High Performing ADHD: What I’m Building Next
Harnessing Hidden Strengths for Yourself or Your Team
I want to share something new with you.
Two years ago, I was diagnosed with ADHD. Looking back at my career — Google, Amazon, consulting and coaching Scaleup Leaders — it explained so much. The big wins. The burnout. The frustrating inconsistency I could never quite fix by just working harder.
The journey I’ve taken as I explored this discovery has reshaped my work and my identity. I’m now moving into a new focus: helping high achievers with ADHD turn their strengths into results without burning out.
What this means for you
If you have ADHD or suspect you might, this is an invitation to join me. See below.
If you don’t, don’t worry—this newsletter isn’t about to turn into an ADHD newsletter. You’ll continue to get the leadership and product insights you signed up for (and I’ve got a great interview coming up soon).
Either way, you’ll find value in the frameworks I’m sharing below. ADHD is surprisingly common in the startup, product, and tech world. Even if you don’t have it, chances are someone on your team does.
What ADHD Is (and Isn’t)
ADHD is linked to differences in how the brain regulates dopamine — the chemical that drives motivation, reward, and focus. That means attention works on an “interest-based” system: it locks in deeply on what’s stimulating, but drifts away when things feel routine, even if they’re important.
This shows up in very different ways depending on the person and context, for example:
Moving fast, generating ideas, and hyperfocusing on what’s interesting.
Struggling with consistency, follow-through, or the “boring but important” tasks.
Feeling like your performance swings from brilliant to frustratingly stuck.
For some, ADHD is obvious and disruptive. For others, especially high performers, it’s subtle — masked by intelligence, work ethic, or role fit.
A neurotypical brain is like a family car. It’s adaptable to many things, is great at doing some of the most important work in the world day in and day out, and is relatively easy to maintain.
An ADHD brain is like a sports car. It’s not great at the school run, and struggles on rough roads, but when tuned and put on the right track, it performs at a level that’s hard to match.
How to Work with ADHD
Because ADHD shows up differently in every person, there isn’t a single one-size-fits-all approach. Like finding product–market fit, working with ADHD means experimenting until you find what works for this particular brain.
Here’s the process I use for myself and my clients:
Discover - what their real strengths and challenges are, and what gives and drains their energy.
Test - design strategies that can be tested as experiments to see if they get traction and deliver results.
Build - put these experiments together into a system with regular support
Grow - embed this system so it keeps working and evolving on its own
The key is getting to know how this particular ADHD brain works, and how best to use it to benefit from the significant strengths while not being held back by the weaknesses. It takes flexibility and adaptation — but when it works, the results are extraordinary.
For leaders with ADHD, this means designing systems, environment, and work that fits your brain.
For leaders working with people who have ADHD, it means being flexible enough to create conditions where ADHD colleagues thrive — and the whole team benefits.
Three Domains of Change
Like any high-performing team builds their capacity to act, learns tactics that work, and develops a strategy to win, a high performing ADHDer has three analogous domains to work on to help them thrive:
Health – exercise, sleep, and nutrition create the brain conditions to enhance focus and resilience, increasing capacity.
Hacks – lightweight systems and environmental tweaks guide attention and reduce friction, giving tactics for solving problems as they occur.
Harmony – design work and life to lean into strengths while reducing reliance on weaknesses, creating a strategy that enables the ADHDer to “win”.
Just making progress in one area limits the potential dramatically — these domains are multiplicative rather than additive, so as you improve brain health, it makes the hacks more effective, especially if you’re acting in harmony with your strengths.
This framework gives structure and direction to our process, so we’ve got specific areas to discover, ideas to test, systems to build, and then know how to harness them together for growth.
Here’s what I’m building and how you can join me
II’m learning everything I can about ADHD and building a program to help both myself and other ADHDers transform their lives. It’s a journey I’m really excited about, and like any founder, am ambitious about the scale of impact I want to make.
If you’re like me — a high performing ADHDer striving to reach their potential — and you’re similarly ambitious about your own transformation, there are four ways you can join me, three new and one old, all free:
YouTube for practical insights you can apply immediately
Substack for deeper dives in written form
Skool community for resources and peer support
LinkedIn for quick takes on ADHD combined with the regular content
And if you’re ready to work intensely with me, taking action today to transform, I’m offering ADHD coaching for leaders who want to deliver results without burning out.
If this resonates—for you or someone you lead—please share it.
Because ADHD isn’t something to fix. It’s something to unleash.