How to Be Successful with ADHD

What's going on? Today we are talking about how to become successful with ADHD. So you guys know I have ADHD. I have really bad ADHD, and it is such an integral component of who I am. And my life changed when I changed the way that I looked at it, and I looked at it as a neurological type as opposed to a disorder. I got off of the pharmaceuticals. I stopped playing the games that were presented to me that are meant for the neurological neurologically typical person, and I just created my own life, right? And I gamified my life and I started practicing lifestyle design. And now, you know, for all intents and purposes, I am what I define as successful, and we'll get into that. But something that you guys need to understand, you know, with ADHD is that ADHDers always occupy one end or the other of the bell curve, right? You see that bell curve meme where it's like idiot, genius, normie. You will never be in that middle section. As much as you wanna be a normal person with a normal job and just to enjoy things and to play the games that are uniquely, or excuse me, that are presented to you, it's gonna be really hard. The only way I think that you can be normal with ADHD is by taking copious amounts of prescription meth in the form of dextroamphetamine, Adderall, methylphenidate, like Ritalin. So it's gonna be hard for you to be normal. Accept that, right? Accept that. Hard for you to be normal, easy for you to be extraordinary. And what's going to decide whether or not you end up on the bell curve over here or over here, right, ending up being like a bum or just not successful whatsoever, or being hyper successful with the highly unique life, is the games that you decide to play and also the level of self-awareness that you're able to breed. It all starts with self-awareness. So understand that you are playing a different game if you have ADHD. Advice that applies to the neurotypical will likely not apply to you, right? Just saying, like, you know, someone saying, hey, all you need to do to be successful is to do the work, that's not gonna apply to you 'cause that's not how your brain works. That's not an excuse though. And this is where people mess up. They use ADHD as an excuse. I have never used ADHD as an excuse and I will never use ADHD as an excuse because excuses just, they don't serve you, right? It's victim mindset and you can never have a victim mindset. It may feel good in the present moment. It is going to cuck you existentially if you ever accept the victim mindset. Mindset. Anyway, let's talk about the game of success. What defines success? That's entirely up to you. But you know, for the sake of this video and for me, that looks like high income, time autonomy, location independence, and fulfilling work. What that looks like in practice is you wake up, you get to do what you want when you want. You don't have to respond to anybody. You can look crazy, you can do whatever you want. You don't have to be afraid of posting your ideas on the internet. You can have a mullet, you can have a mustache, it doesn't matter, right? That's success to me. And it's going to continue to evolve as it all should. But that is what success is. So how do you get that, right? Like, you kind of want to break down each of these individually, but how do you get a high-income job or a career or business? How do you get time autonomy? How do you get location independence? And how do you get fulfilling work? Well, when it comes to work in general, as someone with ADHD, you have two options that will work decently well. Option number one is to get a job with clearly defined structures and then find ways to hit those benchmarks as quickly as possible, right? So can you get a job where it's like, I know I just have to get in, do the work, get out, and then you have all that free time to go and do what interests you, you can do that. And I know guys with ADHD that have that structure and they live pretty good lives. But do I think that is where the highest potential is? No, that is where the safest bet is. So if you value security over spontaneity, over, you know, opportunity, then that might be the option for you. And you know, the way to do this is to create that entire work as a game, right? Create as a game where your only objective is to figure out what those North Star metric are, metrics are that you get judged on and hit those as fast as possible. It's like school, right? School is a good example, like not going to be good at it in the typical sense, but you gotta do it. So recreate the game and figure out how to get the best grades with the least amount of work, right? What do I need to do to get in and get the A, right? Most people are like, well, you just got to sit down to study for 4 hours. Well, that may not work for you. So how can you recreate that game? It's all about just constantly recreating games, right? Starting from scratch, thinking of it from first principles. So that's option number 1. Option number 2 is to have your work be your life. There will be no separation between you and your career. Everything you do contributes to your work, and everything in your work contributes to your life. You are the job, right? You essentially go around and you can never tell people what you do because you do so many things, and it's just who you are, right? Those are the 2 options, and they're not mutually exclusive. And also, you can do one for a little bit and then do the next one. So the best way to approach this is is just, in my opinion, like how I approach it. And I may be biased, but I'm gonna use it as an example for you guys, right? So I started out, I always had my own businesses. I went to school, I did a bunch of different gigs, a bunch of different jobs. I acquired a lot of meta skills 'cause I had no idea what I wanted to do. And the last thing I wanted to do was to pigeonhole myself, right? Because if you have ADHD, you're gonna get obsessed with something and then you're obsessed with something, you make it your entire identity, you're obsessed with it for 3 months and then the dopamine wears off and you're like, wow, I don't even like this that much anymore. Most people, they get attached to that thing that they're doing and they want to continue to do it even though it's no longer serving them, right? You need to get okay with moving on, right? But that also comes with setting expectations when you start a new activity, right? Right now I'm really into like gymnastics style movements. I'm really into a different form of training, but I accept the fact that I'll probably get bored of it in 3 weeks. I'll move on. That's okay, right? Because it contributes to this umbrella goal. That I'm pursuing, which is physical mastery. So anyway, understand this, understand that you're playing a different game. Um, get a job and there's two options, options or opportunities when you get a job. You can either get a job that is easy and doesn't take up too much time. You can do it in your sleep and it doesn't take up a lot of energy or cognitive load and then just hack your way into being satisfactory. How can you get the satisfactory output to get that paycheck while freeing up all that time and not using up a lot of your time? 4-Hour Workweek style. Option number 2 is to get a job that will teach you valuable skills, right? Skills that you can then apply to your further endeavor and your personal game that you're creating. Those are the 2 options. And then spend all of your free time just developing your skills and developing your sense of self, working on self-awareness, and then slowly figuring out what other opportunities are available for you. So option number 3 is to do both. And from my experience, I did both, right? Like I said, started off with a bunch of odd gigs, small businesses, some failed, some did okay. Started with a cybersecurity startup, came on and, you know, built that software for a while, left that, and that's when I kind of started this whole new ADHD awakening. I started a marketing agency, and I started a marketing agency 'cause I was listening to some dude talking about how he created this really successful company, and he's like, "Well, I wasn't really ever good at anything, but I knew that I needed the space to figure out what I was good at, so I started a marketing agency knowing that that wasn't the thing that was gonna get me to the next level," right? Going into it knowing that, hey, listen, this is— this has its place. This isn't my dream. This isn't my mission. This isn't my passion. It's the thing that's going to sustain me while I look for that next thing. And that's what I did with the marketing agency, right? It taught me invaluable skills. It leveraged what I was good at, and it gave me the time, space, and freedom to explore my true work and my true colleagues. So I went in with that mindset, right? A lot of people go in like, I want to make $1 million immediately. I'm going to work 60 hours a week. Well, that's great. One, you create a business that now requires you to work 60 hours a week. Two, you end up burning out. Or three, you just fall flat on your face and you get an ego complex. I went into it with like, I want this to just support me. How can I get really solid cash flow and not have to work a lot and be able to move wherever I want in the world and then have free time to go and focus on those other things, all while building these invaluable skills that I use to this day. So that's why I started the marketing agency. None of this would have been possible if I didn't start that marketing agency. And, um, yeah, I'm grateful for it, but I'm not a good agency owner. Like I'm not good at keeping up with things and doing the same thing day in, day out. And I knew that I just used it and I, and I structured it in a way where it worked for my life. So anyway, those are the two options. Ah, and then you want to slowly align your career and align what you're doing with having your work be your life, right? I believe that ADHDers are driven by a need for mastery. They want to get something, they want to get good at something for its own sake. Right? And I noticed that with myself, like a lot of this stuff that I do, I am doing for my own sake. All the creating content online, like these YouTube videos, I'm doing them for my own sake because they're personally rewarding to me. And by having other jobs and like other businesses that support me, enable me to have this freedom here. And this is where I think a lot of people mess up, especially with ADHD, is they make their passion their work. And what that ends up doing is that ends up causing them to hate their passion and it ends up causing them to dislike their work and it removes that creative pursuit and that hyperfixation focus. So I've done that in the past and I'm very wary about that. That's why like I have my businesses aside from what I do when it comes to health and when it comes to fitness and when it comes to content, because that gives me the freedom to do whatever I want here and not feel confined by the need to make money from it. So, uh, ADHDers do work best when they have a lot of different projects and this is kind of how I look at it. I have a bunch of different projects and all of the projects contribute to the umbrella goal. Everything that I'm doing is synergistic with one another, right? Alignment, whatever you wanna call it. Like the content that I create for my newsletter then goes to like these YouTube scripts, right? It goes to my Twitter, the content I make for Twitter and the research I do for supplements, it goes to creating content about health stuff, right? The work that I do for supplement brands and building health brands, that helps with me, with my marketing and my copywriting, which I then use for my own content. It all connects to one another. Everything is in alignment. If I started doing OnlyFans management, that would be horribly misaligned. It would waste my time and it would waste my energy no matter how much money it brought in. So anyway, work best when you have a lot of different projects, but build projects that you can kind of step back from for a while and just keep at maintenance, right? So right now I'm going super hard at video content 'cause I'm really liking it. So that means that I have to bring these other ones to maintenance and still make sure that they're satisfactory. Right, with my supplement brand, with my marketing agency, with my consulting, with my newsletter, with my Twitter content, with all of these things, I can just have like these check marks that I have. Like, okay, I got it done. I don't have to worry about it. Now I can focus on what I'm really hyperfixated on. That is the best way I've found to do it. Obviously this is scattered because that's how the brain works when you have ADHD. But what I wanna focus on here is that once again, you're playing a different game, right? It's going to be harder for you in the beginning, but if you can power through and if you can stick with it and if you don't give up, If you don't capitulate to the games that they want you to play, you will have such an incredible life. Your life will be so much better. You will take what most people consider a disability and you will become extraordinary. That's what I did. That's what I continue to do. And it's what I'm most proud of is figuring this out. I remember when I was in university and I was really focusing on the startup world because that's the game that was presented to me. I was talking to one of my advisors and one day I was like, man, I'm sick of this shit. I want to go and I want to live on the beach somewhere and I want to train MMA and I want to ride a dirt bike. And he's like, no, that's fucking crazy, right? That's so crazy. But you understand, different games, different games for different people. Everybody has the worldview bias that everybody's perspective on life is the same as theirs. That is not the case. But one thing that I did really talk about was, man, I really want to kind of dig into this ADHD thing because I thought that I found the missing link and it was the missing link that wasn't really expressed expressed by anybody else. I found that all ADHD content online was boring and it was like victim mentality. It was like therapy bullshit mentality. And I hated it because it wasn't serving and it's not self-serving. So now I just really took the time and, you know, I took a year and a half to kind of break down how the ADHD brain works. And I was able to hack my way to some semblance of success. I mean, laundry is still very difficult. Certain chores are very difficult, but you can hack your way around that too. Right, get less clothes, pay somebody to do your laundry. It's all about hacking the game over and over and over again. But anyway guys, this was a ramble. I hope this was helpful. Hope you enjoyed. If you have any questions, let me know and I'll do more videos. Godspeed, have a good one. How you doing?