ADHD + Solo Bootstrapping = IMPOSSIBLE?

I have ADHD, and I've written quite a lot about the intensive systems I build and use to cope with founder-level work complexity. My Plan, Do, Learn System is a case in point.

The 2 best pieces of advice I can personally offer are to a) take an "evolutionary approach" to improving your performance on project work and b) leverage "extra-mental resources."

Evolutionary approach: It's frustrating to recognize a shortcoming, try hard to fix it, and still not notice obvious improvements after a day, a week, a month of effort. But meaningful upskilling almost always takes place over longer time horizons than that. (Hence there's no college degree you can earn with just a week of work.) So practice thinking longer term. Accept from the outset that you're going to have to make small incremental improvements over a very long period of time to get to where you want to be. Then commit to making those improvements.

Extra-mental resources: If you have ADHD, your basic biological hardware probably isn't going to cut it for getting things done if those things involve a lot of complexity. (Psst: even neurotypical folks don't have default hardware that's made for founder-level work, but let's set that aside for right now.) Therefore, you should accept that you'll need to become proficient in the use of resources outside of your brain to cope with the challenges of running a business.

A mental model I use for simplifying this concept is "T5 leverage": there are 3 types of resources you can always leverage by yourself to improve your performance, and 2 types of resources you can leverage with the help of others:

Solo levers:

1. Techniques (e.g. warming up)
2. Tooling (e.g. timers, code, alarm clocks, etc.)
3. Territories (e.g. working in a clutter-free home office)

Group levers:

1. Teachers (e.g. how-to books/articles, in-person trainers, etc.)
2. Teams (e.g. collaborators, colleagues, employees, paid contractors, etc.)

Hence "T5." Most of the above are self-explanatory, except perhaps "territories." Territory just refers to the fact that your social and informational environment has a profound effect on your focus, attention, and mental energy. When I sit down to work, I almost always "optimize" my territory by e.g. putting my phone on DND mode and using website blockers to prevent myself from aimless browsing, etc.

Final piece of advice: pick up Daniel J. Levitin's "The Organized Mind." Hands down the best book on why human brains struggle to get work done in today's complex information environment and what to do about it.

Here's something that helped me immeasurably. Meaning if I didn't do this, everything I have done would have never been. I can't really measure it's impact since it's everything.

I too wished to make something and would get lost in the weeds of the product. Getting to the finish line was always tough.

I flipped it around. I launched, and then I figured it all out.

By entering into a "Launch Now" mindset, everything fell into place. I didn't have to consciously prioritize. The priorities were clear as day.

What I work on to this day was created and launched in 24 hours. Literally on a Friday morning I said, I'm launching tomorrow. and then by Saturday Afternoon it was launched.

It was the absolutely minimalist viable product. And it worked.

I had the mindset that I had to think of everything and then make something to solve the problem. But that's not reality.

The reality is that I'll be working on this project forever (ideally) and so it doesn't have to be perfectly solved in the first launch. I can also launch again and again and again. There's no one launch rule. You don't ruin your launch if it fails.

And I also realized, nobody enjoys all of those things you state you enjoy. Everyone's in the same boat. also you don't know what you enjoy until you're very deep into it.

People see art and think.. "I'll know what I like." but that's wrong. "You'll like what you know." By studying something and executing it you'll find out what you enjoy. And each of those things have components that you may fall in love with. If you love analyzing, then FB Ads are awesome to analyze.

There are so many styles of marketing that it's very hard for me to accept that you don't enjoy marketing.
Do you enjoy building 1 page products? Engineering as marketing (see TweetHunter)
Do you enjoy helping people? Content Marketing (see Bannerbear)
Do you enjoy programming? Programmatic SEO

I thought I would hate PPC, but FB ads are so deep. There are so many people on Facebook that it's possible to market to every segment of the funnel (including people who already bought from you (upsell)).

And beyond PPC, I've enjoyed making a free community on FB to attract top of the funnel, and people that Facebook thinks would like what I do, without me paying for that! FB loves active groups because it keeps people on FB. So they will literally help you get more FB group members. crazy!

Being unorganized is fine, as long as you're productive. Look at Pieter Levels' Post-It Notes strategy. just one thing to do, the top thing. If you get an idea write it down and put it on the back of the queue.

You get immediate haptic feedback by pulling off a task you did, and putting it at the bottom of the pile.

The key to me about being organized was not figuring out what to do, but was showing myself my own progress. Either by google sheet, post its, or white board. Seeing my accomplishments keeps me motivated. Why I don't use a white board anymore for long term planning and organizing. I'll use it strategically to jot some daily stuff down. But having a productivity system means you have to process and save what you did. Without that you're merely going to burn out. You'll have an infinite number of things in front of you, pushing your motivation down (too much, not organized)

Honestly though the biggest thing from all that was being in LAUNCH mode. The next biggest key was understanding that I need to learn what I don't know. And finally I needed a way to capture what I did. Seeing that visual feedback kept me productive and motivated through projects. Don't delete your done's and get them out of the way. Maybe why I hate trello, right now.

In summary
LAUNCH - make it now.
LEARN - keep an open mind
SAVE - To save your mindset, see your accomplishments.

Doing something you don't like to do with ADHD is the worst

@khalidm3 If you haven't launched a product before then beware that what you are going through is way more common than you might think. As far as I can see, you are on the right track, and with time you'll find the best system that works for you.

Things related to the topic that I've asked help for on this community:

[Constant interest shifting has been my kryptonite]
-- https://www.indiehackers.com/post/constant-interest-shifting-has-been-my-kryptonite-cb1757ecc7

[Full-time employees, how are you finding time to hack?]
-- https://www.indiehackers.com/post/full-time-employees-how-are-you-finding-time-to-hack-bec57ef4c0

Found this really useful – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFL6qRIJZ_Y