The ADHD Skills Lab - TopPodcast.com

View Top 200 Chart

Back to Rankings Page

The ADHD Skills Lab — Education
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/

Copyright: © 2023 The ADHD Skills Lab

Latest Episodes:

Toxic Boss or Bullying? ADHD at Work with Brooke Schnittman Nov 02, 2026

Show notes

If you have ADHD, there’s a good chance you were bullied as a kid. Almost half of children with ADHD are, which is double the rate for kids without it. For many people, it doesn’t stop there. In adulthood, bullying often goes quieter: being left out, talked about, micromanaged, or labelled “too much” or “too sensitive.” Because it’s harder to spot, a lot of adults with ADHD don’t recognise it as bullying at all.

Brooke Schnittman, MA, PCC, BCC, is an ADHD coach, coach trainer, and founder of Coaching With Brooke. She’s also the bestselling author of Activate Your ADHD Potential and host of the SuccessFULL with ADHD podcast. Skye welcomes Brooke back to talk about the Coaching With Brooke Adult ADHD Bullying Survey, a global self-report survey of adults with ADHD. They look at what respondents shared about bullying in childhood and adulthood, at work and in relationships, and how it has shaped their confidence, anxiety, and fear of speaking up.

Brooke’s main point: reclaiming agency means learning to respond on your own timeline, and choosing people you can be yourself around.

In this episode:

How to tell bullying apart from conflict, criticism, or just a difficult relationship
The covert forms adult bullying can take, like exclusion and gossip, and why they’re easy to miss
What respondents shared about gender, including women reporting more bullying from family and partners
How bullying can show up for ADHD business owners with clients, leadership, and their own teams
How to recognise patterns, prepare responses, and set boundaries that protect you
Why healing includes choosing relationships that support you

Find Brooke
Website: https://coachingwithbrooke.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coachingwithbrooke/
ADHD Coach Training: https://3cactivation.com
Book: https://www.coachingwithbrooke.com/activatebook

Want to grow your business with ADHD?
You can use my free focus filter to manage overwhelm and organize yourself and your team: https://tinyurl.com/focus-filter
Looking for an ADHD business mentor who's also an operator who'll turn your business into a finely-tuned profit and peace machine designed for your brain?
Book a call and let's assess you're business to see if you're a fit: https://tinyurl.com/book-a-call-uo

ADHD Impulse Control Is About Friction, Not Trying Harder Oct 28, 2026

Show notes

With ADHD, "just wait until later" can feel impossible. Buy it now. Switch to the fun thing now. Say it now. And when you give in to the impulse, it's easy to blame yourself for not trying harder.

In this special episode of the ADHD Skills Lab, Skye Waterson shares a conversation from the ADHD Channel for Women by Understood.org. Host Cate Osborn speaks with Dr. Polaris Koi, an assistant professor of practical philosophy at the University of Turku who researches ADHD, self-control, and decision-making, and has ADHD themselves.

Together, they explore why impulse control isn't just about willpower. Polaris explains how adding friction, removing temptations, and changing your environment can make impulsive actions easier to manage. They also challenge the idea that self-control works like a muscle and discuss how anxiety and self-blame can make things harder.

Cate shares her experience with compulsive shopping, while Skye reflects on the urgency of wanting something right now, even when you know waiting might be better.

No "just wait." No trying harder for the sake of it. No silver bullet.

What We Cover

Why waiting can be so difficult with ADHD
How adding friction can help with impulsive decisions
What the marshmallow experiments reveal about temptation
Why willpower isn't simply a muscle you can strengthen
How self-blame and anxiety affect impulse control

Listen to more episodes of the ADHD Channel for Women from Understood.org:

https://lnk.to/adhdchannelforwomenFD!theadhdskillslab

Want to grow your business with ADHD?
You can use my free focus filter to manage overwhelm and organize yourself and your team: https://tinyurl.com/focus-filter
Looking for an ADHD business mentor who's also an operator who'll turn your business into a finely-tuned profit and peace machine designed for your brain?
Book a call and let's assess you're business to see if you're a fit: https://tinyurl.com/book-a-call-uo

Why ADHD Makes You Overthink Every Decision Oct 27, 2026

Show notes

With ADHD, you can spend three days researching a $50 purchase, finally make the decision, and still wonder if you chose wrong. Meanwhile, the important stuff isn't getting done.

Skye and Robbie Waterson unpack a 2012 study from the Journal of Attention Disorders on ADHD, decision making, and regret. The research found that higher ADHD symptom scores were linked to more maximizing, the drive to find the best possible option, and more regret afterward. They explore why trying to avoid the wrong decision can leave you feeling worse even when you make a good one, and how that same pattern can quietly stall progress in your business.

What We Cover:

Why ADHD can turn a simple purchase into days of research and second-guessing
How maximizers can get better outcomes but feel less satisfied with their decisions
Why trying to avoid regret can actually create more of it
How overthinking small decisions steals time from the work that moves your business forward
Why setting limits on time, money, and acceptable mistakes can make decisions easier
What the research can and cannot tell us about ADHD and decision making

Want to grow your business with ADHD?
You can use my free focus filter to manage overwhelm and organize yourself and your team: https://tinyurl.com/focus-filter
Looking for an ADHD business mentor who's also an operator who'll turn your business into a finely-tuned profit and peace machine designed for your brain?
Book a call and let's assess you're business to see if you're a fit: https://tinyurl.com/book-a-call-uo

Why Pushing Through Stops Working for ADHD Adults (Dr. Tracey Marks) Oct 26, 2026

Show notes

If you have ADHD (and especially if you run your own business), you probably know this cycle: push hard to hit a deadline, get it done, then do the same thing next week. It works often enough that you keep relying on it, until the week it doesn’t and you’re running on nothing.

Dr. Tracey Marks is a board-certified psychiatrist with more than 25 years of clinical experience. Skye and Tracey talk about why pushing through is so hard to give up and what it costs your attention and energy over time.

Tracey’s main point: recovery only works when it matches what drained you in the first place.

In this episode:

Why pressure you put on yourself as a business owner hits differently than pressure from a boss
How to tell whether you’re socially or cognitively drained, and what helps each one
Tracey’s baseline for sleep, food, and movement (including her own bedtime routine)
How to build a small set of anxiety tools that work for you and keep them within reach

Listen in if you’ve been running low for a while and keep telling yourself it’s just a busy season.

Find Tracey
Website: https://markspsychiatry.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@drtraceymarks
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drtraceymarks

Want to grow your business with ADHD?
You can use my free focus filter to manage overwhelm and organize yourself and your team: https://tinyurl.com/focus-filter
Looking for an ADHD business mentor who's also an operator who'll turn your business into a finely-tuned profit and peace machine designed for your brain?
Book a call and let's assess you're business to see if you're a fit: https://tinyurl.com/book-a-call-uo

Why a Big Audience Doesn't Buy | ADHD, Kyrus Keenan Westcott Oct 21, 2026

Show notes

You're posting consistently, growing your audience, and putting hours into marketing your business. People are watching, liking, and following. But they're not buying.

Kyrus Keenan Westcott, known as The Vibe With Ky, has built an audience of more than two million across Facebook and TikTok while working full time as a director of paid media. Diagnosed with ADHD at 35, he's learned how to turn content into a business without making every post a sales pitch.

In this conversation, Ky and Skye unpack why a bigger audience doesn't automatically mean more revenue, why selling before building trust can backfire, and how Ky turns engaged followers into paying customers. He shares what he gives away for free, what he charges for, and why he refuses to rely entirely on brand deals or platform income.

They also explore how he manages a full-time job alongside his growing business, the systems that help him work with his ADHD, and why he's still cautious about giving up a stable income.

You'll learn what actually moves people from following to buying, and how to build income that doesn't depend entirely on someone else's platform.

What We Cover

Why a bigger audience doesn't automatically mean more paying customers
How Ky builds trust before selling, and what he gives away for free
Turning engaged followers into customers without constant sales pitches
Why relying on brand deals and platform revenue puts your income at risk
How Ky manages ADHD, a full-time job, and a business with millions of followers

Connect With Kyrus Keenan Westcott

Ky (Kyrus Keenan Westcott) is a mental health advocate and host of The Vibe With Ky Podcast, which reaches nearly three million followers. Diagnosed with ADHD at 35, he uses humor and honesty to simplify conversations around mental health. He was named one of JCI USA's Ten Outstanding Young Americans in 2023 and keynoted Neuro Diversion 2026.

Website: thevibewithky.com
Social: @thevibewithky on all major platforms
Patreon: patreon.com/thevibewithky
Digital guidebooks: store.thevibewithky.com

Want to grow your business with ADHD?
You can use my free focus filter to manage overwhelm and organize yourself and your team: https://tinyurl.com/focus-filter
Looking for an ADHD business mentor who's also an operator who'll turn your business into a finely-tuned profit and peace machine designed for your brain?
Book a call and let's assess you're business to see if you're a fit: https://tinyurl.com/book-a-call-uo

How To Avoid Task Overwhelm With ADHD Oct 20, 2026

Show notes

You hired people so you wouldn't have to do everything yourself. So why are you still the one remembering every deadline, chasing every handoff, and checking whether things actually got done?

Skye Waterson and Robbie Waterson explain why delegating tasks doesn't always mean delegating the mental load, especially when you have ADHD. Research shows that working memory challenges can make tracking tasks, priorities, and deadlines harder. And when everything lives in your head or gets buried in Slack, your team ends up guessing what matters most.

Skye and Robbie share the prioritisation filter they've developed and tested over five years. It puts tasks, real deadlines, and priorities into one shared system so everyone can see what needs to happen next. They also explain why teams resist new systems, how outdated tasks keep wasting time, and how to spot when a delegation problem is actually a training or process problem.

The goal isn't another complicated productivity system. It's a business where work keeps moving without you having to remember and chase everything.

What We Cover:

Why delegating tasks doesn't automatically remove the mental load
Why even a great assistant needs a shared system to work from
How Slack handoffs lose priority and turn into constant follow-ups
Why teams resist new task systems and how shared visibility helps
How one prioritised list shows everyone what needs to happen next
How to spot outdated tasks, training gaps, and work that's taking too long

Want to grow your business with ADHD?
You can use my free focus filter to manage overwhelm and organize yourself and your team: https://tinyurl.com/focus-filter
Looking for an ADHD business mentor who's also an operator who'll turn your business into a finely-tuned profit and peace machine designed for your brain?
Book a call and let's assess you're business to see if you're a fit: https://tinyurl.com/book-a-call-uo

When Losing Interest Isn't Failure: ADHD and Creativity Oct 14, 2026

Show notes

With ADHD, creative ideas are often the easy part. Starting one is harder. So is the project you were sure about, set down just short of finished, and the shame that follows.

In this special episode of the ADHD Skills Lab, Skye Waterson shares a conversation from the ADHD Channel for Women, created by Understood.org. Host Cate Osborn talks with Adam Reid, an Emmy Award-winning writer, director, filmmaker, and producer, in front of a live studio audience. Adam didn't know he had ADHD until he was around 45.

Their conversation explores ADHD and creativity, and what happens between having an idea and finishing it. Adam explains how he gives himself permission to start, to be bad at something, and to let an idea become nothing. He describes getting close to the end of a first draft and losing all interest in looking at it again. He talks about putting work away to age instead of automatically calling it a failure, and how pieces of old projects have sometimes found their way back into his creative life years later.

Cate brings the harder questions. The frustration of choosing one interest while others wait. The difference between creative potential and finished work. The reality of responsibilities, and the fact that making room for creativity is easier for some people than others. Adam also talks about understanding his strengths, finding people and environments that support how he works, and learning that his worth isn't determined by what he creates.

Skye also shares how Adam's experience reminded her of stepping away from academia after her master's degree, spending a year making art and working in a bakery, before returning to complete her PhD.

No hustle.

No pressure to turn every idea into an achievement.

No need to prove your worth through what you produce.

What We Cover

Why starting can be the hardest part, and how Adam gives himself permission to begin
Why Adam thinks of ideas as seeds rather than children to protect
What happens when interest fades before a project is finished
How strengths, supportive people, and the right environments influence creativity
Late ADHD diagnosis, masking, and separating self-worth from creative output

Want to hear more?

Listen to more episodes of the ADHD Channel for Women from Understood.org:

https://lnk.to/adhdchannelforwomenFD!theadhdskillslab

Want to grow your business with ADHD?
You can use my free focus filter to manage overwhelm and organize yourself and your team: https://tinyurl.com/focus-filter
Looking for an ADHD business mentor who's also an operator who'll turn your business into a finely-tuned profit and peace machine designed for your brain?
Book a call and let's assess you're business to see if you're a fit: https://tinyurl.com/book-a-call-uo

Why ADHD Brains Excel at Starting Businesses (And Collapse at Scaling Them) Oct 12, 2026

Show notes

With ADHD, a quick client callback runs long, you lose track of time, and the work you meant to do is still sitting there. Dr. Jessica McCarthy stopped taking those calls.

Dr. McCarthy is a licensed clinical psychologist and clinical neuropsychologist, and the founder and clinical director of Elements Psychological Services, a two-location assessment and therapy practice in New Jersey. She has ADHD and runs the practice around it.

She walks Skye through what she handed off, what she kept, and the one test she applies to every task. She also shares the automated billing mistake that told her whole practice she had changed her name before she was ready to say why.

What We Cover

Her test for any task: if it takes too much time, it gets handed off or it does not get done
Why call backs were one of the first things to go
Why digital records are harder on ADHD working memory than a stack of paper
What went wrong when an automated system ran exactly as designed
The part of her marketing she is still not willing to hand over

Connect With Dr. Jessica McCarthy

@dr.jessica.mccarthy

@elements_psych

Dr. McCarthy is a licensed clinical psychologist and neuropsychologist, specializing in neuropsychological and psychoeducational assessments and cognitive-behavioral therapy for children through adults. She focuses on neurodivergent populations, including ADHD, autism, and learning differences, and conducts medically-driven assessments for conditions like TBI, stroke, and dementia. Dr. McCarthy uses evidence-based behavior therapies such as ACT and CBT, and enjoys working with young adults and women of all ages navigating life transitions. Her approach emphasizes understanding the brain-behavior relationship and providing actionable recommendations for patients and families. She has worked in schools, medical settings, and private practice, offering a wide range of specialty care. Dr. McCarthy is also a recognized speaker and media contributor on topics related to neuropsychology and mental health.

Want to grow your business with ADHD?
You can use my free focus filter to manage overwhelm and organize yourself and your team: https://tinyurl.com/focus-filter
Looking for an ADHD business mentor who's also an operator who'll turn your business into a finely-tuned profit and peace machine designed for your brain?
Book a call and let's assess you're business to see if you're a fit: https://tinyurl.com/book-a-call-uo

Why Your ADHD Gets Worse When You Start Managing a Team & How To Fix It Oct 07, 2026

Show notes

You finally hire people to get some time back. Then somehow you have even more to keep track of.

What did you delegate? Is it getting done? What did you tell them was most important? Where is everyone actually spending their time?

For ADHD business owners, growing a team can make it feel like the systems you spent years building for yourself suddenly stop working.

Skye Waterson and Robert Waterson look at why. Working memory was already carrying too much when you were managing your own tasks. Now you're trying to keep track of other people's work too, and hiring one highly organized person or adding more AI doesn't necessarily solve the problem.

This episode is about why getting tasks out of your head becomes even more important once you're leading a team, and why your personal productivity system eventually needs to become a shared one.

Next episode, Skye and Robert get into exactly how to build that shared system.

What We Cover:

Why the systems that worked when it was just you can break down once you have a team
Why ADHD leaders can lose track of tasks after they've delegated them
How hiring an organized person can help without solving the underlying problem
Why AI and automation can become more things you have to remember and monitor
Why one shared system lets you see priorities without constantly chasing your team

Want to grow your business with ADHD?
You can use my free focus filter to manage overwhelm and organize yourself and your team: https://tinyurl.com/focus-filter
Looking for an ADHD business mentor who's also an operator who'll turn your business into a finely-tuned profit and peace machine designed for your brain?
Book a call and let's assess you're business to see if you're a fit: https://tinyurl.com/book-a-call-uo

Why ADHD Hustle Never Scales | Amy Marie Hann Oct 05, 2026

Show notes

You are working every spare minute, and the business still is not growing the way it should.

Amy Marie Hann spent 10 years hustling in a sales business that never really scaled. She worked constantly, burned out, and eventually realized that more effort was not going to fix the way the business was built.

Amy is the creator of Master the Mundane, a book and membership community for mothers with ADHD. In this conversation, she explains why people with ADHD can stay with the wrong thing for too long, how slowing down brought back her clarity, and why she built her next business around the life she actually wanted to live.

She also shares why she grew her team and then deliberately made it smaller, how she uses numbers to keep new ideas and emotions from driving business decisions, and where AI genuinely helps her without replacing her own thinking.

You will hear what changed when Amy stopped measuring progress by how hard she was working and started building a business she could actually sustain.

What We Cover

Why ADHD hustle can create a lot of activity without creating growth
Why sticking with the wrong thing too long can be a bigger problem than quitting too soon
How slowing down gave Amy more clarity and creativity
Why Amy grew her team, then deliberately went lean again
How tracking numbers helps separate good decisions from rejection sensitivity and new ideas

Connect With Amy Marie Hann

Website: https://www.amymariehann.com/

Instagram: @amymariehann

Want to grow your business with ADHD?
You can use my free focus filter to manage overwhelm and organize yourself and your team: https://tinyurl.com/focus-filter
Looking for an ADHD business mentor who's also an operator who'll turn your business into a finely-tuned profit and peace machine designed for your brain?
Book a call and let's assess you're business to see if you're a fit: https://tinyurl.com/book-a-call-uo

Related Podcasts