The ADHD Skills Lab

Presented by Understood.org Getting diagnosed with ADHD explains a lot. Then it starts explaining too much. In this episode, Nir Eyal breaks down what happens after that initial relief. When ADHD stops being useful information and starts becoming your identity. He shares how that shift can quietly limit effort, create anxiety loops, and turn every struggle into “this is just how I am.” This isn’t...

Presented by Understood.org Bad environments can train ADHD entrepreneurs to second-guess themselves long after they leave those environments behind. Brandon Smith shares how years of struggling in school, standardized testing, and constant negative feedback shaped the way he saw himself, and why finding practical work completely changed how he viewed his ADHD brain. In this conversation, Brandon...

Presented by Understood.org You feel seen by something that wasn’t meant for you. Skye and Robbie explore whether Bluey reflects ADHD patterns or just captures behaviour accurately. Using DSM criteria, they break down distraction, unfinished tasks, and how patterns are identified over time. This episode sits right on the line between observation and diagnosis and shows you how to think about both....

Presented by Understood.org You build a new system, follow it for a few days, then quietly stop using it. Craig Ballantyne has coached high performers across multiple industries and his approach focuses on building systems that survive real life, not perfect conditions. This conversation looks at why most systems fail for ADHD brains. Craig explains how self-awareness, environment control, and hon...

Presented by Understood.org You get a new idea and immediately want to drop everything else. This episode builds on Wednesday’s research around ideation bias in ADHD. The research suggests people with ADHD prefer the idea phase and are more likely to move on before execution is complete. We break down how this creates the “never-ending pivot” and why projects keep getting abandoned halfway through...

Presented by Understood.org You spend weeks building something before anyone ever sees it. Not because it needs to be that big. Because once you start, it keeps expanding until it feels impossible to finish. This is where minimum viable product actually matters. Not as a business concept, but as a way to stop overbuilding everything and start testing things earlier. ADHD makes it easy to over-scop...

Presented by Understood.org You keep starting new things and abandoning the ones that were working. Katy Weber is the go-to voice behind the Woman and ADHD podcast, reaching millions of listeners and building a multi-stream business from lived experience. Her approach to growth is grounded in what actually works with ADHD, not what sounds good on paper. She explains why ADHD pulls you toward new i...

You keep being told ADHD is genetic, but part of you suspects something in your environment is making it worse. In this next episode of the Research Recap Series Skye and Will (Hacking Your ADHD) discuss research on environmental exposure and ADHD-related behaviors. Together they explore what the science suggests about how certain chemicals may influence attention, impulsivity, and neurodevelopmen...

Presented by Understood.org You keep improving the idea instead of finishing the project. In Wednesday’s breakdown, we showed why ADHD brains prefer ideation and discount future rewards. Today is about building around that. This episode gives you three systems. A written decision log. A structured ideation window. And a clear threshold for when changes are allowed. These systems help you move from...

Presented by Understood.org You have a good plan. But your brain keeps pulling you back into new ideas. Skye and Robbie explain why ADHD brains get stuck in ideation. This episode connects real-world behavior to research. ADHD brains perform well in divergent thinking. But they also prefer it. And they value immediate rewards over delayed ones. That combination makes finishing harder than starting...

Presented by Understood.org You built something that works. Now you cannot stop working without everything feeling like it might fall apart. Krista Mashore is a powerhouse in digital coaching. She built a $70M business after leaving real estate at her peak. She is the gold standard for fast execution and high-output growth, and her systems come directly from managing her own ADHD at scale. We brea...

Description: Presented by Understood.org You’re guessing how long things take. That guess feels reasonable. It’s just wrong, over and over again. In the last episode, we broke down why ADHD time blindness happens. This one is about what to do about it. Because the real problem isn’t planning. It’s relying on estimation at all. In this episode, Skye and Robert walk through how to replace your inter...

Presented by Understood.org You think it’ll take two days. Your team knows it’s two weeks. And after a while, they stop saying anything. In this episode, Skye and Robert break down why ADHD founders consistently underestimate time, not because they’re overconfident or disorganized, but because their perception of time is genuinely off. They walk through the research behind time blindness and estim...

Presented by Understood.org You’re funding everything yourself, and it’s quietly slowing your business down. Not because you’re doing anything wrong, but because you’re relying on the most limited resource you have: your own cash and capacity. Kat Weaver has helped founders raise over $70M and won 22 out of 23 pitch competitions herself. But her approach isn’t about chasing investors, it’s about u...

We usually think of ADHD as behavioral. But what if some of the earliest signals weren’t behavioral at all? In this Research Recap, we break down a large population-based study examining pain-related diagnoses in children before they were diagnosed with ADHD. Researchers looked at over 700,000 medical records to ask a simple question: Were children later diagnosed with ADHD already showing higher...

Description: Presented by Understood.org You approve the direction. Then change everything at the end. Wednesday’s episode showed why ADHD planning creates late-stage corrections. This episode shows how to stop that pattern. Skye and Robbie break down a system built around checkpoints, prototypes, and early feedback. The goal is not better briefs. The goal is catching problems when they’re still c...

Presented by Understood.org The plan made sense in your head. It falls apart when someone else runs it. This episode looks at research on prospective memory and verbal planning. The findings suggest ADHD impacts how plans are built, not just remembered. Skye and Robbie explain why this creates a gap between intention and execution. And why teams end up producing something that feels “close, but no...

Presented by Understood.org You already know what needs to get done. It’s not a knowledge problem. It’s not a lack of ideas. But you still don’t start. Instead, you overthink it, wait to feel ready, or tell yourself you’ll do it later, again. Eric Zimmer is the creator of The One You Feed, an award-winning podcast with 50M+ downloads and 800+ conversations on behavior change. He is the go-to voice...

Presented by Understood.org You keep setting deadlines and somehow everything still ends up happening at the last minute. You plan ahead. You move things around. You even set earlier deadlines. And it still compresses into a final push. This episode explains why that keeps happening and what to change. We build on Wednesday’s breakdown of time blindness and show why most deadline strategies fail o...

Presented by Understood.org Deadlines exist right up until they don’t. You can see it on the calendar. You know it’s coming. You’ve even thought about it a few times. Then suddenly it’s urgent and everything else gets dropped while you scramble to catch up. This episode explains why that keeps happening. We break down what research shows about ADHD and time perception, and why this isn’t just poor...

Presented by Understood.org Jamie Sea built two seven-figure businesses. From the outside, everything looked successful. But behind the scenes, the pressure, urgency and burnout were becoming impossible to ignore. In this episode of ADHD Skills Lab , Skye talks with Jamie Sea, entrepreneur, educator and host of The Jamie Sea Show about the moment she realized the businesses she built no longer fit...

Presented by Understood.org You know how to do the work. But when a task is actually a project, you have to figure out the steps again every time you come back to it. On Wednesday we looked at the research behind this problem. ADHD planning challenges often show up when the brain has to manage the structure of a project internally. This episode looks at the practical solution. Instead of trying to...

Presented by Understood.org You can handle individual tasks all day. But the moment something becomes a project, everything slows down. Research into ADHD executive functioning suggests the difference often comes down to planning demands , not motivation or intelligence. In this episode, Skye and Robbie break down what these experiments reveal about ADHD and why complex projects require building a...

Presented by Understood.org You make a to-do list. Then you avoid it all day. For many ADHD professionals, the problem isn’t motivation, it’s how the workday is structured. In this conversation, Skye speaks with Kyle Vamvouris , founder of SalesThread and the strategist behind 87 B2B sales teams , about how he actually works. Instead of rigid productivity systems, Kyle relies on open calendar spac...

Presented by Understood.org Many adults with ADHD feel like they have to repeat the same instructions again and again. You explain a process to your team, everyone nods, and a week later it feels like no one remembers what they learned. Earlier this week on ADHD Skills Lab , Skye and Robbie explored research on why ADHD brains often struggle during the encoding stage of learning . When information...