Entrepreneurship and ADHD = SUPERPOWERS

uh 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 because the way that um ADHD brains work as well we have a lot of ideas ideas just keep coming we want to do something with it so we kind of create all these ideas and plans and that's why in the creative industry as well 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 go from the idea to the actual finished thing that's out in the world 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 um yes hey everybody I know when we have guests who talk about neurodiversion ideas people get really excited because they feel seen and heard and so when Abby reached out to me it's like Chris I have ADHD I talk to people about ADHD and creativity I was thinking this is a perfect opportunity so Abby welcome welcome to the show and please introduce yourself and tell us a little story about who you are what you do okay hi Chris um thanks for having me on um so um my name is Abby lemon I'm an ADHD coach for creatives um I was a creative myself for many years I worked in publishing magazine design and had had my own business as well um 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 with of ADHD the same signs as other neurodivergences as well so it really feels like um it really feels like it's something that is probably quite prolific across any kind of creative industry I think with with our kind of super powered brains so you mentioned that you were diagnosed uh let me ask you the question this question which is yeah 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 I guess I've always been um fairly hyperactive a little bit um I talk very fast I've had an awful lot of um experiences I guess that I always felt like I didn't fit in I was there was 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 and all of that stuff so that I always knew there was something or I thought there was something going on but I thought it was just me being not fitting in and kind of being weird or any of you know all of that stuff and so when I actually started a master's degree a couple of years ago and part of the Masters program was you can be talked to educational psychologists to see if there's anything like dyslexia or um and I thought 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 staff this um not fitting in this kind of inability to focus and finish things off and all of this and I thought you know what it sounds it really sounds like me so off I went for this educational psychology assessment for ADHD and lo and behold it was you know a pretty much high on the scale for everything um and it just felt like suddenly the jigs the final little jigsaw piece slipped into place for me because rather than feeling like someone who was just not humaning properly and not being able to kind of um 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 um and that's the reason isn't that I'm a terrible human it's there's something else going on so I have a bunch of questions for you uh how were you as a student throughout grade school and then through college 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 and I would talk too much I didn't pay attention and 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 but I came back to college then I left that again and did something else and so there was always this sense of I can't finish something I don't I felt like I was told I was not good enough I was lazy you know constantly my school reports were could dry harder could do better it's clever but doesn't apply herself so I kind of left education feeling um really like you know quite a low self-esteem I guess underneath the kind of that um supposedly outgoing nature was this this feeling that everyone just kept telling me I wasn't good enough and and I could do better even when I was trying really hard um so yeah it was 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 and all of that stuff what you're telling me is quite fascinating because I'm probably the opposite to you in the Spectrum um but the same kinds of comments and critiques that you got as a child I got two and like intelligent doesn't really apply himself um could do better that sounds just like a normal Asian parent talking right there you know 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 and so I wasn't really engaged and there were only a couple of classes or professors instructors who are really engaged in conversation with me where I'm like oh I I'd like to participate now but I have no problems with focus and attention actually I tell people I'm I'm a notorious single Tasker I can do one thing well and then I don't want to do an anything else and I'll stay there until I'm done and and for some people that might be as crazy as you bouncing from topic to topic and we both have been shared outcome which is some kind of esteem issues like am I lazy am I just bored in school you know I think if I'd gone to different school that were designed for people uh to to be more tailored towards the the kids in class versus teaching to the average I would have probably been a lot more engaged because I had no problem once I got into college yeah and I think with um especially well in the UK where I grew up especially amongst girls and females ADHD wasn't recognized because it shows up differently um than it does in boys you know it's and and you're that your superpower being able to focus on one thing until it's finished honestly that's that blows my absolute Minds because like literally cannot do that I need at least 17 different projects going on at once that are like spinning around up here and and I and I and that's yeah that's that's just how my brain works but sort of back to the girls thing I think and 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 you know excluded from school for being like you know not paying attention and all this stuff and so and as as someone who is quite intelligent and and also quite creative I've found ways of hiding how I actually felt underneath I think because it wasn't you know recognized as being anything other than me just not paying attention or not being lazy you've learned to sort of paddle furiously underneath the water you know like the kind of um the metaphorical Swan or whatever where everybody thinks oh you know they're doing okay even though we keep telling them they're not good enough you kind of keep paddling and paddling like 800 times harder just to stay afloat and I think many women now are coming out of this you know coming into perimenopause stage which which you know coming into a certain point my 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 um within kind of other women and um uh it's and stuff so 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 yeah um what just 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 finish what can help you to get more of the punishment I'm just curious oh okay um 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 and and for the Master's Degree what I did was just go absolutely crazy into positive psychology height the hyper Focus learning about it and the uh for many with ADHD so 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 and so I guess it is almost like a little bit of um I don't know a glutton for punishment but also you know 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 if I want to I might hate it and it might absolutely be like this is like the most lowest dopamine inducing thing ever but I can finish stuff so I think to to go back to it it's just like this this drive that I have with them and I know a lot of the adhds are the same too when you're interested in something you are so so interested yes you you're interested in loads of other stuff as well but the hyper Focus thing is is really real and I think riding that that kind of hyper Focus wave is um yeah I think maybe I'm just impulsive and I just think I'm gonna do that and then sign up for it and then worry about it later so maybe there's an element of that as well you you do remind me a little bit of my wife in some regards here so I'm like oh there might be a connection here but I I think there are parallels again so this is 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 the difference between a person like me and you is when I go deep I go deep for like three years years I didn't go deep for like three weeks or three months and it annoys people like how when are you gonna quit on this like why would I quit I wanna go to the very terminal point of which it is that I want to explore this passion or this interest and where I say you remind me of my wife she's hot and cold depending on what time of day it is and it's like oh I'm really into this and I'm like oh then yeah you're into this and so after a while I've just learned to just step back let it go through her pace and not like 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 just it's all over the place but I love how she explores things so deeply but it's it's like um that line from Blade Runner the candle that burns twice as bright Burns twice as fast yeah it's exhausting for us as well when women we are you know there's always a running kind of joke around adhds that we have this like graveyard in our loft of all the hobbies and interests that we've kind of loved for three or four months or six you know and then kind of put away for you know the future where we're never going to look at it ever again because something new will take its place it's also energizing and Brilliant but it is exhausting because our brains tend to be going at this kind of Ferrari Pace um with like a set of like cantilever bicycle brakes to sort of like try and regulate it and and keep it under control so yeah and I and I totally get that it's exhausting for other people around us and I think you do exactly the right thing because sometimes riding we just have to ride the waves of it we have to we have to do the hyper focus and then we have to move to the next thing and just you know that's that's how it is so there's not really a way of kind of 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 and ways um not all of it is kind of positive when when it comes to that you can get hyper focused on entirely the wrong things when you combine that with um you know low self-esteem that's going to come from all this not being you know feeling not good enough you end up you know you can really end up in some chaotic and catastrophic situations and and relationships and and all of that in in your life so it's um it's very much a double-edged sword when it comes to that like you're maybe like going to become addicted in substance abuse maybe is that what you're referring to yeah I did a talk recently um at an event for um ADHD and autism and there was a lady there who was talking because she is very much involved in the youth offenders and prison service in the UK so she supports young offenders she helps them when they get you know they get arrested for the first time and try to keep them out of prison again for the second time she 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 they're not diagnosed and because of this massive cocktail of hormones and everything that these young kids are coming from deprived areas you know they're really not it is just they can't regulate themselves they can't you know their impulsiveness is unregulated and they will just reoffend and reoffend because they just get into that cycle from that young age and one of her big campaigns is to try and kind of stop that by you know getting these people diagnosed so they can have some kind of treatment or help or medication around that just while they're going through this like time in their life so it can be you know it can be really really um chaotic and and and terrible and for for people going through you know with this with not being diagnosed and not recognizing that actually what they feel is just their crappy Behavior whatever is actually something that could be understood and managed a bit better so and so once you were diagnosed what did that do for you and your understanding of yourself uh did you enroll in programs did you take any kind of medication how do how do you move forward once you're diagnosed 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 and when when it came through I think I had a very short window of oh I'm really relieved it's that's great but then came the kind of um 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 you know not being good enough or not feeling good enough um 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 you know was in followed terrible relationships and things because I was just not I just didn't feel worthy of anything more and 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 a little bit more Nuance going on there and so it was like this big roller coaster of emotions that probably I would say lasted for six months I mean and out the other side of it I feel very much a lot more self-compassion for myself a lot more self-kindness I I mean I don't actually take any medication for it but I I know that if I wanted to explore that in the future it could I think medication would have helped me hugely when I was younger but I think I've I've learned so much so many coping strategies and so many ways of kind of managing myself and and this super high level of self-compassion now that actually I'm I'm kind of not medicating at the moment for it but um 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 turn to just not feel this sudden search yourself brilliant now what now I know um so it was yeah it was definitely a mix of emotions after that diagnosis so it sounds like the biggest takeaway is just understanding yourself better and putting the the pieces together like you're trying to solve a puzzle but you're missing one critical piece and you're never going to be able to solve it and so this awareness led to compassion and understanding and 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 yeah yeah it's huge and especially as a if you're running a business if you're someone who's a creative that's kind of you know there's so much stuff in all of that complexity so much emotional stuff with running that comes with being self-employed that comes with putting work out into the world and to one when you kind of have a bit more self-compassion and you can understand that there is a bit of a difference in how your brain is how your brain is kind of connected together and 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 I can't you know some days I really can't focus at all so it's how to how can I mitigate that as much as possible initiate that that negative bit and actually find a way that works for me and and that's that's then that's essentially what I help people do now with their own businesses which is hugely rewarding um and is yeah but it just it's come from I guess my own kind of turmoil and journey that's been kind of so up and down over the years okay so you had said at the top you're an ADHD coach for creatives is that did I remember that correctly all right so does that mean your ADHD or you're helping people with their ADHD when you say I'm an ADHD coach but both of those I'm ADHD and also but it's about helping people and can you guess um it's about helping people manage their ADHD so coping strategies you know for life for business for work um I do I'd also do a lot of work through some government organizations here in the UK that support neurodivergent people in the workplace and um and in their businesses as well so it's it's about finding ways of running you know the day-to-day bit of your business and not getting overwhelmed and not getting kind of you know really behind with deadlines not burning out because that's a real that hyper Focus burnout cycle for those of us with ADHD is a very real thing where we go all in for three months and then we you have to spend three months basically not doing anything because we've just literally burned every single bit of energy in our bodies and you know so it's about how you manage or teaching people and supporting people in in managing that that you know that whole kind of mixing pop that comes with it also yeah but if not 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 um although a lot of creatives have have all these brain superpowers and these 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 I'm really even though probably 50 of their staff are have you know some kind of ADHD or neurodivergence and brain they're so on neurodivergent friendly to work for so yeah so it's a there's an education piece going on and there's also a kind of um I guess um just yeah understanding and awareness piece as well so wow um I just have to be transparent and tell you how I'm processing all this because as a personal practices intentional listening 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 like more of that uh I don't know Toyota motor and you're running at the Ferrari speed and the Toyota's just burning out just trying to like the prices now this is good so it's exhausting for me I just tell you right now it is exhausting uh but it is it exhausting for you to speak at the speed or to think at the speed is this just normal gear no yeah see on Tokyo because I'm already two seconds in yeah it's um no this is how I speak this is how I've always taught yeah and I'm trying to be very conscious in slowing down how fast oh this is your slowest music well thank you for keeping it slow for people like me you know the thing is I've seen this happen before where you you uh sit in and you listen to a public speaker and they're able to tie together super complicated ideas and flow thing to think my former business partner was like like that Jose caballer uh I've seen Gary vaynerchuk speak and I was like oh God I just 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 and so you're going to be usually like 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 whether you're an employee or an entrepreneur it doesn't matter and so Jose used to say to me a lot and to everybody he goes my ADHD is too powerful he learned to like 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 given to a normal brain person or like a what do we call it it's not normal what is the word that we described the not ADHD brain you're right they say okay I like that the neurotypical brain looks at these tools like wow you just made something really really easy and 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 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 and here's how let's try and help some people today okay so the main thing is um there's well there's two things first thing is focus and focusing on tasks when the initial joy and kind of dopamine has worn off that is a real Challenge and for a lot of like my creative friends that I've spoken to and and um you know people I've worked with is once that initial you know party bit of the project is is done it is very difficult to finish things and I think the finishing things and the get and then to hit the deadlines because you're just in that like 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 um is a real challenge for people and that's one of the the things the reasons why um ADHD is get kind of not in trouble at work but they might not be performing as as good as they should be is because they're seen as being like you know we've done all this great work we just haven't emailed about that client or you haven't finished the project so that's a real a real a real kind of challenge um and to resolve that I mean there's always going to be a bit of this that you know a bit of that kind of procrastination on this last bit and that we're as ADHD as we're kind of programmed to seek out the dopamine inducing part of what we're doing um but there's ways you getting some accountability is absolutely key so if your employer or your you know or you at least or you have like somebody you're 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 almost um there's a there's a concept called body doubling which is basically where by you might jump on zoom we're both going to jump on Zoom at 3pm and you're gonna 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 that concept of having that body damage someone in the room can in the even if it's a virtual room can really help those final non-dipamine related tasks get done and that applies to live stuff as well you know get folding up your washing tidying a kitchen doing the washing up you know those are all really low dopamine tasks that as adhds will struggle with so um okay so body doubling and accountability so let me ask you this question so people have sometimes a challenge finishing task 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 of course you could do that of course but an ADHD it's determined as a um an executive function Disorder so it will executive dysfunction the executive function is goal orientated action so that is basically how you self-regulate self um 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 um in interesting or disregulated 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 but 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 it just seems to be in my experience and and that kind of of the clients I've worked with that actually when you've got somebody a real human there to kind of 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 the exact same functioning side is a real killer when it comes to things like being on time as well you know doing the things you said you do remembering to do the things that you have a Post-It note in front of you right there which I have some um to actually remember to do that it's that still that that executive function thing okay this brings up a couple different things I want to share with you like hearing this information and trying to map into things in my life and my timeline 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 and they're like oh 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 like every single day come on right and like can can you not just finish so let me let me take you back in time this is now 2014. uh 2000 yeah 2014 Jose and I are working together and 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 and so he likes to do things together and it was just annoy me he's like we're gonna do a stand-up meeting like what stand-up meeting uh I I I I just why are we having more meetings and so he just liked to do things together and we got into an argument and they said look let's just try a test because he he believed in all these like Silicon Valley things like agile scrum all these tools to help move software we weren't developing software so it just really confused me and he just looked at me like I'm a knuckle Dragon Cro-Magnon Neanderthal or whatever it is right 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 he 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 we'll measure against the Baseline of how much I can get done so she's like sure let's do it she'd gather the team he was like what's our Global business objective what are you gonna do so he's like assigning tasks and while doing it together and all my tasks I did in one day actually in hours yep 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 your feeling is right and I was like yeah okay we have a problem Jose we cannot run projects like this because nothing is done he's like well this was just a bad week I'm like ah 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 and so everything looks important and everyone's easily distracted and if they're following the lead of someone who's ADHD who's yet not he had figured this part out it's a clusterf okay quite literally said I could have done everybody's working one day and then you all can just go home like what's the point okay please respond yes I wanted your Insight uh any kind of uh jokes you want to throw at both of us it's all good well you've just described that is absolutely typical on a holiday for typical ADHD like Behavior getting everything together planning all out scheduling it in listing the tasks but not actually doing any of it exactly that exactly that I knew that two years it's been hours and I this is the challenge I have for some of my clients is they will be like I've done this amazing plan and I've done this and I'm gonna 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 um give them that a little bit of self-trust and you do have to you do have to say well actually as part of this let's get some of this done now when are you gonna do this if and if you're not gonna do it now let's get it on your actual calendar unless I'm gonna message you that day or I'm going to we can you know and so there is actually some action taken because the plan is great but the plan needs to move like you say with the needle has to move in some direction and some of those tasks need to get done and so yeah I recognize that hugely honestly that I've been there myself you've been up there before okay so is it is it correct for me to come to the conclusion that if you're a neurodivergent ADHD person you you actually get a lot of joy in the planning of just getting people together and managing that like you're a classic Planner yeah okay yeah so if that was your job you would be excellent at it if that was my job I would be excellent at it yeah and I've I have that was obviously part of my job that I used to do before and that bit I could do all day long but it's um not all jobs are just planning there is always action your card just sit there and make a plan for something because there's parts of that you will have to do and and that could even be sending emails to people or doing you know and those things won't get done if you haven't got the right kind of are gas tools and and ways of sort of realizing and that self-awareness so yeah well I'm all about yeah leaning into restraints 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 like turn this and drill this into deliverables and and to email everybody out and then to hold everyone accountable and then you can get paid to organize things and and I think that's a very necessary job within an organization now here's where my uh neurotypical brain was like rubbing against a 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 and you just trust that I'm the architect of all of this and you all get your work done in a day and 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's just like no you don't understand how things need to be done and you know what he even did something even crazier here's the crazier part art I'm like this isn't working he goes you know what we need to have um like a board of directors I'm like what you want to formalize having more meetings this is just driving me crazy what what why do we need it uh 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 because the way that um ADHD brains work as well we have a lot of ideas so the ideas flow but there's not necessarily the um the kind of um I guess it's like this impulsive impulsiveness where the ideas just keep coming we have to you know we want to do something with it so we kind of create all these ideas and plans and actually it's really difficult for us to see and and like 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 and so that's again it's just this kind of it's this unregulated flow of ideas and and planning and but without a kind of task or in goal-orientated kind of end to it and that's really typical of ADHD and we don't the thing is as ADHD is we don't always realize that that's what we're doing um because we're just we're just the you know they can be the ideas people and that's why in the creative industry as well we Thrive and in the majority and 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 you know take that board of winning why are we having this board of advisors when we have this other list of tasks that we haven't done so we don't have the executive function to actually go from the idea to the actual finished thing that's out in the world and there's just more ideas just take the place more kind of dopamine right the you know the board directors that's going to be exciting so let's let's get them and let's let's do that so it's this dopamine seeking as well okay unregulated dope means okay I'd like to explore the whole advertising as potentially a great fit for a ADHD brain in a little bit Yeah but I gotta 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 um yes about election to tell the truth or not the truth right now all right tell me the pause tell me everything that's happening inside your brain okay so yes I I do find it very difficult sometimes not to talk over people and it's something I'm working on very innate all the time and it's um it's it's an ongoing challenge because when things pop into your head this is the impulsivity it's an inability to be able to almost regulate your yourself and your kind of your what you're doing and things it's um so yeah I do find it really really hard to to not tell everybody all the things um in one sentence without breathing in one go and imagine when you get a bunch of adhds together it's just it's either amazing if you're another ADHD or not surrogating if you're somebody who's just saying kind of you know quietly in the corner well I've been that quiet person in the corner many a times they're like okay I don't even need to be here right now no one even cares what I have to say but if you were in a room with four uh ADHD brains and you're at the dinner table and no one wants to listen everyone wants to talk who's listening to anybody who's just joyful just to hear yourself speak I think it's I think there is a definitely a sense of joy in meeting people that you suddenly feel like you don't you know you don't you fit in with you know you've kind of if most of us if we're near a Divergent I've spent a good portion of Our Lives not feeling you know not feeling seen or not feeling like we can be ourselves because people are like you know I'm making a shut up or with goddess you know just you know so there's always that sense of not you know having to dampen yourself a little bit so I think there's a lot of joy in just expressing yourself in in a way that kind of feels natural and is there's no one judging you um but my experience of being at a dinner table with other ADHD is is we do listen we do you know and but we kind of 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 um you know the creative ideas flowing and everything else so yeah I think there's there's a bit of both there there's the joy but there I think there is listening but we don't need a lot of time to listen we just need split seconds [Laughter] oh okay I I will I will not uh challenge you on that like 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 I look at it when and I think now I'm starting to suspect maybe my wife is the ADHD and because I'll hear her talk for 20 minutes straight and then when she pauses and I like I think she's done I'll 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 and and 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 I didn't finish my thought howdy can I finish a thought because I'm really good at just sitting there listening and being quiet for as long as necessary because it's important for me just as uh 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 is possible and so when I'm in a room full of ADHD people like they don't really care what I have to say because I can't even get a word in and so this is fascinating to me so you're like yeah 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 just really like you're hearing yourself and you're feeling accepted and you don't have to feel judged or uh you have to dampen yourself um I 100 believe that we are as ADHD is that super quick brain of ours is has an an insane ability to be able to kind of understand other people very quite quickly we can we can we can always use that superpower to I don't know get kind of understand who they are very fast without actually having to sit and listen to along a lot it's more about the body language we just pick up on all those things honestly you can learn about people without even telling you what they would think that's that's what you're saying you're like psychic they're not quite not quite not quite clearly because I just think with yeah we're very fast at being able to pick up on lots of cues from people and and things like that I think 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 a an event in Portland this is many years ago and we just finished speaking Jose myself 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 like talking and then they would ask me something and I was just barely able to express it and then they're doing their thing again right and I was starting to get annoyed and I'm starting to feel really disconnected and if they were super like hyper intelligent ADHD brain they would have noticed this and they would have 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 um guys I enjoy this conversation but I don't feel like I'm contributing anything here and I'm exhausted and I'd like to speak but if you 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 Abby which is you say you could read me but I don't know if you can especially in that example what do you think and I I think in that it's that's quite that's a really astute observation actually for it and I think we do get this dysregulation this inability to kind of sort of be stop being impulsive and all of that is is very real especially when there's somebody else there that is on your kind of frequency um and sometimes it does it and the thing is with ADHD if somebody turns around and says hang on a minute you're not including you know I don't feel included I don't feel in it and there's something called rejection sensitive dysphoria that a lot of people with neurodivergence and ADHD have um rejection sensitive dysphoria is basically this hugely um feeling emotions that are very very high in acute level um so it's the same as like body dysmorphia or something you have this um weird like sense of everything and you know somebody doesn't like you they absolutely hate you or you know you've done something hugely wrong and and actually for someone to turn around and say I guarantee that those two people who you said probably felt absolutely terrible inside they're like because they just wouldn't have realized I'm going to put my hand up and say I expect they were probably absolutely mortified to Rich and not 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 kind of alienate people or push them away so it's um yeah they probably went home that night going I talked too much I talk too fast but they're 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 need to switch into a different gear uh because I think they saw each other and they were just so happy to just talk at lightning speeds like I I still question because they say like when you're talking you're not learning well we hold silence or space for other people then we could 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 I get that part now let's 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 have to do this second I want to I want to have a couple 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 uh within agencies or at higher levels so if you can get to the higher levels you can do really well because you'll come up with ideas and your team will then do it uh people who are really good at single tasking things so how how have you seen people excel in essentially advertising agencies and that creative director role the first tip that I can give you to be really to really find that neurodivergent mine is to look after yourself physically a lot of the creative industry I work long hours and they they drink you know they take their clients out and there's in my experience there's a lot of kind of this um there's there's a lot of you know maybe it's a bit too busy for lunch and all this kind of stuff the best thing and the biggest thing you can do is an ADHD to maintain and and make you know keep your brain working is to look after yourself physically drink loads of water eat make sure you eat lunch every day or or you know you have something that you eat stay off as you know try and lay off the shed or if possible because sugar is again something that will exacerbate your dopamine and it's it means you'll start looking for more of it um you know try and try and stay fit get outside move your board moving your body is the other thing you can do which is you know absolutely I think in my mind crucial to maintaining a really productive and powerful and regulated ADHD brain so don't that is really the the the kind of Crux of really regular and keep staying as regulated as possible and staying as aware of your surroundings as possible the second thing I would think um is really going to be I think practicing some kind of um whether that's a pause before you speak taking you know there's that self-awareness thing so taking a breath before you speak um understanding yourself and really kind of um taking the time to do that's whether you just educate yourself on ADHD if you're 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're aware enough to you know before you go into a meeting maybe take a breath maybe you go and walk around the block maybe you um have developed your self-awareness to the point where you understand that you do need to breathe sometimes and and you know sort of let take in more of those physical and sort of emotional cues from other people as well and the last one I would say really developing is a way of keeping track of what you're doing day to day which isn't necessarily like a productivity schedule but it's a way of not necessarily a to-do list either it's how you 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 to or somebody you know that to kind of check in with you and just just make sure that you're not letting things slide and you're actually keeping on top and stuff so and not everything there's no like magic ADHD app that's gonna transform your life and suddenly make everything really productive and really kind of work really smoothly so it's about trying different things so and and seeing whether they work for you you know to do Lister grade but that's not you know having Post-it notes like you say can work sometimes for some things putting them up on a whiteboard in front of you and you know Finding ways of not letting things disappear because I think with ADHD if there's a task and you or there's something that isn't in your 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 know you haven't looked at it for a week or anything else that that task essentially doesn't exist so it's really trialing and finding ways that work for you that so that you don't let that happen because that's when overwhelm can kick in and everything else great so let me just quickly recap number one is you gotta take care of your health and and this is kind of interesting because the 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 tell people how you keep in shape but back in the day you were doing certain things and you're very fit super fit right 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 what feels like half a second to me in your hyper fast brain like you're the flash you know yo you just sort it through the ideas that do 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 like 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 did the exact same thing for different reasons but do the exact same things number one uh watch what you eat uh 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 right and you'll look better and you'll feel better um number two I would 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 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 goal post 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 and 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 experience that 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 and so I have to constantly remind them like is this an alignment with your first goal because until you're super successful there do you want to change and you know just asking that question will make them stop pause so you know you're right I do want that thing that is important to me and 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 neural Divergent uh people with ADHD they develop very strong systems to regulate their brain and to help them prioritize Jose shared an article with me he's like 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 in the in the the writer of the article describe 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 you share that article with me I'm like dude I totally understand you and it explains a lot of our relationship right now right 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 uh when he's not on medicine um that he can focus he literally did this he would wear headphones is that that would put him into I guess sensory deprivation State and the headphones would play like really fast metal and very loud like I can hear just walking by because he doesn't want to hear anything else but this music which puts him into like a focus zone and 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 he literally I thought it was for show but he needed this yes and 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 it and it would just mug 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 okay and he developed core as a way to regulate his own brain so he'd always start with his everything we want to do then we have to prioritize prioritize prioritize until here's the thing we must do today and he would have that in writing in front of him the alarm is set and that's how he kept the focus and in that way when he did all those things he actually got stuff done it was in extremely impressive at that point what are your thoughts yeah and I I think if that that works for him and I think that it might work for other people as well and I think but then some some Aviation some neurodivergence are very highly sensitive to noise so actually I'm ones that will actually put my headphones on with no sounds and that but it's still providing that sensory deprivation but if there's noise that's gonna I need the silence and lots of other people they're saying so it's finding you know do you work best with noise with dance music with meth you know with nothing how do you make that work but I'd love the idea of putting the blinkers on um you know and some people don't like to have the alarms but they like to work in slightly longer blocks it is at such a trial and error process of finding stuff that works for you but as Jose is found when you find that key you know that magic formula that works for you super productive and get like eight you know a week's work done in one day it's it's it's amazing but that's that there are lots of different tips and tricks to use and lots of ways of doing it and once you find your magic magic magic way or magic formula for you then yeah absolutely brilliant and I found that uh this is not a like 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 and now you're like reciting from it as if you wrote the book Incredible like you're dropping terms I have to jot them all down because there are 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 your higher hyper intelligent here for my little brain I've got to write down words like 10 times and look at them before I 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 so if you're like an academic case or anything like that just like my wife by the way I can remember the word she could never find her phone it's like the daily mystery like four times in the days like because let me see my phone and every my voice we all roll our eyes like we don't know Mom it's like where did you put it last we just have no idea 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 so my phone beeps and I know where it is in the house because and I don't use it for anything else but it's magic for that maybe you can get a lanyard attached to your phone and that way it's like attached to your body yeah hopefully just tie it onto me 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 uh 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 and when I was interviewing him his brain was going just like a gazillion hours a second and 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 could you tell and he just kept talking it didn't even he didn't even stop and this was fantastic it goes Chris I'll try to go slower he didn't but it was fine because you know 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 like rapid fire 30 seconds to this two minutes do that one minute do this they're like oh I 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 and teaching other people these skills yeah and 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 I love the kind of you don't really know what's coming and you don't really know so you can just kind of um yeah really kind of roll with it and and keep things fast moving so yeah I will I will have to look up his episode because that sounds awesome yes I think it just dropped this week and it's just worth every second that you can listen to it and I'm sure you're going to hear it you're like oh I see you I see you brother I I totally get what you're going through my friend yeah you're probably thinking oh poor Chris you have some sympathy ADHD series of guests I think so maybe like I said I somehow attract all these people to me so I I've not learned to to work with them you know I'm married to one I believe and we won't know for sure but I suspect uh anyways Abby is there anything else that you're doing that you want to tell people about um no and well at the moment I'm going to be launching my own podcast in a couple of weeks um I'm which is going to be really good I've done one episode and I'm gonna do a couple more I've just it's done the ADHD thing I've I've not um not doing like more than one in one go um but yeah if people want to reach out to me if you want to know more about ADHD or how um you know how you can sort of learn to manage it a little bit and you can come and look at my website and or check me out on Instagram and with the name like Abby lemon you just have to type it in and you'll find it I'm curious with your podcast that you're launching yeah and do you have guests I will have guests yeah or will you just want to come and talk about ADHD because I was thinking like how does an ADHD host have guests because they want to do all the talking um I think but I don't know yet because I haven't recorded any of them but we'll find out why we run we uh well God find out when I interview some people yeah I mean you could probably do a brilliant podcast as a series of hero thoughts on whatever and it's just you and I enjoy those podcasts as well my initial thoughts around doing it were to do it on kind of the meaning of Happiness as well and finding happiness in your work and as an ADHD where you find that Joy from um because of my Master's research that I'm doing into positive psychology so it kind of um that's that was another that was another tangent that I was considering going off down with my with my podcast as well as just doing a series of me basically talking about stuff like that so and how many episodes do you plan on doing um unlimited I don't know I'll probably do a first season of let's say yeah just not only written me talking um probably a first season of about maybe six episodes to start with and see how see how I get on with that so okay that's a reasonable goal and something that uh neurodivergent brain could probably take on and do right yeah okay beautiful well it's a real pleasure talking to you and it's been a long time since you and I have chatted and I just I enjoyed my time talking to you and 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 misunderstand themselves the one thing that the big takeaway for me regardless if you're neurotypical neurodivergent is to to treat yourself with little self-compassion and and I think there are so many people around us that are going to tell us there's something wrong with this whether there is or not and it's very hard to overcome those voices and 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 Abby lemon thank you very much for being our guest today it's been absolutely wonderful to be here thank you foreign foreign