Today I'm talking with Katy Weber, a certified ADHD coach and the creator of the top-rated Women & ADHD podcast. After a career in journalism and wellness, Katy was diagnosed with ADHD at 45. Following that diagnosis, she has built a platform helping neurodivergent women move past the shame of late diagnosis and into a place of radical self-acceptance.

In our conversation, we talk about the systemic stressors that often trigger a late-life ADHD "breaking point," particularly for women navigating career, parenting, and hormonal shifts. We get into the mechanics of masking, why we often use anxiety and shame as our primary motivators, and the overlap between neurodivergence and physical health, looking at how chronic stress manifests in our bodies.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/288

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk

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

This Episode's Top Tips

1. 1. Recognize that "having it all together" on the outside often comes at a high cost. When people ask, "How do you do it all?" the answer is usually through extreme masking and "white-knuckling," which leads directly to burnout and chronic anxiety rather than true stability.
   2. Many ADHDers wait until the last possible second and use anxiety as a fuel source. While this can work as an effective short-term strategy, keeping yourself in perpetual anxiety to drive productivity is detrimental to long-term mental health.
   3. Broaden your view of ADHD to include the autonomic nervous system and physical health. Katy notes a high correlation between ADHD and "invisible" physical issues like autoimmune disorders, fibromyalgia, and chronic pain, suggesting that a neurodivergent nervous system reacts to stress in ways that affect the entire body, not just cognitive function.

It's 11:20 right now and I'm eating a brownie, but tomorrow, no more sweets - it's zero sugar for me. And exercise, all of it. Every day. And cleaning? My house is going to be spotless. Email? Say hello to inbox zero. And no more TV or video games, only highly enriching activities for me from now on.

All I have to do is follow the plan. What is the plan? That's not important right now. I'll figure that out tomorrow. For now, I'm going to bask in the glory of what is to come.

All right, let's get back to reality - although I really did write this at 11:20… and while those may not be my thoughts exactly, they aren't that far off from ideas I've had in the past. I mean, they weren't good ideas, but ideas nonetheless.

So today we're talking about midnight motivation - that late-night urge to turn your life around that somehow doesn't translate into the next day. We're going to be talking about why, in the quiet of the night, we become these master architects of our own lives, designing sprawling mansions of productivity because we don't have to worry about the cost of materials or even the laws of physics. But when we wake up, we're no longer the architect; we're the contractor. Or maybe even more accurately, the subcontractor who has been handed some hastily drawn out plans on the back of a bar napkin. So in this episode, we're going to look at why our ADHD brains love building these "theoretical" lives when the world is on pause and how we can start translating those blueprints into something we can actually build during the daylight hours.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/284

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk

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

This Episode's Top Tips

1. 1. We need to understand that late-night motivation isn't really potential energy(pulling back the bowstring), but rather it's theoretical energy (you're just thinking about the bow). Recognizing this distinction is important in understanding why we never "release the arrow" in the morning; we never actually pulled the string back in the first place.
   2. While it does feel like planning, thinking about doing something isn't the same as planning, and thinking about planning also isn't the same thing as planning. This is important to remember because even though it's not really planning, it still feels like we are, and when we don't follow through with those not-plans, it also still feels bad.
   3. We want to shift our focus from the Vision (the dopamine-heavy end goal) to the Logistics (the boring friction). A plan isn't a plan if it isn't accounting for all those logistical pieces. If the logistics aren't there, your brain will bail the moment you hit a "hidden" step.
   4. By moving "theoretical" plans into a physical calendar, we are better able to see our existing commitments in a visual space. We don't have infinite time, and if we want to start something new, we have to be able to fit it into the calendar.

Hey Team!

Today I'm talking with Meredith Carder, author of It All Makes Sense Now. Meredith is an ADHD coach and the creator behind the popular Instagram account @hummingbird_adhd, where she focuses on neuro-affirming strategies for adults. With a background in psychology and an MBA, she brings a unique perspective on how we can bridge the gap between our high-level professional goals and the executive dysfunction that often gets in the way.

I got to meet Meredith at the 2025 ADHD Conference in Kansas City and then got to hang out with her again recently at NeuroDiversion in Austin. She's a ton of fun to talk with and while this episode had a few hurdles to get over in terms of actually recording it, was a ton of fun.

In our conversation today, we get into the concept of "Ambition vs. Capacity," that frustrating space where our big ideas don't quite match what we are actually capable of doing in the moment. We talk about why we feel so much shame over "adulting" tasks like laundry and dishes, and how changing our mental models of what an "adult" looks like can free up bandwidth for things that actually matter. We also get into Meredith's specific systems for planning her week and how she uses a "Monday Planning Meeting" to set realistic expectations before the week even starts.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/287

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk

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

This Episode's Top Tips

1. 1. Often, we conflate the ideas of "simple" with "easy," and because simple tasks can lack the stimulation of more complex problems, they sometimes require more deliberate strategy and support, not less.
   2. High-level ideation can be a strength, but it is separate from executive function. We must learn to reconcile our big dreams with our actual current bandwidth to avoid the cycle of "losing self-trust" when we fail to reach unrealistic goals.
   3. Being "good" at something doesn't mean you have to or even necessarily need to do it, especially if it isn't something you are particularly interested in. Selecting goals based on personal values rather than just skills helps ensure that the "20% of boring stuff" required to reach a goal doesn't outweigh the "80% of interest" that keeps us going.