The ADHD Skills Lab

You hit a growth ceiling and your first instinct is to change what you're doing, not fix how you're doing it. Matt Verlaque has coached founders past a million in revenue and sees the same pattern over and over: something works, the novelty wears off, growth stalls, and suddenly a new marketing channel, AI tool, or strategy looks like the answer. Matt and Skye unpack the “pivot chaser” trap, how to tell when a strategy is genuinely broken versus when you've simply gotten bored of executing it...

You spent real money on a system nobody uses. Skye and Robert Waterson see this problem regularly working as fractional COOs with ADHD business owners. The owner gets excited about a new system, the team agrees to the change, and a few weeks later everyone quietly slips back into the old way of doing things. The problem usually isn’t the software. It’s how the change was handled. In this episode, Skye and Robert break down the six phases they use to move a team onto better systems without los...

Most ADHD interventions only work if you actually stick with them. So what happens when the intervention is something your brain actually wants to do? Skye joins Will to unpack a systematic review of 22 studies on virtual reality interventions for ADHD. They look at surprisingly high adherence rates, what the research suggests about attention and working memory, and whether improvements inside VR actually carry over into everyday life. They also dig into the different ways VR is being used, f...

You can be successful on paper and still feel stuck. In this episode, Skye talks with entrepreneur and investor Kassidy Warren about leaving the corporate “safe path,” taking real risks, and the identity shift required to stop playing small. They unpack rejection, procrastination, reinvesting before results, and what it actually means to turn pro — especially with an ADHD brain. If you’ve built something stable but know you’re capable of more, this one will hit. What we cover: The hidden cost...

You've read the books. You've tried to think your way into a better mindset. But the changes never seem to stick. In this episode, Mick Hawes shares why he believes that's because mindset isn't something you change directly. Drawing on more than 35 years coaching business owners in high-complexity industries like custom home building, he explains why your mindset is the result of the systems, environment, habits, language, and other external influences shaping your daily life. Skye and Mick e...

You've probably heard it before: "Just start." "You'll feel better once you begin." "Get rid of all distractions." If you have ADHD, you've probably also discovered that this advice often doesn't work. In this episode, Skye and Robbie unpack the dopamine transfer deficit theory and explore why ADHD brains may not receive the same anticipatory motivation signal that helps neurotypical brains get started. They explain why so much conventional productivity advice misses the mark, why dopamine de...

Why does your ADHD feel manageable in one situation but overwhelming in another? In this episode, Skye and Robbie explore a little-known 1997 review paper that challenged the traditional view of ADHD. Instead of seeing ADHD traits as fixed deficits, the authors argued that traits like attention shifting, hyperactivity, and impulsivity can become strengths or struggles depending on the environment. Together, they unpack what the research actually says, why these ideas never became mainstream, ...

Meditation is one of the most common ADHD recommendations—but what does the research actually say? In this Research Recap, Skye Waterson and William Curb examine two studies on mindfulness and ADHD. The first explores an 8-week mindfulness program for primary school children, while the second compares mindfulness with structured psychoeducation for adults with ADHD. The children's study found improvements in attention and psychological wellbeing. The adult study found something just as intere...

She stared in the mirror one night, still wearing the workout clothes she'd put on that morning, and realized she couldn't remember if she'd had a sip of water all day. Years before being diagnosed with ADHD, Sharon Pope was successfully leading startups while privately struggling with the basics of everyday life. So she built the tool she wished she'd had: an AI task manager that follows up like a person instead of another notification. In this conversation, Sharon shares how that breaking p...

If planning your week, remembering the small stuff, or keeping up with admin feels harder than the actual work, you're not imagining it. This week, Skye sits down with Mike Legett, an ADHD coach and executive functioning specialist who was diagnosed with ADHD as a child. Mike studied molecular genetics at Emory before leaving graduate school when its vague, paperwork-heavy demands became unworkable. She went on to build a career as an internationally recognized swing and blues dance instructo...

You don't need another productivity hack. You need systems that still work when your brain doesn't. Cas Aarssen built the Clutterbug Method, hosted HGTV's Hot Mess House, and grew a global brand by stopping the fight against her ADHD and designing her home and business around how she naturally works. In this conversation, she shares the hard lessons that came from burnout, why traditional organizing advice kept failing her, and how building systems around real habits instead of ideal ones cha...

You get bored with the offer that's working, so you go build a new one. James Wedmore has run the same program and the same live event for ten years and says that's the entire reason it grew. He explains the difference between a real "this isn't working" and a feeling that just shows up the moment things get hard. He also breaks down why he became a bottleneck in his own business, what changed when he got specific about role clarity, and why he keeps his identity and worth separate from his r...

You've reread the same paragraph three times and still couldn't tell anyone what it said. Skye and Robbie return to the DSM-5 for Part 2 of their criteria breakdown, this time on criterion B: difficulty sustaining attention. They work through real examples, rereading pages, checking out of meetings, losing focus on audiobooks even at double speed, and land on why none of it happens during a good movie or video game. The conversation distinguishes between attention that drifts because a task i...