Hacking Your ADHD (William Curb)

Hey team, I’ve got a real treat for you today - as I mentioned earlier in the year I’m going to try and include a few more interviews on this podcast, and this month I’m bringing you my conversation with Dr. Tamara Rosier. I just had a blast talking with her and so this episode is a bit longer than I normally go simply because I didn’t want to stop the interview.

Dr. Rosier is an ADHD coach and runs the ADHD Center of West Michigan. In this interview, we talk about her book Your Brain’s Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Emotions and Life with ADHD.

There is just so much good stuff in this interview we talk about emotional regulation, energy management, and a lot of the funny quirks of having ADHD.

If you like the stuff I have on this podcast your honestly going to love her book and I think you’ll really enjoy this interview as well.

Be sure to check out the book Your Brain's Not Broken

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One of the ideas that I was presented with during the pandemic was that of surge capacity - this is the idea that we all have reserves of emotional energy that we can call on when we’re in a crisis situation. And this was an important idea for people to grasp as the pandemic wore on because people were finding themselves depleted. Despite having been able to handle everything they eventually came to a wall where they didn’t have any more to give.

This is an important concept, but not specifically what I want to talk about today because what I want to talk about is what I gleaned from this idea. That we because we have surge capacity, we also have a normal capacity. This seems like a fairly obvious point, but also one I think that a lot of us with ADHD often overlook. Despite everything I know about planning it is still far too easy for me to try and squeeze too much into one day. And this isn’t just in terms of how much time I have or how much energy I have, but just how much I can reasonably take on.

In today’s episode, we’re going to be exploring this idea of capacity and how it can impact our ability to get anything done. We be looking at what we can do on these days and how we can actually use them to help ourselves to recover.

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This Episode’s Top Tips

1. We can hit low capacity when we’ve been pushing too hard for too long. Our capacity differs from our energy levels in that we can think of it as the total amount of energy we have for a day. Having a low capacity means that we’re not recovering and that when we do recover we’re only coming back to a low base rate of energy.
2. When we’re at low capacity we need to slow down and focus on the things we can do - this means prioritizing and thinking about ways we can apply “both-and” thinking where we accept reality and how we can function within it.
3. A great way to help build back up our capacity is creating some accountability around our self-care tasks so that we actually follow through with those intentions.

In this week’s episode we’re going to be diving into a listener question about cleaning and specifically about doom boxes - and if you don’t know what those are don’t worry you’ll find out soon enough... and I’m sure you probably already have some around that house.

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This Episode’s Top Tips

1. Dooms boxes are the collects of odds and ends that all end up in a single location - usually a box or a drawer. Having a doom box isn’t a moral failing.
2. When tackling your doom boxes set a schedule for when you’re going to go through them and enlist some accountability to make sure that you actually do it.
3. The biggest key to going through your doom box is to sort everything into where those things need to go and to not get up while going through your box. We will get distracted. We will forget what we were supposed to be doing or at least find something else that we’d rather be doing instead.

One of the ideas that I’ve been playing with lately is how to go about my planning in a more natural way or perhaps a better phrase would be functional, because while I love the idea of planning it doesn’t always work out how I want to it to.

And to be clear, I don’t mean that my plans don’t work out, what I’ve been grappling with is that often when I do my planning I’ve failing to do it in a way that encompasses both my professional and personal life. I think this is an aspect of layering on my personal planning over my professional planning - but really I should be doing it the other way around. It makes more sense for me to build my planning around things like saying when my kids are in and out of school. It should be based on what’s going on in my life around me.

And so it dawned on me that one of the ways I could adjust this planning was to focus that planning that was seasonal - because with each season there are definite changes in how I go about my life. And so today we’re going to be exploring how we can look at planning with those seasonal changes in mind.

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This Episode’s Top Tips

1. When we’re writing out our plans we’re not creating some set-in-stone document that we can’t vire from - our plans should be malleable. It’s also important that we’re checking in with our plans as often as we need to so that we can stay on track.
2. By planning with the seasons in mind we’re thinking about the way our lives change with the seasons - are we going to be staying indoors or outdoors more? Are there seasonal events we want to keep in mind? What are the things you’re going to be looking forward to in those seasons?
3. Once you’ve figured out how you want your season to go you can break it down into what you want each month to look like and then take that information to plan out your coming days and weeks.

In this week’s episode, I’m talking with Karen Broda, a Personal Trainer & Wellness Coach who helps ADHD-ers look & feel good naked!

Her purpose is to have you thrive in your body, both physically & mentally so you can show up with confidence every day.

The focus of her work is on uncovering & busting past the self-sabotaging beliefs that are causing you to get in your own way.

Karen is a Pro Bikini Athlete, Circus artist & instructor, & lives in a Tiny Home she built herself!

In our conversation today we discuss the importance of mindset, some of the ways we can reframe our views on exercise, and we also get into how we can set up systems that will keep us exercising even on those days when we don’t want to.

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This Episode’s Top Tips

1. We can think of our mindsets like a muscle and like a muscle they need to be exercised. By working on our mindset consistently we can work on overcoming some of our limiting beliefs.
2. Reframing exercise as movement and movement that we enjoy doing is a great way to get yourself introduced to doing more activity in your day.
3. A great way to find more ways to incorporate movement into your day is to break down the activities you already like doing and figuring out which parts of those you love and where you can find those same aspects in other activities. It’s just about finding things that you can do to move your body consistently.
4. The three components you need for building an exercise system and getting results with it are: First is consistency - next is having it challenge you and thirdly crafting a positive mindset around your routine.
5. Make sure to first build your mindset and then your systems once you have those set you can build up your tips and tricks. Don’t let yourself get bogged down in the little details before you create your foundation.

This week we're going to be deep-diving into multitasking - this is one of those topics that I frequently mention in episodes, but I've never featured before. Not because it doesn't deserve its own episode, but because multitasking is actually a fairly complicated issue and is going to take a bit of time to dissect. So this is actually just going to be my first episode in a series on multitasking and we'll really try and dig into the nitty-gritty of it.

In today's episode, we're going to be talking a bit about what multitasking is and what it isn't - then we'll work on some ways to really drive home the time costs of multitasking and well finish up by looking at some of the ways that multitasking can actually put us in harm's way.

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This Episode's Top Tips

1. There are three kinds of multitasking - Classic Multitasking where we're trying to perform more than one task at the same time. Rapid task switching where we're just going from one task to another in quick succession. And interrupted task switching where we're interrupted from one task and switch what we're doing without finishing what we were doing.
2. When we're talking about multitasking we're primarily concerned with doing two cognitive tasks at the same time that require sustained attention. This means something like walking and listening to a podcast is fine to do because neither carries a huge cognitive load.
3. We often try to multitask with things that we're already fairly practiced at, but this means that we're going to suffer even more of a penalty as we try to combine doing them with other things.
4. Don't text and drive - or even just play with your phone while behind the wheel. When we're mentally juggling all of these different things we're dividing our attention and it takes time for us to refocus on what we need to be doing.

To recap from last week we learned that are there are three kinds of multitasking - Classic Multitasking where we're trying to perform more than one task at the same time. Rapid task switching where we're just going from one task to another in quick succession. And interrupted task switching where we're interrupted from one task and switch what we're doing without finishing what we were doing.

We also covered how we're more likely to try and multitask with things we're familiar with but how that actually creates more of a cognitive penalty from breaking up our tasks and how we often just don't realize how much concentration we're using to complete a task - as evidenced with how dangerous texting and driving is.

This week we're going to be exploring more of the cognitive and biological costs of multitasking, then get into some specific kinds of multitasking that can really drain us and we'll finish up with some ways we can work on reducing the amount of multitasking we do.

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This Episode's Top Tips

1. Multitasking has both cognitive and biological costs that accumulate as we do more and more task switching. These costs can be especially hard on those of us with ADHD because they can serve to drain our executive functions.
2. Multimedia multitasking is one of the worst ways we can multitask because often we're essentially binge multitasking where we multitask for a sustained period and really drain our systems.
3. One of the biggest appeals to multitasking is that we don't have to prioritize what we're doing, we can just choose to do both. To help stave off multitasking work on knowing what your priorities are and create systems where you can focus on just doing those things.
4. One of our best defenses against multitasking is mindfulness - if we can be specific about what we want to do and then become aware of what we are doing throughout the day we can help ourselves focus on doing just one thing at a time.

This week I’m coming in with my second episode in the success with ADHD series and I’m talking with Brendan Mahan. Brendan is a dynamic ADHD/Executive Function consultant, coach, and speaker. And he runs the ADHD Essentials Podcast on this network. Brendan is also probably one of the people I quote the most when I’m doing this podcast because he just has so many great ideas about ADHD and how to approach those issues.

You may remember him from when I interviewed him a few years ago about The Wall of Awful - if you haven’t heard that episode go check it out, it’s a concept that’s definitely worth knowing about.

In our conversation today Brendan and I talk about what makes us successful with ADHD and how we can reframe some of those ideas to fit with who we really are and how one of the biggest keys is finding that balance in our life and our work.

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My friend and colleague, Bob Dietrich, is interviewing me and over 40 other amazing experts on The ADHD Toolbox LIVE!

This FREE video series is packed with tools and strategies for overcoming overwhelm, anxiety, procrastination, executive function challenges, and much more. This is a must-have for any parent looking for solutions for their child.

Join for FREE here

Hey team, welcome back to another questions and answers episode - today I am going to be giving a follow up to my episode about doom boxes and try and clear a few things up - I’m also going to be answering a question about what some of my favorite apps are for productivity and focus.

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Today I’m talking with Ben Ahrens the CEO and Co-founder re-origin which is a science-based, self-directed neuroplasticity training program. Ben was a former trainer and semi-professional surfer who became bedridden with Chronic Neurological Lyme Disease for over 3 years. In his search to help heal himself, Ben sought out and consulted with top neuroscientists and cutting-edge doctors from all over the world. His successful recovery led him to working with these same neuroscientists to develop the program that became re-origin.

In my talk with Ben today we discuss how we can start with just one breath, the power of changing our beliefs and how important it is to embrace the process.

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Executive function is a hot topic around ADHD - and more specifically how we often have a deficit in it.

One of the trickiest parts about executive function is that there isn’t a universally accepted model of executive functions - I know that feels kind of surprising because it seems like something that is talked about as much as executive functions is that we’d have something that is generally agreed upon. So for this episode, we’re going to be focusing on Russell Barkley’s self-regulation model - although I’ll certainly be pulling from other sources as well.

I really like Dr. Barkley’s model of self-regulation, because in many ways we can actually look at ADHD as a disorder of self-regulation itself. And that’s exactly what Dr. Barkley proposes, that executive function and self-regulation are the same thing and that with ADHD we have a deficit in our executive functions and therefore a deficit in our self-regulation.

As such, I’ll be using executive function and self-regulation interchangeably throughout the episode to help emphasize that they are the same thing.

In this episode, I’m going to go into exactly what executive function and self-regulation are, how we use them and how we can get back on track when we find ourselves missing some of that self-regulation.

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This Episode’s Top Tips

1. We can think of executive functions and self-regulation as the same thing.
2. Our primary executive functions are working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control.
3. We have a limited resource pool for our executive functions and we use some of it every time we engage in self-regulation. Fortunately, we can help restore some of these resources by doing things like taking a break, having a snack, and getting some exercise.
4. One of the best ways to help with executive function is to modify our environment so that we’re reducing the amount of self-regulation we need to do. This means doing things like putting away distractions and making time more visible.

Self-diagnosis has become a hot-button topic in the mental health world as social media has ramped up many people’s awareness of many of these conditions. But how valid is that self-diagnosis? Some people argue it's dangerous while others argue that self-diagnosis is as valid as a formal diagnosis.

In today’s episode, we’re going to wade into this minefield and see what grains of truth we can pull out and where this tool is useful and where it isn’t.

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This Episode’s Top Tips

So yeah, this is normally where the top tips would go, but I’m not sure that works as well for this episode, so I just wanted to break things down real quick here. What I’m trying to get at with this episode is that self-diagnosis tends to be an issue of equity and the fact that not everyone can easily get assessed for their mental health conditions is a problem. There is still a lot of stigma and misinformation around ADHD so getting that diagnosis can be difficult. What it comes down to though is what that diagnosis is going to do for you - if you need medication and accommodations then, yes absolutely go seek that formal diagnosis, but if you’re just looking for better ways to work with your brain, going with self-diagnosis isn’t a bad option. And to be sure if you do go the route of self-diagnosis, just be sure to be open to other options. As we went over there are a lot of ways that ADHD symptoms can show up in other mental health conditions, so just stay open and stay curious.

And at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what you’re diagnosed with as long as your doing those things that makes it easier for you to work with your brain.

This week I had the pleasure of talking with MJ Siemens from the ADHD Diversified Podcast and what a conversation we had. In it, we talk a lot about the imposter syndrome that often accompanies success with ADHD and why we often don’t feel successful despite hitting all those metrics we were supposed to. We also talk a lot about how we can work on reframing our views on success so that we can feel good about all those things we accomplish.

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Be sure to go check out ADHD Diversified on your favorite podcast player!

Today I’m talking with Rick Webster of Rena-Fi - a psychology-based financial education platform. Rena-Fi provides ADHD-friendly ideas, articles, and materials to help with managing your finances.

Be sure to check out Rena-Fi.com

In our conversation today though, Rick and I cover a lot of ground outside of finances as well. Of course, we do talk about some ADHD financials as well, including that dreaded ADHD tax.

I had a lot of fun during this interview and I hope you’ll enjoy it too.

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And be sure to check out Rena-fi

• Rena-fi
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Why do we make bad decisions in the moment?

We've all done things that we regret doing right? yeah me, neither - but let's say hypothetically there was something that we regretted doing - something that we said or did that we feel like doesn't really reflect on as a person.

Why is it I can have the best of intentions and still when it comes time I still make the wrong decision?

Today we're going to be exploring the hot-cold empathy gap and why it can be so difficult for us to predict what we're actually going to do in the moment.

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This Episode's Top Tips

1. The hot-cold empathy gap occurs when we fail to predict how our emotions are going to affect our decision-making when we're in that state.
2. This doesn't only apply to things like being angry or depressed but can also apply to our motivation or energy levels. Our ADHD can easily let us overcommit on projects because we fail to predict that we might have less drive and motivation when it comes time to actually do the task.
3. We can work on mitigating some of the effects of the hot-cold empathy gap by making the decisions we want to make easier to make in the moment. We can also use tools like accountability and breaking down our tasks to keep us on track.

In last week's episode, I talked about the Hot-Cold Empathy Gap and how it can be hard for us to really remember or predict how our state is going to affect our actions - one of the consequences of this is that we often label ourselves as lazy when we didn't do something. Our cold state brain tells us that we should have just done the thing, all the while neglecting how we felt. This disconnect is what leads to a lot of our self-judgment and in particular, those of us with ADHD often find ourselves labeling ourselves as lazy.

Why didn't I walk the dogs?

I was feeling lazy - or maybe I feel overwhelmed with work or maybe I couldn't find the leashes.

When we don't do something it's easy to label it as lazy, but often that doesn't tell us what was really going on.

Today we're going to be exploring the idea of lazy and how what we might want to start looking at it a bit differently.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/lazymyth

One of the thoughts I kept coming back to while working on my episode's on multitasking was what it really meant to be multitasking. I settled on using the idea of doing two cognitive tasks at the same time, but that left me with another quandary - what about when I'm doing one thing and just thinking about doing something else. Surely just thinking about something else wouldn't count as multitasking.

But still... There have absolutely been times when I've been thinking about something else and found myself getting engrossed in my thoughts and losing track of conversations or what I was doing. Clearly, my thoughts can play a big role in what I'm doing and if my focus is somewhere else then it certainly isn't here in the present.

Today we're going to explore what our brain is doing here - how our thoughts can kind of run away with us. We'll also be looking at hyperfocus and then bringing together how these things relate.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/wanderingmind

This Episode's Top Tips

1. The Default Mode Network is a collection of brain regions that are responsible for daydreaming, mind wandering and are primarily active in our wakeful resting state.
2. In neurotypical brains the Default Mode Network disengages when we start working on task-specific work - this relationship doesn't hold up in ADHD brains and is why we can drift off in thought while trying to do complex tasks.
3. Hyperfocus is when our concentration engages so much that we kind of just tune out the rest of the world. It can be a double-edged sword, however, because we can also miss cues to eat, use the bathroom and overuse our executive functions, and leave us completely drained when we come out of it.
4. We can help both our default mode network and our hyperfocus by taking breaks throughout the day. We can go further by using those breaks for positive constructive daydreaming where we let our minds wander with purpose.

Hey team, today I’m talking with Skye Rapson of Unconventional Organisation, a New Zealand-based coaching group that specializes in online coaching. They focus on providing research-backed and strengths-based ADHD support to help you get unstuck in your life.

In our conversation, we cover a lot of different areas, including one that I’ve really been interested in recently, systems. We get into what systems are and how important it is to tailor these systems to our own ADHD and then how we can even do that.

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Checkout Unconventional Organisation

• https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/UnconventionalOrganisation/
• https://www.instagram.com/unconventionalorganisation/

Over the last few weeks, I have hit a number of points where it all just felt like too much - now there are a number of things that have contributed to this, but one of the keys always behind when I get overwhelmed is doing too much. This is despite the fact that even when I have too much on my plate it always feels like I should be doing more. That I could squeeze in just a few more things and then… well then I’d probably also still be trying to add more things to do.

In today’s episode, we’re going to be exploring why doing more isn’t usually the best thing for us to pursue and how doing less can actually help us actually accomplish the things we really want to do.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/111

This Episode's Top Tips

1. Prioritizing with ADHD can be difficult and that is only made more difficult as we add more and more to what we’re doing. When we’re able to pare down the amount we’re doing we can then better prioritize all the things that actually need to get done.
2. We don’t have to do everything that ends up on our to-do lists - it’s okay to cross things out even if we haven’t completed them.
3. We only have so much cognitive capacity to focus on any given thing and the more open loops we the more we are going to be drawing on that cognitive capacity. Our best bet for dealing with open loops is to work on simply opening fewer of them by taking less on.

I want to start this episode off by saying that this is something I'm bad at - and not in the sense that what I do to celebrate is bad or that I'm not celebrating the small wins throughout my day. It's bad in the sense that I almost entirely skip the whole thing.

Recently this podcast tipped past half a million downloads. That's a pretty big milestone and is pretty indicative of how successful this endeavor has been. But it was barely a blip for me. I didn't want to acknowledge the success because it can be hard for me to acknowledge when I do things well.

So this episode is as much for me as it is for all of you and in this episode, we're going to be exploring what it means to have small wins and also how we can celebrate them.

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Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/winning

This Episode's Top Tips

1. Celebrating our wins is a way to boost our confidence and it will actively encourage us to seek out that same success again.
2. We can differentiate intrinsic and extrinsic motivation by thinking of intrinsic as what to do because it's interesting and inherently satisfying. Extrinsic motivation comes from rewards or from avoiding punishment. Both can be important parts of how we celebrate our success.
3. Start celebrating your wins by acknowledging when they happen and then letting yourself do something fun to celebrate that success.
4. Don't get down on yourself when the wins aren't coming - we're not always going to have smooth sailing, but only focusing on what didn't happen tends to make us overlook all the good things that did happen.

Today we’ve got a bit of a different episode coming your way - in this episode, I talk with award-winning director Saman Kesh. Kesh is known for his narrative music video work with artists such as Basement Jaxx, Calvin Harris, and Placebo.

In our broad-ranging conversation, we talk about the creative process and having ADHD, medication, therapy, and a whole host of other topics. This episode is a bit more of the practical side of managing ADHD, and there are great tips littered throughout the episode.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/samankesh

Hey team, in today’s episode, I’m talking with Alma Galvan and Bob Dietrich - Alma is a neural researcher and Certified Brain Gym instructor, Bob Bob Dietrich is an award-winning public speaker, event producer, and entrepreneur, and together they run Brainworx, an educational program that teaches adults and children how to help manage anxiety, behavior, and improve focus through simple, scientifically-proven techniques.

In this conversation, we talked about Alma’s journey with raising two children diagnosed with multiple conditions, including Autism, ADHD, and Sensory Processing Disorder - and how those challenges led her down the road of discovering powerful techniques to help promote brain development. We talk about the pons and midbrain and how their underdevelopment can seriously impact our brain functions. We explore some simple exercises you can do to help restore some of this development and how our beliefs can shape our reality.

Be sure to check out the free Workshop

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/brainworx 

Before we get going here, I just want to make sure you know that I'm not a doctor, and while this episode is a lot about your health, it is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice. Just because I say something on this show doesn't necessarily mean it will be the best advice for you - be smart and be safe. And when in doubt always consult your doctor before changing your diet or exercise routine.

Today's episode is a follow up to last week's on Energy Management, but this week we are just going to be going over the area of physical energy.

When we think about our energy levels, our physical energy is what we tend to primarily think about. We think about being tired or just needing a quick pick me up to get through our day. And our physical energy tends to be a basis for all our other types of energy (quick reminder those were: mental, emotional and spiritual along with our physical energy) - when we're physically exhausted it's hard for us to draw on our other wells of energy. Have a bad night's sleep? You might be feeling that brain fog all-day - blood sugar low? You might be more likely to snap at a family member over something not that important.

We need our foundation of physical energy to power our bodies and to let us fully engage with our other energy sources. In today's episode, we're going to be covering the three main areas that we get our physical energy from: sleep, diet, and exercise.

Show note at HackingYourADHD.com/physicalenergy

This Episode's Top Tips

1. Getting enough sleep is one of the most important things we can do for our energy levels. To help get a good night's sleep make sure you are allowing yourself to get 4-6 sleep cycles of 90 minutes. You can improve your sleep quality with a dark, cool room and by creating a routine to get you ready for sleep by your bedtime.
2. Instead of focusing on what foods you should or shouldn't be eating, focus on ways that you can make the habits of eating the right foods easier. By making the lifestyle changes you are more likely to stick to your new dietary plan - making mistakes isn't a set back it's just part of the path to changing your habits.
3. Aim to get 20-30 minutes of moderate exercise per day - we're just trying to get our heart rate up here. If you are just starting up, then maybe try starting with a light 10-minute walk and work your way up.
4. Along with getting enough exercise during the day, you also are going to want to be moving more throughout the day. During your breaks be sure to get up and stretch a little and don't let you're self stay in one position for too long.

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Today we're going to be looking at ways that we can work on cutting down distractions and staying focused. We'll also be looking at ways that we can better schedule our time to focus on when our brain is going to be working best and we'll also be looking at better ways to end our workday.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/mentalenergy

This Episode's Top Tips

1. Mental energy is about our ability to focus and keep our focus. To effectively do this we need to stop trying to multitask and reduce the number of distractions we have around us. This means limiting notifications and creating a work environment where we won't be easily interrupted.
2. We can create smarter time blocks using our ultradian rhythms to guide us - breaking our scheduling into these 90-120 minute cycles allows us to focus on working when we've got the most energy and taking breaks when we're going to need them the most.
3. Schedule your most important tasks for early in the day. By completing what's most important first you'll never find yourself at the end of the day having missed those tasks. You can decide if it's best to eat the frog with this task or to ease into it.
4. End your workday with a shutdown routine to signal to your brain that you are really done with work. By only working while you are at work you'll make better use of your time and you'll allow yourself real time to relax and recover while you are at home.

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Emotional Energy isn't as cut and dry as physical energy - there are no emotional calories that we can track and measure. And while there is no scientific delineation of how to measure emotional energy it’s still something that we can all feel - we're not robots. We know that when we're feeling those positive emotions that sometimes we can barely contain the energy we're feeling - when we're seething with rage it can feel like we're going to burst. When we're sad it can feel like we want to melt into our beds and never be seen again. When we're overstressed it can feel like if we don't do something our skin is going to crawl off but even the idea of attempting that first step still feels like too much

Our emotions play a big role in our energy levels throughout the day. Just because we don't have a good way to measure them doesn't mean that we should write them off.

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Find the show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/emotionalenergy

This Episode’s Top Tips

1. Our emotions play a big role in our energy management throughout the day - but emotions are complicated. While we can derive energy from both positive and negative emotions, we're better off using the energy from our positive emotions - The energy we draw off of emotions like fear or anger often comes with a price.
2. We want to build our emotional intelligence by trying to observe ourselves - check-in with yourself throughout the day and ask, what am I doing? and how is that making me feel? You can also go beyond that by asking how you feel about the emotions you're feeling.
3. When scheduling your day make sure that you are giving yourself time to recover after emotionally draining activities. 
4. If you need a quick fix to calm yourself down, try taking deep belly breaths. Deep breathing creates a physiological response that encourages your body to relax - as your body relaxes, your mind will follow.
5. Give yourself some time to let yourself think. With ADHD we spend a lot of our day go from one distraction to the next - but when we let ourselves have the goal of just letting our minds wander it can help us explore how we're feeling and recharge our emotional batteries.

I know the term spiritual energy is going to throw a lot of people - so let's start off by getting clear on what I mean here. When I'm talking about spiritual energy I'm not talking about anything religious here, I'm simply referring to the idea that you have an energy reserve that you can tap into when you're doing something that matters. And specifically, something that matters to you - this doesn't have to be some higher calling type of idea.

One thing that really illustrates the idea of digging deep into that energy reserve for me is when I'm doing something like weight lifting. As I get to the end of my set I can find myself flagging, I can feel like I'm not going to be able to push the bar the 3 more inches it needs to go to rack my bar - and yet I can have my spotter tell me "you've got this" and my brain hears that and I push just a little bit harder and I finish out. Where did that energy reserve come from? As far as I was concerned I was already pushing as hard as I could and yet, with just a few words I was able to find that motivation to push a little harder.

Access to the human spirit isn't just limited to athletic endeavors. And our motivation to dip into this energy source often comes from doing meaningful work. Many people don’t recognize meaning and purpose as potential sources of energy, but when we're doing work that aligns with our values we are able to accomplish so much more. 

Today we're going to be looking at three areas that we can use to access our spiritual energy: living their core values in their daily behaviors, doing the work that we do best and enjoy the most, and allocating time and energy in our lives for the things we deem most important.

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This Episode's Top Tips

1. There are three areas we need to focus on for our spiritual energy: Living our values, working with our passion, and scheduling time for those things that matter to us.
2. Spend some time exploring your values by asking yourself what you can't stand - when you define what you won't put up with it is often helps define what we do stand for.
3. Work on finding what you are passionate about by defining what you are willing to put up with - further refine your passion by finding your work "sweet-spot" by finding where you are effective, effortlessly absorbed, inspired, and fulfilled.
4. Use your calendar to schedule your most important work - follow your energy patterns and try to schedule those most important tasks early in the day.

Hey team - thanks for sticking with me during my break and to everyone that filled out my survey a few weeks back. Your input was really incredibly kind and I’m excited to get back into the show.

To get things going we’re going to come back at it with some listener questions - questions that I kind of let build up while I was on break, so I may be doing a few of these episodes to try and catch back up on things, although don’t be shy to drop a new question on me at hackingyouradhd.com/contact

In this week’s Q&A we’re going to be looking at working from home and how to do better with some of our eating habits.

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One of the questions that I’ve been getting a bit more frequently recently is just trying to understand where to get started with ADHD - and I think this is a question that a lot of us have because there is just so much out there on ADHD and it’s hard to know where even to begin thinking about what you might want to be doing.

In today’s episode, we’re going to be exploring this idea by first looking at some of the areas that ADHD entails, how that knowledge can boost your ability to manage your ADHD, and also take a look another look at the Wall of Awful.

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This Episode’s Top Tips

1. ADHD is a spectrum disorder meaning that you are going to have a variety of symptoms to varying degrees. Your ADHD is unique to you, and how you treat your ADHD is going to be a matter of figuring out which symptoms are affecting you the most.
2. One of the hardest parts of ADHD is getting past our internalized messaging around who we are - if we haven’t taken the time to work on accepting how our ADHD affects us, then it is easy for us to blame our problems on ourselves as personal failings instead of accepting how our ADHD can hold us back.
3. The Wall of Awful is the emotional impact of repeated failure, and it makes activating on tasks even more difficult - there are 5 ways people try to get past the Wall of Awful, two don't work, and one works but is damaging to our relationships and then two that work - the two that don't work are staring at it or trying to go around it - the one that works but is damaging is trying to hulk smash through the wall - the two that work that we want to focus on are climbing the wall and putting a door in our wall.

As I was finishing up my Getting Started episode I realized that if I had been talking to someone I’d also still have a ton of questions and feel like that episode really didn’t answer anything for me. Or rather I think I’d have felt like it didn’t answer the question I thought I had asked. Now to be fair to past me, while, yes, I kind of did that, but also when we’re talking about where to get started with our ADHD management we really don’t know those things but nonetheless those are really important things for us to hear.

And I still think those are the place we should get started with our ADHD management, but I also know that there are other places that people are going to have questions about, so in this episode, I’m going to try addressing some of those, specifically, therapy, coaching, and accountability. I may even have to slap on part three to address some of the lifestyle changes that can be incredibly helpful for managing your ADHD. Again, as I mentioned in the last episode, ADHD is a spectrum disorder and we’re all going to be starting at our places. We’re all unique ADHD snowflakes and we’re all going to have our areas where our ADHD affects us the most.

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This Episode’s Top Tips

1. While ADHD coaching and therapy can seem similar they are distinct practices with therapists often focused on healing in the past and present and coaches more focused on future-oriented goal setting.
2. When seeking out help in either of these domains it is important to remember that they do not work like magic and you are going to have to put in work to see results. Additionally, the individual you see will usually end up being a lot more important than their profession.
3. Accountability is a tool that we can use to take ownership of our actions and when used in conjunction with others it can help create salience and clarity in what we are doing to follow through with our intentions.

Hacking Your ADHD just passed the three-year mark, which I’m just amazed at. Amazed with having stuck with it, amazed with how the show has grown and amazed with my wonderful audience. It also feels like I was just doing the 2-year episode not so long go… you know, like 12 months ago or so. That’s the funny thing about time, it just keeps marching on regardless of how well we’re paying attention to it.

For this year's anniversary episode, I decided that I’d take a look back at some of the things I’ve learned about ADHD over the last three years. I’m going to cover some of the a-ha’s and misinformation that I’ve had and seen - as well; I’ll be looking at how my views on trying to be neurotypical have changed and some of the ways I’ve learned to better embrace my ADHD. And, of course, I just want to mention that this episode is just touching on this topic of what I’ve learned because, well, it’s been a lot.

And I also just want to take a quick second to thank everyone who has decided to join me on this ADHD journey. I truly appreciate having you along for the ride.

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Show note at HackingYourADHD.com/threeyears

This Episode's Top Tips

1. There are always going to be more a-ha moments when we go “oh, that’s an ADHD thing?” but we’ve got to temper those moments with the understanding that there is also a lot of ADHD misinformation out there and we always have to check our sources.
2. While it can feel like we’re just a flavor of neurotypical it is important for us to realize that ADHD has it’s own way of operating the brain and that we need to look for solutions that work with our brains, not someone else’s.
3. It’s more than okay for us to do less, in fact a lot of the time is better for us to take something off our plate because we often take on too much. By doing less we’re allowed to focus more on the things that really matter.

All right, back on track with this series on Getting Started with ADHD Management, and this week we’re going to be focusing on some of the more physical areas that can really help us get our ADHD under control, and those are sleep and exercise.

During the monthly ADHD reWired Live Q&A, we frequently get questions about what are the top things that we all do for our ADHD, and inevitably the answers come back as sleep and exercise. It’s just that important. And also, it’s understandably hard for us to follow through on.

So in today’s episode, we’re going to be discussing why these things are so important for our ADHD management, but also, just as importantly, how we better follow through on our intentions of getting better sleep and exercising more.

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This Episode’s Top Tips

1. While ADHD coaching and therapy can seem similar they are distinct practices with therapists often focused on healing in the past and present and coaches more focused on future-oriented goal setting.
2. When seeking out help in either of these domains it is important to remember that they do not work like magic and you are going to have to put in work to see results. Additionally, the individual you see will usually end up being a lot more important than their profession.
3. Accountability is a tool that we can use to take ownership of our actions and when used in conjunction with others it can help create salience and clarity in what we are doing to follow through with our intentions.

 Hey team, this week we’re talking about coping - our ability to cope with stressful situations but more specifically, how we can work on coping with our ADHD. When we’re coping with something, we’re trying to figure our way through a tough situation. When we’re trying to cope with our ADHD, it is often less about our emotional response (although that is important too) and how we’re using our problem-solving skills to alleviate some of our ADHD mishaps.

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This Episode’s Top Tips

1. While ADHD coaching and therapy can seem similar, they are distinct practices, with therapists often focused on healing in the past and present and coaches more focused on future-oriented goal setting.
2. When seeking out help in either of these domains, it is important to remember that they do not work like magic, and you are going to have to put in work to see results. Additionally, the individual you see will usually become much more important than their profession.
3. Accountability is a tool that we can use to take ownership of our actions, and when used in conjunction with others, it can help create salience and clarity in what we are doing to follow through with our intentions.

Hey team, this week we’re getting emotional and talking about the relationship between ADHD and our emotions. While emotional dysregulation isn’t part of the diagnostic criteria for ADHD, some studies have found that 70% of adults with ADHD exhibit emotional dysregulation.

In this episode, we’ll get into why it isn’t part of the diagnosis, as well as examine what emotional regulation is and what we can do to help ourselves keep our cool a little bit better.

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This Episode’s Top Tips

1. Emotions are short-duration and are often in response to specific situations. Emotional regulation is our ability to control our emotional response to those situations, usually through down-regulation.
2. Emotional impulsiveness and deficient emotional self-regulation were both parts of an ADHD diagnosis but were removed from the DSM in the 1970s because we can’t easily measure emotions.
3. We can help down-regulate our emotions through mindfulness, being aware of how we are physically feeling, slowing down, and removing ourselves from difficult situations.

Hey team, this week we’re talking about our weeks and how we can get more out of them with a weekly review. The idea behind a weekly review is that we’re looking back on how things went and using that to help us figure out how we want our next week to go.

In this episode we’re going to go over the benefits of performing a weekly review, look at some of the ways to make doing it easier and then get into the nitty gritty of how to actually perform it.

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This Episode’s Top Tips

1. The point of a weekly review is for us to not only look back at what happened last week, but use that knowledge to help us plan out how we’re going to approach our next week. It allows us to gain clarity over what we’ve done and what we want to do.
2. When we’re performing our weekly review it is important to keep ourselves out of judgement - we’re not trying to beat ourselves up over anything we didn’t get to, we’re just looking to make next week better.
3. One of the most important things for making sure we complete our weekly review is to actually build in the time to perform it on our schedule. By building in and protecting our time to perform a weekly review we are far more likely to follow through on our intentions.

Hey team, in this week’s episode, we’re going to be diving into energy drinks… well, not literally, that would be sticky… and well, that amount of caffeine would probably be lethal.

Anyways… Our topic for the week is energy drinks, how they affect us and as I just mentioned, that means we’re also going to be talking about caffeine.

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This Episode’s Top Tips

1. The main concern with energy drinks is how quickly they can provide a high amount of caffeine into your system. Typical energy drinks have 160-250mg of caffeine, compared to about half that for an 8-ounce cup of coffee.
2. The biggest concern with large amounts of caffeine is its 3-7 hour half-life, which means that if we’re having multiple energy drinks in a day, we can build up quite a lot in our system.
3. With ADHD, it can be easy to view caffeine as a way for us to help manage our ADHD, but with how quickly we develop a tolerance to caffeine, that can easily get out of hand.

Hey team, as we begin to get ready to roll into the new year, we’re going to be seeing a lot more about New Year’s Resolutions and goal setting - but we’re also going to be getting a lot of pushback articles as well. Articles telling us how setting goals is only setting us up for failure and what we need to do instead. And the question is, who do we believe?

In this episode, we’re going to be examining some of the arguments against setting goals and also looking at what we might want to be doing instead and how we can combine that all into one overall theory.

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This Episode’s Top Tips

1. Regardless if you want to call something a goal or not, breaking down a goal into its component parts and focusing on the process that’s going to get you there is a better way to approach goal setting.
2. We don’t want to be striving for arbitrary numbers goal setting needs to have a why behind it to have any meaningful impact.
3. We don’t need to always hit our goals to be successful with them. Goals are often just targets we’re aiming for, and we can always learn from our failures.

Hey team, this week I’m talking with Aleta Storch of Wise Heart Nutrition, a small nutrition practice made up of 3 neurodivergent-affirming dietitians. She is a Registered Dietitian, Licensed Therapist, and a Body Trust Provider.

Many of us with ADHD face many issues around eating and feeding ourselves - from things that can arise from choosing what to eat, when to eat, or just not having the executive function to get ourselves to eat.

In our conversation today, Aleta and I talk about some of these issues surrounding ADHD and eating, such as interoception, meal planning, and issues surrounding executive function. We also discuss intuitive eating and how we can modify those ideas to fit in with our ADHD.

If you're interested, be sure to sign up for the ADHD reWired Coaching and Accountability Groups at coachingrewired.com

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/wiseheart

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Hey team, this week we’ve got a listener question:

"My name is Mike and I have a question about wrapping things up. I have a really difficult time on the last lap of projects, or sometimes there is like a secret lap after what I thought was the last lap, which, you know, sometimes depending on the project includes like sending thank you notes or thank you emails or a bunch of stuff where I sort of feel like I already spent all of the dopamine and executive function of the rewards of a project. And then once I sort of feel like I reached that finish line, I realized there are a bunch of little loose ends that need tidying and I have a really hard time getting to them cuz it feels like it's over. Okay. Thank you very much."

Hey, Mike, thanks for the question; I’m sure this is something that a lot of people deal with, I know I certainly do. It can feel incredibly disheartening to finish a task and then find out that, oh wait, there’s just a little bit more to do.

In today’s episode, we’ll be looking at how we can clean up some of these loose ends and also how we can avoid getting into some of these situations.

If you're interested, be sure to sign up for the ADHD reWired Coaching and Accountability Groups at coachingrewired.com

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One of the things I never quite got a grasp on is seasons... I mean I grew up in Hawaii and we basically had hot and not quite as hot. But this comes up for me because technically we're still in Spring right now so I guess this could still be a Spring Cleaning episode - officially Summer starts on the Solstice in June on the 20th... so I made in by like a week if you're listening to this when it comes out.

Regardless of if this is Spring Cleaning or not, cleaning can be a great way to signal the start of something new. We all get used to the mess in our space and freshening things up can not only signal the start of something new but also shift our mindset.

Today I'll be exploring the benefits of cleaning, how we can update our space, some tips on accountability, and then get into a few of the specific things that you can do.

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Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/freshstartcleaning

This Episode's Top Tips

1. You can help spur your fresh start by rearranging your space - this doesn't have to be a big move, but sprucing up your environment can help it feel new and like you are starting fresh.
2. Getting rid of our old stuff can help lift mental burdens and take care of old open loops. Our accumulated stuff often carries more mental weight than we really know.
3. To help keep on track during cleaning make sure you create some accountability. It can be a great way to help you follow through with your planning and also in the moment through body doubling.
4. Leave yourself notes as to where you left off in your cleaning so when you come back you can pick it back up without having to try and figure out what you were trying to do. While it may seem like we wouldn't forget, it's easy to lose track of where we were at in our plans.

Hey team, Happy New Year!

I’m excited to get going into 2023, but I also don’t want to just be doing everything by the seat of my pants, so it’s time to do a little planning and think about how we want this year to go. In this episode, I will be talking about rest and planning and getting into some of the things I specifically want to do with the podcast in 2023.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/2023

Hey team, this week we have another listener question:

Hi there. I just wanted to say thank you so much. I was riding my bike while listening to your podcast and that really helped my brain to be able to digest the information and I was audibly saying, “Yes. Right. Okay.” And it was like I was talking to you, so I just wanted to say thank you so much. I'm not even sure if I have a question, but today I did Google, “What's it like for people who don't have ADHD?”And in the three years of you having this podcast, forgive me if that's one that maybe I haven't listened to yet and completely ignore this and just take the compliment and the celebratory win of you are really affecting people's lives. I know that you've affected mine, and I know people have asked me, Hey, continue with your podcast, but because of some of the things I'm learning and managing with my own executive functioning, I haven't been as consistent with my own podcast. So it's really inspirational to know that you are out here doing it and honestly had such a wonderful structure and the music, and I'm like, wow, he really understands. He's really someone who actually understands what it's like in the brain and in the mind. So it was just such a pleasant experience to have found this podcast and I'm just so, so grateful. So I just wanted to say that. Thank you.

Thank you so much for the kind words about the podcast and you know what, that isn’t an episode I’ve done - it isn’t even a question I’ve ever thought about that much, but it is an incredibly intriguing one. Often when we’re talking about ADHD we’re talking about what it’s like to have ADHD, but from my standpoint, well I already know what that’s like, so what would it be like if I didn’t have it?

So that is the question we’re going to be looking at in this episode as well as looking into the terms neurotypical and neurodivergent as well as getting into a little bit about masking.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/noadhd

I’ve been thinking about the phrase, “I want to hit the ground running,” and how that’s kind of how many of us try and start the year. I know that’s how I felt - and honestly, in that first week of the year, I was doing great… but then I got covid. That really threw a snag into things.

With ADHD we tend to like to go fast with things; we don’t want to wait around. But that’s usually not actually our best strategy. Going from one urgent task to the next can keep us motivated, but it can make it hard to get to anything that isn’t urgent.

In today’s episode, we’re going to be exploring how we use urgency as a drive to get more done but how we also need to learn to make time for all those important but not urgent tasks.

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This Episode’s Top Tips

1. Just because something feels urgent doesn’t mean that it’s actually important that we do it right that instant. We often have
2. We often use deadlines to motivate ourselves into doing the important things, but living deadline to deadline only allows us to work on things that at urgent and let’s many things that are important but not urgent fall by the wayside.
3. Using accountability is a great way for us to follow through with our plans to complete all of our important but not urgent tasks. We can do this either through creating artificial deadlines or through co-working.

Hey team, this week we’re going to be talking about slowing down. One of the worst parts of ADHD is that we often feel like we have to do all of the things right now. That if we don’t jump from task to task to task, we’re just not going to get anything done. We live a life where we only have two modes, doing nothing and super speed. It’s exhausting, and we often find ourselves missing important things because we can’t keep up that pace.

In today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about how we can work on slowing down and trying to find a more comfortable middle ground between those two modes.

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This Episode’s Top Tips

1. When we’re talking about slowing down, there are three areas that we need to focus on - time management, task management, and activation energy.
2. While the simplest solution seems to just do fewer things, when we’re choosing to do less, it becomes more important for us to be selecting the right tasks.
3. We can also feel the need to maintain momentum in our day, which can lead us to overdo it and burn ourselves out. If we can build the belief in ourselves that we will, in fact, make time for all those important but not urgent tasks, it can help us slow down and do only what we really need to do.

Hey team, this week we’re going to keep up our discussion of slowing down, but we’re going to be focusing on memory - well, kind of. With ADHD, it can be hard for us to remember all of the things that we need to do, so what comes into play is the good old to-do list.

Because when we’re talking about memory, what we’re really talking about in this context is task management. How we’re going to remember the things we want to do and how we’re going to go about doing those things.

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Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/130

This Episode's Top Tips

1. To-do lists serve as a way for us to externalize our memory - we don’t have to mentally keep track of all the things we write down. But if we don’t properly use and curate our lists, they stop being a trusted source of information.
2. We can use our to-do lists to help plan our days, but if we find ourselves constantly not finishing our daily plans, that is a sign that we need to cut back on how much we’re trying to accomplish in a single day. Part of slowing down is accepting that we don’t have to do it all.
3. To help keep our to-do lists from becoming overwhelming, it is important we’re saying no more. One of the most important people we need to say to no more, however, is ourselves.

Hey team, we’re back at it for another episode about slowing down, but this time we’re looking at activation energy, which is the idea we’re going to need to have a certain amount of energy available to get started on a task. When we’re getting ready to get to the next thing on our to-do list, sometimes it can feel like it’s just too much, and getting started is really going to be the hardest part.

Activation energy is that minimum threshold for us to get going on that thing, and some days it just isn’t there, and so today, we’re going to be looking at ways that we make getting started a little bit easier.

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Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/131

This Episode's Top Tips

1. Activation energy is what takes us from thinking about doing something to actually doing it. It’s what can keep us on the couch when we feel like we could be doing something else.
2. When we rely on urgency being our primary mode of motivation it can make it increasingly hard to work on anything that isn’t urgent.
3. Different tasks take different amounts of energy to activate on and we can work on lower that barrier to entry or increasing our amount of available energy. We can do this by making tasks more fun, using accountability, and breaking our tasks into smaller parts.

Hey team - this week I’m bringing you a conversation I had with Skye Rapson about burnout and boundaries. Skye is the founder of Unconventional Organization - a New Zealand-based coaching group that specializes in online coaching. They focus on providing research-backed and strengths-based ADHD support to help you get unstuck in your life.

You may remember Skye from a previous episode last year, but we had such a fun conversation then that we decided to have another round. In this discussion, we drill into what burnout is, how to work on getting out of burnout, and then also how setting boundaries can help us stay out of burnout in the first place.

And really, this is a fantastic episode to help capstone this series on slowing down.

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Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/132

Be sure to check out https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com

Hey team, this week we’re going to be talking about the upcoming change to Daylight Saving Time in the US - but don’t worry, if you’re not one of those places that experience a spring time-switch, there is still going to be a lot of great stuff we cover in this episode.

Our natural sleeping and wake times are controlled by our circadian rhythm, so we’re going to be discussing that in some detail and what we can do to help get ready for the time change so that it doesn’t hit us like a ton of bricks.

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Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/133

This Episode's Top Tips

1. When we’re preparing for an upcoming time change, we can start moving our wake and sleep times gradually to match up with the change.
2. While it can be tough to adjust our bedtime if we focus on setting a strong bedtime routine, we can use that help us get sleepy and work on adjusting when we’re starting to get ready for bed instead of just when we want to fall asleep.
3. Our circadian rhythm dictates our sleep cycle and energy throughout the day - we can influence it with things like morning sunlight, exercise, when we’re eating, and in some cases, melatonin.

Hey team, this week I’m talking with one of my favorite people Roxie Martin - I got to know Roxie back when I was doing ADDmin work for the ADHD reWired Coaching and Accountability groups. Since then we’ve become fast friends and frequently check in with each other.

Recently we were talking about Roxie’s decluttering coaching, and I thought this would be an excellent topic for the show because cleaning and decluttering are things that just always seem to come up.

In this episode, we talk about the difference between cleaning, decluttering, and organizing - we get into the specifics of how we can be more effective in our cleaning, how we can better approach declutting, and a whole lot more.

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Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/134

Be sure to check out https://www.roxiemartincoaching.com/

Hey team, this week we’re going to be talking about using our tools but, more specifically, getting back into the habit after we’ve stopped using them.

ADHD has the tendency to make us consistently inconsistent, and that can lead us to finding ourselves having dropped habits, routines, and tactics that had been helping us. Sometimes we need to find new habits, but sometimes we need to look back and figure out why we stopped doing all those things that were helping us get through the day.

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This Episode's Top Tips

1. There are a lot of reasons that we might stop using a particular tool, from boredom to forgetfulness to changes in our life circumstances. It’s okay for us to change how we’re using our tools, but it’s also important that we’re making that decision consciously.
2. One of the best ways to make sure we’re not losing track of our tools is to create an ADHD toolbox where we’re keeping track of all the tools that we find helpful in our lives.
3. When we’re looking to reinstate some of our previous tools, it can be important to look back and figure out what caused us to stop using them in the first place; however, when we’re doing this, it’s important that we stay out of judgment and approach the question with curiosity.

Hey team, this week I’m talking with Natalie Lue about her book, The Joy of Saying No. Natalie is the author of the popular relationship and self-esteem blog Baggage Reclaim, as well as the host of The Baggage Reclaim Sessions podcast.

With ADHD, we can often end up as people-pleasers, always putting other people’s needs above our own. And while being helpful is a great trait, we also need to make sure that we’re taking time for ourselves as well.

In our conversation today, Natalie and I discuss how to get out of people pleasing and work on setting up boundaries to help keep us on track with what we really want to be doing.

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This Episode's Top Tips

1. People pleasing is about suppressing one's needs, desires, expectations, feelings, and opinions to prioritize others' needs and avoid negative consequences.
2. By people pleasing, we create unspoken contracts, and this can lead to frustration when the other party does not fulfill their end. We are often dropping hints instead of being direct about our needs because of our fear of rejection or negative consequences.
3. While it can be hard to say no, it is vital that we are using our no to help us set boundaries that will help us curtail our people-pleasing and allow to prioritize our own well-being.

One of the ideas that I was presented with during the pandemic was that of surge capacity - this is the idea that we all have reserves of emotional energy that we can call on when we’re in a crisis situation. And this was an important idea for people to grasp as the pandemic wore on because people were finding themselves depleted. Despite having been able to handle everything they eventually came to a wall where they didn’t have any more to give.

This is an important concept, but not specifically what I want to talk about today because what I want to talk about is what I gleaned from this idea. That we because we have surge capacity, we also have a normal capacity. This seems like a fairly obvious point, but also one I think that a lot of us with ADHD often overlook. Despite everything I know about planning it is still far too easy for me to try and squeeze too much into one day. And this isn’t just in terms of how much time I have or how much energy I have, but just how much I can reasonably take on.

In today’s episode, we’re going to be exploring this idea of capacity and how it can impact our ability to get anything done. We be looking at what we can do on these days and how we can actually use them to help ourselves to recover.

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This Episode’s Top Tips

1. We can hit low capacity when we’ve been pushing too hard for too long. Our capacity differs from our energy levels in that we can think of it as the total amount of energy we have for a day. Having a low capacity means that we’re not recovering and that when we do recover we’re only coming back to a low base rate of energy.
2. When we’re at low capacity we need to slow down and focus on the things we can do - this means prioritizing and thinking about ways we can apply “both-and” thinking where we accept reality and how we can function within it.
3. A great way to help build back up our capacity is creating some accountability around our self-care tasks so that we actually follow through with those intentions.

Hey team, this week I’m talking with Dawn Barclay about her book, Traveling Different: Vacation Strategies for Parents of the Anxious, the Inflexible, and the Neurodiverse. Regardless of whether or not you have kids, traveling can be difficult when you have an invisible disability, such as ADHD. There are so many things that we have to keep track of, and even when we get there, there are still a host of things that our ADHD can make even more difficult.

Dawn has spent her career working in the travel industry as well as working as a travel writer. She wrote this book as a guide to what she wished she had 20 years ago. In our conversation today we talk about some of the many difficulties that come from traveling with neurodiverse children (and ourselves) and then what we can work on doing to help alleviate some of those stressors.

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Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/137

Executive function is a hot topic around ADHD - and more specifically how we often have a deficit in it.

One of the trickiest parts about executive function is that there isn’t a universally accepted model of executive functions - I know that feels kind of surprising because it seems like something that is talked about as much as executive functions is that we’d have something that is generally agreed upon. So for this episode, we’re going to be focusing on Russell Barkley’s self-regulation model - although I’ll certainly be pulling from other sources as well.

I really like Dr. Barkley’s model of self-regulation, because in many ways we can actually look at ADHD as a disorder of self-regulation itself. And that’s exactly what Dr. Barkley proposes, that executive function and self-regulation are the same thing and that with ADHD we have a deficit in our executive functions and therefore a deficit in our self-regulation.

As such, I’ll be using executive function and self-regulation interchangeably throughout the episode to help emphasize that they are the same thing.

In this episode, I’m going to go into exactly what executive function and self-regulation are, how we use them and how we can get back on track when we find ourselves missing some of that self-regulation.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/executivefunction

This Episode’s Top Tips

1. We can think of executive functions and self-regulation as the same thing.
2. Our primary executive functions are working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control.
3. We have a limited resource pool for our executive functions and we use some of it every time we engage in self-regulation. Fortunately, we can help restore some of these resources by doing things like taking a break, having a snack, and getting some exercise.
4. One of the best ways to help with executive function is to modify our environment so that we’re reducing the amount of self-regulation we need to do. This means doing things like putting away distractions and making time more visible.

Hey team, this week I’m talking with Kristen Carder, the host of the I Have ADHD podcast - in this episode, we dive into the nitty gritty of ADHD and how advice for neurotypicals often doesn’t work for those of us with ADHD. We often hear about the need to be consistent, but with ADHD, not only is that hard, it can feel downright impossible. Instead, Kristen and I discuss how we can embrace our inconsistency and instead focus on being persistent.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/138

 Hey team, this week I had a great conversation with Shell Mendelson, a career counselor who specializes in working with adults with ADHD. We talk about how traditional career advice often doesn’t work as well for ADHD, how we don’t want to dictate success purely on financial outcomes, the importance of deadlines, and whether or not we should consider disclosing our ADHD at work.
 
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This Episode’s Top Tips

1. Traditional career advice doesn't always work for people with ADHD. Many of us ADHD often have difficulty finding the right job because we can feel resistance to taking instruction and we often need accommodations to do our best work.
2. When considering disclosing your ADHD at work it is often better to consider a self-accommodation process first and then having a win-win conversation with your boss about how you do your best work.
3. When considering entrepreneurship and self-employment it is important to way the pros and cons of being your own boss. While we can focus more on what makes us happy we also have to find a balance with prioritizing our most important tasks.

Hey team,

Recently when I was talking with my therapist, they mentioned that it seemed like I would frequently go into the fawn response - I was a little taken aback by this because while I felt like I’d heard of the fawn response before, it wasn’t something I was familiar with, or even could even particularly put my finger on what it was.

Fortunately for me, I run a podcast where I can dive into topics and gleam a bit more understanding about things I’m interested in.

While most of us have probably heard of the fear responses of fight, flight and freeze, there is also a forth response known as fawning. In today’s episode we’re going to be looking at all the fear responses as well as looking at how we can start working on better controlling those responses.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/140

This Episode’s Top Tips

1. When faced with a threat, our body's automatic response can be fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. 
2. Fawning behavior is a trauma response that involves people-pleasing to avoid abuse. People-pleasing can become a problem when it is done compulsively and to the detriment of one's own self-interest. 
3. It is important to be mindful of our emotions and identify when we are in a fear response. While fear is a healthy emotion that can help protect us, we don't want it to control our actions. 4. Identifying and acknowledging our emotions can be helpful, and seeking therapy can also be beneficial. 

One of my favorite sayings from Brendan Mahan of the ADHD Essentials podcast is that ADHD is life on Hard Mode.

The executive dysfunction that comes with ADHD makes everything just a little bit more difficult. From doing the dishes to filling out tax returns we find ourselves needing to put in more effort than our neurotypical peers.

But what’s important for us to remember is that while these things can absolutely be harder for us to do, it doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

Today we’re going to be exploring this idea of doing hard things - what makes something difficult and how we can work on moving ourselves through that process.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/hardthings

This Episode's Top Tips

1. It is important for us to define what we find being hard because when we choose to believe something should be easy we tend not to give it the attention that it deserves.
2. Our problems can’t be solved until we acknowledge them as problems - but also can’t solve those problems unless we put forward the effort of defining them and acknowledging the underlying issues.
3. Define what done looks like for a task and be sure to be mindful of how that can be functional in your life.

Last week we began this series on how to do hard things and looked specifically at how we define hard things and ways that we can work through some of our problems so that they can become more manageable.

This week we’re going to be continuing that conversation but with a lens that focuses on why it can be so hard for us to even attempt to do hard things. We’ll be looking at some of the misconceptions we have about doing hard things as well looking at how acknowledging the hard things we’ve done in the past can help us do more hard things in the present.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/hardthingspart2

This Episode's Top Tips

1. We often discount our ability to do hard things from a mistaken belief that we’ve never been able to accomplish anything hard.
2. When we mistake failing at simple things for failing at doing hard things it can reinforce the idea that we can’t do hard things. Remember, just because something is simple doesn’t mean it isn’t hard.
3. Don’t assume the logic in your head is always actually logical. It is easy for us to make logical leaps that don’t hold up to reality - slow down and examine those beliefs. You don’t have to believe everything you think.

All right, I’m back from my little break and we’re just heading right back into the hard stuff - or at least how we can start getting it checked off our to-do list.

Today we’re going to be looking at some more ways that we can adjust our mindset around doing hard things and also looking at some of the reasons we might be choosing to do certain hard things. Then we’ll finish up this series by digging into a few of the more concrete things that you can do so that you can tackle those hard things.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/hardthingspart3

This Episode’s Top Tips

1. Part of the reward of doing hard things is actually doing the hard things - this may seem glib, but when we’re building up our habits and routines the only way we actually build them is by doing the hard parts. We can’t skip to the end and expect to have picked up habits needed to maintain that goal.
2. We can reshape our mindset around the things that we “have to do” - we often rebel against the have to’s and so changing our mindset into things that we get to do can have a profound impact on how we approach doing those tasks.
3. Two of the best ways to get through doing hard things is to know your why behind what you’re doing and then having some accountability to help you follow through.

Hey team, I’ve got a great conversation for you this week with María-Victoria Albina - she’s a Master Certified Somatic Life Coach, UCSF-trained Family Nurse Practitioner, and Breathwork Meditation Guide. With over 20 years of experience in health and wellness, she brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to our conversation today. She holds a Master's degree in Public Health from Boston University School of Public Health and a BA in Latin American Studies from Oberlin College.

In today’s episode, we delve into practical tools and empowering practices to support your journey toward wellness. We get started with some definitions and then navigate through self-care, boundaries, nervous system regulation, and so much more.

I had a great time talking with Maria-Victoria, and I hope you’ll get as much out of this conversation as I did.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/141

This Episode’s Top Tips

1. By familiarizing ourselves with our autonomic nervous system, which controls automatic bodily functions, we can work on mapping our nervous system to help keep ourselves regulated by understanding what state we’re in.
2. It’s important for us to prepare strategies in advance and create a list of coping strategies and self-care practices that you can refer to when you find yourself in a particular emotional state.
3. When you feel revved up, anxious, or worried, take a moment to pause and assess where you are on a scale from zero to ten. This self-awareness can help you recognize when you're in a state of sympathetic activation and need to slow down.
4. Recognize that change is possible and that emotional outsourcing and codependency are not fixed states. Engage in practices like somatics, breath work, and thought work to rewire your mind and nervous system. This can help you respond to situations with agency, set healthier boundaries, and cultivate a sense of safety, significance, and belonging in a more authentic way.

With ADHD we get to hear a lot of advice on how to get past our various symptoms. Sometimes that advice isn’t so bad, sometimes it’s pretty good - I mean that’s what I’m trying to do with this podcast. But more often than not the advice we get for how to deal with our ADHD is downright bad.

In this episode we’re going to be exploring some of this unhelpful advice and what makes it bad and hopefully how we might be able to turn it around into something useful.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/142

This Episode’s Top Tips

1. Much of the ADHD advice available is not written by people with ADHD and doesn't consider the context and struggles of individuals with executive dysfunction. ADHD is a spectrum disorder with varying symptoms and levels, and advice may not work for everyone; individuals may have preferences or aversions to specific strategies or approaches based on their brain types.
2. Common ADHD advice of "just do it" or "if you really wanted to do it, you'd do it" oversimplifies the challenges of ADHD and doesn’t take into account how the symptoms of ADHD are going to prevent you from following through on that advice.
3. ADHD is a real and impairing disorder, not an excuse or laziness. ADHD symptoms are chronic and significantly impact daily life.

This week I’m talking with Dez Rock, an entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience and currently serves as the CEO at SIEMonster - a web security company. But today we’re focusing on her ADHD and how she believes it has made her into an exceptional leader.

In our conversation, we discuss our experiences with ADHD and its impact on our lives. We also talk about the importance of deadlines, the challenges and benefits of ADHD, and also touch on the significance of routine. And we also get into the need for support systems, the detrimental effects of shame, and the value of sharing personal stories within the neurodiverse community.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/143

This Episode’s Top Tips

1. Build routines and establish touchstones throughout the day to provide structure and support productivity. While routine can become boring, having a basic framework can help us stay on track and maintain a sense of stability.
2. We want to surround ourselves with support systems, including medication, routines, and other strategies tailored to our individual needs. We can also reach out to friends, family and other members of our communities for help in overcoming many of our ADHD challenges.
3. We need to understand that neurodiversity is not a one-size-fits-all concept. Each person has unique strengths and challenges, and it's important to avoid comparing ourselves to others. We can celebrate our individuality and focus on personal growth and well-being.

Hey team, this week I had a great conversation with leadership coach Leigh Collier. In this episode, we go over the process of how she helps individuals discover the best version of themselves by overcoming limiting beliefs. We also delve into topics such as identifying personal strengths, the importance of seeking support from communities, and get into how we can challenge those self-limiting beliefs. We also go over the value of individuality, working with your own brain, and distinguishing coaching from mentoring or therapy.

Be sure to check out Leigh's Website: https://www.ttncoaching.com/

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/144

This Episode’s Top Tips

1. Those of us with ADHD can face a lot of various challenges when trying to take on a leadership role. Because of this, it is crucial for us to embrace self-leadership and find tools and techniques that work for our brains. We need to experiment with different approaches to enhance our performance and productivity to help us overcome the obstacles that can come up due to our ADHD.
2. It’s important for us to understand the distinction between coaching and mentoring. While mentoring involves imparting wisdom and advice, coaching focuses on facilitating the individual's self-discovery and helping them find their own solutions. Coaching is meant to empower us to think critically, question self-limiting beliefs, and develop a sense of ownership and build self-accountability.
3. We need to be able to recognize the self-limiting beliefs that may be holding us back and preventing us from reaching our full potential. This means that we need to question the thoughts and beliefs we have about ourselves and challenge their validity. We can gain a fresh perspective and develop strategies to help overcome these beliefs by working with a coach or therapist.
4. If we can focus on identifying and leveraging our strengths, we can use those to help propel ourselves in the right direction. We can recognize that our strengths are unique to us and that they can help contribute to our success as leaders.

Hey team,

I’ve recently been thinking about task initiation a lot, but while working on the first draft of this episode, I realized that there were a few ideas that were important to explore first.

So in this episode, we’re going to be exploring some ideas of executive dysfunction, but then we’re also going to be getting into stuff surrounding our mental and physical health and then how we can work on our systems that help keep everything in order.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/145

This Episode's Top Tips

1. We need to recognize and respect our physical and mental states - it crucial that we’re kind to ourselves and acknowledge that we’re not always going to be at 100%. We don’t always need to pushing ourselves and it’s important to we’re giving ourselves time to recover.
2. It’s important that when we’re build the systems in our lives that we look at making them simple and effective. We want them to be able to work even on our bad days and that means we need to lower the barrier to getting started on them.
3. One great way that we can implement systems with our ADHD is through checklists and creating designated places for things to go. Again our systems are there to help make our life simpler and streamline the things we need to get done.

When it comes to understanding our ADHD it can be a bit of a minefield to navigate - one of our most pernicious problems is that often we're never really educated in what it means to have ADHD. And to top that off, what we learn from pop-culture just reinforces stereotypes that don't really reflect what ADHD is actually about.

One of the most important ways to help manage our ADHD is to accept it, but that can be really hard to do if we don't actually have a good grasp of what having ADHD means. So in today's episode, we're going to be diving into the ADHD subtypes (or presentations as it's now being called) → there are the 3 kinds of ADHD that you might be diagnosed with, hyperactive-impulsive, inattentive, and combined.

Today we're going to be exploring these presentations of ADHD and working on understanding how this can help define our own ADHD.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/subtypes

This Episode’s Top Tips

1. ADHD is a spectrum disorder, which means that it includes a wide list of conditions and severity which means that your ADHD is just that, yours. No one is going to have the exact same symptoms that you do, so don't worry about comparing yourself to others even if you do resonate with a lot of the stories you hear in the community.
2. The three presentations of ADHD are Hyperactive-Impulsive, Inattentive, and Combined. We can roughly estimate that about 10% of diagnoses are hyperactive-impulsive, 30% are inattentive, and 60% are combined.
3. I know this was basically in the first tip, but it bears repeating - we're all going to be ADHDing in our own way - make sure you're not going to struggle with all the same things that everyone else does so focus on what's going to make the biggest difference for you.

Hey team,

This week I’ve got an awesome conversation for you with Jodi Lasky -

Jodi is a seasoned entrepreneur, coach, and author with extensive knowledge in neuropsychology, accountability, productivity, and introversion. Drawing on her background in Communication, Culture, and Technology, as well as law, Jodi has dedicated her career to understanding leadership and personal tendencies. Her coaching program, 'The Introvert Founder', leverages her understanding to help introverted entrepreneurs navigate the complexities of business success, encouraging them to work in harmony with their natural tendencies rather than battling against them.

In our conversation today, talk about using the ideas from Agile Product Development and implementing them for personal goal setting and planning. But we also explore issues around neurodivergence, particularly focusing on ADHD and introversion.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/146

This Episode's Top Tips

1. We can consider using Agile Planning and Scrum for our planning by tracking progress in short cycles, maintaining a to-do list (backlog), and managing priorities. The backlog is especially helpful for keeping yourself on task as new ideas come up.
2. Introversion and extroversion are more about how you recharge your energy. Introverts recharge by being alone or with a few close friends, while extroverts gain energy from being in larger groups. Understanding this about yourself can help you better manage your energy throughout the day and avoid burnout.
3. Whether it's introversion or ADHD, we can stop fighting against our natural tendencies and instead find ways to work with them. We can work on accepting our neurodivergence and explore ways that it can serve us in our personal and professional life. For many of us, this means avoiding "hustle culture" that promotes working incessantly. We need to prioritize a balanced schedule that allows for rest and personal time.

Today we’ve got a bit of a different episode coming your way - in this episode, I talk with award-winning director Saman Kesh. Kesh is known for his narrative music video work with artists such as Basement Jaxx, Calvin Harris, and Placebo.

In our broad-ranging conversation, we talk about the creative process and having ADHD, medication, therapy, and a whole host of other topics. This episode is a bit more of the practical side of managing ADHD, and there are great tips littered throughout the episode.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/samankesh

One of the ideas that I’ve been playing with lately is how to go about my planning in a more natural way or perhaps a better phrase would be functional, because while I love the idea of planning it doesn’t always work out how I want to it to.

And to be clear, I don’t mean that my plans don’t work out, what I’ve been grappling with is that often when I do my planning I’ve failing to do it in a way that encompasses both my professional and personal life. I think this is an aspect of layering on my personal planning over my professional planning - but really I should be doing it the other way around. It makes more sense for me to build my planning around things like saying when my kids are in and out of school. It should be based on what’s going on in my life around me.

And so it dawned on me that one of the ways I could adjust this planning was to focus that planning that was seasonal - because with each season there are definite changes in how I go about my life. And so today we’re going to be exploring how we can look at planning with those seasonal changes in mind.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/seasonalplanning

This Episode’s Top Tips

1. When we’re writing out our plans we’re not creating some set-in-stone document that we can’t vire from - our plans should be malleable. It’s also important that we’re checking in with our plans as often as we need to so that we can stay on track.
2. By planning with the seasons in mind we’re thinking about the way our lives change with the seasons - are we going to be staying indoors or outdoors more? Are there seasonal events we want to keep in mind? What are the things you’re going to be looking forward to in those seasons?
3. Once you’ve figured out how you want your season to go you can break it down into what you want each month to look like and then take that information to plan out your coming days and weeks.

Over the last few weeks, I have hit a number of points where it all just felt like too much - now there are a number of things that have contributed to this, but one of the keys always behind when I get overwhelmed is doing too much. This is despite the fact that even when I have too much on my plate it always feels like I should be doing more. That I could squeeze in just a few more things and then… well then I’d probably also still be trying to add more things to do.

In today’s episode, we’re going to be exploring why doing more isn’t usually the best thing for us to pursue and how doing less can actually help us actually accomplish the things we really want to do.

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Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/111

This Episode's Top Tips

1. Prioritizing with ADHD can be difficult and that is only made more difficult as we add more and more to what we’re doing. When we’re able to pare down the amount we’re doing we can then better prioritize all the things that actually need to get done.
2. We don’t have to do everything that ends up on our to-do lists - it’s okay to cross things out even if we haven’t completed them.
3. We only have so much cognitive capacity to focus on any given thing and the more open loops we the more we are going to be drawing on that cognitive capacity. Our best bet for dealing with open loops is to work on simply opening fewer of them by taking less on.

Trimethylxanthine is the world's most popular psychoactive drug - for many caffeine is such a ubiquitous substance that calling it a drug seems like a misnomer. How could something so widely used that has so few regulations around it be a drug? But a drug is simply a chemical substance that affects our nervous system function and can result in changes to our perception, mood, cognition, and behavior. I feel like caffeine ticks the box pretty well on all those accounts.

In today's episode, we'll be exploring how caffeine works - some of its benefits and negatives and then we'll be looking at what we know about how caffeine and ADHD mix.

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This Episode's Top Tips

1. Caffeine is a psychoactive drug whose primary mechanism is binding to adenosine receptors in the brain. The buildup of adenosine in our system is what makes us sleepy, so by binding to these receptors caffeine is able to keep us awake.
2. Caffeine has a host of benefits but having too much caffeine near bedtime can affect our slow-wave sleep and reduce our total amount of sleep.
3. There is still a lot of research that needs to be done on the interaction between caffeine and ADHD but it is clear that many people with ADHD attempt to self-medicate with caffeine.

As we've been working on goals one place I want us to take a step back on and think about is meeting ourselves where we are.

As we get going with our planning we tend to decide that well we want to do all of the things. And I mean why not, there are a lot of things that I want to do, if I don't start now, when am I going to start? I can't tell you how many ill-fated adventures I've started because of that whole "if not now, when?" line - there are so many things that I should be investing my time in now. I need to be meditating and exercising more and eating healthier and saving money and work on business and building my relationships and learning new skills and on and on and on.

I'm sure everyone listening has that list of things they know that they should be starting on now because the sooner the better results you'll see down the line. But we're not starting on them... or when we do we don't stick with the changes.

Today we're going to be looking at what it means to meet ourselves where we're at and then some of the ways that we can work on making that happen.\

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This Episode's Top Tips

1. We only have so much time and energy we can put into any given day - giving ourselves the self-compassion to accept this is our first step in meeting ourselves where we're at.
2. When we're trying to add things back into our life that we've previously done it can feel like we picked up the wrong puzzle pieces and this is because we often don't think about how our circumstances have changed. Just because we did something before doesn't mean it will be necessarily easy for us to just pick right back up.
3. After we approach what we're capable of with self-compassion we need to decide on some of the things that we're not going to do. This gives us the mental space to focus on the things we can do right now.
4. Celebrate your small wins because they are the stepping stones to reaching your goals.

In just one more month we're going to be coming up on the halfway point of 2021 — I know, I have no idea how it got here either.

But with this mark in time we're starting to see a shift going on - while COVID certainly isn't a thing of the past, the vaccine role out has opened up a lot of possibilities for what we want our future to look like.

At the end of 2020, I did some planning for 2021, but I knew that a lot of it was going to be uncertain so I didn't make too many specific plans. But now that I'm getting a better grasp of what the future might hold — although let's be honest, with ADHD we're always going to have a lot of uncertainty — I felt like it was time to go over those plans again and maybe give myself a fresh start.

In this episode, we're going to be talking about the fresh start effect, go over some stuff on planning, and how we can work on sticking to those plans.

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Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/76

This Episode's Top Tips

1. Fresh starts can help us let go of our past performance and embrace our new self.
2. We can effectively create motivation with financial incentives, but often that isn't enough for us to follow through on some of the things that we really do want to do. We also need to create reminders and a plan on how we want to accomplish our goals.
3. Don't try and do all the new things at once - pace yourself and create a plan on what you want to do first. Try and focus on doing the things that by doing them will make everything else easier.
4. We need to be flexible with our plans because we are going to hit speed bumps - while we can't plan for everything we can work on ways to help us get back up when we get knocked down.

Hey team ,
this week I’m talking with Dr. Jessica Stern about ADHD, mental health, and trauma. Dr. Stern is a licensed clinical psychologist, consultant, and clinical assistant professor at NYU Langone Health. Her areas of specialty are depression, anxiety, ADHD in adults, and trauma, as well as burnout, productivity, and corporate wellness.

In our conversation today we discuss the intersection of ADHD and trauma, the need for routine and structure while still maintaining our need for spontaneity. We also get into the importance of support networks and how we can also check in with ourselves.

Additionally, we also talked about Wondermind, a mental fitness company that Dr. Stern is serving as an advisor. Wondermind was co-founded by Selena Gomez and Mandy Teefey and just launched their own podcast Baggage Drop which features short 10-minute episodes to help with mental health and build habits.


Be sure to check out my interview with Skye Rapson on her podcast The ADHD Skills Lab

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Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page

Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/147

This Episode's Top Tips

1. Fresh starts can help us let go of our past performance and embrace our new self.
2. We can effectively create motivation with financial incentives, but often that isn't enough for us to follow through on some of the things that we really do want to do. We also need to create reminders and a plan on how we want to accomplish our goals.
3. Don't try and do all the new things at once - pace yourself and create a plan on what you want to do first. Try and focus on doing the things that by doing them will make everything else easier.
4. We need to be flexible with our plans because we are going to hit speed bumps - while we can't plan for everything we can work on ways to help us get back up when we get knocked down.

This week I’m talking with Star Hansen, a Certified Professional Organizer (CPO©) and Clutter Whisperer on a mission to help you banish your personal Clutter Monster. Her methodology focuses on helping you take control of your stuff and create a life you’re truly proud of. Star looks at the deeper meaning of your stuff to help you figure out why you feel overwhelmed by your clutter in the first place. Star’s best-selling book, “Why the F*#@ Am I Still Not Organized?”, has inspired countless individuals to tackle their clutter head-on and find lasting solutions.

In our conversation, we discuss the significance of having clutter-free spaces and the impact it has on mental and emotional well-being - how clutter can create stress, affect decision-making, and hinder productivity. We also delve into the emotional attachment people often have to their belongings, how clutter can impact relationships, and how clutter can highlight personal values and emotional struggles.

Check out Star's Freebies (including a copy of her book)

Support me on Patreon

Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page

Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/148

This Episode's Top Tips

1. Fresh starts can help us let go of our past performance and embrace our new self.
2. We can effectively create motivation with financial incentives, but often that isn't enough for us to follow through on some of the things that we really do want to do. We also need to create reminders and a plan on how we want to accomplish our goals.
3. Don't try and do all the new things at once - pace yourself and create a plan on what you want to do first. Try and focus on doing the things that by doing them will make everything else easier.
4. We need to be flexible with our plans because we are going to hit speed bumps - while we can't plan for everything we can work on ways to help us get back up when we get knocked down.

Hey team,

This week I’m talking with Rachel Scanlon, a stand-up comedian, actress, writer and co-host to the podcast Two Dykes and a Mic. Seen on Don't Tell Comedy, JFL’s Straight Up Stand Up, and Comedy Central, Rachel is a high-energy comic that buzzes with positivity.

In our conversation, we hear about Rachel’s journey with ADHD and her decisions to manage it. We also explore the intertwining worlds of ADHD and queer identity. From the challenges of school to the joys of podcasting, our conversation ranges and highlights the power of embracing your own unique experiences.

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Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/149

This Episode's Top Tips

1. People with ADHD are often labeled with stereotypes like being "scatterbrained" or "lazy." It's essential to challenge these misconceptions and highlight the strengths, such as drive, engagement, and compassion, that many individuals with ADHD possess.
2. Recognizing and understanding one's neurodivergence can be liberating. Instead of attempting to fit into a neurotypical mold, individuals with ADHD should embrace and celebrate their unique traits and abilities.
3. There can be intersections in the experiences of being queer and being neurodivergence. It's beneficial for people to question and engage in some introspection, even if it leads to the reaffirmation of your own initial understanding.
4. With ADHD it’s important to find creative outlets that let you truly be yourself. By tapping into your own self-expression you can lean into your strengths and find fulfillment with what you do.

Hey team,

This week, we’re diving into the innovative world of digital therapeutics with Dr. Scott Kollins, exploring the potential of a unique game-based treatment for ADHD.

Dr. Kollins works for a company called Akili that has been developing a video game that is designed to help treat the symptoms of ADHD. The game EndevorOTC was only available for iOS, but they also just recently launched an Android version.

In our conversation today, we discuss the challenges, successes, and future of this pioneering approach to managing ADHD.

Check out Endeavor OTC

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Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/150

This Episode's Top Tips

1. We should consider EndevorOTC as a supplement rather than a replacement for traditional treatments. While the research does show it’s benefits, we often want to approach our ADHD treatment from multiple angles.
2. As with anything we do for our ADHD, consistency is key. Just like exercise or going to the gym, the game's benefits come with regular and consistent use.
3. Although designed as a game, this treatment should be approached with the understanding that it's a medical product aiming to assist and that sometimes it’s going to be hard.

Hey team!

This week, I’m joined by Antonia Bowring - Antonia holds a B.A. in Political Science, an M. Phil. in Development Economics, and an M.B.A. She is an ICF-certified coach with an Executive Coaching Certificate from NYU. She is a frequent speaker to on topics ranging from mindfulness, ADHD in the workplace, and communication best practices.

In our conversation today, we delve into the challenges and strengths associated with ADHD and how we can work on leveraging those through creativity and intensity. We also talk about embracing ADHD, the importance of self-acceptance, mindfulness practices, strategic collaboration, and get into what it means to receive a late diagnosis.

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Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/151

This Episode's Top Tips

1. Recognizing and understanding the specific attributes and challenges of ADHD can help individuals develop strategies to manage their symptoms more effectively and leverage their strengths.
2. Just as important as identifying our strengths can be identifying our weaknesses and finding ways to help mitigate those weaknesses, like collaborating with others and outsourcing when we can.
3. Incorporating mindfulness, regular exercise, and maintaining good sleep hygiene are essential strategies for managing ADHD. These practices can significantly enhance focus, emotional regulation, and overall well-being.

Hey team,

This week, I’m talking with the founder of the Inattentive ADHD Coalition and author of Living with Inattentive ADHD: Climbing the Circular Staircase of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Cynthia Hammer. In our conversation today, we discuss Cynthia’s journey with a late diagnosis of inattentive ADHD and critical lessons that she’s learned along the way. We also explore the challenges of recognizing ADHD, dispel common myths, and emphasize the importance of early diagnosis. From overcoming critical self-talk to self-publishing her memoir, Cynthia shares valuable insights on living with ADHD and creating a brighter future for those of us in neurodivergent community.

Be sure to check out the Inattentive ADHD Coalition
and Cynthia's book: Living with Inattentive ADHD: Climbing the Circular Staircase of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Support me on Patreon

Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page

Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/153

This Episode's Top Tips

1. Avoid trying to fix everything at once. Instead, prioritize one thing at a time for improvement. ADHD management is a journey, and gradual progress is key.
2. Social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram can be valuable sources of information and support for ADHD. However, be discerning in choosing reliable sources to avoid misinformation.
3. Focus on becoming aware of your critical self-talk and work replacing negative thoughts with positive self-talk. Self-compassion is crucial for managing ADHD effectively.

Hey Team,

This week I’m talking with Chuck Wisner, an expert in effective communication. He was a senior affiliated mediator with the Harvard Mediation Program and is president of Wisner Consulting. And he recently published the book, The Art of Conscious Conversations: Transforming How We Talk, Listen, and Interact.

In our conversation today, he introduces us to the four archetypal conversations that underlie all our interactions, from storytelling to collaboration and from creativity to commitment. He shares practical tips on navigating these conversations with mindfulness, highlighting the power of questions and the importance of understanding standards in our interactions, whether in business or personal relationships.

While this isn’t a strictly ADHD episode, I think it still is a valuable look at communication and something that many of us with ADHD can struggle with. Through our conversation, I do try and link up many of the ideas with how they present to those of us with ADHD.

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Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/156

This Episode's Top Tips

1. Work to understand the four archetypal conversations—storytelling, collaboration, creative, and commitment. If we can recognize when we are in each type of conversation and learn to navigate them effectively, it can help us avoid many common pitfalls.
2. With ADHD it can be hard to resist the urge to rush into decisions or actions. But if we can take the time to slow down, set clear standards, and communicate our expectations, it will help ensure that everyone involved in the conversation understands what is expected and why.
3. Questions are a powerful tool in conversations. Ask open and honest questions to foster understanding and open communication. Encourage others to share their perspectives and reasoning. Questions can help uncover new insights and solutions.

Hey team!
This week, I’m talking with Neha (name changed for anonymity) - she is a first-generation Indian immigrant who worked in big tech based out of the Bay Area, California. She now works to create awareness about undiagnosed ADHD in South Asians, especially women, and sells ADHD and autism-friendly products on her website pawtistictravel.com. 
And just as a quick note, Hacking Your ADHD listeners can get a 15% discount code with Hacking15 on all purchases.

In our conversation today Neha talks about her history of chronic domestic and emotional abuse, and how finally acknowledging and getting help with PTSD revealed her ADHD symptoms and diagnoses. We explore the lasting impacts of childhood trauma, from physical and emotional abuse to neglect, and its connections to ADHD and other mental health issues. We go into the importance of self-validation, diagnosis, and self-compassion in the healing journey. Through our discussion, we try and provide insights into living with and managing ADHD, emphasizing small ways that we can work with our brains instead of against it.

As such, this episode is a bit more intense than some other episodes so if that’s not something you are up for right now, feel free to skip this one or come back to it later. That said, I think this is an incredibly powerful episode and want to thank Neha for the vulnerability of coming on the show and sharing her story.

ACE Test Resources

• https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/03/02/387007941/take-the-ace-quiz-and-learn-what-it-does-and-doesnt-mean
• https://developingchild.harvard.edu/media-coverage/take-the-ace-quiz-and-learn-what-it-does-and-doesnt-mean/

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Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/157

This Episode's Top Tips

1. One way to evaluate the impacts of childhood trauma is through the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) test, which can help access what many of us might just think of as a normal childhood. It’s important that when we’re looking at our ADHD we also consider issues like complex trauma which can exacerbate the symptoms.
2. Even if it feels like we don’t have big T trauma, it can still play a role in how we manage our ADHD symptoms - we also often have a tendency to try and minimize the impact that trauma can have on us. It’s important to remember that trauma isn’t a competition and everyone is going to respond differently.
3. It’s vital for us to recognize that if we were harmed we’re not to blame and that if we’re trying to seek validation from our abusers we will often be met with gaslighting. It doesn’t matter how the abuser feels about the situation, and can instead focus our energy on treating ourselves with compassion and healing.

Hey team,

This week I’m talking with Jackie Silver about nutrition and wellness. Jackie is a Registered Dietitian with a Master of Health Science (MHSc) in Nutrition Communications. She has a firm belief that neurodivergent and disabled people deserve to live a healthy lifestyle but found the opportunities for these communities lacking, so she decided to start her own practice, Accessible Wellness. Her area of expertise is in working with kids, teens, and adults with autism, ADHD, and those with intellectual or developmental disabilities.

In our conversation today, we discuss strategies for making nutrition and wellness more accessible. We talk about some of the common challenges we can face while trying to feed ourselves with ADHD, like irregular eating, difficulty with meal planning/prep, and poor interoceptive skills. We look at how we want simplified, tailored strategies to help people where they're at, rather than simply overwhelming them. We also go into some of the dangers of diet culture and the need to have compassion for ourselves when trying out new strategies.

The Hunger-Fullness Scale

Neurodivergent-Friendly 30-Minute Meals

Be sure to check out Accessible Wellness

• On their Website
• On Instagram

And these great articles from the blog:

• 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating with a Neurodivergent Twist
• Forget to Eat? A Guide to Mechanical Eating for Neurodivergent Adults

Support me on Patreon

Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page

Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/158

This Episode's Top Tips 

1. Common challenges we can face when dealing with ADHD and food are irregular eating, difficulty with meal planning/prep, and poor interoceptive skills - that is recognizing when we are hungry or full or somewhere in between. To help combat this we can use strategies like eating schedules, snack cheat sheets, batch cooking, and using hunger/fullness scales to help build up that interoception.
2. We can work on practicing mindful eating by paying attention to tastes, textures, and fullness cues even when we have distractions around. Remember that we want to focus on meeting ourselves where we’re at and doing things that work with our brains.
3. It’s important to be compassionate with ourselves and focus on small, sustainable changes rather than demanding perfection.

Hey team!

This week I’m talking with Strengths-Based Learning Expert Caitlin Meister who has made it her life’s work to bring her strengths-based, neurodiversity-affirming, joyful learning approach to other parents and educators.

Caitlin is the Founding Director of The Greer Meister Group, a New York City-based private tutoring and educational consulting practice. She attended Wesleyan Unversity and went on to receive additional training through the Harvard Graduate School of Education and in the Orton-Gillingham approach for teaching students with language-based learning differences.

In our conversation today we discuss strength-based and neurodiversity-affirming approaches in education that foster belonging and engagement for all students. We also explore practical strategies like reframing behaviors, collaborating with teachers, and providing specific praise to support neurodiverse learners. Caitlin shares insights on embracing neurodiversity and creating flexible, inclusive learning environments where children's strengths and differences are valued.

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Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/159

This Episode's Top Tips 

1. We can focus on utilizing a child's strengths and interests as starting points for learning and growth to help build confidence and engagement.
2. It’s important to work collaboratively with teachers as a team with the shared goal of supporting the child's well-being and success.
3. Advocating for neurodiversity to be valued in learning environments can help create flexible spaces that can help everyone thrive.

Hey team!

This week I’m talking with ADHD coach Shane Thrapp - but specifically, today we’re going to be diving into the service Focus101 - which is a free body-doubling site designed to help you get the most of your work time. Now, funny story, I’m actually working on this while body-doubling through Focus101 right now.

Now in this episode, we’ll be getting into exactly what body-doubling is and how it can be incredibly helpful for completing those tasks that are hard for us to follow through on on our own. We also talk about a number of other tools that can be used in conjunction with body doubling, such as the Pomodoro technique, alarms, using our calendars, and ways to break our tasks into smaller pieces.

Check out Shane's Coaching - Creating Order From Chaos

and

The Men's ADHD Support Group

Support me on Patreon

Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page

Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/160

This Episode's Top Tips 

1. Body doubling is a technique where we work in the presence of another person, even virtually, to help provide accountability. I can be effective at keeping us on track, reduce distractions and helps provide the motivation to stay on task.
2. We can make body doubling even more effective when we use tools like Pomodoros, alarms, reminders, and breaking our tasks down into smaller pieces. I also personally find the aspect of scheduling a particular time to do a task to be an especially important aspect of body-doubling.
3. As we discussed in the episode, Focus 101 is a free online tool for ADHD productivity combining features like body doubling, Pomodoro, and accountability groups.

Hey team!

In today’s episode we are talking with Terry Bartley, the author of Tyranny of the Fey, host of the podcast Most Writers Are Fans, and a full-time English teacher. In our conversation today, Terry shares his journey as a writer, revealing how he channels his creativity while managing ADHD. We also get into Terry’s diagnosis and how learning about the symptoms led to his self-recognition of the condition. We discuss some the misunderstandings of ADHD and how that can lead to some of the stigmas associated with ADHD. We also go into some of the many tool that Terry uses to help keep himself of track when writing and teaching.

Support me on Patreon

Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page

Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/161

This Episode's Top Tips 

1. Deadlines are great tools to help keep you motivated and keep you on track - espesially in regards to righting. These deadlines are incredibly helpful for those things that don’t have a well defined done state (like writing).
2. Accountability can be incredibly helpful for keeping us on task and can come from many sources. In Terry’s case, working with an editor helped keep him on track when he needed to follow through with those intentions of writing.
3. The importance of grace and understanding is an critical building block in our ADHD journey - whether it is with ourselves or others we need to allow for room to make mistakes and grow with our ADHD.

Hey team!

This week I’m talking with, Jesse Mecham, the founder of the hit budgeting software, You Need A Budget - or as it’s more commonly abbreviated YNAB - now I understand, that the term, “hit budgeting software” does come off as a little strange, but it is honestly something that has quite the cult following. And I know that the idea of budgeting can seem a bit overwhelming so don’t worry we get into that. Also while the software is called You Need A Budget, that isn’t quite the focus of what’s going on. And while this software wasn’t designed for people with ADHD, the underlying tenents have really resonated with a lot of ADHDers.

In our conversation today, Jesse and I discuss YNAB's four key habits for money management, including giving money "jobs", planning for future expenses, building flexibility, and aging money to create financial breathing room. We also talk specifically about how these methods can aid those with ADHD by promoting intentionality and creating helpful friction in spending and saving.

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Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page

Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/162

This Episode's Top Tips 

1. Give every dollar a "job" - Assign your money to different spending categories and priorities when budgeting.
2. Plan for irregular and future expenses - Don't just budget for fixed monthly bills. Save for things like car repairs. We need to be flexible with our budgeting to allow for when things come up.
3. Add friction before purchases - Don't save card info in browsers. Figure out where the money is going to be coming from before purchasing to make spending more thoughtful.

 In today’s episode, I’m going to be talking about what’s going on with Hacking Your ADHD over this last year and what’s coming up next year.

No real show notes for this episode but feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page

Hey Team!

We’re kicking off 2024 with the incredible Jessica McCabe - creator, writer, and host of the award-winning YouTube channel How to ADHD. I’m sure a lot of you are already familiar with Jessica’s work as her YouTube channel has more than a million subscribers, but for those of you who haven’t, her channel contains a wealth of knowledge about ADHD and is one of the things that kicked me in the pants to start taking my ADHD more seriously.

And now she’s coming out with a book: How to ADHD: An Insider's Guide to Working with Your Brain (Not Against It) - which is coming out on January 2nd - so tomorrow if you’re listening to this when this episode comes out.

In our conversation today, Jessica and I discussed how we want to go from surviving our ADHD to thriving with it, to get past some of our issues with executive function and universal design. We also get into a lot of stuff about her book and how she was able to use a lot of the strategies that she wrote about in the book to also help her write that same book.

Honestly, this episode was a blast to record and I hope you enjoy as much as I did putting it together.

Be sure to check out howtoadhdbook.com to find Jessica's book

Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page

Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/164

This Episode's Top Tips 

1. When we want to move from surviving to thriving we want to start looking at not just how we can get more things done, but what’s worth doing.
2. Even projects we’re interested in can be difficult for us to work on, so it's important for us to keep them exciting with variety.
3. When planning out those big projects, work backward from where you want to be to figure out all the steps in between so that we can see that path to done.
4. Effort for us is not the problem, so trying harder is not the answer.

Hey team!

I’ve got a fun episode for you this week - I’m talking with Jesse J. Anderson about his new book, Extra Focus: The Quick Start Guide to Adult ADHD. I actually got to meet Jesse in person last November at the International ADHD conference (and I got to be on a panel with him as well) although we recorded this before then. And if you don’t immediately recognize the name, I’m sure you’ve seen some of his stuff online where he posts as ADHD Jesse.

In our conversation today we delve into his experiences with ADHD, his journey as an author, discussing practical coping strategies, challenges with memory and motivation, and the importance of adapting to individual mental processes.

Be sure to check out Jesse's book Extra Focus: The Quick Start Guide to Adult ADHD

Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page

Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/165

This Episode's Top Tips 

1. Avoid relying solely on urgency as a motivation source, as it can lead to negatively reinforcing cycles and increased anxiety. We can embrace a variety of strategies for coping with ADHD, while acknowledging that what works may change over time or depending on the situation.
2. Prospective memory is our ability to remember to remember - and so with our ADHD it can be struggle not only to remember what we need to remember, but even that there is something that needs to be remembered. There are a variety of solutions we can try to help with this such as physical reminders, our calendars, and alarms on our phones.
3. It’s important that we acknowledge and address the shame often associated with ADHD. ADHD is hard and having difficulties with ADHD is not your fault. However, we still need to take responsibility for finding and implementing coping strategies.

Hey Team!

Today we’ve got a real treat, I’m talking to one of my favorite people, Brendan Mahan of the ADHD Essentials Podcast. I last had Brendan on to talk about the Wall of Awful, his model of how everything that we do can be made harder from repeated failure. It’s a great episode and I’ll link that in the show notes if you want to get caught up on that.

I asked Brendan back on the show because while we were at the International ADHD Conference I got talking to him about a different model of his and that’s the 9 parts of a transition. Now I understand that the idea of 9 parts of a transition can seem a bit daunting, but what I think the most salient point of this episode is, is that transitions are far more than what we initially think they are. Because of this we often underestimate what goes into making those transitions. But I’m getting ahead of myself here, in our conversation today, Brendan breaks down this model and we also explore strategies for managing distractions and understanding our emotional states.

Checkout Brendan's podcast ADHD Essentials

Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page

Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/167

This Episode's Top Tips 

1. Understand that each transition includes multiple components, not just the physical move from one task to another. We need to consider not just the stopping, moving, and starting components of a transition, but also the physical, cognitive, and emotional aspects as well.
2. And just to hammer this piece home, we need to recognize and address the emotional aspects of transitions, as they play a significant role in the process. This is especially important when we’re switching contexts, like going from work to family stuff.
3. It’s also important for us to understand that sometimes not all the parts of a transition are going to be all that impactful - some parts of the transition are going to be easy. But when we do struggle with moving onto the next thing it is important that we can step back and try and identify what’s going on and where we’re finding that resistance.

Hey team!

This week, we have the return of Skye Rapson of Unconventional Organization to discuss an innovative tool she developed, the Planning Funnel, which is designed to help us break down our goals into manageable steps.

This was a really fun conversation, and the planning funnel looks awesome - now, as a note, the planning funnel is part of Unconventional Organisation’s ADHD Academy - but they do have a promotion going now that includes the Planning Funnel and 15% off your first month. So if that’s something you’re interested in be sure to go check out https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com/the-adhd-academy 

In our conversation today, we talk about the importance of goals and planning, how to break down those goals, and ways that we can use ADHD-friendly strategies to make executing on those goals easier.

Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page

Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/168

This Episode's Top Tips 

1. Recognize that planning your goals is crucial, especially for individuals with ADHD, as it helps in managing time blindness and setting realistic expectations.
2. Focus on a few select goals or themes to avoid feeling overwhelmed. This approach allows for more in-depth planning and a higher success rate.
3. Break your goals into subtasks to make them feel more achievable and to clearly see the progression towards your larger goal.
4. Planning can be more emotional than we tend to think of it. We need to be mindful of self-criticism and negative internal dialogues that can arise during the planning process and give ourselves the time it deserves.

Hey Team!This week we’re joined by Ying Deng, known as ADHD Asian Girl across social media. I was able to get to know Ying a bit at the recent International ADHD Conference and thought she’d be a great guest for the show. Meditation is something that I’ve wanted to discuss on the show for quite a while now, but it also isn’t something I’m super knowledgeable about so it was great to have a chance for this discussion.In our conversation today we get into what mindfulness and mediation actually is - and some about what it isn’t, since meditation isn’t exactly something we get an accurate picture of from popular media. We talk about some of the reasons that mediation can be beneficial for ADHD as well as some of the strategies to help bring meditation into our lives because ADHD can also make it a hard habit to start.

Be sure to check out all of Ying's Mindfulness Course
or
checkout where she's on the web with her Linktree

Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page

Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/169

This Episode's Top Tips 

1. We can engage in mindfulness during daily activities like putting on socks or brewing coffee. By focusing on the sensations we can work on being present in the moment.
2. ADHD can make it hard for us to build our practice so we can mix up our routine with guided and unguided meditations, sit outside to connect with nature or engage in mindful movements to cater to how we’re feeling on any given day.
3. We don’t need to meditate for long periods and if we find that challenging, start with shorter, more manageable sessions and gradually increase the duration as we build the habit.
4. Body doubling can be a great way for us to get into a meditation practice. Partner up with someone or join a community for meditation sessions to make the practice more engaging and accountable.

Hey Team!

We’ve got a returning guest this week who was a real hit last time, Saman Kesh - Saman is an Iranian-American filmmaker who has worked with artists such as Basement Jaxx, Calvin Harris, Kygo, Placebo, !!! (pronounced Chk Chk Chk)

Anyway, we’re not here to discuss any of that today, instead we’re going to be talking about his recent ketamine treatment. A while ago, Saman reached out to me asking if this was something that I’d like to cover on the show, and yeah, this is absolutely something I think would make for a really interesting show. Now, with that said, I do want to emphasize that we are talking about Saman’s treatment here, and this is neither a defense nor a condemnation of ketamine treatments. I also want to emphasize that this is not something that is for treating ADHD but has been proven to be effective as an off-label treatment for a variety of mental health disorders, including depression, anxiety, PTSD, and trauma.

If ketamine treatment is something of interest to you I also strongly advise that you do so with medical supervision. This isn’t stuff to play around with, and we still have a lot to learn despite the fact that ketamine has over 50 years of clinical use and research behind it.

Perhaps at some point, I’ll work on an episode from more of a treatment perspective, but for now, we’re just talking about Saman’s experience. Also to note from this episode is that we talked for quite a long time and so I decided that we could split the episode into two parts.

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Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/170

This Episode's Top Tips 

1. It’s important for us to understand that the way we treat our ADHD is not one size fits all and that there are a variety of ways that we can treat our ADHD. While medication is an effective step, we also want to be looking at other ways that we can improve our mental functions with things like exercise, diet and stuff like mediation.
2. Recognize and celebrate the strengths and perspectives ADHD adds to your life, rather than focusing solely on its challenges. And while there is no question that there are challenges if we can recognize the unique way ADHD brains navigate the world we can celebrate the strengths and perspectives ADHD adds to our life and work.
3. Understand the importance of allowing flexibility in routines to accommodate the ADHD brain's need for variation and stimulation.

Hey team!

Welcome back to the second part of my conversation with Saman Kesh - In part one of the conversation we covered a lot of the ground around Saman’s ketamine treatment and how that influenced his ADHD.

And just as a quick reminder, this is not a condemnation nor a defense against ketamine-based treatment, the conversation is simply about what his experience was. And if ketamine treatment is something that has piqued your interest, be sure that you are following up on that under proper medical supervision, this isn’t stuff to play around with.

In this second part of the conversation, we switch gears a bit and talk more about our identities with ADHD and the acceptance of our ADHD. We also get into some other therapy techniques like EMDR and other ways that we can work on supporting our ADHD brains.

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Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/171

This Episode's Top Tips 

1. Recognizing and accepting ADHD as a part of your identity can be a powerful step toward managing everyday challenges. That acceptance is a huge piece in how we are able to navigate problem-solving and finding solutions that work for our brains.
2. Therapy is a great way to help work with our ADHD brains and we there are a lot of options for what we can do - CBT, DBT, EMDR and talk therapy are all ways that we can approach to understand our brains better.
3. There are a lot of ways that we can help ourselves work with our ADHD like physical activity, meditation, and other forms of self-care that can help reduce our ADHD symptoms and increase our overall well-being.

Hey team!

No interview today - getting back to some monologue episodes - and completely off topic here, but I just have this negative connotation to the word monologue, like, in my head it sounds like it’s supposed to be something boring? Maybe that’s just me.

In today’s episode we’re tackling the complex reality of ADHD management. Forget about finding a silver bullet; it's about piecing together a puzzle of habits, routines, and strategies that work for you. We’ll be exploring the mosaic of strategies that can help us navigate our days more effectively and how we can build our own personalized way to help us manage our ADHD.

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Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/172

This Episode's Top Tips 

1. Embrace small changes and focus on incremental improvements in your daily routines that can collectively impact managing ADHD. We don’t need that silver bullet that is going to fix everything.
2. Just because our ADHD management is going to rely on a lot of different strategies it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a plan of action - it’s still important for us to be focusing on those strategies that are going to be giving us our biggest bang for our buck like getting better sleep.
3. Adaptability is key; it’s important to understand that not every strategy will work all the time, and be open to adjusting your approach as needed. We’re not always in control of everything going on in our day and we have to work around that as best we can.

In today’s episode, we have a listener question dealing with the root cause of ADHD and whether or not ADHD comes from trauma or it's something we're born with.

I’m sure a lot of people have had similar thoughts on what the root cause of ADHD and sometimes it’s hard to find accurate information because so much of it can conflict.

In today’s episode, we’re going to be looking into the issue of whether or not ADHD is an issue of genetics or if it is one of trauma - but I also want to be upfront about this and be clear that this isn’t really a both side issue, all of our best research supports the idea that ADHD is a genetic condition.

Just as a note before we get started, I do talk a good deal about trauma in this episode, so if that’s not your thing, feel free to skip this episode.

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Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/173

This Episode's Top Tips 

1. Just in case I didn’t make this clear enough in the episode, ADHD is a genetic condition, and while trauma may play a role in the severity of ADHD, it is not a cause of ADHD.
2. The mix-up between the conditions comes from the overlap in symptoms between ADHD and trauma, such as difficulty concentrating, disorganization, and inattention, which can complicate diagnosis and management.
3. Trauma can exacerbate ADHD symptoms, potentially pushing subclinical ADHD diagnoses into clinical ADHD territory. We also have to acknowledge the validity of individual experiences and perspectives regarding ADHD and trauma, recognizing that different factors may contribute to symptom manifestation and severity.
4. If you want to better understand what’s happening with you, it is best to consult with an ADHD specialist or mental health professional who can conduct a comprehensive assessment to untangle the complexities of ADHD and trauma, aiding in accurate diagnosis and tailored treatment plans.

Hey Team!

With us today is Mattia Maurée and we’re going to be diving into the experiences of living with both autism and ADHD, also known as AuDHD. I was recently on Mattia’s podcast, AuDHD Flourishing, to talk about subclinical autism (which I was diagnosed with in 2022) so if you want to hear more about that head on over to their show, links in the shownotes.

In our conversation today, Mattia shared their story and the insights they've gained through their journey. Our conversation aimed to shed light on the similarities, differences, and unique challenges faced by individuals navigating both conditions.

And just for a little background on the connection of ADHD and autism, we do see quite a lot of this comorbid condition, with about 50% of people diagnosed with autism also getting an ADHD diagnosis (and just as a note, that percentage doesn’t go the other way because of the difference in population sizes, there are a lot more people with ADHD than those diagnosed with autism). Also interesting to note that before 2013 the DSM didn’t allow for a dual diagnosis of autism and ADHD. And that just gives a little insight into how recently the idea of the two of them being intertwined became and because of that there aren’t a ton of resources out there for AuDHD individuals.

So I hope this episode can help start bridging more of that gap.

Be sure to check out Mattia's Podcast AuDHD Flourishing

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Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/174

This Episode's Top Tips 

1. Monotropism is our tendency to narrow our focus and is a characteristic of both ADHD and autism and can lead us to miss things outside of this attention tunnel. By learning about attention tunnels, we can work on creating more effective coping strategies that take into account our narrow band of focus.
2. Simplifying one's environment and commitments to minimize overwhelming stimuli and demands can help maintain focus and reduce anxiety.
3. Regularly reflecting on what works and what doesn't can help tailor our personal strategies for managing symptoms and challenges, acknowledging that what works may evolve over time.
4. When seeking a proper diagnosis, it is important to find a healthcare provider who is knowledgeable about the nuances of ADHD and autism spectrum disorders to make sure that you’re getting an accurate diagnosis. Who is assessing you can make all of the difference.

Hey Team!

I’ve got an exciting interview today that I’ve been hoping to do for a while now.

Dr. Roberto Olivardia is a clinical psychologist and a lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He specializes in the treatment of ADHD and within the field of ADHD, he further specializes in comorbid disorders, such as OCD, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, and body dysmorphic disorder.

However, in true ADHD, fashion during our pre-interview chat we decided to switch the direction of the podcast to instead deal with sleep. In our conversation we talk about Dr. Olivardia’s own issues with sleep and how sleep is just one of those issues that seems to plague everyone with ADHD. We get into some of what underpins ADHD sleep issues and some of the things that we can do to try and get ourselves a good night’s sleep.

I had a blast recording this and I hope you enjoy just as much as I did.

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Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/175

This Episode's Top Tips 

1. Establish a pre-sleep routine that signals to your brain that it's time for bed. This might include changing into comfortable sleepwear, dimming the lights, and engaging in a relaxing activity like reading or listening to music. Or, as was the case for Dr. Olivardia, going and getting a workout in. Remember that sometimes to calm your ADHD brain down, you need a bit more stimulation.
2. Underpinning that last point again, not everything that is typically recommended for getting a good night's sleep always works for our ADHD. It’s important to experiment with different techniques to see what works and doesn’t work for you.
3. If sleep problems persist despite your best efforts it’s always good to consider consulting with a sleep specialist. We often don’t know what we don’t know when it comes to sleep and a specialist can help identify any underlying issues and recommend additional treatments.

Hey team!

This week I’m talking with Jamie Cutino, a licensed Occupational Therapist, TEDx Speaker, ADHD Coach and a fervent advocate for the ADHD community. In today's episode, Jamie shares her insightful and empowering journey from discovering their ADHD diagnosis to utilizing skills she learned as an occupational therapist to enhance daily life. Jamie has her own podcast, Outsmart ADHD, where she and her guests go over the latest research, share stories and look to provide you with actionable advice.

In our conversation today we talk about what occupational therapy is and how it can help with ADHD management, how sensory issues can impact our ADHD and get into some of the tips and strategies that can help with these issues. And since Jamie is also a podcaster we get into some stuff about the podcast and things I’m looking to improve.

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Find the full show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/176

This Episode's Top Tips 

1. Occupational therapy can provide strategies for improving executive functioning, task initiation, and completion, as well as transitioning between tasks. It is designed to help you develop and maintain the meaningful activities that are hard for your ADHD brain.
2. Since needs can vary daily, having a range of strategies to address different challenges is crucial for effective ADHD management. Tools like noise-canceling headphones and well-lit environments can drastically improve focus and comfort but will work differently for different people.
3. Recognizing that you can't do everything alone and leveraging support can lead to more enjoyment and success in both personal and professional life. When you can, it is great to outsource and delegate the things that are hard for you to complete.

Hey team!

We’ve got another listener question today, this time from my friend Aggie:

  

Hi, Will, Aggie here. Longtime listener, first time caller. To give listeners context, you and I did admin work together and accountability coaching groups. Then we actually got to meet in person at the Chad conference before COVID hit. I myself have a background as a special education teacher, uh, specializing in severe disabilities and autism specific programs. So behavior is one of my strong skills. Implementing understanding. and executing behavior interventions. My question is this, planning and scheduling and time tracking are all great preventative strategies.Do you have any insight or resources around when you know you're already late, probably rushing, and you're trying to stay calm and collected and still show up the way you want to, Even when you were already late. So I'm trying not to show up flustered and discombobulated. I'm thinking maybe some people have coping strategies or other people can share what they do to, to do what I described and give me a jumping off point on how to reframe that emotional state.In the moment of slight or major panic. Would love to hear your ideas or other listeners ideas in response. And thank you so much for your podcast. You're seriously crushing it.

Thanks for the question; Aggie and I think this is an issue we can all relate to. Being late sucks. So, in this episode, we tackle the struggle of showing up calm and composed when maybe we don’t feel calm and collected. We’ll be looking at a number of tools that we can use to try and get ourselves in the right head space, as well as jumping into what we can do so that we might not be late quite as often.

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Find the full show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/177

This Episode's Top Tips 

• Practice acceptance of your ADHD and that sometimes lateness will happen. Work on changing the narrative from self-criticism to understanding and try to give yourself some compassion when you’re running late.
• Try reframing "I'm sorry I'm late" to "Thank you for your patience" to create a more positive atmosphere and show your gratitude when someone waits for you.
• Deep breathing can be especially helpful in calming your nervous system - when we’re running late and stressed, our prefrontal cortex is impaired, and that makes rational decision-making harder. By slowing down and activating our parasympathetic nervous system through deep breathing, we can calm ourselves and get into the right headspace.

Hey team!

This week we’re going to be discussing the challenges of managing ADHD within a relationship where both partners have ADHD and how that can lead to the amplification of symptoms and the struggle to maintain routines and tools.

We’ll also be diving into the potential difficulties of managing ADHD later in life but also how we can lean into the strengths that we have already developed.

This is another listener questions episode and if you’d like to potentially have your question answered on the show head over to hackingyouradhd.com/contact and click on the orange button.

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Find the full show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/178

This Episode's Top Tips 

1. In relationships, clear communication is key, and it’s important to foster accountability while making sure that you are also staying out of judgment.
2. Find a balance between structure and flexibility in daily routines, and make sure you’re creating room for accepting your ADHD (and your partners).
3. When examining your previously created coping strategies, be sure to explore how you developed them and figure out if they are still helping you or if they need to be adjusted.