Cameron Herold argues that ADD/ADHD should be reframed as strengths for entrepreneurs rather than disorders. He calls ADD "attention disbursement," which enables entrepreneurs to see the full landscape (market, customers, team, finances) and thus delegate effectively. He also compares bipolar traits to an entrepreneurial "CEO disease," saying mania fuels leadership and followership while lows function as course-correction; both, he contends, can be leveraged rather than medicated in most cases.
Chapters
This is going to come as a bit of a surprise to you. And I was just asked, how do I fix my add, or did I go about biohacking to fix my add? You know, and how do entrepreneurs kind of fix their attention Deficit disorder or adhd? And the reality is it's not a fucking disorder. And I think we need to start to stand up for ourselves and explain this to people. ADD is not a disorder. It was labeled the disorder by the medical system and the school system because the people that have it, most of us are very entrepreneurial, are not going to be good teachers and good doctors, but we don't want to be teachers and doctors. So ADD is not a disorder. When you're an entrepreneur, Attention Deficit disorder is really attention disbursement. And what it means is you see everything. You see what's happening with the economy, the market, your customers, your suppliers, your website, your branding, your funnels, your messaging. You see what's happening with your team and the culture and your financials and your P and L and the balance sheet and the numbers and all of this stuff. Stuff that we have to keep our head wrapped around. If we were so completely focused, I. E. If we fixed our ADD and could completely focus for 8 hours a day on something, we wouldn't notice everything around us and that would make us horrible as entrepreneurs. So the reality is the attention disbursement that gives us the full view of everything that a doctor can't see because they're very myopic, or a teacher can't see because they're all by the book. There's no book in business. The reality is there. There is no box. You've got to be outside of the box that doesn't exist in the first place. And ADD allows you to be outside of that box and see everything that's going on. And then because we see everything that's going on and we see so much of it, we don't have the bandwidth to hang on to it all. We have to get people to do it for us. So we end up delegating this stuff to get fixed to everybody. That's a strength. Again, as an entrepreneur. So what I want you to do is actually rally around understanding that these are not problems that you have to fix. These are actually strengths that you want to leverage. Very similar, by the way, to bipolar disorder, which has been nicknamed by the medical community as the CEO disease. Most entrepreneurs and I cover this in chapter 12 of my book, Double Double, where I talk about the highs and lows of CEOs and the entrepreneurial Roller coaster. You can even look up on Google. The Entrepreneurial Rollercoaster Cameron Herald Tim Ferriss I was on Tim's blog about 12 years ago talking about it. A full article about the highs and lows of CEOs. Bipolar is not a disorder for entrepreneurs. The mania is why people follow us. It's that crazy energy, the enthusiasm. It's why people will quit their job to come and work for us or why someone will invest in our company. It's why an employee will stay up until all hours to finish a project. It's because of the energy of that entrepreneur that they're following. And then the stress and depression is simply us course correcting because we're under this insane amount of pressure. You know, we have our house mortgaged, we're trying to recruit people into the company. Meanwhile, we're not even sure if it's going to make it. These are all traits of entrepreneurs that that crazy roller coaster that we ride. Normal humans who are in normal jobs can talk to their peers, but the entrepreneur can't really tell their employees they're scared or frustrated or worried because they'll all freak out and run away. So we keep a lot of our stress inside us. We often don't go home to our spouse or our partner and talk about our angst or anxieties because it will drive them crazy and they'll worry too much as well. So we often keep all that bottled up inside. So I talk about the whole highs and lows of CEOs and that entrepreneurial roller coaster and how to ride the roller coaster, how you can actually wave your arms in the air and have fun instead of holding on and screaming in fear. But the reality is it again is a strength when you recognize that you're at that manic stage. You hop on streamyard and do some videos. You talk to your team, you get people rallied around your ideas. You don't talk to the media when you're stressed and depressed. You talk to them when you're filled with energy. Anyway, both of them are very, very big strengths of entrepreneurs. ADD and bipolar disorder can both be massively leveraged. We, we do not need to be medicating them unless you're on the very, very, very, very outward fringe. But for the most part, these are strengths, not disorders at all.
