The ADHD Skills Lab
Things are starting to fall through the cracks.
Not because you're not trying, but because the systems everyone recommends weren't built for a brain like yours.
The ADHD Skills Lab is for business owners with ADHD whose responsibilities have grown past simple solutions. Each week, Skye Waterson and guests share research-backed strategies and real-world systems to help you reduce the chaos, make consistent progress, and stop reinventing the wheel every time life gets complex.
No "just use a planner." No productivity hacks that last a week. Just honest, practical support from someone who has spent years researching, testing, and refining what actually works for adult ADHD.
Skye is the founder of Unconventional Organisation, a former academic diagnosed with ADHD during her PhD, and the author of over 50 articles read by more than 250,000 people worldwide. She has worked with senior leaders, business owners, academics, and professionals navigating ADHD in high-responsibility roles, and was invited to share her research with both the Australian and New Zealand Government.
🤝 In partnership with Understood.org: https://u.org/4boG8QW
🌐 https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com/
📲 https://www.instagram.com/theadhdskillslabpodcast/
Episodes
216 episodes
You Won’t Outgrow ADHD Working Memory, So Build Systems Instead
You start an email, remember a purchase, open another tab, and suddenly five tasks are each 20 percent done. For adults with ADHD, working memory problems don't necessarily disappear with age.Skye Waterson and Robert Waterson unpack a 20...
Does RSD Cause Physical Stress?
Rejection sensitive dysphoria gets talked about constantly in ADHD spaces, but there isn't much research behind it yet.In this Research Recap, Skye and Will unpack a small study that tried to measure what happens when people with ...
Psychotherapist Shares How Smart Delegation Saves Neurodivergent Entrepreneurs
You hired help. You still find yourself taking things back on.Kara Kushnir built A Work of Heart Counseling and Wellness from a part-time practice into a fifteen-provider team. But growing the team meant learning that she couldn't keep d...
The Truth About Masking Your ADHD & How To Fix It
ADHD treatment works. But does it keep working the same way eight years later?In this Research Recap, Skye and Will dig into the MTA study, one of the largest and most influential ADHD treatment studies ever conducted, and what re...
ADHD and the Daily Habit That Makes Goals Inevitable
You know what you want in the future. You still can't make yourself do the boring task today.Skye and Robbie break down the goal setting system Skye actually uses, adapted from Dan Martell's framework. It works backward from a 25-year vi...
The ADHD Task Manager That Actually Works (Jason Chatfield)
You know what needs doing. You have the ideas. So why is actually finishing the thing so hard?Jason Chatfield has written and drawn the syndicated comic strip Ginger Meggs for sixteen years, writes for The New Yorker, and built a career ...
Why ADHD Business Owners Struggle With Social Media More Than Money
You built the business because you were good at the work. Nobody warned you that promoting it might be harder than doing it.New research on neurodivergent entrepreneurs found that maintaining a social media profile was the most commonly ...
$17.5 Billion CEO Explains The Unfair Advantage ADHD Gives Your Business (Carlos Gutierrez)
Carlos Gutierrez spent 25 years rising from sales representative to CEO of Kellogg, then served as U.S. Commerce Secretary. He did it all without knowing he had ADHD.When he was diagnosed later in life, Carlos began looking back at his c...
The Surprising Link Between Hay Fever & ADHD (with William Curb)
Waking up exhausted after eight hours of sleep isn't just bad luck. In this Research Recap, Skye and Will break down a meta-analysis on hay fever and ADHD, including the finding that people with allergies are significantly more likely to...
The AI Shift Every Founder Needs to Understand (Matt Verlaque)
You hit a growth ceiling and your first instinct is to change what you're doing, not fix how you're doing it.Matt Verlaque has coached founders past a million in revenue and sees the same pattern over and over: something works, the novel...
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How ADHD Became His Secret Weapon in Business (Tom Reber)
Tom Reber built successful businesses while privately believing he wasn't smart enough to fight for his own ideas. That belief followed him from childhood special ed into business ownership, where he went bankrupt once and later sold another bu...
Why Your Team Hates New Softwares (And What to Do About It)
You spent real money on a system nobody uses.Skye and Robert Waterson see this problem regularly working as fractional COOs with ADHD business owners. The owner gets excited about a new system, the team agrees to the change, and a few we...
Chris Do On Why Nobody Cares About Your Brand Until You Stop Hiding
Most people don't struggle to put themselves out there because they lack ideas. They struggle because they're afraid of what people will think once they see the real version of them.So they post the safe version instead. The version nobody ...
Can Virtual Reality Actually Help With ADHD?
Most ADHD interventions only work if you actually stick with them. So what happens when the intervention is something your brain actually wants to do?Skye joins Will to unpack a systematic review of 22 studies on virtual reality interven...
How To Deal With Deadlines With Your ADHD Brain - Rebroadcast
You’re guessing how long things take.That guess feels reasonable.It’s just wrong, over and over again.In the last episode, we broke down why ADHD time blindness happens. This one is about what to do about it.Because ...
Why Perfectionism Keeps Your Business Stuck (Even Though You're An Overachiever)
You can be successful on paper and still feel stuck.In this episode, Skye talks with entrepreneur and investor Kassidy Warren about leaving the corporate “safe path,” taking real risks, and the identity shift required to stop playing sma...
The 4 Types of ADHD Founders (Which One Are You?)
Click the link below to see which founder type you are!https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com/adhd-founder-typesYou keep solving the same business problems, but they keep coming back in different forms.After revie...
The Real Reason Your ADHD Mindset Won't Change (Mick Hawes)
You've read the books. You've tried to think your way into a better mindset. But the changes never seem to stick.In this episode, Mick Hawes shares why he believes that's because mindset isn't something you change directly. Drawing on mo...
ADHD Treatment: The Shocking Results After 8 Years
You start medication or therapy, things get better, and then a few years later the old struggles creep back in. You wonder if you did something wrong.This week, Skye Waterson is joined by Will Curb from Hacking Your ADHD for a Research R...
Why "Just Start" Advice Fails With ADHD (And What Actually Works)
You've probably heard it before:"Just start.""You'll feel better once you begin.""Get rid of all distractions."If you have ADHD, you've probably also discovered that this advice often doesn...
Why ADHD Owners Crash When Money Systems Change Too Fast (Diane Gardner)
If you've ever tried to overhaul your finances in one weekend only to abandon the system a few days later, you're not alone. According to Diane Gardner, that's exactly why most financial systems fail for ADHD business owners.Diane Gardne...
Why ADHD Was the Ultimate Survival Mechanism
Why does your ADHD feel manageable in one situation but overwhelming in another?In this episode, Skye and Robbie explore a little-known 1997 review paper that challenged the traditional view of ADHD. Instead of seeing ADHD traits as fixe...
Why Adults with ADHD Struggle with Friendships (Caroline Maguire)
You meet someone, become instant best friends, and a few months later they're gone. Then it happens again.Most ADHD advice focuses on productivity, but Caroline Maguire believes we're missing something just as important: friendship. Caro...
Does Meditation Actually Help ADHD? What Two Studies Found
Meditation is one of the most common ADHD recommendations—but what does the research actually say?In this Research Recap, Skye Waterson and William Curb examine two studies on mindfulness and ADHD. The first explores an 8-week min...
Why ADHD Founders Quit at Exactly the Right Time
Every founder with ADHD has wondered whether they quit too early. A 2024 foraging study unexpectedly suggests the opposite may sometimes be true. Researchers built an experiment expecting ADHD traits to be a disadvantage, and instead discovered...
