How ADHD became my Superpower

Hold my DSM V because I'm coming at the ASA (American Psychological Association) with hands! They might be jazz hands, but don't let the pizazz fool you. I mean business. The designation of the term ADHD misinforms societal understanding, and most importantly, an individual's self-identity, creating a false paradigm. Background, the DSM series are a progression of diagnostic books that outline medical disorders as understood by the practices of psychology and psychiatry.

My role for more than a decade has been to create and shape the narrative copy for organizations and brands. I've put in the 10,000+ hours to deeply understand the power of narrative to create identity and associated value. This type of work requires focus, deep understanding of target audience values, attention to detail, and meticulous revision.

"Naming a product, concept, or process, gives identity and perceived value."

Terms:

ADHD: Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Psychology: Diagnosed by adderessing areas of inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity against statistical norms

Pyschiatry: Neural mapping shows lower levels of dopamine production typically treated with perscriptions of legalized methamphetamines 
        

My issue with ADHD in name, diagnosis, and sociological acceptance, stems from the fact that it does not give an accurate identity or value to what is being observed. What is described in the diagnosis are perceived detracting deviations from a statistical norm. This juxtaposition is flawed for many reasons: It is based upon the assumption that a norm exists in the first place, and that this norm is somehow optimal. It omits a balanced perspective by excluding the benefits of the phenomenon being observed. Rather than giving individuals and the populace a holistic term, it leaves us with nothing more than an accentuation of believed deficiencies.

The naming of ADHD only highlights perceived negatives from a statistical norm. It does nothing to mention the benefits and advantages. This negative nomenclature has then misled societal understanding, reinforced false, by the omission of positives, identities and behavioral stereotypes. It has also negatively impacted the structure of our education system towards these neurodiverse individuals. As a named disorder in the DSM V it also qualifies for pharmaceutical medication. All of this built around a name that omits positive attributes and only highlights negatives, as associated to an assumed mean/norm.

Here's my story...

I always struggled to stay still (bouncing my leg as I type this). My whole life I've been rebuked for tapping on things, moving my limbs, seeking stimulus. What is so incredibly misunderstood about ADHD is that it is not a disorder in the sense that we can't pay attention. We can! It means our minds operate on less dopamine and we seek stimulation in conversation, topic matter, art, sound, experience, and the lists go on. If the stimulus of the communication medium we're focusing on is flat, we're going to need to move our heels up and down, tap a finger, scratch our hair, or move our bodies. These actions are stimulus seeking, but benign. They don't take away our ability to focus on our mind's target, they simply fill in the void of stimuli from the communication medium. If you're talking, and we're moving, we love you and we care about what you're sharing. My reality also made standardized education difficult. I was homeschooled as a kid. Really thankful for my mom and her belief in us learning the ways we learned best. She let me binge on my curiosity. Sometimes spending days on end with my nose in a book that captured my interest. High school was a learning curve, but it turns out others find someone who facilitates study groups to be very helpful :)

Interruptions are also misunderstood. Interpersonal communication is an intricate and nuanced dance. I would like to explain that someone with ADHD interjects in conversation as a form of mental participation. The trouble here is that our own societally reinforced bias emerges. "Interrupting is disrespectful, you can't remember that and share it later?" A paradigm shift would be to realize that someone whose brain is designed to grow through curiosity is NOT being disrespectful, but rather validating and supporting the spoken thought being shared. (Think about it, if you KNEW someone adding to your communication meant they were deeply engaged with your idea and topic, would you be offended if they said a couple words into your mic?) The truth is, our interjections are often times tough to hold on to if we are talking about something we're stimulated by.

The brain that operates on less dopamine is well suited for a growth mindset.

As an extremely curious person, I used to carry a great deal of shame around my lack of academic discipline. This impacted my identity. I saw myself as lazy, distracted, impulsive, etc. If I could go back to hug that kid and point him towards the truth...

The truth is, people with oddities as supposed to some norm, also have positives. Let's start with my favorite - ADHD gives Hyperfocus.

Here's a story about my lack of academic discipline, the shame narrative it produced, and what I learned about myself. When I got to college I knew I had to perform. I came from a family rich in love where scholarships were needed to earn degrees. Both of my older sisters had received full ride scholarships for college. When I got to school, I knew that I would have to "dig deep" to figure out how to stay focused and keep up. I was a student athlete and a socialite. The wheels for my plan to stay focused fell off before I had finished my first semester.

I misinterpreted the next part of my story for over a decade. As a freshman, struggling to keep up with course work, I decided to abandon my original plan to be an archetypally "disciplined" student. Instead, I let my natural curiosity think through how to optimize my motivations, interests, and time, towards achieving the marks I needed to get my degree. What I came up with was a system to navigate the next 7 semesters of college without needing to purchase a textbook.

This reckless idea saved me $10,000.00s of dollars, 1,000s of hours, and the daily shame of my mind literally refusing to read boring information.        

After semester one, I came up with a hypotheses to make A/B's without course materials. Armed with an MVP and sheer audacity, I launched a live beta test in semester two. Once my course load was in, I came up with a set of filters for the campus directory to find students who had already taken the classes I was in. I put together a simple cold outreach email campaign, leaning on empathy, and phrases like, "college amirite?" My cold outreach MQL conversion rates suffered, so pivoted to an on-site cadence. I found students in the cafe and said, "Hey, I'm taking this class and I have trouble focusing but want to learn, would you help me by sharing your notes if you still have them?"(pre google drives fam). Turns out, almost all professors are stuck on repeat. This is when I discovered my hyperfocus. See, somehow, in crafting this plan (that no doubt made a few of you ??) I learned about systemization, optimization, efficiency, and time management. I applied my hypothesis as a beta test in semester two... and after a few tweaks along the way we scaled that system 6 more semesters.

Once my system was in place, the daily shame narrative associated with not reading enough got quiet and I made an important discovery... I LOVE PSYCHOLOGY! Oh man, I had taken advanced math, hated showing "work" (obviously). I loved science, but those chemistry books were written by cave trolls with fat thumbs. Then along comes psychology. This mysterious, debated, permeable, scientific field just ripe with new ideas. I was naturally curious to the topic. I wanted to go deep and narrow while simultaneously firing ideas around my head like a spider weaving a web. It's a circus, but we like it that way. Our Hyperactivity metabolizes into Hyperfocus. In the name, ADHD, the "HD" refers to hyperactive disorder. Again, "disorder" implying negative. Remember the need for stimulus? This strange phenomenon happens. Genuine curiosity becomes the stimulus feeding the hyperactive dopamine seeking brain and all of a sudden... Hyperfocus engaged. I got lost, and found, in the library. I devoured any content I could get my hands on. I would read journals and studies on topics of interest and correspond with the authors. It was an itch I had to scratch.

My degree in Psychology got a heck of a lot cooler once I realized it triggered my hyperfocus flow state. I HAD to find out how it (psychology and this focus thing) all worked. Nurture, nature, development, behavioral, cultural, trauma, defense mechanisms, addictions, neural connectivity, give me more. With all my non-major related studies on systematized auto-pilot, I was able to really dive deeply into my degree. I made the Psi Chi honors society and was able to present two research studies for review at SEPA (South Eastern Psychology Association).

I didn't realize that my time in college was a blueprint for me to learn how to evaluate a system, find correlations for systemization, opportunities for optimization, and efficiencies for scale. I did it, but I certainly didn't know what any of that meant back then. Years after college I still carried the same early years shame about my ADHD. I never would have written something like this and published it, if I hadn't learned a very important lesson. Many of you, like I did, probably think that academic discipline is vital and character building. One must learn to be responsible and do hard things. This very common self-talk and I believe it needs changed. The mental image of "academic discipline" always looks like something we're NOT doing. It's the way we've been told it should look, but not the way that necessarily works best for us to truly learn. College is supposed to educate you for a professional career. In my case, it did just that. I learned how to create efficiency vehicles within outdated systems, and that little snippet just so happens to be the root ingredient of every Unicorn over the last 40 years/always.

College prepared me to be disruptive

My brain makes less dopamine than the "norm." Adaptively, I've always kind of understood that part of myself. My shame cycle as a student (even while hacking higher education) would tell me I was simply pain averse to not sit still and grind through the monotonously boring pages of textbook written 80 years ago by a stick in the mud about a topic that bores me. Pain was my motivator to create efficient and scalable solutions within systems. Maybe we should tell more young people with ADHD that pain drives innovation. Email, pain of waiting for mail. Amazon, pain of going to the store. Google, pain of going to the library. Youtube, pain of reading how to do something. What's interesting about all these "pain" points is that they all have to do with time. The things we hate to spend our time on hurt and we know it. Those with ADHD have brains designed to solve these problems, and yet, we perpetuate a narrative that their avoidance of those pains is their deficit and disorder.

My ADHD superpowers, as I've come to understand them have been misunderstood for most of my life. As a student I often felt a lot of shame that I wasn't a more disciplined academic. It wasn't a lack of desire to dig into the content matter, it was sheer boredom in the mediums used to communicate. What people don't understand about ADHD is that we jump to other stimuli out of boredom. Instead of designing course work and communicating through mediums of interest, our systems feed children legalized methamphetamines and tell them they have a disorder causing them to "misbehave." I believe our education system, pharmaceutical industry, and common understanding of ADHD all stems from the branding given by the APA in the DSM. This is a false paradigm and we need a rebrand!

What is a false paradigm?

I work with clients in cannabis. The 90 year prohibition of hemp and cannabis was fraught with misinformation, fear tactics, propaganda, and a host of other nonsense. I'm not going to get into it all with you on this post, but I'm going to use cannabis as an example of a false paradigm that has led to a paradigm shift.

Old/False Paradigm:

• Cannabis will make you crazy.
• Cannabis makes you a deadbeat.
• Cannabis is a gateway drug.
• Cannabis isn't healthy...

Now, we're (Scientists/PhDs) learning that our bodies have an ENTIRE SYSTEM designed just to absorb the active molecules inside hemp and cannabis to help your body maintain homeostasis.

New Paradigm:

• Cannabis is good for you.
• Cannabis treats cancer.
• Cannabis staves off alzheimer's and dementia.
• Cannabis kills covid.
• Cannabis supports our lymph, lymphatic, and immune systems...

We must stay continuously curious to grow. Strong beliefs, loosely held.

My paradigm shift: ADHD is not a deficit or a disorder.

ADHD misrepresents the true neurological diversity observed for the individual and can create a false fixed identity mindset. It also sets a false expectation societally...

"James, you can't have a window in your office! How would you ever get anything done?!" -previous employer

As a young professional, employers and peers were often critical of my propensity to go fast, jump from topic to topic, and be easily "distracted." At the time, I believed my ADHD, part of my identity, was in fact a disorder (it's in the f*&$ing name...). The same shame narratives from academia seemed to follow me. It followed me because both I, and our culture, perpetuate this disorder/deficit paradigm. I was this oddity in the office. I fought adamantly to check the right boxes in Salesforce. Punch out tasks in Asana. The granular box checking that informed my KPIs were hell. Every damn day. Luckily for me, all the companies I've been a part of have given me avenues to chase my curiosity...

Chasing my curiosity almost always resulted in seasonal hyperfocus sessions. I would catch an idea by the tail, run at it until my brain was pudding, stand back, and realize I had delivered more value in the 72 hour sprint, than I had in the previous 3 months combined. Thank God that so much of consumer behavior is simply applied psychology. My degree gave me a basis of understanding. The questions around churn, scaling, CAC, CLV, were simply strings in the tapestry of business to follow, understand, and manipulate. In spite of what the world calls a "disorder" I have always been able to over-compensate with my mental sprints in times of hyperfocus.

Covid and the global lockdown helped me unlock my truth.

As someone who was not trusted to have a window for fear of me being distracted, imagine how I felt when mandatory Work-From-Home came into place! All of a sudden, there was no asinine "butts in seats" KPI. There were also no coworkers to distract me with side talk. It was this beautiful blank slate that allowed me to ask the question, how do I optimize this superfocus that I don't fully understand? Of course, because I was home, I was able to chase this question with unfettered curiosity. I found out that if I started my day with meditation and movement, my mind, body, and soul was then primed for what others call "flow state." My hyperfocus, that I had no idea when it was going to show up, was being accessed intentionally for the first time in my life. This was simultaneously an incredible, and heartbreaking, discovery.

What had changed? I wasn't in the environment that exacerbated my "disorder." I was chasing and catering an environment that fed my dopamine hungry brain. Every day I primed my brains appetite, and let it feast in hyperfocus. It was like intermittent fasting for my productivity. I was accomplishing more in the first 4 hours of my day, than I typically did in a week... (daaaaaaaaaaang).

I want to give the world biggest, "THANK YOU!" to my business partner and CEO, Ryan Piersant. He didn't have to fully understand how it all worked to support me chasing the best ways for me to operate. Listening to myself, I would recharge during the day with a hike in the woods on a Monday. Go play a round of golf with a friend on a Thursday. All to restore my creativity for a Saturday where I'd create an entire brand, strategy, go to market, and implementation plan. My whole life I've been a sprinter. There's NOTHING wrong with that reality. In fact, discipline, became a tool of self-investment once I understood this about myself. I do what I once considered mundane and boring everyday in order to stay ready to sprint. I stretch, strengthen, and grow physically, mentally, and spiritually every single day. It doesn't drain me anymore, because I understand how it fuels my curiosity and in turn my superpowers. There's nothing quite like the RUSH of hyperfocus pointed where you want go...

Changing the Narrative

First off, if you've read this far, thank you. Thank you for investing your time in exploring this misunderstood topic. If you have ADHD and you made it this far, there's a good chance the hyperfocus resonated loudly with you ??. Good! I've said it, ADHD needs a rebrand. It's not going to come from the PhDs in psychology that I emailed with in College. It's going to come from us. Those with ADHD and our supporting teams, changing the opinions of our circles, companies, and communities.

The world will keep shoving it's misinformed stereotypical bias at us, but Friends, that narrative is a lie. It doesn't define us, describe us, or serve us.

Other superpowers not mentioned in this post:

• Crisis management (Stimulus doesn't shake us, we eat it.)
• Imagination / Vision (Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high!)
• Multi-tasking (I've sent 26 emails, 65 texts, changed spotify playlists 4 times, and created two brands with GTM strategies while writing this post)

ADHD is not a disorder. ADHD is not a deficit. ADHD is a one sided, assumptively negative descriptor that doesn't serve the individuals to which it pertains or their families and community. Human beings are incredibly unique, drastically diverse, and abounding in limitless creativity. Let's not pigeon hole ourselves with terms that no longer serve us.

With that, ADHD, you're dead to me. I'll use the term to build bridges towards fuller societal understanding, and then promptly punt you off of said bridge!??