The ADHD Skills Lab

Your business is doing well. Momentum is real, clients are happy, and structure feels like the enemy right now. But if you turn that camera around and look past the founder, you find a stressed team running on broken systems, one sick day away from everything slowing to a stop.
Research on ADHD traits and project management suggests operational effectiveness, specifically goal setting, milestone tracking, and resource allocation, drops measurably when ADHD traits are present. The mediating factor is not inability. It is role stress: the compounding weight of having more tasks than your brain can hold and no clear sense of what matters most.
This episode breaks down what the research found and what it means for ADHD founders building a team. Friday covers the practical response.
What We Cover
Why teammates rated people with higher ADHD traits lower on operational effectiveness, including goal clarity, milestone mapping, and resource allocation
What role stress is and why the research found it significantly mediates the relationship between ADHD and project management performance
Why the disorganization doesn't stay at the founder level. It cascades onto the team below.
How the creative strengths in ADHD are real, and why the research suggests they need a specific kind of support to work
Why entrepreneurship gives ADHD founders a structural option that teachers, nurses, and academics never get
 P.S. Losing work because the admin layer around your business can't keep up with you? Invisible Systems is a 90-day done-for-you sprint where I (Skye) extract the processes from your head, build the operating layer, and find the right person to run it. Six spots left at the founding price, book a call at invisiblesystem.co

You've tried the calendars, the timers, the hacks. They work for two weeks and then stop. Jenna Free says that's not a discipline problem. It's a regulation problem.
Jenna is a counselor for ADHD with ADHD, author of The Simple Guide to ADHD Regulation, and has worked in-depth with over 1,000 people through her ADHD Regulation Method. Her position is direct: dysregulation is not a fixed trait of the ADHD brain. It is a learned response to a lifetime of friction. And it is the reason every other system eventually fails.
We cover her three-level regulation framework, why she skips meditation and breathing exercises entirely, how dysregulated beliefs quietly block delegation and visibility in your business, and what physical signs most ADHD business owners have normalized as just a Tuesday.
What We Cover
Why regulation has to come before any other system or tool
The three levels Jenna works on: nervous system, thoughts and beliefs, behavior
Why negative self-talk and urgency feel like they work, and what they actually cost you
How dysregulation shows up as delegation avoidance and RSD in business
The first practical step to start noticing and interrupting dysregulation today
Connect With Jenna Free 
Book Title: THE SIMPLE GUIDE TO ADHD REGULATION: The Secret to Finding Balance, Getting Things Done, and Enjoying

Social Media Links & Show Notes:
TikTok: @adhdwithjennafree ; www.tiktok.com/@adhdwithjennafree
Instagram: @adhdwithjennafree ; www.instagram.com/adhdwithjennafree
Podcast: ADHD with Jenna Free; https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/adhd-with-jenna-free/id1801356817
Website: https://www.adhdwithjennafree.com/

Here is the link for the free PDF I mentioned www.adhdwithjennafree.com/adhdguide
 P.S. Losing work because the admin layer around your business can't keep up with you? Invisible Systems is a 90-day done-for-you sprint where I (Skye) extract the processes from your head, build the operating layer, and find the right person to run it. Six spots left at the founding price, book a call at invisiblesystem.co

Why do so many people start ADHD medication... and then quietly stop within a year or two?
In this Research Recap, Skye and Will unpack a systematic literature review examining why over half of all patients discontinue or significantly reduce ADHD medication within 2 to 3 years of starting.
This episode isn't about whether you should take medication.
It's about something more practical: what the data actually found about why people stop, where expert assumptions conflict with what patients reported, and how access barriers, drug holidays, and whether someone chose treatment for themselves all appear to shape long-term adherence.
If you've ever let a refill lapse and told yourself you'd sort it later, this episode will feel uncomfortably familiar.
What we cover:
Why over half of patients discontinue ADHD medication within 2 to 3 years, and what the data found as the top reasons
The gap between what experts assumed drove discontinuation and what patients actually reported
How drug holidays, sometimes recommended by doctors, complicated how researchers tracked real adherence
Why access barriers like pharmacy friction, moving states, and losing a prescriber show up as a real factor
What the research suggests about people who sought treatment themselves versus those pushed into it
Want more of Will's work? Go check out HackingYourADHD.com or subscribe to his YouTube channel.
 P.S. Losing work because the admin layer around your business can't keep up with you? Invisible Systems is a 90-day done-for-you sprint where I (Skye) extract the processes from your head, build the operating layer, and find the right person to run it. Six spots left at the founding price, book a call at invisiblesystem.co

You're generating real revenue. But every time you open your banking app, your brain shuts down and you close it again.
Nicole Stanley is the founder of Arise Financial Coaching and creator of the Money Momentum Method. Late-diagnosed with ADHD at 30, scoring in the 99th percentile for severity, she built a financial method that turned out to be designed for ADHD brains before she knew she had one. She crossed $250,000 in revenue last year and has helped clients save an average of $40,000 annually.
Nicole explains why standard budgeting fails ADHD brains, why most business owners are solving the wrong financial problem, and how her method works without willpower or expense tracking.
She also walks through her five-problem financial diagnostic. Less than 10% of people actually have a spending problem. Most are misdiagnosing themselves entirely.
If avoidance has been your default financial strategy, this conversation gives you a different place to start.
What We Cover
Why budgeting fails ADHD brains - it looks backwards and produces shame, not behaviour change
The five financial problems and why most business owners are fixing the wrong one
How the Money Momentum Method was ADHD-designed before Nicole knew she had ADHD
The curiosity framework: look at your numbers as if they belong to a friend
Why financial problems are solvable problems, not evidence of who you are
 P.S. Losing work because the admin layer around your business can't keep up with you? Invisible Systems is a 90-day done-for-you sprint where I (Skye) extract the processes from your head, build the operating layer, and find the right person to run it. Six spots left at the founding price, book a call at invisiblesystem.co

You know what your most important work is. You still spend the first four hours of the day doing everything else.

Casey Neistat recently posted a video called *Navigating the Matrix* showing how he organizes his workday as a creator with ADHD. He tracks his tasks in real time, explains the system he uses to manage everything, and ends by accepting the chaos as part of the deal.

Skye and Robert disagree with that conclusion.

In this standalone episode, they break down the hidden problem underneath Casey’s system — why ADHD business owners keep ending up trapped in urgent work, why prioritization systems collapse under pressure, and why the issue is usually structural, not motivational.

What We Cover:

- Why ADHD urgency bias overrides even well-designed prioritization systems
- How Casey’s four-color framework mirrors the Eisenhower Matrix — and where both break down
- Why task capture and task prioritization are two completely different cognitive jobs
- The real reason everything keeps ending up in the “urgent” category
- Why delegation is usually delayed far too long by ADHD business owners
- What changes when low-value operational tasks are consistently removed from your plate
- Why “being good under pressure” quietly creates long-term business chaos

This episode is less about productivity tactics and more about the hidden operating system underneath ADHD work patterns.
 P.S. Losing work because the admin layer around your business can't keep up with you? Invisible Systems is a 90-day done-for-you sprint where I (Skye) extract the processes from your head, build the operating layer, and find the right person to run it. Six spots left at the founding price, book a call at invisiblesystem.co