Claim OwnershipThe ADHD Skills Lab
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© 2026 The ADHD Skills Lab
Description
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/
146 Episodes
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Presented by Understood.org You already know what needs to get done. It’s not a knowledge problem. It’s not a lack of ideas. But you still don’t start. Instead, you overthink it, wait to feel ready, or tell yourself you’ll do it later, again. Eric Zimmer is the creator of The One You Feed, an award-winning podcast with 50M+ downloads and 800+ conversations on behavior change. He is the go-to voice on sustainable habit change, and his work shows what actually works when willpower doesn’t. In t...
Presented by Understood.org You keep setting deadlines and somehow everything still ends up happening at the last minute. You plan ahead. You move things around. You even set earlier deadlines. And it still compresses into a final push. This episode explains why that keeps happening and what to change. We build on Wednesday’s breakdown of time blindness and show why most deadline strategies fail over time, especially the fake ones you don’t really believe. Then we walk through how to structur...
Presented by Understood.org Deadlines exist right up until they don’t. You can see it on the calendar. You know it’s coming. You’ve even thought about it a few times. Then suddenly it’s urgent and everything else gets dropped while you scramble to catch up. This episode explains why that keeps happening. We break down what research shows about ADHD and time perception, and why this isn’t just poor planning. Future time doesn’t create pressure until it’s right in front of you, so you end up re...
Presented by Understood.org Jamie Sea built two seven-figure businesses. From the outside, everything looked successful. But behind the scenes, the pressure, urgency and burnout were becoming impossible to ignore. In this episode of ADHD Skills Lab, Skye talks with Jamie Sea, entrepreneur, educator and host of The Jamie Sea Show about the moment she realized the businesses she built no longer fit the life she wanted. Jamie shares what it was like to feel trapped inside success, how ADHD patt...
Presented by Understood.org You know how to do the work. But when a task is actually a project, you have to figure out the steps again every time you come back to it. On Wednesday we looked at the research behind this problem. ADHD planning challenges often show up when the brain has to manage the structure of a project internally. This episode looks at the practical solution. Instead of trying to carry the whole project in your head, many ADHD entrepreneurs externalize the planning layer...
Presented by Understood.org You can handle individual tasks all day. But the moment something becomes a project, everything slows down. Research into ADHD executive functioning suggests the difference often comes down to planning demands, not motivation or intelligence. In this episode, Skye and Robbie break down what these experiments reveal about ADHD and why complex projects require building a sequence before starting. That requirement can create real cognitive friction for many ADHD brain...
Presented by Understood.org You make a to-do list. Then you avoid it all day. For many ADHD professionals, the problem isn’t motivation, it’s how the workday is structured. In this conversation, Skye speaks with Kyle Vamvouris, founder of SalesThread and the strategist behind 87 B2B sales teams, about how he actually works. Instead of rigid productivity systems, Kyle relies on open calendar space, rapid experimentation, and what he calls “sandbox days.” In the episode, Kyle explains: Why most...
Presented by Understood.org Many adults with ADHD feel like they have to repeat the same instructions again and again. You explain a process to your team, everyone nods, and a week later it feels like no one remembers what they learned. Earlier this week on ADHD Skills Lab, Skye and Robbie explored research on why ADHD brains often struggle during the encoding stage of learning. When information isn’t encoded properly, it never makes it into long-term memory. In this episode they focus on wha...
1Presented by Understood.org Many adults with ADHD feel like they have a bad memory. You learn something in a meeting or training session, but a few days later it feels like the information has disappeared. In this episode of ADHD Skills Lab, Skye and Robbie break down research on memory and ADHD. They explore how information gets encoded into long-term memory and why this stage of learning often breaks down for ADHD brains. The discussion covers a major meta-analysis on effective learning tec...
Presented by Understood.org You start a business for freedom. Then one day you realize the business no longer fits the way your brain works. Taki Moore is often called the business coach’s favorite business coach. Through his Million Dollar Coach community he has helped thousands of coaches grow their businesses and create more than $1 billion in client results. Along with that success was something he didn’t fully understand until recently: ADHD. In this episode of the ADHD Skills Lab, T...
Many adults with ADHD struggle with tools that seem simple at first but quickly become overwhelming. Dashboards full of icons, systems that require too many clicks, and constantly changing interfaces can quietly drain focus. In this episode of ADHD Skills Lab, Skye and Robbie explore practical ADHD work systems that reduce visual overload and make digital tools easier to navigate. Earlier this week, they explored research on object recognition memory in ADHD and why visual systems like softwa...
Why does a simple software update suddenly make everything feel impossible to use? In this Research Recap, Skye and Robbie break down a meta-analysis examining object recognition memory in ADHD. Object recognition memory helps your brain recognize visual information like icons, folders, faces, and layouts. It’s what allows you to quickly identify the right button in a menu or remember where something lives inside a complex interface. Researchers reviewed 28 studies involving children and adol...
When creative work gets hard, most people with ADHD assume something’s wrong. Wrong idea. Wrong project. Wrong career. In this conversation, Andy J. Pizza (author, illustrator, and host of Creative Pep Talk) breaks down the moment his work completely dried up — and why that crisis forced him to stop winging it and start creating strategically. We talk about perfectionism, rejection sensitivity, creative droughts, collaboration fights, and the uncomfortable shift from “I hope this works” to “I...
Business owner with ADHD wanting operational clarity and focus? Click here to book a session with Skye. https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com for a operational clarity session! More adults with ADHD start businesses than the general population. But here’s the part nobody talks about: Research shows ADHD is positively linked to entrepreneurial attitudes and startup behavior… and negatively linked to post-launch outcomes, performance, and wellbeing. In this Research Recap, Skye an...
Description Business owner with ADHD wanting operational clarity and focus? Click here to book a session with Skye. https://www.unconventionalorganisation.com for a operational clarity session! Why does focus feel like forcing a rusty machine to start… instead of flipping a switch? In this Research Recap, Skye and Will unpack a randomized placebo-controlled study examining how brain networks behave differently in adults with ADHD. This episode isn’t about recommending medication. It’s...
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...
“I wasn’t failing. I just wasn’t growing.” Adam Tasker had the career. The family. Three kids. Responsibility handled. But privately, he knew he was drifting. After being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, following his sons’ diagnoses, he began to look at how he was operating. Not just as a father, but as a leader. At home. In business. With himself. In this conversation, Skye and Adam unpack: What actually changes after a late ADHD diagnosisHow overwhelm escalates and why some days collapse f...
Looking for The Business Visibility Workshop? Click here for details: https://unconventionalorganisation.circle.so/checkout/the-business-visibility-workshop-wednesday-feb-18th You don’t need a formal ADHD diagnosis for ADHD traits to affect your health, finances, or well-being. In this Research Recap, Skye and Will break down a study on subclinical ADHD - ADHD traits that fall below the diagnostic threshold - and how they impact entrepreneurs and employees. The findings are confronting. Acros...
If sales feels heavy, awkward, or mentally exhausting, it’s probably not because you’re bad at it. It’s more likely because you’ve been trying to sell using advice that relies on pressure, performance, or rigid systems - the exact things that make ADHD brains freeze, overthink, or avoid the conversation altogether. In this episode, Skye sits down with Wes Schaeffer (The Sales Whisperer) to talk about how to sell in a way that actually feels calm, grounded, and sustainable — without hype, mani...
A lot of people with ADHD deal with physical symptoms they’ve never talked about - or never thought were connected. This episode looks at what the research actually shows about ADHD and gut issues, and where the line is between association, speculation, and overreach. ADHD usually gets framed around focus, motivation, and productivity. But growing research suggests it may also be linked to very real physical symptoms, including gut issues that many people quietly live with. In this episode, S...
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