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

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

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

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

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

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

I was recently thinking about kids being picky eaters and how there is a movement where we’re not supposed to say picky anymore; we’re supposed to say they’re selective eaters.

And you know what, I get that. I grew up as a picky kid, and… let’s be honest, I’m a fairly picky adult as well. Scratch that, selective adult.

And I know it’s semantics, but I often find semantics are important. Because if we’re reframing this idea of being picky into being selective, it loses a lot of that negative connotation, and it gives a lot more power to the idea that what we’re doing is we’re making choices. In this case, making choices about food, but I think this is something we should keep in mind as we’re moving into the new year because a lot of us are going to find that we’re going to need to be more selective with our goals, especially in regard to New Year’s Resolutions. 

And this is the idea that we’re going to be exploring in this episode - what are the things that we really want to focus on doing - what are the things that we want to commit ourselves to, and then what are the things that we should be letting go of.

I know a lot of you are working on making plans for the year, so we’re going to be starting this year with Chris Wang, CEO and co-founder of Shimmer, an ADHD coaching platform designed to meet people where they are. I had a lot of fun in this conversation, where we covered a bunch of stuff about goal setting and how to make sure you’re doing the important stuff in your life. Along the way, we discuss the power of community, process-oriented goal setting, and what it means to live in alignment with your values.

This week we’ve got Skye Waterson of Unconventional Organization back on the show to talk about the book she’s working on, Focused, Balanced Days with ADHD. Skye is an academic and ADHD coach with over seven years of experience in adult education. She has studied various fields, including Psychology, Sociology, and Public Health, and is currently a Doctoral Candidate in Population Health. Skye also hosts "The ADHD Skills Lab" podcast, where she discusses research-backed tips and advice to help individuals navigate life with ADHD.

Feels like it’s been a while for me but hopefully I was able to prepare enough material ahead of time so that you didn’t have to notice. And the reason it’s been a bit for me is because of the 2024 International Conference on ADHD which is a collaborative event put on my CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder), ADDA (Attention Deficit Disorder Association), and ACO (ADHD Coaches Organization). always been.

This week I’m joined by Madeline O’Reilly and Jonathan Hassall to talk about their new online program called Decoding Doing that is based on a book they wrote with the same title. And that’s fair, Decoding Doing is a great title when we’re talking about procrastination.

We’re diving right back into the world of ADHD research, continuing on from what we were talking about a few episodes back. In this episode, we’re going to be more focused on what goes into making ADHD research reliable. I go in-depth into what you can expect to find when reading a study and then also into what thing to look out for when trying to determine what’s really going on in those studies.

If I were to ask you how any of these things work I expect most people would say they could. But let’s take the toilet example—I know personally, I’d probably start with something about the flush adding water and maybe creating a difference in pressure and… okay maybe I don’t know how a toilet works. And that’s the point here: with the illusion of explanatory depth, we have some understanding of what’s going on, but when pressed for details, we often find those gaps in our knowledge.