PodcastsBusinessThe ADHD Skills Lab

The ADHD Skills Lab

Skye Waterson
The ADHD Skills Lab
Latest episode

178 episodes

  • The ADHD Skills Lab

    Why ADHD Makes You Chase Bad Ideas (& how to stop it)

    10/06/2026 | 23 mins.
    You've launched things that seemed solid, only to watch them unravel for reasons that felt obvious afterward. That's not a judgment problem. For ADHD founders, retrospective clarity comes naturally. The pre-mortem is a tool that pulls that clarity forward, to the start of a project, when fixing problems is still cheap.
    Skye and Robbie break down the pre-mortem method, developed by cognitive psychologist Gary Klein and later popularized by Daniel Kahneman, and explain why it fits ADHD-wired brains in particular. ADHD founders tend to communicate broad vision without the full set of dependencies, leaving teams misaligned and triggering micromanagement loops. They're also prone to hyperfocused tunneling in the wrong direction. The pre-mortem interrupts both patterns before they cost you.
    They also cover how to use it as a minimum viable test. Before a prototype, before a hire, before a pivot, spend an afternoon stress-testing the idea. Sometimes the right output is: don't do this.
    What We Cover
    Why ADHD founders naturally access retrospective clarity, and how to use it at project start instead of after the fact
    How incomplete vision communication creates micromanagement loops, and what the pre-mortem does to close that gap
    The novelty bias and hyperfocus tunneling problem, and why planning for failure acts as a directional check
    How to run a pre-mortem solo, with a team, or with AI, including a specific reverse prompting approach
    Why a half-day pre-mortem with AI or a mentor counts as your minimum viable test before any build
    ย 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 https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com/
  • The ADHD Skills Lab

    How ADHD Pulled This Entrepreneur Out Of $600k Debt (with Galel Fajardo)

    08/06/2026 | 37 mins.
    Sitting in a parking lot after leaving the bankruptcy attorney's office, $600,000 in debt written off, home gone, Galel Fajardo told himself no one would ever hire him again.
    Galel Fajardo is a business coach, digital marketing consultant, and fractional CMO with 23 years of entrepreneurial experience and a Master's in Performance Psychology. He specializes in helping high-performing entrepreneurs, especially those with ADHD, whose businesses look successful from the outside and feel like a prison from the inside. His clients have doubled their revenue, with one scaling from $2.5M to $10.1M in three years, not by working harder, but by building the right structure first. He coaches from the only credential that actually matters: he has lived every problem he teaches.
    What he learned through that experience, his ADHD diagnosis, and years of coaching shapes how he thinks about execution, delegation, and the internal stories that stall growth.
    This episode covers the specific frameworks Galel uses in his own business and with his clients.
    What We Cover:
    Why the systems that work in your 20s tend to fail once a business reaches real complexity and what to replace them with
    How Galel uses AI as a ruthless critic rather than a yes-machine to pressure-test ideas before committing resources
    The structural reason ADHD brains are strong activators but need an external check to finish and execute
    Why transparency about ADHD with your team tends to improve delegation rather than undermine authority
    How Galel identifies the belief underneath an activation problem and works with clients to shift it
    Connect With Galel Fajardo Website: https://www.galel.com
    ย 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 https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com/
  • The ADHD Skills Lab

    The Real Reason Structure Doesn't Stick When You Have ADHD

    05/06/2026 | 40 mins.
    You've built systems before. You probably built them well. The problem wasn't creating them. The problem was maintaining them once the novelty wore off.
    Wednesday's episode explored why ADHD founders often struggle with operational consistency. This episode covers the structural solution.
    The systems integrator role sits between the ADHD founder and the rest of the business. It captures ideas, filters priorities, protects the team from constant pivots, and builds the documentation that turns founder insight into repeatable execution.
    Skye and Robbie break down the four functions of the role, how it differs from an EA or COO, how it scales as a business grows, and the hiring mistakes that cause founders to recreate the same bottlenecks they're trying to solve.
    What We Cover
    The four functions of a systems integrator and how they differ from a standard EA or COO role
    How raw creative output gets processed through pre-agreed prioritization filters before it reaches the team
    Why the role acts as a gravitational buffer against novelty-seeking attention wells pulling the team off course
    How the role scales from solopreneur to COO-led team
    The three hiring mistakes ADHD founders make when trying to solve the structural problem
    ย 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 https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com/
  • The ADHD Skills Lab

    The Hidden Burnout Nobody in Your Business Is Talking About

    03/06/2026 | 33 mins.
    Your business is doing well. Momentum is real, clients are happy, and structure feels like the enemy right now. But if you turn that camera around and look past the founder, you find a stressed team running on broken systems, one sick day away from everything slowing to a stop.
    Research on ADHD traits and project management suggests operational effectiveness, specifically goal setting, milestone tracking, and resource allocation, drops measurably when ADHD traits are present. The mediating factor is not inability. It is role stress: the compounding weight of having more tasks than your brain can hold and no clear sense of what matters most.
    This episode breaks down what the research found and what it means for ADHD founders building a team. Friday covers the practical response.
    What We Cover
    Why teammates rated people with higher ADHD traits lower on operational effectiveness, including goal clarity, milestone mapping, and resource allocation
    What role stress is and why the research found it significantly mediates the relationship between ADHD and project management performance
    Why the disorganization doesn't stay at the founder level. It cascades onto the team below.
    How the creative strengths in ADHD are real, and why the research suggests they need a specific kind of support to work
    Why entrepreneurship gives ADHD founders a structural option that teachers, nurses, and academics never get
    ย 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 https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com/
  • The ADHD Skills Lab

    Why Simple Tasks Feel So Exhausting With ADHD (with Jenna Free)

    01/06/2026 | 30 mins.
    You've tried the calendars, the timers, the hacks. They work for two weeks and then stop. Jenna Free says that's not a discipline problem. It's a regulation problem.
    Jenna is a counselor for ADHD with ADHD, author of The Simple Guide to ADHD Regulation, and has worked in-depth with over 1,000 people through her ADHD Regulation Method. Her position is direct: dysregulation is not a fixed trait of the ADHD brain. It is a learned response to a lifetime of friction. And it is the reason every other system eventually fails.
    We cover her three-level regulation framework, why she skips meditation and breathing exercises entirely, how dysregulated beliefs quietly block delegation and visibility in your business, and what physical signs most ADHD business owners have normalized as just a Tuesday.
    What We Cover
    Why regulation has to come before any other system or tool
    The three levels Jenna works on: nervous system, thoughts and beliefs, behavior
    Why negative self-talk and urgency feel like they work, and what they actually cost you
    How dysregulation shows up as delegation avoidance and RSD in business
    The first practical step to start noticing and interrupting dysregulation today
    Connect With Jenna Freeย 
    Book Title: THE SIMPLE GUIDE TO ADHD REGULATION: The Secret to Finding Balance, Getting Things Done, and Enjoying

    Social Media Links & Show Notes:
    TikTok: @adhdwithjennafree ; www.tiktok.com/@adhdwithjennafree
    Instagram: @adhdwithjennafree ; www.instagram.com/adhdwithjennafree
    Podcast: ADHD with Jenna Free; https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/adhd-with-jenna-free/id1801356817
    Website: https://www.adhdwithjennafree.com/

    Here is the link for the free PDF I mentioned www.adhdwithjennafree.com/adhdguide
    ย 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 https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com/
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About 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. ๐Ÿค In partnership with Understood.org: https://u.org/4boG8QW ๐ŸŒ https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com/ ๐Ÿ“ฒ https://www.instagram.com/theadhdskillslabpodcast/
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