---
title: Unlock your ADHD superpowers with Chris Ferdinandi
date: 2024-05-28T05:30:00-04:00
author: Sean Smith
canonical_url: "https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-9/unlock-your-adhd-superpowers-with-chris-ferdinandi/"
section: Podcast
---
<!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-BEGIN\]\]>[Skip to main content](#main-content)Guest Chris Ferdinandi
Chris Ferdinandi helps developers with ADHD thrive. His ADHD tips newsletter is read by hundreds of developers each weekday. Learn more at ADHDftw.com.
[ ](https://twitter.com/ChrisFerdinandi)
Season 07 Episode 9 – May 28, 2024
37:38 [Show Notes](#show-notes)
## Unlock your ADHD superpowers with Chris Ferdinandi
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Chris discusses how ADHD has impacted his career as a web developer and provides resources to other developers.
### Show Notes
- What is ADHD?
- Chris's history and experience with ADHD
- Challenges for women getting diagnosed
- How does ADHD impact Chris's career in web develop
- Things an employer can do for an employee with ADHD
- Time awareness / blindness
- Reactions Chris receives when people learn he has ADHD
- What teachers can do to support students with ADHD
- See all the resources and links Chris has prepared for people with ADHD here: [https://adhdftw.com/website-101/](https://adhdftw.com/adhd-isnt-a-deficit-of-attention-and-doesnt-neccessarily-mean-youre-hyperactive/)
### Show Links
- [ADHD-Autism-OCD](https://neurodivergentinsights.com/misdiagnosis-monday/adhd-vs-autism-vs-ocd)
- [Jonathon Stark](https://jonathanstark.com/)
- [ADHD ftw!](https://adhdftw.com/)
Powered Transcript Accuracy of transcript is dependant on AI technology.
**\[00:00\]** **Sean:** Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Website 101 Podcast, the podcast for people who want to learn more about building and managing websites. I'm Sean Smith, one of your co-hosts, and with me as usual, we have Amanda Loots. Hey, Sean. How are you? Good. Good.
**\[00:23\]** **Mike:** And Mike Miller.
**\[00:24\]** **Sean:** Hello, everybody. And today we have a special guest, a returning to the podcast, make some a friend of our show. Christopher Nandy, he helps people learn vanilla JavaScript, believes there's a simpler and more resilient way to make things for the web, creates courses, e-books, and runs online workshops. He also maintains a JavaScript toolkit, hosts his own podcast, and develops developer tips newsletter. He is a busy guy. And he's here to talk to us about ADHD and working in the web, or maybe just life in general with ADHD.
**\[01:04\]** **Amanda:** A little bit of both. Thank you also much for having me. It's great to be back on the show. Hi Chris.
**\[01:10\]** **Mike:** Yeah, thanks for being here. So let's, we just jump right into the core of this whole thing. You are living with ADHD. What is ADHD?
**\[01:21\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, so ADHD is kind of badly named. So ADHD stands for attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder. And I think depending on when you grew up, you might associate it with that really hyperactive kid in class, that was always me. You might also kind of picture someone who's a little like spacing in a loop and that can also absolutely sometimes be me.
The problem with I think the naming of ADHD is it's not so much that you have a deficit of attention. There's not a shortage of it. You just have trouble regulating it. So that sometimes means that you have just a lot of things bouncing around in your head and your brain is constantly littering from one to the other.
But other times, it can actually cause the opposite problem where you become hyper focused on just one thing to the detriment of all the other things around you, including important work projects, eating food, going to the bathroom, just general self-care, it can be a really fun rollercoaster. And there's a whole myriad of other things that come along with ADHD. Not everyone's ADHD experiences is exactly the same, but I think the most accurate description I once had a coworker say that she imagined being in my head like being a little dog, like A puppy inside one of those lottery ball machines and every one of the balls bouncing around was an idea and the dog was just constantly bouncing around to all of them. Very, very accurate, very much would be in it.
My head is like, yeah, and within the HD, there's even different kind of, they're called subtypes of ADHD. So some folks have the distractibility without the hyperactivity. Some people have the hyperactivity without the distractibility and a good chunk
**\[03:13\]** **Sean:** people have both. Where do you stand? I have it's called combined subtype so I have both. I'm
**\[03:21\]** **Amanda:** very hyper. I'm also I've slowed a little bit as I've gotten older. My metabolism has has worn out but like I used to be like again with the puppy analogies like when a puppy comes into a room full of people and just bounces all over the place and has an accident on the floor like that was always me
**\[03:36\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** at parties and stuff. Do you think do you think that's actually though because of of getting older and your metabolism, or do you think it could be because of getting older and recognizing that you are dealing with this and learning coping mechanisms and more lifestyle stuff as opposed to metabolism.
**\[03:54\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, that's a great question. I think for me personally, a lot of it is just that my overall energy levels have slowed. So I still feel a lot of the mental hyperactivity. I'm just less physically hyper.
I do know for some people it is like I've developed coping mechanisms it's often referred to as masking where like you you put on a persona that's not who you really would be if if you didn't try to restrain yourself a little bit. I am just notoriously bad at that. I generally do not mask. which has its own pros and cons.
It can, I've been able to turn it into a benefit but it could create some issues in professional situations. But yet for me personally, a lot of it has honestly just been like, I am a lot more tired than I was a decade ago.
**\[04:47\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** I think we all are.
**\[04:48\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, and you know, it's funny, like I just, as a tangent, another thing I'm great at because of the ADHD. One of the things you'll hear from a lot of folks with ADHD is that they do some of their, like my people, do some of our best thinking at night when it's late and you're feeling kind of tired. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that it's like, it's quiet. Most other people are beds in beds.
There's fewer distractions. And because you get a little tired, your brain like finally slows down and you can focus on like one thing without having a million other things kind of pulling you in different directions. So yeah, so a lot, being tired helps a lot. I'm not recommending people like to liberally sleep to private themselves or anything, but you know, I do some of my best work at night.
**\[05:35\]** **Sean:** So Chris, when were you first diagnosed? Were you diagnosed as a child or as an adult?
**\[05:42\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, I was, I was diagnosed as a kid. This was back in the like 80s, early 90s, when ADHD was really new. And the only real treatment for it was Ritalin and there was a lot of like doctors who would either overprescribe it because they were still trying to work out like what appropriate dosing was. This was also back when ADHD was the hyperactive kid thing and there was a lot of stigma around it.
So I never actually got treated for it. It's one of those things I grew up new and I had, but never really did anything about or connected with a lot of the challenges I had academically when I was in high school and college, the lack of impulse control that sometimes comes along with it. And my difficulty getting things done when I first started working professionally. It wasn't until actually just like five years or so ago when I started revisiting ADHD literature and realizing we have learned a lot in the last 30 something years and a lot of things that I always just thought were weird quirks or personal failings on my part are actually ADHD related.
a whole slew of things from impulse control to just general high, I always thought I was just like a really emo person, but like high levels of emotional sensitivity and rejection sensitivity are a hallmark of ADHD for a lot of folks. Yeah, so there's just a whole bunch of interconnected things that I discovered about myself only recently. So I was diagnosed as a kid, but in a lot of ways, my experience with having ADHD is not dissimilar from folks who realize they have it as adults, which is a really shockingly large number of the ADHD population. I think because of that increased awareness, a lot of folks are getting diagnosed now in their 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond.
**\[07:35\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Yeah, I've heard that even more recently into adulthood, more women get diagnosed then because in the 80s and in the 90s when we were growing up, it was always the little boy, the little boy who couldn't sit, the little boy who couldn't pay attention. And now that I think there's more research and there's more awareness and there's not as big a stigma and more people are talking about it. And it has become this like huge spectrum. I think a lot more adults are realizing and a lot more women are being, is diagnosed the right word or just more aware of it?
**\[08:08\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, diagnosed is the right word. And on the kind of the note of women being diagnosed, one of the challenges with getting a diagnosis as a woman is for a lot of women, ADHD manifests as the distracted subtype without the hyperactivity. And so for years, women with ADHD were often just labeled as like a high potential doesn't live up to it, right? or like they'd get put on the advanced kid track where you get thrown into those like accelerated courses and everything and then kind of like flunk out.
And it's only been recently when they've realized that this takes different forms. And there's even different diagnostic criteria for women now to make it more likely to get diagnosed.
**\[08:55\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** I'm learning more and more and more that women just get screwed with so many things. Like women having heart attacks. the three guys are laughing and cutting me off. Women having heart attacks present differently than men having heart attacks and the symptoms are different and it's yeah a lot a lot of medical stuff is very gender biased and we're going to go back and talk about Chris
**\[09:22\]** **Amanda:** now instead of my issues. No I mean if you want to unpack that Amanda I would be out because because you're a hundred percent. Another time.
**\[09:30\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Another time. I want to talk about it.
**\[09:32\]** **Amanda:** All right. Yeah, that is a fantastic, fantastic topic though, but you're absolutely right. And so, one of the things that, um, just, I guess, as an aside, um, and I will make sure that we get a link to this in the show notes, but, um, uh, there is a website that has several, like, if you think, do I have ADHD or you're not sure, obviously, a professional diagnosis is, um, is a worthwhile tool to have, especially if you think that, like, medication might be an important part of your treatment if you think you have it. But there are also some self-tests that you can do, Attitude Magazine, ADD, Etude Magazine.
They have a pair of self-diagnostic tests and they actually have a separate one for women that takes into account the fact that it manifests a little bit differently. Not always often. I have met women who have the hyperactivity. It's just way less common.
So I'll make sure we get some links to those in the show notes if anybody's
**\[10:26\]** **Mike:** Curious if they have it or not. Absolutely. Yeah. Have you seen the I saw recently a someone shared like a Venn diagram I think it it had a DHD and Autism and giftedness maybe were the three circles and they obviously overlap and they had to do with like Topic switching and things like that. There's all kinds of different things that are some of them share and some of them don't and have you seen that?
**\[10:49\]** **Amanda:** I don't know yet. I have I saw one that it was it was ADHD, autism and OCD was the one that I saw They have, so it's obviously not 100% overlap, but a lot of folks with ADHD have autism and vice versa, which can often make getting diagnosed with both if you have, if you have them a little bit more difficult because there's so much overlap and sometimes it's difficult to rule out like, you know, is it ones or the others or both. I've also heard some emerging schools of thought that autism and ADHD are both part of one big spectrum and what we've historically thought of as two different conditions might actually be the same thing. I don't think that's mainstream yet, but there's some immersion in thinking around that. But actually a big part of my rediscovery of my ADHD was because I thought I had autism or ASD because of a whole bunch of things that, you know, again, I always thought of ADHD is I'm just hyper, and I have all this other stuff that's not that, and yeah, turns out there's a ton of overlap.
One of the most difficult things with getting diagnosed with either is identifying like, okay, I have all these symptoms, it could be either one. Is it one of those two? Is it both? Yeah, it gets really complicated, and that's where having a professional opinion can be helpful although as Amanda as you alluded to, a lot of medical professionals don't always listen to their patients. It's way worse with women but oftentimes a lot of the folks doing diagnoses are not folks with ADHD or autism themselves and so they don't have like that that same understanding of what the conditions or symptoms are. One of the problems for years with ADHD and I believe also So with autism is that a lot of the symptoms related with ADHD or the things you experience with ADHD are not things that are easily measured and quantified. And so I think emotional sensitivity, for example, a lot of folks with ADHD get really upset over things that would be considered minor emotional setbacks for other folks, or neurotypical folks. But quantifying how big is an emotional reaction and is this outside the realm of typical is much harder to quantify than something like do they bounce around a lot? It's much easier to physically observe that than to gauge how big is an emotional reaction.
**\[13:25\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Well, everything emotional and mental is none of it's quantifiable.
**\[13:29\]** **Amanda:** It's always hard to pin that down.
**\[13:32\]** **Mike:** So for sure, you are a web developer. And we're here doing web development podcasts. So just we're dig into this little deeper. But at a high level, how does your ADHD impact your career as a web developer? Is it good, bad, both? What's going on there?
**\[13:51\]** **Amanda:** Yes, yeah, it's a blessing in a curse, as I think a lot of folks with ADHD will tell you. So the good, let's start there. So I think I have found that there's shocking number of developers who have ADHD. And I think a lot about coding itself kind of attracts folks who have ADHD because they can put you into this really like...
One thing worth mentioning, it's currently believed that one of the big causes of ADHD is a shortage of dopamine in the brain. Your brain doesn't make enough of it the way a neurotypical brain would. And so you seek novelty and thrill and things that cause dopamine to get spiked in your brain. So, for a lot of developers with ADHD, coding because it's this immediate feedback loop of I did a thing, I get to see the results, I did a thing, I get to see the results, really triggers that dopamine loop, the same way that playing a video game or pulling refresh on social media might. And so the benefit of this for a developer is when I get pointed at a big, hairy challenge, like, oh, we've got this problem, we can't figure it out. We need to do this big new thing. I can absolutely crush projects like that. My hyper focus kicks in, and I will go into tunnel vision and spend like 14 hours working on a thing. And it will feel like no time at all has passed because one other fun thing about ADHD is you get time blindness, and you have no real ability how much time has or hasn't passed or how long things take, which is also at downside that we'll talk about in a minute.
**\[15:39\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** question to cut you off hold on. Did you still build the client for the five
**\[15:43\]** **Amanda:** months it would have taken? This was actually at a, this was at a day job. So I got paid my employer made out very handsomely, right? They got five months worth of work in a month.
The flip side of that is then for the like several months after that, I was in this weird kind of like let down, super distracted, like nothing as fulfilling as this kind of kind of phase. And so it ends up being a bit of a wash where you're overly productive during some periods and under productive during others. But there are also some things that are particularly challenging, especially in like an employer type environment, so you tend to, if someone tells you something, you don't write it down right away, you forget. ADHD folks usually have large hard drives and very limited amounts of RAM to put it in computer terms, right?
So I can hold one or two things in my head and then they're gone. So if I don't write them down and save them somewhere, that's it. It's tough to get started on tasks. Once you do, you become a bit of a juggernaut, like you just cannot stop.
But it's tough to get started. And so if you're in an environment where there's a lot of distractions and interruptions, frequent meetings, stand-ups, open office environments, getting anything done can be absolute hell because you'll start working on something you'll get interrupted and then it takes you almost as long as you spent actually doing the work to just get back into it in the first place. Yeah, so a lot of like I tell a lot of my students with ADHD that a lot of the challenges of working with ADHD, or not the ADHD itself, they're a working environment that's structured around the needs of neurotypical folks when you are not, and so a big part of what I advocate for is trying to structure your work in your life in a way that works for your brain, rather than a neurotypical person's brain, which is not always possible, but as much as you can, it's a great thing to do.
**\[17:37\]** **Sean:** I have a question for you. So say I'm an employer and I've hired a developer and it has ADHD. What are some things that I can do to make life easier for him and more productive for
**\[17:50\]** **Amanda:** me? Yeah. That's a great question. So it's going to vary from person to person because everyone's ADHD experience is a little unique.
And so I think literally the best thing you can do right off the start is asking them what do they prefer, you know, do they have any specific needs, any particular wants or ways they work best. So just like as an example, right, I hate stand-ups. They are the worst possible thing for me. They ruin my whole day.
But I have some students who actually really enjoy them because they find it gets their brain into work mode and kind of points them in a direction for the day. Whereas for me, it's like, oh, it's this tedious thing I have to do before I can start working. So everyone's experience is a little bit different. But at kind of a high level, things like allowing your employee to work, when and where they feel best rather than like everybody has to come into an office and be butts and seeds from nine to five is a huge one.
And I don't think that's just an ADHD thing. I think that's most people. But for ADHD in particular, it is acutely painful to be in an office environment with an open office environment with a lot of distractions. Also sometimes someone with ADHD's peak hours are not normal working hours, as I mentioned before.
You know, a lot of times like my people do some of our best work at night. And I might be totally useless from like let's say 9 to 11 and then things kick in for me and you know, so allowing odd work hours can be useful. Putting things in writing rather than just telling people verbally can also be really helpful because if you're talking I have two options. I can listen or I can take notes.
I can't do both. And if you tell me too much at once, when I go to take notes later, I will have forgotten half of what you said.
**\[19:39\]** **Mike:** That's a good rule in general for most people,
**\[19:41\]** **Amanda:** by the way, just very, it really is. But task shifting, it's one of these, a lot of this advice is just general good advice, but it's more acutely painful for folks with certain neurological divergence. So as an ADHD person, task shifting is even harder for me than others. Similarly, there's certain types of work that I think folks with ADHD are often better at. So like, minutiae work, and just lots of repetitive tasks that don't particularly change all that much, can be really, really, they're super boring to the point that it's hard to do them. Even like, I've sometimes put off for three months making a phone call that's taken 10 months just because the idea of picking up the phone When pressing the numbers was like overwhelming...
...Whereas big challenging projects really kind of spark that novelty trigger in the brain and can really get the most out of someone with ADHD. The other thing along those same lines that would be aware of is that same behavior can lead to burnout, where you spend so much time focused on the exciting thing that you don't take the time you need to recharge and you burn yourself out...
...So if I were a manager of someone with ADHD, I would probably also try to be cognizant of the fact that if I don't force some downtime or if I just try to stack a big project after a big project on someone with ADHD, they're gonna burn themselves out. And that's gonna be bad for everybody of them and me.
**\[21:17\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Which is hard for there are a lot of management types who as soon as you see somebody, an employee who's like done like five months worth of work in one month, they all of a sudden start expecting those kinds of hours and results all the time, which isn't healthy, but they're all about that bottom dollar.
**\[21:37\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, the other thing that I've struggled with just personally is I worked at an employer once where they shifted from annual performance reviews to quarterly. And that went really bad for me because I would have some quarters where I was awesome and some quarters where I was terrible, Whereas when they were just looking at the whole year and aggregate, it was much more like events. And so we can create this really like skewed perception of your performance, you know, when you have those tighter performance review cycles. The immediate feedback is nice, but having some sort of like grade tied to it, and that can also trigger all sorts of like anxiety and stuff.
**\[22:13\]** **Sean:** Yeah. Quarterly, feedback is excessive for anybody. Like, what employer has the time to do that? Sorry, to talk about it. No, no, it was driving me nuts that somebody was quarterly reviews for all of their employees, that's insane.
**\[22:30\]** **Amanda:** This was like a VC firm where I think they were honestly just looking for people to cut because they were trying to drive up their return on investment or whatever, the valuation...
...But I had the other thing, I had mentioned time blindness. So something in the ADHD brain, I'm not entirely sure what the biological mechanism for this is, but it makes it really difficult for us to perceive time accurately or normally. So if you ask me how long a task is going to take, I have absolutely no idea...
...Even if I've done a task before, I cannot tell you how long it's going to take and there's no guarantee that it'll take me the same amount time the next time. And so certain types of jobs like if you're in an agency environment where they need like really tight estimates and it's going to take me eight hours to do this thing and I'll have a like it can be really really really really difficult...
...The irony of course is that if you set a deadline an ADHD person may spend six hours staring at their computer wondering how to start and then the last two hours actually getting the thing. So would they end up hitting their projected estimate, but it's like a mad scramble in those last two hours because that deadline creates a sense of urgency that then triggers that like excited dopamine release again...
...And they start working at it. Yeah, so there's a lot of ups and downs, and I have spent a lifetime professionally trying to structure my work, so that it works for me rather than the other way around. One thing that I've had immense privilege of being able to do is being really open about my ADHD with managers in the last like few years that I worked properly employed before I went off to do education and consulting full-time. And I was very lucky to have managers who like understood and were willing to work with me on it...
...I talk to a lot of folks who either don't feel comfortable doing that because they're They're more junior, or they happen to be part of some other group where they feel like they're already under more scrutiny, so female developers, or people who are people of color, other marginalized communities, LGBTQ, I literally have talked to someone, a friend of mine who's black, who was like, I already feel like I have more of a target on my back because of my skin color. I don't want to give them another reason to scrutinize my work, so I never tell anybody I have ADHD...
...And, you know, so again, I'm saying all this as like a sys hat white dude with just immense amounts of social privilege, but if you are in that position, talking about it with your employer can be helpful. In many countries, it's a protected group, so like in the United States where I live, you are actually eligible for disability accommodations in the workplace...
...If you say you have ADHD, I have heard stories that some employers are like, we don't even have a form for that. that look like, right? So you do have to really feel comfortable being an advocate for yourself, but it can be a good thing if you're in a position to do so.
**\[25:44\]** **Sean:** To jump back to the time blindness and as a self-employed person, how do you deal with not knowing how long something's going to do when you need to like give a quote to a client? And then you say, well, you want this website built or you want this new section on a website. I'm bad at estimating, and I think it's a struggle that for a lot of, to use the word you mentioned before, neurotypical, people have, how do you deal with it when you don't even know how long it's taken you in the past to do something?
**\[26:15\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, I don't build by the hour. So, I just shout out to Jonathan Stark over at Jonathan Stark.com. He wrote this book a while back called Hourly Billing his Nuts, where he talked about how hourly billing misaligns, you know, the incentives of the person doing the work and the person paying for it. And so, I, I quote on projects, like when I do work, I say, it will cost you X, I will give you Y, it could take a week, it could take three weeks, we're going to do it until we get it right. You know, so the focus is really on the quality of the deliverable rather than on how long it takes.
**\[26:53\]** **Sean:** Yeah, I like Jonathan Stark, but I also work with agencies that they want to know how many hours because that's how they want me to go over. Oh, absolutely.
**\[27:03\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Or the reverse, it has to launch on this date. So get it done by then.
**\[27:09\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, so that thing that has to launch on this date, that's fine for me, because then I just go into like, overdrive, hyperfocus mode and just like knock it out...
...But yeah, it's more like what Sean just described the whole, how many hours is it gonna take we need to know so we can give an estimate. Like if you're subcontracting through an agency or whatever, I did that for a while and it was absolute hell for me...
...The last time I did that, I ended up, it was I had a time tracker app that I was using to keep track of my hours. Coming up with estimates was like, I would just make things up and then try to hit those hours like often times it would take less time, sometimes it would take a little bit more...
...But yeah, it's not, it's not for me, the hourly. Some work fun at all.
**\[27:57\]** **Mike:** Okay, so you mentioned it a little bit earlier. I was going to ask, you know, do you recommend or do you tell people about your ADHD up front? You've kind of covered that pretty well. Let me just jump to my next quick question there is, when people learn that you you have ADHD, what typically is the reaction? Do you get people who are like, I don't know how to deal with you or do they just not care what do people tend to say?
**\[28:24\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, no, that's great. So usually that what you just described, the I don't know how to deal with you, that happens before they find out I have ADHD, right? So like, you're a lot is a common thing...
...You'll hear about people with ADHD, especially folks who have hyperactivity or combined subtype, just because we are so high energy. And it can be really intense for some people. So usually when I disclose I have ADHD, I get that like, oh, that explains a lot. Or if it's someone who every now and then I'll get the more reserved like, OK...
...Increasingly in the tech world, I get a lot of like, oh my god, me too. Or I was just recently diagnosed. Or I've been suspecting I have ADHD. or someone else I know has ADHD. So it's become a lot more common. One of the big reasons I like to talk about it though is I'd like to normalize it because I feel like a lot of folks have it or thinking they might have it, sometimes feel uncomfortable with it because of that stigma from back when we were all growing up...
...And so a big part of what I try to do is break that stigma by being really open about the fact that I have it because I can and are not everybody has that level of comfort. I don't think I've ever really had a negative reaction to it. I think the worst I've ever gotten is just kind of the neutral.
**\[29:44\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** like, okay, moving on. You talked earlier about your students and things that you do while you're teaching. I'm sure everyone is tired of hearing about it. I also teach part-time at a college here in Canada. I teach web development. What are some of the things as a teacher that I could to do to help support some of my students.
**\[30:07\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, that's a great question. And I've actually ended up with my ADHD student population kind of by accident. Before I ever talked about publicly having it, I would tend to write courses that were really like short and narrow and project oriented because that's just how I like to learn. And then I ended up with a student population that's like 40% ADHD or something.
And it turns out they were just attracted to that style of learning as well. But so one of the things that I've found personally is in large part I think because of the lack of like RAM, just that we don't have like a big working memory, teaching more narrowly scoped projects.
Like if you ever, if you are narrowly scoped lessons, so like a lot of, I'm gonna make the analogy to like online courses. I know you teach college, it's a little bit different, but a lot of online courses are like 80 hours, everything you need to know about. And for someone like me, that is wildly overwhelming.
Whereas, learn the ins and outs of this narrow little topic is much more appealing because I feel like I'm not gonna get distracted halfway through and move on and have wasted my money. So an analog for teaching would be having kind of shorter lesson cycles.
And then I guess the other piece of this is our, I think most folks brains, but like ADHD brains, perhaps a little bit more so, tend to lock stuff in or stay engaged better when we're actually doing things rather than just trying to passively absorb information. And so a lot of my teaching is oriented around learn a thing, do a thing, repeat, and really short cycles.
So one or two little topics, okay, go practice, come back, repeat. Yeah, I don't know that doesn't always work in all contexts, but it can be very successful.
**\[32:04\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Okay, thank you.
**\[32:05\]** **Amanda:** Nice. You're welcome.
**\[32:07\]** **Sean:** Thank you for asking. Chris has started this new community for ADHD developers. He's got a podcast, a newsletter, and a community called ADHD FTW. I assume that's for the win. That's for X combination point. What is the goal of this? and what do you expect for people to get out of it? What do you hope to put into it and get out of it yourself?
**\[32:34\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, great questions. So I am, one of the things I hear from a lot of, both my students and even just the general developer population with ADHD is that I feel like my ADHD is a gift.
ADHD is a gift. There's let me do lots of amazing things. Sometimes gives me superpowers. But I talk to a lot of folks who don't feel that way. They feel like it's holding them back. They feel like they're really struggling.
I felt like that when I started working professionally. I legitimately thought I was going to get fired from my first professional job because I just could not keep track of all the stuff that was getting thrown at me or get anything done.
And so a big part of what I'm trying to do is provide a place for folks with ADHD who work in our field, to feel comfortable asking questions, talking about it, sharing their struggles, getting feedback, and also creating a toolkit of resources to help them work more effectively unlock those neurodivergent superpowers and really thrive personally and professionally.
What's in it for me is I was once that like that lost person who felt like I did not have a lot of resources. And over the last few years, I've gotten a lot of great information from other folks.
I also just as an ADHD person, I come alive when I'm in the company of other folks with ADHD. It's like this hive mind kind of thing happens and you all just like, yeah, like a swarm of bees just light up with energy. And so I just, I like being around that energy a lot and I want more of it in my life.
**\[34:10\]** **Sean:** Nice. That's awesome. So what is your community going to be having like a Slack or a Discord or I mean there's a newsletter that I'm aware of and I assume that newsletter is going to be similar to your JavaScript one where it's like this or I'm sorry podcast short little bites of two to three minutes.
**\[34:32\]** **Amanda:** Absolutely. So if you head over to adhdftw.com or adhd for the win.com because I realized saying adhdft W as a mouthful. So I have both domains. You can find the newsletter. There's a podcast that comes out twice a week, and it is Sean, as you noted, just short little little tips and tricks. There's also a Discord community where you can meet and talk with other folks with ADHD. I will probably grow it out with more stuff over time. I'm just kind of seeing how this thing
**\[35:03\]** **Sean:** evolves. That's really cool. We'll definitely include links to that in the show notes when the episode
**\[35:08\]** **Mike:** comes out. Yes I'm thank you. Yeah it's it's really there's a lot of people in our industry of course who are struggling or just living with all kinds of learning disabilities anxiety whatever else we talked about it a few times so it's really commendable that you're putting together this program to kind of help people that are like you you know and because I'm sure you're right there's probably plenty them out there who could benefit from this so good for you. It's great. Yeah I just want to
**\[35:34\]** **Sean:** like tie it into web development or even a little bit more, we're all concerned about accessibility, but this is basically hidden accessibility because it's not somebody in a wheelchair. It's all in your head. And I'm not saying that in the pejorative sense. I mean, it's literally in
**\[35:49\]** **Amanda:** your head. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. It's not as visible as other forms of disability sometimes take, for sure. There's a whole other conversation to be had around UX of neurodivergence and what that that means in terms of like your content strategy and information architecture and it's a whole, I'm not even sure I'm necessarily the most qualified person to talk about that sort of thing, but within the accessibility space there is kind of a subset of folks who particularly specialize around how you, how you build websites that take neurodivergence into account.
**\[36:25\]** **Mike:** That's where we're going. Okay, well Chris, thank you so much for coming back in the show. It's great to hear from you again. And we'll put all these links to all this stuff
**\[36:34\]** **Sean:** talk about in the show notes please check them out. Thank you so much Chris. Thanks Chris. Thanks for
**\[36:38\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** having me. The website 101 podcast is hosted by me Amanda Loots. You can also find me online at
**\[36:48\]** **Mike:** AmandaLoots.com. And by me Mike Mella, find me online at belikewater.ca or on socials at Mike Mella.
**\[36:56\]** **Sean:** I'm Sean Smith your co-host. You can find me online at my website caffeine creation.ca and link them at Caffeine Creations. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the website, 101 Podcasts. The podcast for people who want to learn more about building and managing weapons.
**\[37:26\]** **Mike:** Managing weapons. Hold different skillset. Take two.
Close Transcript
Have a question for Sean, Mike, and Amanda? [Send us an email](/contact).
[](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWJzaXRlMTAxcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC5yc3M%3D)[](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/website-101-podcast/id1449510012)[](https://open.spotify.com/show/3rmSM1R9t6q1U8DmYWJRSO?si=NrYPMgDaRV6Dd56PjEaPow)### Season 07
- 1 [ When to Say No](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-1/when-to-say-no/)
- 2 [ How can I communicate better with clients?](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-2/how-can-i-communicate-better-with-clients/)
- 3 [ What to do when work is slow - with Mitchell Kimbrough](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-3/what-to-do-when-work-is-slow-with-mitchell-kimbrough/)
- 4 [ Motivation, Burnout, and Imposter Syndrome, with Kevin Nicholson.](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-4/motivation-burnout-and-imposter-syndrome-with-kevin-nicholson/)
- 5 [ How to spin up a website quickly using a boilerplate](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-5/how-to-spin-up-a-website-quickly-using-a-boilerplate/)
- 6 [ Back in my day...](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-6/back-in-my-day/)
- 7 [ How to submit a support request with Ben Croker](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-7/how-to-submit-a-good-support-request-with-ben-croker/)
- 8 [ Online Learning and Keeping up with Technology with Ryan Irelan](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-8/online-learning-and-keeping-up-with-technology-with-ryan-irelan/)
- 9 [ Unlock your ADHD superpowers with Chris Ferdinandi](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-9/unlock-your-adhd-superpowers-with-chris-ferdinandi/)
- 10 [ Rebroadcast: 11 Things to avoid doing on your website](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-10/rebroadcast-11-things-to-avoid-doing-on-your-website/)
- 11 [ Raw and Unedited](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-11/raw-and-unedited/)
- Bonus[ The Joy of Self-Taught Coding](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-/the-joy-of-self-taught-coding/)
### All Seasons
- [Season 01](https://website101podcast.com/season/01/)
- [Season 02](https://website101podcast.com/season/02/)
- [Season 03](https://website101podcast.com/season/03/)
- [Season 04](https://website101podcast.com/season/04/)
- [Season 05](https://website101podcast.com/season/05/)
- [Season 06](https://website101podcast.com/season/06/)
- [Season 07](https://website101podcast.com/season/07/)
- [Season 08](https://website101podcast.com/season/08/)
- [Season 09](https://website101podcast.com/season/09/)
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