Hey Team!

Today, I’m talking with Dr. Ryan Sultan, a distinguished psychiatrist specializing in ADHD, anxiety, depression, and substance use disorders. He serves as an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute.

And he has also been exploring the evolutionary basis for ADHD. Now, let’s get to a few things up front here because often when I hear about evolution and ADHD, I know I’m about to hear something about ADHD as a superpower.

That’s not what this conversation is about today. While we will be looking at how ADHD traits might have been useful in a pre-industrial world and why natural selection didn’t weed out our distractible, impulsive brains, the focus is more on how those brains thrived within society instead of looking at them in isolation. This means that our conversation mostly focuses on how these ADHD traits work in conjunction within society rather than trying to view them either negatively or positively. And then we also get into how understanding this evolutionary basis for ADHD can help us understand better ways of managing and treating ADHD.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/211

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This Episode's Top Tips

1. 1. Regarding the evolutionary basis of ADHD, avoid thinking of it in terms of better or worse and instead try to see how ADHD traits can serve the community as a whole.
   2. With that lens in mind, the impulsivity, novelty-seeking, and hyper-focus of ADHD brains could have been advantages in early human societies, especially for hunting, exploring, and problem-solving in unpredictable environments. With the opposite from the structured, repetitive, sit-still-and-focus world we live in today giving us more difficulties because it wasn’t “designed” with the ADHD brain in mind.
   3. Neurodiversity can benefit everyone. Societies thrive on diverse thinking styles. ADHD brains bring creativity, spontaneity, and out-of-the-box problem-solving, which can be a huge asset when properly supported. We’re better when we work together.

On today’s episode, we've got a returning guest, Antonia Bowring, an executive coach and author who's reshaping how we think about productivity in the ADHD community. In our pervious conversation we explored her journey writing 'Coach Yourself!' and today we will be diving into how she developed her ADHD Success Planner, and how these tools can help you manage daily tasks more effectively. Antonia breaks down her simple yet powerful three-part planning system designed to transform your weekly grind into a manageable flow.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/210

If you we able to join us for our Live AMA on YouTube, thank you! It was so nice getting to answer some of your questions. If you missed it and would like to watch it, the live recording can be found here. Please subscribe so you can join us for the next one!

This Episode's Top Tips

1. 1. Acknowledge the calendar as the foundation of effective planning; it’s non-negotiable for keeping track of tasks and appointments.
   2. View planning not just as taking care of a task but as a vital form of self-care that helps manage stress and improves reliability.
   3. Embrace self-forgiveness and adaptation. Allow yourself the flexibility to change planning methods and forgive missed tasks to maintain motivation and effectiveness.

Hey Team!

In this episode, I’m thrilled to welcome Natalia Aíza, a multilingual counselor and OCD specialist.

Natalia is the founder and executive director of Kairos Wellness Collective, a therapy center that focuses on holistic care for clients experiencing OCD and Anxiety - located in Boulder, Colorado. They offer therapies including Exposure Response Prevention (ERP), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Play Therapy, Art Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Neurofeedback. Obviously, we won’t get into all of that in our conversation today, but we do hit on a few of those.

Also, separately, I wanted to mention that Kairos is the Greek word meaning “the perfect, delicate, crucial moment; the fleeting rightness of time and place that creates the opportune atmosphere for action, words or movement; also weather.” And really, I just wanted to share that because I love words like that - I just find them neat.

Anyway, in our conversation today, we dive into the overlap of ADHD and OCD - how they are similar and how they differ, and also the unique challenges each presents, especially when they are co-occurring. Natalia shares her personal and professional insights on distinguishing between ADHD distractions and OCD compulsions and how to approach treatment for each.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/209

Also before we get started, I wanted to let you know about my AMA on YouTube Live, happening the week this is released on January 31st at 10 AM Pacific - if you’re interested you can find that on the Hacking Your ADHD YouTube page, youtube.com/@hackingyouradhd and subscribe to the channel - or if you want to submit a question ahead of time you can do so at hackingyouradhd.com/ama

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https://www.shimmer.care/

This Episode's Top Tips

1. 1. It’s important to remember that you need to approach OCD and ADHD treatments differently; techniques beneficial for one may exacerbate the other.
   2. Try to distinguish between compulsions and simple fidgets or stims—while symptoms can be similar, it’s essential to understand the root causes that characterize compulsions.
   3. Be proactive in seeking diagnosis and treatment if OCD symptoms appear; early intervention can prevent the condition from worsening.

Hey Team

I was recently thinking about kids being picky eaters and how there is a movement where we’re not supposed to say picky anymore; we’re supposed to say they’re selective eaters.

And you know what, I get that. I grew up as a picky kid, and… let’s be honest, I’m a fairly picky adult as well. Scratch that, selective adult.

And I know it’s semantics, but I often find semantics are important. Because if we’re reframing this idea of being picky into being selective, it loses a lot of that negative connotation, and it gives a lot more power to the idea that what we’re doing is we’re making choices. In this case, making choices about food, but I think this is something we should keep in mind as we’re moving into the new year because a lot of us are going to find that we’re going to need to be more selective with our goals, especially in regard to New Year’s Resolutions.

And this is the idea that we’re going to be exploring in this episode - what are the things that we really want to focus on doing - what are the things that we want to commit ourselves to, and then what are the things that we should be letting go of.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/208

This Episode's Top Tips

1. 1. You can do anything, but you can’t do everything. If something feels draining, unaligned, or no longer serves you, it’s okay to move on.
   2. Work on reframing quitting as a positive. We’re redirecting our energy toward something more meaningful and prioritizing those things that we really want.
   3. Focus on sustainability. If a goal feels overwhelming, reassess and try to find a more manageable way to approach it.

Hey team!

Well, it’s 2025…. It doesn’t quite feel real yet; I mean, we’re a quarter of the way into the 21st century, but it feels like we got here fast. I’m not quite sure I’m ready, but regardless, time marches on.

I know a lot of you are working on making plans for the year, so we’re going to be starting this year with Chris Wang, CEO and co-founder of Shimmer, an ADHD coaching platform designed to meet people where they are. I had a lot of fun in this conversation, where we covered a bunch of stuff about goal setting and how to make sure you’re doing the important stuff in your life. Along the way, we discuss the power of community, process-oriented goal setting, and what it means to live in alignment with your values.

Of course we also discuss Chris’s coaching platform, Shimmer, but Chris does a great job bringing a lot of actionable advice to this conversation, so whether you’re looking for coaching or just want some extra tips to help with planning this episode’s got you covered.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/207

This Episode's Top Tips

1. 1. Work on setting process-oriented goals where your focus is on the actions you can control, like “exercise 3 times a week,” rather than outcome-based goals like “lose 10 pounds.”
   2. Make sure you are specific and write your to-do lists with clear, actionable steps to avoid overwhelm and decision paralysis. You want to know exactly what your next step is when looking at your to-do list.
   3. Leverage your support systems. You can use community and coaching to provide accountability, remove roadblocks, and refine your systems. Remember there is no gold star for toughing it out by yourself and it’s okay to get help.

This is the second part of the series on how to better manage your smartphone with your ADHD - you don't have to have listened to part 1 to listen to this episode, but if you like this episode I'd definitely recommend going back and listening to last week's episode as well. In that episode, we covered how we can limit the distractions that our smartphone can present and also how to make it easier on our ADHD brains when we're setting up our smartphone.

This week we're going in a bit of a different direction - while smartphones can be easily distracting and endless entertaining, they also provide us with some great tools to help us manage our ADHD. In this episode I'm going to be discussing a number of the apps I use to help me navigate my day - since I use the iPhone that means most of the apps I specifically discuss are going to be iPhone apps; however, I do try and provide alternatives for Android.

Find the Full Show Notes at: HackingYourADHD.com/ADHDPhone2

Today's Top Tips

1. Make use of reminder apps on your phone - make sure to use lots of different sounds and to create recurring reminders for things that you need to be reminded of frequently.
2. Use your calendar as a reminder app as well - for important events make sure to have reminders well in advance so that you can plan for them ahead of time.
3. Get a good note-taking app for your phone and create a reminder to also look at the notes that you take throughout the day or week.
4. Take advantage of shortcuts on your phone so that you can do complicated tasks without getting distracted.

I've been carrying around a smartphone in my pocket for more than 10 years - I started off with the first iPhone and have since gone over to Android, dabbled with the Windows Phones for a few years and then ended back up with an iPhone again. Through my years with my phone I've learned that it can be a great asset and help me with a number of my ADHD difficulties; however, I've also felt the dark side of the phone as well. Games, social media, email and all those notifications.

ADHD makes it really easy for us to get off track so we want to be making sure that we're not letting our phones dictate our next actions. Through trial and error phone designers have been making it harder and harder for us to put down our phone. Since we have ADHD this means that it is almost too easy for us to get distracted when we pop open our phone to just check the time. The screen lights up and suddenly we're hit with a hundred different ways our attention should go.

This week we'll be focusing on ways to set up your phone to be less distracting and we're going to work on setting up our phones intentionally to make sure that we're paying attention to what apps we have on our phone and where those apps are located. We'll also be looking at other ways to reduce the constant stream of distractions that our phones can produce.

Find the full show notes at: HackingYourADHD.com/ADHDPhone

This Episode's Top Tips

1. Purge any apps that you don't need on your phone - both unused apps and also apps that pull you in too much.
2. Organize your apps so that your most useful apps are easy to open and your distracting apps are hidden.
3. Turn off most of your notifications and make use of your Do Not Disturb feature.
4. Check out your phone's screentime feature and set some sensible restrictions on how much time you are spending on your phone.

Last week was all about getting there and this week we're focusing on what to do when you get back. Travel disrupts our routines and habits - and we should take those disruptions seriously. One thing that I've had to learn over and over again is that ADHD makes transitions hard - and coming back from a trip is a big transition.

This Episode's Top Tips

1. Identify your routines and habits before your trip so that when you get back you know where to pick things back up. Make sure you are paying special attention to your
2. While you are traveling try and keep up as many of your habits and routines. If you need to, you can make small tweaks to them to make them easier while you are away.
3. Make sure you are planning your days and regularly checking that plan once you get back. You can use a habit tracker to make sure you are follow through with all of your intentions.

Find all the show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/podcast/RefocusedVacation