Abi Lemon:

It's this unregulated flow of ideas and planning, but without a kind of task goal orientated kind of end to it. And that's really typical of ADHD. We don't always realize that that's what we're doing because we're just the ideas people. And that's why in the creative industry as well, we thrive, but we can also really, really flounder because we don't have the executive function a lot of the time to actually go from the idea to the actual finished thing that's out in the world.

Chris Do:

Hey, everybody. I know when we have guests who talk about neurodivergent ideas, people get really excited because they feel seen and heard. So when Abi reached out to me and said, "Chris, I have ADHD. I talk to people about ADHD and creativity. I was thinking this is a perfect opportunity." So Abi, welcome to the show and please introduce yourself and tell us a little story about who you are, what you do.

Abi Lemon:

Okay. Hi, Chris. Thanks for having me on. So my name is Abi Lemon. I'm an ADHD coach for creatives. I was a creative myself for many years. I worked in publishing magazine design and had my own business as well, and really felt the call after my own ADHD diagnosis to support other people in the creative industry because the more people I spoke to, either ex-colleagues or peers or people that have worked for me as freelancers, all seem to be experiencing a lot of the same symptoms of ADHD, the same sciences of neurodivergence as well. So it really feels like it's something that is probably quite prolific across any kind of creative industry, I think, with our superpowered brains.

Chris Do:

What made you suspicious you might have an ADHD brain and then what kind of test did you take to make sure that you do have it?

Abi Lemon:

So I guess I've always been fairly hyperactive a little bit. I talk very fast. I've had an awful lot of experiences, I guess, that I always felt like I didn't fit in. Even from a very early age, it was like this sense of not quite fitting in, not quite feeling like I was doing what other people were doing, this sense of feeling quite flaky and not finishing things and all of that stuff. So I always knew there was something... Well, I thought there was something going on, but I thought it was just me not fitting in and kind of being weird or all of that stuff.

So when I actually started a master's degree a couple of years ago, part of the master's program was you can talk to educational psychologist to see if there's anything like dyslexia. And I thought, "Do you know what? I've been reading a lot about ADHD recently. I've been seeing people talking in the media about this kind of list of things like this in attentiveness, this childhood stuff, this not fitting in, this kind of inability to focus and finish things off and all of this." And I thought, "Do you know what? It really sounds like me."

So off I went for this educational psychology assessment for ADHD. And lo and behold, it was pretty much high on the scale for everything. It just felt like suddenly the final little jigsaw piece slipped into place for me because rather than feeling like someone who was just not [inaudible 00:03:32] properly and not being able to do things in the same way or finish things in the same way other people, suddenly it was like, "Oh my god, there might actually be a reason for that." And the reason isn't that I'm a terrible human. It's, there's something else going on.

Chris Do:

So I have a bunch of questions for you. How were you as a student throughout grade school and then through college?

Abi Lemon:

Okay. So from an early age I was told I was a daydreamer. I was told I was highly intelligent but didn't try very hard and I was lazy and I could always do better. I would talk too much. I didn't pay attention. I found it very hard to finish things. So when I left high school, I went to college for a few months, then I went off traveling for a bit, then I came back to college, then I left that again and did something else.

So there was always this sense of, I can't finish something, I felt like I was told I was not good enough. I was lazy. Constantly, my school reports were, "Could try harder, could do better. Is clever, but doesn't apply herself." So I kind of left education feeling really quite a low self-esteem, I guess. Underneath the kind of supposedly outgoing nature was this feeling that everyone just kept telling me I wasn't good enough and I could do better even when I was trying really hard. It was an interesting time, I think, that kind of led up to the very volatile teenage years coming out of that feeling really not very good and like I didn't really know who I was and all of that stuff.

Chris Do:

What you're telling me is quite fascinating because I'm probably the opposite to you in the spectrum, but the same kinds of comments and critiques that you got as a child, I got too: intelligent, doesn't really apply himself, could do better. That sounds just like a normal Asian parent talking right there because no matter how well your kid's doing, they could always be doing better. Now, I struggled through school because the topics didn't interest me. I felt like I was smarter than the other students, and I was just sitting there kind of just half my brain at work and still doing A-level work. So I wasn't really engaged, and there were only a couple of classes or professors, instructors who really engaged in conversation with me where I'm like, "Oh, I'd like to participate now," but I have no problems with focus and attention.

Actually, I tell people I'm a notorious single-tasker. I can do one thing well and then I don't want to do anything else and I'll stay there until I'm done. For some people, that might be as crazy as you bouncing from topic to topic. And we both have then shared outcome, which is some kind of esteem issues like, am I lazy? Am I just bored in school? I think if I had gone to different school that were designed for people to be more tailored towards the kids in class versus teaching to the average, I would've probably been a lot more engaged because I had no problem once I got into college.

Abi Lemon:

Yeah. And I think especially, well, in the UK where I grew up, especially amongst girls and females, ADHD wasn't recognized because it shows up differently than it does in boys. Your superpower of being able to focus on one thing until it's finished, honestly, that blows my absolute mind because I literally cannot do that. I need at least 17 different projects going on at once that are spinning around up here. Yeah, that's just how my brain works. But back to the girls thing, I think ADHD as a kid, when I was growing up in the 1980s, was boys that were naughty, boys that ran around and were hyperactive, and boys that bounced off the walls and were excluded from school for not paying attention and all this stuff.

And as someone who is quite intelligent and also quite creative, I've found ways of hiding how I actually felt underneath, I think, because it wasn't recognized as being anything other than me just not paying attention or not it being lazy. You learn to sort of paddle furiously underneath the water, like the metaphorical swan or whatever where everybody thinks, "Oh, they're doing okay, even though we keep telling them they're not good enough." You keep paddling and paddling like 800 times harder just to stay afloat. And I think many women now are coming into perimenopause stage, which coming into a certain point where hormones are changing. And actually, this whole lifetime of trying to be somebody else and live up to the expectation, much like you're saying about your parents, but living up to the expectation of what everybody thinks you should be doing, it kind of comes crumbling down a little bit, which I think is why so many later in life diagnoses are happening at the moment within other women and stuff.

Chris Do:

Mm-hmm. I have a lot of other questions to ask you, but when you had mentioned then finally you got diagnosed as you're pursuing your master's degree.

Abi Lemon:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

If you can just briefly tell me, if you didn't love the entire school experience and you bounced in and out of school until you finished, what compelled you to get more of the punishment? I'm just curious.

Abi Lemon:

Oh, okay. Because I guess in true ADHD style, I decided that I really wanted to pivot my business into the kind of psychology side of the work I was doing. I was doing a lot of mentoring and coaching. For the master's degree, what I did was just go absolutely crazy into positive psychology, the hyperfocus, learning about it. For me with ADHD, something that I'm very impulsive about is when I'm really interested in something, I have this amazing drive to suddenly learn everything about it and be essentially qualified to the top level that I could possibly be in it. So I guess it is almost like a little bit of, I don't know, glutton for punishment. But also, when it felt like actually I'm going to do this, and because I did finish my bachelor's degree, I actually proved to myself at that point beforehand that I can do it if I want. So I might hate it and I might absolutely be like, "This is the most lowest dopamine inducing thing ever, but I can finish stuff."

So I think to go back, it's just like this drive that I have within me. And I know a lot of other ADHDs are the same too. When you are interested in something, you are so, so interested. Yes, you're interested in loads of other stuff as well, but the hyperfocus thing is really real. And I think riding that kind of hyperfocus wave is, yeah, I think maybe I'm just impulsive and I just think I'm going to do that and then sign up for it and then worry about it later. So maybe there's an element of that as well.

Chris Do:

You do remind me a little bit of my wife in some regards here, so I'm like, "Whoa, there might be a connection here." But I think there parallels again. I want to get into the nuance of this, because I think a lot of times when people attach these kinds of labels, people just automatically assume it's going to be so different or a certain way. And what I find quite interesting is, I'm also a deep diver, and so when I find something I'm interested in, I go really deep. I guess the difference, and correct me if I'm wrong here, a difference between a person like me and you is when I go deep, I go deep for three years. I don't go deep for three weeks or three months, and it annoys people like, "When are you going to quit on this?" It's like, "Why will I quit? I want to go to the very terminal point of which it is that I want to explore this passion or this interest."

And when I say you remind me of my wife, she's hot and cold depending on what time of day it is. It's like, "Oh, I'm really into this." And I'm like, "Oh, and then now you're into this." So after a while I've just learned to just step back, let her go through her pace and not try to ride every wave with her because for a person like myself, it's exhausting like, "Oh, it's all about this." And then, "No, no, it's about this philosopher now," and then it's about this religion and it's all over the place. But I love how she explores things so deeply, but it's like that line from Blade Runner, "The candle that burns twice as bright burns twice as fast."

Abi Lemon:

Yeah, it's exhausting for us as well when we are in it. There's always a running kind of joke around ADHD, is that we have this graveyard in our loft of all the hobbies and interests that we've kind of loved for three or four months or six and then put away for the future where we're never going to look at it ever again because something new will take its place. And it is exhausting for us as well. It's also energizing and brilliant, but it is exhausting because our brains tend to be going at this kind of Ferrari pace with a set of cantilever bicycle breaks to try and regulate it and keep it under control.

So yeah, and I totally get that it's exhausting for other people around us, and I think you do exactly the right thing because sometimes we just have to ride the waves of it. We have to do the hyperfocus and then we have to move to the next thing, and that's how it is. So I don't think there's a way of stopping it. I think there's a way of just enjoying it and accepting sometimes who we are as individuals and our nuances and ways, but not all of it is kind of positive when it comes to that. You can get hyperfocused on entirely the wrong things, and when you combine that with low self-esteem, that's going to come from all this feeling not good enough, you can really end up in some chaotic and catastrophic situations and relationships and all of that in your life. So it's a very much a double-edged sword when it comes to that.

Chris Do:

Mm-hmm. Like you're maybe going to become addicted in substance abuse maybe. Is that what you're referring to?

Abi Lemon:

Yeah. I did a talk recently at an event for ADHD and autism, and there was a lady there who was talking, because she's very much involved in the youth offenders prison service in the UK. So she supports young offenders, she helps them when they get arrested for the first time and try to keep them out of prison again for the second time. One of the things she said in her talk was actually something like, 90% of all the young offenders that are admitted, she believes have an ADHD diagnosis, but they're not diagnosed.

And because of this massive cocktail of hormones and everything that these young kids are coming from deprived areas, they're really not. It is just they can't regulate themselves. Their impulsiveness is unregulated, and they will just reoffend and reaffirm because they just get into that cycle from that young age. One of her big campaigns is to try and stop that by getting these people diagnosed, that they can have some kind of treatment or help or medication around that just while they're going through this time in their life. So it can be really, really chaotic and terrible for people going through with not being diagnosed and not recognizing that actually what they feel is just their crappy behavior or whatever is actually something that could be understood and managed a bit better.

Chris Do:

So once you were diagnosed, what did that do for you in your understanding of yourself? Did you enroll in programs? Did you take any kind of medication? How do you move forward once you're diagnosed?

Abi Lemon:

So for me, understanding myself and getting that diagnosis, I thought I would just experience absolute relief. I thought I'd be so relieved, I'd be like, "Okay, that's brilliant. I know myself now." Kind of wasn't like that at all. When it came through, I think I had a very short window of, "Oh, I'm really relieved. That's great." But then came the grief of what could have been if I could have understood myself a little bit more in the past and hadn't basically given myself such a hard time over not being good enough or not feeling good enough. There was a lot of sadness for a lot of choices that I made, perhaps when I was younger when I got in with the wrong crowd and I was in fall-out terrible relationships and things because I just didn't feel worthy of anything more. There was this kind of anger that no one had this kind of rage a little bit, that no one had ever picked up on it before and just basically was just kind of telling me I wasn't good enough when actually there was something a little bit more nuanced going on there.

So it was like this big rollercoaster of emotions that probably I would say lasted for six months. And out the other side of it, I feel very much a lot more self-compassion for myself, a lot more self-kindness. I mean, I don't actually take any medication for it, but I know that if I wanted to explore that in the future, I could. I think medication would've helped me hugely when I was younger. But I think I've learned so much, so many coping strategies and so many ways of managing myself and this super high level of self-compassion now that actually I'm not medicating at the moment for it, but I know it can really hugely help other people as well. So yeah, it was a real journey and an unexpected one as well. I just wasn't expecting to just not feel this sudden, "Oh, brilliant, now I know." So it was definitely a mix of emotions after that diagnosis.

Chris Do:

So it sounds like the biggest takeaway is just understanding yourself better and putting the pieces together. Like you were trying to solve a puzzle, but you're missing one critical piece and you're never going to be able to solve it. So this awareness led to compassion and understanding. I mean, that is a gigantic takeaway, just to know that you're not broken, that you're okay, and this is how your brain is wired. Right?

Abi Lemon:

Yeah, It is huge. And especially if you are running a business, if you are someone who's a creative, there's so much stuff in all of that complexity, so much emotional stuff that comes with being self-employed, that comes with putting work out into the world. When you have a bit more self-compassion and you can understand that there is a bit of a difference in how your brain is connected together, you can find ways around it. It's not wrong. It's not broken. It's like, "Well, actually, I know that I am rubbish with timekeeping. I know that some days I really can't focus at all." So it's, how can I mitigate that as much as possible, mitigate that negative bit and actually find a way that works for me? That's essentially what I help people do now with their own businesses, which is hugely rewarding and it's come from, I guess, my own turmoil and journey that's been so up and down over the years.

Chris Do:

Okay. So you had said at the top you're an ADHD coach for creatives. Do I remember that correctly?

Abi Lemon:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

All right. So does that mean you are ADHD or you're helping people with their ADHD when you say "I'm an ADHD coach"?

Abi Lemon:

Both of those. I'm ADHD, and also, but it's about helping people... Can you guess? It's about helping people manage their ADHD. So coping strategies for life, for business, for work. I'd also do a lot of work through some government organizations here in the UK that support neurodivergent people in the workplace and in their businesses as well. It is about finding ways of running the day-to-day bit of your business and not getting overwhelmed and not getting really behind with deadlines, not burning out because that hyperfocused burnout cycle for those of us with ADHD is a very real thing where we go all in for three months and then we have to spend three months basically not doing anything because we've just literally burnt every single bit of energy in our bodies. So it's about teaching people and supporting people in managing that whole kind of mixing pot that comes with it all. So yeah.

But it's not just business owners. There's a lot of people in employment that need that support as well. And there's a lot of employers that also need to understand more about neurodivergence, because although a lot of creatives have all these brain superpowers and this kind of neuro differences, I've actually noticed in a lot of the clients that I work with that many of the agencies and creative agencies they work with are really, even though probably 50% of their staff have some kind of ADHD or neurodivergent brain, they're so on neurodivergent friendly to work for. So yeah, there's an education piece going on and there's also a kind of just understanding and awareness piece as well.

Chris Do:

Wow, I just have to be transparent and tell you how I'm processing all this because as a person who practices intentional listening, and interviewing you and just having a conversation with you, my brain is trying to keep up with your brain and it's way overclocked right now. I might have more of that, I don't know, Toyota motor, and you're running at the Ferrari speed, and the Toyota's just burning out, just trying to process.

Abi Lemon:

Sorry.

Chris Do:

No, this is good. So it's exhausting for me. I'll just tell you right now, it is exhausting. But is it exhausting for you to speak at this speed or to think at this speed, or is this just normal gear for you?

Abi Lemon:

No. Yeah. See, I'm talking, I'm already two seconds in. Yeah. No, this is how I speak. This is how I've always taught, and I'm trying to be very conscious in slowing down how fast I'm talking as well.

Chris Do:

Well, thank you for keeping it slow for people like me. The thing is, I've seen this happen before where you sit in and you listen to a public speaker and they're able to tie together super complicated ideas and flow from thing to thing. My former business partner was like that, Jose Caballer. I've seen Gary Vaynerchuk speak, and I was like, "Oh god, I wish I could string together such complex ideas and words and facts and data points and switch gears when necessary." I just thought like my brain just can't do that. And then later on you're like, "Oh my god, they have ADHD, duh."

So the first thing I want everybody to know is, oftentimes, ADHD, that label, at least in the past, has been looked at as something's wrong with your brain, but in fact you have a super fast brain. You just process information faster than everyone else. So you're going to be usually really intelligent. And if you know how to apply it and to regulate it, you could be a top performing person in whatever industry that you're in.

Abi Lemon:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

Whether you're an employee or an entrepreneur, it doesn't matter. So Jose used to say to me a lot, and to everybody, he goes, "My ADHD is too powerful." He learned to lean into it, and he created a lot of tools to help his brain organize what I would think is pretty normal stuff. But those tools, the neurotypical brain looks at these tools like, "Wow, you just made something really, really easy." And that was how he tapped into his genius, and he would develop all kinds of tools so that his brain can focus. And for neurotypical brains, it was brilliant. So there's an advantage here. Okay. Now, when we talk about that you're an ADHD coach for creatives, what kinds of patterns or things have you noticed that here's a challenge and here's the solution? Let's try and help some people today.

Abi Lemon:

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So the main thing is... Well, there's two things. First thing is focus and focusing on tasks when the initial joy and dopamine has worn off. That is a real challenge. For a lot of my creative friends that I've spoken to and people I've worked with, is once that initial party bit of the project is done, it is very difficult to finish things. And I think the finishing things and then to hit the deadlines, because you're just in the last bit, even though you've got a tiny task to do, might take you as long as the whole rest of the project, is a real challenge for people.

And that's one of the things, the reasons why ADHD get not in trouble at work, but they might not be performing as good as they should be, is because they're seen as being like, "We've done all this great work, but you just haven't emailed back that client or you haven't finished the project." So that's a real of challenge. And to resolve that, I mean, there's always going to be a bit of that procrastination on this last bit and that we as ADHD, as we're programmed, to seek out the dopamine inducing part of what we're doing. But there's ways. Getting some accountability is absolutely key.

So if your employer, or you at least, or you have somebody you are working with, can offer you some accountability to just give you a little nudge on those tasks and just remind you of things and just kind of... There's a concept called body doubling, which is basically whereby you might jump on Zoom, we're both going to jump on Zoom at 3:00 PM and you are going to do the thing that you said you were going to do and I'm going to do something I need to do, and then the task will get done. But that concept of having that body done as someone in the room, even if it's a virtual room, can really help those final non-dopamine related tasks get done. And that applies to life stuff as well. Folding up your washing, tidying a kitchen, doing the washing up, those are all really low dopamine tasks that as ADHD, we'll struggle with.

Chris Do:

Okay, so body doubling and accountability. So let me ask you this question. So people have sometimes a challenge finishing tasks and then if somebody can give them a gentle reminder, it's like, "Oh yeah, right, right, I need to finish that." Could you not just self-regulate? Could you not just set up alarms and goals that are put on post-it notes or digitally so that you don't need someone else to do that for you?

Abi Lemon:

Of course you could do that. Of course. And ADHD is determined as an executive function disorder. Well, executive dysfunction. Executive function is goal-orientated action. So that is basically how you self-regulate your self-awareness, your time management, all of those things, to help you achieve some kind of goal. Because our executive function can be quite heavily interesting or dysregulated or just kind of not quite as goal orientated as other people, yes, we can certainly do all of those things. But probably, chances are, we'll think about doing it, we won't do it, and then we'll beat ourselves up because we didn't remember to write the thing on the post-it note or we saw the alarm go off and we didn't do the thing.

And it just seems to be, in my experience and the clients I've worked with, that actually when you've got somebody, a real human there, whether that's virtually or in person or whatever, to give you that accountability, it helps to push your, I guess, your trust in yourself a little bit further as well, so that some of the self-regulating activities might be feasible in the future. But yeah, the executive functioning side is a real killer when it comes to things like being on time as well, doing the things you said you'd do, remembering to do the things that you... To have a post-it note in front of you right there, which I have some, to actually remember to do that, it's still that executive function thing.

Chris Do:

Time for a quick break, but we'll be right back.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this week's episode as much as I am. Now, before we dive back in, I want to ask you a quick question. Are you an established creative service provider, coach, or consultant looking to scale your business without losing your soul in the process? If so, The Futur Membership was created just for you, and I'd like to see you inside with us. Go to thefutur.com/pro to learn more and join.

Welcome back to our conversation. I tend to somehow attract certain ADHD people into my life, and they drive me crazy. But for whatever reason, we're like Abbott and Costello, Bonnie and Clyde or whatever, we just belong together. It's kind of wild. I was like, "Ugh, can't you guys just get yourself done? Why are you working on this other stupid crazy idea?" And this, "Oh, you have a new idea today, every single day? Come on. Can you not just finish?" So let me take you back in time. This is now 2014, yeah, 2014, Jose and I are working together. He's teaching me things about CORE and the framework about brand strategy, and we decide to start a company together. He's the CEO and I'm just, I don't know what I am. He likes to do things together, and it would just annoy me. He's like, "We're going to do a standup meeting." I'm like, "What? Standup meeting? Why are we having more meetings?"

So he just liked to do things together, and we got into an argument. He said, "Look, let's just try a test," because he believed in all these Silicon Valley things like Agile, Scrum, all these tools to help move software, and we weren't developing software so it just really confused me. And he just looked at me like I'm a knuckle dragging Cro-Magnon, Neanderthal or whatever it is. Just like, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm stuck in this kind of waterfall project management where it's very hierarchical and he wanted to do things very flat. So here's the challenge I gave to him. I said, "Why don't we try your way and see what happens? Let's do it for a week and see how much we accomplish and then we'll measure against the baseline of how much I can get done." He's like, "Sure, let's do it." So he'd gathered a team, he was like, "What's our global business objective? What are you going to do?" So he's assigning tasks and we're all doing it together. And all my tasks I did in one day, actually in hours.

So I've done everything I need to do for the entire week, and I just waited. And at the end of the week, with all the meetings, no one finished anything. I know you're feeling this, right? And I was like, "Okay, we have a problem, Jose. We cannot run projects like this because nothing has done." He's like, "Well, this was just a bad week." I'm like, "No, I believe you know how to run these things, but this is how nothing gets done." But having heard you say this about body doubling and having other people keep us accountable because the executive function of prioritizing goals is in dysfunction. So everything looks important and everyone's easily distracted. And if they're following the lead of someone who has ADHD, who's yet not yet figured this part out, it's a cluster half. I quite literally said, "I could have done everybody's work in one day and then you all can just go home. What's the point?" Okay, please respond. I want your insight. Any kind of jokes you want to throw at both of us, it's all good.

Abi Lemon:

Honestly, what you've just described there is absolutely typical on Jose's part, typical ADHD behavior, getting everything together, planning it all out, scheduling it in, listing the task, not actually doing any of it. Exactly that.

Chris Do:

I wish I knew that two years prior to going into business.

Abi Lemon:

Honestly, we could spend hours, and this is the challenge I have with some of my clients, is they will be like, "I've done this amazing plan. I've done this, and I'm going to follow this up and everything else." But actually, part of helping them to feel confident in their decision making and their ability to run a business or their ability to do their job is to kind of give them that, a little bit of self-trust. And you do have to say, "Well, actually as part of this, let's get some of this done now. When are you going to do this? And if you're not going to do it now, let's get it on your actual calendar. I'm going to message you that day." So there is actually some action taken because the plan is great, but the plan needs to move. Like you say, the needle has to move in some direction and some of those tasks need to get done. So yeah, I recognize that hugely, honestly, that I've been there myself as the Jose.

Chris Do:

You've been Jose before. Okay. Is it correct for me to come to the conclusion that if you're a neurodivergent ADHD person, you actually get a lot of joy in the planning of just getting people together and managing that? You're a classic planner.

Abi Lemon:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

Okay.

Abi Lemon:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

So if that was your job, you would be excellent at it.

Abi Lemon:

If that was my job, I would be excellent at it. And that was obviously part of my job that I used to do before, and that bit I could do all day long. But not all jobs are just planning. There is always action that has to be taken. You can't just sit there and make a plan for something because there's parts of that you will have to do. And that could even be sending emails to people, and those things won't get done if you haven't got the right kind of, I guess, tools and ways of realizing and that self-awareness. So yeah.

Chris Do:

Well, I'm all about leaning into your strengths. So if your skill is to plan and bring people together and organize and map things out, hire an assistant and say, "Okay, I need you to drill this into deliverables and to email everybody out and then to hold everyone accountable. And then you can get paid to organize things." And I think that's a very necessary job within an organization. Now, here's where my neurotypical brain was rubbing against the system because I'm like, "My god, I could have just told everybody what to do. We don't have to have a meeting about it. Here's all your marching orders. You just trust that I'm the architect of all of this, and you all get your work done in a day. We'll have pizza for Tuesday through Thursday or Friday, and then we'll celebrate at the end."

But he and I were just butting heads because he was just like, "No, you don't understand how things need to be done." You know what? He even did something even crazier. Here's the crazier part. I'm like, "This isn't working." He goes, "You know what? We need to have a board of directors." I'm like, "What? You want to formalize having more meetings? This is just driving me crazy. Why do we need that?" "Chris, we need a business plan." I'm like, "We have a business plan. It ain't working. We're going broke right now, and we don't have time to sit around and have a board of advisors or directors telling us more stuff that we could be doing and not doing anything." So I'd love for you to respond to that.

Abi Lemon:

The way that ADHD brains work as well, we don't have necessarily the same level of impulsiveness where the ideas just keep coming we want to do something with it. So we create all these ideas and plans. Actually, it's really difficult with the executive function to really see that actually the goal at the end of it isn't just to have a bunch of advisors or a bunch of board people. It's to have the thing out in the world, whatever that product is, or that service and make the money. So again, it's this unregulated flow of ideas and planning, but without a kind of task goal orientated kind of end to it. And that's really typical of ADHD.

The thing is, as ADHD, is we don't always realize that that's what we're doing because we're just the ideas people. And that's why in the creative industry as well, we thrive. And in the majority, in advertising, in marketing, we can really, really thrive in some of those creative roles, but we can also really, really flounder because we don't have the executive function a lot of the time to actually go from the idea to the actual finished thing that's out in the world. There's just more ideas just take the place, more kind of dopamine. "The board of directors, that's going to be exciting, so let's get them and let's do that." So it is this dopamine seeking as well.

Chris Do:

I'd like to explore the whole advertising as potentially a great fit for ADHD brain in a little bit. But I got to ask you this question, as an ADHD person, do you find it difficult to be silent? Do you find it difficult just to listen versus I need to talk and tell you all my things right now?

Abi Lemon:

Yes.

Chris Do:

I saw you thinking about should I tell the truth or not the truth right now? All right, tell me the pause. Tell me everything that's happening inside your brain.

Abi Lemon:

Okay. So yes, I do find it very difficult sometimes not to talk over people. And this is something I'm working on all the time, and it's an ongoing challenge. Because when things pop into your head, it is the impulsivity, it's this inability to be able to almost regulate yourself and what you're doing and things. So yeah, I do find it really, really hard to not tell everybody all the things in one sentence without breathing in one go. And imagine when you get a bunch of ADHDs together, it's either amazing if you're another ADHD or not so amazing if you are somebody who's just sitting quietly in the corner.

Chris Do:

Well, I've been that quiet person in the corner many of times. I'm like, "Okay, I don't even need to be here right now. No one even caress what I have to say." But if you are in a room with four ADHD brains and you're at the dinner table and no one wants to listen, everyone wants to talk, who's listening to anybody versus just joyful just to hear yourself speak?

Abi Lemon:

I think there is definitely a sense of joy in meeting people that you suddenly feel like you fit in with. If most of us, if we're neurodivergent, have spent a good portion of our lives not feeling seen or not feeling like we can be ourselves because people are like, "Aren't they going to shut up?" So there's always that sense of not having to dampen yourself a little bit. So I think there's a lot of joy in just expressing yourself in a way that feels natural and there's no one judging you. But my experience of being at a dinner table with other ADHD is, we do listen, but it's okay we bounce around on each other. And some of the most hilarious conversations are with other people that have that quick mind and the creative ideas flowing and everything else. So yeah, I think there's a bit of both there. There's the joy, but I think there is listening, but we don't need a lot of time to listen. We just need split seconds, minutes in.

Chris Do:

Oh, okay. I will not challenge you on that. When you say, I don't need a lot of time to listen, it's like you're really not listening then, are you? But that's okay because I look at it when... And I think now I'm starting to suspect maybe my wife is the ADHD because I'll hear her talk for 20 minutes straight, and then when she pauses, I think she's done, I'll start one sentence and she'll start going again and I'll wait. And then it happens all the time. And then eventually I'm like, "Can I finish one thought?" It's like I haven't finished like... You know how sometimes you set up the first half of the argument or the idea and the second half changes how the first half is presented? But she chops me right there and like, "Well, let me tell you about this." I'm like, "I didn't finish my thought honey. Can I finish a thought?"

Because I'm really good at just sitting there listening and being quiet for as long as necessary because important for me, just as how I align myself, to make sure the other person can completely express whatever idea they have and for me to be able to listen with as much of my brain as possible. So when I'm in a room full of ADHD people, I'm like, "They don't really care what I have to say because I can't even get a word in." So this is fascinating to me. So you're like, "We don't have to spend a lot of time listening." So the question is, are you really listening? Are you really learning about each other? Or it's just really like you're hearing yourself and you're feeling accepted and you don't have to feel judged or you have to dampen yourself?

Abi Lemon:

I 100% believe that we are, as ADHD, is that super quick brain of ours has an insane ability to be able to understand other people quite quickly. We can almost use that superpower to understand who they are very fast without actually having to sit and listen to a lot. It's more about the body language. We just pick up on all those things, honestly. Am I saying it's like a magic power there?

Chris Do:

You could learn about people without even telling you what they would think. That is what you're saying. You're like psychic.

Abi Lemon:

No, not quite, really.

Chris Do:

Not quite, of course.

Abi Lemon:

I just think we are very fast at being able to pick up on lots of cues from people and things like that, I think.

Chris Do:

Okay. All right. So I'll give you an example here where I'm going to challenge that a little bit. So I'm at an event in Portland, it's many years ago, and we just finished speaking, Jose, myself and another speaker. I could just tell there's another super fast brain. I was just impressed with her intelligence. We sat at a table at a bar and they were just talking. And then they would ask me something and I would just barely able to express it. And then they're doing their thing again. And I'm starting to get annoyed and I'm starting to feel really disconnected. If they were super hyper-intelligent, ADHD brain, they would've noticed this and they would've regulated themselves. Or maybe, through their ADHD brain, they can't do that because it all feels the same to them.

I had to literally say, "Guys, I enjoy this conversation, but I don't feel like I'm contributing anything here and I'm exhausted. I'd like to speak, but if you guys want to do your thing, I don't want to be a wet blanket to your party." And they both looked at me like that was a news flash and they stopped. They actually stopped and could contain themselves for long enough for me to feel like I can be a part of the conversation. So this is my challenge to you, Abi, which is, you say you could read me, but I don't know if you can, especially in that example. What do you think?

Abi Lemon:

That's a really astute observation actually for it. And I think we do get this dysregulation, this inability to stop being impulsive. All of that is very real, especially when there's somebody else there that is on your kind of frequency. And sometimes it does. The thing is. With ADHD, if somebody turns around and says, "Hang on a minute. I don't feel included, I don't feel in it," there's something called rejection sensitive dysphoria that a lot of people with neurodivergent sense ADHD have.

Rejection sensitive dysphoria is basically this hugely feeling emotions at a very, very high and acute level. So it's the same as body dysmorphia or something. You have this weird sense of everything, somebody doesn't like you, they absolutely hate you, or you've done something hugely wrong. And actually, for someone to turn around and say, I guarantee that those two people, who you said, probably felt absolutely terrible inside because they just wouldn't have realized. That kind of rejection sensitive thing would've... I'm going to put my hand up and say, I expect they were probably absolutely mortified to realize that you had been feeling like that in that conversation. Which is why when you get that kind of wake up as well, you don't want to be like that. You don't want to alienate people or push them away. So yeah, they probably went home that night going, "I talk too much. I talk too fast."

Chris Do:

But they stopped right then and there, and I was able to engage and have real conversations, and there was a back and forth. They just needed to know that they needed to switch into a different gear. Because I think they saw each other and they were just so happy to just talk at lightning speeds. I still question, because they say when you're talking, you're not learning. So when we hold silence or space for other people, then we can actually learn about them. And maybe that's my superpower, that I'm okay to just be quiet most of the time.

Okay, so I get that part. Now let's switch gears here. I would love for you to give us maybe a couple of tips. I would just want to prime you here. You don't have to do this second. I want to have a couple of tips, like say three things that you can do if you suspect that you're an ADHD or you know for a fact an ADHD brain, a neurodivergent brain, what you can do to be more productive or to create space for other people or how you can read those physical cues that your brain may not be picking up. So I just want you to think about that for a second.

Now, I promise, because I don't want to have an open loop and not finish it. There tends to be ADHD people in the creative direction space within agencies or at higher levels. So if you can get to the higher levels, you can do really well because come up with ideas and your team will then do it, people who are really good at single tasking things. So how have you seen people excel in especially advertising agencies and that creative director role?

Abi Lemon:

So the first tip that I can give you to really prime that neurodivergent mind is to look after yourself physically. A lot of the creative industry work long hours, and they drink, they take their clients out. In my experience, there's a lot of this bit too busy for lunch and all this kind of stuff. The best thing and the biggest thing you can do as an ADHD to maintain and keep your brain working is to look after yourself physically, drink loads of water, make sure you eat lunch every day or you have something that you eat. Try and lay off the sugar if possible because sugar is, again, something that will exacerbate your dopamine and it means you're stuck looking for more of it. Try and stay fit, get outside. Moving your body is the other thing you can do, which is absolutely, I think in my mind, crucial to maintaining a really productive and powerful and regulated ADHD brain. So that is really the kind of crux of really regulating and keep staying as regulated as possible and staying as aware of your surroundings as possible.

Chris Do:

That's one.

Abi Lemon:

That's one. Yeah. The second thing I would think is really going to be, I think, practicing some kind of, whether that's a pause before you speak, that self-awareness thing. So taking a breath before you speak, understanding yourself and really taking the time to do that. So whether you educate yourself on ADHD, if you're diagnosed or not diagnosed, whether you find other people that you can talk to about ADHD, whether you listen to podcasts about it, but just having that self-awareness so that you are aware enough to... Before you go into a meeting, maybe you take a breath, maybe you go and walk around the block, maybe you have developed your self-awareness to the point where you understand that you do need to breathe sometimes and take in more of those physical and emotional cues from other people as well.

And the last one I would say really is I think developing a way of keeping track of what you're doing day-to-day, which isn't necessarily like a productivity schedule, not necessarily a to-do list either. It's learning how to prioritize, learning how to actually not let the tiny little non-dopamine tasks drop off your radar. And that could be as simple as blocking stuff into your Google Calendar, getting a coach, getting someone to hold you accountable, getting a colleague or your manager or somebody to check in with you and just make sure that you are not letting things slide and you are actually keeping you on top of stuff. There's no magic ADHD app that's going to transform your life and suddenly make everything really productive and really work really smoothly. So it's about trying different things and seeing whether they work for you.

To-do lists are great, but that's not... Having post-it notes, like you say, can work sometimes for some things, putting them up on a whiteboard in front of you. Finding ways of not letting things disappear. Because I think with ADHD, if there's a task or there's something that isn't suddenly in your immediate kind of sphere of vision, there's a thing called object impermanence, which means it doesn't exist. So if there's a task that you know you've got to do, but you've kind of buried it somewhere and you haven't looked at it for a week or anything else, that task essentially doesn't exist. So it's really trialing and finding ways that work for you so that you don't let that happen because that's when overwhelm can kick in and everything else.

Chris Do:

Okay, very good.

Abi Lemon:

Oh, I just said a million words.

Chris Do:

No, no, no. Great. So let me just quickly recap. Number one is, you got to take care of your health. And this is kind of interesting because the few ADHD people I know and associate with, they're not exactly in great shape. And I see that you work out regularly. I've seen many of your posts. I don't want to want to tell people how you keep in shape, but back in the day you were doing certain things and you're very fit, super fit. Number two, and I've seen you do this throughout our entire conversation, is you'll take a breath before you speak. And I'm assuming in what feels like half a second to me in your hyper fast brain, you're the flash. You just sorted through the ideas like, "I want to say this," and you're probably editing a whole bunch of things. And just a little bit of a pause before you speak makes a big difference.

Number three is, you say whatever works for you, but you need to somehow track your progress just to make sure you're on task and you're doing the right things for what it is that you want however you want to do that. Now, here's the beautiful part of what you just said. I would tell someone who is a neurotypical to do the exact same thing, literally do the exact same thing for different reasons, but do the exact same things. Number one, watch what you eat, take care of your body because you're going to be working for a long time. And if you don't take care of the machine, the machine will fall apart. If you take care of the machine, you have more energy, you have greater focus. And you know what? What you say to the world is, I'm a motivated, focused person who can get things done. We just assume that about people who are in really good shape. And you'll look better and you'll feel better.

Number two, I'd go a little bit more extreme, instead of pausing before you speak, don't speak at all if what you say doesn't improve upon silence. I'll just put it out there. It's not necessary for you to speak. You can just sit there in silence and process, and people will give you credit for being a deep thinker even if you're not thinking about anything. And then the last one is, of course, we have to have pretty clear goals and we need to make sure the goalpost is clear to us so that we can take steps towards achieving that. Anybody who's been successful knows what they want, they've envisioned it in their mind, and they're able to break it down into subtasks to chunk it down and then to go at it one step at a time. And that's really critical.

One of the things that we like to tell people is FOCUS. FOCUS is an acronym for follow one course until success, because this is where some of my friends get into a lot of trouble who are in the neurodivergent spectrum there, where they have a beautiful business model, they have tons of experiences, they can do wonderful things, and then every other day it seems like they're calling me or messaging me. It's like, "Oh, I want to do this now." I'm like, "What happened to that brilliant business model that I think is excellent that you were making money on? And you want to quit that because it was so successful? I do not understand this, and you don't have the resources to try every single thing." So I have to constantly remind them like, "Is this in alignment with your first goal? Because until you're super successful there, do you want to change?" Just asking that question will make them stop, pause, say, "No, you're right. I do want that thing. That is important to me." So then they're able to do that.

Okay, there's a couple other things I want to share with people having just hung around with enough neurodivergent people with ADHD. They developed very strong systems to regulate their brain and to help them prioritize. Jose shared an article with me. He's like, "I can't communicate this to you, but here's what it's like to have ADHD." And he slides it over and I read the article and it's fascinating. The writer of the article described being in a room where every single thing is equally important as everything else. Make a million dollars, that's very important. Somebody walking by, that's really important. There's a fly in this room, that's equally important, and they can't regulate that. So once he shared that article with me, I'm like, "Dude, I totally understand you and it explains a lot of our relationship right now."

But here's a really cool thing, and I thought he did this for theatrics, but he had to do this to just make sure that when he's not on medicine, that he can focus. He literally did this. He would wear headphones that would put him into, I guess, sensory deprivation state, and the headphones would play really fast metal and very loud. I can hear just walking by, because he doesn't want to hear anything else but this music, which puts him into a focus zone. Then he quite literally did this. He took post-it notes and taped them on the side of his glasses. So he was blocking his vision. I thought it was for show, but he needed this.

Abi Lemon:

He needs it.

Chris Do:

Yes. He would just look forward, and then he had an alarm set every 15 minutes to remind him these are the three things you have to do today. Because he gets started, he forgot what he's supposed to be doing, and it would just bug me because I'm like, "Oh my god, it was just so loud." And he's like, "Okay, you're supposed to finish this thing. Okay, he's working, and an alarm would ring." And he developed CORE as a way to regulate his own brain. So he'd always start with, "Here's everything we want to do, then we have to prioritize, prioritize, prioritize into here's the thing we must do today." And he would have that in writing in front of him, the alarm set, and that's how he kept focus. In that way, when he did all those things, he actually got stuff done. It was extremely impressive at that point. What are your thoughts?

Abi Lemon:

I think if that works for him, and I think that it might work for other people as well, but then some ADHD and some neurodivergents are very highly sensitive to noise. So actually, I'm one that will actually put my headphones on with no sound, but it's still providing that sensory deprivation. But if there's noise, I need the silence. And lots of other people are the same. So it's finding, do you work best with noise, with dance music, with nothing? How do you make that work? But I'd love the idea of putting the blinkers on. Some people don't like to have the alarms, but they like to work in slightly longer blocks. It is such a trial and error process of finding stuff that works for you. But as Jose's found, when you find that magic formula that works for you, super productive and get a week's work done in one day. It's amazing. But there are lots of different tips and tricks to use and lots of ways of doing it. Once you find your magic way or magic formula for you, then yeah, absolutely brilliant.

Chris Do:

This is not a blanket statement, but I found that the people that I know that I have ADHD, and I can tell, their ability to learn to read is on next level. Their ability to recall things that they've read, I've been very envious of. I'm like, "God, I wish I could do that. You just chewed up that book in a minute and now you're reciting from it as if you wrote the book. Incredible." You're dropping terms. I have to jot them all down because they're not terms I'm familiar with, like rejection sensitive dysphoria. And you talked about the executive function and body doubling and just dropping... So you can remember things. Obviously, you're hyper intelligent here. For my little brain, I've got to write down words like 10 times and look at them before it sticks with me. So there's something beautiful about how different our brains work. The rest of it, I do not envy, but that I do envy for sure.

Abi Lemon:

Can't find my keys or anything like that. But yeah.

Chris Do:

Just like my wife.

Abi Lemon:

But I can remember the words.

Chris Do:

She can never find her phone. It's like the daily mystery. Four times in the days, she's like, "Did you see my phone?" And everybody, my boys, we all rolling our eyes like, "We don't know, Mom. Where did you put it last?" And she just have no idea.

Abi Lemon:

Do you know it's the one thing I use my Apple Watch for more than anything else, is pressing the button so that I've sent my phone beeps and I know where it is in the house. I don't use it for anything else, but it's magic for that.

Chris Do:

Maybe you can get a lanyard attached to your phone, and that way it's like attached to your body.

Abi Lemon:

Yeah, lovely. Just tie it onto me.

Chris Do:

Yeah. Yeah. So I was just saying like, maybe if you're a teacher, if you're in the academic space, this could be really good for you because you can learn really fast and you can retain what you read and then you can teach other people what you've read, and then you can also read them without having to listen to them and understand that they're confused in areas and you could redirect. Right?

I also talked to Rob Fitzpatrick. He wrote the book The Workshop Survival Guide. When I was interviewing him, his brain was going just like a gazillion hours a second, and I'm just, I can't keep up. So eventually I'm like, "Rob, I hope you don't find this offensive, but by any chance, are you ADHD?" He goes, "Yes, can you tell?" And he just kept talking. He didn't even stop, and this was fantastic. He goes, "Chris, I'll try to go slower. He didn't, but it was fine because we can listen to a podcast over and over again and we could pull the pieces out.

Again, what's really interesting with Rob is he designs workshops to work around his brain because he needs to be doing stuff. So he's like, it turns out the more you switch tasks or games with people in a workshop, the more they're engaged. So if you talk for a really long time or if you give them a task to design a website for three hours, their brain is just going down and down and down. But if you give them rapid fire, "30 seconds, do this, two minutes, do that, one minute, do this," they're like, "Ooh, I just got to keep up here." So that is a person working with the tools that they have in their brain and making the most of it, and then becoming brilliant at teaching other people these skills.

Abi Lemon:

Yeah. And do you know what? I love doing that. And that's why I love speaking. It's why I love running live workshops and events, is because exactly that. I love the kind of, you don't really know what's coming and you don't really know, so you can just really roll with it and keep things fast moving. So yeah, I will have to look up his episode because that sounds awesome.

Chris Do:

Yes. I think it just dropped this week, and it's just worth every second that you can listen to it. I'm sure you're going to hear it and you're like, "Oh, I see you. I see you, brother. I totally get what you're going through."

Abi Lemon:

You're my friend.

Chris Do:

Yes. And then you're probably thinking, "Oh, poor Chris."

Abi Lemon:

Is this like the ADHD series of guests?

Chris Do:

I think so, maybe. Like I said, I somehow attract all these people to me. I've not learned to work with them. I'm married to one, I believe, and we won't know for sure, but I suspect. Anyways, Abi, is there anything else that you're doing that you want to tell people about?

Abi Lemon:

No. Well, at the moment I'm going to be launching my own podcast in a couple of weeks, which is going to be really good. I've done one episode and I'm going to do a couple more. I've done the ADHD thing of not doing more than one in one go. But yeah, if people want to reach out to me, if you want to know more about ADHD or how you can learn to manage it a little bit, you can come and have a look at my website or check me out on Instagram. And with the name like Abi Lemon, you just have to type it in and you'll find it.

Chris Do:

I'm curious with your podcast that you're launching.

Abi Lemon:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

Do you have guests?

Abi Lemon:

I will have guests, yeah. Do you want to come and talk about ADHD?

Chris Do:

Because I was thinking like, how does an ADHD host have guests because they want to do all the talking?

Abi Lemon:

I think... I don't know yet because I haven't recorded any of them, but we'll find out, won't we? I'll find out when I interview some people.

Chris Do:

Yeah, I mean, you could probably do a brilliant podcast as a series of your thoughts on whatever, and it's just you. I enjoy those podcasts as well.

Abi Lemon:

Yeah. My initial thoughts around doing it were to do it on the meaning of happiness as well and finding happiness in your work, and as an ADHD, where you find that joy from because of my master's research that I'm doing into positive psychology. So that was another tangent that I was considering going off down with my podcast as well, is just doing a series of me basically talking about stuff like that.

Chris Do:

And how many episodes do you plan on doing?

Abi Lemon:

Unlimited? I don't know. I'd probably do a first season of, let's say, just unlimited me talking. Probably a first season of about maybe six episodes to start with and see how I get on with that.

Chris Do:

Okay. That's a reasonable goal and something that a neurodivergent brain could probably take on and do. Right?

Abi Lemon:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

Okay, beautiful. Well, it's a real pleasure talking to you, and it's been a long time since you and I have chatted. I enjoyed my time talking to you. Thanks for sharing a little bit about how you process the world and how what you do can help a lot of other people who are going through similar things and maybe have been misunderstood and misunderstood themselves.

The big takeaway for me, regardless if you're neurotypical, neurodivergent, is to treat yourself with little self-compassion. And I think there are so many people around us that are going to tell us there's something wrong with us, whether there is or not, and it's very hard to overcome those voices. So we have to begin with the healing process for ourselves, learn to love ourselves a little bit more, to be more compassionate, and try to understand who we are as a unique individual, not meant to fit into some kind of mold. And if you could do that, I think you can achieve everything that you want in your life. And with that, Abi Lemon, thank you very much for being our guest today.

Abi Lemon:

That's great. It's been absolutely wonderful to be here. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Abi Lemon, and you are listening to The Futur.

Stewart Schuster:

Thanks for joining us. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get a new insightful episode from us every week.

The Futur Podcast is hosted by Chris Do and produced by me, Stewart Schuster. Thank you to Anthony Barrow for editing and mixing this episode. And thank you to Adam Sanborne for our intro music.

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