I’ve got a fun episode for you this week - I’m talking with Jesse J. Anderson about his new book, Extra Focus: The Quick Start Guide to Adult ADHD. I actually got to meet Jesse in person last November at the International ADHD conference (and I got to be on a panel with him as well) although we recorded this before then. And if you don’t immediately recognize the name, I’m sure you’ve seen some of his stuff online where he posts as ADHD Jesse.
In our conversation today we delve into his experiences with ADHD, his journey as an author, discussing practical coping strategies, challenges with memory and motivation, and the importance of adapting to individual mental processes.
William Curb: So Jesse, could you do a quick introduction so people can get to know you a little better?
Jesse Anderson: Sure. Yeah. Like you said, my name is Jesse J. Anderson. I go by ADHD, Jesse online, and I'm on kind of Twitter, well, X now and threads, Instagram, kind of all the places. I used to do a little bit on TikTok, but I kind of don't do that anymore because it is a time suck. I'm an author. I just wrote a book. I just finished and released my book, Extra Focus, the quick start guide to adult ADHD. And I also have a newsletter that's also called Extra Focus, where I write kind of weekly tips, advice, and just sort of what it's like living with ADHD. Yeah. And that's also called Extra Focus, which I think I just said.
William Curb: Nice. And I just finished reading that book today because I am, you know, good with deadlines, which is definitely something you talk about in the book.
Jesse Anderson: For sure. For sure.
William Curb: Yeah. I was like, oh, yeah, this I'm like, I could just finish this reading some less and I'm like, OK, well, I can do this other stuff. And then I can finish this tomorrow morning. And then I'm like, OK, I can finish this tomorrow morning tomorrow afternoon right before I start.
Jesse Anderson: That's like me with packing any time I have a trip. I have like this great plan. I'm like, I'm going to pack at this night, like two nights before. And then it's like, well, I can do it the night before. Well, maybe I'll do it the morning of actually, I'll just end up doing all of the packing. Like as the Lyft driver is on his way to my house, then it's like, well, that's a real deadline. So I'm going to panic pack and hopefully not miss too much in those final minutes.
William Curb: Yeah, it was definitely something I was thinking about in the section that was talking about urgency versus importance. And like urgency does make things very important.
Jesse Anderson: Totally.
William Curb: But it's not something we want to rely on all the time.
Jesse Anderson: There's definitely kind of a cost to relying on urgency for your only source of motivation.
William Curb: Yeah, one of the things I came to realise with that, too, is that when I'm relying on urgency or motivation, it is such a motivating factor that it makes other motivations not nearly as strong. It makes it so it's like, oh, well, I'm just going to wait for everything to be urgent because that makes it motivating. And it's a reinforcing cycle that's fairly negative in my life.
Jesse Anderson: Yeah, I feel like growing up with ADHD, I wasn't diagnosed until I was an adult. But growing up with it, I would learn sort of patterns of what worked for my brain to do things. And those were not necessarily positive, like urgency, a big one. But there was a lot of things that I just sort of like adding chaos fuel to my life. Like I found that that motivated me to get things done.
But it had a lot of negative side effects, you know, like anxiety and issues like that that would just sort of like crop up. But it motivated me. And so I relied on those tips regardless. Like it was something that I knew I needed to like I knew I needed something to motivate myself to move forward. And then that just seemed to be I would get myself into trouble that way.
William Curb: Yeah, absolutely. Because we do notice these patterns for like, oh, yeah, I do my best work, quote unquote, best work when it's right. It's like best work in the idea that I got it done. It's usually not bad. It's just there are some clear signs that I was not spending my time wisely there.
Jesse Anderson: Totally, totally.
William Curb: I'm very impressed with the, you know, stick to it. And this is actually finishing the book because that is a hard thing to do, especially with ADHD.
Jesse Anderson: Yeah, like when I started the book, it was like, since I got diagnosed, which was about like six years ago now, there wasn't a lot of content available at the time, like Jessica McCabe had kind of just started her channel.
And I think Eric Tivers had his podcast and that was kind of it. And then like some older books from like decades ago, when I talked to my doctor, he was like no help at all. So there was really, there was very little information to sort of like figure out how to get started. And so when I wanted to write the book, I really wanted it to be like, Hey, maybe you saw like one of my tweets or you saw some other like ADHD meme or something on TikTok, enough times to be like, maybe I should look into this more. I really wanted this book to be like, here's a great first step.
Here's like that quick start guide to figuring out like, what is this thing? ADHD, because in my mind, I have a totally different idea of what it is. Cause like that was me. I thought ADHD was, you know, the stereotypical, the boy that just ran in circles and class and got in trouble all the time or like couldn't focus on anything for more than a two seconds. Like the squirrel meme, like that's what I thought ADHD was.
And that didn't define me. And so that's why I think it took so long for me to find out that I actually had it because I didn't know hyper focus was a thing. And so when someone suggested I might have ADHD, I was like, I have no problem focusing on things that are interesting to me. I can spend hours focusing on them. And then I found out about hyper focus, which is like, oh, yeah, that's because you have ADHD.
That was definitely hard because like I said, like I knew I wanted to write this book and I was very excited in the beginning. There was all this energy and ideas and I was writing and everything was going great. And then it was like one day I looked up and it was like, oh, I haven't, I haven't touched the book in like four months. Like I sat it down in a drawer, you know, metaphorically one day. And then it was like, I totally forgot all about it.
And then that's when I kind of needed to create some sort of systems to help me because I knew it was really important to finish it. And so I hired an editor who gave me deadlines. And then I actually, I did beta reading with the book where I had people sign up to read early versions of the book. And that was a way to motivate myself to finish it because I knew I was like, I told these people I was going to get, let them see the book. And I'm embarrassed of what the book is right now. So I have to work really hard to get it to a state that I can actually share it with other people.
William Curb: Well, I mean, it got to a fantastic state because we have a ton of ADHD content out there now, but, you know, a while ago there wasn't. And that material, you know, you like look at some of these books, they are dense.
Jesse Anderson: Yes, for sure.
William Curb: Whereas I really appreciated with your book, I'm like, this is really relatable and easy to get through. Like I'm not, I didn't dread reading it.
Jesse Anderson: Thank you. I mean, yeah, that was definitely the goal. There was like, I'm not going to name anything. But yeah, there's a lot of like ADHD books that are very dense. I remember there was one that's pretty popular and I was trying to read it and I got not that far into it. And there was like a single page where one paragraph filled the entire page and spread onto the pages next to it. And I tried to read that page so many times and I just couldn't, you know, I just found myself bouncing back up and I never got past that page. That just like ginormous paragraph that was just like a wall that I couldn't get past.
And so very, very intentionally when I was writing my book, I was like, I know not all people with ADHD are going to be able to read this, which is why I'm going to, you know, eventually do an audiobook too. But I wanted to make this as ADHD friendly as possible, which is why I hired an illustrator. So there's a lot of illustrations in it. And I very much intentionally designed like the text where like paragraphs are short, like usually not more than a few sentences and there's space between the paragraphs. So it's like it's very visually kind of easy to read and not get lost in those like walls of text, which is all too common, I find.
William Curb: Yeah, absolutely. And it was also, you know, it looked well researched. There was notes and stuff with like, OK, yeah, this is where this information came from, which is always good with.
Jesse Anderson: Right.
William Curb: As we know with ADHD, there's a lot of stuff people are like, yeah, this is what ADHD is. You're like, yeah, is it?
Jesse Anderson: Yeah, I definitely like it's definitely a good mix of like, well, I think it's a good mix of like sort of that well researched and documented, like factual kind of stuff with my own experience, which I really try to always like call that out. Like this is my experience of living with this sort of aspect of ADHD versus another part. Where I'll say this was a study that really showed that this is a common scenario or whatever the case may be.
William Curb: Yeah, absolutely. Because yeah, like there's no research on body doubling.
Jesse Anderson: Right.
William Curb: But we know it's an effective technique to use.
Jesse Anderson: Totally, totally. That's yeah, that's a great example, for sure.
William Curb: So yeah, it was great to be like, OK, this is well researched and stuff. So what didn't make it into the book? Because I'm sure you had a bunch of stuff that didn't.
Jesse Anderson: Yeah, absolutely. Like for me, I think the part of the book that I was most excited for people to read, I think, was the motivation chapter. And so a lot of like initially when I was writing the book, I was just sort of like writing about different topics and they weren't really joined together. And then once I started to like have to form a book, you know, like what's going to go where, what order of things can go in.
I definitely ran into like there was too much stuff before it made sense to get into motivation. And I know for me, like my hope is obviously that people will get the book and read the whole thing. But I know for me, like a lot of books that I read, I get like 35, 40 percent in and then I sort of drop off. And so I wanted that if people read my book, I want them that 40 percent.
I want them to get to motivation because I think that's so important. So there is definitely stuff before that that I eventually had to cut out. Some of the stuff was getting into like how to get diagnosed, like what that process looks like, which is difficult to do in a book anyway, because it's so like regionally different.
Like it depends what your insurance is, it depends what country you live in, even what state you're in, if you're in the U.S. And so I tried to tackle that several times and eventually I was like, you know what, if I just like rip it out, it just makes everything feel so much smoother. And another thing I ended up cutting out to, I initially wrote a lot more about kind of like brain networks and like the default mode network and sort of like some of the science that's happening in the brain, even though I find that stuff really fascinating, it's still sort of like not fully known. There's still like a lot of ongoing research in that. So I kind of got to the point where I'm like, I don't want to release this book. And then in like two years, be like, well, that's way out of date now, because now new information is found out about how dopamine works. And things like that. So yeah.
William Curb: Yeah, absolutely. It is amazing being like, oh, yeah, ADHD has been around for a while, but it is still like in the infancy of what we understand about in the brain.
Jesse Anderson: Totally. Yeah.
William Curb: Yeah, I feel like there's also the same thing with like stuff about dopamine where it's like, yeah, dopamine feels like it has a very big impact on ADHD, but we don't have really solid evidence on how it's doing that.
Jesse Anderson: Right. Yeah.
William Curb: And also like the approach in the book, too, that there are lots of different strategies that you can use for all of these things. There's no one thing that you're like, you point to like, this is how you fix your ADHD, because obviously you can't do that.
Jesse Anderson: Uh-huh. That's a big one for me, because I think for a long time, I for decades, even I've been really interested in sort of like the productivity space, getting things done, the GTD movement and all of that. Like I've followed that for years and years and years. And I always feel like I see stuff and I for a long time would think like, oh, that's the solution that's going to work for me. That's going to be like that magic bullet that finally solves my difficulties with motivation or whatever it is.
And then it wouldn't work. And then so that would just make me feel bad, which I already had like, you know, growing up with ADHD, it's pretty common to have like self-esteem issues. And so that would just sort of like come back in the shame of like, oh, what's wrong with me? That this strategy that I would think it works for everybody else, but it doesn't work for me.
I'm just broken somehow. And eventually just sort of realising that really I like to think of it in sort of like a sports metaphor of like the football team doesn't have one play that they use that always works. Like they got a whole playbook of all sorts of different things and they have to change it up if they're playing a different team that's really good against the run defence.
Like they're going to rely on the run plays less and they're going to try something else. And so for me, like I have a whole bunch of strategies in the book that I think are useful and designed to work for people with ADHD. But there's definitely going to be a strategy in there that like may never work for you ever. Or it's the thing that might not work right now, but then six months later, the situation has changed and then you can sort of try it out. So I really think of strategies is like, try this one.
Oh, that's not working today. Try that one. Very similar in approach to Danny Donovan's anti-planar book, which is excellent. Highly recommend that. That one's just like, it's just all strategies and it's like they're very creative and fun. And that's sort of the same approach of like, try and see which one of these is going to work for you today.
And don't feel bad if it doesn't. Like that's novelty is what like our brain, I think really likes novelty. And so that's part of it too, is like, maybe this strategy isn't working anymore just because it's not novel anymore. And that's totally fine. You know, put it on the shelf for a while and then maybe try it again in six months or a year, but find something else that's going to work for you in the moment for whatever scenario you're facing today.
William Curb: Yeah, I've had some thoughts about like trying to get ahead of that lack of novelty in the systems and being like, could I like seasonally change how I'm doing things? And like, you're like, oh, I know this is eventually not going to be novel anymore. Maybe if I get ahead of it, then it won't be in the situation where I'm like, well, I just stopped using this one day.
Jesse Anderson: Right. So are you kind of like building a system for novelty?
William Curb: It is a percolating in my brain of how I might be able to do that. Because it seems like I'd rather do that than hit the point where it's just, oh, I'm just doing something new for the sake of doing something new.
Jesse Anderson: Right. That's definitely a lot of what I do now is just like designing for how what works with my brain, which is before I was like trying to find the magic solution. And now I'm like, just find stuff that works with your brain and then adapt with that. And I'm trying, I still try lots of new systems. Like right now I'm trying, there's it's kind of like expensive, but there's a system called Analog, which is like you get this little wooden tray and you have a card that you kind of write your tasks on. And then it's just like sitting in front of you throughout every day.
And I'm hoping that like the novelty of like I have this new system is going to work for a while, but we'll we'll see how it goes. But I'm always kind of trying to mix it up. Like people ask me sometimes, like, what's your productivity system? And I'm like, I don't know, it depends. Like, like I might be using things like I might be in the season of my life or I'm using the things app again, which is one I kind of like go back to for a while. Or maybe I'm down to just index cards or writing on the back of my hand or on the palm of my hand or something.
Well, I'm really sort of like mixing that up a lot. But the idea of systematising it, I do think is interesting because I there's part of my brain that loves that idea of finding a system that works. There's like, I want that. So I want that that cool, well designed system that just like really works and is really refined in that way.
William Curb: Yeah, because I spent a long time trying to set something up on notion that it could be like, this will be system that I use. It'll have all these things. And I'm used notion for all of my content creation. So I'm like, this is like, I've been using this for years. I can just kind of, it just doesn't bring any motivation to follow through on the things. I'm like.
Jesse Anderson: Right.
William Curb: I really want that to work.
Jesse Anderson: Totally.
William Curb: So the other thing I was thinking about for the book, were there things that kind of surprised you when you were learning about them for ADHD?
Jesse Anderson: Oh, that's a great question. I think when I started writing, I hadn't learned yet about prospective memory, which I write about in the book. And I think it's really interesting. There was a study on it and basically pro, which is like PRO, prospective memory. Basically, it's the idea of like remembering to remember to act. So it's like when you're in the middle of your day and you're like, Oh, I should grab milk on the way home or like, Oh, I should take care of that in the morning. And then getting to that later time and then your brain like remembering, Oh, yeah, I said, I was going to get milk on the way home.
So as I'm driving home, I'll go take that action. And there is a study done that showed like not surprising to me that people with ADHD struggle with this a lot that we make these intentions. And what I find for me personally is when I make these like, it's like, Oh, I should do this later. Even though I've read all the stuff and I know all the things I believe myself that when I say, I'm like, Oh, I'll take care of that later. I think I will. Even though my own history showed, like I can tell you right now, like I won't. When I say like, Oh, I'll remember to take care of that later.
I will not. It just like, that's not the reality or the same sort of thing with saying like, Oh, I'm going to put whatever this does that is that I want to remember later. I'm going to put it in this special weird place because then I'll definitely remember it. And then, you know, I'm trying to find that thing. I have no idea where I put it, but that prospective memory, I think was something I hadn't heard of before. And that was something while I was researching for the book that I read about and I found really interesting and really like kind of connected with like just knowing that I'm going to forget those things. And that's just part of kind of what having an ADHD brain is. When I very first got diagnosed with ADHD, I was seeing a like a counsellor.
I forget where her title was, but it kind of became a combination like ADHD therapy and also like marriage therapy because it was like, Hey, if you, you know, you're married for 10 years and when you has undiagnosed ADHD, guess what? There's some, there's some problems that may crop up. So we kind of as we're doing like every other week, my wife would come and we're kind of working through stuff. But one of the most obvious issues we talked about in that was for years and years and years, every single night, my wife would ask me to take out the trash. Like, Hey, can you take out the trash tonight as she would like go to the bedroom? And I'd be sitting on the couch, like watching TV or whatever and be like, yeah, sure, I'll get it.
I'll take care of it when I go upstairs. And then every single night I would get up off the couch. Would my prospective memory would not kick in. So I would not remember that I said I was going to take out the trash and I'd go to bed without taking out the trash. And that happened for years and years and years where I would think that like my assumption was just that, oh, I'm sure I take it out sometimes and sometimes I forget, but it was never, I'm never like getting off the couch and deciding like, oh, I don't want to do the trash. I just never think about the trash at all.
Like that's not even a thought in my mind. So one of the things we did that are like therapist gave us the advice of like putting a whiteboard up that I would see when I was going, you know, getting up off the couch and going upstairs. And then my wife writing on it, take out the trash with like a little box for me to check off. And we made that that was the one change that we made where she would still, she would come to me and say, Hey, can you take out the trash? I would say, yes. Yeah, sure. No problem.
And then I'd get off the couch, you know, like half an hour later, and then I would see the whiteboard. And then that was like that physical representation of what my prospective memory should be doing, but I would see the whiteboard and be like, oh, yeah, I wanted to take out the trash. And then I'd take out the trash, no problem. Check off the box. And that really just sort of like solved this issue that was for her, you know, what it was communicating was before is that he doesn't care. He's being lazy.
He doesn't want to do, he just wants me to do the trash in the morning, like communicating all this stuff. And I was just like oblivious to all of it. I had no idea any of that was happening.
William Curb: Yeah.
Jesse Anderson: That was really sort of a turning point for us because it helped her see that this wasn't my intention. I wasn't like trying to be a jerk because I basically like, for the most part, like never really forgot again. We did that. And for a few months, probably she would every single night, she would write it on the whiteboard. I would check it off and then she'd like wipe it off in the morning and then rewrite it every night. And then I just never forgot the trash again. And after a while, it eventually became a routine. So now I just do it.
We don't have to use the whiteboard anymore. But yeah, that memory thing, I think that was something a lot of the other issues and like the differences with sort of your brain with ADHD. I was aware of, but I think the memory stuff I really kind of wasn't because your brain is so good at just sort of like filling in those gaps. So you think you remember things and it fills them in a way that's very positive to you, which is not often the reality as I found out.
William Curb: Yeah, it's like from both perspectives, it feels bad when you realise you've forgotten. But it also from your partner's perspective, it's also like, why couldn't they just remember? And if you go from the perspective, oh, it's ADHD, we have to do things differently. That is a much better way to come at it, rather than why didn't they remember? Oh, they, you know, any number of labels that are awful.
Jesse Anderson: Right. Yeah, totally. I think that's such an interesting dynamic to navigate, because when you don't know about ADHD, it's like, you know, if you have like in our case, you know, the ADHD partner and neurotypical partner, like for them, it's like, it doesn't even like compute that I would actually forget because like to her, she's like, we talked about it like 20 minutes ago and you said you would do it. Like it doesn't make any sense to me that you would forget to do that when you assume everyone has sort of like similar brains. And there's so many things like that. So I have a daughter, she's 13 and she also has ADHD. She takes after me in a lot of ways. But because of that, like there's a lot of things that'll happen where she'll, she will do something.
And to my wife, like her action makes no sense at all. It's like, why in the world would you choose to do this thing? But me coming from an ADHD perspective, like I can see, I'm like, oh, yeah, I can see why she would have done that. Like that's sort of something I could see myself doing in that situation because of those differences. And so whereas like a neurotypical initial brain like seeing that, and I'm not trying to make like a strong like divide between ADHD and neurotypical, but like, it's common to see like somebody else act differently.
And then it just feels like your interpretation of the intentions are often wrong because like it feels like an intentional choice to not do what maybe seems like common sense or the most obvious action. And so I think that's a lot of what like finding out about an ADHD diagnosis can help with helping realise that those differences in like response and action don't always communicate the intentions that you think they might be.
William Curb: And I think it's really important for both sides to realise that too, because, you know, as someone that forgets to do things, I have to be like, oh, yeah, they will feel that they like they're going to interpret this differently if they aren't considering my ADHD. Their emotions are valid there too.
Jesse Anderson: Totally, totally. Like it's not like, hey, it's OK that I do things this way because like I just have ADHD and you have to deal with it. Like this is definitely not the case. It's more that like finding out about the ADHD gives you this new lens to view the situation to understand why things are like done differently or whatever it is. And then when you're aware of that, it's like, OK, you know, like finding out about the trash thing. It's like, well, now that I'm aware of this, what can we do? What strategy can we do to assess this?
Because the answer isn't just like, sorry, I'm never going to do the trash because my brain doesn't remember. Like that's not that's not a viable solution to like make this relationship, this partnership in our marriage work. So we have to figure out a way that does work with my brain and the differences that we have. And for us, it was this whiteboard. And so it's all about kind of like finding like now that we know about this like giant factor of ADHD, like what can we do to address that and change behaviour in a way that works for everybody kind of involved.
William Curb: Yeah, I had a similar issue with the trash where I'd take it out and then I'd like come back to reline it and coming back in. I'd have like that doorway effect walking through a doorway for everything and just never reline the trash. And I'm like, eventually I was like, oh, if I just reline it before I take it out to the big trash can, then I won't forget. Just have to kind of change how I do things.
Jesse Anderson: Yeah, yeah.
William Curb: And I'm like, oh, I bet there's a bunch of other things where I could just kind of change the order I do things and I won't forget to follow through on doing them.
Jesse Anderson: Totally like similar. I had the same thing with the lining of the trash can. And for me, when I take the trash bag out, I pop up the can in a way that the lid stays open. And so when I walk back in, I see that very obvious open lid. And that's that like, you know, if it's if it's out of sight, out of mind, like I'll walk back in, like you said, the doorway and everything's gone. But because I walk back in and then it's like it's right in my face. I see this big, weird looking trash lid up.
And that tells me to kind of take that next step. For me, that's another one of those big things with ADHD is like putting things into physical space so that I will see them. Because otherwise it's that desk drawer effect. Like if I can't see it, it's gone. Like I'll never think to open the drawer to look at the thing that I put in there. Like it's got to be out where I'm going to kind of stumble across it and whatever my day to day activities are so that I can remember to take whatever that action is.
William Curb: I've always found there's, in the book you were talking about. Yeah, the piles of stuff we have around our area. And I like reading looked up and went, yeah, there's the floor. There's some on my desk. There's some on the couch next to me. And we do have that tendency to like leave things out so that we can have this memory of them. But that's also a problem because then we get blind to them. It's like, oh, we have.
Jesse Anderson: Yes.
William Curb: There's just a mess everywhere. I was like, look at my desk. I'm like, I don't even remember why some of these things are on here anymore.
Jesse Anderson: Yeah, it's definitely kind of that like we were talking before. It's like those strategies we learned to for motivation growing up. But there's side effects that those aren't just because they're effective in the moment doesn't mean that there aren't side effects that can be negative. So there's sort of like that balance of trying to figure out like when is my desk or whatever got into the state where like this is no longer useful.
This is just noise. And maybe it's time to do a clean sweep. And maybe I'll leave like that post it note on the monitor there and put this paperwork there and then everything else gets swept off the desk. And I kind of do a redo. It can definitely get to the point where it's just like this is a little bit out of control.
William Curb: Yeah, I mean that's, that's my relationship with tabs.
Jesse Anderson: Oh, for sure. I am all too familiar with the fact that on an iPhone, Safari only goes to 500 tabs because I hit that limit a lot.
William Curb: Yeah, I recently just went through and close them. I'm just like, why did I think this was important to look at again? Or my favourite one, though, is this was like 404. I'm like, what was it?
Jesse Anderson: Yes, totally. Yeah. Or I'll have the panic of when you get. I just got a new iPhone like last month and I lost all my tabs. And I'm like, what, what treasure trope? Like what really important thing that I have open in a tab on my old phone that now is lost to time? Like, I'll never know what that was, just like you're saying with the 404. Like, what was it? I want to know.
William Curb: I'm sure past me was really looking out for future me by not closing this.
Jesse Anderson: Right, exactly.
William Curb: So do you have any thoughts you'd like to leave the audience with?
Jesse Anderson: One thing we, we sort of touched on a little bit is just the idea of shame. I think it's that such an important topic with ADHD, because so much of us carry around. You know, we heard all so many negative messages growing up. There's that I talk about in the book. It's not like a study, but there's so many that like estimated that people, you know, kids with ADHD here, like 20,000 more negative messages in their peers, which sounds like a lot until you do the math. And you're like, no, that kind of adds up. So you hear that many more negative messages, especially when you don't know about ADHD, and there's just like nowhere for that to go. And so you just like carry all that on your shoulders.
Just like, I'm broken, I'm bad, and you feel shame anytime you do anything that reminds you of this difference. And I think that's something that I'm sort of wrestling with, like, kind of what to do with that. I talk about that some in the book, but I also I feel like there's a lot more to go there.
That that's like one idea I've thought about for a second book, because I think that just the shame that comes with ADHD is so huge and so powerful, which is why I like I love a lot of what Brené Brown says, because she kind of talks about that shame, vulnerability a lot, which I think is really powerful. I guess I don't know exactly what I'm saying about it, other than just like, just like, know that it's not your fault. You know, there's like the scene in Goodwill Hunting where like Robin Williams is saying, like, it's not your fault. It's not your fault. Like I feel like so many of us with ADHD need that moment of just like because we similar to Will like in the movie, like initially is like, yeah, I know it's not my fault, but it's fine, whatever.
But like Robin Williams' characters just continue to say like, no, no, you're not really hearing what I'm saying. And there's just so much of that kind of that baggage that we just carry on our shoulders of this shame and blaming ourselves. And so that's I think why so many people like like the advocacy work that's kind of happening with ADHD right now, I love seeing like this message you get spread so that more and more people are finding out that, hey, surprise, you've got this thing, ADHD. And that's really what's been causing all these kind of differences and challenges in your life. It's not your fault. It's not your fault.
William Curb: Absolutely. Because it's one of those things it's like so often I will be in my like, why did I do that?
Jesse Anderson: Yeah.
William Curb: Oh, ADHD. Because it's like we can be it's not our fault, but it's still our responsibility.
Jesse Anderson: Totally.
William Curb: No one else is going to fix it for us, unfortunately.
Jesse Anderson: Yeah, absolutely.
William Curb: All right. Well, if people want to find out more about you, you mentioned earlier number of the social channels and use it @ADHDJesse.
Jesse Anderson: Yep. @ADHDJesse is my username on pretty much all of. But I'm on most of the social media platforms, primarily, I would say, Instagram, X and threads are mostly where I'm at. And then you can get the book at extra focus book dot com or anywhere that books are sold, it's available. And it's just called Extra Focus, the quick start guide to adult ADHD.
William Curb: All right. And I'll link all that in the show notes. Courage, everyone, to go check you out.
Jesse Anderson: Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. This was a great conversation. I loved it.
William Curb: Thank you so much.
This Episode's Top Tips
Avoid relying solely on urgency as a motivation source, as it can lead to negatively reinforcing cycles and increased anxiety. We can embrace a variety of strategies for coping with ADHD, while acknowledging that what works may change over time or depending on the situation.
Prospective memory is our ability to remember to remember - and so with our ADHD it can be struggle not only to remember what we need to remember, but even that there is something that needs to be remembered. There are a variety of solutions we can try to help with this such as physical reminders, our calendars, and alarms on our phones.
It’s important that we acknowledge and address the shame often associated with ADHD. ADHD is hard and having difficulties with ADHD is not your fault. However, we still need to take responsibility for finding and implementing coping strategies.