Accountability, Community, and Actually Getting Stuff Done with Russ Jones

Joining me today is Russ Jones, the host of the ADHD Big Brother podcast and founder of an ADHD coaching community that helps adults get out of their heads and into action. Russ is an actor and comedian, a background that shines through into his work giving his content relatability and charisma.

Russ and I really got into our talk and so I’ve ended up splitting this episode into two parts.

In this first half of the conversation, we get into why so many of us struggle to turn knowledge into real-life change and how a strong ADHD community can provide the structure and support we need to actually follow through. Russ also shares insights from his own journey—like how quitting a 20-year nicotine addiction helped him discover the power of daily community support.

If you’ve ever struggled with consistency, this is an episode you won’t want to miss.

All right, keep on listening to find out how community coaching can provide the structure and support to help you actually follow through.

William Curb: All right. Well, I'm here with Russ Jones and we're going to be talking about ADHD Big Brother, his community and podcast. And one of the places that I want to start with is there's individual coaching and group coaching, but you're really into this idea of community coaching, which plays off of all of this. And so can you tell me a little bit more about what community coaching is?

Russ Jones : It is born out of the idea that so many of us and I can speak to myself 100%. And then from the experience that I have in coaching is that we're very good at getting inspired and going, oh, that's a great idea. Like, or we go to therapy and we're like, oh, yeah, I got an epiphany or a breakthrough. And then we leave and we don't do anything with that information. We just forget because we have no working memory, right?

It's not for lack of intention. We left there going, this is going to be just going to change everything. And then we realize we're hours away from our next appointment a week later and we're like, oh, shit, I have to cram, I have to do something. So I have something to show for it. And so the accountability and the doing of the work is missing. Sometimes it's missing in group coaching as well. This is modeled after a quit group that I was in. I had a 20 year nicotine addiction.

And one of the most important things to me was community, the accountability that I got through a community. I'll say that. It's showing up every day and posting, hey, I'm going to do this no matter what, come hell or high water. In my case, it was, I'm not going to use nicotine. And it feels awful. There's horrificness to it. But I show up the next day and I show up the next day and there was daily accountability. And I'm like, that is the thing. It's so missing with ADHD. We're so good at knowing why we can't do the thing.

This is kind of a birdwalk, but we're really good. We learn that we have ADHD and then we go do a deep dive. We watch all the videos. We listen to all your podcast episodes.

Jessica McCabe's YouTube channel. We read all the books, Ned, Hollowell, Russell, Barkley, everybody or we buy the book and we like look at the glossary or whatever, look at the table, and we go, yes, oh, this explains everything and we don't do any of the work. It's literally just go, now I can explain to the world why I'm not doing the work. And there's a power in that. It's great and we can connect with people, right? And we can go, oh, we can identify with people. My heart is in like, but I want to fucking do my laundry. I can tell you why I'm not doing my laundry, but I want to still be able to do my laundry. I have found that there is a massive strength in the accountability that you get from a community.

I'd say a like mind community of ADHDers, right? We want shame free. We want judgment free. We want people that go, oh, it's I'm not a piece of shit loser.

I have ADHD and these are my struggles. And people get each other, right? And then if you add accountability on top of that, the doing of the work is the thing that's I believe is missing. I could go to a coach and I could get one great idea, right? Maybe I can get daily accountability, right? I typically do that with the people that I coach.

Text me that you did the thing that you said you're going to do. Let's move the needle forward. Same with group coaching. With the community, you get like literally many people who have all their lived experiences and they're all sharing what's working for them. And you go in there with a problem and like I can't do my laundry. And so then you get 10 people going, me neither. But here's what I'm finding that works. Here's what I'm doing. Here's what I'm doing. And you get ideas.

William Curb: Well, and there's a lot of things that I'm hearing that echo some other things I've been reading and talking with people about. One of them that really resonates with me here is what gives us the best accountability. Because often we think of like, oh, we want someone very close to us to give us accountability. But research has shown that's not really that effective because those people are more likely to be like, have an understanding of why you didn't do the thing. And so we know, oh, if I don't do this, well, my wife's going to understand why I didn't because, you know, I've had a rough week or whatever.

And this isn't saying that we need to push through having a rough week or anything. But we do feel a stronger sense of accountability to people that we have like weak ties to, which is kind of counterintuitive. But having this community where we're like, Oh, I know all these people.

I mean, I don't know them, know them. I'm not living with them. I'm not. If you didn't do a particular thing, I wouldn't be like, Well, this is I'm really upset about this.

I'd be like, Oh, maybe you should try this other way. And that kind of community, we have such a better sense of accountability, because you're like, Oh, yeah, this is painted by the brush of who I want these people to see me as, as opposed to, you know, your family who's like, he's a very different brush of who you are.

Russ Jones : I was just talking to somebody from the community earlier today about the idea of being in a space where it's okay to not do the thing that you said you're going to do, but you don't walk away from it. Where I didn't do my laundry, everybody gets it.

Everybody supports it. But the conversation continues. And like, what got in the way coaching questions, right? What got in the way? What can you do next time? Can you set a timer?

Can you do this? It's a place to be okay with that uncomfortability of quote unquote failure and not walking away from it. And that's so helpful when you're around people that are having that same struggle. Like I remember like we do a day streak in our community, right? Where we gamify the hell out of everything.

I mean, I have like, if you look, I think I've showed you these before, like I have games to do shit in life. And we were talking offline about like trying to get back into exercise and like how making it smaller and smaller and smaller. I spent probably a week in my community saying day one, I'm going to exercise for 30 minutes. And then I would show up the next day, day one again.

Oops. I'm going to work out. But you also add in like I woke up late or I didn't feel like I had enough energy in my body or this allows you to look at what's going on and knowing that you have ADHD, but like you're constantly trying to move the needle forward as opposed to day one, I'm going to exercise and then you don't exercise. And you're like, I guess I suck. I'm going to go away for a month and a half and be depressed and beat myself up until I have a spark of motivation to be like, let's do this again. I'm like, let's get that going faster.

William Curb: One of the things I'm thinking about here too is just that aspect of how you what you get out of community is also what you put into it. Like you can't just be like, I mean, this is true for any form of coaching, but I think it's especially true with community aspects of things because like you're probably not going to have like, you know, if you're doing one on one coaching and then you don't show up, you're going to have the guy going like, hey, you're still getting charged for your session.

Russ Jones : You're paying a lot of money to do nothing.

William Curb: Yeah. But with community coaching, it's kind of like, oh yeah, I have to do the work too. And I think that's like, there's this gap between knowing and doing that we often suffer from. And sometimes we really want to feel like that. I mean, that's kind of like the allure of a lot of coaching stuff is like, oh, they're going to make me do this because I'm going to give the money and it's going to happen. Oh, yeah. I get that approach, but I'm also know that I need that all internal shift myself to say like, I still have to do the work. Like, I'm not going to be paying this coach forever.

I need to be able to do this afterwards. And building those systems. And I think community is such an important part of that system.

We have these built in ideas of like, we should be doing these things alone. And that is wrong. And so, okay, we're going to pay someone to help us. And that does work. And I think a lot of people get a lot out of coaching. But this is like the step beyond that. What do you want to do once you have the skills, once you have the knowledge?

Russ Jones : Yeah, I see this a lot is that as soon as we find a thing inside of us that makes it magical, then we can do our thing. And where I'm coming from is that hyper focus feeling that we want, that we know what it feels like. I know what it feels like when I fire on all cylinders and I'm just kicking ass. I want that feeling now. And I sometimes come to coaching thinking like, I want you as the coach to help me to get to that feeling for doing my taxes.

I'm like, that's not a real thing. We have to, in my view, we have to learn how to do shit that the normies can do because it's important. And we need to learn how that we can do important things our own unique way. And man, we are creative. We are insanely creative people. And if we can get into a room full of creatives, somebody's going to have a shiny fucking object for us on how to do stuff.

Someone's going to have the planner that is like, wait, what? You do things that way? I'm going to try that for a week and a half. And now we have a week and a half of productivity. It's not working anymore.

Who's got another shiny object? Playing to what works for us, right? And in a community of phenomenally creative people with insanely cool ideas, for me, it's the funnest place to be.

William Curb: I see this too. Accountability comes from the body doubling rate and planning sessions. And a lot of these things feel like things that we should be able to do on our own and theoretically can and have. Like I've written out my schedule for the day and I'm like, yeah, I can do that. But it is the consistency aspect that is often what eludes me the most where I'm like, yeah, oh, yeah, it is not just doing the day the one time. One of the things that's most frustrating for me about accountability is that I'll do a body doubling session and I'll be like, what am I even doing?

Like, there's just someone over here and I'm just working. Why is this effective? It's frustratingly effective that it works because I'm like, right? What is happening? Why is my brain like this? Like, I should just be able to do this. But I'm okay. Well, I have to re-center myself in reality. Like, well, it's easy to not do it. And if there's someone there, it's less easy. So that's a great tool to use.

Russ Jones : Absolutely. 100%. We do that in our community. We do that. We have the 24 seven body doubling thing. We'll do workshops and stuff. I work with people in terms of like, I'll show up to the body doubling room and I'll just be like in the public chat saying, Hey, I'm going to be in the body double room, right? I'll go in there and I'll just have it on.

And there'll be nobody in there but me looking at me. But there's something about I've caged myself in an activity. I've said for 45 minutes, I'm this and somebody might pop on.

So I've already I've I've created this boundary around myself. And I'm a subscriber to like, it doesn't guarantee that I'm going to be focused on the work. It doesn't guarantee anything. But it does make it more likely. And I think we're in service of more likely a lot of times.

William Curb: Well, I know for me, one of my like core values is integrity. And I say, I'm going to do something. It tends to make it a lot better if I'm saying that to someone else. If I'm saying it to myself, well, that I mean, like, I lie to myself all the time. So that I don't have self integrity at all. Like, that's like, same. But saying to someone else, I was like, Oh, God, told Russ this, now I got to do it.

Russ Jones : I bet you anything, you'll look for a million loopholes to find your way out of it. Our brain will like, Oh, what can you say? What can you say? What could I do? I go do that in, we call it the Skull Spaghetti Room, right? This is our daily accountability club of like, post what you say you're going to do. I'll say meditate, right? And this is back in the day where we'd be like, I'm going to meditate.

That's the thing that I'm going to do today, or I'm back to day one on my streak. And it'll be at night and I'll be like, Oh, shit, I forgot to say, I forgot to meditate. Okay, maybe I'll just close my eyes and breathe for five seconds. I'm meditated. So then you start to get more complex with your integrity of what you announced. You say, I'm going to meditate for 10 minutes, ass on the cushion, or I'm at day one. And so I'm like, Okay, well, now I have to, I have to raise the bar on myself on what I say I'm going to do.

William Curb: Yeah, absolutely. Because it's yeah, it is. Yeah, I'm like, Oh, I technically did what I said I was going to do. So we are hardcore.

Russ Jones : That's what we're so damn creative.

William Curb: Yeah, our ability to justify just about anything, justification is so easy. And you're just like, Oh, yeah, well, this is true. And I was very vague in what I said.

Russ Jones : To your point too, of earlier, my heart goes out to I'm in almost 50. A lot of the people in our community are in their 40s. Like I think that's the demographic for my podcast is typically later in life diagnosed people. But there's this feeling that we're supposed to be able to do stuff on our own. There's this feeling of like, these are remedial tasks. I should be able to do them. To try to normalize the fact that these things are it's okay to not be able to do them. But that doesn't mean we can't do them. We can do them. We perhaps just need unique ways to go about it that are yet to be discovered for ourselves or something.

William Curb: Yeah. So especially with this demographic of late diagnosed, you know, later in life ADHD is that it again, this is should we should be able to do these things because that's the messaging we've got through all our life. We've got lots of negative things about it. And it's also weird with the things that we can do like I'm like, oh yeah, I'm putting out this podcast every week and it's something I could do. And also my car is full of trash that and I'm like, it's like, oh, this smells. How did I not take care of this earlier? Like I'm only taking care of this because I had a banana a week ago and now it's awful in my car and I have to make sure that my children don't complain when we drive to school. Yes. It's like, how do how am I doing the hardest thing? But this what not easy but simple task just eludes me so badly.

Russ Jones : Oh, for sure, man. For sure. I to this day, I think doing the dishes is one of the levels of hell on earth. I really it's so internally dramatic torture to me. And I think learning how to be cool with myself about the fact like, no, no, yeah, it's this is hell.

And I accept that it is hell. The only way that I can do the dishes more often than not is to use these simplistic ADHD tools. Like I'll preach timers to the day I die for ADHD. I'll set a timer for 10 minutes and I'll half ask clean the dishes because that's the shortest amount of time that I can see myself working on this God awful task. And then my reward is that I quit. Like if 10 minutes is up, fuck it, I'm done. I quit. Yay for me. I did what I said I was going to do for 10 minutes. More often than not, the dishes are all the way done.

William Curb: But right. That's like the other frustrating thing with being like, in my head, the dishes take forever in reality, they take a couple minutes. Yeah. I just like as long as I'm not like haven't like left it for like a week and it's like really built up, a normal amount of dishes does not take that much time to do. And I'm like, oh, this is so frustrating because if I just did this every day, it would never be a problem.

But I'm also never going to do that without setting up systems to make this happen. And I think it's the deception of something that feels easy. Like it's simple, but we we were mistaking simple for easy. And so we're like a lot of times like the easy things that I'm not doing is because I haven't spent the time like, well, they're easy. So I don't need to use the tools because I can just do it. But it's just and it's like, no, I can't just do those things.

Like I don't just write my podcast. There's a bunch of stuff that goes into making sure it happens. And yeah, because of all those tools, it makes it not hard. But if I didn't use the tools, then it would be incredibly difficult. And then I'm like taking the other very like, oh, well, it's simple, I should just do it. And then not doing it because I'm not using the tools that I should be using, even though I know about them.

Russ Jones : Yeah, I don't know if you feel this way of like, oh, once I've done the tools enough, all of a sudden dishes will somehow become mentally easier. I think being cool with myself about the fact that like this is the way it is, is the way it will always be. I will always be time blind to this stuff.

Big fucking deal. I use a timer. That's how I do dishes. I think it's this thing of like, if I were to tell somebody how I do the dishes, I would feel really stupid. But I'm like, I don't have to tell anybody how I do the dishes. I don't have to tell a room full of grownups. This is how I do these things that are super easy that you guys all do every day. I set a timer and find the point of entry and then I'm super specific about my task and like all these things, these dots that I connect in my brain to then go, I don't need to tell the normies of the world how I do stuff.

William Curb: Yeah, one, we also have this comparison we're making to someone else's outsides to our insides where we're like this. And like, good point. I was at the bus stop talking with other parents the other day and they're like, man, I feel terrible about not having gotten like, I've gotten my outside Christmas decorations down, but not my inside ones. And I'm like, oh, we got those put away like two weeks ago. So that's a win for Team ADHD here. You took care of your insides.

Good deal. Yeah, so often it's like, yeah, we're making these comparisons like, oh man, this is so easy for so and so. And like, we have no idea because I'm again, we're not normally being going out and being like, look at this thing that should be easy. That's hard for me because that's just not how we communicate. And I don't think people would be like, I don't know, if I talk to my bus stop parents about how difficult it is to be washing dishes, they'd probably be like, yeah, they should suck. Yeah, probably everybody.

Russ Jones : Yeah, it's, I think it's the growing up in a world of like, yeah, they suck, just do them. Just freaking do the dishes. You're like, yeah, I wish. I really wish. That would be great.

William Curb: Yeah. And it's comparing myself to my parents and being like, yeah, but I'm always comparing them to when they were at a much more mature state than I am now, like comparing my 20 year old self to when my parents were in their 50s. I'm like, that doesn't make any sense.

Well, yeah, of course, they're better at these things at this point. Even if we both have ADHD, we both have developmental delays, but mine's way, way further down. I'm more like 16 right now, and they're more like 40, which is being months away from 40. I'm like, yeah, there's I feel still feel behind, but yeah, I still feel 16. God damn it. There's days where I'm just like, man, I don't want to do anything.

Yeah. But yeah, being more mature, I'm like, well, I don't feel like doing anything, but I guess I'm going to do stuff anyways, because I know I'm going to be, I can look ahead to how I'll feel in the evening and be like, well, yeah, if I don't do any of these things, I'm going to be kind of mad at myself. So let's be nice to future will and kind of get at least pretend to do work, which is, oh my God, I love the strategy of pretending to do work, because so often it leads to me to actually doing work where I'm like, oh, I'll just type these things and like, I'm going to put the titles here. Okay, well, I'm just I'll write this part. And then before I know it, I'm like actually doing a thing. And it's just like, oh, dang.

Russ Jones : And that's fascinating. Can you talk about that really quick, that strategy? Is it a literally like you pretend to do the thing that you say you're going to do?

William Curb: Yeah, I'm just like, I'm like, oh, well, I'm like, that's cool. Okay, I want to write a new episode. Okay, well, I don't know what I want to write about, but I use notion to like organize all my things. I'll create a new thing in my spreadsheet and I'll think and I'll write a couple words down just to be like, okay, well, like, this is the idea. And I'm like, well, that's, and then like the frustration of like it not being complete leads me to keep going. And if it doesn't, I stop. It's kind of just like a do a little bit, do a little bit, do a little bit. And if at any point, I'm like, not any point, but after a bit, I'm like, man, I still really don't want to do this. Like I don't, but it is the take the step and then it's easy to see the next step. And then I do that next step. It's like, I love that.

Like the journey of 1000 steps starts with a single one. It's like, yes, absolutely. And if you need to take a break and do something else for a while, go do that too.

Yeah. But yeah, a lot of the times I'm like, yesterday I needed to do a number of things. And I was just like, okay, I'm just going to open up the email I need to respond to and just read it one more time. And then I'm like, I don't want to close this. I just want to respond to this. Just could take a sentence, send that off. Okay. Well, I'm like, Oh, well, the task is now done.

And it was just taking that smallest first step was what really drove it. And it was just like, I'm not going to really do work. I'm just going to pretend to do work. And then it leads to me doing to work. And sometimes that's frustrating. And so I won't pretend to do work because I know what's going to happen. But I have to be okay with that some days.

Russ Jones : I love it as a strategy to get started. I think that's brilliant. I'm going to, I'm going to adopt that or I'm going to give it a thwack. I always think that we're all lab ratting ourselves on trying things. I love that.

That's what I love about reading a new book on ADHD or therapy type stuff. I'm like, let me try it. Let's see what happens. And so I love that idea of just starting the act of it. Right? It's just pretend like you're doing it and seeing it if the momentum comes. Yeah. Or seeing if the, yeah, I love that.

William Curb: I think that's cool. Basically, I'm just doing it like, if I saw like, I had a boss over my shoulder and they were kind of like watching me like, what would I do to make it look like I was doing something?

Russ Jones : Click here and here and like, yeah. Pretty typing. Yeah. Like, oh yeah, look, there's words appearing on the screen. Those are bad words. Okay. Let's make them good words. That's awesome. I do really well myself when I cage things kind of as a side note, like the structure. I used to always fight against the structure. And then when I realized that, oh, if I have structure, I actually can get more unstructured time, the time to follow my whims and everything like that. So caging a process like that around some kind of a time to work session ends up really helping me out. Yeah.

William Curb: I'm having this other really funny thought with, if I'm like, choosing to do a task, I'm like, I'm like, I'm going to like do some cleaning and watch some TV at the same time. What I'll end up doing is I'll like start cleaning, turn on the TV and then just watching TV.

But the reverse is true too. If I'm watching TV and I'm like, oh, well, I should pick this up. Eventually I'd be like, I'm going to need to go to the other rooms. I'll just pause and then I don't get back to watching TV because now I'm cleaning. That's my brain. Whatever the first thing is, we're not going to keep doing that.

Russ Jones : Like pick one, dude. What are you doing? Are you watching TV or cleaning? Yeah, that's interesting.

William Curb: Yeah, it's funny how, and I mean, this is exactly what the community aspect you were talking about. Like people just be chatting and be like, yeah, this is something I tried.

And someone's like, oh, awesome. I didn't really think about the fact that whenever I tried to clean, I turn on the TV and then I end up watching some random show that I don't even care about sitting and being like, oh, what's that? It's really boring. Why can't I stop watching this?

Russ Jones : It's so interesting. It's also like the funnification. Is that a word? Funnification? Sounds like a good word. Let's put coin that one. We'll put that in the dictionary. There was a time when I create, I found a website, by the way, that you can create games. Like I'm talking to a fellow board gamer, right? You can make playing cards. So I created a card game for doing bullshit, like cleaning, dishes, laundry, all these things. I would do, I don't know if I can explain it really quick if it's going to resonate, but it's basically like you put down all the things that you need to do and you get out one of your Dungeons and Dragons dice and you roll it. That's like the basic version of it.

I complicated the shit out of it for my card game, but it's a way for me to enjoy the unknown. I don't know. The dopamine burst of, I wonder what the shitty thing I'm going to have to do is. Roll the dice, you flip over the card and it's like dishes. So you set a timer for 10 minutes and you just do that thing for 10 minutes.

And then if you get done in time, you roll the dice, flip over another card or you roll the, whatever it is. And I hate talking about dopamine, but it's like the boost of dopamine that you get or whatever it would be, right? Is from finishing a thing, from completing the timer or finishing a thing, from the unknown of finding out what the next thing is going to be.

Because for me, it's just knowing what I'm doing. If I'm going to spend an hour cleaning, forget it. I don't want any part of it. It sounds like it's the rest of my life and it sounds awful.

But if you go, I'm only going to do a bunch of random stuff for 10 minutes and I'm going to let fate decide. I had my entire apartment just spotless. Within an hour, I mean, I know we all have varying levels of clutter, but like basic pickup, there's so much we can achieve in 10 minutes. In 10 minute increments, it's ridiculous.

William Curb: Yeah. And there's like things that make it more fun or easier to do. Yes. And listen to music. One thing that I've discovered I really love is like the grabber arms with like the thing like you use for like a trash pickup.

Yeah. I walk around my house and I pick like I have children and I have dogs. The fact that I don't have to lean over makes it infinitely easier. Like I had heard someone like recommend this tip and I was just like, I'm not going to do that.

That's awesome. But like there's a time when I'm like, oh man, I can't lean over and I like use them. Like, oh, well, just keep grabbing these things. I'm like, well, this is now part of my life forever. That sounds awesome.

Russ Jones : And I think I have to buy one of those because that literally sounds like the funnest thing ever. Picking up trash, picking up stuff in your living room, carrying it around.

William Curb: I love that. Oh, there's like, oh, there's a little piece of paper on there. Can I get that with this? And I'm like, it would be so much easier for me to lean over at this point and pick it up. But now I want to do it this way. Exactly. Yeah. And it's doing things like that where it's just like, oh, I'm just going to chase this up a little bit. It'll be not necessarily easier, but just more enjoyable. And I think that's such a huge piece of like, oh, I don't have to do this in a way that makes me miserable. Yeah.

Russ Jones : Across the board, right? ADHD 101. We have interest wired brains. We need things to have some level of interest to them. Or we say novelty and urgency as well. But I think everything in its core is interest. Like, urgency means we're interested in not losing our job. We're interested in not dying, right? But novelty is like, oh, we're interested in this new thing. So like, the idea of implementing fun and interest and uniqueness into the mundane, that's our way. That's very Mandalorian. That is the way. Like we grew up with the normies who are importance wired, and they can go like, I'm going to do this shitty thing now because it's important to me. Like, that's great. But I don't think I'll ever have that in me.

William Curb: Just because something is important does not mean it is interesting for me to do. And yeah, it feels like it should be. But we need to round ourselves in reality. It doesn't matter what shoulds or just or any of those mean. It's like, we have to do this based on what we literally can and can't do and living with our brain. It's getting beyond that, like beating ourselves up about what we want for to just be and be like, okay, well, can we just make this happen some way that works for me? Another thing great about community because so many times, like, I've seen with other communities, and people post like, I have to do this thing this way, blah, blah, blah, and someone's like, why? And they're like, because that's how you do it. And then they're like, are you sure?

And they're like, oh, shoot. Okay, maybe I don't have to fold all of my clothes like this. I can just put them in these bins or hang them up instead or do this other way I just didn't think about because I was just raised that this is how you do things.

Russ Jones : Yeah, even take it to the level of where we do have to do important things, right? We do have to, we don't have to do anything. I'm sorry to say that, but it's like, it would be great if we saved for retirement, if we took care of our health, because we want to be agile when we're in our sixties. It would be great to do these things that are important, that we've deemed important. So then how do we as ADHDers do the work to say this is important to me? And then dial it all the way back down and go, okay, I've made a determination of importance. Now, how can I make this interesting and fun, these stupid little daily slogs, like that consistent effort that we need to make towards this long-term vision?

How do we thumb that up a little bit? Because it sucks. Working out blows.

I'm not going to see my ripped abs after 20 minutes of like walking. So I don't know, that's where the whole leaning in and being cool with the fact that we think a certain way and we do things a certain way. So we find our way to do things that they can do their way.

William Curb: This is also making me think we were talking briefly before this perspective you have on goals too, how that's a bit different than what a lot of you typically would see.

Russ Jones : Yes. Like the way the normies look at goals is that the goals at the top of the mountain, it's beautiful. It's what movies are made of, right? Where you're like, oh, it's at the top of the mountain and blood, sweat, and tears, and you're going to have setbacks and it's going to hurt and that's how you know it's working and you're going to bleed and that's how you know you're tough. And then when you get to the top, you look and behold all the land and you've achieved your goal and oh man, that's pretty freaking rad. But that's not how ADHD works.

Like ADHD works at where at the bottom of the mountain, right? And we look up and we're like, holy shit, that's a long way to go. And I'm going to need a coat probably. I'm probably going to need ropes and harnesses. I should go price those out at the REI and see who's got the best deal on ropes and harnesses. I should probably take a class on climbing.

So let me go research the best classes on climbing and we'll spend forever at the base of the mountain and we'll never start. It's too much. And I'm like, if we could, if we flip it, it's just a stupid metaphor. So like, what if we just pretend, yeah, let's just magically start this visualization at the top of the mountain, right? We start the goal at the top and the actual goal is somewhere way off in the distance below the cloud line. We don't even actually quite know where we, but we know if we get to the bottom, we're there. And all it takes to get started is just a nudge, just like a little boop. Maybe somebody pushes us a little bit and then we start rolling down the mountain. Doesn't that feel easier to achieve? To just be like, oh, just nudges, just little nudges forward, boop, boop, boop. And then eventually we get our goal.

This Episode's Top Tips

1. ADHDers love collecting information (tips, tricks, hacks), but we can often struggle to implement it—having a community to provide some accountability is a great way to help bridge that gap.

2. Having consistent, low-pressure accountability (like daily check-ins) can often work better than big coaching sessions spaced out over weeks, where we’re scrambling to get to that thing we said we’d do right before our session.

   1. Community support works best when you’re actively engaged. You get out so much when you’re engaging with your community.