Research Recap with Skye: How ADHDers Succeed and Why It’s Complicated

Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I’m your host, William Curb. On this podcast, we dig into tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Today I’m joined by Skye Waterson for our Research Recap series.

In this series, we usually look at a single research paper, but today we’re covering two and pulling out practical takeaways. We’ll discuss two papers on ADHD strengths: Strengths and Challenges to Embrace Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Employment: A Systematic Review, and Paradoxical Career Strengths and Successes of ADHD Adults: An Evolving Narrative. I love an “evolving narrative,” and the way papers are named.

Before we get started, I’d love to hear what you think of these Research Recaps. If you have thoughts or a paper/topic you want us to review, head over to hackingadhd.com/contact and let us know. New episodes of Research Recap come out every other Friday. All right—let’s get into it

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at https://HackingYourADHD.com/254

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William Curb: Skye, what can you tell me about the first paper?

Skye Waterson: We’ll start with the systematic review. ADHD significantly impacts psychosocial and occupational functioning—there’s a big workplace effect. This recent review aimed to understand ADHD in the workplace specifically. They screened about 68,000 records and included 79 studies. They developed a model of challenges, strengths, adaptations, and the idea of person–environment fit, which also comes up in the second paper. A lot of us will instantly recognize that fit as something we wish we had more of.

William Curb: Their results fell into four categories: challenges, strengths, adaptations, and sex differences. They noted most workplace ADHD research participants are male, so future studies need more women.

Skye Waterson: Yes. Another interesting point in the introduction: even when ADHD is said not to persist into adulthood, employment outcomes are still worse.

William Curb: I highlighted that too. My hot take is we don’t actually grow out of ADHD. People may learn coping strategies to mask symptoms—or they just mask—until it burns them out.

Skye Waterson: My hunch is similar: symptoms that disrupt others might lessen or get masked, but ADHD symptoms overall may persist. There’s also the clinical vs. subclinical conversation. But the continued worse employment outcomes suggest that if you ask an adult with past ADHD how it’s going, they’re unlikely to say, “It’s amazing, I’m completely sorted.”

William Curb: And to be clear, that’s a personal belief, not yet supported by research. In the next 20 years, we might change our understanding.

Skye Waterson: In terms of challenges, they identified ADHD symptoms themselves, poor workplace performance, low job satisfaction, maladaptive thoughts and behaviors, and interpersonal difficulties—so a wide range of challenges are present in the workplace.

William Curb: I thought it was interesting that they separated core symptoms like inattention and hyperactivity from things like interpersonal issues. But those issues often stem from the core symptoms—like being inattentive and forgetting to call people back. It’s helpful to separate symptom vs. repercussion.

Skye Waterson: Right, and that distinction comes up more in kids, but it’s useful here: “Do you have ADHD struggles?” and “Do your struggles affect other people?”

William Curb: Often the struggles that affect other people are the ones we learn to cover for.

Skye Waterson: They also identified strengths: determination, resilience, creativity, hyperfocus, multitasking, embracing ADHD, and emotional intelligence.

William Curb: Multitasking was my favorite—because I don’t think we do it well. Research suggests people who think they’re good at multitasking are often the worst at it. Everything I’ve seen suggests ADHDers are worse at doing two things at once.

Skye Waterson: Multitasking is tricky. Some say people with ADHD work better with music or in busy coffee shops—if that’s “multitasking,” then maybe. But what’s really happening is we’re increasing stimulation to focus better. That’s different from doing two tasks at once. If multitasking means working and checking email constantly, I’m “great” at it—and trying to be less great. Also, listing multitasking next to hyperfocus is odd—they’re completely different.

William Curb: Hyperfocus is often listed as a strength, but I’m not sure it always is. We’ll get more into that with the next paper.

Skye Waterson: Let’s look at mediators that increased job satisfaction, tenure, and performance: person–environment fit; stimulating workplaces; flexibility to have both communal and quiet spaces; challenging and novel tasks; fast-paced activities; active learning; and personal autonomy. They even suggested solopreneurship as beneficial.

William Curb: Autonomy is huge for satisfaction and sense of self—especially for ADHD.

Skye Waterson: Exactly. Energy and stimulation levels shift, so autonomy plus challenge and novelty helps. I’d add clear deadlines and sub-deadlines that are real. This is why many ADHDers end up in academia or entrepreneurship. I worked with New Zealand’s security intelligence groups—lots of hunch-driven work, and many folks there had ADHD.

William Curb: I also see this with ER workers and first responders—high energy, quick decisions.

Skye Waterson: Sometimes we chase interests for career choice, but person–environment fit can matter more. If your interest leads to a bureaucratic job with no autonomy, it won’t be great.

William Curb: There’s an overemphasis on passion. We need fit and autonomy. The job should be interesting enough; we don’t have to monetize our hobbies.

Skye Waterson: “Finding my passion” is how I burned out in university. Not recommended.

William Curb: We can find satisfaction and fulfillment outside work—that often matters more than pure “passion,” which changes.

Skye Waterson: The review also covered accommodations: workplace policies, assistive devices, and ADHD medication. Medication was met with ambivalence—people acknowledged benefits but mentioned side effects and a resentment about needing meds because the environment’s fit isn’t good enough.

William Curb: Many have negative associations with medication—bad experiences, fear of feeling “different.” There are many ADHD medications, and it can take time to find the right one. The key is a doctor willing to iterate. For some, the right med and dosage make all the difference.

Skye Waterson: It’s a journey for many, though sometimes it’s straightforward. Social support systems also mattered—technical support as workers and moral support as individuals. Feeling supported mediated challenges and strengths and led to better outcomes. Anything to add before the next paper?

William Curb: Let’s get the context from the next paper: Paradoxical Career Strengths and Successes of ADHD Adults: An Evolving Narrative. I don’t know why I like that phrase so much.

Skye Waterson: It’s a qualitative study—smaller dataset, analyzing interviews through a positive psychology lens.

William Curb: They had only 17 adults, and three participants were self-diagnosed. That surprised me in a research paper—I’m not sure how I feel about it.

Skye Waterson: Same. This was a thematic analysis (shoutout to Braun and Clarke). In qualitative research, you’re not aiming for generalizable findings—you’re gathering lived experiences and themes that can inform future quantitative work. It even used the term “ADHD-ish,” which you don’t often see.

William Curb: My screen reader pronounced it “A-D-H-dish,” which was hilarious.

Skye Waterson: I have a soft spot for qualitative research—it can surface depth you won’t get elsewhere. Looking at these two papers together is helpful: quantitative breadth plus qualitative depth. Their research questions were: how do ADHDers construct self-identified strengths to explain career success using a strengths-focused interview process, and to what extent do they attribute success to in spite of ADHD vs. because of it?

William Curb: They found familiar core strengths: spontaneity and idea-linking—one I strongly resonate with. I connect ideas in ways others don’t. It’s classic ADHD: someone’s talking and I jump to “bees,” and people wonder where that came from. Three minutes earlier we mentioned something that connected. It’s great for business brainstorming too—this plus that equals Z.

They quoted a journalist who said you’re often walking around in a slight fog without structure, but the advantage is you’re not boxed in, so when something happens, you can spring into action. That paradoxical strength resonated.

Skye Waterson: They also discussed adaptive strategies. One that stood out was “active altruism”—helping others with the care you sought or missed earlier in life. That’s personally meaningful to me: I struggled with financial freedom and autonomy growing up with ADHD symptoms, and helping others find that now is what gets me up in the morning. It connects back to person–environment fit.

William Curb: One participant (a teacher) noted it was also self-serving in a healing way—helping others helped heal their inner child.

Skye Waterson: Exactly. It can sound a bit “woo,” but it’s real. I had a client who got tenure in academia—something I’d considered but didn’t pursue—and helping her was both cool and, yes, a little selfish.

William Curb: Another interesting angle: strengths can loop back into problems when overplayed—leading to overcommitment and burnout. That ties to my view that hyperfocus isn’t a superpower; it can be borrowing from our future selves and ignoring other priorities. I read about a mother who hyperfocused on work and couldn’t hear her baby crying next to her—that’s a problem. She needed ways to avoid slipping into hyperfocus to stay attentive to multiple things.

It’s jarring when someone says they’ve been calling your name for minutes and you didn’t notice. You don’t even realize you were that tuned out.

Skye Waterson: That complexity is what this paper captures. It’s a fun read with lots of quotes—highly recommended. They also addressed “hard-won success” before diagnosis—the mix of pride and grief: “If I’d known, what would I have done differently? I still succeeded even without knowing.”

William Curb: And the big theme: success because of ADHD vs. in spite of ADHD. It’s about self-acceptance, reframing strengths, and defining success meaningfully—especially when it’s hard for ADHDers to see their own success.

Skye Waterson: We know from research that self-criticism is more common—we did things differently growing up and were criticized for it, gently or not.

William Curb: I loved the closing quote they shared: “The biggest difference came when I accepted my strengths and found strategies for my weaknesses. That’s when I felt most like me, and that’s when I started to achieve—when I stopped trying to fit into boxes I wasn’t going to fit into. I don’t really understand why, but it’s working for me, so it’s what I’m going with.”

Skye Waterson: I loved that too. It could be a thesis statement for all of this.