Hacking Your ADHD

It's 11:20 right now and I'm eating a brownie, but tomorrow, no more sweets - it's zero sugar for me. And exercise, all of it. Every day. And cleaning? My house is going to be spotless. Email? Say hello to inbox zero. And no more TV or video games, only highly enriching activities for me from now on.
All I have to do is follow the plan. What is the plan? That's not important right now. I'll figure that out tomorrow. For now, I'm going to bask in the glory of what is to come.
All right, let's get back to reality - although I really did write this at 11:20… and while those may not be my thoughts exactly, they aren't that far off from ideas I've had in the past. I mean, they weren't good ideas, but ideas nonetheless.
So today we're talking about midnight motivation - that late-night urge to turn your life around that somehow doesn't translate into the next day. We're going to be talking about why, in the quiet of the night, we become these master architects of our own lives, designing sprawling mansions of productivity because we don't have to worry about the cost of materials or even the laws of physics. But when we wake up, we're no longer the architect; we're the contractor. Or maybe even more accurately, the subcontractor who has been handed some hastily drawn out plans on the back of a bar napkin. So in this episode, we're going to look at why our ADHD brains love building these "theoretical" lives when the world is on pause and how we can start translating those blueprints into something we can actually build during the daylight hours.
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/284
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD
This Episode's Top Tips
We need to understand that late-night motivation isn't really potential energy(pulling back the bowstring), but rather it's theoretical energy (you're just thinking about the bow). Recognizing this distinction is important in understanding why we never "release the arrow" in the morning; we never actually pulled the string back in the first place.
While it does feel like planning, thinking about doing something isn't the same as planning, and thinking about planning also isn't the same thing as planning. This is important to remember because even though it's not really planning, it still feels like we are, and when we don't follow through with those not-plans, it also still feels bad.
We want to shift our focus from the Vision (the dopamine-heavy end goal) to the Logistics (the boring friction). A plan isn't a plan if it isn't accounting for all those logistical pieces. If the logistics aren't there, your brain will bail the moment you hit a "hidden" step.
By moving "theoretical" plans into a physical calendar, we are better able to see our existing commitments in a visual space. We don't have infinite time, and if we want to start something new, we have to be able to fit it into the calendar.

Hey Team!
Today I'm talking with Meredith Carder, author of It All Makes Sense Now. Meredith is an ADHD coach and the creator behind the popular Instagram account @hummingbird_adhd, where she focuses on neuro-affirming strategies for adults. With a background in psychology and an MBA, she brings a unique perspective on how we can bridge the gap between our high-level professional goals and the executive dysfunction that often gets in the way.
I got to meet Meredith at the 2025 ADHD Conference in Kansas City and then got to hang out with her again recently at NeuroDiversion in Austin. She's a ton of fun to talk with and while this episode had a few hurdles to get over in terms of actually recording it, was a ton of fun.
In our conversation today, we get into the concept of "Ambition vs. Capacity," that frustrating space where our big ideas don't quite match what we are actually capable of doing in the moment. We talk about why we feel so much shame over "adulting" tasks like laundry and dishes, and how changing our mental models of what an "adult" looks like can free up bandwidth for things that actually matter. We also get into Meredith's specific systems for planning her week and how she uses a "Monday Planning Meeting" to set realistic expectations before the week even starts.
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/287
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD
This Episode's Top Tips
Often, we conflate the ideas of "simple" with "easy," and because simple tasks can lack the stimulation of more complex problems, they sometimes require more deliberate strategy and support, not less.
High-level ideation can be a strength, but it is separate from executive function. We must learn to reconcile our big dreams with our actual current bandwidth to avoid the cycle of "losing self-trust" when we fail to reach unrealistic goals.
Being "good" at something doesn't mean you have to or even necessarily need to do it, especially if it isn't something you are particularly interested in. Selecting goals based on personal values rather than just skills helps ensure that the "20% of boring stuff" required to reach a goal doesn't outweigh the "80% of interest" that keeps us going.

Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Today, I'm joined by Skye Waterson for our research recap series. In this series, we take a look at a single research paper, dive into what it says and how it was conducted, and try to find any practical takeaways.
In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called "Time Perception in Adults: Findings from a Decade Review." In this paper, they analyzed a decade of research—from 2012 to 2022—investigating the specific nature of time perception deficits for adults with ADHD. Time is a little bit more complex than we often think, so let's get into how complex it really is.
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at https://HackingYourADHD.com/286
https://tinyurl.com/56rvt9fr - Unconventional Organisation Affiliate link
https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk - YouTube
https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD - Patreon

Hey Team!
We've all had those moments where we walk away from a conversation and immediately spiral into a "self-regulation hangover," wondering if we said too much or if we were just being "tolerated" rather than included. Feeling like maybe this whole friendship thing maybe just isn't for us.
This week, I'm talking with Caroline Maguire, a veteran social skills coach and the founder of the Social Excellence training program. She holds a Master's in Social Emotional Learning and is one of the few experts who approaches social skills as a "muscle" that can be built, rather than an innate talent you either have or you don't. Her first book, Why Will No One Play with Me?, became an instant staple for neurodivergent families helping children struggling with social skills to make friends. And with what she learned from that book she is now bringing to her upcoming book, Friendship Skills for Neurodivergent Adults: A Guide for the Anxious, Uniquely Wired, and Easily Distracted.
In this episode, we're looking at the mechanics of friendship through a neurodivergent lens. We talk about the importance of proximity and "shared interest fuel" in bypassing the awkwardness of small talk. We also touch on the "rejection lens" and how our history of being bullied or marginalized can often color our current adult relationships. Caroline also walks me through some of her most practical frameworks, including the "Ice Cream Scoop" method for building trust and why having a "third place" is essential for creating low-pressure social friction.
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/285
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD
This Episode's Top Tips
ADHD impulsivity often leads to "oversharing," which creates a "self-regulation hangover" of shame. The shift here is to view sharing as taking one "scoop" at a time, waiting for the other person to match your level of intimacy before offering more, which protects your trust and your energy.
Our brains naturally hang on to negative social stories like Velcro while letting positive ones slide off like Teflon. Recognizing this biological bias allows you to challenge the "rejection lens" and realize that a friend's lack of a text might be about their own hard time rather than a reflection of your worth.
Making friends isn't a 1-2-3 prescriptive step; it's about "social friction" and proximity. By prioritizing showing up at the same place consistently, you allow people to get used to you, which lowers the barrier for entry into community and future friendships.
Remember, deep friendship doesn't happen instantly and takes work. Don't be discouraged if you're first attempts don't work out, keep at it and build up those friendships over time.

Is it possible to take ADHD off "Hard Mode"?
We often hear that living with ADHD is like playing a video game where the difficulty slider is permanently stuck on "Hard." But while the challenges of executive dysfunction are very real, we sometimes make things even more difficult for ourselves by insisting on doing things the "right" (read: hardest) way.
In this classic monologue episode, William Curb explores the concept of Easy Mode. What would it look like if your morning routine felt effortless? What if your workspace didn't feel like a barrier to your productivity?
By utilizing the "Focusing Question" from Gary Keller's The One Thing, William breaks down how to find the lead domino that makes every other task easier—or completely unnecessary.
In this episode, we discuss:
The "Easy Mode" Vision: Defining what a low-friction life actually looks like (and why a perfect life might actually be a bit boring).

The Focusing Question: Learning to ask, "What's the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?"

The Domino Effect: Why focusing on small, strategic tasks creates the momentum needed to tackle the big ones.

Environment Design: Using the three parts of a task (Setup, Doing, and Cleanup) to reduce the cognitive load of starting.

Progress over Perfection: Shifting the goal from "fixing" your ADHD to simply sliding that difficulty scale down a few notches.

Mentioned in this episode:
The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

The "Walls of Awful" concept (shoutout to Brendan Mahan)

Checklists & Automation: Tools to make remembering "unnecessary."

"Sometimes life is hard because our ADHD is making it harder, and sometimes it's because we're choosing to do things in the hardest way possible."
Find the full show notes and transcript at: hackingyouradhd.com/191
Support the show on Patreon: patreon.com/hackingyouradhd