ADHD: my biggest strength, and my biggest challenge

I'll try keep this week's newsletter short (something I never quite achieve! lol).

This week I want to talk about ADHD.

I was officially diagnosed with ADHD on 30th April 2025, but I'd suspected I had it for many years prior.

I’d always struggled with certain things that others seemed to find straightforward. However, my highly structured previous careers (medicine and the army) gave me a lot of external scaffolding, which somewhat masked my symptoms.

When I became an entrepreneur around 2018, all that scaffolding was removed, and wow - the struggle became undeniable.

Suddenly, I had no external systems, bosses, rotas, or structure forcing me to do basic things like get up, get ready and go somewhere. It was all up to me.

And I ‘failed’ miserably.

It’s taken me YEARS to adapt and modify my life so I can function well with ADHD as an entrepreneur. A lot of trial and error, failures, and experiments… figuring out what actually works for my brain.

What I find fascinating, infuriating, and extraordinary (all at once!) is that ADHD is both my biggest blessing and my biggest curse.

I credit my ADHD for my creativity - endless ideas, vision, connecting the dots, seeing patterns, reading people, and connecting deeply with others.

I also credit it for my ability to hyperfocus. If something interests me, my ability to work on it for hours, days, even weeks is insane. I forget to eat, drink, sleep… everything. Hyperfocus has saved me countless times. That last-minute ability to pull things off is something I used to hate, but now I see it as a super power (even if it still comes with stress).

I also credit it for thinking in an unconventional way. I question things. I challenge rules that don’t make sense. I dislike rigidity without reason. I see the world differently.

But…

On the flip side:

I would say my difficulty starting tasks, focusing on the right things (or switching focus), performing repeatable tasks, and staying on top of life admin, friends’ birthdays, special occasions, and doing things in advance instead of at the last minute… are some of the things that still frustrate me and at times get me down.

One of the most painful things for me to navigate is my struggle around relationships.

Remembering birthdays, weddings, special occasions… all the important moments in the lives of the people I love.

And when I do remember, it’s often too late to organise something thoughtful or I get overwhelmed with the admin involved in planning and executing, and I freeze and do nothing.

On top of that, how much I struggle to keep up with messages - often leaving people without a reply.

I’ve really beaten myself up about this over the years, and if I’m honest, I still do sometimes.

I genuinely believe I’ve lost several friendships because of this. From the outside, it probably looked like I didn’t care enough… when the reality is the complete opposite.

When friends or family comment on how long I've taken to reply to something, I feel pain, because I keep letting them down without meaning to. 

That’s been a really hard thing to navigate.

All the other ADHD struggles are things I’ve gradually been working on - through lifestyle changes, therapy, coaching, systemising, automating, and using a million different 'hacks' to support the areas I find most challenging.

These are the things that have helped me the most:

• Google Calendar – I live and breathe through this thing. Scheduling everything, setting reminders… if it’s not in there, it doesn’t happen.
• My coach and therapist – having trusted professionals to help me navigate business and life has been vital. ADHD brings additional challenges in terms of stress, mood, and resilience, and having that support has been life-changing.
• Exercise – wow. These past few months post-surgery where I haven’t been able to exercise have been really challenging. Exercise is like a washing machine for my brain - it leaves it all clean and shiny. It helps me reset. Without it, everything feels harder.
• Routine – I am still not great at this (even when I'm 90 I doubt I will be sticking to routines consistently lol), but when I do have some sort of predictable structure, even if imperfect, it makes a big difference.
• Accountability – this is huge for me. I use Focusmate (a site to book sessions with another person online to co-work - you can check it out HERE), I set goals with my coach, I lean on my community, and sometimes I even use social media as a way to hold myself accountable. It makes a massive difference.

So why am I talking about ADHD?

Because many of my clients (and people who read this newsletter) either have ADHD or recognise themselves in a lot of this.

I seem to naturally attract people who think like this… and I actually love that, because I understand their brains, their struggles, and their way of thinking so well.

ADHD (and ADHD-like traits) can be a huge advantage in business. 

But it requires a very different approach - one that works with our brains, not against them.

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought lately. I naturally coach my clients in a very ADHD-informed way. It’s what comes naturally to me, and it’s what I’ve seen supports them the most.

A lot of it seems counterintuitive and, in fact, goes against the grain of what a lot of online ‘gurus’ teach.

For instance, when one of my clients is stuck and unable to take action, I’ll often get them to commit to doing LESS, not more. I know their nervous system is in freeze mode. Trying to push them harder is not what they need. They need to regulate, go back to basics, be kind to themselves, and take the pressure off. Suddenly, after the pressure is off, they naturally go back to being ultra productive without needing any external motivation.

When working with ADHD clients, the approach has to be very much ‘founder-first.’ In other words, my main role as the coach is to support the human first, and business second.

To be a thinking partner.
To give them space to verbalise their zillion ideas.
To help synthesise and make sense of what's going on in their brain and nervous system.
To help them go from chaos to clarity.
To help them re-prioritise and focus.
To help them get unstuck when their nervous system is dysregulated.

It’s a very different approach, and I think it’s massively under-recognised. I genuinely believe the mainstream advice out there is harming a lot of ADHD entrepreneurs, because they blame themselves for perceived failures, when in fact it's the system and approach that is not supporting them adequately.

People with ADHD can absolutely - and do - thrive and become incredibly successful.

But they require a different kind of support to do this, and validation that they are not broken - they simply don't fit into the conventional system we have been brainwashed to adopt.

I’ll leave it here. This is most definitely not short! lol. So much more to say on this subject but I need to sleep (hello hyperfocus!).

I’d love to know - did any of this resonate? Are you someone that has or suspects has ADHD? How has this shown up in your life and what have been the main challenges you've faced?

You don’t need a diagnosis. This isn’t about labels (and I’m definitely not diagnosing anyone here).

It’s about understanding our strengths… and our brains, so we can optimise for what we naturally excel at (and delegate what we suck at ;-) )

Hit reply and let me know what landed for you - I always love hearing from you :-)

Wishing you a wonderful rest of your week.

With love,
Marcela