PodcastsBusinessThe ADHD Skills Lab

The ADHD Skills Lab

Skye Waterson
The ADHD Skills Lab
Latest episode

174 episodes

  • The ADHD Skills Lab

    What Thriving ADHDers Know About Dysregulation That You Don't

    01/06/2026 | 30 mins.
    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 [Links placeholder]
    Β 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
  • The ADHD Skills Lab

    The Real Reasons People Quit ADHD Medication

    31/05/2026 | 14 mins.
    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.
    Β 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
  • The ADHD Skills Lab

    Why Progress Never Feels Permanent (Even When You Do Everything Right)

    29/05/2026 | 30 mins.
    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
    Β 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
  • The ADHD Skills Lab

    How Casey Neistat Nails Productivity Advice For ADHDers

    27/05/2026 | 36 mins.
    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 β€” 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 β€” 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 β€œurgent” 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 β€œbeing 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.
    Β 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
  • The ADHD Skills Lab

    How ADHD Perfectionism Disguises Itself as Productivity (Dani Donovan)

    25/05/2026 | 38 mins.
    You built something people love. Running the business of it is a different problem entirely.
    Dani Donovan is the creator of The Anti-Planner, a self-published ADHD productivity workbook that generated over $1 million in its first year and has now sold more than 115,000 copies with a 4.9-star rating. She built it without a business plan, without onboarding documents, and without a team that had done any of this before.
    In this conversation, Dani explains how a single ADHD comic from 2018 nearly never got posted, how a business coach’s field guide exercise became the product she actually needed, and what happened when she had to tell 28,000 pre-order customers their books were running late.
    We also get into the part nobody warns you about: what hiring looks like when there are no SOPs, no infrastructure, and no clear handoff between the creative work and the operational side of the business.
    This is a conversation about the hidden cost of scaling creative ADHD-led businesses β€” and why building the thing is often easier than building the systems around it.
    What We Cover:
    How Dani designed The Anti-Planner around what she actually used instead of what productivity systems were β€œsupposed” to look like
    Why she turned down traditional publishing and protected creative control over the product
    The pre-order strategy that generated 42,000 orders across two launches
    What happened when she had to email 28,000 customers about delayed orders β€” and why almost nobody asked for refunds
    Why scaling an ADHD-led business gets operationally difficult long before it looks successful from the outside
    Connect with Dani Donovan:
    Website: https://anti-planner.com
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danidonovan
    TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@danidonovan
    Β 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
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About The ADHD Skills Lab
Things are starting to fall through the cracks. Not because you're not trying, but because the systems everyone recommends weren't built for a brain like yours.The ADHD Skills Lab is for business owners with ADHD whose responsibilities have grown past simple solutions. Each week, Skye Waterson and guests share research-backed strategies and real-world systems to help you reduce the chaos, make consistent progress, and stop reinventing the wheel every time life gets complex.No "just use a planner." No productivity hacks that last a week. Just honest, practical support from someone who has spent years researching, testing, and refining what actually works for adult ADHD.Skye is the founder of Unconventional Organisation, a former academic diagnosed with ADHD during her PhD, and the author of over 50 articles read by more than 250,000 people worldwide. She has worked with senior leaders, business owners, academics, and professionals navigating ADHD in high-responsibility roles, and was invited to share her research with both the Australian and New Zealand Government. 🀝 In partnership with Understood.org: https://u.org/4boG8QW 🌐 https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com/ πŸ“² https://www.instagram.com/theadhdskillslabpodcast/
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