The Bypassing Creative Consistency with Susanne Schotanus
Release Date: 06/01/2026
Research Recap with Skye: Circadian Rhythm
Hacking Your ADHD
Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Today, I'm joined by Skye Waterson for our Research Recap series. In this series, we take a look at a single research paper and dive into what the paper says, how it was conducted, and try to find any practical takeaways. In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called "ADHD as a Circadian Rhythm Disorder: Evidence and Implications for Chronotherapy." Now, this is a perspective paper looking at the...
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The Bypassing Creative Consistency with Susanne Schotanus
Hacking Your ADHD
Hey Team! As many of you know, I have a passion for writing, and so I’m excited that today we are diving deep into that world and why it often feels like an uphill battle when you have an ADHD brain. I'm talking with Susanne Schotanus, an expert ADHD coach who holds the unique distinction of being the world's first dedicated ADHD writing coach, as well as the founder of the annual Basecamp to Brilliance writing summit. Susanne brings a wealth of clinical and practical insight from her years spent coaching everyone from burnt-out university professors to memoirists struggling to organize...
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Scaffolding the ADHD Brain: How Habits Fail and Systems May Save Us
Hacking Your ADHD
Hey Team! When I moved into my neighborhood, most of the houses weren't built. So I got to see over the course of a few years, a lot of the work that went into putting those houses up, all the day-to-day progress that always kept happening, and how every step seemed to set them up for the next step. Now, nobody expects a brick wall to just materialize out of midair on pure willpower or a house to get completely built with no effort. yet when it comes to managing our daily routines, that’s exactly what we try to do. We expect our internal motivation to keep us on track despite our own...
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Tearing Down Cement Walls of Shame with Ron Capalbo
Hacking Your ADHD
Hey Team! Today I’m sitting down with Ron Capalbo, known to many as @adhd_ron on the socials. I’ve gotten to know Ron at a number of ADHD conferences and had a great time at Neurodiversion talking with him about Dungeon Crawler Carl and figured it was time to have him on the pod. Ron is an AACC-certified coach through the ADD Coach Academy who specializes in strengths-based development and helping adults navigate the messy "shame cycle" that so often accompanies an ADHD diagnosis. He’s spent years building a community focused on honoring unique brain chemistry rather than fighting a...
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Research Recap with Skye: Fidgeting
Hacking Your ADHD
Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Today, I'm joined by Skye Watterson for our research recap series. In this series, we take a look at a single research paper and dive into what the paper says, how it was conducted, and try to find any practical takeaways. In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called A Quantitative Analysis of Fidgeting in ADHD and Its Relation to Performance and Sustained Attention on a Cognitive Task. And so,...
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Hacking the Limbic System’s Spending Habits with Christine Lane
Hacking Your ADHD
Hey Team! This week, I’m talking with Christine Lane, an accredited financial counselor (AFC) with a master's degree in psychology. Christine has ADHD herself and, luckily for the rest of us, her hyper-fixation happens to be on personal finance. She’s the founder of Mind Over Money, where she focuses on the psychological hurdles that make traditional budgeting feel like a personal failure rather than just a glitch in your executive function. In our conversation today, we get into her "Four-Bucket Banking System" and why we need to stop making our money multitask. We also explore the...
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Coping with your ADHD (rebroadcast)
Hacking Your ADHD
In this rebroadcast of Hacking Your ADHD, host William Curb returns to the fundamental concept of coping—redefining it not just as an emotional reaction, but as a proactive problem-solving toolkit designed to mitigate predictable ADHD mishaps. Curb explores the critical shift from "reactive" stress management to "proactive" strategies, such as building calendar buffers and utilizing visual organization systems like hooks and "point of performance" reminders. By distinguishing between effective tools and maladaptive habits like self-defeating humor or impulsive spending, the episode...
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No Pain, All Gain: Somatic Healing with the Workout Witch Liz Tenuto
Hacking Your ADHD
Hey team, today I'm talking with Liz Tenuto, more widely known as the Workout Witch. Liz is a somatic specialist with a degree in psychology from UCSB, who has spent over a decade helping people release chronic stress through movement. She's also the author of Moving Through Trauma, which hit shelves in January. Liz's work bridges the gap between psychology and physical health, specializing in how trauma and stress manifest as psychological issues like gut problems, insomnia, and chronic pain. In our conversation today, we're diving into the world of somatic exercises, which are slow...
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Research Recap with Skye: Sleep Problems
Hacking Your ADHD
Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Today, I'm joined by Skye Waterson for our research recap series. In this series, we take a look at a single research paper, dive into what the paper says, how it was conducted, and try and find any practical takeaways. In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called "Prevalence, Patterns, and Predictors of Sleep Problems and Daytime Sleepiness in Young Adolescents with ADHD." And so this is a study...
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Stop the Panic: Regulating Your ADHD Brain with Jenna Free
Hacking Your ADHD
Hey Team! Today I’m talking with Jenna Free, a Master’s-level Canadian Certified Counselor and ADHD coach, who focuses on polyvagal theory, which is to say, she helps people understand their nervous system. She works specifically with neurodivergent adults to move them out of the "fight, flight, or freeze" responses that make ADHD symptoms feel ten times heavier than they need to be. In our conversation, we’re moving past the usual "tips and tricks" to look at the biological hardware of the ADHD brain and, more specifically, on nervous system regulation. We discuss the mechanics of...
info_outlineHey Team!
As many of you know, I have a passion for writing, and so I’m excited that today we are diving deep into that world and why it often feels like an uphill battle when you have an ADHD brain. I'm talking with Susanne Schotanus, an expert ADHD coach who holds the unique distinction of being the world's first dedicated ADHD writing coach, as well as the founder of the annual Basecamp to Brilliance writing summit. Susanne brings a wealth of clinical and practical insight from her years spent coaching everyone from burnt-out university professors to memoirists struggling to organize decades of research.
In our conversation today, we discuss why standard linear approaches to writing clash so intensely with our multi-dimensional thinking styles. Susanne explains the mechanics of the "messy middle" in long-term projects, how our constant craving for novelty can derail a draft after just two weeks, and why we might want to reconsider our view of consistency. We also explore practical ways to gamify your workflow and create structural frameworks that adapt to your brain rather than forcing your brain to adapt to them.
And while this episode's core focus is on writing, I think there is a lot to get out of this when considering any kind of long-term pursuit.
Susanne's Website - https://passionatewritercoaching.com/
Free Guide - https://passionatewritercoaching.com/hackingyouradhd/
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/299
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD
This Episode's Top Tips
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- Waiting until you magically feel motivated to start a task is a losing game because our brains require action to generate momentum. To trick your brain into gear, lower the barrier to entry by making the first step absurdly small. Writing a single sentence or fixing a minor typo requires almost zero initial effort, but that tiny completion can give your brain the dopamine boost it needs to transition into work mode.
- Your note-taking and organizational systems are here to serve you, not the other way around. Using a brand new productivity tool for two glorious weeks and then completely losing interest isn’t a personal failure; it’s just the natural lifespan of a novelty-driven dopamine source. With this in mind, keep your architectures simple, make sure your data is easily exportable, and make it easy if you need to switch tools in the future.
- ADHD brains run on an system driven by interest, novelty, challenge, urgency, and passion. Most of us default to novelty (which leaves us with a mountain of half-finished projects) or panic-induced urgency (which runs us straight into burnout). To break the cycle and handle long-form projects, start intentionally leaning into the underutilized levers of challenge, gamification, and genuine playfulness.