADHD. In this Research Recap, Skye and Will unpack a paper examining ADHD as a circadian rhythm disorder. This isn't a list of sleep hygiene tips. It's a look at what's actually different in the ADHD body's clock, and why typical advice misses it. Understanding the delay changes how you plan your day, not just your bedtime. What We Cover: Why ene...

You've reread the same paragraph three times and still couldn't tell anyone what it said. Skye and Robbie return to the DSM-5 for Part 2 of their criteria breakdown, this time on criterion B: difficulty sustaining attention. They work through real examples, rereading pages, checking out of meetings, losing focus on audiobooks even at double speed, and land on why none of it happens during a good movie or video game. The conversation distinguishes between attention that drifts because a task i...

You spend years building workarounds for your own brain, then realize you could build your company the same way. Chris Wang did exactly that. As co-founder and CEO of Shimmer, an ADHD coaching platform that has delivered more than 90,000 coaching sessions, Chris was diagnosed with ADHD at 28 while building the company. Instead of treating her personal systems and her business systems as separate problems, she applied the same coaching frameworks, structure, automation, and strength-based deve...

You've read the ADHD criteria a dozen times and still aren't sure if you actually qualify. Skye and Robbie Waterson and sit down with the DSM-5 itself and read through the inattentive criteria line by line, the same list a clinician would use for an actual diagnosis. They score themselves against each one in real time, and they don't agree on most of them. The conversation covers why the criteria were written for children and then loosely translated for adults, why "close attention to detail"...

Most productivity advice for ADHD is written for people who just need a nudge. If you have ADHD, you need something more honest than that. Ari Tuckman holds a PsyD and an MBA, has authored five books on ADHD, and has spent over 40,000 hours in clinical work with adults. He co-chairs the largest ADHD conference in the US and has been quoted in the New York Times, CNN, and the Washington Post. In this conversation, Ari breaks down what productivity actually means for ADHD brains, why "don't get...

Running your business on anxiety feels like productivity. It isn't. It's a system built on urgency, and it burns out fast. Research suggests that goal-focused interventions can reduce anxiety in adults with ADHD. What they don't appear to do is meaningfully improve executive functioning. Skye and Will break down a Norwegian randomized controlled trial on goal management training, what it found, and why that gap between feeling less anxious and actually getting more done matters for how you ru...

You've launched things that seemed solid, only to watch them unravel for reasons that felt obvious afterward. That's not a judgment problem. For ADHD founders, retrospective clarity comes naturally. The pre-mortem is a tool that pulls that clarity forward, to the start of a project, when fixing problems is still cheap. Skye and Robbie break down the pre-mortem method, developed by cognitive psychologist Gary Klein and later popularized by Daniel Kahneman, and explain why it fits ADHD-wired br...

Sitting in a parking lot after leaving the bankruptcy attorney's office, $600,000 in debt written off, home gone, Galel Fajardo told himself no one would ever hire him again. Galel Fajardo is a business coach, digital marketing consultant, and fractional CMO with 23 years of entrepreneurial experience and a Master's in Performance Psychology. He specializes in helping high-performing entrepreneurs, especially those with ADHD, whose businesses look successful from the outside and feel like a p...

You've built systems before. You probably built them well. The problem wasn't creating them. The problem was maintaining them once the novelty wore off. Wednesday's episode explored why ADHD founders often struggle with operational consistency. This episode covers the structural solution. The systems integrator role sits between the ADHD founder and the rest of the business. It captures ideas, filters priorities, protects the team from constant pivots, and builds the documentation that turns ...

Your business is doing well. Momentum is real, clients are happy, and structure feels like the enemy right now. But if you turn that camera around and look past the founder, you find a stressed team running on broken systems, one sick day away from everything slowing to a stop. Research on ADHD traits and project management suggests operational effectiveness, specifically goal setting, milestone tracking, and resource allocation, drops measurably when ADHD traits are present. The mediating fa...

You've tried the calendars, the timers, the hacks. They work for two weeks and then stop. Jenna Free says that's not a discipline problem. It's a regulation problem. Jenna is a counselor for ADHD with ADHD, author of The Simple Guide to ADHD Regulation, and has worked in-depth with over 1,000 people through her ADHD Regulation Method. Her position is direct: dysregulation is not a fixed trait of the ADHD brain. It is a learned response to a lifetime of friction. And it is the reason every oth...

Why do so many people start ADHD medication... and then quietly stop within a year or two? In this Research Recap, Skye and Will unpack a systematic literature review examining why over half of all patients discontinue or significantly reduce ADHD medication within 2 to 3 years of starting. This episode isn't about whether you should take medication. It's about something more practical: what the data actually found about why people stop, where expert assumptions conflict with what patients re...

You're generating real revenue. But every time you open your banking app, your brain shuts down and you close it again. Nicole Stanley is the founder of Arise Financial Coaching and creator of the Money Momentum Method. Late-diagnosed with ADHD at 30, scoring in the 99th percentile for severity, she built a financial method that turned out to be designed for ADHD brains before she knew she had one. She crossed $250,000 in revenue last year and has helped clients save an average of $40,000 ann...

You know what your most important work is. You still spend the first four hours of the day doing everything else. Casey Neistat recently posted a video called *Navigating the Matrix* showing how he organizes his workday as a creator with ADHD. He tracks his tasks in real time, explains the system he uses to manage everything, and ends by accepting the chaos as part of the deal. Skye and Robert disagree with that conclusion. In this standalone episode, they break down the hidden problem und...

You built something people love. Running the business of it is a different problem entirely. Dani Donovan is the creator of The Anti-Planner, a self-published ADHD productivity workbook that generated over $1 million in its first year and has now sold more than 115,000 copies with a 4.9-star rating. She built it without a business plan, without onboarding documents, and without a team that had done any of this before. In this conversation, Dani explains how a single ADHD comic from 2018 nearl...

Nobody agreed on what done looked like. The handover happened anyway. That is where it fell apart. This episode is the practical follow-up to Wednesday. Skye and Robbie walk through the specific hiring and handover process they use with ADHD founders, including what they have lost money figuring out so you do not have to. The hiring side covers why video applications and paid test projects replace interviews, how to write a role description that filters for initiative rather than compliance, ...

You hired someone good. The work was fine. You still sent the late-night Slack message, redirected the task, and checked in on something that had already been handled. This episode looks at what the research suggests is actually driving that pattern. Not trust issues. Not a bad hire. A specific kind of perfectionism that shows up differently in people with ADHD. Two studies help explain it. A 2016 study found perfectionism was the most common cognitive distortion in adults formally diagnosed ...

The school sent her daughter to a desk with her head down because she could not sit still during circle time. That was the moment Jessica stopped waiting for someone else to figure it out. Jessica Shaw is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, and Vanity Fair. She is the host of Everyone Gets a Juice Box, Understood.org's podcast for parents raising neurodivergent kids. She is also a mom of two teens who think differently, and someone ...

Understanding why ADHD happens can feel like chasing a moving target. This study adds a biological angle most people haven't considered. We discuss a prospective study examining whether maternal inflammation during the second trimester is associated with ADHD symptoms in children later in life. Researchers measured cytokine levels in 62 pregnant women and followed up on ADHD symptoms in 68 children using teacher and parent reports. The study suggests there is an association between those infl...

Description: Presented by Understood.org You don’t have a lack of focus. You have too many ideas pulling it in different directions. This episode builds on Wednesday’s breakdown of ADHD novelty bias and shows you how to actually manage it without shutting it down. Because the goal isn’t to stop having ideas. It’s to stop them from constantly disrupting execution. You’ll hear how to treat novelty as input instead of immediate action, how to capture ideas so they stop feeling urgent, and how to...

Presented by Understood.org You keep switching direction mid-project, and now nothing in your business is fully built. In this episode, we break down ADHD novelty bias and why new ideas don’t just feel exciting. They feel urgent, important, and hard to ignore. You’ll hear how this shows up in real businesses. The team is aligned, work has started, and then a new idea comes in. It sounds better, feels right, and within days everything shifts. Six months later, you’ve got multiple half-built pr...

Presented by Understood.org Getting diagnosed with ADHD explains a lot. Then it starts explaining too much. In this episode, Nir Eyal breaks down what happens after that initial relief. When ADHD stops being useful information and starts becoming your identity. He shares how that shift can quietly limit effort, create anxiety loops, and turn every struggle into “this is just how I am.” This isn’t about ignoring ADHD. It’s about understanding the difference between what’s real and what you’ve ...

Presented by Understood.org Bad environments can train ADHD entrepreneurs to second-guess themselves long after they leave those environments behind. Brandon Smith shares how years of struggling in school, standardized testing, and constant negative feedback shaped the way he saw himself, and why finding practical work completely changed how he viewed his ADHD brain. In this conversation, Brandon breaks down how environment affects confidence, self-trust, business growth, and leadership. He a...

Presented by Understood.org You feel seen by something that wasn’t meant for you. Skye and Robbie explore whether Bluey reflects ADHD patterns or just captures behaviour accurately. Using DSM criteria, they break down distraction, unfinished tasks, and how patterns are identified over time. This episode sits right on the line between observation and diagnosis and shows you how to think about both. What We Cover: Where observation stops and diagnosis startsWhy realistic behaviour can feel diag...

Presented by Understood.org You build a new system, follow it for a few days, then quietly stop using it. Craig Ballantyne has coached high performers across multiple industries and his approach focuses on building systems that survive real life, not perfect conditions. This conversation looks at why most systems fail for ADHD brains. Craig explains how self-awareness, environment control, and honest constraints matter more than motivation. You will leave with a different way to think abo...

Presented by Understood.org You get a new idea and immediately want to drop everything else. This episode builds on Wednesday’s research around ideation bias in ADHD. The research suggests people with ADHD prefer the idea phase and are more likely to move on before execution is complete. We break down how this creates the “never-ending pivot” and why projects keep getting abandoned halfway through. You’ll learn how to use minimum viable product thinking to actually finish things, even if your...

Presented by Understood.org You spend weeks building something before anyone ever sees it. Not because it needs to be that big. Because once you start, it keeps expanding until it feels impossible to finish. This is where minimum viable product actually matters. Not as a business concept, but as a way to stop overbuilding everything and start testing things earlier. ADHD makes it easy to over-scope, get pulled into the wrong details, and delay real feedback. So instead of finding out what wor...

Presented by Understood.org You keep starting new things and abandoning the ones that were working. Katy Weber is the go-to voice behind the Woman and ADHD podcast, reaching millions of listeners and building a multi-stream business from lived experience. Her approach to growth is grounded in what actually works with ADHD, not what sounds good on paper. She explains why ADHD pulls you toward new ideas, how pivoting too early kills momentum, and what changed when she stopped rebuilding from sc...

You keep being told ADHD is genetic, but part of you suspects something in your environment is making it worse. In this next episode of the Research Recap Series Skye and Will (Hacking Your ADHD) discuss research on environmental exposure and ADHD-related behaviors. Together they explore what the science suggests about how certain chemicals may influence attention, impulsivity, and neurodevelopment. The focus stays on association, not certainty, and what that means in practice. The conversati...

Presented by Understood.org You keep improving the idea instead of finishing the project. In Wednesday’s breakdown, we showed why ADHD brains prefer ideation and discount future rewards. Today is about building around that. This episode gives you three systems. A written decision log. A structured ideation window. And a clear threshold for when changes are allowed. These systems help you move from “this could be better” to “this is done.” What We Cover: Why ideas expand until you force a stop...

Presented by Understood.org You have a good plan. But your brain keeps pulling you back into new ideas. Skye and Robbie explain why ADHD brains get stuck in ideation. This episode connects real-world behavior to research. ADHD brains perform well in divergent thinking. But they also prefer it. And they value immediate rewards over delayed ones. That combination makes finishing harder than starting. What We Cover: Why ideation becomes a loop instead of a phaseResearch showing ADHD strength in ...

Presented by Understood.org You built something that works. Now you cannot stop working without everything feeling like it might fall apart. Krista Mashore is a powerhouse in digital coaching. She built a $70M business after leaving real estate at her peak. She is the gold standard for fast execution and high-output growth, and her systems come directly from managing her own ADHD at scale. We break down what burnout actually looked like behind the scenes. From selling 150+ homes a year to wal...

Description: Presented by Understood.org You’re guessing how long things take. That guess feels reasonable. It’s just wrong, over and over again. In the last episode, we broke down why ADHD time blindness happens. This one is about what to do about it. Because the real problem isn’t planning. It’s relying on estimation at all. In this episode, Skye and Robert walk through how to replace your internal clock with systems that actually hold up in real work: why you can’t “get better” at estimati...

Presented by Understood.org You think it’ll take two days. Your team knows it’s two weeks. And after a while, they stop saying anything. In this episode, Skye and Robert break down why ADHD founders consistently underestimate time, not because they’re overconfident or disorganized, but because their perception of time is genuinely off. They walk through the research behind time blindness and estimation failure, and how this shows up in real businesses: why your timelines feel right when you s...

Presented by Understood.org You’re funding everything yourself, and it’s quietly slowing your business down. Not because you’re doing anything wrong, but because you’re relying on the most limited resource you have: your own cash and capacity. Kat Weaver has helped founders raise over $70M and won 22 out of 23 pitch competitions herself. But her approach isn’t about chasing investors, it’s about using the right kind of money at the right time. In this episode, she breaks down: Why self-fundin...

We usually think of ADHD as behavioral. But what if some of the earliest signals weren’t behavioral at all? In this Research Recap, we break down a large population-based study examining pain-related diagnoses in children before they were diagnosed with ADHD. Researchers looked at over 700,000 medical records to ask a simple question: Were children later diagnosed with ADHD already showing higher rates of pain-related medical visits? The association was clear. The explanation is not. No fear-...

Description: Presented by Understood.org You approve the direction. Then change everything at the end. Wednesday’s episode showed why ADHD planning creates late-stage corrections. This episode shows how to stop that pattern. Skye and Robbie break down a system built around checkpoints, prototypes, and early feedback. The goal is not better briefs. The goal is catching problems when they’re still cheap to fix. What We Cover: Why late feedback is built into ADHD planningThe 24–48 hour check-in ...

Presented by Understood.org The plan made sense in your head. It falls apart when someone else runs it. This episode looks at research on prospective memory and verbal planning. The findings suggest ADHD impacts how plans are built, not just remembered. Skye and Robbie explain why this creates a gap between intention and execution. And why teams end up producing something that feels “close, but not right.” Friday’s episode will focus on systems that reduce this gap. What We Cover: Why ADHD af...

Presented by Understood.org You already know what needs to get done. It’s not a knowledge problem. It’s not a lack of ideas. But you still don’t start. Instead, you overthink it, wait to feel ready, or tell yourself you’ll do it later, again. Eric Zimmer is the creator of The One You Feed, an award-winning podcast with 50M+ downloads and 800+ conversations on behavior change. He is the go-to voice on sustainable habit change, and his work shows what actually works when willpower doesn’t. In t...

Presented by Understood.org You keep setting deadlines and somehow everything still ends up happening at the last minute. You plan ahead. You move things around. You even set earlier deadlines. And it still compresses into a final push. This episode explains why that keeps happening and what to change. We build on Wednesday’s breakdown of time blindness and show why most deadline strategies fail over time, especially the fake ones you don’t really believe. Then we walk through how to structur...

Presented by Understood.org Deadlines exist right up until they don’t. You can see it on the calendar. You know it’s coming. You’ve even thought about it a few times. Then suddenly it’s urgent and everything else gets dropped while you scramble to catch up. This episode explains why that keeps happening. We break down what research shows about ADHD and time perception, and why this isn’t just poor planning. Future time doesn’t create pressure until it’s right in front of you, so you end up re...

Presented by Understood.org Jamie Sea built two seven-figure businesses. From the outside, everything looked successful. But behind the scenes, the pressure, urgency and burnout were becoming impossible to ignore. In this episode of ADHD Skills Lab, Skye talks with Jamie Sea, entrepreneur, educator and host of The Jamie Sea Show about the moment she realized the businesses she built no longer fit the life she wanted. Jamie shares what it was like to feel trapped inside success, how ADHD patt...

Presented by Understood.org You know how to do the work. But when a task is actually a project, you have to figure out the steps again every time you come back to it. On Wednesday we looked at the research behind this problem. ADHD planning challenges often show up when the brain has to manage the structure of a project internally. This episode looks at the practical solution. Instead of trying to carry the whole project in your head, many ADHD entrepreneurs externalize the planning layer...

Presented by Understood.org You can handle individual tasks all day. But the moment something becomes a project, everything slows down. Research into ADHD executive functioning suggests the difference often comes down to planning demands, not motivation or intelligence. In this episode, Skye and Robbie break down what these experiments reveal about ADHD and why complex projects require building a sequence before starting. That requirement can create real cognitive friction for many ADHD brain...

Presented by Understood.org You make a to-do list. Then you avoid it all day. For many ADHD professionals, the problem isn’t motivation, it’s how the workday is structured. In this conversation, Skye speaks with Kyle Vamvouris, founder of SalesThread and the strategist behind 87 B2B sales teams, about how he actually works. Instead of rigid productivity systems, Kyle relies on open calendar space, rapid experimentation, and what he calls “sandbox days.” In the episode, Kyle explains: Why most...

Presented by Understood.org Many adults with ADHD feel like they have to repeat the same instructions again and again. You explain a process to your team, everyone nods, and a week later it feels like no one remembers what they learned. Earlier this week on ADHD Skills Lab, Skye and Robbie explored research on why ADHD brains often struggle during the encoding stage of learning. When information isn’t encoded properly, it never makes it into long-term memory. In this episode they focus on wha...

Presented by Understood.org Many adults with ADHD feel like they have a bad memory. You learn something in a meeting or training session, but a few days later it feels like the information has disappeared. In this episode of ADHD Skills Lab, Skye and Robbie break down research on memory and ADHD. They explore how information gets encoded into long-term memory and why this stage of learning often breaks down for ADHD brains. The discussion covers a major meta-analysis on effective learning tec...

Presented by Understood.org You start a business for freedom. Then one day you realize the business no longer fits the way your brain works. Taki Moore is often called the business coach’s favorite business coach. Through his Million Dollar Coach community he has helped thousands of coaches grow their businesses and create more than $1 billion in client results. Along with that success was something he didn’t fully understand until recently: ADHD. In this episode of the ADHD Skills Lab, T...

Many adults with ADHD struggle with tools that seem simple at first but quickly become overwhelming. Dashboards full of icons, systems that require too many clicks, and constantly changing interfaces can quietly drain focus. In this episode of ADHD Skills Lab, Skye and Robbie explore practical ADHD work systems that reduce visual overload and make digital tools easier to navigate. Earlier this week, they explored research on object recognition memory in ADHD and why visual systems like softwa...

Why does a simple software update suddenly make everything feel impossible to use? In this Research Recap, Skye and Robbie break down a meta-analysis examining object recognition memory in ADHD. Object recognition memory helps your brain recognize visual information like icons, folders, faces, and layouts. It’s what allows you to quickly identify the right button in a menu or remember where something lives inside a complex interface. Researchers reviewed 28 studies involving children and adol...

When creative work gets hard, most people with ADHD assume something’s wrong. Wrong idea. Wrong project. Wrong career. In this conversation, Andy J. Pizza (author, illustrator, and host of Creative Pep Talk) breaks down the moment his work completely dried up — and why that crisis forced him to stop winging it and start creating strategically. We talk about perfectionism, rejection sensitivity, creative droughts, collaboration fights, and the uncomfortable shift from “I hope this works” to “I...

Business owner with ADHD wanting operational clarity and focus? Click here to book a session with Skye. https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com for a operational clarity session! More adults with ADHD start businesses than the general population. But here’s the part nobody talks about: Research shows ADHD is positively linked to entrepreneurial attitudes and startup behavior… and negatively linked to post-launch outcomes, performance, and wellbeing. In this Research Recap, Skye an...

Description Business owner with ADHD wanting operational clarity and focus? Click here to book a session with Skye. https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com for a operational clarity session! Why does focus feel like forcing a rusty machine to start… instead of flipping a switch? In this Research Recap, Skye and Will unpack a randomized placebo-controlled study examining how brain networks behave differently in adults with ADHD. This episode isn’t about recommending medication. It’s...

You can be successful on paper and still feel stuck. In this episode, Skye talks with entrepreneur and investor Kassidy Warren about leaving the corporate “safe path,” taking real risks, and the identity shift required to stop playing small. They unpack rejection, procrastination, reinvesting before results, and what it actually means to turn pro — especially with an ADHD brain. If you’ve built something stable but know you’re capable of more, this one will hit. What we cover: The hidden cost...

“I wasn’t failing. I just wasn’t growing.” Adam Tasker had the career. The family. Three kids. Responsibility handled. But privately, he knew he was drifting. After being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, following his sons’ diagnoses, he began to look at how he was operating. Not just as a father, but as a leader. At home. In business. With himself. In this conversation, Skye and Adam unpack: What actually changes after a late ADHD diagnosisHow overwhelm escalates and why some days collapse f...

Looking for The Business Visibility Workshop? Click here for details: https://unconventionalorganisation.circle.so/checkout/the-business-visibility-workshop-wednesday-feb-18th You don’t need a formal ADHD diagnosis for ADHD traits to affect your health, finances, or well-being. In this Research Recap, Skye and Will break down a study on subclinical ADHD - ADHD traits that fall below the diagnostic threshold - and how they impact entrepreneurs and employees. The findings are confronting. Acros...

If sales feels heavy, awkward, or mentally exhausting, it’s probably not because you’re bad at it. It’s more likely because you’ve been trying to sell using advice that relies on pressure, performance, or rigid systems - the exact things that make ADHD brains freeze, overthink, or avoid the conversation altogether. In this episode, Skye sits down with Wes Schaeffer (The Sales Whisperer) to talk about how to sell in a way that actually feels calm, grounded, and sustainable — without hype, mani...

A lot of people with ADHD deal with physical symptoms they’ve never talked about - or never thought were connected. This episode looks at what the research actually shows about ADHD and gut issues, and where the line is between association, speculation, and overreach. ADHD usually gets framed around focus, motivation, and productivity. But growing research suggests it may also be linked to very real physical symptoms, including gut issues that many people quietly live with. In this episode, S...

If the word accounting makes your attention disappear, this episode is for you. Skye sits down with Joe Dunaway - founder of Vici Financial, accountant, business owner, and ADHDer - to talk about why so many ADHD entrepreneurs avoid their numbers, and how to understand them without overcomplicating things or forcing yourself into systems you won’t maintain. This isn’t about becoming good at accounting. It’s about knowing enough to make decisions, reduce background stress, and stop guessing ab...

Looking for the Bottleneck Reset Workshop? Click here for details: https://unconventionalorganisation.circle.so/checkout/bottleneck-reset-workshop-wednesday-jan-21st Kids with ADHD are not just more likely to struggle academically. They are more visible, more misunderstood, and often less liked by peers and teachers. In this Research Recap, Skye and Will unpack a study on ADHD, social status, and bullying, and talk honestly about what it felt like to stand out in school for reasons you did no...