PODCAST. The Relationship Between ADHD and Entrepreneurship with Peter Shankman.
Introduction:
Welcome to Wise Squirrels, a podcast for late-diagnosed adults with ADHD.
Peter Shankman is a serial entrepreneur, author, and ADHD advocate who discusses the challenges of ADHD, its connection to entrepreneurship, and embracing strengths for fulfilling work.
Guest Background:
Peter Shankman is the brilliant mind behind Help a Reporter Out (HARO).
He has authored numerous best-selling business books on customer service and public relations.
Notably, he wrote the book "Faster than Normal: Turbocharge Your Focus, Productivity, and Success with the Secrets of the ADHD Brain," which inspired a podcast by the same name.
Peter's latest creation is a children's book titled "The Boy with a Faster Brain."
Diagnosed with ADHD in his mid-30s, Peter is on a mission to show kids that they aren't broken but rather brilliant, preventing them from spending decades trying to prove themselves.
Episode Highlights:
The Flaws in the Education System and Challenges Faced by Children:
Discussion on how classrooms are designed and the flaws in the education system.
Uncovering the challenges faced by children, especially those with ADHD.
The Fascinating Connection Between Laughter, Dopamine, and ADHD:
Exploring the connection between getting laughs and the release of dopamine.
Peter shares insights on this topic and relates it to his own experiences.
The Struggles of Socially Awkward Kids and Their Impact on Adult Life:
Shedding light on socially awkward kids who talk excessively to prove they aren't broken.
Exploring how these struggles affect adult life.
ADHD and Entrepreneurship:
Discussing the prevalence of ADHD among entrepreneurs and the reasons behind it.
Highlighting the importance of finding people who excel in areas where individuals with ADHD may fall short.
Navigating Life with ADHD:
Exploring the nuances of ADHD and sharing valuable insights on navigating life with the condition.
Topics include not caring what others think, deciding when to let go of an idea, and finding enjoyment in work.
Help a Reporter Out (HARO) and Time Management:
Learning about Peter's brainchild, Help a Reporter Out, and its significance.
Discussing the implementation of procedures to manage time and reduce decision fatigue.
Visualizing Outcomes and Emotional Return on Investment:
Emphasizing the importance of visualizing the outcomes and consequences of choices.
Exploring the concept of emotional return on investment and finding joy in work.
ADHD and Addiction, Surrounding Ourselves with Supportive People:
Discussing the fine line between ADHD and addiction and the impact of our social circle.
Highlighting how the people we surround ourselves with can uplift or bring us down.
Practical Tips for Managing ADHD:
Sharing practical tips, such as bringing a laptop during downtime and handling regrets from the pre-diagnosed life.
Conclusion:
Encouraging listeners to connect with Peter Shankman on social media (except Twitter) @PeterShankman or reach out to him at peter@shankman.com.
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Hey, I'm not sure if you know about this, but I was a speaker and a trainer for Google for nearly six years. In addition to this, I've been a coach through a lot of my career, helping small business owners and entrepreneurs improve their businesses. But now with ADHD, I've learned a lot about helping other wise squirrels like me. Check out the link at wise squirrels.com/coaching
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and book a free session with me to see if I can help you. I have a feeling I can you.
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Dave, welcome to wise worlds, the podcast for late diagnosed adults with ADHD. I'm your host, Dave Delaney, and today I'm speaking with Peter Shankman, a serial entrepreneur and the brilliant mind behind Help a Reporter Out or horror. Now, Peter has authored numerous best selling business books on customer service and public relations, delving into the secrets of success. But notably, he penned a great book called faster than normal, turbocharge your focus productivity and success with the secrets of the ADHD brain, which inspired a podcast by the same name, but Peter's latest creation ventures into a different realm. It's a children's book titled The boy with a faster brain. You see, Peter was diagnosed with ADHD in his mid 30s, and now at 50, he's on a mission to show kids that they aren't broken, but rather brilliant, and he wants to prevent them from spending the next three decades of their lives trying to prove that they're broken. Today, we'll be diving into various intriguing topics with Peter. We'll explore the flaws in the education system and how classrooms are designed, uncovering the challenges faced by children. We'll also discuss the fascinating connection between getting laughs and the release of dopamine, something I know quite well. Peter will shed light on the struggles of socially awkward kids who talk excessively to prove they aren't broken, and how that affects our adult life. I also know a thing or two about that. We'll delve into the reasons why ADHD is commonly found among entrepreneurs, and the importance of finding people who excel in the areas where we fall short. And we'll chat about the nuances of ADHD and he'll share valuable insights on navigating life, such as the liberating act of not caring what others think, and the moment when you should decide that an idea isn't working anymore. We'll also explore the concept of emotional return on investment, how to enjoy what you're doing, and blur the line between work and fun. We'll hear about Peter's brainchild, helper, reporter out and discover the significance of implementing procedures to manage your time and reduce the number of choices you have to make, knowing oneself and playing the tape forward will be key topics as we explore visualizing the outcomes and consequences of our choices. Now we're going to touch upon the fine line between ADHD and addiction and how the people we surround ourselves with can either uplift us or they can bring us down. Plus we'll uncover some practical tips, like bringing your laptop when you know you'll have some downtime and handling regrets from your pre diagnosed life. To connect with Peter Shankman, you can find him on social media except Twitter at petershankman, or simply reach out to him. At peter@shankman.com
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I'll include links to everything we talk about right here in the show notes. Let's get on with the show. I want to start with a quote having ADD or ADHD makes life paradoxical. You can super focus sometimes, but also space out when you least mean to you. Can radiate confidence and also feel as insecure as a cat in a kennel. You can perform at the highest level, feeling incompetent as you do so. You can be loved by many, but feel as if no one really likes you. You can absolutely totally intend to do something then forget to do it, and you can have the greatest ideas in the world, but feel as if you can't accomplish a thing, sounds about right? Yeah. And it's actually a quote that you used in a webinar you did about six or seven years ago about ADHD. Do you recall choosing that quote? Maybe we could talk a little bit about that. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's Ned Hallows opening line from delivered from distraction. And, you know, it makes a lot of sense. It's, it's very, very
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anyone with ADHD can recognize themselves in that quote.
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I think for me,
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you know, for years, it was constantly trying to figure out why I could do something.
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Thing, and then couldn't do another thing. Why I could make this why I could start and sell million dollar companies if I couldn't remember to take out the trash, things like that. And over time, when I finally started to understand what I was about and what my brain was about, everything started to make a lot more sense. And that's where things
5:16
started to click for me. Really, it was, it was, you know, not easy, certainly not as a kid in school, it was terrible. I wasn't diagnosed, so I mid 30s growing up, it was just called sit down. You're disrupting the class disease, and that's all I had. And so, you know the problem is,
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is that when you
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are constantly told or shown repeatedly as a kid that you're broken, that tends to cut very deep, and that makes it much, much harder
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to ever, believe me or not, and I have, you know, I'm on a mission now to
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show kids at an early age that they're not broken, that they're brilliant, so they don't spend the next 30 years trying to disprove that they're broken.
6:07
And I totally support that mission. It's yeah, I mean, this is something obviously close to home for me personally, because at 50, I was diagnosed with ADHD, so not that long ago, and it has been quite a revelation for me. That quote obviously hits home in multiple ways for me as well, but it's been really
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it's been a real wake up. My wife is a school teacher, and for years she's been telling me, dude,
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you have ADHD and I finally
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got tested and and we came to this conclusion, and now looking back at my own past, and my mom kept all my old report cards from from when I was kindergarten through grade school all the way up to high school, and reading, My wife and I, Heather, had been sitting back recently reading these report card comments from the teachers and just laughing our heads off. I mean, the poor people that had to put up with me. But at the same time, it's pretty it's pretty eye opening, reading these comments going, oh my god, it's so obvious. Well, what I'm a fan of? I don't know if I have it in front of me, but there's a
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quote I have a very similar report card that I received, that I found in my parents storage units, and it basically says, probably very similar to what yours said. But the premise is that
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Peter is trying to find it was actually for years. It was one of my, one of my, it was my Facebook I copied it. Made it my Facebook background. Peter accepts here it is. Peter accepts responsibilities. Peter accepts responsibilities. Is very helpful in class. However, he shows little self control and speech at times as a follow directions, he can work independently, but as a relatively short attention span for short attention span for his age, therefore he doesn't concentrate on his work. Peter seems to relate better with children either older or younger than himself.
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And yeah, I mean, this was 1980 so I was eight years old. And so, you know, you look at it now, and yeah, it's accurate to 100% and so again, that was, it was called sit down to interrupt the class. Now it is
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much more important and much more understood. You know, the problem is, teaching hasn't really changed in about 400 years. 400 years ago, the reason that kids sit in classrooms in rows and columns today is because in the 1600s we had one room schoolhouses, and that was the only way to fit all the kids you had. So times have changed. Procedures somehow haven't. And so a lot of it has to come back to figuring out
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things that we can change and and understanding that we know more about our brains now and not everyone works in the exact same way.
9:08
Yeah, it's interesting. My kids went to Montessori school growing up. That's where this report card was from. Oh, really interesting. Yeah, yeah. So even, even without the the confines of the desks, or maybe they were doing it that way back then, because I, I quite, I quite, uh, appreciated the system for for our kids, just the creativity and the ability to to move around some and things like that, where it wasn't quite cookie cutter, of course, 80s, it might have been different. Well, it was a little different. They did give us some, some, you know, a little bit of relaxation in that regard. But you know, they still had to send home those, those notes that, that, you know, every day I was getting in trouble for talking out of turn or whatever. And I, you know, promised myself, promise my parents every day I'll never do it again. Very good every day. Did it because it's very, you know, you get that dopamine hit from making those jokes, from cracking out.
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Yeah, yeah, and you just want more of it. Yeah, it's interesting. It might also the dopamine aspect and how it connects to laughter with something that actually I heard from you, or I read from you when you wrote about that, because that does resonate with me, with my interest in comedy, training with you know, and performing improv and teaching that, and then also doing some stand up as well, and always being the class clown and interrupting people as soon as I hear think of something funny to interrupt them with,
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yeah, yeah. So you get that, that dopamine hit, it's interesting. Well, also for me, a lot of it, and I realized this only a couple years ago. A lot of my interrupting and sort of telling people, you know, someone be telling a story, I'll need to interrupt and immediately share something that relates to me about that story. And what I found out is the reason I do that is, again, when you grow up for years being told that you are
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unable
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to be normal, or you're not. You don't fit in, or you just should sit down and stop destruct from the class, whatever it is, one of the things you do almost immediately is you attempt to show everyone you meet that you're not broken, that you're not
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as bad of a kid as everything so, you know. So So what winds up happening is you wind up becoming socially awkward because you don't know about timing. You don't know when to shut up, you don't know when to sit down and let people talk, because you constantly feel this need to tell people No, no, it's I'm good, I'm okay, you'll like me, trust me. And so that comes again from years of teachers, parents, my parents, but teachers, adults telling you, Hey, sit down. You're doing this wrong.
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So we really do need to sort of change that dialog. Flatbed or Yeah, and it's interesting, too. I was listening to an interview with Henry Rollins about his diagnosis with ADHD and also as a kid, but he spoke quite now it's in a number of years old, but he spoke quite poorly about
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the resentment he felt about being on medication and how his his mom treated him and the system, the school system, treated him and, yeah, I'm curious about about the thoughts there on, you know, because you talk a lot about, and you write a lot about how this should be treated as a superpower, and how, you know, you look at creatives and How entrepreneurs, like yourself and myself, entrepreneurship is a big it's a big driver or a big outlet for for adults with ADHD. Have you found that kind of correlations between you starting companies and and having ADHD and maybe that being part of your operating system to help you do Yeah, absolutely. I had one job in my life. I worked for America Online. They let us do whatever we wanted as long as we got the job done. So imagine my first job at a school. I'm doing these incredible things. I can work any way I want. Work two in the morning. Work from the boreal forest, whatever. And then I come back to New York after three years of AOL, and I get my second job at a
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major national weekly magazine, and all of a sudden we have 8am meetings and 8:30am meetings, and 9am check ins and 1045 editorial boards. And I'm like, Oh, my God, this is Russia. And I lasted one week before I quit, before I quit, and that was last I've ever had. I went on my own. And the reason I did was because I realized, okay, AOL gave me this sort of false description of what the workplace was like. It was a great time, but they sort of screwed me, because now I assume that the workplace was like that. Turns out it's not,
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I can't do this,
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you know, whatever this is. I can't work like this, so I'm gonna go out of my own. And it's funny, I remember telling my parents that I was going to my own open a PR firm with absolutely no experience. And I said, What's the worst going to happen when it when it I literally said, when it fails, not if it fails, when it fails, I'll go get a job. It's gonna be 25 years in October, and I haven't a good job yet. So that's interesting. So I mean, it takes a lot of a lot of risk and gumption to go out and do your own thing. And I know that you know you've written about, I think you read, you wrote a line that I love people find, or excuse me, find people who are great at what you suck at.
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Tell me a little bit about that, because, you know, even for me, growing my own business, I struggle, and I am sort of a one man show a lot of the time.
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Tell me a little bit about the people that you've met and you connected with and how they helped you grow, let's say that PR company and whatever that evolved into. I'll take it a step further. The thing about ADHD is that we're born.
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Without, or we're born with rather a certain gene. We're born with a special gene called the How hard can it be gene? Right to the point where, if things, you know, if we try something and it doesn't work, we simply go and try something else. And we're really good at that. And so to me, that's with the real superpower, because the highway is littered with the bodies of dead, brilliant ideas that died because they never got turned into anything, because the people who came up with them were too scared to try it, or too afraid to take the risk, or too freaked out to go jump and make that you know, that attempt. And so the beauty of ADHD is that we do that all the time, and a lot of times we do fail, but we also succeed quite often. We'll be right back. Why squirrels is brought to you by 10x conference coaching from future fourth Have you ever attended a conference with no plan at all, only to return after the conference to your office and you have a pile of business cards sitting there on your desk for months. You might have some down there right now. I get it. We get busy when we get back to work. We're catching up from being out of the office or being away. There's a whole lot of money that's spent in attending and sponsoring and exhibiting at conferences and trade shows and summits. If you want to maximize the return on your investment of your next conference, check out 10x conference coaching. Stop wasting your money by learning everything you need to know before, during and after your next big event. It's 10x conference coaching from future fourth and why squirrels get your first free session today at 10x cc.com that's the number 10x cc.com
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and now back to the show. And that's tremendously beneficial. I mean, I started and sold help reporter out within three years. And it was a I started on an airplane.
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It worked for two and a half years out of my apartment,
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and it was acquired for several million dollars, and and, you know, what was the worst thing that could have happened? I would have tried it. It wouldn't have worked. I would go back to doing PR, but that radically changed my life. I'm lying on my couch talking to you right now with a dog on my chest,
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you know, as opposed to working in another, you know, working for a company, or being in an office or so, the beauty of ADHD is that we take that we find those risks to be acceptable risks. I'm a licensed skydiver. Why? Because that why take that risk and become a licensed guy? Because the dopamine that I get from Skydiving is worth the calculated risk I take of jumping out of a plane multiple times in one day. I trust my training. I trust my gear, right? If I thought I was gonna die every time I jumped, I wouldn't jump. Yes, it's dangerous, but so is crossing the street in Manhattan. I don't get the same rush across the street in Manhattan. The rush I get comes from skydiving, and I know that I'm a better person when I land.
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I'm a single dad. The only time I have to work out is four in the morning. So I get up at four in the morning and I get on my peloton bike for two, three hours each morning
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to get the workout done. And you know again, what you're going to sleep in your workout clothes. You can get up super early and work out what's wrong with you. It's what works for me. The biggest
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gift that someone with ADHD can give themselves is to stop caring what other people think.
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And that's because we are different, and we are different, and the things we do for ourselves are different. We need to stop caring. The only people that matter, only people's opinions matter to me, are my daughter, my parents, girlfriend. It's about it. Maybe my dog, my dog's opinion matters, but I don't care otherwise. Why these people aren't paying my mortgage?
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Right? I am, yeah. And so the things I do help me do it better.
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So as we take more risks and we do fail, everybody does, but when you're entrepreneurial and like, at what point, because ADHD as a superpower, could also help you push through on an idea, as you said it, and stick it out
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and hopefully to receive success. But at what point do you realize, or have to realize, or have to be told, perhaps, that this isn't working? At what point do you you you abandon the idea and move on to.
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The next thing I've done that too, I think, I think it comes when you get to a point where you're like, This is not fun anymore.
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The beauty of ADHD is that the things we do, the things that we love to do, the things we enjoy doing, are the things we're very passionate about. And as long as we're continue to enjoy them, we'll continue to be passionate about them. The second we don't enjoy them is when we stop being passionate about them. And so because of that, I always tell people, if you're doing something, I'm not talking about doing something. And, oh, it's not fun today. It's, you know, it's more work. That is fun. I'm gonna quit, right? I'm talking about a consistent, less consistent, lack of return, of investment, of the emotional investment you're putting into whatever you're doing. If, over time, you realize, hey, this isn't making me happy anymore. Thing about running Help a Reporter Out is I can count on one hand the number of days and the three years I ran it, the number of days that I felt like it was more work than fun. One hand, otherwise it was all fun. And so for me, the key is, if I can't tell the difference between work and fun, I'm doing the right thing. Yeah, thing. The day I do start to notice that, more often than not, might be time to reevaluate.
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Yeah, that's a great tip. That's, that's, that's a very good tip, because for those of those, those folks listening, who may be working, who don't have their own entrepreneurial endeavor, that's, you know, I mean, it's a good it's a good wake up call to consider, you know, moving on or changing careers or looking for something new. If you're talented, you're smart, you can always get another job, yeah. But, you know, missing that chance to go on your own and do your thing is just probably one of the worst things I can imagine. I tell the story when I was like six years old, I was in a camp, a day camp.
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They they told all the campers, one day, they say, hey, the fourth July parade is coming.
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We have a float. If you want to ride the float, raise your hand. I didn't know what a float was, so I said, No. And then my parents take me to the parade. I see all my friends on my camp float. I want to do that. And I started running towards it. My dad pulls back. He's like, No, you didn't sign up when you were supposed to. And I six years old, right? I still remember this shit. And so it's one of those things where I'm like, Okay, I will never let an opportunity pass me by. Worst case scenario. I don't do it, but I'm never gonna let an opportunity pass in my worst case scenario, fails, whatever, but I never want to be sitting there going, Man, I wish I'd taken that opportunity. Good, solid advice there, by the way, for those listening who are not familiar, can you briefly describe Help a Reporter Out I know you've done it a million times, but just so people know what we're talking about, help reporters pretty easy. It's a three times per day email that you receive for free in your inbox with anywhere from 100 to 150 queries from journalists all around the world about any topic imaginable. You scan the email. It takes about 10 seconds if you see a reporter writing about something that you can answer, like whatever you're good at, you know, badminton, skydiving, basketball, archery, fishing,
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corporate takeovers, whatever, you simply reply to the journalist, and you can get free press. And it's, it was an idea that I came up with, and it, it blew up. I started sending out some emails to some friends. It blew up almost overnight. By the time I sold it, I was sending out
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1.1
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point 2 million double opt in emails every single day with an with an 89% open rate. So it was pretty sick. How did you come up with that idea
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when you're ADHD, you talk to everyone if you're next to me on an airplane, using the seat next to me, unless you fake your death, I don't know everything about you by the time I land. And so because I'm just gonna let you talk, I'm fascinated by it. And so here I am learning everything about you. And I also know a ton of reporters. These reporters are calling me, Hey, Peter, I'm doing a story on Who do you know? Oh, yeah, call this guy, right? And then the problem is, it started getting the point where I'd get calls from reporters, and I didn't know they'd be like, yeah, I get your name from so and so I'm doing, like, I don't know, you know, and I have to start, like, 12 hours later I'd find a person that could answer the question. But that was my whole day. I'm like, There's got to be a better way to do this, and how it came out. That's brilliant. I keep hearing you bring up airplanes, and it's interesting that you've come up with great ideas on airplanes. You You've written about, you know, liking airplanes for time to write and concentrate on stuff, because, you know, traditionally, at least, we didn't have Wi Fi on planes, so that helped, but we do now, but it still sucks. Yeah, I usually turn it off anyway, but I just stay with that, but, but also skydiving, I think there's this consistent thing with you about airplanes. I don't know it's just something I've noticed. It's very possible. I mean, I had an airplane for me as a happy place. It means I need to go in and do something that I love.
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Where I'm going somewhere to explore somewhere new. Yeah, I'm going to give a speech. I'm going to jump out of once. I mean, there's definitely a a love for me of that. And so I think that that, you know, maybe I'm already high on Dome when I walk out of the plane.
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Hence, it's a easier way for me to do whatever I need to do. Yeah, it's interesting, because, as a speaker myself, I love and as an avid traveler as well. You know, I didn't I ended up in Nashville because from Toronto, because I met my wife in Ireland when we lived over there, and we, we've traveled a lot, and so it's, yeah, it's, it's interesting, but I have a similar kind of feeling about about air travel. I haven't jumped out of a plane yet, though. Give
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it time.
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So tell me about setting deadlines for everything you do and and avoiding choices. I've found that pretty a pretty great topic that I've read and heard you speak about. So when you're ADHD, everything is exciting and everything is distracting, because the you need to put procedures into place when you need time to prevent yourself from liking or being distracted by everything.
26:15
For me, a lot of that happens, you know, I'll get off the bike in the morning and I take a shower and I'll get dressed for a while trying to figure out what should I wear. What should I wear? And my day was getting my day was starting late because I was constantly trying to figure out what to wear. And it's not like I'm some clothes horse, whatever. What would happen is I get into the closet and I'd see a sweater.
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Oh my god, I remember that sweater. Larry, hear that sweater? Oh god, I wonder what she's doing. I haven't sweating her ears. I should look her up now, it's three hours later, and make the living room on Facebook, and I haven't left the house. So for me, the elimination of choice is possibly the quest of the greatest tool in the world in I have my closet is has two sides to it. It is, for the past several years, those two sides have been labeled. They say office slash travel and speaking slash TV. Office slash travel is just a t shirt and jeans. Speaking slash TV is button down, shirt, jacket and jeans, my suits, my vests, my sweaters. All that stuff is in my daughter's closet, in her room, because if I had to look at it every morning, that's what would happen. So it's the elimination of choice is probably one of the greatest gifts you can give to yourself, because it's you don't have to think about it, right? I know that I am wearing. Okay? What's my schedule? Alexa, what's my schedule today? Today, you have three calls, and you have to pick up your daughter for school, t shirt and jeans. Yeah, and that's what says the other day. Well, you're getting on a plane
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and you're giving a speech at 4pm in Boston, button down, shirt, jacket and jeans. It's that simple. The less you have to think about, the better you can do. So you were diagnosed in your mid 30s. You said you're like me, what 50? Now I'm 5150. Yeah, when you were diagnosed, like, tell me about how that came to be and and maybe how you processed that, that new information or diagnosis, I knew I had it. I mean, it's one of those things. You break your leg, you see a bum sticking out of your leg. You don't need to go to a doctor say, Hey, did I break my leg? It's pretty clear you broke your leg. Go get it fixed, right? So for me, I knew that I had ADHD. It wasn't, you know, by that point, I had done the research. I knew there was for me, it was just a question of figuring out, what do I do about it, right? Do I want to be a slave to meds? How do I work on this? And so, you know, I talked to a doctor and talked to my therapist, who I've seen for 20 years plus now. And it came down to the point that I knew what the
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best way to phrase this. I knew what I had I knew I had to do about it. It was just a question of, Do I want to start today, tomorrow? So for me, it came down to after talking to my doctor, talking to my therapist. Okay, I have a prescription. I'm probably not going to take it every day, because I know things that I need. To give me the dome I need, right? I know how to get the stuff I need in my brain, so I'm going to focus on just doing those things. If there's something special, if I can't get it, whatever that day, then I'll take a pill. And
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that's really what it came down to for me. It's interesting now, because I'm I'm on medication, and have, I've found it to be helping, but I also am aware, over the weekend, my my wife and I helped one of her colleagues. She and her kids had moved into
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basically a motel, and a very sketchy one at that, and
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she needed some furniture and some clothes, so we brought them over to her. And it was a real sobering moment and a real and a moment for me to realize just how thankful and grateful I am for the life I have and what.
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What are your thoughts for people who can't afford a therapist and they can't afford medication, they don't have insurance,
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who have ADHD or who assume they do, what would you suggest or recommend? You know, obviously that not a doctor. But I think that one of the things you can do, best things to do, is start to learn and understand yourself. I understand what makes you the way you are. Understand what sets you get you into those places, right? What gets you into the
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the
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what sets you off, right? What puts you in a position where you're now going to lose time and you're not going to be
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as productive. What got you there? You know, there's a great saying. Alcoholics have a great saying called play the tape forward. How are you going to feel in 12 hours after you do the thing you're thinking about doing? How you going to feel in 12 hours after you have a drink? How you going to feel in 12 hours if you don't have a drink? Right? And I am a huge fan, a huge fan of that, because there'll be times when I potentially could do something stupid, and I'll ask myself, Hey, how is this going to impact me in
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X number of
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hours, how many feel about this in the morning? Am I going to work out if this happens? Am I going to work out tomorrow morning? If I don't work out tomorrow morning, then what's going to happen? Right? Right? How is how is that going to impact the rest of my day.
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And so it's that premise of sort of understanding yourself
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that I think anyone can do. But for me, it's wonderful because it allows me to ask myself, Is this a smart idea? Should I be doing this? And look, I'm certainly not perfect. I you know, I screw up like everyone else, you know, I'm not always on. I'm not as good as I should be all the time, but I do what I can do to to attempt to mitigate the damage or minimize the damage, for anything I might do. And so a lot of that comes from just knowing yourself. You mentioned, uh, aa, Alcoholics Anonymous, and I don't consider myself an alcoholic. However, I did quit drinking three years ago and haven't had a sip of alcohol since more for a lot of stresses that I was going through at the time, which had me drinking a little too much. And I realized, okay, I need to take 30 days off here. And I did that and found some non alcoholic beers, which were actually incredible that I had no idea existed. And I'm like, Holy shit, there's really good non alcoholic beer now, which is it was a game changer for me. And so my dad passed away a couple years ago from from dementia and Alzheimer's, and at that time, I realized, okay,
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I need to do everything I can not to get that.
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And that included exercise, meditation, mindfulness. It included quitting drinking. It included getting a sleep test and realizing, Oh, look at that, I have sleep apnea. My brain's not getting oxygen. Sleep apnea is very common within people with ADD and ADHD. Ah, interesting. I didn't know that I bring that up because part of me is thinking in this late revelation. For me personally, I almost feel, and I don't feel like I need to apologize for my ADHD, but at the same time, there are people out in the world who I feel like I need to reach out to to say, hey, guess what? Remember that time I never followed up with you, right? I'm really sorry, but guess what happened? Or guess what I figured out I don't know, like, almost like, aa, where you go and apologize? Yeah, you know, here's my take on that. Though I don't necessarily need to apologize, because I don't ever want to look at my ADHD as a weakness or blame my ADHD for the things I do wrong, I'm in control of myself, right, for good or for bad. So I think for me, a lot of it comes down to understanding again, understanding how I brain functions, and just saying how I work. But, you know, learning as much as I can so that if I do make mistakes, I won't make them again. There is a unbelievably fine line between ADHD and addiction, unbelievably close,
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you know? And I learned that
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probably by my late 30s, and I realized, okay, you know what? I don't
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I want to try to widen that line. I'm gonna do what I can, because it again, we're all three bad decisions in a row away from being a junkie in the streets. I really believe that. And so I'm very aware of of how I interact, not only with alcohol, but with
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people. You know, there are people who used to be in my life who I knew that if I hung out with them, alcohol would follow, or stupid ideas would follow whatever and and I heard a great quote once you know that a if you put three pieces of fruit together and one of them gets moldy,
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the mold will spread to the other three pieces of fruit.
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And the same is true with the people in your life. So what kind of people do you want to have in your.
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Life. And so for me, understanding that, you know, I,
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although I'm not a follower per se, I do have a very addictive personality. And so for me, I need to know that, and need to be aware of what I can do about that at any given time. So again, that a lot of that comes back to playing the tape forward, as I said. But you know, at the end of the day, I want to know that I'm making my decisions today. They're going to affect me in one hour, two hours, 12 hours, two weeks. Yeah. And that also gets back to what you mentioned about knowing yourself as well and kind of setting those limits or avoiding problems altogether. For me personally, when I was a kid, you know, I smoke pod and things like that. But I always stayed away from hard drugs because I knew it would lead me into bad places. And same with drinking, I was a big beer drinker, but, but always kind of avoid its hard liquor, because my dad was, you know, drink a lot and, and, yeah, so knowing I'd also like when I did drink, I would drink too much often. Or when I smoked, I would smoke a chimney. You know, we don't have a we don't have a moderation button. We have we have two speeds. We have namaste and our kind of bitch, and that's it.
36:13
Yeah, yeah. So when I mentioned that quote at the very beginning, which was from Ned Dr, Edward Hallowell, so he wrote the beginning of your book, and he was also the first guest on your podcast. Tell us a little bit about your podcast and your book, and then, of course, I also want to talk about the boy with the faster brain too. Yeah, so faster than normal, both the book and the podcast. The same name came out when I realized that my ADHD. So basically, after I sold help reporter, out, it took a year or so off, and I'm sort of trying to figure out why I was, you know, why I could do certain things so easily and do other things so horribly. And, you know, I came to the point of the realization, I hold the crap. Okay, I do have the ability to do incredible things, but I need to understand how my brain works,
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right? And so figuring that out
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sort of led to help a reporter, I'm sorry, led to faster than normal, yeah, you know. And I just wrote this book based on my experiences, you know, with the whole premise of, look, I'm not a doctor, but here's what I know works for me.
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I
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and then the podcast sort of followed suit of that,
37:28
the premise that
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there has to be other people like me,
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you know, other super weirdos who
37:36
seem to do really, really well and also seem to have ridiculous abilities to do incredible stuff, and yet, you know, can't keep their marriage going, or whatever it is. And so that led to the book and the podcast. And then from there, this book came out almost six years ago, and everyone told me back then to immediately write a tour de children's book. And because I have ADHD, it took me five years, and I did.
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And so that's the boy with the faster brain. And the boy with the faster brain is about a 10 year old boy named Peter, who is just like me. Was always getting in trouble and everything. But then he unlike unlike me, he gets diagnosed, yeah, and he learns about things like cognitive behavioral therapy and other things like that that allows him to
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use his fascia brain to his advantage, live his best life, not get in trouble things like that.
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And it's adorable. It's a great book. I love it. And thank you. And yeah, no, it is.
38:36
It's interesting because so I wrote a book in 2013 it's incredible that it was that long ago now called new business networking. And in the book, I actually included you and talked about Haro specifically, and how Help a Reporter Out is a great way for networking with journalists and so on. And so I use that in the book. But I, I wrote that book. It was, you know, I had a publisher, I had a contract. It was 80,000 words. I wrote that book with undiagnosed ADHD, which I think is probably one of my biggest accomplishments, because honestly, honestly, like, I was ready to quit constantly, because I know how to the point that I was talking to other author friends, and they were saying, Dave, it's okay. It's just self doubt. You're gonna go through imposter syndrome when you write a book. It's okay. Everybody goes through it. It's fine. And I know that is part of the process, but I had no idea of this other thing that was shaping, just fueling kicking my self esteem in the ass and just making me want to quit constantly. And yeah, it just it was tough.
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I had a similar thing. I wrote a lot of books on
39:57
God on planes or whatever, because it was.
40:00
Only time you do an ad I had booked called Zombie loyalists about customer service, and I had a year's deadline. I did all the research in the first two weeks, and then
40:10
did nothing for 11 months. And then my publisher called me say, Hey, I have two weeks. How you doing? It was done. I'm like, Oh yeah, sure.
40:18
Hung up the phone book the flight. So here wrote chapters one through five in the flight out, landed, got a coffee, he's a sushi, didn't even clear immigration. Got back on the same plane, same seat, two hours later, wrote chapter six through 10, flew home of the book and got and got busted, got held up by Homeland Security for six hours and never cleared immigration in Asia. But the press, behind it was that that I know how I work when it's something I really enjoy doing, I can hyper focus. And that's, that's where the book came from.
40:52
Dude, getting back to planes again, your biography has to have something to do with planes. In the title, oh my God, that's wild. That is, that is really wild. And something I'll keep in mind as I start looking at my southwest points. Another
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example, yesterday, I had a I was in jury duty. I sit there most of the day. I didn't get called. So I got like, a, you know, I was able to get like, Oh, nothing, but, um, but I was sitting there, and I brought my laptop because I knew that I was going to have at least four hours of doing nothing but sitting in a room, so I brought my laptop and I worked pretty
41:30
much straight through four hours and managed to knock out like 75 emails on my inbox and wrote a couple of emails from my mailing list because I was someplace else where I had no other choice but to sit down and down and do
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that work. It really does work. I did actually find that helped me too, with with writing my book is changing location, I would go to a library or a coffee shop or a friend's condo and just yeah, just hammer it out there. Just getting out of the house really helped. Do you have any
42:08
resent? Not well, maybe resentment, but any any feelings of life, maybe your childhood or life before you were diagnosed, where you look back on things, and I don't want to say, beat yourself up, but there you go. I just said it on, why? Like, how you could have done something differently. Like, are there? Are there regrets? Are there feelings? Like, tell me a little bit about how, how you've handled that. I mean, everybody has regrets. Naturally, it doesn't matter, but,
42:38
but as it pertains to neurodivergence and ADHD. It was great line in the movie Thomas Crown Affair Pierce Brosnan selling one of his companies. And the guy says, What do you think crown? He regrets about the way you played this. He looks at him in his typical Pierce Brosnan handsome way, and says, regret, gentlemen, is a waste of time as is as is gloating. Have you figured out where you're going to tell your board when they realize you paid 34 million more than anyone else is offering? And I just, I always go back to that line life is so damn short. I don't regret anything. I think that everything that happened to me as I was growing up benefited me because I like who I am today. My daughter likes who I am today. I'm a good dad. I like to help people, literally, as I'm sitting here getting an email from someone who just said, I bought your children's book and I left it for my kid to find, and he found it, and he said he came in yesterday. He said, I think I know what my problem is. I think I'm like the boy in the book. I don't want to be bad in class, but sometimes my brain just makes me I mean, dude, I just helped an eight year old understand himself. And, you know, I'm the happiest guy in the world, and the books that I've been reading and studying up on ADHD, and really a big part of the purpose of this podcast, too, is to learn more about it and to help, yeah, remove the stigma and to help people, especially folks like me who are late diagnosed adults, to get a grasp of it. I found, personally, I found, you know, meditation and mindfulness to be incredibly rewarding and helpful. Do you have a practice? Do you do that at all sometimes? I mean, I find that my best place for doing sort
44:23
of getting out of my head again, is getting on the bike. I'll get up at 4am I'll get on my actual road bike, and I'll go outside and start riding. I don't even notice where I'm going. I just ride. And sometimes I'll wake up, I look up and I'll find myself 50 miles away from the city or whatever, yeah, and it's just, you got to figure out what works for you. Yeah, yeah. Are there questions I didn't ask you or topics that I didn't cover, that you feel that would be worth chatting about? I
44:50
think at the end of the day, you want to focus on everyone, how everyone uses their ADHD differently. Because everyone does. Everyone uses their ADHD differently, and you have to ask.
45:00
Ask yourself, in what way do I use it that benefits me? In what way do you use it? What can I learn from all of that? Mm, hmm, yeah, I have a habit. I do maybe because it's also because I like to hear my own voice, but I use my air pods. And when I'm out walking the dog or out driving or whatever. I record audio comments to myself, and for some reason, I don't do anything with the recordings, but I just talk to myself. I do a lot of that too. I do that from I get on my when I'm going out for a run or some exercise, whatever. I keep a,
45:37
you know, my phone in my hand, and I can, I can write to that all the time. Yeah, it's interesting, because nowadays we're in the we're at that point with technology where we're not like the the mad person walking down the street talking to himself like, now you can just talk to yourself on your phone and nobody knows the difference. Yeah, well, I'm not in trouble for that as a kid.
45:58
Yeah, right, Peter, this has been amazing. How can people get a hold of you, learn more about you and reach out? Yeah, I'm at Peter Shankman on every social. I don't use Twitter anymore, but I'm at Peter Shankman everywhere else, Instagram, Facebook, whatever my email is, peter@shankman.com
46:15
and I am always available to chat. I love talking about this stuff. Yeah, thanks, man. Tell me about very quickly before we wrap up about Twitter. What was your deciding decisions about not using Twitter anymore? I don't need to be somewhere that is run by a guy who just goes out of his way to be a dick. The guy has a couple 100 billion dollars. He could go out and save the world tomorrow. He could end hunger. He could end homelessness. He could then he chooses to fight with 15 year old ankle biters on Twitter. Something's seriously wrong there, yeah, and power them too by allowing them to spread those ankle bites. Yeah? I see no. I see no purpose to be there anymore. It breaks my little heart. I found Twitter, yeah? I mean, you know, I found Twitter at a specifically sort of lonely point of my life, you know, seven when, when I found Twitter and started using it, and, you know, back then, yourself included, you know, we it was just such a cool space, and has just gotten so toxic. At one point, I was the 49th most followed person on Twitter. That's how early I was. And, you know, yeah, I'm just done. I don't I don't need it anymore. It's a waste of time. How do you divide your sorry to keep going? How do you divide your attention for somebody who does spend a fair amount of time online, with the web, writing and so forth, like, how are you able to kind of manage your time? Everything gets put into a calendar, and I abide by that calendar.
47:44
I have to, I have to make sure that everything I do sticks the calendar. Because although, as I go off in tangents and I won't wind up, you know, I wind up doing not the things I'm supposed to be doing. So for me, it's very much about being aware of the time and being aware of, you know, I use I use alarms, and
48:03
my Apple Watch beeps probably 10 times a day let me know it's time to do something else. Mm, hmm, yeah, it's interesting. When the web has been, you know, apps and so forth have been and social media has been really designed to make us addicted. Yeah, it's certainly for the end of the day. You need to remember that, that you own your phone, your phone does not own you.
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And we will end there. Great, great reminder for everybody, alright, my friend, well, thank you again for being on the show. And yeah, we'll talk again soon. Take care. Hey, thanks for listening to wise squirrels. It has been amazing to share this with you. Best way to show your support for the show, leave us a review, follow the show and share it with the people in your life. We drop new episodes every two weeks, so stay tuned for that, plus drop by wise com or click the link in the podcast description, and you'll find a lot of different resources, like articles, a an assessment, a newsletter, lots of good stuff over@wisequairls.com
49:08
so drop by, let me know what you think, and we'll see you next time. Take care.
49:18
Hey, I'm not sure if you know about this, but I was a speaker and a trainer for Google for nearly six years. In addition to this, I've been a coach through a lot of my career, helping small business owners and entrepreneurs improve their businesses. But now with ADHD, I've learned a lot about helping other wise squirrels like me. Check out the link at why squirrels.com/coaching
49:47
and book a free session with me to see if I can help you. I have a feeling I can't.
Try our free ADHD test or download a copy of Now What? for late-diagnosed adults with ADHD, you know, wise squirrels.
