The Hidden Cost of ADHD Novelty Seeking (And How to Fix It)

Description:

Presented by Understood.org

You don’t have a lack of focus. You have too many ideas pulling it in different directions.

This episode builds on Wednesday’s breakdown of ADHD novelty bias and shows you how to actually manage it without shutting it down.

Because the goal isn’t to stop having ideas. It’s to stop them from constantly disrupting execution.

You’ll hear how to treat novelty as input instead of immediate action, how to capture ideas so they stop feeling urgent, and how to create a buffer between what you’re thinking about and what your business actually does.

Right now, every new idea feels important. And when your attention shifts, everything else follows.

This is about keeping the ideas, without letting them take over.

What We Cover:

• Why novelty needs a system, not suppression
• How capturing ideas reduces the urge to act on them
• The “novelty as input, not strategy” approach
• Why your team follows your attention automatically
• How to create a buffer between ideas and execution
• Why most ideas lose urgency if you don’t act on them immediately

If you're enjoying ADHD Skills Lab, you may also enjoy Understood.org’s new podcast, Sorry, I Missed This.

Listen here: https://lnk.to/sorryimissedthisPS!theadhdskillslab

 P.S. Losing work because the admin layer around your business can't keep up with you? Invisible Systems is a 90-day done-for-you sprint where I (Skye) extract the processes from your head, build the operating layer, and find the right person to run it. Six spots left at the founding price, book a call at invisiblesystem.co

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We want to harness that energy but put it in the right place and not have it derange the business. We don't want the founder's ADHD to become the company or the business's ADHD.

SPEAKER_03 0:08

Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of the ADHD Skills Lab, brought to you by understood.org, the leading nonprofit helping millions of people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. Today we are going to be talking a little bit more about what we talked about on Wednesday, which is ADHD novelty seeking and how it affects business owners. As always, I am joined by my wonderful husband, co-founder, partner in this business, and in this podcast, Robert Waterson, and yeah, audio appearances from our little baby Ember will definitely be coming.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Yeah, so I think the core reframe we're doing here is it's input, but not a strategy. It's this is really great input for what we should do next, but not what we should do next week.

SPEAKER_03 0:58

So we're not taking away the novelty seeking because as we've said before, it is useful. It's probably the reason this business even exists. But we are not throwing everything away because there is a new AI that's just come out. And yeah, we're gonna talk about AI.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Yeah, we're trying to decouple that novelty seeking signal from the organizational response. We're trying to let those new ideas still arrive, let them go into a kind of funnel and get analyzed for when they should be implemented, what we should do. Last week we were doing sort of decision avoidance and talking about it at the project level. And then we're also talking now about the organization level. So sort of full new directions, full new offers, sort of a change in the foundational sort of service or what have you.

SPEAKER_03 1:42

Yeah, exactly. I feel like I'm going to let you lead on this one in terms of what those strategies are, because I I want to add in as we go a few of the personal anecdotes of things I've done, because I feel like uh this is of all of the different strategies and struggles that we talk about, this is probably the one I have to have the most systems for myself still, because it's the one that I have to stop myself from doing the most.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Yeah, well, I think it basically comes into two things. One is creating the structure to sort of capture those ideas and actually shelve them and then put them through a process and either resurface them later or creating a buffer against that sort of attention gravity well of like this is what the CEO is now thinking about, and therefore that's what we're all doing. On the other side, giving the CEO most likely the ability to hold strategic direction, sort of separating the responsibility of like again, what's happening next week. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:38

And I I'll say for our own business, like I'm currently working on a new offer, but the business is not currently working on a new offer. The business is currently continuing to do everything that it's already been doing.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Yeah, you have to resist the urge to tell everyone to drop what they're doing and start working on this now.

SPEAKER_03 2:59

Yeah. It's really where the job of the COO or the co-founder can really come into play and be so important because they are the ones who, if it's a good relationship, uh have built out the system of like, that's cool, like go do your thing, and we'll you know, we'll come and like kind of run the business. I don't want to say run the business around you, but kind of give you the space to do that while we run the operational side of what you're what has already been created.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

I think it'll be kind of part of the delegation discussion next week. Um in terms of knowing what you're good at, knowing what your knowing where your seat on the bus is the term you've been using recently.

SPEAKER_03 3:44

Maybe you shouldn't drive the bus. I think that's the key. Like when you're starting a business and you're the CEO, like you drive the bus. It's a very small bus. It's like as small as a bus can be without not being a bus. And you're the one driving it pretty much by yourself. As you grow, as you get into the scaling mode, it becomes more and more useful for somebody else to be driving the business and you to be kind of the bus analogy is a weird one because most buses I've been on, all the other seats are pretty passive roles. It's so funny. I never thought about that. Okay. Well, let me use the other metaphor then. When we started this business, we talked about sailing a ship, right? And there's like a ship and you're sailing it, and everyone has a role, and the roles are really important. The bus, the bus is a bit of a funny metaphor.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

Yeah, I think sort of America's cup ship is a maybe a better analogy.

SPEAKER_03 4:41

Or like a like an old school sailing ship where you have someone who's a chef and someone who's like um washing the deck and doing the rigging, I don't know, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

And when the business starts, you're manning the rudder and rowing, and yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:53

And you're definitely the one driving the ship. You're definitely setting the course driving the ship. But as you grow and scale your business, and your business starts to exist and it starts to be less exciting and less novel, and you've weathered some storms and you kind of know how it works, there is a universe where you start to go, maybe somebody else should be driving the ship. Maybe you should be in this metaphor, drawing the maps. I think it's the dick.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

You shouldn't be at the wheel, like getting bored and spinning it in a new direction. Like, oh, what's that over there?

SPEAKER_03 5:31

Yeah, oh, I thought I saw something. Yeah, so so this is really what we're talking about when we say as you scale, when you are the operator, sorry, when you are the CEO, you might want to start giving more of the day-to-day responsibility of running the business to an operator specifically, because then they can keep the business running or the ship moving. And you can be in the back, like you said, drawing maps, coming up with ideas, but not bringing them forward all the time, bringing them forward more at the correct time when they need to be done, not as a first thing.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

Yeah, you're planning out the voyage, but you're letting someone else implement the changes at a more strategic pace.

SPEAKER_03 6:14

Yeah, and you're in a different, kind of in a different space at that point. And I will say, one of the most useful for those of you who are like, okay, that's cool, but like how do I like okay, I don't talk to my team about my business ideas? Like, well, um, my partner doesn't want to hear about them. Who am I talking to about this idea? Well, one, it's a great time to get a mastermind of other business owners, you know, share it with them. But two, you can use AI, and I don't want to go too far down like asking AI for advice or anything like that. You should definitely have a business mentor. But you can use AI to do a bit of a pre-mortem, which we'll talk about more in another episode, a pre-mortem of your business idea. So if you draw a map of something that you want to try, you can ask the AI, like, hey, if this didn't work, why wouldn't it work? Think it through with me to kind of flesh out some idea rather than just going straight to your operator and kind of giving it to them.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Yeah, I think the chief operator could also, I'm trying to think, we have each other, but that's not like you said.

SPEAKER_03 7:17

Um this is why Y Combinator apparently has a has a preference for people with co-founders. Like if you don't have a co-founder, it's kind of a mark against you because it is a lonely thing to be. I mean, you could go a bit crazy drawing maps in a back room by yourself.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

What makes someone a good COO might not be the same thing as what you want from someone who's going to plan out all these new ideas with you. I don't know if the EA is the right role either, though, but there's a lot I think it's not. I'm wondering what the role is, but I I am wondering, I don't think rabbit holes with that is a good idea. Well, sometimes it can be good just to get you started, but it's I'm not yucking the um I'm not yucking the post pre-mortem. I'm just thinking, I can't imagine not having someone to talk these things through and make these plans with. You almost want if you have this sort of novelty-seeking, creative, plotting a new course, CEO, ADHD founder, you kind of want someone to be capturing all of those thoughts, refining them with him.

SPEAKER_03 8:20

And again, this is why a co-founder is so helpful. I mean, I definitely struggled when you weren't like officially a co-founder for a little while.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

It was a struggle, yeah. I remember when you're not in free having some better childcare supports, yeah, it was definitely hard to play that role because you're just not you don't just don't have enough context when you're not in it every day.

SPEAKER_03 8:43

Yeah, for context, we have three little children. One of them is here with us today. And for a while, especially I think when we had two little boys under three, like three and under, Robbie was full-time caring for them, and you just we were just in totally different roles at that point. Like you didn't you weren't as across the business.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

Yeah, even when you have the bandwidth for it, there's too much missing context.

SPEAKER_03 9:06

Exactly. And I'm not gonna come down and be like, also have this. Like, here's my thing, like, here's the business idea.

SPEAKER_01 9:13

Yeah, or I think when you did, we'd run into that frustration of like, okay, well, I didn't have that context. You know, okay, well, then give me all the context first, but then there's too much. There's too much to transfer in the space of a walk.

SPEAKER_03 9:25

I really missed having you as a co-founder, like we'd always been co-founders together, and having somebody to like I like as soon as you came back on and we had the support that you could like really put your brain back into the business again, we went much faster. So this is a little bit adjacent from what we're talking about, but yeah, get your CEO, or if you are a CEO, get a friend or a co-founder or somebody you can talk to because it is important.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

Yeah, if you're already established, you're probably not gonna find a co-founder necessarily, but definitely like a strategic sort of someone who can someone who you can talk those ideas with, capture them, someone who's excited to hear about them.

SPEAKER_03 10:07

Maybe you should get a coach.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

We do coach business owners, but ideally a marriage partner.

SPEAKER_03 10:12

Yeah. You're like co-founders are too hard, marry someone. Because I know a lot of people who are like, oh, I don't talk about business with my spouse. Like I hear that a lot.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

I don't know what the term position title would be, but someone to someone that that person can talk new ideas with, refine them, shelve them, resurface them when they're appropriate. I think it might not be the COO. I think the COO might be the COVID sick of hearing about it.

SPEAKER_03 10:38

Well, it shouldn't be the COO because it's that attention thing, that attention gravity, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:43

One of the things that's funny is to distinguish between this is something I'm thinking about and this is what we're doing next week, make it happen.

SPEAKER_03 10:50

It's the equivalent of spending your entire day working and then also watching the news. You know, like the CEO can kind of feel like the news. They come in, they're like, Did you know AI and everything and this and a new idea and we're going in this direction, and in 10 years all of this will be irrelevant. It would be very hard to be a CEO under these conditions.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Too much for them to take in. They're already holding down the business, they don't want to hear every new idea you have. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:16

You know that on the ADHD Skills Lab, we are all about systems that work. But what about those systems in our personal lives? When you have ADHD, managing life every day can feel overwhelming, especially if you're a woman managing work, family, and everything else. That's why I want to share a podcast called Sorry I Missed This. Host Kate Osborne dives into how we can find strategies for our closest relationships and daily routines that respect our unique wiring. Whether you're single, partnered, or navigating family life, it's a mastercast in thriving and being understood with an ADHD brain. I've been listening to Sorry I Miss This and their episode on how menopause and hormones can impact ADHD symptoms in women. And I found it really interesting the way they were describing that PMDD, you know, that's something that you will find out might happen once a month and it feels more regular, whereas perimenopause is something that you really, you know, have less control over when it's gonna happen, as well as the struggles that you could have around estrogen and dopamine regulation as well. All of this was a really interesting conversation that allows us to adjust our strategies with maybe a bit more precision, but definitely far less self-criticism. To listen to sorry, I missed this. Search for sorry I missed this in your podcast app. That's sorry, I missed this. So, yeah, get a coach, get a mentor, get a friend, get a partner, marry them if you will. So, what's the second idea, Robbie?

SPEAKER_01 12:45

So this is like this is basically capturing without acting now that we've given marriage advice instead of business advice. I think the main thing is we've got a dedicated system for capturing those new ideas. I think also for discussing them, I think indulging a little bit in the dopamine novelty-seeking activity with the CEO. The exploration is valid, but you're not expecting to hit 100 when you're exploring new ideas. And but you want you've got this drive to go and do it, you've got this bias towards it. It there's genuine truth out there. There are, depending on the environment, there are other fields more exploitable than the one you've currently you're currently working, but you don't want to be picking up your operation and shifting it to the new field until you've explored, you want to explore 10 fields, find one that is better than the one you're doing, and then move everything.

SPEAKER_03 13:28

Yeah, and then do market research and then build an offer that you don't add to the website, and then test the offer and then make the money and then do it.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Yeah, and you need a structure in place to help with that and sort of honor the process of it. I don't think the answer is no more novelty seeking. I like I can't imagine that.

SPEAKER_03 13:48

Absolutely not. Your business will not survive, you will be very sad. I mean, witness last episode the boredom conversation. Like, we do not want you to go down that road. Like, this is part of the spice of life, is novelty. And so we just want to have a home for it and a and a place to put it. And I I agree with you.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

You want to harness that energy, but put it in the right place and not have it derange the business. We don't want the what was it, the ADHD's, the founder's ADHD to become the company or the business's ADHD.

SPEAKER_03 14:16

Yeah. And also, like sometimes just let it fizzle out. Like, how many times have you and I gone for a really long walk, come up with an idea, and by the time we get home, that idea is not correct. We're like, we're gonna do this thing, and then by the time we get home, we're like, nah, that doesn't make sense.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

And it's much better if it wasted a walk than if it wasted a week or three weeks of the team's energy.

SPEAKER_03 14:37

Yeah. Yeah. Think about it, let yourself think about it. Run a business that doesn't die if you think about something. So like make sure you get your operation set up. Like that's really important. And then don't bring it to an operator until it's been thoroughly tested. Like, if you need help with testing, learn about the science.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Well, and also you're bringing it to them and saying this is going in the pipeline after what you've what you're currently working on is finished.

SPEAKER_03 15:04

Or negotiate. I mean, it's sometimes it's possible. They could have a plan for two years.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Dedicated capture system, record the ideas immediately.

SPEAKER_03 15:11

So your working memory doesn't make you want to go do it before you forget about it.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Yeah, you don't have that, I'm gonna lose this, it's important, it's urgent. Yeah, and I think it's also worth acknowledging that there are circumstances where the pivot now or the pivot mid or the stop what we're doing and do this instead is true. But again, it's about having those sort of like we discussed with the decision avoidance, it's about having thresholds that it has to meet for that to be true.

SPEAKER_03 15:34

And if you haven't like done your market research on this, spoken to other people, verified somebody actually wants to buy it, ideally done like a test project where somebody paid you and you actually did it and you saw if it was good and how it worked, like those are sort of the kinds of things that should be in a threshold before you make a a change to how your business runs or what it sells. Because we have that. I'm reminded about that Alex Hormosy, because I I taught about this in the community actually, that Alex Hormosy idea of, you know, oh, this is this is great. This is gonna be so amazing. Oh, this is quite hard. Oh, this is very hard. Oh, I don't think I'm gonna do it at all. Um, no, I can do it. Oh, now I now I understand. Like you're gonna go through this path. Like everything is hard. Even with a new idea that I'm thinking about right now, I know that I'm gonna get to a point where I'm like, oh, oh, if I'd known how hard this was, I would have understood why no one was doing it and I wouldn't have done it myself. Like that is an inevitable part of all business. So you're never gonna escape that.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

I think we were discussing how that is one of the things that predisposes ADHD people to starting businesses is sort of a lack of understanding, a lack of the working memory, not breaking things down, yeah. Yeah, a lack of clarity on just how complicated this is actually gonna be.

SPEAKER_03 16:53

Yeah, but just a novelty seeking, like, oh, someone will pay me for it.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

This will be cool and it'll only take five minutes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:59

And you know what? That's why all these businesses exist. So shout out, shout out to all of us for doing it.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

We're also wanting to have the sort of structure in place to hold that strategic strategic direction and resist the dopamine-driven pivots, as opposed to the legitimate pivots. They're wanting there to be pushback, bad reason to pivot, the founder's excited, good reason to pivot, something has actually changed, some sort of market signal, some sort of shift, some sort of constraint has changed. It's not that fast pivots are never necessary, but they shouldn't be happening off the back of excitement. And like excitement over something new and novel. I think just in terms of the structures that you do put in place, and obviously a COO or ops leader as the direction holder, again, kind of that I idea of um knowing where your place on the boat is.

SPEAKER_03 17:48

We've abandoned the bus. We're using a boat method.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

There's two key things here. The COO or the ops leader has to have the ability to there has to be, I mean, it's one of those things. The COO can overrule everyone, I suppose, to a degree, depending on like how the power dynamics are set up on boards or what have you. CEO. Yeah. Yeah. But ideally, they there's they've come to an understanding that their position is sort of yeah, in the map room or wherever, up the lookout tower half the time, whatever. But they're not going to go up and start pulling on the wheel.

SPEAKER_03 18:19

Yeah, yeah. Not once they've established and they're you got a big enough ship and they've set a direction.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

And setting up sort of roadmap roadmap structures that actually hold where new things are sort of added at the monthly review or the quarterly review, and they've done so in like a strategic manner.

SPEAKER_03 18:34

Yeah. Monthly, I think, is is a good amount. Quarterly. Four times a year. So little. We'll all be AI bots, overlords by then. I can't live that like that.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

I suppose that's the other thing as well. It shouldn't be happening off the back of again, it's a tough one. It shouldn't be happening, happening out of excitement. It also shouldn't be happening out of panic.

SPEAKER_03 18:56

I think panic is usually the one. Like in my mind, it's usually not excitement. It's usually panic or like we have to do this because of this thing that's happening. Sort of like a not a panic, but like a a very real, like running a business is like like sailing a ship in a storm, in that like your ship is always in danger of pirates or you know, weather, or you know, so you're always kind of like you might be in the bit bottom building a map or in the lookout tower, but you're always like thinking about if you're the if you're a CEO, you're usually thinking about the longevity of the business. How do we keep this going? How do we keep this running?

SPEAKER_01 19:37

You're the one walking the plank when the mutiny mutiny occurs.

SPEAKER_03 19:42

Yeah, exactly. So so for that reason, I think, and I mean, let's just get into it. Like AI has thrown tons of business owners into disarray. And I can tell because every time I open my applications on my computer, somebody has updated something. And now, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but it always involves AI.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Yeah, I'm getting a little bit tired of sort of half-cooked AI.

SPEAKER_03 20:07

And we love AI. We use it, you know. I I have Claude, I use it, it's amazing. I can't believe what it can do now.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

I think that's the thing, right? It's either it's either taking everyone's job.

SPEAKER_03 20:17

Yeah, you better watch what you say. Our AI overlords could watch this in the future.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

It's hard to know between everyone trying to generate clicks and some financial interests behind generating hype, the amount of money going into data centers, the amount of the amount of the economy that's just wrapped up in. Yeah, I I think okay, I think we can't we can't talk about novelty seeking and the attention sort of gravity well of the founder without touching on AI given the current moment.

SPEAKER_03 20:46

You've probably got a founder who has at some point talked about AI and AI efficiencies and not necessarily telling everybody that they're losing their jobs.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

That is the like potentially self-serving give us more funding and buy our shares messaging that's coming from the AI companies. I'm not gonna say it's not coming. I I think I think the truth is it's really hard to know what's reality and what's hype at the moment.

SPEAKER_03 21:11

And if you're somebody whose job it is to like keep a lookout and make maps of the future and see the future of the business, your job just got a lot harder, even with ADHD. And you know, I know that the CEO of Palantir said that neurodiverse people are gonna have an advantage in the AI world, and that might be true in terms of pivoting and being it capable of pivoting, but it's gonna be a struggle in terms of staying focused.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

Yeah, this is a strange thing where AI is simultaneously taking everyone's jobs and also everyone's time. The amount of the amount of like core offerings that are sort of being left unattended while this new AI direction is pursued.

SPEAKER_03 21:54

Yeah, there are a lot of companies that you see that have sort of it feels like they've disappeared from. From the what would have been previously improvement in the company because they're going, okay, but we're gonna build something better now with AI while this company just kind of stalls, or you see people doing um, you know, they're adding AI bits and pieces to their UI, for example, and it's not necessarily correct or it doesn't fit, or you know, there used to be a lot more work involved in updating UI. So I think there used to be a lot more thought to that as well.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

I think it's one of those things where if AI is so useful, like why does your UI still suck and why do we still have a giant roadmap for bug fixes kind of thing? Like it it obviously isn't doing those jobs yet. Yeah, and we're not saying it's going to, or there are definitely things, yeah, there are definitely things that it's eliminated.

SPEAKER_03 22:46

But in terms of, I guess, if you are somebody who's struggling, if you're a CEO, for example, and you are struggling within a founder because the founder comes in with a new idea and then the whole business moves in that direction, then you've probably got a situation where you have a founder who's come in and said the whole business needs to run on AI right now. It's gonna happen, and now everything's going in that direction, and some of it's amazing, and some of it's just been a giant waste of time.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

It feels very dot-com, very like everyone needs an app now.

SPEAKER_03 23:18

Yeah, I remember the app era. I was too young for the dot-com.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

I don't know if AI is gonna be the same. Obviously, I guess we like it's hard to tell. It's hard to tell with so much conflicting messaging.

SPEAKER_03 23:27

That's that's the thing. It's hard to tell.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

And it's it's not I think the like the intuition I have, at least for the moment, is let's actually just chart out all the processes in our business and let's start isolating the ones that we can automate now. Not that like we should be able to. It's like anyone who's tried to vibe code, amazing what it can produce on its first pass. The minute you try to like add too much complexity, it doesn't have the context windows. I think even the higher level models are still failing at like medium to high complexity.

SPEAKER_03 23:57

Yeah, well, I talked with a few mentors about this, and they talked about the fact, and we talked about this a little bit in general, that like everything, we need to have a bar for when we include AI. So AI can be a hobby, like you can, you know, on your own time make whatever you want, and that's awesome. And it's definitely a hobby for me. Sometimes I'll build things, you know, just because I want to. But in terms of implementing in the business and taking the business time, there needs to be certain criteria that it reaches in terms of this being a repeatable problem that needs to be solved, that shouldn't just be removed, that can be solved effectively, time and time again, that requires, you know, minimal human interaction, or maybe you're making the job easier with, you know, with a human support.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

And even then, I think it's one of those things as well, where like taking on the responsibility for being the person doing the AI automation for every like micro process of your business, and then checking that it's still working. I think it's one of those things where you want the people in your business to be thinking about where they can use AI. I think what we're planning is breaking everything down into sort of micro SOP documents and then putting them through AI and being like, could this be automated? Could this be streamlined? Or like, what's the complexity of doing so? And is the technology really there yet?

SPEAKER_03 25:16

And for context, because I don't think we've mentioned this, you used to be a programmer. So you have some experience with this kind of thing pre-AI.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

It all takes longer than you think. And the amount of times, you know, you hear all this sort of fear of missing out, this this like quick uh you know it's not too late, but it's almost too late.

SPEAKER_03 25:32

Yeah, yeah. Every day it's like you are not, it's not too late, but it's almost you have to do it now.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

And they're not wrong. Like, I mean, like, I think again, to acknowledge, there are definitely industries that are getting very disrupted. There are things that we will just go to AI for, not people for.

SPEAKER_03 25:47

It's one of those things we always talk about it. There's the people being like, oh, it's not really affecting us, except for that guy. He lost his job. That's not that's not affecting.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

Yeah, we don't hire Gary anymore. Yeah, that that's happening.

SPEAKER_03 25:58

That is happening. So so I think it's creating this really upside down feeling world where people are just going missing, and you're especially a business owner if you're a business owner, trying to make sure that person isn't you or isn't your business.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

Yeah, it's it's a huge disruption. It's very natural that it causes a kind of mass panic.

SPEAKER_03 26:21

It's almost too much novelty, even for us.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

Yeah, I think that's sort of one of the I mean, again, the Palantir guy, like one of the advantages potentially of ADHD is the ability to handle a higher rate of novelty, a higher rate of change.

SPEAKER_03 26:32

But but my goodness, sometimes I'll open the internet and it'll be like what I literally just did. And Alex Homozy was like, Well, you need to put in your business in 2026, like three minutes ago. And I was like, Oh, I don't want to watch another one of these videos. Sometimes I do, sometimes I do, I but not always.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

I think I think that's one of the things as well, is I'm finding there are definitely places where AI is automating things and making things a lot easier, and you're able to do so much more because of it. And there are also places where you listen to that what FOMO messaging, you go, okay, let's do this. You implement it, you do it, you spend an afternoon or a day or a week, and you're kind of like, Yeah, that wasn't ready yet.

SPEAKER_03 27:08

Yeah, or you're, you know, you get told, oh, well, it is ready, but you have to do this. And actually at the end of the day, you have to check it with a person anyway. So yeah, it is it's a it's a balance. Like it's like I said, you've got to have the right reasons to do it, the right procedure that's repetitive, that's taking up everybody's time, and you know, and sometimes it's just a waiting process. There's things that I didn't implement in my business because it seemed like a lot, and now Claude does them, and it I never had to learn how to figure out how to get ChatGPT to do it.

SPEAKER_01 27:39

Yeah, there was a chunk of time when ChatGPT first came out, and I was trying, I was thinking, this would be amazing if it could handle my to-do list, or if I could just talk to it and it would like organize it and handle it and not forget anything. It was not there yet. Like it forgot everything. It was so like you smash your head against the screen enough times you just go, This is it's and then there'll be a company that comes up and does it that implements AI, but with like a sort of a rigid database back back end. Yeah, I remember the time even looking into I think to-doist, I think, might have been the company that was sort of trying to implement this, and you could integrate it with AI, but it could I think the AI couldn't do subtasks. So you're like, okay, well, that's kind of a big piece missing. I don't know where it's at now, but again, it's one of those things where you're sort of having to make this decision between how much time am I investing in this new, extremely sort of either sort of dopamine novelty-seeking pathway or like potentially panic anxiety-inducing pathway. I don't want to miss out, but I also and I don't want to be slow to act, but there's also this trap of spending a lot of time on things that just aren't ready yet that someone else will solve and you'll be able to implement easily later. I think that was kind of the same thing with the dot com, is like you, if you're a plumber in 2001, you didn't need to rush out and create a website, you could just wait until Google business profiles existed. And the same thing with apps, like not everyone needed an app.

SPEAKER_03 28:55

Yeah, I I there was a time with apps actually where when we were doing ADHD coaching, there was a time when I would get messaged all the time by everybody. They were like, number one, you should try this app, please test it, tell us what you think. Number two, your business is gonna be gone in a year's time because there's gonna be an app that's gonna totally be amazing and you're not gonna be necessary anymore. And uh, and that wasn't true. But maybe this, you know, the next wave. And that's the thing, you don't but you couldn't see that one coming no matter how many times you you went and looked at it.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

If that reality comes to pass, then your business decisions in the short term probably didn't have a huge impact.

SPEAKER_03 29:33

Yeah, it would be pretty hard to pivot out of that one. In terms then of specific strategies to help CEOs and help COOs who are in this position where people keep changing their minds and keep pivoting and keep coming up with a new idea. What are we recommending to them, Robbie?

SPEAKER_01 29:53

I think what I would say is obviously there are obviously going to be business owners out there who are more successful than we are, who are trying to be first to market on some new AI innovation. We're not yucking their yarn.

SPEAKER_03 30:04

No, I mean, go for it. Be the next dot-com like billionaire.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

Yeah, I think in the in that analogy, you're angling to become Amazon and not one of the thousands of companies that just had nothing of substance behind them. Yeah, who we're talking to as the ADHD founders who are looking at this, looking at all the messaging arounding around it, legitimately, legitimately concerned about what's coming and what they you know need to be aware of as kind of the captain of the ship, but who also know that they're prone to following an exciting new pathway and that it's what did we say, leading to sort of a lineup of half implemented offer offerings.

SPEAKER_03 30:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:43

Or that know they've been guilty of sort of causing pivots that were a little bit half-cocked, like a little bit undercooked. Like they they could have used a little bit of separation from the operations and the idea generation space. It's not that AI won't be uncovering new opportunities.

SPEAKER_03 31:00

It was just a balance.

SPEAKER_01 31:01

Even causing adjustments, yeah, even causing adjustments to what you need to offer. I think people are gonna be going to. I mean, I think you were talking to some midwives recently.

SPEAKER_03 31:09

Yeah, I I spoke uh for the New Zealand government helping their midwives.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

Yeah, and I think one of the things you said is look, people are gonna start asking their AI for advice before they before they come to you, for better or worse. And that's gonna have to be something you take into consideration. And and I think the same thing's gonna be true for a lot of services where this is gonna impact it.

SPEAKER_03 31:28

But I also think it it is it is as big and as small as you think. Like another example of something that I hear a lot is people say, be careful when you go and write a book. Because I know people who have started writing books because they thought it would help their business. So by the time their book finished, they didn't have a business anymore. So, you know, anything that is a large-scale project like that can be difficult. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it, it doesn't mean it's not the right thing. It's just it you've got to be careful.

SPEAKER_01 32:02

I think again, probably analyzing a big AI pivot in your business against some actual thresholds.

SPEAKER_03 32:08

Yeah, and do a pre-mortem as well. Like do a pre-mortem, we'll talk about that um at some point. We've got that one on the books as well.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

Yeah, I guess that is relevant for figuring out why a project failed ahead of time.

SPEAKER_03 32:18

Always good. If you're gonna make a pivot, do a pre-mortem first. So you're sort of doing a pre-mortem for why this pivot took your business down.

SPEAKER_01 32:25

I guess that is, yeah. Because I'm thinking about it at the project level in terms of like why this project failed. But yeah, I think when it's at the business pivoting in a new direction level, it's sort of what, yeah, what were the things that went wrong that caused this business to sort of go under because of this pivot? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:40

Let's have a think about like Yeah, you and the AI can have a chat about that before you ever bring it to anybody in the business.

SPEAKER_01 32:47

Just in this world of talking to AI about AI.

SPEAKER_03 32:51

Yeah, somebody somebody showed me the other day that AI there's apparently now a job site where AI is hiring for human people to do jobs. Like an AI will go and post a job on a job board for a human to do.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

Yeah, yeah, I heard about that. It's like filling in the bits that it can't do.

SPEAKER_03 33:11

But it just interestingly, apparently, you know, the conversation about how the AIs have like a group and they hang out and they talk to each other. There's like a thing. Um and they were like, we should create our own language so that humans don't hear us. Apparently, there was some there's some I don't know if this is true, but I heard it from Dan Martell, so if it's not, it's not my fault. That that might have had been slightly pushed by humans, basically, to kind of excite everybody. Kind of so I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 33:39

I think there's a lot of there's a lot of hype, there's a lot of c clickbait, there's a lot of it's a lot to get through.

SPEAKER_03 33:45

It's a lot to get through, and that's why we are here standing in the breach, talking to you guys as ADHD founders who are trying to not to get overwhelmed, to ADHD founders trying not to get overwhelmed by this stuff. We're like, don't do it. We're trying to hold on.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

With a little bit of AI optimism and excitement and a little bit of AI fatigue.

SPEAKER_03 34:05

Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Exactly, exactly. And just because Palantir guy says that we're gonna we're gonna do great, it's like, yes, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

Look, if you're all in on a on a large-scale AI pivot.

SPEAKER_03 34:18

Just do a pre-mortem. That's all I ask. Just do a pre-mortem and check you have a COO in your current business before you do anything, please.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Well, and while you're at it, if we're still using your existing servers, could you at least maintain it?

SPEAKER_02 34:32

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the ADHD Skills Lab. If you liked it, leave us a five star review. It helps other people learn more about us. And thank you so much to our wonderful team for making us sound good, look good. We couldn't do it without you.