SuccessFULL With ADHD

ADHD, AI, and the Myth of Hustle: Smarter Success Strategies with Skye Waterson

• Brooke Schnittman MA, PCC, BCC • Season 1 • Episode 96

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In this episode, I’m thrilled to welcome my colleague and fellow neurodivergent leader, Skye Waterson! Skye is the founder of Unconventional Organisation, a global ADHD support service, and host of the ADHD Skills Lab podcast. We talk about her winding journey from academia and burnout to building a thriving coaching practice that helps professionals worldwide create focused, balanced lives with ADHD. Skye shares how her late ADHD diagnosis during her PhD changed everything—from how she works to how she supports others, including leaders and entrepreneurs navigating similar paths.

We dive into the latest research on ADHD, including how AI may play a surprising role in identifying ADHD through speech patterns, and what that means for the future of diagnostics. Skye also walks us through the tools and systems—like Notion AI and the prioritization filter—that help her clients go from overwhelmed to intentional and effective. Whether you’re a late-diagnosed adult, a business leader, or someone looking to better understand how ADHD impacts performance and communication, this episode will give you insight, validation, and practical strategies to take with you.

Skye Waterson is a former academic turned coach, podcast host, and founder of Unconventional Organisation, an international ADHD support service. After her surprise ADHD diagnosis during her PhD, she developed research-based strategies and wrote over 50 articles reaching 250,000+ readers. Invited to share her insights with the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service, Skye has supported late-diagnosed professionals across various fields. As host of the ADHD Skills Lab podcast with over 100,000 downloads, she helps overwhelmed professionals create focused, balanced lives. Through her writing, speaking, and coaching, Skye has assisted thousands in understanding and managing their ADHD

Episode Highlights:

[0:00] – Skye introduces research exploring how AI may detect ADHD through voice patterns.
[0:56] – Welcoming Skye and a little behind-the-scenes on how this rescheduled episode finally happened.
[2:13] – Skye’s academic background and her "spiky profile" with dyscalculia and ADHD.
[4:18] – The surprising journey to her ADHD diagnosis during a PhD burnout.
[7:55] – How ADHD and masking impacted her personal and professional life.
[10:09] – The rise of AI in ADHD research and how it may change diagnostics.
[11:59] – ADHD in leadership: why your boss might have ADHD too.
[13:30] – Communication patterns and how AI might pre-diagnose ADHD through language use.
[15:26] – Brooke breaks down current diagnostic standards and methods.
[18:19] – The pros and cons of early detection and potential misdiagnosis using AI.
[20:43] – Why Notion AI is a game-changer for ADHD task management and prioritization.
[24:54] – Skye’s coaching philosophy: simplify, systematize, and focus on the 20% that matters.
[26:30] – Writing her book and balancing what to include vs. what needs coaching support
[31:18] – Where to follow Skye and her work (Instagram, Substack, podcast).
[32:00] – The one thing Skye wants every ADHD-er to hear: You’re already working hard—now work smarter.

Connect with Sky Waterson:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unconventionalorganisation/ 

Website: https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com/ 

Thank you for tuning into "SuccessFULL with ADHD." If this episode has impacted you, remember to rate, follow, share, and review our podcast. Your support helps us reach and help more individuals navigating their journeys with ADHD.

Want to be ‘SuccessFULL with ADHD’ by Activating Your ADHD Potential?
Order our 3x best-selling book/workbook for adults with ADHD ▶️ http://bit.ly/activateadhd

Brooke Schnittman:

Tell me a little bit more what you were saying about AI and voice and people possibly being diagnosed based on what they're hearing from Ai they looked at.

Skye Waterson:

Can the AI tell basically if somebody has ADHD based on how they talk. So this idea of like, okay, well, if we're communicating with ADHD, is there a way that we communicate that's obvious and obvious to the point where the AI might be able to pick it up and figure out that that's what this is. And they did find that there's some strong evidence that we have ways of talking. We kind of come to a point and go back around. We skip a few steps, you know, things that we know about ourselves. We interrupt more and so these things, when you look at them across like a large language learning model, they can provide potentially some, some strong indications of ADHD, which could change the game for diagnostic, or at least pre diagnostic.

Brooke Schnittman:

Welcome to successful with ADHD. I'm Brooke Schmidt, let's get started. Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of successful with ADHD in true ADHD fashion today, this one has been rescheduled about three times, but we are here with my colleague sky Waterson, who's a former academic turned coach, podcast host and founder of unconventional organization, which is an international ADHD support service, and I've had the opportunity to be on her podcast. Sky's surprise after her ADHD diagnosis was during her PhD, where she developed research based strategies and wrote over 50 articles reaching 250,000 plus readers. How cool is that she was invited to share her insights with the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service. And sky has supported late, diagnosed professionals across various fields as the host of the ADHD skills lab podcast with over 100,000 downloads. And she helps overwhelmed professionals create focused, balanced lives through her writing, speaking and coaching. So sky, welcome. Finally, on to successful with ADHD. It's a pleasure to have you.

Unknown:

Yeah, thanks. It's really great to be here.

Brooke Schnittman:

Yeah, yeah. So we hear so many times the late diagnosed woman with ADHD sounds like you are really academic. So I'm not sure of your journey in school, but if I had to guess academically, you were probably a high achiever.

Skye Waterson:

I was what you would call a really spiky profile. So in terms of my English, things like that. I did really, really well. It was kind of off the charts, because I just couldn't stop reading in terms of math, I, turns out, have dyscalculia, so I could do, like, coding computers, that kind of stuff. I love that. But like, if you gave me a basic math equation and no calculator, it would just be crickets. So I went through my schooling with I did enough, and a lot of it was, you know, working and then burning out to get the grades I needed to get to the next level. But I also experienced a lot of that kind of, you know, how could you even fail at this? Everybody else is doing fine as well.

Brooke Schnittman:

So your reading, your writing, that was where you succeeded, and then the math piece of your dyscalculia was more challenging and caused more negative. Talk

Skye Waterson:

definitely had I not found statistics which, for some crazy reason, didn't twig the same thing. I don't think I would be sitting here today, but I found statistics, and they let you use computers for that. So we were all good,

Brooke Schnittman:

absolutely. It's so funny how you know, I hated statistics, but I loved math. Loved Yes, I loved algebra, right? All the things that you hated. So we're all different. Two late diagnosed women with ADHD here succeeding in two totally opposite things. So then you were doing research in your academia, and you discovered you had ADHD. How did that all go down?

Skye Waterson:

Yeah, so I I'd had ups and downs with my career. I basically had, you know, went through the academic space because it felt very comfortable, you know, something that I was used to. But I would burn out every couple of years and go do something completely different after my masters. You know, I burned out so hard that I just took a year completely away from anything. Even though I had a PhD scholarship at that time, I just couldn't, couldn't imagine doing it again. So when I went back to the university and I decided, okay, I want to do this, I was like, I have to figure out what's going on. Because. Sometimes I'm great, and sometimes I don't even find I don't even, you know, read the second page of the test. So I went to them, I had no idea what I could have. I thought maybe dyslexia, because I knew that could run in my family. And then they were amazing. They gave me a lot of interesting tests. So you click buttons, leave you in a room, all kinds of things. And they came back and they said, Hey, we think you have ADHD, and we think you should get, you know, tested for that. And I was like, I think it's just for kids, like I taught ADHD in developmental psychology, and we didn't talk about adults. Yep, doesn't exist. You're wrong.

Brooke Schnittman:

Oh, wow. So you didn't even going through psychology. Weren't really taught that adults have ADHD. It's just in kids. So the lack of education like and knowledge and understanding, right, when we were going to school, there's new information all the time that we're learning. And even in the UK, right, they didn't know that there was an adult ADHD diagnosis until most recently. Do you believe that your non specific learning disability also masked your ADHD.

Skye Waterson:

I think that both having ADHD and then having dyscalculia meant that I essentially I overcame both of those issues by working, like, double the amount of anybody else that was that was working. It was something I learned from my parents. They were both very, you know, you're going to get good grades, kind of parents. And so, yeah, work hard. And so if you know, one of the things was, like, if it's not working, you know, because I did really bad in school for math and things like that, you know. Then we're just going to figure out how to get we're going to get extra classes, extra lessons, all that, more tutoring, more tutoring, exactly. So I took that with me throughout my academic career, and so I was doing well, but I was doing well at the expense of my own personal health, my personal life, you know, that kind of thing. So I think that was really the masking. The masking was more just I didn't realize until I started learning the strategies. And you're right, there wasn't any understanding of ADHD, not when I and I studied clinical psychology, which is where you get diagnosed with it while and, you know, I only studied that at honors level, but still, I just didn't, didn't know that it was not normal to be pushing this hard. Yeah,

Brooke Schnittman:

well, two things I I got my master's in students with disabilities, and then before that, my undergrad in elementary education, and I also, like, had no idea that I was exhibiting the same signs that my students were, and I did when right, it's just wild to professionals in the neurodivergent space who had no idea that they themselves had it, and also that old school mentality of just work harder, just work harder, and you will get there. Yeah, burnout doesn't matter. Just keep working until you get that A I

Skye Waterson:

didn't even know what burnout was at that age, like, burnout didn't like, we didn't talk about burnout at the time when I was yeah, it was just like, Well, clearly you you just couldn't hack it. Or, I think the thing that I used to tell myself was, oh, well, I'm just, this isn't my passion. So I would, I would go up the ladder of academia, but I would do it in psychology and then sociology, and then in design school, and then yes. And so I would be like, I just have to find my passion, and then I'll never burn out again. Yeah,

Brooke Schnittman:

yeah, that same thing. I went into administration and then started my own business. It was like, let's just keep climbing the ladder, and that will, that will do it. Let's take the weekends and do all the work and have no social life. And you know, it will work. I'll be the best and they won't know no one. It's only proven that, like psychologically, we do better with people around, yeah, but no big deal. So you got your diagnosis, you started your company, unconventional organization, and you do a lot of research. So tell me, I mean, there's research coming out all the time about ADHD, neurodivergence, diversity. Tell the listeners what you find to the most up and coming information. In that you and your team have researched that you feel the listeners would be interested in,

Skye Waterson:

gosh, there's so much. There's so much coming out. I mean, this is one of the reasons why we review research in our podcast, because it comes up so often. I think the biggest things are AI. AI is coming in, and obviously it's affecting a lot of different things. It's also affecting diagnostics. There's studies that are coming out around could large language models hear how a person speaks and use that, you know, snippet of language, to understand if they have ADHD, and they've done some tests on that, so there's more conversations around diagnosis. I think the other thing that's really interesting is for me, anyway, it's one of the groups that I particularly work with are business owners and CEOs and executives, and so this is still a very new thing. Whenever I go onto a podcast where I talk to people with work and they say, What do you expect me not to know I'm like, the person with ADHD is probably your boss. And so this conversation is starting to come through. And so I'm learning, at the moment, I'm doing research into ADHD in leadership roles. What does it look like when? And the truth is is there's very, very, very little research on this. It's still very much expected that if you have ADHD, you're never going to be able to get promoted. So they're never going to even discuss that. But there's a discussion of change leadership and transformational leadership and all of these things that connect really well with ADHD strengths and this, you know, maybe there's a future conversation we can have about how that could come with some weaknesses that need support. So I'm also looking at how ADHD affects people who are doing, you know, who are in those spaces. Yeah, I find

Brooke Schnittman:

it interesting that you say that, because I get asked to speak for, you know, fortune, 500 big companies too, and it's like, okay, let management know how to work with their associates, right? And the data says, and this isn't all leaders, but 30% of entrepreneurs have ADHD. I think it's way more than that. And yeah, people just don't know or not disclosing. And then you have the leaders, right? The CEOs, the ones that are visionaries, the ones who need to be creative, the ones who need to put out fires, the ones who need to be on their toes and do something different every day, which like that is the Exactly, exactly, yeah. So, like, how do you harness, like, universal design, and everyone gets what they need. Yeah, that's a really great the leader doesn't know that they too have ADHD, right? So I think there's that education in both. And how do we work together to make a cohesive where two people, maybe have ADHD, the associate and the leader, and how you work with each other styles? So exactly, find that I can't wait for that to come out so you can tell us more about that, and then tell me a little bit more about what you were saying about AI and voice and people possibly being diagnosed based on what they're hearing from Ai.

Skye Waterson:

So this is not meta analysis research. So when we talk about the research, I always like to make a distinction between the research that's been like reviewed, multiple pieces of researchers come out. And then we're looking at, like a meta analysis of that research, which is usually the best research, the stuff that we can really commit to. And then there's just the interesting single paper. So this is more in that interesting single paper line. And what they found was, you know, they they looked at, can the AI tell basically, if somebody has ADHD based on how they talk and they used, there's a episode, you guys can just DM me on Instagram if you want it at unconventional organization, and I'll actually send you this episode. But this episode is about the idea of communication styles with ADHD. So this idea of like, okay, well, if we're communicating with ADHD. Is there a way that we communicate that's obvious and obvious to the point where the AI might be able to pick it up and figure out that that's what this is. And they did find that there's some strong evidence that we have ways of talking. We kind of come to a point and go back around. We skip a few steps. You know, things that we know about ourselves, we interrupt more. And so these things, when you look at them across like a large language learning model, they can provide potentially some strong indications of ADHD, which could change the game for diagnostic, or at least pre diagnostic.

Brooke Schnittman:

Yeah. So like. Let's talk about, what does that mean for diagnosticians? Yeah,

Skye Waterson:

well, I think a lot of times, you know, I mean, we've talked, I'm sure, about how long it takes you to get diagnosed with ADHD, and I know you had someone recently on your podcast talking about the different ways of doing that. So I guess my question for you, because I think you might be more up to date with this than me, what is the current like diagnostic process like? What's the best way to get a diagnosis?

Brooke Schnittman:

I don't think there is a best way. I mean surveys, right the checking off the boxes for the DSM five. What symptoms of ADHD Do you have? Has it occurred before the age of 12 in two or more areas of your life. And if it's before the age of 17 that you're getting diagnosed, then you have to have six out of nine symptoms. And if it's after the age of 17 that you have to currently be exhibiting five out of nine symptoms. So that is the standard. But as far as like not being the best way, I have children with ADHD who went to the pediatrician and they diagnosed. It was so obvious, right? That they had ADHD, and that was the first step, right? It really depends on finances and wait time. Like you said, for students, you can also get a neuropsychological evaluation, a psychiatric evaluation. You could get one from the school, which usually takes longer, but you don't need to spend 1000s of dollars to go outside of school, but, but the child needs to qualify, and you need to go through the committee of special education to do all of that, right So, and then there's other other things, like brain scans and genetic markers, but they say that right now, ones that are, you know, proven to be the best are when it's being done through a survey. It's one of

Skye Waterson:

those things where I think the biggest problem that people are having is for a lot of people, getting access to ADHD diagnostics is very expensive to get, and so it would be nice to know if you qualify, if there's like, if there's an option to say, like, hey, like, I was very lucky. For example, I would never have walked into a psychiatrist office and paid up front for those services, if there was not a situation where I'd gone to my university for free and they'd done tests on me. So they did the eye tracking test, and they did a couple of other tests, you know, and asked me questions and things like that. So there is a world where putting aside all of the ethics around AI, because obviously we talk about that too. There is a world where, you know, somewhat creepily, you could record kids in a classroom and become aware of, like you, your child might be exhibiting signs of this or that. You should get tested, and not just for ADHD, other things as well. So

Brooke Schnittman:

like you said, it's more of like a pre diagnostic, definitely pre diagnostic, years that you know your son or daughter might Yeah, have these symptoms that can exist with ADHD, go see a pediatrician, go see a psychologist, go see a psychiatrist. Yeah, and

Skye Waterson:

maybe it's not that, you know, yeah, but at least, I mean, I thought I had dyslexia, and then I found that I had ADHD. So, you know, it's, it's always, it could, it could provide some sense of what's going on and and we talk about the pros and cons of that and the anxieties of that as well. Yeah,

Brooke Schnittman:

yeah. No, absolutely. Well, I think there is, I mean, there's no good or bad or right or wrong, but I definitely think that that could prevent a lot of missed diagnoses, as you mentioned, or wrong diagnoses. It brings opportunity to get an early diagnosis and then get the help that is needed, so you don't need to learn later in life that, oh, this whole time my anxiety existed because I wasn't being treated properly for the right symptoms or the right diagnosis, exactly. Yeah, very interesting. Yeah. You know, AI is so funny, right? Because everyone was a lot of people were really scared, some people were excited, and it, yeah, it's a beast. It can do so much, right? But I think I've heard before that if you don't grow with AI at this point, like you're going to get lost, especially as a business leader,

Skye Waterson:

yeah, I think it's one of those things. I mean, I personally, when I'm teaching strategies, I learn AI systems. I have, you know, and so, you know, I learned about notion AI. AI is kind of in everything right now. So I'm sort of approaching AI in the same academic framework that I approached everything. Look at the research. Get a sense of what's going to work best. Try it practically myself. See if it works. Try it with my one on one clients, if it's working on all of those different levels. But. That's when I will introduce it to my coaching program. To You know, it's been vetted and and it will help you. In this particular instance, sounds

Brooke Schnittman:

like you have an open mind and you're curious and you're constantly growing, which is makes an amazing leader. You mentioned notion, and I'm glad you brought that up, because I do know that so many of my clients as well and so many ADHD ers out there love notion. Can you tell the people listening, I did talk about it ironically this week with some of my groups. Can you tell some of the listeners like, what you use notion for, personally, professionally, what some of your clients use it for?

Skye Waterson:

Yeah, so the biggest thing I use it for is I teach something to help you go from overwhelm to focused. It's called the prioritization filter. It's one of my oldest systems based on the research that I just described. And so one of the ways that I use notion is to help me filter my priorities. So I use it as a bit of a dumping ground for my tasks. And then I go through and I filter priorities according to, you know, helping with working memory, helping with time blindness, helping with dopamine, urgency. It just takes a couple of minutes, and that process is probably the one I use it most for. But the reason I use notion, I mean, my community manager loves notion, so she got me into it. And initially I was like, no, not another thing, because I'm quite resistant that these days. But notion, AI does allow you to pull information. So you could say, like, Hey, I talked about this thing, or this was a priority that I discussed, can you pull up where I said it? And notion will do that, which is really good. I will say I have caught notion slacking a little bit. And this does happen with AI, where I've said, Hey, can you find this thing? And it's given me, like, the latest version I've been talking about it, and I've had to be like, No, I talked about it in like, last year, like, go deeper. And so it's sort of reluctantly. I always think of it as, like an enthusiastic intern. It's like, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's had a bad day and it's a bit hungover, and you have to, like, really,

Brooke Schnittman:

that's so funny. This is not a sponsor of notion. Yeah, no, we're not doing that. But it's really funny. This is like, Okay, well, sometimes we can access our long term memory and sometimes our working memory is not working, so it doesn't go into the long term memory. Sorry, yeah. It's funny because, you know, like the way that you said it, it reminds me of just like Google Doc, and they have the tabs now, right? So, yeah, and then you could go find and search and go find things from like, use it as a scroll. I use Asana. I mean, Trello Monday are similar. Yeah, there's so much out there.

Skye Waterson:

There is, and I That's why I always say everything I teach is product agnostic. I will tell you if the system you're using is not ADHD friendly, that sometimes happens. But as long as it's ADHD friendly, it's going to support your working memory, support your time blindness. I don't mind if it's paper, if it's digital, if it's aI we work with all our bills, or both. Yeah. Well, as long as you have a flow, a workflow for why you're doing it exactly,

Brooke Schnittman:

exactly, yep, yep, that's great. Yeah, I always have that dynamic people asking, Okay, what, what app should I download? What AI tool should I use? And my experiential logical brain is like, just do what works for you. Try not to over complicate the system. If you don't have a system, I can recommend some, and we can see why it may or may not work. But just because there's a million apps out there right now on productivity and focus doesn't mean that any of them are going to work better for you than the thing that you're using right now. Exactly

Skye Waterson:

usually, what we're looking at is we're looking at kind of this idea of what works for you, and then I'll look at it, and I'll probably pull out like 30% of it, because it's unnecessary,

Brooke Schnittman:

exactly like you're just trying to simplify and under complicate their life, right? Yep,

Skye Waterson:

that's that's like 90% of what I do. It's like, simplify and then help you understand what is the 20% that's going to give you 80% return, whether it's increased revenue or, you know, hitting your KPIs, whatever it is that you need to do, and then figure out how to actually get the time and actually keep the time to do that in your life. It's very simple, but incredibly complicated to do.

Brooke Schnittman:

Is so you've been in the field for years now. Why don't you tell us what year 2080 is? My successful? Yeah, well, I'm doing what I do 20% of the time. That gives you 80% results.

Skye Waterson:

Honestly, I was just reviewing this because I make my community think about this a lot like this is something that that I get people to do a lot because, like, I worked with two people yesterday who have like, six and seven figure businesses, and they didn't know what their 8020 was. They were like, maybe I need to do this new thing. Maybe I need to build this new thing. And I was like, if you look at the data, and again, we want to come back to the data. This is how you've been getting clients. So why don't we do more of that? Follow your kid? My 8020 Exactly. My 8020 is, is emailing people to be on podcasts. If I'm being completely, completely frank, I I don't know why. Maybe it's because you guys can't see my face, but I it's just way better on podcasts, I think I'm still a bit awkward on Instagram. I do have like 80,000 followers, but usually when people hear me on podcasts, it's when they're usually when people hear me on podcast, that's when they're like, Oh, she knows what she's talking about, so I try and go on another I

Brooke Schnittman:

like her. I trust, yeah, I like her fully sound so that she knows that's really cool. So what else are you guys working on at unconventional organization at the moment? Oh, good

Skye Waterson:

question. I mean, we're really working at the moment. You know, I started writing a book, so I am trying to write the book, focus, balance days. You know how to get that with ADHD, but it's been interesting because I'm just trying to figure out, like, what to include and what not to include, and this is in the model and the book. So what we're working on is, I run a coaching program called Focus, balance growth, and it helps people in the community understand what they need to do with ADHD, and then how to get there as part of a community of other business owners and executives who are doing the same thing. And so for me, it's really becoming a case of going, Okay, I've spent a real I've spent, you know, five years learning about how to help you do the thing. But there's a lot of people now, including myself, who run businesses or run teams, and they have to help their teams do the thing, and there's a big understanding of that as well. So the research I'm looking into right now, and the thing I'm thinking, do I keep it in the book? Do I not keep it in the book, is, do I start talking about that as well? Do I bring in being a team leader with ADHD as well. Yeah,

Brooke Schnittman:

I know how hard it is to know when you're writing a book, is it too much? Is it too little? And I actually spoke about this on an earlier podcast where it was an Ask me anything like, activate your ADHD potential podcast episode. And it was I had to take a break, like a pretty long break. I got my book out in less than a year, but I did it as a self published, not I didn't have to go through a publisher. And I remember I just like, same thing with you. Like, I was like, Okay, I have this idea. I want to teach people how to go from chaos to clarity, but with my 12 steps of my program, but I want to talk about the disruption cycle. So then once I started talking about the disruption cycle, I got to a point, and I was stuck right. And then I started added adding in my program after a while, and I was like, oh, it just naturally flowed. I'm like, okay, instead of this, let me add this. Instead of this, let me add this. Let me add more to this. And you again, you get into your 20. I know it's 8020 but you get into your 20% that person produces 80% results, right? You get into your flow, and you're like, Okay, right? So don't overthink it. It will come. Thanks.

Skye Waterson:

I appreciate it. Yeah, I think that's the thing for me. I'm committing to writing and to speaking, and actually I use AI to help me with both of those things. So, you know, it is helpful, but it's

Brooke Schnittman:

a speaking partner, yeah,

Skye Waterson:

exactly. But it is really coming through this idea of, like, yeah, what is the 20% that's going to give everybody else the 80% I think that's probably the thing I'm focusing on at the moment. Is, you know, having too much stuff, basically, and wanting to having to pare it down, and, you know, make sure I teach the stuff that's going to have the biggest impact, which is what I always wanted, yeah, 100%

Brooke Schnittman:

and I think having five years experience doing what you're doing, right, they say you're an expert after five years. Oh, really. And yeah, so you're an expert, but I think you'll know. I think you'll know because you'll have your outline, you already have your program. Mm. And you put it into the book, and then you're like, wait a second, they are not going to be able to translate this piece just by a book, right? Like they actually need someone to teach that. So let me take that out and add this. Right? Exactly.

Unknown:

Yeah. Well, that's great advice. I appreciate

Brooke Schnittman:

that. I think,

Skye Waterson:

honestly, I put it all for so long because I wrote a master's thesis and then burned out for a year before I got my diagnosis. And so when someone was like, Do you want to write a book? I was like, not again,

Brooke Schnittman:

never. Okay, fine, yeah, pretty much,

Skye Waterson:

yeah. I'm like, Look, I have a book. They're like, it's all on ADHD. I'm like, oh, god damn.

Brooke Schnittman:

But just remember, too, I think, like, when you have a program regardless, like, you know, it works for people, so when you put it in the book, like, Okay, you're like, 12 steps ahead of so many people who don't have anything and are starting from scratch. So yeah, hopefully that gives you some flow, that gives you your first couple steps,

Skye Waterson:

if you guys want to follow, yeah, it's on sub stack. You can watch my like, journey to writing this on sub stack. It's like, helps keep me accountable.

Brooke Schnittman:

Amazing, amazing. So why don't you share where people can find you on sub stack, your Instagram, all the links if people want to get in touch. Yeah,

Skye Waterson:

no worries. So you can find me at unconventional organization. That's my website. The best way to get in contact with me, and is actually me. And ask me, like, where to find my sub stack, or any other thing you want to know is on Instagram at unconventional organization. And I also have the podcast the ADHD Skills Lab, which Brooke has been on. And we talk about, we get nerdy, we get real nerdy, and we talk about all of the research there. Yeah,

Brooke Schnittman:

it's, it's a great podcast. I definitely recommend that you go follow it and search for our episode if you're gonna follow it anyway. Yeah, you might as well. You might as well. You might as well. Okay, what's one thing that you want to leave listeners with here today who have ADHD? The thing I

Skye Waterson:

want to leave people with is you probably are already working as hard as you can. I think a lot of times people think, and I was definitely one of those people when I was younger, that if I just worked harder and tried harder and white knuckled through it a bit more and got less sleep, I would be able to succeed, and I would get to this point where I'm just like, I've done it, and, you know, I've kind of reached that level. But in reality, you're probably working as hard as you already can, and it's more about how you do it, and it's about the strategies.

Brooke Schnittman:

Yeah, that's so good. So there was an article that came out from, I don't know if a CEO or what, but saying that, in order to have the greatest productivity, to work 60 hours a week. And it's like, interesting, yeah. So next time you think you have to, right, you have to do 60 hours a week. You have to do 80 hours a week. You have to do 90 hours. You have to do 20 hours. 20 hours a week. Think about what works for you and your body,

Skye Waterson:

yeah, what works for you, what works for your family, and you know, this is one of the reasons I'm so passionate about helping people get a team together.

Brooke Schnittman:

Yeah, can't do it alone, nope. Well, Sky, thank you so much for making this happen, and I'm glad your children complied, and everyone's healthy to our listeners out there. Go follow sky, go listen to our podcast and go think about that next AI feature you're using or don't and simplify it.

Unknown:

Yeah, simplify first.

Brooke Schnittman:

Yes, exactly, all right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the pod, and we hope to talk to you soon. Thank you for having

Unknown:

me. Thanks

Brooke Schnittman:

for listening to this episode of successful with ADHD. I hope it helps you on your journey, and if you need any additional support for you or a loved one with ADHD, feel free to reach out to us at coaching with brooke.com, and all social media platforms at coaching with Brooke, and remember, it's Brooke with an E. Thanks again for listening. See you next time you

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