Dial in Your Dopamine: Motivation, Focus, and the ADHD Brain at Work with Skye Waterson (1/2)

Are push notifications directing your day? While useful in some ways, push notifications can also become a huge distraction, especially for the ADHD brain. This week in episode 313 we’re joined by Skye Waterson, a former academic turned business owner and ADHD coach, to discuss practical strategies for staying focused in your work.

Since dopamine levels affect our motivation, we might need to make adjustments to our dopamine levels to help increase our focus whether we work in an office or from home. Skye will explore some of the unique challenges of working from home with ADHD, thoughts on the ADHD brain’s struggle with procrastination, and the importance of clarifying our daily priorities. We also discuss the purpose of developing daily routines that will decrease stress and support working memory.

Original Recording Date: 12-29-2024

Topics – A Different Perspective on ADHD in Our Careers, Baselining ADHD and Work Environments, Motivation and Dopamine at Work, Working from Home and Managing Distractions, Developing Purposeful Routines, Communication Preferences and Managing Push Notifications, Procrastination and Prioritization

2:11 – A Different Perspective on ADHD in Our Careers

• Skye Waterson is a former academic who found out she had ADHD at the beginning of pursuing a PhD. As a result, Skye decided to focus on ADHD research. After doing a bunch of research on ADHD, Skye posted her findings on the internet. Once the pandemic hit, Skye began coaching and loved it. She has grown her coaching practice into a 6-figure business and recently transitioned to working with business owners who have ADHD.
• We’ve discussed ADHD on the show previously with guests Jon Towles and Kristen Carder, but this time we’re going to approach it from a different angle. Here are the links if you would like to go back and hear those discussions:
  • Episode 129 – The Challenges of a Superpower with Jon Towles (1/2)
  • Episode 130 – The Excellent Advocate with Jon Towles (2/2)
  • Episode 216 – Experiencing a Neurodivergent Diagnosis with Kristen Carder (1/2)
  • Episode 217 – The Vulnerable Parts of ADHD with Kristen Carder (2/2)

3:15 – Baselining ADHD and Work Environments

• How would Skye define what ADHD is and is not?
  • ADHD is a persistent and pervasive struggle with executive functioning (an area where Skye is heavily focused), impulsivity, and emotional dysregulation. This comes from shifts in the brain as seen in the neuroscience.
  • Skye tells us the DSM-5 is most commonly used for diagnosing ADHD. The DSM-5 is a set of criteria and questions one would get asked by a professional (usually as psychiatrist but could be other professionals depending on your country) to diagnose ADHD. There are slightly different criteria to diagnose ADHD depending on whether you’re a child or an adult.
  • When diagnosing adults, professionals are looking for whether your struggles have been pervasive over time.
  • There are two primary types of ADHD:
    • Primarily Inattentive – it may not show up, but this usually means you are distracted
    • Primarily Hyperactive – driven by a motor internally / difficulty sitting still
    • There is also a combined type (which happens to be Skye’s diagnosis type).
• These types are going to play out in our careers. What might ADHD look like for someone who works in technology?
  • Skye says this can look like many different things. Work environments can look like Google, a place where there is a lot of flexibility and freedom. Environments like this also force you to manage your own time. Doing technology work for the government, for example, may not allow flexibility in the applications you get to use. In some cases, Skye has worked with clients who were employed by a government and were not allowed to use their phones at work.
  • Overall, it depends on the level of flexibility your work environment will allow.
  • “Mostly we’re thinking about how do you foc