PodcastsBusinessThe ADHD Skills Lab

The ADHD Skills Lab

Skye Waterson
The ADHD Skills Lab
Latest episode

182 episodes

  • The ADHD Skills Lab

    ADHD CEO Who Built a 90,000+ Coaching Platform: ‘This ONE System Changed Everything’

    06/22/2026 | 38 mins.
    You spend years building workarounds for your own brain, then realize you could build your company the same way.
    Chris Wang did exactly that.
    As co-founder and CEO of Shimmer, an ADHD coaching platform that has delivered more than 90,000 coaching sessions, Chris was diagnosed with ADHD at 28 while building the company. Instead of treating her personal systems and her business systems as separate problems, she applied the same coaching frameworks, structure, automation, and strength-based development directly to how Shimmer operates.
    In this conversation, Chris shares what that looked like in practice: what she automated, what stayed human, how she structured fundraising as an ADHD founder, and why she stopped trying to build the company differently than she was learning to manage herself.
    Connect With Chris Wang
    Chris is on instagram: @adhd.christal and you can learn more about Shimmer at www.shimmer.care
    What We Cover
    Why Chris applied her ADHD coaching framework to company operations
    The automation that removed admin work for coaches
    How she decides what should stay human and what should be automated
    Her fundraising system for managing outreach, follow-ups, and rejection
    Why strength-based delegation changed how her team works
    How personal ADHD systems became Shimmer's operating model
     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

    ADHD Diagnosis Criteria Explained By People Who Actually Have It

    06/17/2026 | 28 mins.
    You've read the ADHD criteria a dozen times and still aren't sure if you actually qualify.
    Skye and Robbie Waterson and sit down with the DSM-5 itself and read through the inattentive criteria line by line, the same list a clinician would use for an actual diagnosis. They score themselves against each one in real time, and they don't agree on most of them.
    The conversation covers why the criteria were written for children and then loosely translated for adults, why "close attention to detail" means something different for someone who triple checks every payment versus someone who doesn't notice errors at all, and why your own family's version of "normal" can hide a pattern you've had your whole life. Skye also explains the difference between primarily inattentive, primarily hyperactive, and combined type, and why subclinical scores still matter even if you never meet the full six-symptom threshold.
    If you've ever wondered whether you "really" have ADHD or just relate to some of it, this episode shows you exactly what's being measured and why that question is harder to answer than it sounds.
    What We Cover:
    The actual nine inattentive criteria from the DSM-5, read directly from the manual
    Why the same criterion can apply to one person and not the other, even with shared ADHD
    How the criteria shift between children and adults
    Why family normal can mask a lifelong pattern
    The difference between subclinical and clinical, and why it still matters
     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

    Adult ADHD, Productivity Myths and Building A Better Life ft. Ari Tuckman.

    06/15/2026 | 34 mins.
    Most productivity advice for ADHD is written for people who just need a nudge. If you have ADHD, you need something more honest than that.
    Ari Tuckman holds a PsyD and an MBA, has authored five books on ADHD, and has spent over 40,000 hours in clinical work with adults. He co-chairs the largest ADHD conference in the US and has been quoted in the New York Times, CNN, and the Washington Post.
    In this conversation, Ari breaks down what productivity actually means for ADHD brains, why "don't get in trouble" is not a good enough goal, and how business owners can use external structure and the right people to focus on where they add the most value.
    Connect With Ari Tuckman:  www.DrAriTuckman.com.
    What We Cover
    Why simplistic productivity advice fails ADHD adults and what to look for instead
    The difference between managing ADHD to survive versus building a life worth having
    How to hire an assistant who will act as external executive function, not just a scheduler
    The role of reputation-building when ADHD makes consistency hard
    Ari's "things lead to things" principle and how it applies to business growth
     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 Using Anxiety To Manage Your ADHD Isn't A Good Idea

    06/12/2026 | 11 mins.
    Running your business on anxiety feels like productivity. It isn't. It's a system built on urgency, and it burns out fast.
    Research suggests that goal-focused interventions can reduce anxiety in adults with ADHD. What they don't appear to do is meaningfully improve executive functioning. Skye and Will break down a Norwegian randomized controlled trial on goal management training, what it found, and why that gap between feeling less anxious and actually getting more done matters for how you run your work.
    What We Cover
    Why using anxiety as a task manager is a direct path to burnout
    What the research found about goal management training and anxiety reduction
    Why the study's results showed little change in executive functioning despite structured intervention
    The difference between reducing mental load and building systems that improve output
    What's missing from most ADHD support frameworks when it comes to actual mechanics
    Want more of Will's work? Visit HackingYourADHD.com or subscribe on YouTube.
     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 ADHD Makes You Chase Bad Ideas (& how to stop it)

    06/10/2026 | 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
     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. 🤝 In partnership with Understood.org: https://u.org/4boG8QW 🌐 https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com/ 📲 https://www.instagram.com/theadhdskillslabpodcast/
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