Story
Just In Time AI
What Is ADHD? How the ADHD Brain Works, and How I Developed It Into a Superpower
Challenge: Are You Treating Your ADHD Brain as a Disorder When It Could Be Your Edge?
If your brain runs at full speed all day and you have spent years apologizing for it, you are carrying a cost that is bigger than it feels. Working adults who meet ADHD criteria lose about 22 more days of work performance a year than coworkers without it (de Graaf et al., 2008, Occupational and Environmental Medicine, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18505771/). That gap is not fixed. We can close most of it, not by sanding the edges off the wiring, but by building a short set of rules around how attention, memory, and energy actually work for us.
I have run this way for decades, as an engineer, a public speaker, and a leader, and I treat ADHD as a superpower rather than only a disorder. The rest of this piece hands you the lessons I built to get there, and the research that explains why they work. For how I built systems around ADHD attention specifically, see What systems actually work for how ADHD attention operates?.
Want help turning your own attention, memory, and energy into a system you actually run every day, instead of one more thing you meant to start? JitDash is opening for pre-signup now: https://jitai.co/jitdash
What: How Do I Turn ADHD Energy, Memory, and Attention Into a Practice I Can Run Every Day?
One note before the definitions: calling ADHD a superpower is my own framing, not a claim from the researchers cited below. The same is true for calling it an advantage for everyone, once they learn how to use it.
A few working terms, defined once:
- ADHD: a neurodevelopmental condition marked by inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity that begins in childhood and often continues into adulthood (NIMH, 2026).
- Hyperfocus: long, intense absorption in one task, to the exclusion of nearly everything else around you.
- Energy, confidence, memory, activity: the four things I consider fundamental to living with ADHD. Energy and confidence both run high and low. Memory, for me, runs almost always low as I have gotten older, but when I was younger it was high (never perfect). Activity runs almost always high.
Start with attention, the first letter in ADHD. It is a massive superpower and a massive weakness at the same time: the power to not hear, see, or notice anyone or anything around you. My wife or my son can walk up and talk to me, and I never even know they are there. I am not ignoring them. I am hyperfocused on what I am doing right now, and that hyperfocus produces real thinking: the kind of focus that solves hard problems.
That attention is a two-sided coin. It buys incredible focus, and it costs you and everyone around you until you build a rule for it. Our rule: if someone needs me to hear them, they must get my attention first, even something as small as asking for the remote control, what is for dinner, did you get to that task last week, or are you available.
I train the people around me, since otherwise they read my hyperfocus as disrespect. I play back what I heard, out loud, which I call active listening, and I write down the message as it is given, just enough for a reminder, which will be a different level of detail based on how you remember. Everyone benefits from building the habit of getting someone's attention before you talk; it is a foundation of good communication, and if the recipient has any form of ADHD or similar brain function, it is an absolute requirement.
When communicating with everyone, get their attention first if you want to be heard, especially if you know they have ADHD. Have you ever said something to a waiter or waitress as they walked by, and you know they heard you but did not do what you asked? Maybe they did not actually hear you!
🎓 Lesson
- ADHD: Train the people around you and play back what you heard.
- Others: It is a foundation of good communication and if the recipient has any form of ADHD or similar brain function it is an absolute requirement.
Hyperfocus is fleeting. The instant it breaks, the work can be gone. I could be 20 minutes or even two hours into a problem, just get the answer, and have an interruption hit at the wrong moment before I could write it down, and it is gone. So the next rule is: write it down now, and often. Have a system for capturing notes as you go, so you can pick the thread back up. I type fast, over 70 words a minute, which is still a tiny fraction of what my brain produces, but every bit helps.
I used a voice recorder for decades; now I use an app on my phone. That app, JitDash, will be released soon and will have a free option, so you can use it too. It can even transcribe a meeting, so it takes notes for you while your phone listens in on the conversation.
In my world I use alarms to artificially exit from hyperfocus so I do not miss key events like deadlines, other tasks, etc. My JitDash app allows me to set alarms and reminders so I do not miss important tasks, I can timebox tasks, set notifications when a timebox is about to expire and keep myself on track. These alarms allow me to work through time blocks and keep me from staying in hyperfocus for too long. You can do the same with phone alarms and stopwatches.
I write down progress and any cue to myself, so an interruption does not erase the work, and I accept the annoyance of being interrupted at the wrong time; it is not the other person's fault that I just lost two hours of thinking. Everyone around someone with ADHD benefits from respecting deep focus. It is painful to have hyperfocus broken, so slide a note where the person will find it later instead of breaking in; if it is urgent, get their attention directly, because a note might sit unseen for hours or days. If you have a really hard problem to solve, bring in the person with ADHD to help, especially when it needs out-of-the-box thinking. See How Do I Remember Tasks With ADHD? for the full capture method.
🎓 Lesson
- ADHD: Recognize that some are impatient and you must accept them for who they are. It does nobody any good to harp on the threads that pull us apart.
- Others: Relationships especially between those with ADHD and those that are impatient are especially challenging. You must learn to accept the deficiency and embrace the super power side of ADHD. If you can do this, everyone wins, if you cannot everyone loses.
Research: How Does the ADHD Brain Actually Work, and What Is RSD?
I will apologize in advance for getting into the weeds on this section. It is important information that grounds you in reality. Stick with me, because this is a reason the rest of your journey with learning ADHD matters.
ADHD runs in families. Twin, family, and adoption studies put its heritability at about 74 percent, and no single gene causes it (Faraone and Larsson, 2019, Molecular Psychiatry). A 2021 consensus statement signed by 80 researchers states plainly that ADHD cannot be diagnosed from brain scans, rating scales, or neuropsychological tests alone (Faraone et al., 2021, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews). Imaging of over 3,200 people found several brain regions very slightly smaller on average in ADHD, an effect that was largest in children and not significant in adults (Hoogman et al., 2017, Lancet Psychiatry).
Across 83 studies, groups with ADHD scored worse on executive-function tasks: stopping a response, staying vigilant, holding things in working memory, and planning, with medium-sized effects (Willcutt et al., 2005, Biological Psychiatry). The same authors are clear that this weakness is neither necessary nor sufficient to explain every case; not everyone with ADHD shows it the same way.
Dopamine is one leading explanation, and it is unsettled. Dopamine is a chemical messenger the brain uses to send signals between nerve cells, involved in reward, motivation, movement, and attention (Cleveland Clinic). PET scans of unmedicated adults with ADHD found lower availability of dopamine transporters and receptors in the brain's reward pathway, and lower availability tracked with higher inattention ratings (Volkow et al., 2009, JAMA). A later meta-analysis found the dopamine transporter measured 14 percent higher on average in ADHD, but results varied widely by whether people had taken medication before, which is why "ADHD means low dopamine" cannot be stated as settled fact (Fusar-Poli et al., 2012, American Journal of Psychiatry). People with ADHD also discount delayed rewards more steeply than other people, preferring smaller, sooner payoffs over larger, later ones, a moderate-to-strong effect across 21 studies (Jackson and MacKillop, 2016, Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging). One proposal ties this and the mind's tendency to drift to a brain network that is active at rest intruding on periods of focused work (Sonuga-Barke and Castellanos, 2007, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews). Praise and a good reputation light up the same reward region of the brain as money does (Izuma, Saito and Sadato, 2008, Neuron).
🎉 Tip: Feed that reward system on purpose: look for every chance to give and receive genuine praise, and you can start with one sincere compliment today.
RSD, or rejection-sensitive dysphoria, names an intense reaction to the mere perception of rejection or criticism. The term traces to a 2006 clinical article by psychiatrist William Dodson, who wrote that many adults with ADHD "have what has been termed rejection-sensitive dysphoria" (Dodson, 2006, Psychiatric Times). The Attention Deficit Disorder Association is direct that RSD "isn't a formal diagnosis" and has limited research behind it (ADDA, undated). The DSM-5 lists emotional dysregulation as a feature that supports an ADHD diagnosis, not a required symptom of it (Kooij et al., 2019, European Psychiatry). A meta-analysis of 1,926 adults found those with ADHD scored much higher than others on emotion dysregulation, though results varied a great deal between studies (Beheshti et al., 2020, BMC Psychiatry).
🎉 Tip: Once you spot a rejection that stings more than it should, go looking for the people and situations that fill you back up, the way the user group below did for me. That search is worth running today.
RSD is one real cost of ADHD, and it is not the only one. Adults with ADHD carry roughly five times the odds of an anxiety disorder and four and a half times the odds of major depression, in a pooled analysis of over half a million adults (Hartman et al., 2023, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews). In Danish health registers covering nearly two million people, those with ADHD had about twice the death rate, driven mostly by accidents (Dalsgaard et al., 2015, Lancet). Cognitive behavioral therapy has helped with the emotional symptoms that come with ADHD, including depression and anxiety, across 44 randomized trials (Guo et al., 2022, Journal of Attention Disorders). None of this is a reason to stop reading. It is the reason the next section matters.
Why: What Does Treating ADHD as a Strength Actually Change for You?
Now Let's Get Real: Understanding ADHD and RSD in the Real World, With Real Impact. What Does This Scientific Jargon Mean?
Before I understood any of this, I believed either I was stupid or everyone around me was stupid. It was easier to believe the first one. That belief is a great entry point into RSD: recognizing it, and recognizing how it shapes the people around you, is the key to getting it out of your way.
What fourteen years at Microsoft taught me about inadequacy
I worked at Microsoft for 14 years as a senior engineer, product leader, public speaker, educator, and team member. I have consulted for dozens of Fortune 500 companies and helped dozens of startups get off the ground. I have taught at schools including Harvard, MIT, and Yale, and I have taught millions of people from stage, from my blog, videos, newsletters, classroom, published books, and good old fashioned one on one. Even with all of that, the feeling of inadequacy still surfaces, regularly and often.
Inadequacy is not you. It is your brain lying to you. What others say or do, and what happens to you, is not caused by you; it is the world around you meeting the way your brain is wired. Figure out what makes that feeling fall away, and relentlessly seek more of it. As Dale Carnegie puts it in How to Win Friends and Influence People, "be lavish with praise" and "never criticise, condemn or complain." Praise lands in the same reward system of the brain as money does, according to the 2008 Izuma study, which is why it matters so much, and why I recommend giving it, and seeking it, on purpose. If you do not have something good to say, do not say anything at all.
🎓 Lesson
- ADHD: Figure out what makes you happy and endlessly and tirelessly seek to be in those situations and around people that understand you.
- Others: Be lavish with praise, and never criticize, condemn, or complain.
Clipper, a BBS, and the first user group I ever started
In 1992 I was a developer, writing in Clipper, a DBASE-based database language. A fellow Clipper developer asked me questions, and I generally had the answers. Back then there was no internet and no user groups. There were BBS systems, digital bulletin boards, so I built one around Clipper, where I could take other people's questions and ask my own. Later I started a guys' night out that became the first user group I ever ran. Through user groups, others' great results taught me I was great at teaching, and that my inner belief in my own inadequacy was simply false. I have since started and run many dozens of groups, and this series is likely the beginning of my next one. These same experiences taught me how to start and run successful businesses, through helping, praising and guiding others, so it literally changed my life.
In a survey of nearly 10,000 people, a clinical ADHD diagnosis went with both the intention and the action of starting a business (Lerner, Verheul and Thurik, 2019, Small Business Economics).
Find what gives you strength, and seek it relentlessly. For the people around someone with ADHD: if you do not have something positive to say, say nothing. People with ADHD have a ton of energy to give back, but take energy from them and everyone in their world pays the price.
🎓 Lesson
- ADHD: Find what gives you strength, and seek it relentlessly.
- Others: If you do not have something positive to say, say nothing, since taking energy from someone with ADHD costs everyone around them.
What one problem at Microsoft showed me about my own wiring
When I joined Microsoft as an Evangelist in the Windows Vista pre-launch era, I was the voice and face of Microsoft across the Northeast, from New York to Maine. Microsoft already had an event eval, so they had a clue, but they could not figure out how to make it actionable. In my first few months I built detailed evaluations covering what attendees liked best and what they wanted to learn more about. I added how this technology would impact them and how long it would take them to use it in their business. I also covered how long before they would likely roll it out, what they would need, and how Microsoft could help them with onboarding. With each show that I used this, I got a ton of data. I created a handout for shows with links to download our products, and these links had tracking codes so we would know how much people actually downloaded as a result of the event. I also built hands-on labs around automated deployment toolkits. This one challenge, how we turn the millions of dollars Microsoft spends on a single event into data we can use to improve the business, I solved in a matter of weeks. Over my first couple of years, Microsoft adopted many of my suggestions worldwide, helping save or make many millions of dollars.
Research on ADHD traits links to more original ideas on creativity tasks, though the effect shows up more clearly at the trait level than in clinically diagnosed groups (Hoogman et al., 2020, Neuroscience and Behavioral Reviews, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33035524/). I attribute this success to my ADHD superpower of long, intense hyperfocus. I can see solutions when others only see problems. I can also often see opportunities when others do not even see the challenges. I believe this is my ADHD superpower at work.
🎓 Lesson
- ADHD: Long, intense hyperfocus can let you see solutions and opportunities that others miss entirely.
🎉 Tip: The same hyperfocus that solved a years-old problem for me is already in you; point it at the stuck problem nobody else has cracked.
Calling it what it is
The last letter in ADHD stands for Disorder. I understand and agree with the clinical reasoning behind that word. Choose to focus on the positive side effects instead, and feed them, even though the negative effects cannot be removed. That positive side is the superpower ADHD provides as a side effect. Naming it that way is the first step in using it.
🎓 Lesson
- ADHD: Focus on and feed the positive side effects of ADHD, since the negative ones cannot be fully removed.
ADHD is not something a blog series teaches to the level of mastery. What you can do is practice the principles here, encourage the people around you to focus on their own superpower, and leverage the strengths you are now aware of, even knowing that awareness is small next to what you will likely never fully grasp. If you can do that, everyone wins. If you cannot, everyone loses.
My own drive to help others traces back to my mother, an incredible leader who was endlessly compassionate and caring. I learned to give that energy away because she gave it to me, my whole life.
Bottom Line: What Should You Do Tomorrow to Treat Your ADHD as a SuperPower?
Start at the point the cost actually gets created: the moment attention breaks, before the idea is lost and before the interruption is read as disrespect. Adopt these rules tomorrow:
- Require people to get your attention before they talk to you, and say so out loud to the people closest to you.
- Play back what you just heard, and write it down as it is being said.
- Keep a fast capture system open at all times, whether that is a keyboard or a voice app, so a lost thread is a rare event, not a routine one.
- Name your own version of energy, confidence, memory, and activity, and notice which one is running high or low today.
- When inadequacy surfaces, treat it as your brain's wiring talking, not a verdict on you, and go find the people and situations where that feeling drops away.
You will know it is working when fewer ideas vanish mid-thought, when the people around you stop reading your focus as rudeness, and when setbacks cost you minutes instead of days. Skip this, and the cost repeats every year: the same lost work performance, the same strained relationships, the same inadequacy resurfacing on a loop, because nothing was built to catch it earlier. You can start building your confident and superpower brain now! You got this!!!!
Frequently Asked Questions
Disorder or superpower
Is ADHD a disorder or a superpower?
ADHD is clinically a disorder, and calling it a superpower is a separate choice you get to make for yourself. The diagnosis itself is well supported, so choose to focus on and feed the positive side effects instead of only the negative ones, since the negative effects cannot be fully removed but the positive ones can be built on.
🎉 Tip: Naming your own strengths is a choice you get to make today, not a verdict handed down from a chart. You can start choosing that frame right now.
Pick one strength you already know you have, and name it out loud today. Read more: https://danstolts.com/blog/adhd-as-a-superpower/#challenge-are-you-treating-your-adhd-brain-as-a-disorder-when-it-could-be-your-edge
Why do people say ADHD is a gift?
People call ADHD a gift because living with it comes with real strengths, like hyperfocus and a drive to find and chase what energizes you, alongside its real costs. The negative effects of ADHD cannot be fully removed, so choosing to focus on and feed the positive side effects is what turns the diagnosis into that framing.
🎉 Tip: List one strength of your own on paper this week, the way hyperfocus and chasing what energizes you show up in this article. Writing it down makes it real.
Name your own strengths rather than waiting for someone to hand you the label. Read more: https://danstolts.com/blog/adhd-as-a-superpower/#calling-it-what-it-is
The brain and dopamine
What happens in the brain of an ADHD person?
Researchers link ADHD to small average differences in several brain regions, weaker executive-function performance such as stopping a response and holding things in working memory, and altered dopamine signaling in the brain's reward pathway. None of these differences show up on a scan as a diagnosis, since a clinician still has to assess symptoms directly, and some adults with ADHD show lower availability of dopamine receptors tied to this reward pathway.
🎉 Tip: The Clipper story in this post shows what feeding yourself positivity on purpose can look like in practice. You can find your own version of that this week.
Treat any single finding as one piece of a larger, still-unsettled picture. Read more: https://danstolts.com/blog/adhd-as-a-superpower/#research-how-does-the-adhd-brain-actually-work-and-what-is-rsd
Why do ADHD brains work differently?
ADHD brains work differently because the condition is highly heritable, running in families through genetics that researchers have not reduced to one single gene. That inherited wiring shows up as consistent, measurable differences in attention, impulse control, and reward processing, not as a single faulty part, and as a new Microsoft evangelist, that same wiring let me solve, in a matter of weeks, an event-measurement problem the company had carried for years.
🎉 Tip: Your own brain's wiring is already built for this; build your systems around what you actually notice in yourself, not a generic checklist. That noticing can start with your very next distraction.
Build your own systems around the differences you notice in yourself, rather than a generic list of symptoms. Read more: https://danstolts.com/blog/adhd-as-a-superpower/#why-what-does-treating-adhd-as-a-strength-actually-change-for-you
How do people with ADHD get dopamine?
Dopamine signaling in the brain's reward pathway is lower in some adults with ADHD, and lower availability has tracked with higher inattention in at least one study. The size and consistency of that effect is still disputed in the research, and the guys' night out that became my first user group is a positive example: the great results others got from it taught me I was great at teaching.
🎉 Tip: The guys' night out that became my first user group started as nothing more than curiosity. Follow your own curiosity this week and see where it leads.
Treat "this task gives me a dopamine hit" as a personal observation to use, not a settled mechanism to rely on. Read more: https://danstolts.com/blog/adhd-as-a-superpower/#clipper-a-bbs-and-the-first-user-group-i-ever-started
Hyperfocus
What does ADHD hyperfocus feel like?
Hyperfocus feels like being completely absent from everything except the one task in front of you, to the point that people nearby can go unnoticed. It produces real, deep thinking while it lasts, and it is fleeting: the moment it breaks, the thread can be lost for good.
🎉 Tip: A fast note-taking habit, even a phone app like the one I use, can turn a fleeting hyperfocus session into something you keep. Start today with whatever is already in your pocket.
Build a fast note-taking habit before you need it, so a broken hyperfocus session costs you minutes instead of hours. Read more: https://danstolts.com/blog/adhd-as-a-superpower/#what-how-do-i-turn-adhd-energy-memory-and-attention-into-a-practice-i-can-run-every-day
How do I activate my ADHD hyperfocus?
In my experience, you activate ADHD hyperfocus with a hard problem nobody else has solved, not simply an interesting task. My hyperfocus activates when a problem like that pulls me in, the way the Microsoft event-measurement problem did when I was a new evangelist. Protecting the window once I am in it, by telling the people around me not to interrupt, is what lets that pull turn into real work.
🎓 Lesson
- ADHD: A hard, unsolved problem can pull your hyperfocus in; protect the window once you are in it.
Tell the people around you that you need to not be interrupted once you find that problem. Read more: https://danstolts.com/blog/adhd-as-a-superpower/#what-one-problem-at-microsoft-showed-me-about-my-own-wiring
How do I get out of hyperfocus with ADHD?
To get out of hyperfocus with ADHD, set an alarm for deadlines; use your phone or simple apps like JitDash. Someone needs to get your attention directly, because a quiet approach will likely go unnoticed entirely. Ask the people around you to get your attention first, whether that is a tap, a word, or stepping into view, rather than assuming you will notice them.
🎉 Tip: Ask the people closest to you to tap your shoulder or step into view instead of calling from across the room. That one small ask up front pays off every time.
If the matter is not urgent, leave a note where you will find it later instead of trying to break in. Read more: https://danstolts.com/blog/adhd-capture-memory-before-it-is-lost-how-to/
Turning ADHD into a strength
How can I turn my ADHD into a superpower?
Turning ADHD into a superpower starts with a short set of personal rules around attention, memory, and energy, instead of trying to will the symptoms away. Requiring people to get your attention before talking and writing down progress constantly are the two rules that make the rest of this possible.
🎉 Tip: Running these rules daily, not just reading them once, is what turns them into a practice. You can pick just one rule and start it today.
Chase the specific things that make inadequacy drop away for you, and treat the rules as a practice you run every day. Read more: https://danstolts.com/blog/adhd-as-a-superpower/#now-let-s-get-real-understanding-adhd-and-rsd-in-the-real-world-with-real-impact-what-does-this-scientific-jargon-mean
What are some good habits for adults with ADHD?
Good habits for adults with ADHD start with requiring others to get your attention before they speak to you, said directly so it becomes a shared habit. Keeping a fast capture system open at all times, so a lost thought is rare, is the second habit worth building. Both work because they stop depending on attention and memory at the exact moment those run low.
🎓 Lesson
- ADHD: Build the get-my-attention-first habit and the always-on capture habit, and run both every day.
Play back what you hear out loud, and write it down as it is being said. Read more: https://danstolts.com/blog/adhd-as-an-operating-advantage/
What are some compensatory strategies for ADHD?
Compensatory strategies for ADHD include active listening, where you play back what you just heard, which catches the gap between hearing something and losing it. An always-on capture system, a get-my-attention-first rule, and writing down a progress cue the moment focus breaks are three more, each one keeping an interrupted thread from disappearing for good.
🎉 Tip: Pick just one of these strategies to start with today, the way I started with simply writing down a cue the moment focus broke. One habit built well beats five started halfway.
Treat all of these as standing habits you run constantly, not tools you reach for only when something feels at risk. Read more: https://danstolts.com/blog/adhd-as-a-superpower/#bottom-line-what-should-you-do-tomorrow-to-treat-your-adhd-as-a-superpower
How can someone with ADHD manage boredom at work?
Managing boredom at work starts with seeking out the parts of the work that are genuinely interesting to you, since ADHD attention and performance respond strongly to how engaging a task feels. Noticing which tasks reliably pull your focus, and steering toward more of those over time, is the pattern worth building.
🎉 Tip: The Microsoft evaluation problem I solved in weeks started as exactly this kind of unsolved, overlooked problem. Go looking for your own version of it this week.
Look for problems that others have not been able to solve, work through the issues, understand them, and find a solution, since engaging your abilities this way can lead to amazing outcomes. Read more: https://danstolts.com/blog/adhd-as-a-superpower/#what-fourteen-years-at-microsoft-taught-me-about-inadequacy
Confidence and emotion
Can inattentive ADHD contribute to low self-esteem?
Yes, inattentive ADHD can contribute to low self-esteem, in the sense that living with it before you understand your own wiring can leave you believing you are simply inadequate. Recognizing that this feeling is your brain's wiring, not a fact about your worth, is the first step out of it.
🎉 Tip: Being lavish with praise, toward yourself and the people around you, is a habit you can start in your very next conversation. It costs nothing and it adds up fast.
Surround yourself, as much as you can, with people who are lavish with praise and slow to criticize. Read more: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18439412/
Do people with ADHD have extreme mood swings?
Often, yes: research finds adults with ADHD score substantially higher on measures of emotional dysregulation than adults without it, though the size of the difference varies a great deal between studies. Cognitive behavioral therapy has helped adults with ADHD manage emotional symptoms in multiple randomized trials, and that intensity often traces back to the same feeling of inadequacy covered in this article: a lie your brain tells you, not a fact about you.
🎉 Tip: Looking for the people and situations that make that inadequate feeling fall away is a search worth starting today. You get to choose where you put your energy next.
Surround yourself with people who understand you, the way finding the right user group did for me. Read more: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7069054/
Creativity and work
Is it true that people with ADHD are more creative?
Yes, in most studies: people who score high on ADHD traits generate more original ideas on creativity tasks than people who do not, though this has not been shown as clearly in clinically diagnosed groups specifically. As a new Microsoft evangelist, I built the event evaluations and download tracking the company had been missing for years, in my first few months on the job, which is what that creative tendency looked like for me.
🎉 Tip: Pointing your own original-idea tendency at a real, overlooked problem is how it turns into something others can use. You can start looking for that problem today.
Use that tendency on purpose: bring your ADHD brain into brainstorming and early-stage problem solving rather than only late-stage execution. Read more: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33035524/
Are ADHD people good entrepreneurs?
Often, yes: research links the hyperactive and impulsive side of ADHD to stronger entrepreneurial attitudes and willingness to start something. A 2019 survey of nearly 10,000 people found a clinical ADHD diagnosis went with both the intention and the action of starting a business, which matches my own experience building a business out of a BBS and a guys' night out.
🎉 Tip: The Clipper developer community I built out of a BBS and a guys' night out became my first business lesson in disguise. Your own curiosity-driven project might be the start of something bigger too.
Use the startup energy to get something moving, then build in a partner or a system to carry execution once it launches. Read more: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11187-018-0061-1
Energy and the cost of ADHD
Do people with ADHD have lots of energy?
Yes, often: in my experience activity runs almost always high, while energy runs high and low rather than staying constant. In my own experience, energy is one of four things worth tracking day to day, alongside confidence, memory, and activity.
🎓 Lesson
- ADHD: Track your own energy, confidence, memory, and activity day to day, and build your schedule around when energy is actually available.
Notice your own pattern rather than assuming a fixed answer, since these traits run high and low differently for each person. Read more: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder-adhd
Why is it hard to live with ADHD?
ADHD carries real, measured costs: working adults with ADHD lose substantially more work-performance days a year than peers, and adults with ADHD carry much higher odds of anxiety, depression, and early death from accidents. None of those costs are a reason to stop building around your strengths; they are the reason the rules in this piece exist.
🎉 Tip: Every rule in this piece exists to catch one of these costs early, the way writing things down catches a lost idea before it is gone. You can adopt the first one today.
Treat the costs as the problem the practice is solving, not as the final word on what living with ADHD is like. Read more: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18505771/