The ADHD Skills Lab
The ADHD Skills Lab
Skye Waterson
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/ 📲 https://www.instagram.com/theadhdskillslabpodcast/
You Won’t Outgrow ADHD Working Memory, So Build Systems Instead
You start an email, remember a purchase, open another tab, and suddenly five tasks are each 20 percent done. For adults with ADHD, working memory problems don't necessarily disappear with age. Skye Waterson and Robert Waterson unpack a 2013 meta-analysis of 38 studies on working memory in adults with ADHD. The researchers expected older adults to perform better. Instead, the review found adults with ADHD performed moderately worse on both verbal and visual working memory tasks, with age not c...
Sep 29
31 min
Does RSD Cause Physical Stress?
Rejection sensitive dysphoria gets talked about constantly in ADHD spaces, but there isn't much research behind it yet. In this Research Recap, Skye and Will unpack a small study that tried to measure what happens when people with ADHD symptoms experience social exclusion. Using a deliberately unfair ball-tossing game, researchers compared how rejected participants said they felt with changes in their heart rate and blood pressure. The results didn't line up the way researchers expected. This...
Sep 23
11 min
Psychotherapist Shares How Smart Delegation Saves Neurodivergent Entrepreneurs
You hired help. You still find yourself taking things back on. Kara Kushnir built A Work of Heart Counseling and Wellness from a part-time practice into a fifteen-provider team. But growing the team meant learning that she couldn't keep doing everything herself. In this episode, Kara talks about the temptation to say yes to everything, the burnout that follows, and how she learned to delegate, ask for help, and build a team she trusts enough to tell her no. What We Cover Why trying to do ever...
Sep 21
32 min
The Truth About Masking Your ADHD & How To Fix It
ADHD treatment works. But does it keep working the same way eight years later? In this Research Recap, Skye and Will dig into the MTA study, one of the largest and most influential ADHD treatment studies ever conducted, and what researchers found when they followed the same kids over eight years. They unpack why the strong early treatment gains had disappeared by year eight, why medication use dropped dramatically over time, and the surprising finding that even the group still taking medicati...
Sep 18
24 min
ADHD and the Daily Habit That Makes Goals Inevitable
You know what you want in the future. You still can't make yourself do the boring task today. Skye and Robbie break down the goal setting system Skye actually uses, adapted from Dan Martell's framework. It works backward from a 25-year vision to one specific goal this year, then down to one daily non-negotiable that makes that goal inevitable. They also get into what happens when you miss a day, why trying to focus on five goals at once backfires, and how immediate rewards can make the thing ...
Sep 16
22 min
The ADHD Task Manager That Actually Works (Jason Chatfield)
You know what needs doing. You have the ideas. So why is actually finishing the thing so hard? Jason Chatfield has written and drawn the syndicated comic strip Ginger Meggs for sixteen years, writes for The New Yorker, and built a career across cartooning, comedy, and writing. But he learned he cannot rely on his brain to generate ideas and execute them at the same time. Instead, Jason built physical systems that separate thinking from doing: external deadlines, index cards, a wall calendar, ...
Sep 14
38 min
Why ADHD Business Owners Struggle With Social Media More Than Money
You built the business because you were good at the work. Nobody warned you that promoting it might be harder than doing it. New research on neurodivergent entrepreneurs found that maintaining a social media profile was the most commonly reported self-employment challenge. Ahead of work-life balance, unpredictability, and financial pressures. In this episode, Skye and Robert unpack why social media has become such a difficult part of running a business, what else neurodivergent entrepreneurs ...
Sep 9
25 min
$17.5 Billion CEO Explains The Unfair Advantage ADHD Gives Your Business (Carlos Gutierrez)
Carlos Gutierrez spent 25 years rising from sales representative to CEO of Kellogg, then served as U.S. Commerce Secretary. He did it all without knowing he had ADHD. When he was diagnosed later in life, Carlos began looking back at his career differently. The disorganization, procrastination and impulsivity he had treated as personal flaws finally had a name. So did some of the traits that helped him succeed, including intense hyperfocus, intuition and an ability to connect with people. In t...
Sep 7
30 min
The Surprising Link Between Hay Fever & ADHD (with William Curb)
Waking up exhausted after eight hours of sleep isn't just bad luck. In this Research Recap, Skye and Will break down a meta-analysis on hay fever and ADHD, including the finding that people with allergies are significantly more likely to also meet the criteria for ADHD. They talk through how swollen sinuses can disrupt sleep, how that can show up as brain fog and forgetfulness, and why the researchers still can't say which condition comes first. Want more of Will's work? Visit HackingYourADHD...
Sep 4
10 min
The AI Shift Every Founder Needs to Understand (Matt Verlaque)
You hit a growth ceiling and your first instinct is to change what you're doing, not fix how you're doing it. Matt Verlaque has coached founders past a million in revenue and sees the same pattern over and over: something works, the novelty wears off, growth stalls, and suddenly a new marketing channel, AI tool, or strategy looks like the answer. Matt and Skye unpack the “pivot chaser” trap, how to tell when a strategy is genuinely broken versus when you've simply gotten bored of executing it...
Sep 3
37 min
Load more