The Distractables - your ADHD friends

Finding your career can be tough. And it can be even tougher if you're an ADHDer.

Join our co-hosts Marie Ng and Jesse J. Anderson for the very first episode of The Distractables - your ADHD friends, a casual conversation amongst ADHD friends, focusing on practical ADHD tips/tricks/hacks to get through daily life.

In this episode, Marie and Jesse will introduce themselves and also discuss their personal journeys on finding and creating a career that works for their ADHD minds, and how they got to where they are. They'll explore the trials and tribulations that this involved, as well as successes, and share some tips/tricks/hacks which might help if you're an ADHDer trying to navigate your career path right now.

00:00 Welcome to The Distractables
00:37 Marie and Jesse introductions
01:40 Connecting Over ADHD
02:29 Navigating Career Paths with ADHD
04:48 Unusual Job Experiences
05:39 Dreams and Realities
12:51 The Perfect Job Fit
15:34 Navigating Work and Personal Goals
16:31 Balancing Entrepreneurship and ADHD
18:31 Finding the Right Work Environment
20:26 Challenges in Corporate Settings
21:45 Embracing Unique Work Rhythms
23:41 Creating a Compatible Work Life
25:01 Shame-Free Productivity
28:54 Adapting to Career Changes
29:59 Conclusion and Where to Find Us

Where you can find us!

Marie and Llama Life
Jesse
Thank you for listening! Join us next week for more honest and open chats about ADHD. 

Chat soon, 
Marie & Jesse 

Creators & Guests

Host
Jesse J. Anderson
Author of 📙 Extra Focus: The Quick Start Guide to Adult ADHD
Host
Marie Ng 🦙
🦙 Founder of Llama Life 🧠 Late-diagnosed ADHD 🫶 I love making stuff

What is The Distractables - your ADHD friends?

A show for ADHDers by ADHDers - a casual conversation amongst ADHD friends, focusing on practical ADHD tips/tricks/hacks to get through daily life.

 Hello and welcome to The Distractables, my name is Marie and I'm here with my friend, Jesse J. Anderson.

Hey, how's it going? I'm super excited to do this today.

Same. This is our very first recording.

The overall premise of this podcast is like super casual conversation and this week is just the two of us, but our plan is to have a guest on every week, keep it super short, about 30 minutes, and just talk about all things, ADHD, but focusing on those practical tips.

Sounds good. Do you want to intro first or,

yeah, sure. Okay. So yeah, my name's Marie. I'm based in Melbourne, Australia, and I am the founder of a productivity app called Lama life. It's an app that helps ADHD folks do, tasks and routines and get through their daily life, just make things a little bit easier.

And it's something that I made for myself and it wasn't really meant to be a thing, but I put it on Twitter one day and people really gravitated towards it. So now it's a product that is available out there. We're in the app store, both Android and iOS and also on the web.

Awesome. Yep. My name is Jesse J.

Anderson. I'm the author of the book extra focus, the quick start guide to adult ADHD. And I also write a weekly newsletter that also is called extra focus. And then I just write lots of random stuff about ADHD online. And similar to you, I've a full time job as a developer, so I didn't create my own product, but I'm doing development design sort of work as my job as well.

So we share that in common, which helps us to talk about fun, nerdy topics. Yeah.

And that's actually how we met, right? Cause you were writing you was writing about ADHD online on Twitter and I saw one of your posts, it was a. You were doing this program called Ship 30 for 30, where you have to publish these very short articles and put them on Twitter.

But the whole goal was to get that momentum to put your work out there. And I saw one of your short little essays, and I was like, Oh my gosh, I just resonated so much with me. And I think we just connected over that. I don't know. We've probably been friends about two years now.

It's been,

yeah, I feel like two maybe three years. I don't know. I'm not good with time.

Yeah. It's been a kind of a couple of years just, yeah. Connected over Twitter back when I loved Twitter, which is it's not even called Twitter anymore not the same as it was back then, but yeah, so we connected over there and we've been yeah, good friends since.

Yeah. I thought today we could talk a little bit about how we got to this point and all the different jobs that we have. So we just talked about the jobs that we're doing now. But how do we actually get there and how ADHD kind of factors into that?

Because I imagine there's a lot of folks out there with ADHD who are. Struggling in their work at the moment, or maybe they've hopped around different jobs. And I want to normalize that a little bit because I definitely went through that journey as well, like trying to figure out what works for me.

And, I think a lot of it is just about recognizing that your brain works differently. So maybe something, a job that suits a neurotypical might not be something that suits someone with ADHD and just talking about that journey.

Yeah. I agree. This isn't universal or anything, but I know that myself included a lot of people with ADHD have had a lot of jobs and I feel like there's a lot of different reasons for that, but one of them is like what you mentioned, like we, we get to a job and we just get bored or we quickly figure out like this is not compatible with how I work.

In a future episode we're going to have Trina Haynes as a guest and Trina and I did a workshop together. And one of the first slides we showed was just this just a screen that listed like 50 jobs on it. And we were having people guess what are all these jobs? What do they have in common?

And the answer was they were jobs that either Trina or I had have, because we had both had 30 different jobs throughout, the last 20 years or so. And yeah, there's just so many jobs where I would start and maybe I'd be really excited for the future. First like month or so I'm like, Oh yeah, this is great.

I think everything's really optimistic. Everything's going to be great. And then I have a conflict with my boss. I'm like, Oh, this isn't going to work. Or I'm like time sheets. This is not, this does not work with my brain. And I feel like a lot of those jobs were just me. Especially without knowing about ADHD.

I was just like trying stuff out and then realizing Oh, okay. Add to the list, like required time sheets isn't going to work for me.

So any job that has that, I can't, I just can't do it. And so I need to, and building that list over time of whatever things What are those things I'm just not compatible with because I'm not going to even try to make it work with a job like that.

And luckily I have found over the years, a few jobs that did work really well for the way that my, my brain works.

Yeah, for sure. And like even, so I didn't have many jobs. You were saying like 30 jobs or something like that, but I had really weird jobs and I also really struggled to figure out what I wanted to do.

Like I was so late. My, my brother, who's just he's about a year younger than me. We're very close, but he finished university and went into his job. And. That all seemed really easy for him. Like he knew straight away what he wanted to do. And I took years, like I was very late.

I think I got my first job at 25, which is quite late. Before that I was doing, I say first job first my parents called it like a real job because it was in corporate and it was like getting paid a proper salary . Whereas before that I did like weird jobs. I took forever.

Like I just didn't know didn't know what I wanted to do. And I just thought it was super hard. Like everything interested me, but then nothing interested me. And I, at one point I wanted to be an FBI agent. That was probably my weirdest one because I was like, this probably shows my age, but I was super, like a super fan of the X Files back in the day.

And I was like, I want to do, I want to be like Mulder and Scully. I want to be investigating stuff. And I even studied criminology at university as a subject. Cause I was like, Oh yeah, I want to be like criminal profiler and stuff. I just had like wild ideas, things that were just really crazy and out there.

But then it turns out criminology is super boring because it's all about legal rules and like figuring out, there's just too much legal stuff, too much memorizing rules . And I was like, Oh, I don't know. I actually failed the exam for criminology because I couldn't, it's just too boring.

Was that, and I also left the exam early because I just got bored in the exam. It was so dumb. It was like the dumbest thing I've ever done in my life. I think like I just walked out. I think I went to go see a movie halfway. Because I was just, I was like,

what was the movie? You went to the X Files movie came out, right?

You went to go see the X Files movie?

I don't think it was the X Files movie even. I was adding up my scores. I was like, I think I got this right. I think I got this right. And then I was like, I think I got enough to pass. And I just walked out.

Oh, so you walked out thinking that you had done it.

You're like, yeah, I pretty much nailed it. I'm going to walk out. Yeah.

So dumb. It was like, oh man, it was, yeah. And. And I almost did it. I got 47 percent and obviously you need 50 to pass or 51 or whatever, but I went back to the university and I said, can I get a I can't remember what it's called. You can apply, like if you just fail, you can apply, oh, it's called a supplementary exam.

In Australia, you can apply to do a special exam to take it again. And, it's basically like a second chance, but they told me you, you can't, you don't qualify for that because you didn't show up for all these other things related to the course and hand in those assignments. And I'm like, Oh, so that means

you would have had to go through the whole thing again to, it cost me a lot of money

because I basically wasted the money toward that subject.

And I had to take another subject. To make up for it, which took another semester, that was like a massive learning for me, I just, I don't know, it wasn't suitable, so that was one of my big things. I was like, I want to be FBI agent, do criminology. And I even went as far as to look at in Australia, what is the equivalent of the FBI?

And it's this agency called ASIO, A S I O. And I looked into the application process. I was like going to go for it, but I didn't,

but not so much because one day I woke up and I'm like, nah.

Yeah. It reminds me, like when I was growing up, I was like, I think a lot of kids, my age, I was really obsessed with space, like space sounded awesome.

I really, for a long time, really wanted to be an astronaut and really like for me, the reason I. Abandoned that idea was because my dad is really tall. My dad is six foot six. And so at the time, I think it's changed now, but back then in the eighties, you couldn't be, I don't remember exactly. I think it was like, you can't, couldn't be an astronaut.

You couldn't go to space if you were taller than five foot 10. Or something like that. And so I wasn't that tall yet, but I was like, my dad's six foot six. There's no way I'm going to be like five, 10. And so I basically was like that. I'm not going to be able to go to space. And that's why I abandoned it.

It's a really weird reason, but knowing what I know now, oh, I would have been a terrible astronaut. They do the most boring monotonous, like they get to go to space. Yeah. But then they're just sitting there doing like the most boring monotonous sort of work that I feel like probably, and just like the schooling required for it.

I don't think I luckily for me, that dream, I think was killed before I ended up walking out of the exam to watch a movie or whatever, because that's probably where I would have ended up as well. And it would have been a, costly mistake as it sounds like it was for you.

Is it is the height requirement because you're in a small space and you got to turn and maneuver yourself?

Yeah, I think that was part of it. The fact that you're in a small space. And I think it was just the way the suits were designed at the time. Again, I believe this requirement has gone away. Also, I think space affects you like a decent amount more if you're at that, like the height. Cause I know like gravity is a big, I don't know.

I don't remember the particulars of it and I'm pretty sure that rules has changed, but I remember I read, I was like reading one of my space books. And then I just saw that fact. And I was just like heartbroken. I was like, Oh, there's, that's not going to work. My dad's too tall. And so I didn't end up near as tall as my dad, but I'm like, like 6'1 6'2 which was, yeah, too tall to be an astronaut in the eighties.

I would totally, I would fit the requirement. I'm like 5'1 You're like a whole head tool. It's so funny. The

ideal candidate you need that you can fit in all the spots I need.

Yeah, exactly. I can maneuver my way through. Yeah, cool. What other crazy jobs? Oh, I also had this job. It's I don't even know what it's called in the States.

It probably has a ton of different names, but it was like a part time sort of summer job and. It was for putting those glass bottles that are like twisted, and then you can put like layers of sand in them, like colorful sand. And then you stick that.

Yeah. If you put like the face on it and like the what's it, the troll hair on the troll hair.

Yeah. So you, you put Sandy and you fill it to the top and you can choose your own colored sand and then you put troll hair to like stopper it at the top and you stick your eyes on. And then we also had these pipe cleaners do you call them pipe cleaners as well? Yeah, I think so.

Yeah. Yeah.

So the little fuzzy things with wire in them, and then you stick those on his arms and then we had a ton of accessories. So you could make it like playing tennis or holding a mic, guitar playing golf, I remember,

so we have the local fair that I grew up going to every year, they had these I don't know what they call them here, but yeah, like these colored, like sand bottles with, and I remember looking at them and being like, Who in the world is buying these things?

Like who wants this weird tchotchke of this, like bottle with colored sand in it, but there was always people at that stand always like filling up, putting in the different colors in there. So yeah, apparently some people love it.

Yeah. A lot of kids come through and they do it and they pick all their accessories and What I had to do was I had a hot glue gun, which was super fun.

And then I had to ask them what accessories they wanted. And then I'd be like glue everything on. And I was, I just remember going on so quick at this. I'm really good at this. That was just like a summer job, but. It was fun. I think what made it fun and work for me was it was fast paced.

We were always really busy and there's a lot of things going on because you had to make sure all the sand trays were filled, all the accessories. It felt like there was some variety and it was interesting, which is pretty key for me. And I think a lot of folks with ADHD would agree, like it has to be interesting.

If it's not interesting to you in some way, it's going to be difficult.

Yeah. I feel like over the years like I said, I've had probably 30 something, some odd jobs. And There's been a key few that I think really hit the right spot for me. That really worked with the way that I work.

And I think the first job I found that was like a natural fit for the way my brain worked. Was actually delivering pizza. And so I got a job as a like I was supposed to be a delivery driver and also work in the kitchen, but I did not want to work in the kitchen at all. I was like, I, that sounds awful to me.

I don't want to, like I had worked at McDonald's before that. And I was like, I don't want to do anything with that. Like actually touching the food. And so I'm literally, I'm just going to avoid it as much as possible. So I'm just going to like hide out and wait until there's a delivery weight kind of hide in the back while someone else makes the pizza and then I'll grab it and deliver it.

I actually had Three different jobs, delivering pizza or something. I may be more than that guy. Like different companies. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I've delivered for several different places for probably four or five years. I spent where I delivered pizza and I've never, not a single time did I make a pizza even though multiple of those places that I worked at, it was supposed to be in my job requirements and I successfully just avoided it the entire time that I worked there. Cause I was like, I'm just going to play dumb and not know, not ever learn how to do it and avoid doing the pizza, which made it I don't know, maybe some of my coworkers hated me.

I never heard that, but maybe that was possible, but for me, I loved the job because all I did was drove around in my car, listen to music or whatever. I didn't really have podcasts back then, but I was just listening to, yeah, I had my, like my disc man that I had hooked up with,

I had my disc man and it was hooked up to it's the weirdest thing to describe to someone that wasn't from this era because I had my disc man and then I used the headphone port That connected to this weird, like fake plastic cassette tape. And then I pushed the cassette tape into my stereo deck. And that's how I could play the CD. Cause my car radio didn't, or my car stereo didn't have a CD player.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how that thing worked. That thing is crazy. It's gotta be magnets or something. I don't know. But anyway, that job was like amazing. Cause it was just like, All I was doing was just listening to music and then just trying to drive to places as fast as possible, which was like really fun.

My ADHD brain loved figuring out how to navigate the city as fast as possible. And anytime I came to a red light. I would take a right. I would turn. Cause I'm like, I'm not going to stay at a light. I'm going to turn and I'm going to figure out another way to get there.

And so that was like, always my goal is like, never stop the car. You always keep moving. Wait, that's not in every city. You can't just turn on a red light in Australia.

You can't do that. Like you work like in the middle of Seattle or something like that. But I lived in a suburb. That's like an hour South of Seattle.

And I, yeah, I was like. That was always my goal. Just never stop going.

Yeah. And so

that was a really great job for me because in a way, I was making my own schedule. Cause it was like I showed up like it didn't, my, the time of things didn't really matter. Cause I'm like on the road the whole time.

So it's I didn't have to do things to someone else's schedule. I just showed up around the dinner rush and hopped in a car and drove around, delivered pizza. And it was great. The only thing is it's terrible on your car. And at some point, I don't want to be raising a family and I'm still delivering pizza.

It's not exactly the conversation starter you want to have at the dinner party, but I love that job for sure. For several years, it was a great starter job for me.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's so funny. We both have our own businesses as well. You've got a few things going,

you have an element of like your own business, which I think, I don't know, ADHD and entrepreneurship just works so well for me and it might not work for everyone because everybody's situation is a bit different. So if you have a family to support, like a large family, maybe you can't just quit your job and start your own thing, but you could do something on the side.

You could do a project which might become something else later on, there's many different ways to do it. But for me, I think it's so critical to have some part of your job. It's never going to be perfect, but some part of your job that you really are passionate about and interested in, like even my job now.

So building Llama Life, I do a lot of dev. Like I'm a developer, but I'm also a designer. Which you are as well, developer and designer, I think it's a really cool combination to have because you can really bring a product to life if you can design it and imagine what it's going to be and develop it.

But I don't work by myself. I work with two other people as well. And we have this small team of three and we're just a great combination because everybody brings something to it, but I still have to do stuff I don't like there's definitely still the business side, counting taxes, just like regulation stuff.

Like we have to do as well. , but I have half of it that I love and the other half that's not as great.

Yeah. And there's the meme of I quit my nine to five. So that I could have my 24, seven when you work for yourself, it's you're always working in a different way or whatever.

But yeah, I do have a full time job right now. I'm doing kind of both at the same time, but I've, I accidentally landed in, a field that really works for me. And so a lot of jobs being a developer, you're able, not all of them, but there's more jobs in that kind of field where you can make your own schedule.

There's a lot more flexibility.

Once you get to a certain level, there's a lot more trust of where people just trust that you can do your job and they don't have to micromanage the minutes you're on the clock or anything like that. Yeah. Which is great. Having gotten to that point, it fits me really well because my work rhythms aren't normal.

And I think a lot of people with ADHD relates to that. If you were to track like my output for every day. It's like going to be wildly different. Some days I'm going to do a ton of work and get so much done. And then I might go three days where I'm like, ah, I almost did nothing. Like totally true.

But that's what it feels like nothing actually got done three out of the four days, but that fourth day. I did four days worth of work because it was like, that's how my rhythm is. And you can actually, I was just recently looking at in a this is technical for people that aren't in like the development world, but using GitHub, I can see which days I'm doing kind of the most commits, the most like work is very much, I can see.

This like common pattern of it goes up for a day and then it's down for a few days and then it's up really big. And then it's down like very obviously seeing my pattern of it's not One high line that just continues to go. It's like up and down, because that's how I'm working.

I'm like, yeah, building up to this thing and then getting a bunch of work done and like a big rush or whatever.

Yeah. You're you're working with your brain, like that's how your brain works. So you're letting it work the way it needs to work, which can be a little, up and down and I'm the same.

I have these bursts of energy where I do a lot of stuff and then the rest of the time It's not working as well, and I think what one, one thing that I've, I'm trying to do more is just yeah, go with that flow a little bit more and not force myself. Like when I'm on yeah go for it.

Cause I don't know when that's going to, I don't know how long that's going to last. So I'm like, okay, which might mean that sometimes I work quite late, but then other times when I'm not, it's not working for me, like it's not happening, then maybe I'll take a break and that's. That's easier said than done, but I think it just, the big thing for me is like being very self aware on like how I'm feeling and how my energy levels are and trying to work with that versus work against it.

And I think that's one of the things I struggled with in corporate. When I had my corporate job was that I was trying to fit into the corporate system, which Doesn't let you do that. You can't just Oh, hey boss. I'm not feeling it today. I'm going to, I'm going to stop. You can't be like, I'm going to stop at four today because I'm just not feeling it.

But don't worry. I'll work super late the next day or whenever my motivation hits. That's not going to cut it. So I had a lot of trouble fitting into that kind of corporate system where you had to show up nine till five and be on that whole time. And I also had this issue where I'm just a little restless, like I'm not super hyperactive, but I'm a bit restless inside.

So I would just get up all the time. And I got told we're an open plan office. And I got told Stop getting out of your seat. You're distracting other people. And I didn't even realize I was doing it. But the thing is my boss sat opposite me in an open plan office. Every time I got up, she could see.

And she, in my performance appraisal, it was like, you're doing really well. Like you're a great. Everything's good, but you get up way too often. Stop getting up. It's like what I

saw when I was like in elementary school and my report cards and stuff like that. Like he keeps getting out of his seat. Yeah.

But yeah, or that, that's great at this, but yeah, all the assignments are late or yeah. Getting out of the seat was definitely what I saw too.

Yeah. What happened? Because I was getting up out of my seat so much, like I'd go make a coffee, go to the bathroom. I'd be walking down the hallway.

Yeah. Lots of good things happen when you're walking around and so what ended up happening was I knew everyone like I knew a lot of people I also knew the CEO because the CEO is like walking around sometimes too and so we'd have little hallway chats and. It worked out really well for me because in that same company, I ended up moving to a different role and the role was more like an innovation type role, which required me to collaborate with different parts of the organization and guess who can collaborate because I know all the people and I know all the different departments because, I saw this person walk down the hall.

I don't even work with them, and they're in a different department. But I know them because we always seem to be getting up and going to the kitchen, making a coffee. And so that ended up working pretty well. I guess up until it didn't, which is, I got bored of it. I got bored of it after a while,

But it wasn't what happened.

That would happen way faster if you had to stay in your seat feel like that's the other thing is like just getting up and walking around doing that sort of stuff. Like when you sit down again, it's almost like you've re renewed some energy to keep going where it's again, like going back when I was like, I don't know, in high school or something like that, trying to do homework.

If I'm going to sit down and just stare at my homework for two hours, like two minutes into that process, I'm no longer doing any work. And so just staring at the work for two hours is not going to get anything done. I need to be getting up and doing something or doing that, like a Pomodoro timer or something to add any amount of novelty or stimulation or something to revitalize.

As some interest into the task I'm doing otherwise, because once you hit that point where it's boring, it's then something has to change because I'm never going to be able to get any more work done.

If I can't revitalize that in some sort of way.

And that's the cool thing about when you work for yourself, it's you can create that environment for yourself.

Like we all work remotely. And so if I need to get up and make a coffee or just get up because I want to get up. I don't have to ask, I'm not disturbing anybody because we're remote and no one even knows I'm getting up as long as I'm still getting my work done and not holding up the team and doing what I said I was going to do.

It's fine. Just get up, do whatever, come back. I work really late sometimes because It's happening for me, but it still gets done. Yeah, not everyone can do that, but I think one thing to think about is maybe how can you create something like that? It might not be for your whole job, but just create something like that where you have this outlet where you can do something that's going with how your brain works and how you might want to work.

As a side, like a little side project almost to begin with, or find a job or a company that will have some elements of that. Maybe the remote work where you could get up if you needed to. There's always ways, like it's never going to be perfect, but there's ways that you can find like, Oh, this company is a little bit more suited to me, or this job is a little bit more suited to me.

Yeah. And I think a really big part of it that took me a long time to get to is just the idea of. Accepting that , my brain is going to work different. And so I like to think of it as like shame free productivity, because for so long I was trying to find all these productivity hacks because I was struggling at work with different things and I was feeling bad about that.

I was feeling, oh, I should be doing it like this or I'm supposed to do it like this. And that's so hard for me. And a lot of what I think I've come to just accept when that stuff happens rather than feeling bad, feeling shame that, oh, I'm different, or this doesn't work for me, or whatever it is, instead, trying to, Be curious, not judgmental, because for so long, because all the voices I was hearing from teachers and authority figures was judgmental.

And so that's what I was learning to look at my. Quote unquote problems with my differences was judgmental. What's wrong with this? Why can't I fix this?

And lately I've been able to have much more of that, like being curious Oh, why, like, why is this thing a struggle? Like maybe that's just not compatible with me.

And for me, again, the timesheets, that was the thing. I've had those jobs where I have to track timesheets and I'm just not compatible with that. I treat it as there's other jobs out there, like a firefighter. Like I'm never gonna be a firefighter.

That's not a job for me. And another thing on that list is I'm never going to be X job that has time sheets. That's just now off the list of jobs. That I'm ever going to try to get or apply for or anything. Yeah. And I know obviously that's like somewhat of a. Privileged perspective, because now I have a job where I don't have that.

I started to reframe, that it's not about feeling bad. It's about finding what is compatible with my brain, because my brain's not going to just like change and suddenly be good at handling time sheets. There's not like a fix for that.

So you're like finding. Like I'm treating those difficulties as part of the, like the rubric or whatever for choosing jobs that I would apply for and stuff like that. Would you say

Make a list of things, but then you won't get everything on your list, but you could make a list and then say, totally non negotiable at all.

Like this one is like on top. This is my main thing. And then a few extras.

Yeah, absolutely. Cause like you were saying, going the entrepreneur route means cool, you can have a lot more. Customization for some of these things, but it doesn't mean like you don't have to do any of the bad work, like the stuff that sucks, like that still is there.

It's about figuring out, yeah, waiting those things and the trade offs. And cause I have a job right now, which I'm very thankful of. That's very flexible, but I still have an early morning meeting that I have to be at. And if I was working for myself, maybe I wouldn't have that meeting at that time, cause that's difficult for me to be on time but that's like a trade off, I have these other advantages to the job.

So I'm going to have to figure out how to make it to this meeting on time. Or whatever those things are. So it's about figuring out and just not feeling bad about it. Cause that was for so long. My default was like,

when I struggled with a thing, I was like, Oh, I'm broken. Everyone else can do these timesheets or I can expense reports or whatever those things are that other people were really good at.

And I always struggled at. I just felt bad for it. Like I was broken and instead it was more for me. I've just reframed it as that's just something that's not compatible for me. I guess maybe a better example would be like, I'm not going to like, try to join the NFL.

That's not where my skillset is. Some people are born with skills where that will make sense. And that doesn't make sense for me. Just the same as kind of these other things I'm figuring out over time. It's like a job that has this thing and this thing. Those are non negotiables for me.

Like again, the timesheets, like that's a non negotiable. Like I can't do a job that has that. There's other things like an early morning meeting that like that might be a trade off that I'm willing to accept. But it's yeah, that, that's been my approach for figuring some of that stuff out.

Yeah. I like that. And I think it's, I also read somewhere that it's quite common, like it's a lot more common nowadays for people to have, several different jobs throughout their lifetime. Whereas like way back, you might just have one job and you got to, it's really important what career you pick your career path.

Cause that's like your one job and you might end up doing that your whole life, but I feel like now people change careers so many different times. And even throughout that, like I only found my interests, I think. In my thirties, like just thinking okay, this is what I really love to do.

And what you said, what is non negotiable and what isn't. But these are the things I really love to do, I love creating stuff and just making something out of nothing. It's so interesting to me. There's so many things that could go wrong and it's just like exciting and that's the stuff I love.

I think it's, That clarity that you were saying I know now, what I really am not good at and what I really don't like and what I am good at and what I really love doing. So just trying to find something that fits with that. Not a hundred percent, but as much as I can, that fits with that.

Yeah, maybe

that's a good place to end the episode. We want to try and keep these quite short, around 30 minutes, but yeah. Where can we find, where can we find all your work and and find your stuff?

Sure. Yeah. So my book is extra focus and my newsletter also called extra focus. So if you go to extra focus. com, you can sign up for the newsletter there. And then the book is just available everywhere. So Amazon or your local bookstore, if they don't have it, you can request it and they will be able to get it which is pretty cool.

Yeah. And then I'm. Online everywhere that you can be on social media. Just ADHD, Jesse, I'm on all the platforms. I probably use threads the most right now. That's when I'm probably most active on, but I post my stuff in all the different places. So you can follow me wherever you prefer to hang out these days.

And how about you? Where can people follow the stuff you're doing and get their own copy of Lama life if they don't have it already?

Yeah. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at three hour coffee that spelled out the word three hour coffee, and you can find Lama life in the app store or the Google play store, just search for Lama life.

Or you can go to our website. It's Lama life. co that's not. com. It's a. co, which I wish I never got, but Lama life. co and we're on Twitter as well at Lama life and Instagram at Lama life CEO. Cool.

Awesome.

We will see you on the next episode and we've got some exciting guests lined up.

Next episode will be Trina Haynes, who's a dear friend of both of ours. So that should be like super fun.

I was just going to say, we're going to have a good time for sure. Trina is awesome.

Yeah. She's so cool. . I'll see you then.

See ya.