#071: In this episode, I discuss the fascinating journey of Sir Richard Branson, a successful entrepreneur with ADHD. I explore how we with ADHD can leverage our unique racecar brains to our advantage. I highlight the importance of creativity, face-to-face conversations, and the power of writing down ideas. I also touch on the growth mindset, proactive behavior, and the five habits of Branson that can enhance productivity and well-being. Enjoy listening!
ADHD POWER LINKS
#071: In this episode, I discuss the fascinating journey of Sir Richard Branson, a successful entrepreneur with ADHD. I explore how we with ADHD can leverage our unique racecar brains to our advantage. I highlight the importance of creativity, face-to-face conversations, and the power of writing down ideas. I also touch on the growth mindset, proactive behavior, and the five habits of Branson that can enhance productivity and well-being. Enjoy listening!
ADHD POWER LINKS
The most successful ADHDers in the world see ADHD as a superpower. This podcast, adhd Power, is my attempt to document the many failures and lessons I've learned on my journey of living a high performance life with ADHD. My hope is that you use these lessons to increase your productivity and maybe someday soon turn your ADHD into a valuable asset in your life. Please share and enjoy. So one welcome ADHD high performers to the 71st episode of the ADHD Power podcast. My name is Nikola. I'm an ADHD high performance coach, master, student and podcaster, and in today's episode I will share with you the five success habits of ADHD, or Sir Richard Branson.
Speaker 1:As you know, sir Richard Branson is a highly successful entrepreneur and also has ADHD. He could leverage his unique race car brain to his advantage. So let's get started, guys. First of all, who is Richard Branson? Sir Richard Branson is a British entrepreneur known for his charismatic and adventurous personality. He's the founder of the Virgin Group, which controls more than 400 companies in various fields, including well known Virgin Atlantic airline. Branson is recognized for his innovative and unconventional business tactics. Notably, he has publicly shared his experience with ADHD, illustrating how he's turned this into a strength in his entrepreneurial ventures. His career is marked by a willingness to take risks and a passion for challenging the status quo in business. So that's quite interesting. Yeah, richard Branson a really, really interesting personality. I have bigger respect of him and something. What I mentioned in the beginning is he's pretty charismatic, yeah, advantageous.
Speaker 1:Regarding his personality, I would say many of us with ADHD we have this gift of being charismatic. We really can have wonderful conversations with other people. We can see the details, because we have high levels also of sensitivity oftentimes and we can see in conversation certain things that other people are not able to see. That is also the reason why I would say many successful ADHD years are in the field of podcasts creating great podcasts, but also doing other stuff, like in the television industry as well and also when it comes to charismatic or sensitivity in conversations. A lot of successful ADHD years are also in sales. You know they are great salespeople and maybe that's also something interesting to you as well. So he has a really adventurous personality, which is quite common for many of us with ADHD, since we tend to be more people who are more unconventional, and then I shared with you he is pretty innovative and unconventional. Now, in regards to the innovativeness, that's an interesting thing Many of us with ADHD, we are highly creative people. We have ideas that constantly pop into our mind, which is a wonderful gift, I would say, in the entrepreneurial world, but also as a working professional. For example, it helps me on my journey building my own business, coaching business. All the time I have great ideas, or I have ideas to improve my business, which is really, really helpful. And also unconventional business tactics is also a great thing, because Richard Branson is pretty unconventional to a certain degree and this can help you especially, I would say, in the entrepreneurial context, because you are doing things differently. That's also to, I would say, the reason why many ADHD years start a business, because we tend to be more people who do things a little bit different than everybody else. We have different ideas, we see things from a different perspective, we question the status quo, which is also quite interesting. Then later on I mentioned OK.
Speaker 1:He has the willingness to take risks, which is also quite common for many people with ADHD. We love risks. Some people go skydiving or base jumping, whatever can be really crazy stuff. We get the adrenaline from those kind of activities. I also have a good friend of mine. He's doing all crazy stuff like base jumping, jumping out of the airplane, and that's also interesting, I would say. Adhd is like, for example, david Goggins I mentioned, I guess, also in the last episode. I guess he has ADHD I'm almost 100 percent sure and what he's doing? Basically he gets his adrenaline from different kind of activities, like doing crazy marathons yeah, he was, I guess he was a Navy SEAL etc. So this person, for example, gets his adrenaline from doing crazy stuff like this, challenging himself constantly, which is also great, by the way.
Speaker 1:When it comes to ADHD and risks, obviously a lot of people with ADHD are in jobs where a lot of, let's say, adrenaline is connected with it. That could be, of course, entrepreneurship, but also, for example, working in the hospital, working as a fireman Different options exist there as well like also investing financial, like day trading is obviously also something that I guess many of us with ADHD can thrive. Be under this constant, let's say, pressure to a certain degree. Also, richard Branson, as I said, is challenging the status quo, and I believe this is a wonderful thing. Not accepting everything as given, like, for example, everybody tells you X but you question that, and I guess this is really, really valuable in your life if you see things from a different angle. Yeah, for example, what I try to do in my life or at least I try it to if I have an opinion about something, I sometimes try to challenge myself to see it also from the other perspective. Yeah, to give myself the incentive also to accept other arguments and to, yes, to simply be open for other arguments, for other points of view, and I believe that can really enrich our lives, not only build up knowledge, but also help us to be more open to things in general. Yeah, and listen to things and coming up with our own conclusion. Yeah, that's, I guess, a really important thing to have a free, let's say to a certain degree, this freedom of deciding or coming up with our own conclusion, with our own life synthesis in the end, which is a really valuable thing. And, yeah, this questioning the status quo I guess is a pretty valuable thing in the business context building a company, for example, but also when it comes to being a working professional, obviously as an executive, but not only as an executive, head of a department, etc. Or a totally different job, normal job, whatever it is like. I guess it's so valuable if you have the ability to see, to identify certain things that the company could improve. That's great. You know, questioning the status quo, which is not always easy because most people don't like too much change, especially, for example, in the company, everybody doing the same since 10 years and then somebody new comes and starting to challenging the status quo. But I can tell you this is, I guess, exactly what is needed when you want to change something. It was like in my first internship I came there, I had I got this task of building up social media, building up the employer brand. That was an amazing thing and to a certain degree, it also required to change certain things like to, to change the presence on our social media, to change the social media presence A little bit. Yeah to, because I was really building it up from scratch. We had there are some few channels, but I could really. They gave me really total responsibility and it can really start all over again, which was really really helpful. So, basically, from scratch, everything building up. And also, for example, when it comes to the status quo, I build it up a career website. Or simply, I conducted a photo shooting in the in this company we had different locations and that was was leading that project and there also, to a certain degree, we came up with. The project was simply coming up with a new career website. We had an existing one, but I wanted to change that and that again was like challenging the status quo, doing things a little bit different, because it required that we change certain systems in the company, etc. So, yeah, that's in regards to that.
Speaker 1:A short intro about Richard Branson and also what is quite interesting regarding his different strength he has. I wanted to simply give you a little bit of an insight in regards to that. Now let's tackle the five success habits of him. I promised I will share with you five habits that he follows in his life to live a successful, to live a high performance life and, as you know, this podcast is all about productivity, high performance with ADHD, to really thrive with it. And I want to give you here five habits.
Speaker 1:The first one is he has fun in business and life. He said fun is at the core of the way I like to do business and it has been key to everything I have done from the outset. I guess this is a really valuable thing, always if everything seems like so serious, sometimes making a joke, but also what I really love is sometimes smiling without a reason. I did that, for example, in my first internship. Now in my second internship was also as an entrepreneur.
Speaker 1:If I had a really long day, I always try to smile in the end, but also while I'm working, simply smiling without a reason, because often times I found myself simply not only smiling when something external happens, like, for example, somebody tells me a joke, or something nice happens, whatever but doing exactly the opposite. Simply smiling without a reason immediately fuels my brain with, I would say, happiness. I feel lighter, I feel better, task at hand is going more smooth, I would say, also increases my dopamine level in my brain. So this is a quite thing, smiling without a reason, and in his case it is simply he has fun in business and life, and I guess this is really important to have a successful life, to don't lose this, let's say, the fun aspect in our days. Sometimes we work maybe crazy long hours, sometimes we have a lot of things on our plate, but still making a joke yeah, not everything is so so serious smiling without a reason. I guess that is also helpful. First habit he has fun in business and life. Second habit is he has face to face conversations.
Speaker 1:As you know, we ADHD ADHD is a love vitamin C. Dr Ned Hallowell, a renowned ADHD expert, calls it vitamin C, but he doesn't mean the normal classical vitamin C. He means the vitamin connect. So we people with ADHD obviously we love being around with other people, but this is, I guess, not only applicable for ADHD years. I guess most people really like to be around other people or at least to have great relationships, and Richard I would say Richard believes that real relationships are still built face to face. He said how to improve communication in the office start with face to face contact. Yeah, so maybe that's also interesting to you as well.
Speaker 1:I experienced that, for example, when I started my first podcast, catch the senate. It's a German podcast still. You can find all episodes online. 89 episodes are online about topic of productivity, learning, business and health for topics. I simply started with it because I was passionate about this topic and I thought, yeah, maybe that's a good idea. So not directly related to ADHD, but obviously it has. Is this related in the end? Because I figured out being while learning about productivity, while learning about health, learning about learning in general and also business to live a successful life with ADHD, and now I'm sharing that knowledge, or I try to share at least my knowledge on this new podcast here.
Speaker 1:Now the point is I conducted there some interviews, for example with Dr Professor, with Professor Dr Sven Felpel he's the former youngest professor in the world from Germany and a leading longevity expert there and in those in certain conversations, and I had some conversations over zoom and some conversation physically. I would really say I love, I really like both conversations. It doesn't matter if it's over zoom or is it physically like face to face and but sometimes what is quite interesting, although I really love zoom and obviously I'm doing every single day I have zoom meetings, team meetings etc. And I believe the quality is really not suffering a conversation, the quality of a conversation is not suffering only conducting it or online, but sometimes I really love to have physical, face to face conversations because sometimes there is something magic in the air, you know. So therefore, especially when it comes to podcasts, I try sometimes to record a podcast really face to face if it's possible. Obviously I'm doing a lot of zoom because it's quite convenient. I can talk to so many people all around the world I don't need the extra to travel there but sometimes having face to face conversations, interviews, is a wonderful thing and I'm really grateful for if it's possible. So, yeah, I guess, both conversations over zoom, but as well, or online meetings, online conversation but also face to face are both nice. Sometimes face to face has a little bit this, this magical, this magic in the air, which I really love, of course.
Speaker 1:And also, I guess Richard Branson laws once what he said again how to improve communication. The office started face to face contact. All right, that was his second habit. He has face to face conversations, the second. The third one is now he takes lots of notes on paper. This is a huge one with ADHD. I believe we ADHD is our great at coming up with wonderful, creative ideas. We have this gift of creativity, but the point is, if we don't write them down, we forget them. Richard Branson said in that regard regardless where I am or what I'm doing perhaps with the exception of kite surfing or swimming I always have a notebook on hand. So what he's simply doing, he's taking notes. If he has an idea, he writes it down. Because David Allen, a leading productivity expert, said once our brain or something similar he said like our brain is good for having ideas, not for holding them. So that simply means, okay, we can. We constantly have great ideas, but if we don't write them down, we will forget them.
Speaker 1:Therefore, I personally use a simple strategy. I personally use the distraction log. What is the distraction log? Simply a dedicated blank piece of paper, and what I'm doing there is on the upper part of the paper. I write the date of today, like, for example, the 13th of November. Yeah, then I have one column on the left side where I simply write a title to do, and on the right side, a second column. I write notes, and throughout the day, if something pops into my mind, I immediately write it down. Like, for example oh, I would like to check out this one blog post I read two years ago, or I should email or answer this email, whatever it is I write it immediately down. If something pops into my mind, and also if I have ideas like all the time I have ideas how to improve my business, all the time I have ideas how about what? I could record a podcast or write a social media post I immediately write it down. I write it down on my distraction logs. Sometimes I also immediately put it into my Google spreadsheet. I have like a huge Google spreadsheet where I manage all my social media posts and I immediately write it down and I have like a section for ideas.
Speaker 1:Point here is that this has different benefits. I would say two major benefits. First is you don't get distracted. Obviously, if you have a thought like about XYZ, you immediately write it down while you're maybe conducting a deep work session and then you can move on, like, for example, I'm now I start my first deep work session in five AM, in the morning, two hours and if something pops into my mind I write it down. That I don't get distracted, because if I would immediately start with the thing, maybe let's say I have an idea or I could answer emails, which is definitely not a good thing in those two hours to do because I want to do the deep work, the important stuff. Then I write it down and later I can come back to it, so I don't get distracted in the moment.
Speaker 1:It has also another benefit when it comes to impulse control. We add each years. We tend to be sometimes we can be impulsive, but it's a skill that we can learn to have a high level of impulse control. I believe in my case it definitely worked out and how we can do that is pretty simple. Always when something pops into your mind, like, for example, oh, I could do XYZ, you write it down, as I said. But the point is now, if you write it down and you come back later to this blank piece of paper, like in your shutdown ritual in the evening, if you plan your next day, then you can again revisit this distraction log. Then you can think about it again.
Speaker 1:About it Like, for example, you have this idea, oh, I could buy like a desk stand or a computer stand for my laptop. Then in the morning you have this idea, you write it down and in the evening you come back to it and you realize, okay, actually I don't need that, I definitely don't need that to spend that money. And the cool thing is now, okay, we have like a second layer or second barrier in place, or there in general a barrier in place that helps us again to reflect upon it and then come up with an informed decision if that makes sense or not. And that is called again, the distraction log strategy, a really simple one, simply a blank piece of paper, as I said. You write down the date. Then to do, one column to do and one column notes. That's simply it To do's I use for, obviously, task notes, more for ideas. That's it. So, richard Branson, he takes lots of notes on paper. So really, in your case, leverage your unique brain, your creative mind, write down the ideas. If you don't write them down, you will lose them. Maybe, if you have a great idea to start your own business, write it down.
Speaker 1:Make a plan, because, as James Clear also wrote in his book Tommy Cavince, he wrote about implementation intentions, which is a fancy word for having a plan. I interpreted as simply having a plan and that's, I guess, really important. If we have a plan for something, if we write down an idea and then maybe recreate out of that a plan, it increases the likelihood that we stick to it and how we can actually come up with a plan. We simply write down at x state I will do at epsilon place this activity. Yeah, so, for example, if you want to start your business, start with it. Then say, in Saturday at 8 am, I will search two hours for business ideas in my office. You're really specific. Write that somewhere down, somewhere visible. Write it on your whiteboard, out of sight, out of mind. You know it.
Speaker 1:Point is make a plan, then you increase the likelihood that you can stick to it, and that is also important because it's oftentimes connected with procrastination why people procrastinate and obviously many of us with ADHD have the tendency to procrastinate but how we can overcome that is having more clarity what we should do, because why we get overwhelmed is oftentimes connected with not having clear steps, not having small steps. Always. That's what I personally always like to do is, when I approach a project, I always break it down. For example, I'm currently working on a three, seven day program called the seven day ADHD action accelerated. That helps working professionals, entrepreneurs with ADHD, to overcome procrastination, to make a lot of progress in seven days on procrastinated tasks, and obviously that's a huge project to do everything because you need to do multiple things.
Speaker 1:I needed to record modules, I needed to set up email sequences, I needed to create a checklist, a plan for every client, et cetera, and many more tasks, and the first thing what I simply did is is creating a structure, writing down, chunking down this bigger project. So I have this project, this three program, seven day free program, and then I break it down into different steps. Yeah, I need to do email sequences, I need to create landing pages, I need to create a membership site and so on and so forth. That's the point of chunking it down, really, really powerful. And that is really the 80, 20, I would say with 20% effort, you have 80% outcome output Because now, after simply writing down a structure, you're less overwhelmed. And I applied that to different areas of my life In my interns, as an entrepreneur, in my master's degree. I everywhere applied that and it really helps with overwhelm. Especially in those days when I feel overwhelmed, I've always asked myself do I have clarity on what I should be doing? If I don't have, I need to get more specific. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1:Next habit of Sir Richard Branson is make mistakes and keep moving forward. Many of us with ADHD can tend to beat ourselves up for making mistakes. Yeah, we have this negative self-talk, why I did XYZ and we are ending up with fear of failure and never trying again. Richard Branson says one thing is certain in business you and everyone around you will make mistakes. The point is therefore mistakes should be used as an opportunity to learn, and that is again connecting with having a growth mindset.
Speaker 1:I would say what really helped me on my journey is starting to be proactive, taking responsibility and having a growth mindset. So that simply means and I learned that in the great book the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People of Stephen Covey simply being proactive. That simply means in every difficult situation in my life, it's always up to me how I react. I choose my reaction. In the end, I can see like failure as only bad, but I can see it also as an opportunity to grow and learn. Yeah, if I make a mistake and I'm doing constantly mistakes and I actually want to do mistakes because they help me to learn and learning maybe quick. How I defined learning is I absorb an information like, for example, I did a mistake and I learn. That simply means the next time I change my behavior. What is intelligence? Intelligence is how fast you can change your behavior. So learning is you change your behavior and intelligence is how fast you do it.
Speaker 1:Now point here is I would say, what does it mean actually having a growth mindset? Because nowadays everybody talks about growth mindset and it's simple, as you have a challenge and you see it as an opportunity to grow, to learn. It's like let's apply to living a high performance life with ADHD. Maybe we have some struggles. Yeah, maybe we have some challenges, but this is a great opportunity to get better, to learn to thrive. Yeah, that's basically it, what it does and what it means, and, on the other hand, it's existing, also having a fixed mindset. What is a fixed mindset? Those people are saying things like I am, like I am, I can't change nothing about it, I'm bad at time management, I never will be on time. I, we ADHDs I can't do that. That is pretty a fixed mindset.
Speaker 1:And obviously, if what I experienced is if I would tell myself things like that, I would set up myself to a certain degree or I would limit myself and I would start to identify with the identity of a person who does certain things yeah, and I overwrote, I mentioned that so many times now on this podcast, but I believe it's so crucial, this identity thing. And simply, if you, I always ask myself if I would say something or speak or something over myself, like in the past I told myself I'm not good at math, but I actually realized that doesn't help me anything If I. It doesn't serve me anything If I speak over myself. I'm not good at math because I'm limiting myself, because nowadays I'm pretty decent at math, which is quite interesting. But that changing point was simply not saying anymore I'm not good at math, because what I started to say is okay, currently I have maybe this challenge with mathematics, but simply what I need to do is put in a little bit more work in. Yeah, I need to maybe learn a little bit more about it and then I can also become good at math. And nowadays surprise, surprise, I'm pretty decent at math. I'm not struggling with it anymore.
Speaker 1:And that was simply connected. Stop saying things over myself that limit myself. And that is again connected with having a fixed or growth mindset. Yeah, so mindset is really, really crucial, because I guess David Goggins also ADHD. He or set something similar like once you change your mindset, you can attack everything. I guess I hope I rephrased that correctly. But that's basically that Once we change our mindset, we can literally achieve everything and how we change it to see, for example, challenge as an asset opportunity to grow. I really love that one growth mindset versus fixed mindset. And also, if you want to learn more about it, a great book is Stephen Covey Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and why I believe this is so.
Speaker 1:It is so important to not only read books about ADHD, because we can learn so much from self development books. Obviously, there are so great books about ADHD, like, for example, adhd 2.0 or ADHD Explained this is, I guess, the newest book of Dr Nat Halwell, I just bought it or the ADHD advantage so many great books. Point is don't limit yourself to only consume those kind of content or read only books about ADHD. Read also books in different fields because in the end, if we are quite frankly reading self development books or self help books that are not directly related to ADHD, oftentimes we can learn a lot there how to thrive with ADHD, like, for example, I would say, atomic Habit is a wonderful book if we have ADHD how to build up good habits, how to break bad habits, but also how to find meaning in life as an ADHDer.
Speaker 1:Great book is Man's Search for Meaning or, for example, having some certain principles in our lives. Great book for that is Beyond the Order of Jordan Peterson Twelve Rules for Life. I really enjoyed reading that book. Or another one is Solve for Happiness by Mo Gofta. So many great books I read and I really loved and enjoyed them and they really helped me to live a better life with my unique brain. And yeah, that's simply it here in regards to that.
Speaker 1:So main takeaway, coming back on the habit I mentioned, habit number four is Make Mistakes and Keep Moving Forward. So simply see challenges, see mistakes always as an opportunity to learn. It's not a recommendation, it's simply what I experienced worked well for me. Maybe it can help you as well. Habit number five Enjoy Fun Exercise.
Speaker 1:As you know, exercise boosts dopamine and norepinephrine, the chemicals we maybe lack a little bit, as ADHDers can happen, or to a certain degree we have not enough. But we can find ways how we can increase those chemicals. And Richard Branson says I find exercise the most natural and effective mood boost. So there is Richard does lots of fun sports kite surfing, tennis, biking, etc. And, by the way, a quick thing here how you can maybe add a little bit of sparkle to those sports you are doing, or to find maybe something new, sometimes to have a little bit of novelty.
Speaker 1:You can ask yourself what fun sport did I love as a child, for example? In my case it was riding downhill. I had a downhill bike. I was jumping over those big, big ramps and doing crazy stuff with my downhill bike, jumping over drops, and it was a great time and I really enjoyed it. Unfortunately I stopped doing that, but actually I need to set my priorities in life, obviously, but still I leave that door open. Maybe one day I will go for a downhill ride on a mountain, who knows? Actually, currently is a good opportunity here in Salt Lake City, where I'm doing my other internship. They have great mountains, unfortunately already soon winter, maybe next year, so point is maybe another time.
Speaker 1:So point here is simply, I would say, what helped me also on my journey with ADHD is working out consistently. And because working out is so, so great, I remember a great story from I guess it wasn't ADHD 2.0, I guess a professor. He was always working out but once he stopped because he had an injury, his whole life started to fall apart. Everything else didn't work so well. So working out really helped him and I would say to a certain degree also, it helps me tremendously because I like to work out five times a week. I do personally strength training and cardio, a mixture of it. I always start my training with 10 minutes warming up cardio actually it's not cardio, it's more warming up on the treadmill, for example and then I do 50 to 60 minutes more than 60 minutes, usually strength training, and this is really a habit that really, really helped me, and I would say the better question is then always how we can stick to that.
Speaker 1:I give you now five simple steps. Foundation is always ask yourself which kind of person I wish to become In my case a healthy, athletic person and then you prove it to yourself with small wins. So you reinforce identity because, as you know, identity simply means repeated beingness or repeated being. So if we do something over and over again, that becomes our identity. So clarify that, which kind of person you want, wish to become. And then four steps how to change your behavior, based also on the book of James Clear Atomic Habits.
Speaker 1:First thing is simply make it obvious. Make working out obvious. You can sleep in your training cloth, you can place your training cloth next to your bed. Second one is make it attractive. So you could say after I worked out, I will do give myself a reward. For example, after I work out, I will go out for lunch, eat with somebody a healthy meal. The third one is simply make it easy, and this is a really important one, reduce it to its easiest form. So if two minutes seems like doable, then start with two minutes yeah, start with only two minutes, and then two minutes working out, and then you work your way up, up, up, step by step. And the fourth one is simply make it satisfying. How you can make it satisfying.
Speaker 1:I personally like the strategy of tracking certain things, especially when it comes to working out. If you want to track something, you can simply take a calendar and for each day you make a cross. That has different benefits. One is you see your progress and secondly, you see your success chain and you don't want to break your success chain. That's the point and I give you an incentive to continue. Like, for example, in my case, I published, I guess, over 130 episodes in a row on my two podcasts, catch the Senneth and ADHD Power. So I have a really long success streak, success chain. Every single week I showed up publishing an episode and that gives me the incentive to continue with it, to don't stop and to not publish a Monday. So each Monday I show up, yeah, no matter what.
Speaker 1:And those steps maybe can help you to establish this habit of working out consistently and really, really important here would say, because it hurt it sometimes people saying like I have ADHD, I can't do this, as I said before, identity. If you start to identify with this identity, I can't do X. You set yourself up already in the beginning, to a certain degree, for failure, because you tell yourself I will not be able to do that. And that's again referring to the mindset point here. So first get clear about your mindset, have a growth mindset, establish, train yourself, having a growth mindset, change your identity, get clear which kind of person you wish to become and then start thinking about the goals you want to achieve. But not the other way around, because a lot of people are doing exactly the opposite. We first start with okay, I have this goal of losing five kilograms, five whatever you know, use whatever you want to lose weight, simply. And then we have this goal and then we identify the process like oh, for example, I need to follow a training, workout plan, diet plan, whatever. And then we stick to that. We achieve our goal.
Speaker 1:But then what's happening? We fall back into our old habits we make, we destroy our progress. Yeah, it may be again, binge eating, whatever. Because we didn't change the fundamental, we didn't change our personality, we didn't change our identity, our core beliefs, and therefore we do it the other way around to make it a little bit more sustainable. First we tackle the identity, ask ourselves which kind of person I wish to become, and then we start tackling the goal.
Speaker 1:The cool thing here, the nice side effect Once we made change or we we change something in our life, the likelihood is higher that we can stick to it really, really long because we changed our personality. It's like in my case I, my identity, is being a healthy person and I prove it to myself over and over again that I am a healthy person, with small wins like working out, eating healthy, taking cold showers, taking omega three, flaxseed oil, organic lemon in the morning, whatever you name it. Point is, I prove to myself that I am that kind of person. Yeah, this is really something that helped me, all right. So habit number five again was enjoy some exercise. I share with you a little bit, okay, how you can maybe build up this habit. If you're already doing great, if not, maybe those strategies can help you a little bit. And also, I guess, interesting if you're searching for new strategies simply ask yourself what fun or sorry, if you are looking for new sports in your life, ask yourself what fun sport did I love as a child. In my case it was doing downhill, for example. All right. So those were the five habits.
Speaker 1:Habit number one, once again, was he has fun in business and life. Habit number two is he has face to face conversations. Habit three he takes lots of notes on paper. Habit four make mistakes and keep moving forward. Habit five enjoy fun. Exercise. Now Richard Branson. Richard Branson proved that ADHD is no barrier to become successful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sure I don't need to tell you that ADHD high performers and as an ADHD myself, what I realized I needed to focus on my unique strength, like him, for example, and to follow a productivity system that works for my ADHD brain. So, point what I'm saying here is, first of all, following a strength-based approach I really like and that is also the reason why I like books like, for example, adhd 2.0, because it helps us to really change, sometimes a little bit, the perspective on ADHD, to really see the valuable gifts we have and also find ways, obviously, how to overcome the challenges. Because once we really learn and I use the analogy of Dr Nett Hellerwell, once we learn to strengthen our bicycle brakes in order to become race car brain brakes, then we really can harness our full potential of our unique race car brain. If we don't find a way to manage that, that can be kind of dangerous. It's like a race car brain with bicycle brakes is kind of dangerous. Point here is following a strength-based approach, focusing on our strength, like in my case.
Speaker 1:I can express my creativity through this podcast, through social media, through my business. But also this unconventional aspect I can express like this yeah, as you know, on this podcast I'm not following the crowd like speaking everything the same, like everybody else, about ADHD, I have my own point of view. I figured out my own way to live a successful or at least I tried to live a successful life with ADHD and I share it with you and that is also definitely something. So the strength aspect and then also a productivity system that works for my ADHD brain, a high-performance system, and that's what, simply, I built it up.
Speaker 1:I learned a lot from people like Oli Abdel, for example, a great YouTuber, how to become more productive, but not only. Like his approach is, I would say I hope I can say that in a correct way like productivity is doing the things we love, like doing nice things in life, and he uses a more sustainable approach, I would say or not put it like that, or simply, he sees productivity more as doing the things we like, and that is, I guess, a really important aspect. And I learned tremendous things of him, like setting up my productivity system regarding the right tools, like I, for example, how to use my calendar, how to use my task management system, how to use how I take notes, and I build it up. My systems like, for example, my main task management system is in things, then I take notes in Evernote and Google Docs. I manage my main calendar, the Google calendar. I have a central point for my time block schedule, etc. And things like that. To build that up was really helpful.
Speaker 1:And in my productivity system, I would say it's not only important to have tools and tactics, it's also I include their habits, like working out, eating healthy I really see it from as a holistic thing is all living a successful life, living a high performance life with ADHD and because so many aspects in life matters, like sleep matters, diet matters, breath matters, working out matters so many different things and obviously it's kind of complex to a certain degree, but we can make it easy and we can build up a system that works for us, so maybe that's a good takeaway here. So really, and I would say, building up my own productivity system helped me to go from a chronic procrastinator in high school. Also, I struggled in the first semester as a freshman at uni until I got my act together and nowadays, to a certain degree, I change certain things in my life. I can do my second internship as an executive project manager to the COO in a Swiss large corporation that has also a location in the US in Salt Lake City, also doing my master's degree at an elite uni, and I really don't want to brag what I achieved. It's not about that. I simply want to inspire you and tell you hey, if you change certain things in your life and you are a little bit more open mind maybe to certain tactics, and don't limit yourself, you can achieve so much with ADHD. So don't let a disability simply dictate what you can achieve or what you can't achieve in your life. Working with my ADHD brain changed my life for the better. Alright, that's simply it for this episode.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for listening, thank you so much for your support and, by the way, it would mean the world to me if you could subscribe to this podcast, because I'm doing this all for free. I try to share everything what I know with you for free. A little thing what you can give me back is simply subscribe to podcast. Share it maybe with somebody you like. You know, if somebody likes high performance and has ADHD, that's maybe somebody you can send a podcast to. But also if you think somebody else would benefit of it, please send it to them. That would mean the world to me. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful week. Bye, bye, guys.