How Entrepreneurs Can Manage ADHD Without Medication

How I Manage My ADHD Without Medication – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rEwOMf_khY

Transcript:
(00:00) – Hi, I’m Dan Martell, technology entrepreneur, investor and creator of SaaS Academy and in this video I’m gonna go totally off script and talk about how I manage my ADHD without medication. And be sure to stay to the end where I’m gonna share with you guys a list of resources that I use to kind of enhance the strategies that I’m going to be talking about in this video.
(00:20) (upbeat music) So if you deal with ADHD or have somebody in your life that’s struggles with it you probably feel frustrated that every day is a crap shoot. You don’t know if you’re going to be productive. You don’t know if you can get any level of focus. Every time you start to read, you know 30 seconds later you’re off to some other thing.
(00:46) You probably already clicked off this video or thinking about what you’re gonna have for lunch or maybe you’re feeling tired, you don’t have the energy or something feels off and when you take your medication maybe, and look I’m not a doctor. I’m not gonna tell you what to do. I’m just gonna tell you what I’ve done.
(01:04) Essentially my experience has been that if you do things right you can get super clear. You can summon a super focused state at will. You can ensure that every day is your best day and you can really manage the way you show up with your unique ability in your zone of genius and just who you are which I think is absolutely a super power.
(01:25) I’ve got a video I’ll link up below. It’s one of my most popular videos. Why I’m doing this one on why I think ADHD is my super power. But without sharing with you the strategies that I’ve learned over the years, implemented into my life and my day then it’s hard for people to understand how that could look.
(01:40) So I’m just gonna walk you through what a day in my life looks like if you feel inspired to adopt any of those things, feel free to do that but this is really just my take. I don’t play a doctor on the internet. Be sure to consult with your physician. Figure out what’s appropriate for you and just test things.
(01:55) I think that was the biggest thing that I’ve learned over the years is just trying, tweaking, et cetera. Now, what happened was at 8 years old I got diagnosed with ADHD and for many years I felt broken. It actually sent me into kind of a spiral of depression and making some really bad decisions in my life.
(02:15) And there’s a whole story on kind of how that impacted me and where I ended up and really rock bottom and how I’ve turned my life around since then to now where I’ve started five companies. I’ve hired over 500 people in my career. I became a millionaire when I was 27 and investor in 30 other companies. Look, I’m not sharing that stuff to brag.
(02:35) I’m just sharing it because I want to give you context for what’s possible when you own who you are and you figure out is there a better way to tweak things to essentially turn it around as a power instead of a deficit. One is nutrition. What you put in your mouth definitely affects your brain, your mind, your focus and the first thing is sugar.
(02:56) I think that is probably the worst thing that we as a society have introduced into our lives. Most of you don’t even realize how much grams of sugar you’re consuming on a daily basis. And all I ask is that you look on the back of the packages and most of you are probably consuming your sugar through liquids, through the beverages that you drink on a daily basis.
(03:18) Taking those things out. Going back to water. First thing I do when I wake up every morning is half a liter to a liter of water first thing. My feet hit the ground, I grab my water bottle. It’s ready to go. I drink it. That just hydrates my body. As soon as you wake up, you’re dehydrated. Hydrate your body. Have that bottle next to you.
(03:35) Drink throughout the day just water and that’ll help quench that thirst for any kind of high sugar supplements. Now, the other thing is I’m a big fan of low carb, high healthy fats. For the most part my breakfast, if you want to dial into anything, dial in your breakfast. I go avocado, egg whites, maybe one egg, lots of vegetables and it’s really simple and clean.
(03:59) It takes me like seven minutes to cook up and that just sets the whole day. From there it’s always just proteins and salads. And again, I’m not saying, I’m not judging what you eat. I’m just saying if you want to see if you could help counteract some of the downsides of your ADHD, just try tweaking your nutrition.
(04:19) It’s probably the biggest area. If you drink coffee with lots of sugar and cream, start trying to drink it black. I mean it’ll change everything. I mean just on an energy level it’s gonna change anything. So nutrition is the first place. Number two is sweat everyday. I know for a fact that if I don’t work out I don’t have the same impact in my work, my creativity’s not there, my ability to focus, my ability to communicate is depleted and so my rule is just sweat everyday.
(04:49) When you wake up, get a workout in. Do something. It could be as simple as doing 30 pushups. You know, I have a workout when I travel and I’m in a hotel room. It’s essentially four rounds of 20 reps each of jumping jacks, air squats, pushups, and sit-ups. It takes about, depending on how fast I’m moving, 10 to 12 minutes and that’s all you need to actually get a good workout in everyday in the same spot you’re standing.
(05:14) You don’t need any equipment, no nothing and it’s gonna get your sweat on and that just sets for me my mind. I love to run, I love to do Crossfit but I don’t do those things for my body per say, I do ’em for my mind. And I’m telling you if you’re not working out, if you’re not moving your body then 100% it’s gonna affect your ability to focus.
(05:31) So that’s a big area. Number three is sleep. So many entrepreneurs, so many individuals like yourself that have ADHD have a really hard time going to bed, having a deep sleep and the reason why is your mind is racing. At the end of the day there’s a few things I do. One, I sleep with a sleep mask to make sure that the room is 100% dark.
(05:50) I use an app on my phone for white noise so I don’t get interrupted throughout the night. You can use an app like sleep stream which is incredible. Again, I’m gonna link those up below and/or any app that really creates white noise. There’s a bunch of free ones out there. And just make sure that you turn off all electronics before you go to bed.
(06:06) I’m a big fan of reading and this is a funny part. Maybe you can’t read because you get distracted really quick. Well, what happens with me is I’ve taught myself if I start to read in bed, I go to sleep. So it’s funny now that when I’m reading a book, I literally will fall asleep just because that’s what’s been programmed in my mind.
(06:21) Be sure to get yourself a little reading light and a book and every night fall asleep with a book on your chest and it’s a great way to go to bed. Your mind will go to sleep, wear the sleep mask, white music on or white noise on and you will sleep. So ideally, at least seven hours. I try to aim for eight.
(06:37) Four, morning routines. I’m a big fan of rituals to really just take all the best practices that I learn is have it stack them into my day so that I don’t have to think about it. So I have a morning ritual, if you don’t have one, I highly recommend the book Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod and it will walk you through his framework called Savers.
(06:57) Mine is a variation of that. I’ve been doing mine for before his book was written but it’s an incredible book and it’ll just walk you through. But the big thing for me, especially with ADHD, is meditation. Your mind is so powerful and if you’re not meditating for at least five minutes. And you’re like, “I can’t meditate.
(07:12) “Every time I sit down my mind races.” Yes, I agree. But if you can learn to take control of that. If you can just sit there in silence and just be in awe of how your mind kind of goes all over the place, just bring it back. Great app like Headspace to just help you understand how meditation works. Whatever it is for you.
(07:33) If you’re not meditating and you want to get off medication and self-medicate your ADHD a little bit, I just don’t know how you’re gonna do it. Because it’s just part of exercising the muscle which is your mind and ability to focus and just be aware of what’s going on and really I’m just in awe of how our minds work and how we kind of have two different views of what’s going on in reality.
(07:57) So morning rituals to me, it’s everything from what I eat, my exercise, my gratitude journaling, meditation, the movement part, that’s just locked in. If I don’t start off my day with that then my whole day is just (mimics explosion) up for a roll of the dice and we’ll see what happens. Five, 30 minute Pomodoro work blocks.
(08:18) So my mind works best when I know exactly what I’m working on and I focus it in on a 30 minute window. Essentially I do 25 minutes of work, 5 minutes of rest. And that rest is usually a breathing techniques, stretching, standing up, moving around, whatever it is but for 25 minutes I have a timer set. I know exactly what I’m working on and I go deep and there’s just something about the gamification of having that 25 minute timer and I’ll link up a tool I use below called Be Focused but it just allows me to just not easily get
(08:48) distracted and go get browser blindness where I jump on Facebook or YouTube. I mean for many of us it is second nature. I’m a hotkey guy. All of a sudden my fingers without even thinking about it open up the browswer and start typing Facebook and I’m like, “What the (censored) am I doing here?” So if you’re having those issues consider setting a timer.
(09:05) Pomodoro is an incredible technique, super simple to allow you to focus on your work. Six, energy management. I truly believe that like there is a circadian rhythm to life and to seasons, et cetera, our day follows a certain energy pattern and flow. And for me, what I’ve learned and could be different for you.
(09:26) Some people they swap it for night versus morning. In the morning is when I do my best work output. Meaning any creative work, anything I want to create or things that I know I’m gonna have a hard time doing like reviewing financial statements or whatever it is in the business. Reviewing contracts, I need to do that first thing in the morning when my mind is most aligned with what I need it to do.
(09:50) And then what I do is I then load my whole afternoons talking with people from an energy point of view. I just think that if you don’t know what your energy flow is for the day, really consider studying it, understanding how you feel and mapping to that so that you can put the right types of tasks and work in those windows.
(10:09) Like I don’t meetings before lunch. The reason why is because I don’t want to use that time that I know I could be focused and create something when I can just push my meetings to the afternoon. Now, maybe you’re not in a position to be able to do that but there’s probably other elements from an energy flow in your day that you can restructure and what I call day parting.
(10:27) You can change the time of day that you focus on those tasks and those pieces so that you can get the most out of your focus. Seven, music. Now if you made it this far you probably don’t have ADHD. I’m kidding. It just means that the content’s on point but for real, I used to play background music while I worked.
(10:47) I do my best work in coffee shops and busy airports. I use Vevo on my AppleTV so that I could play that in the background just like a music video. It’s like a modern day MTV. But now what I do is I actually have an app called Focus At Will and you know there’s science behind it but it’s different channels.
(11:03) You essentially complete a questionnaire and it’ll tell you what kind of music based on who you are, again, it could be hocus pocus. All I know is those tunes, I use the up tempo channel on Focus At Will. For me, just totally gets me in the zone. So if I map that with my 30 minute Pomodoros and I have my music playing in the background I can be anywhere at any time and just boom, crank out some work.
(11:26) So if you don’t incorporate some level of auditory distortion in your work day, videos, you just don’t want to have stuff that you’re watching. Definitely don’t put on, don’t go binge watching House of Cards on Netflix. Put stuff that you don’t have to listen to but it’s there and it’s kind of a beat and a rhythm and it’ll help you.
(11:44) I know it helps me really stay focused when I need to get something done immediately and I can’t waste any time getting into that zone. Eight, block time. One of the most important habits that I have is that I know exactly what I’m doing on a 15 minute interval throughout my whole day.
(12:03) Some of you might think that’s crazy over scheduled and structured. That’s cool, you can think that. I can show you my results, they speak for themselves. The reason why I’m able to put out so much content and deliver so much value to my coaching clients, to be able to build businesses and invest in other companies, be value added, be present for my family, take incredible amount of vacation every year is because it’s all structured.
(12:28) I don’t need to know what I’m doing this afternoon, I just know that it’s packed because I review my day the night before and I review my week on Sundays. So block time is the habit of actually scheduling, going in your calendar, dragging and dropping and putting in the description of that calendar entry exactly what you’re gonna do to move the needle forward.
(12:46) So that way I don’t sit there, I call it bleed time, between different events or you have a meeting with somebody and they keep talking and you have nothing scheduled on your calendar so you keep talking. All of a sudden a 30 minute meeting went to a 60 minute meeting. All those things add up. So I’m a big fan for focus point of view to really help me mitigate the ADHD is to block time with these specific tasks I want in the description and then use my Pomodoro timer to make sure that I execute in those 30 minute windows.
(13:15) Nine, build a team, a support network. People around you, now many of you guys are saying, “Dan, I do not have the financial means to do that,” and I can understand that. But I will tell you this, ever since I was in junior high school and there was class projects or there was activities or we were playing a sport or playing in the backyard with my friends, building a treehouse, et cetera, I got really good at corralling and recruiting people to help support me in what I was creating.
(13:48) Okay? And to me that’s no different than your life. There are certain things that you would love to do for eight hours a day that other people, and you probably don’t think this is true, I guarantee it. I know for a fact my bookkeeper Sandy is amazing. She loves to do bookkeeping and spreadsheets and numbers and if I took that away from her and I said, “Hey, you’re gonna start to write blog posts,” she would freak out ’cause she doesn’t like to do that.
(14:11) If I said, “Hey, we’re gonna stick a camera in front of ya “and we’re gonna record some videos,” she’d be like, “Oh my God, no way, I quit.” I know for a fact there are people in your life that would support you in a certain area and you could swap out certain tasks. You could ask for favors, you could look for leverage.
(14:28) You just need to have enough self worth in the value you bring to other people to be able to ask for it. That’s the biggest challenge. I’m not gonna get into that whole bag of whatever but you need to bring people into your life to support you in the things you struggle at because I know for a fact there are people out there that love to do that work.
(14:47) The things you hate to do, other people love to do and if you can bring that in and tweak your day and tweak your projects so that you can have that. It takes time, years maybe, but you build towards that one day you will wake up and you will realize that ADHD is 100% your super power. It’s the reason why you’re so energetic and creative and able to produce outcomes that other people are in awe and inspired by instead of making it a crutch or a deficit or a weakness.
(15:18) And that to me is my hope, especially for all the kids watching this. If you’re watching with your parents, just know that, again, I felt broken at 8 and there were people that showed up in my life and showed me that there was possibilities and they believed in me in a way that I didn’t believe in myself at the time.
(15:34) And through that journey of entrepreneurship is the ultimate personal development program and for me programming became a new addiction where I could really get focused on kind of going deep on something that wasn’t illegal or got me in trouble and since then I just decided I don’t want to take medication to deal with my ADHD.
(15:54) That was a decision I made probably eight years ago and it was a transition and I added all the things I’m talking about and many other stuff I’m probably forgetting to just say no, I’m gonna own this. I’m gonna tweak it. I’m gonna work my way through it and I can tell you it’s been almost ten years since I made that decision.
(16:11) It’s probably the best one. I show up as me, as Dan, not as somebody else and it feels absolutely fricking amazing and I hope this for you. So quick recap, one is nutrition. Two is sweat everyday. Three is ensure I get incredible sleep. Four is focus on my morning routine. Five is the Pomodoro technique.
(16:31) The 30 minute focus of work productivity. Six is energy management. Seven is music. Eight is block time and then finally, nine is build a team of supporters. If you’ve gone through the transition yourself or if you feel like you’re going through it now and you need some support, just leave a comment below.
(16:49) There’s incredible people that are part of the community, they can relate. Also be sure to check out the other video on ADHD is my super power. You will, (laughs) just so you know, when you go watch it, it’s the 100% contrast. Okay? That was Dan Martell three years ago and this is Dan today. And maybe I was a little bit chubbier.
(17:08) Maybe I didn’t understand how video worked and all this stuff. I’ve done video every week for the last three years so go check it out. Maybe it’ll inspire you to start a new creative endeavor ’cause it’s been probably the biggest blessing in my life is having a community of folks like yourself watching these videos so that I can serve in a bigger way.
(17:26) So hope this video finds you incredibly well. If you liked it be sure to click the like button, leave a comment below. Subscribe to my channel. Super appreciate you guys watching. I’ll see you in the next video. Were you there when Dan asked me about the shirts I wear? A lot of people ask me, “Where do you get your shirts? “Your shirt game is on point.
(17:42) ” I’m like, “Well, I don’t know.”