Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional
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Make Goals Inevitable with ADHD: Stressors and Entrepreneurship with Skye Waterson (2/2)
Does the ADHD brain experience stress differently in situations like being laid off, for example? According to Skye Waterson, ADHD coach and our guest in episode 314, stress actually has the potential to hit you harder after a crisis. In this discussion, Skye shares practical tips for setting achievable goals as a job seeker or an entrepreneur and the importance of taking a long-term view throughout the process. We talk about the strengths of the ADHD brain in the tech field and how to determine if a work environment is the right fit when you’re interviewing. Skye also shares the reasons she decided to walk away from academia to start a business and some of the lessons learned along the way. Original Recording Date: 12-29-2024 Skye Waterson a former academic turned entrepreneur and ADHD coach. If you missed the first part of our discussion with Skye for a slightly different perspective on the ADHD brain, check out Episode 313. Topics – Stress and the ADHD Brain, ADHD Strengths in Tech, Setting Goals and Maintaining Accountability, Walking away from Academia, Reflecting on Entrepreneurship, Job Interviews and Finding an Environmental Fit 2:34 – Stress and the ADHD Brain Nick suggests we talk about stress in the context of the current job market. We’re seeing layoffs across tech and other industries continue. How do these stressful and traumatic situations affect the ADHD brain differently than perhaps those who do not have ADHD? “There’s no conclusive thing that I can think of in the research that I’ve done that we experience stress in a different way…. What I would come back to with ADHD is that we have impulsivity struggles and we have executive functioning struggles. And so, it comes back to this idea that you’re ADHD all the time. When something stressful happens to you when you have ADHD…you have to deal with all of the emotional regulation, all of the thinking…all those things can mean it hits harder.” – Skye Waterson People with ADHD can struggle with rejection sensitivity and self-criticism. Self-criticism could be partially due to receiving a lot of criticism when younger (positive or negative). Stressful events can hit harder as well if you have PTSD or other mental health struggles. Skye gives the example of getting into a car wreck. After it happens, you have to call the insurance company, figure out what to do with your car, and do many other things. “And especially once the dopamine is gone…you might be good in the crisis, but post-crisis, you now have to pick up all of this executive functioning task work and do emotions. So, you might be struggling way longer than somebody else might be struggling…because now you have to deal with all this actual admin work as well.” – Skye Waterson, on experiencing stressful situations with ADHD If we put that same set of challenges in the context of someone losing a job, someone would need to figure out how to spend the time they have left at a company (could be some or none), update their resume, update LinkedIn, and decide what to do next. “I’ve worked with a lot of people in that job space…. Essentially what you’re doing is you’re starting a small business called finding another job. It’s really complicated…. Really it does have to be a system that you break down…. What is my goal? My goal is to get this job. What are the steps that make this goal inevitable in a day? …Make it an achievable goal for you to hit those things and focus on that and give yourself dopamine for that rather than…my goal is to wake up every morning and try and get a job. That’s very, very difficult and not very fun from an emotional point of view.” – Skye Waterson Some of the people Skye has worked with chose to begin a small business on the side after being impacted by a layoff. It’s certainly one option for people but not the only one. Part of the system might include a specific number of people to message per day, a specific number of resumes to send per day, and a specific number of jobs to check in on. These goals should be achievable for you. Would the amount of dopamine required to work toward getting another job each day be even higher because of the compelling event that put you into a stressed state? Skye says yes but you also do not have to start immediately. We can sometimes go into crisis mode and use the dopamine of stressful events to push us forward. It can seem like a crazy burst of energy that propels you until you crash. “In the moment when it happens…and if you knew that this might happen it can be good to prepare this in advance…you want to go ahead and do something grounding. Things you liked as a kid are very helpful. Give yourself Chinese food, watch a movie with a friend…things like that could be really good. But have a time in your calendar that you’ve blocked out that is ‘plan to find another job.’ Give yourself a 2-hour window. Put it in your calendar like you’d put a doctor’s appointment. Take yourself to a coffee shop if that’s going to help you stay motivated to do it, especially if you’ve been used to a working environment, and once you’re there, give yourself a really nice cup of coffee (maybe a chocolate biscuit with this one) and then go ahead and plan it out.” – Skye Waterson Skye recommends an AI-powered app called Goblin Tools to help with planning / breaking down things into steps. This app is free and is designed to help people with ADHD. You could search for “find a job in X industry in X country” for example, and the tool will break it down into steps that you can convert into a daily rhythm (focusing on the input and not the output) and overall system for finding another job. With ADHD one of the struggles with executive function is working memory. It can be hard to break things down into subtasks once you have a high-level task or goal. Skye likes to use the example of buying a new rug to show all the subtasks required (measuring, finding a new one, going to get it, deciding what to do with the old one, carrying it upstairs, etc.). Nick has seen the challenge of breaking things down into steps firsthand through working with his daughter. It’s like there are dependencies that are missed. But once Nick’s daughter has the list, it’s easy to move forward and make progress. “A list, a daily routine, a reward,…making it a realistic thing….” – Skye Waterson, on the elements of a good system for a job search Goblin Tools can also provide a rough time estimate for tasks. They probably are not really accurate, but it can help you understand everything will not happen tomorrow and that it will take time. Is it easier for the ADHD brain to find closure after a stressful event (loss of a job, death in the family, etc.)? Skye has not seen any evidence to suggest this is the case. “It’s more the case that the admin of all of these things can tend to linger for a lot longer for people who are neurodiverse. So, they might still have boxes of things that they haven’t organized, for example, for years after other people would have organized them.” – Skye Waterson Part of the reason Skye recommends using the prioritization filer we discussed last week was to account for things which might be lingering in someone’s mind for a long time (like things that have gone unorganized). Some of the strengths of ADHD are creative problem solving, original thinking, etc. 11:53 – ADHD Strengths in Tech How might the strengths of the ADHD brain play out in the world of technology? Nick mentions a great discussion from the ADHD Skills Lab podcast with guest Lisa Ballard about working in technology sales with ADHD. “There are a ton of strengths. When I work with people who have ADHD it’s really about how do we mitigate the struggles so we can focus on the strengths. We’re not living a life of just mitigating the struggles, and sometimes people think that…. We know from the research that we’re original thinkers. If you give a person with ADHD a task and an example of the task, people who are neurotypical will tend to iterate around that example. People who are ADHD be fully left field…and completely originally redesign this thing…. You can sort of see how that would work well if you were in a workplace and you were solving a problem. One of the best things about ADHD in the technology space is that we are out of the box thinkers. We love pulling a solution to a complex problem out that no one else has seen before. And we’ll usually have an original perspective on why it exists, what we should do about it…. They’re great people to have in the room when you are ideating, when you are problem solving, when you are bug fixing even…all of those spaces.” – Skye Waterson, on ADHD strengths and how they play out in tech Would this support the theory that many entrepreneurs have ADHD? Skye says ADHD is so common in entrepreneurs that people just assume entrepreneurs have it instead of the other way around. Skye mentions two types of entrepreneurs: The first type would be someone who has ADHD, never really worked on it, managed to focus without burning out completely, and became a very successful business owner with multiple employees. This person has not sorted out their own ADHD. The second type is the entrepreneur with ADHD who is struggling (and maybe burning out) who seeks out strategies and support. “Sometimes people will say ‘I have ADHD, but it doesn’t affect me….’ You should talk to the people in your office. It might.” – Skye Waterson 14:43 – Setting Goals and Maintaining Accountability How can the entrepreneur stick to the business they have chosen and focus on it without getting distracted or losing interest in it completely? One of the ADHD traits is losing interest in things after a time and abandoning them. Skye says it’s very hard, and she’s spoken to other e
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