Is it possible to take ADHD off "Hard Mode"?

We often hear that living with ADHD is like playing a video game where the difficulty slider is permanently stuck on "Hard." But while the challenges of executive dysfunction are very real, we sometimes make things even more difficult for ourselves by insisting on doing things the "right" (read: hardest) way.

In this classic monologue episode, William Curb explores the concept of Easy Mode. What would it look like if your morning routine felt effortless? What if your workspace didn't feel like a barrier to your productivity?

By utilizing the "Focusing Question" from Gary Keller's The One Thing, William breaks down how to find the lead domino that makes every other task easier—or completely unnecessary.

• The "Easy Mode" Vision: Defining what a low-friction life actually looks like (and why a perfect life might actually be a bit boring).

• The Focusing Question: Learning to ask, "What's the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?"

• The Domino Effect: Why focusing on small, strategic tasks creates the momentum needed to tackle the big ones.

• Environment Design: Using the three parts of a task (Setup, Doing, and Cleanup) to reduce the cognitive load of starting.

• Progress over Perfection: Shifting the goal from "fixing" your ADHD to simply sliding that difficulty scale down a few notches.

• The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

• The "Walls of Awful" concept (shoutout to Brendan Mahan)

• Checklists & Automation: Tools to make remembering "unnecessary."

"Sometimes life is hard because our ADHD is making it harder, and sometimes it's because we're choosing to do things in the hardest way possible."

Find the full show notes and transcript at: hackingyouradhd.com/191

Support the show on Patreon: patreon.com/hackingyouradhd

Hey Team!

We often talk about the "internal" struggles of ADHD, the messy desks and the forgotten appointments, but we don't always talk about how the outside world reacts to those traits. I'm joined by Brooke Schnittman, an ADHD coach and the best-selling author of Activate Your ADHD Potential. Brooke has worked with thousands of individuals to help them develop sustainable systems for focus and emotional regulation, but today, she's here to talk about a global study she conducted on the link between ADHD and bullying.

So in today's episode, we're talking about how this study was conducted and what we can garner from that data. We also discuss the "invisible disability" penalty, where our symptoms are misinterpreted as character flaws, and how "masking" can actually prevent us from progressing because we're too busy being chameleons. And we also cover some practical ways to identify safe people and build a "reciprocal" support system that helps buffer against the impact of chronic criticism.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/283

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD

This Episode's Top Tips

1. 1. When faced with a threat or bullying, the ADHD brain often experiences a physiological "freeze" where the parasympathetic nervous system takes over. It's important for us to understand that we're not always in control of this shift, and not to be self-critical about how we react in the moment and give ourselves grace to do better in the future.
   2. To effectively manage a bullying situation, we have to understand the framework: repetition, power imbalance, and harm. Recognizing that a power imbalance can be "social status" or "neurotypical norms" rather than just a boss-employee hierarchy allows us to identify why a situation feels "off".
   3. Many ADHDers stay in bullying situations because the executive function required to leave (interviewing, onboarding, starting over) feels more overwhelming than the bullying itself. Shifting the perspective to "body data"—how your nervous system feels around that person—can be a more reliable indicator than your internal pro/con list.
   4. Since bullying often triggers a survival response that shuts down your executive functions, you can't rely on logic in the moment. To combat this, Brooke suggests focusing on nervous system regulation tools (like EMDR or grounding) to help your body feel safe again. You have to train your brain before the situation occurs so that "doing X when Y happens" becomes a more automatic habit.

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 it says, how it was conducted, and try to find any practical takeaways.

In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called "Improvement of Anxiety and ADHD following goal-focused cognitive remediation: a randomized controlled trial." This study investigates goal-focused interventions and looks at whether they can improve executive function and emotional well-being for adults with ADHD. There's not too much to the intro, so let's get into it.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at https://HackingYourADHD.com/282

https://tinyurl.com/56rvt9fr - Unconventional Organisation Affiliate link

https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk - YouTube

https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD - Patreon