1070: An ADHD Strategist’s Pro Tips for Staying Motivated and Productive When You Can’t Focus with Skye Waterson

Pete Mockaitis
Skye, welcome!

Skye Waterson
Hi, it’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to hear your wisdom. You are an ADHD strategist and coach. That sounds handy. We’ve had over a thousand episodes, but we have not taken a laser shot directly at ADHD before, though it kind of comes up tangentially fairly often. So, could you, first of all, maybe just define, what are we talking about here? What precisely is ADHD? Is it the same thing as ADD? How do I think about this?

Skye Waterson
It’s a good question and it has been changing. So, ADHD is something that, if you wanted to get diagnosed with, you would go to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of disorders. Or, more likely, you’d want a psychiatrist to do it for you. And you could be diagnosed in this version, because it has been different in the past, with ADHD, type one, type two, primarily, and type three.

So, it’s primarily inattentive, which is what we used to know of as ADD; primarily hyperactive, which is the ADHD; or combined type, which is what I have. And what we know from this is that, basically, you are somebody who hits a certain criteria, of feeling driven by a motor, struggling to sit down, getting distracted, like all these kinds of things. And it also happens persistently and pervasively, so across different categories of your life and across time as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so three flavors: inattentive, hyperactive, and combined. And can we hear a little bit of detail for, what does each mean? And how do I distinguish that from just, you know, being a human who has moods and distract-ability and all that?

Skye Waterson
Yeah. Well, you know, and there’s more and more conversation about this idea of subclinical ADHD because I think it’s something that everybody does struggle with. And I will say, about 50% of my clients are undiagnosed. So, they haven’t had the official diagnosis yet. They just think that they might have ADHD.

And so, when we’re talking about this, what, really, we’re talking about is you might be somebody who goes, “Oh, yeah, I get it. On a Friday afternoon, I’m exhausted and very distractible.” But we’re saying, “But what about on a Monday morning? What about on the weekend? What about at home? What about at school? What about at work?” Like, this variety of different environments is the situation that we’re looking at.

And, “Was it happening when you were a child? Is it happening now?” You know, that’s kind of what people will be looking at. And then hyperactive is very much the classic ADHD. If you guys know a person who’s like running three different businesses, two of them on some kind of really strange thing you’ve never heard before, and like always go, go, go, that kind of ADHD.

And then ADD is more of the distractible. So, person who’s looking out the window, distracted, that kind of ADHD. That’s a very generalized version of it. There’s lots of different kinds, but that’s essentially the tropes that people think about.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, then what’s this combined business? Like, someone is go, go, go and inattentive at the same time or, like, back and forth? How does that unfold?

Skye Waterson
Pretty much, yeah. So, somebody who gets distracted and is hyperactive.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now I’d also heard that hyper-focusing can be a part of ADD or ADHD as well, which was a head-scratcher for me. It’s like that kind of sounds like the opposite. What’s going on here?

Skye Waterson
So, what’s happening there is you’ve got something called time blindness. So, people with ADHD, and when I first found out I had it, this was a surprise for me, really struggled with time blindness, seeing how much time is passing. And so, if you’re bored, it feels like, you know, two minutes is like a year.

But if you get into flow, if you’re really focusing, you can actually lose track of time and you can just be fully engaged and fully focused on the task at hand. That hyper focus is specific to ADHD because it’s not that we are necessarily just distractible. It’s more like a wandering attention. So, if your attention gets fixed on something, then we can really dive into it. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s not good.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess good or not good is based upon what needs doing and what you find yourself hyper-focused upon.

Skye Waterson
Yeah. Did you want to be hyper-focusing on that thing? Sometimes people are like, “I did not have any intention to hyper-focus today, and now I am knee-deep in my closet reorganizing it for the second straight hour. That was not the plan.” So that would be the case.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. So, I guess the way we know if we got it or not is we chat with a psychiatrist who does the DSM. That sounds maybe expensive and intense. Is there a quicker, easier way we can get a pretty good idea, Skye?

Skye Waterson
Well, there are online versions. You can even search the DSM. I think it’s available. But there are online tests that you can take. Some of them, you know, in the NHS and places like that will do a better job of kind of approximating what you would be asked by a psychiatrist. Obviously, if you don’t go to a psychiatrist, they can’t help you rule out whether you have other conditions that might be co-occurring, which happens a lot with ADHD.

But, yeah, it does take a while. It could take a really long time if you try and go public. And if you try and go private, then it’s very expensive. So, for that reason, a lot of people decide to just live with the, you know, they go, “Okay, I’m pretty confident I have it and I need strategies for it,” and they come to me and that’s what I help with.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And what’s our best guess for the very rough proportion of professionals, diagnosed or not, who likely have it?

Skye Waterson
It’s about 2.5% of the population of adults. That’s usually the stats.

Pete Mockaitis
Noted. And I’m curious, in terms of, for the 97.5% of listeners who do not have it, are there any particular strategies that work awesomely for people with ADD, ADHD, as well as the rest of folk?

Skye Waterson
Yeah. Well, that’s the greatest thing. I mean, I’ve had the opportunity to work with the New Zealand government on some of their organizations, and I often will teach these strategies, and people will say, “Wait, wouldn’t this be great if everybody was doing it?” And I’m like, “Yes, these are wonderful strategies for anybody who’s struggling with executive functioning or distraction,” which is all of us at some of the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Understood. And maybe, just to get the motivations fired up, can you share any transformational tales or research results on just what kind of impact can adopting some of these strategies have?

Skye Waterson
Yeah. Well, there’s a lot of research. One of the things that we do know about ADHD is it’s one of the most treatable conditions. So, it’s very, very treatable. Once you have strategies for it, it’s very helpful. A lot of the problems people have is just that they’ve been taught the wrong systems, and they don’t have a sense of how their brain actually works because no one’s taught them, and so they have no idea.

Pete Mockaitis
So, when you say wrong systems, can you give us some examples of common prescriptions that just aren’t cutting it?

Skye Waterson
So, I would say the biggest thing is that people will be given strategies based on this idea that we have executive functioning when we don’t. So, with ADHD, the biggest struggles we have are working memory, forgetting everything, everything that we’ve recently been told. Time blindness, so not being able to track, estimate, measure time effectively.

Dopamine, so having a struggle with not getting enough of it, not having it processed correctly. And transition time, so not being able to transition between task to task effectively, needing a bit more downtime, needing to chunk things out. Those are really, really important. If somebody says to you, for example, “You should just get started. You’ll feel better,” or, “Why don’t you give yourself a reward once you finish this? That’ll be great.”

Those are the pieces or, “Why don’t you do this just with an hour a day between your meetings?” This is terrible advice for ADHD.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And I guess I’m saying get the reward was like, “Hey, I got a dopamine situation so maybe that’s not going to cut the mustard there.”

Skye Waterson
Research does not back you up on that one.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, say again?

Skye Waterson
So, there’s research into this, it’s something that I’m very passionate about. It’s called the dopamine transfer deficit theory. So, it came out in 2008, one of my favorite pieces of research, because that’s who I am. And, basically, what it shows is that there seems to be a gap in the type of dopamine boost that you get when you’re ADHD at the beginning of a task.

If you’re neurotypical, you know there’s a reward at the end of the task. Your brain gives you a little thumbs up, a little “Woohoo!” at the beginning because you know that you’re going to get that reward at the end. If you’re ADHD, your brain just kind of goes, “This is lame. Why are we doing this?” And then you do it. And then at the end, you give yourself a reward and your brain goes, “Well, this is nice, but why did we have to do that horrible thing?” The connection is not there.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s intriguing. And so, that has been shown. When we say neurotypical as opposed to ADD, ADHD, how, and this is based upon they have the diagnosis, or do we have any brain scans, or biomarkers, or I guess we know it because we got the symptoms and the DSM diagnosis? Are there other indicators at the biochemical or level of matter that we can point to?

Skye Waterson
You’re speaking my language. I love a neuroscience paper. So, in terms of, generally overall, you are asking me about, “Do we actually see neurobiological shifts in people who have ADHD and people who don’t?” The answer is yes. There is a lot of neuroscience research. In fact, not just neuroscience.

AI as well, they’ve been looking at AI research and finding that the way people speak with ADHD is a bit different, tend to like jump from point to point, and more likely to interrupt. And so, there is new research coming out that you could actually potentially get to a place where you can tell if someone has ADHD or not, at least at a subclinical screening level using AI.

So, there are lots of different ways, neuroscience and neurobiology are one of them, but it does take a long time because you have to sit in the chair and there’s not that many of them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. So, then help us out, if we do have ADD or are just having a heck of a time focusing, what are your favorite strategies?

Skye Waterson
My first favorite strategy is what I call a two-minute focus formula, because there’s only two minutes. So, I want to give you guys that upfront. You guys can actually DM me at Unconventional Organisation on Instagram. If you want this, just use the word awesome, and I will give it to you because that way I’ll know it came from here.

And, basically, the first thing you need to do is you need to go ahead and you need to write down somewhere you’re going to keep it, not on a random piece of paper. We want it to be something we’ll come back to. You start by writing down everything that you are going to be doing, every single task basically that’s in your head. Don’t look at your email. Don’t look at your other tasks. Let’s just focus on what’s in your head.

And, usually, this is the longest part because it takes people a while. They don’t realize how much stuff is in their head. And then from there, we want to look at everything that’s there, and we want to go ahead and we want to identify “What has to be done tomorrow or there will be a significant negative external consequence?” Significant. It can’t be nothing. It has to be, “There will be a bill that hasn’t been paid,” “You will not be prepared for an event that is happening.”

The kind of stuff that, heaven forbid, if you ended up in a waiting room that day, you still would have to figure out how to do it on your phone, or you’d have to tell somebody that it wasn’t going to happen. That’s urgent. Everything else is not urgent. And the reason I say this is because, often with ADHD, we can really struggle with clarity of thought. And so, this is a very, very clear clarifying indicator. So, that’s step one.

Pete Mockaitis
And you say this only takes two minutes?

Skye Waterson
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Wouldn’t the listing of all the things take a long time?

Skye Waterson
That is true. It depends on how many tasks you have. It might take five. It usually doesn’t take longer than that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Skye Waterson
But once you’ve done that, basically at this point, what you want to do is you want to go ahead, and this is really, you know, I’ve done this hundreds of times with lots of different professionals, and I’ve never had anybody have more than five tasks that are truly urgent for tomorrow. And this is across work, home, everything.

So, if we’re thinking about this, we’re going, “Okay, I now know what is truly urgent,” let’s look at the rest of the tasks and think about, “Okay, what are the tasks that are on this list that are going to help move me forward? What are the 80-20 tasks, those things that are going to help me with something?” So, that’s the stuff that you really want to highlight.

I usually recommend people highlight it in green, stick it in their calendar, give themselves a dopamine boost to get started. We can talk about that in a second. But these are things you really want to focus on and promote, because a lot of time we actually spend our time doing things that are neither urgent nor important. They’re just easy to take off, and that’s a big problem.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we have a very clear picture for urgency, which is really nice in terms of getting that level of clarity from, “Well, yeah, there’s a lot of things which would be nice to kind of have done soon-ish,” as opposed to, “If these are not done today, suffering will ensue.” It’s like, “Okay. All right. Bright red line there,” and only five-ish things maybe rise above it.

Skye Waterson
Sometimes none. People are always surprised.

Pete Mockaitis
Hey, good news. So that’s a crystal clarity on the urgency. And, likewise, can we get that with importance? There’s 80-20.

Skye Waterson
One hundred percent.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you tell us how it is done?

Skye Waterson
Yeah, so that’s actually something that, when I work with people, I figure out first. And what we want to understand is we want to understand “What is your 80-20? So, first of all, what is your goal?” And this is where we have a whole conversation about setting goals and how we feel about setting goals, because I’ve never met someone with ADHD who doesn’t have a strong feeling about goals, positive or negative.

But we need to know the direction that you’re going in, in order to understand “What is the 20% thing that you could do that’s going to give you an 80% return to get there?” Because a lot of times, that’s actually something you’re already doing, and you just need to double down on, expand on. It’s not the new shiny thing that could totally work, but has not been tested even once. So, this is kind of what we want to focus on.

And so, usually, when we’re looking at that, what is truly important, it’s what is going to help you reach your goal, what’s the 20% that will give you 80% return on reaching your goal?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I love the 80-20 Rule, and that’s super. I guess, sometimes, it feels a little unclear, like, “Well, I don’t know, it might be any number of these things.” Do you have any follow-ups, or next-level questions, or prompts, or approaches to zero in on that?

Skye Waterson
Yeah. Usually, if you’re struggling with this because you don’t really know what your goal is. So, that’s what to focus on. So, the first thing I’ll do is I’ll ask people to identify, and this isn’t just me. This is some awesome, you know, I’ve had amazing mentors in my own life. Ask for a 25-year goal. So, we say, “Okay, 25 years from now, what are the five things that you want to have achieved?” And you’re going to be like, “Man, that was great. Like, I am nailing it”?

Because when we take it to 25 years, we’re usually at a position at that point where we are not in fear or we’re like, “Oh, I’ll probably figure it all out about that. What’s the point?” So, we sort of go, “Well, I want to be this.” Most people want, “I want to spend time with my family. I want to travel. I want to be healthy. I want to have money,” or whatever it is they want to do.

And then, at that point, we go in, and we say, “Okay, what is the one thing you could do this year that would make it easier for you to reach your 25-year goal?” That’s really what we’re talking about here. And it could be a financial decision, it could be an organizational decision, maybe it’s a health decision. And then at that point, we’re going, “Okay, now let’s come back into what we have to do, what we have on our task list right now. What is the thing that is helping you get there?” That often is where we get the best clarity.

And then if you’re really struggling, I actually do have an entire decision-making ADHD framework because it’s not uncommon to struggle with decision-making, and we go through some of the research behind the significance of tasks, and we talk about the margin of error and that kind of thing to help you figure out, “What is important to really spend time on when it comes to making a decision?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, this framework is intriguing. Is this discussable in five to 10 minutes?

Skye Waterson
Yes. All of my stuff is very simple because, what I want is to practice. I want it to get, you know, people often say to me, like, “You’re in my head. I can’t get it out now in a good way because it’s, like, helping me understand things.” So, yeah, so basically, at a very, very basic level, and I’m going to mess up some statistics here so I apologize. Apologies for those of you who know what I’m talking about.

We want to talk about this idea of significance. So, even if we’re talking life-saving medication, “Should it be used? Should it be not used?” that kind of thing, there’s a 1% margin of error. So, there’s never something that is truly free from having a chance that it is incorrect.

So, if you think of yourself as all the decisions you make being on a continuum from 1% margin of error, very, very important decision, but still could be wrong to a 50-50 margin of error. You know, it really doesn’t matter. Flip coin, you know, red shirt, green shirt, whatever. It’s fine. Then we need to understand, “What is the margin of error that you are happy to have with the decision that you’re making? What is the amount that you’re happy to have in error?”

So, if somebody’s like, “I don’t know which of these things to focus on this week,” then I ask people, “Okay, well, what is the margin of error on this?” And, usually, people will probably say it’s about 30% because they’re like, “Well, it’s not that important. I don’t want to waste my week, but if I did the wrong thing, it’s not going to be the end of the world.”

And at this point, I will help you assign time to a margin of error. So, if it’s a 50-50 task, it really doesn’t matter what decision you make, then we will go ahead and say, “Okay, you’re just going to take a few minutes to make that decision.” If it’s the 1% margin of error, you could take a year to make that decision. But the most important thing is that you go ahead and you schedule that time to make that decision.

So, if it’s a 30%, 40% decision, which one is more important? I’d say, “Okay, let’s go ahead and we’ll schedule some time later today. Maybe we’ll schedule 20 minutes or 15 minutes. You’re going to sit down, look at all the options, weigh them up, maybe talk to somebody, ‘What do you think I should do?’ And then at the end of that 15 minutes, whatever decision you made at that point is the decision that you’re going to stick with.”

Pete Mockaitis
Now, when you say margin of error in percentage terms, I’m thinking, I’ve always got two different concepts in my head at the same time here. So, one is margin of error, if I’m making an estimate of how much something is going to cost, “Oh, I was off by 5%,” versus a margin of error in terms of thinking about, like, the consequences of error. So, just to make sure I’m conceptually getting this, what does the percent represent in our margin of error here?

Skye Waterson
The percentage that you’re willing to be wrong. So, in a 50% scenario, you’re saying, “I’m happy with a 50% margin of error because the decision I had to make was what are we going to eat tonight. Worst-case scenario, we pick something that I don’t really enjoy, and it’s a new experience for me. It’s totally fine.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I see. It’s like, “How certain must I be to be okay with this decision, such that if I got it, if there was a 50% chance of me getting it wrong, that means it doesn’t matter all that much if I get it wrong,” versus, “There must be 99% certainty of this because, if I mess up, you know, my whole family is dead.”

Skye Waterson
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
“Thusly, I’m going to proportionately spend more resources on the actual decision-making research stuff of nailing that decision right.”

Skye Waterson
Exactly, because most of the time, with ADHD as well, we’ll have this thing. And if you have ADHD and you’re listening, you’ll probably be like, “Oh, yeah, I do this all the time,” where you won’t really decide to make the decision, you won’t lock it in as, “I’m going to make a decision.” It’ll just kind of go around in your head. You’ll think about it and you’ll ruminate on it.

But because we have working memory struggles, we’ll lose the thread of the decision we made. We might even talk to somebody and come back and go, “That’s it. That’s what I’m going to do. Oh, I’m glad I figured it out.” Never write it down. Forget that we made that thing and then go and do it again. And so, we can end up in this rumination cycle that is very, takes a lot of mental energy.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I dig it. And so then, it seems like a lot of the value here is just getting clear that “What the task is, is making the decision. That is the project that we are embarked upon.”

Skye Waterson
You might even write that down and put it on your filter. That’s a hack for you right there.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, okay. That is the mission. That is the project, is the making of the decision, as opposed to, you jumping the gun and figuring out all the things, “If I do it and if I don’t do it.” It’s like, “Oh, well, we’re not even there yet.”

Skye Waterson
And then you’re like, “Oh, but what if…?” Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. That’s handy. What else we got?

Skye Waterson
Well, I think the third piece that is often what I get from people is, “Okay, cool. I have made a decision. I now know what I need to do but I don’t want to do it. It’s too boring. It’s too confusing. The last time I did this, somebody yelled at me and I didn’t like it and I don’t want to do it again.” This is something that we don’t talk about enough with ADHD, or even without ADHD.

We often have these experiences, and so you’re going to guess it. I’ve used the research to come up with a strategy to help you do it in about 15 to 20 minutes.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, let’s hear it.

Skye Waterson
Okay. So, I want to ask you, “What is a task that you don’t want to do right now?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, let’s just say some tax stuff, yeah.

Skye Waterson
That’s a really good example. That’s a really good example. So, if you’re ADHD, the first thing that we want to do is we want to, and we talked about this before, we want to give you a reward for starting the task. We know the reward at the end is not really going to be attached to the task. It’s not going to be motivating enough to get you to do it. So, we want to give you a reward for starting the task.

And if you’re in a position where it’s tax stuff, we want to give you a really nice reward. So, at this point, people usually say, “Okay, well, Skye, I don’t want to eat piles of chocolate forever.” “That’s okay. We’re not going to do that. We’re going to sensory stack.”

So, if you think about your five senses – touch, taste, smell, sight, sound – what are the different sensory items that we could add to you sitting down at your desk, or sitting down at a coffee shop, or wherever you want to do the taxes? So where are you planning on doing this task?

Pete Mockaitis
In my office here at the computer.

Skye Waterson
Perfect. Okay. So, the reward has to be in your office at your desk. This is very important because of transition times. A lot of people will be on the couch, in front of the TV, being like, “I’m just trying to get the motivation to go do this,” and they’re like, “Why doesn’t this work?” It’s because you’re not doing it in the space.

So, if we think about the different senses, so food, drink, listening to something, watching something, what’s something fun you could do at the beginning of this task? So, it’s not part of the task. It’s just something you’re going to do for 10, 15 minutes.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, what’s funny, because, like, my first thought is, “Ooh, a fun thing I could do in my office at my computer is, like, play a game,” but that’s dangerous because you might get carried away, and do that for hours. Like, “Oh, this is so much. I don’t want to stop.”

Skye Waterson
It does have to be something you will stop. Yeah. It does have to be something you will stop. And so, I will say, over time, people can do things more, like playing a game. Your brain starts to trust you, that you’re going to do this, and it’s not going to be as terrible as it sounds.

But TikTok is never a good idea, so don’t do that one. But is there anything else? Sometimes people like to do Sudoku or a puzzle or a retro game or read a comic or an article or a YouTube video.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, what’s so fun, I’m looking right now in my office. I have this, this is so weird. I think Tim Ferriss talked about these acupressure mats, like Bed of Nails is one of the brand names. And I don’t know why it’s so fun for me to just kind of mush it against my body. Like, it’s kind of like the rush of a cold plunging a little bit, except not messy. It’s not painful, but it’s an intense sensation, which, at least for now, is still kind of novel and interesting. So, I guess we could call that a reward in a weird sense.

Skye Waterson
Yeah, 100%, so we could do that one. Now let’s stack it. So that’s good, but you’ve got to do taxes. So, we want to add something. Is there a cold beverage, a hot beverage, anything like that that you’d like to bring with you to your desk?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. Well, I’m thinking about GT’s Gingerade Kombucha, or Heineken 0.0, or just straight up Diet Coke, I mean, you know.

Skye Waterson
Okay. Which is the one you want the most?

Pete Mockaitis
Probably the Kombucha right now, yeah.

Skye Waterson
Okay. Perfect. So, we’re adding the Kombucha. It’s very themed. And then let’s go ahead and add some music or something to watch while you do this.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, watching at the same time as I’m doing a thing, or as I’m doing my acupressure and my beverage?

Skye Waterson
Yeah, as you’re doing your acupressure.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, man.

Skye Waterson
Because the first thing you’re doing is just something fun. So that’s the first thing you’re doing.

Pete Mockaitis
So, watching, well, if I really go on bonkers on the visuals, I might put on the Oculus Quest 3 and look at some, like, 8K nature videos.

Skye Waterson
That’s cool.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s kind of fun to do in the morning on a cloudy day. It’s kind something I do sometimes.

Skye Waterson
Yeah. Okay.

Pete Mockaitis
Or, I guess watching. I’m thinking about the Fireship YouTube channel. But, again, there’s danger there. YouTube fun, click, click, click, away, away you go. So, watching. What else do people love watching?

Skye Waterson
I mean, you’re right about the whole thing with views. I think some people will put like really cool digital backgrounds on their computers. Some people will just want to watch music videos. That can work, you know, things like that. Personally, I think I’ve got the weird one. I like to watch Twitch streams because I love gaming.

So, if I can’t get some gaming done, and so it gives me like a little piece of that. So, I might choose to do that while I use the mat and have the drink. But, yeah, something like that. Some people listen to music at this point. They don’t want to watch anything. So, they have a couple of pieces. I usually think three is quite nice, especially when you’re doing something that’s particularly difficult, so.

But the question I always want everyone to ask, and this is why we’re doing this live with you is, if you said to yourself, “Okay, forget the task, forget that task. All I’m saying to myself right now is, ‘Will I go and sit at my desk if it comes with a Kombucha, a Shakti Mat, and looking at something nice?’”

Pete Mockaitis
Sure.

Skye Waterson
Yep. Okay. Good. Perfect. Because that’s what we want to know. That’s the most important thing we want to know. So, the second thing that we do is, while we’re doing those things, while we’re giving our brain the boost, the dopamine boost, that we don’t think it’s getting because of the way our brains are currently wired, you want to go ahead and you want to turn off the distractions.

This is a good time to turn off distractions because you’re feeling good. So, who cares about them anyway? What is the stuff that you know is going to distract you when you get down to doing the taxes?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, probably, many open tabs or windows on the computer itself.

Skye Waterson
Exactly. So, we want to turn off the tabs. If you’ve got one of those situations where your brain almost goes ahead and clicks your email before you even think about it, go ahead and remove that bookmark, make it harder to find. If you need to, you can use apps like Freedom to fully remove it. You want to go ahead and remove distractions right now.

The next thing you want to do is you want to dial down the dopamine a little bit. So, maybe at this point, you just switch to music or a podcast or something in the background. Still there. We’re not going to silence just yet, but we’re dialing it down. And then at that point, what you want to do is you actually want to go ahead and write down, on a little Post-it note, a recipe of exactly what you’re going to get done.

So, “I need to open this application. I need to find this form. I need to do this.” And the reason you’re doing that is because you struggle with working memory, right? Too boring, too confusing, too, you know, “I felt bad last time I did it.” So, the too confusing piece, we want to break that right now.

We want to put it on a piece of paper, exactly what you’re going to get done during this period of time, as if you’re writing a recipe for somebody else because that person is probably you. Because if you have ADHD, you’re probably going to get distracted and forget what you were doing and have to come back to that little piece of paper. So, that’s the next piece. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Yep.

Skye Waterson
Awesome. And then from there, the last piece we really get to is, “Okay, I’m here. I know what I’m doing. I’m feeling good, but I’m a little bit nervous about actually doing the task. Like, what if it goes badly?” And so, we want to give yourself the opportunity to do a few stretches. When you’re about to do exercise, or artistic endeavors will often stretch or do some practice runs. We don’t really do that with work tasks.

So, we want to just open the application that you’re going to use and tinker around in it a little bit, you know, move some stuff, add some notes, just play in it with no real pressure to get started. And, usually, what’s happened at this point is people have gone ahead and they have found themselves in position where they’re like, “Okay, well, I’ve already opened the application. I know exactly what I’m doing. And I already gave myself a dopamine boost and turned off all distractions.” Inertia starts to go the other way and you go, “Well, I might as well just do it now.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that’s really intriguing. So, then the reward is happening before instead of after. And I guess my concern is that I’d be enjoying myself so much, I’m like, “I just want to keep this party going. Now I really don’t want to stop all this fun for the taxes.” Is that not a problem? Or, how does that end up unfolding?

Skye Waterson
It’s a good question. So, what we talk about here is we talk about the idea of the dopamine dial. So, rather than going ahead and just going, “Well, I gave myself a reward at the beginning, and then I turn everything off and we get serious and get to work.” We talk about a dopamine dial. We dial the dopamine down.

So, we don’t just turn it off. We say, “Yeah, the party can keep going. We’re just going to write a list of tasks that need to be done right now.” But let’s just switch it away from the podcasts. What’s the next thing that might work? What about some music? Is that going to work? We still got the drinks. We still got everything there. And your brain’s kind of going like, “This is pretty cool.” Still like, “I’m not panicking yet. We’re not in a dopamine-deprived state yet.”

And then from there, you’re like, “Well, we’re just going to open the application. We’re going to tinker around in it.” What happens for most people at that point is they start to kind of get this situation, which you might’ve found in the past where you go, “This is kind of distracting me now. Like, I know what I’m doing. I know I’ve got to do it. I know it’s on. It’s something that’s on my list, and I need to get it done. And I’m right here and I’m about to do it. This music is kind of distracting me now.”

So, you’ll tend to naturally start to turn those things off, but it’s when you give yourself the pressure of, “Now I’m starting,” that we can get ourselves in that position.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very cool. All right. So, that’s really handy and thoughtful and thorough. Thank you. Any other favorite do’s and don’ts for we don’t want to do the thing, but it’s time to do the thing, how do we proceed?

Skye Waterson
Well, honestly, I think the biggest thing that I would say to everybody is you think that you know how to give yourself a reward for starting a task. You probably don’t. If you’ve sat here and gone, “Yeah, I mean I have a coffee,” this is level one of this, right?

We want to go all the way to level 10. Like, most people that I see who fail to actually get tasks done once they understand the strategy, they fail to get tasks done because of a feeling that, “I ought to be able to just do it. I should just be able to do it. I don’t understand why I can’t do it. Everyone else can do it.”

And that feeling, unfortunately, can hold you back from actually doing the task. So, usually, at this point, I ask people to get really serious about their dopamine. Make a list. Five things for each sense, for each of your different senses, like, combine them in different ways. Like, get serious about this, because this is often the thing that’s really holding you back.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now I’m thinking about dialing the dopamine up to 10, I mean, well, that invites all sorts of thoughts, like, “Oh, well, let’s crank some, let’s get some alcohol and nicotine and more involved in the party.”

Skye Waterson
That’s exactly what I’m saying. Everyone’s like, “Oh, well, this must be what you’re talking about.” And it’s like, “No, no, there’s many different ways,” you can ask ChatGPT or your favorite AI if you need help. But, like, there’s many different strategies before we get there, right? So, a lot of times people, for example, with the phone, people say, “Okay, well I have my phone. I’m addicted to my phone. What do I do?”

Like, before phones, we used to have, I don’t know if you’ve ever were in an office before phones, but, like, we had a ton of things. It was like the little thing that you like to throw a basketball into, and the Sudoku, and the weird little like water thing that you pressed and little hoops went into it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Skye Waterson
You know what I mean? There’s like a whole thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Severance had that one.

Skye Waterson
Exactly. So, go in that direction and then think about, during the week when you’re at the supermarket, what is a new cold drink that you’ve never tried before? Grab that off the shelf. Leave that for when you’re going to get started off on that next task. Those are the things that you would be surprised make a huge difference.

And, you know, obviously, we can always talk about the hardcore negative sources of dopamine, but that conversation is actually why we end up in that situation where everyone’s, like, we’re either dopamine deprived. And if you’re ADHD, you’re already dopamine deprived. So, it’s not really a helpful conversation a lot of the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, for funsies, could you give us just a quick rundown of a few of your favorite tidbits? Because, yeah, I think you’re right. Once we really let the creative juices flow, I mean, sometimes I have a feeling, it probably gets pretty, like, weird and uniquely custom for your own proclivity.

Skye Waterson
Oh, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, I actually do have, now you mentioned, a Tupperware vessel of water in the refrigerator that I will shove my face into. And so, the mammalian dive reflex is a real thing. It reduces heart rate, etc. And it just feels kind of fun. And so, I guess, if we’re pushing our own buttons, then that could take all kinds of interesting flavors. Can you share a few things with us?

Skye Waterson
Yeah, I love that because people often, you know, this level one dopamine is, like, “I’ll get coffee and then I’ll do this.” And level 10 is like, “On Wednesdays, at 7:00, if I do this in this light, this is great.” People get very specific. My favorites, I mean, I love all kinds of different carbonated drinks, is my favorite. So, I’ll go for different kinds of those ones.

I, like I said, will watch Twitch. I will also watch YouTube. I know not everyone can do that. They’ll get distracted. I am lucky enough not to do that. I have, the Spotify AI guy now has me pretty well dialed in. So, if I play the DJ, it usually knows exactly what kind of music I want to listen to because it’s got me based on time of day.

Yeah, those are kind of the biggest ones that I do. In terms of physical touch, I have a lot of fidgets. And if all else fails, I’ll usually go to a coffee shop and I’ll go there with no ability to plug my computer in, and I’ll order something really nice, and that’ll kind of get me through.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, tell me, any final things, tips, tricks, things you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Skye Waterson
I think, usually, what I like to tell people is just your systems are probably broken, not your brain. I think it’s really important for people to understand that because so often we people will find themselves sort of slamming up against a wall again and again and again.

That’s what leads to burnout. I’ve done it many, many times before I figured out I had ADHD. And being able to work with different systems makes it a lot more fun. It’s not just better for you and what you do, but it’s also a lot more fun.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share a favorite quote?

Skye Waterson
Yeah, my favorite quote is, “We rise by lifting others.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Skye Waterson
At the moment, I am reading most things by Naval Ravikant. So that’s kind of the area I’m in right now.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Skye Waterson
It’s split between Notion and Miro.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Skye Waterson
Dopamine. Starting with dopamine, for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key nugget or Skye-original sound bite that is quoted often?

Skye Waterson
I think a lot of people, to come back to the dopamine thing, will just be like, you know, that people tend to say like, “You have to take your dopamine seriously. You have to take having fun as seriously as working if you have ADHD.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Skye Waterson
You can find me at Unconventional Organisation on Instagram. Like I said, you can just DM me there and I will give you the two-unit folks formula. And you can also find me at Unconventional Organisation on the internet. I have a podcast, The ADHD Skills Lab, where I talk about a lot more of this research. And if you want to join my program, I work with executives and entrepreneurs who have ADHD who want focused, balanced growth.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for someone looking to be awesome at their job?

Skye Waterson
Probably, stop trying so hard and start thinking about ways to do things differently.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Skye, thank you.

Skye Waterson
No worries. Great to be here.