Rethinking ADHD with Peter Shankman: How growing up with a faster brain can be an asset

Hi, we are the ADHD Skills Lab podcast. My name is Skye. And my name is Sarah. And we will be your hosts, chatting to you about practical ADHD strategies you can use, the research behind some of these strategies, as well as interviewing other professionals with ADHD about how they've developed skills and working through struggles in their lives. You might know us from Unconventional Organization, where we talk about this kind of stuff all day long. So we're super excited to have you along and we're going to chat through it together. 

So today I am so happy to be speaking with Peter Shankman. For those of you who don't know, Peter is an author, a serial entrepreneur, and a successful speaker. He has founded and sold several companies, including Help a Reporter Out or HARO, and has written several bestselling books, including Faster Than Normal, Turbo Charge Your Focus, Productivity, and Success with the Secrets of the ADHD Brain. He is also the host of the ADHD podcast, Faster Than Normal. So welcome, Peter. It is... Absolutely great to have you on the podcast. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. So you're based in New York, which as someone who's watched a lot about New York, but hasn't actually lived there, it's actually where a lot of our clients come from. Is there anything about New York that is particularly friendly for ADHD brains? I mean, it's, you know, city that never sleeps. There's always something going on. You know, if you can't sleep between the morning, you can find a hundred things to do. For me, I mean, I grew up here. I was born and raised here. So, I mean, it's all I know. I've lived in other places, I've lived in quiet places, I've lived in other cities. I just always wind up being back here. There's energy here that's really un-nationally where else in the world. Well, I can tell you that in New Zealand, the city definitely sleeps. There is nothing to do until AM. Awesome. 

So take me through your ADHD diagnosis journey, because you were diagnosed quite late. What was that experience like? Yeah. So I was diagnosed probably in my late thirties, mid-thirties. It basically made everything make a lot more sense. I mean, everything kind of understood, I kind of understood what was going on and why my brain was the way it was. This sort of gave me that little bit more of insight to, yeah, this is why this happens. For me, it wasn't about thinking something was, by the time I got diagnosed, I didn't think anything was wrong with me anymore. I just sort of thought that I was different. I kind of worked on getting over that something's wrong with me for years ago. For me, it was really about understanding that I could do things differently in a different way. And as long as I knew how to do that, I could be beneficial for it. Interesting. So for you, was it something that you sort of knew that you probably had and you were just confirming it or was it a surprise to get diagnosed? No, I kind of at that point kind of knew it. It was more about knowing, being aware that I had it and knowing here's what I could do to make it better. Here's what I could do to make it easier, you know, and here's what I could do to help me with it. Yeah, no, that makes sense. And it's interesting because, yeah, you mentioned sort of being quite early on that person in the classroom that might've been diagnosed with ADHD. So I was kind of interested to find out that you only were officially diagnosed when you were a bit older, which I think is an experience for a lot of us. But sometimes in the classroom, if it comes up, people tend to pick it up, but maybe not so much in the 80s. Well, in the 80s, it didn't exist. What existed was sit down, you're disrupting the class disease. Yeah, exactly. It was tough because, you know, everyone was saying, okay, you're broken, right? And so to be able to sort of understand, hey, I'm not broken, I just do things differently and that's actually a benefit, was not only a great thing to have happen to me, but a great thing to be able to tell that story to the rest of the world as well. Yeah, no, and that's such an interesting turnaround that I actually wanted to talk about a little bit because unlike other people who were diagnosed with ADHD, you've decided to be very open about it, which is amazing and awesome. It's really helped a lot of people. Was that a hard decision for you or a decision at all? It wasn't. I have always been very open with who I am, both for good or for bad. And I think a lot of that comes from ADHD because growing up, when you're told you're broken all the time, you tend to overcompensate. You tend to try to make people think, hey, I'm awesome. Trust me, I'm awesome. Look at me. I'm awesome over here. And I had an ex. Well, it's not it's not the greatest thing in the world. Is that an ex-girlfriend who told me that the problem, the reason we didn't date 20 years ago when we first started dating, the reason we broke up was because it was always the Peter Shankman show. And she was right, because when you're told you're broken, you constantly make you think you're better and you're not. You're worthy of their time. So when I finally was able to accept who I am is who I am. It changed everything about my life. All of a sudden I was able to be myself and be friends with people and not have to worry that I'm not enough for them. I can just be who I wanted to be. And that really changed everything for me. Interesting. Yeah. So from what you're saying, it sounds like the ADHD was already present in this situation and this gave you something to discuss and talk about and kind of explain what was going on and work through. Absolutely. know, something that you'd regretted, you know, you've been in so many different situations talking to so many different people. No, the reason I haven't regretted it more than anything else is because of the emails I get every single day from adults from kids who say, hey, I see myself in your book. Thank you so much. I realize I'm not breaking. That is worth everything. It's worth absolutely everything. Yeah, I have to say I am. I'll talk about your book in a second, but I re-listen to it again this week in preparation for this podcast. And it was really good, you know, once again, just to kind of listen to it and get all those strategies. And yeah. Even though I do it all the time, it was just a great book. So what would you say to other people who are in different positions and they've been diagnosed recently and they're having this conversation? Because we hear this conversation a lot. Should I share my diagnosis? Should I not? What should I do? What's your kind of advice for those people? Because I'm sure you get that question as well. So the best advice I ever got was, if you don't like where you are, move, you're not a tree. What that tends to mean to me is that you have the ability at any given moment to say, this is not how my story will end. You have the ability to change everything about you and change everyone about you and change everywhere about you. And if you tell people you're ADHD, or if people don't like to be with you because of the way you're acting, perhaps you want to find different people. People who cut you down, people who hurt you, they're not good people. Good people don't take pleasure in hurting other people. And when you're different, when you have ADD, when you have ADHD, when you're a different type of person, a lot of times, It's very easy for people to pick on you and people make you the scapegoat because you are the problem in their eyes. And what you need to learn is that you're not a problem. You're just you're magical and your magic isn't for everyone. And that's okay. Let people be their own way and you'll just stay in your lane doing your own magical stuff. Right? And that I think is the problem that a lot of people don't realize there's nothing wrong with just being by yourself, waiting to find the friends that matter to you and being your own. person and just being magical on your own. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. And I don't think enough people realize that. Yeah. Well, I think it's hard to realize it's definitely something that, you know, we've all had those experiences and it's something that I think is good to realize, and I totally agree with what you're saying. I think it's hard in the moment to take that with ADHD can be a lot of pushing against the norm. And so sometimes at the beginning of that process, it can feel. different because you are changing your environment a lot of the time. 

How much do you think that has an effect changing your environment with ADHD? I change the environment constantly because that's how I get my best work. That's how I focus. That's how I'm able to create the sort of life I want to lead. You know, I, people say, why do you skydive? It's crazy. I'm like, no, crazy is staying on the ground. You know, when I get out of a plane, I land, I'm so full of dopamine and adrenaline that I throw my skydiving gear in the corner of a hangar. I pull out my laptop and I write 10,000 words. It's a wonderful. Feeling same thing with being on a flight, same thing with doing all that stuff. And so for me, changing your environment is probably the best thing you could do. Why the world is a book. And if you don't travel, if you don't move, you don't get out of your own way, you're just reading one page. Why would you wanna do that? You have a whole book in front of you. Why would you only wanna read one page? Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And sometimes maybe it's about that fear of like going, well, the other pages weren't great. And now I have this ADHD diagnosis. Does this mean that the next pages might be better? Maybe that's when the book gets amazing, right? Maybe that's when you, if you stuck into that long, maybe that's when the book starts getting really awesome. Yeah, yeah, it's getting good, right? Definitely. Yeah. So I guess in terms of, you know, all of the resources and strategies that you talked about in your book, faster than normal, is there anything that you would update since then? There's lots of things I want to talk about that I think are tried and true. There's no way you would change them. But was there anything in terms of strategies and technology that you would have? would do a mixed edition adjustments to? I wanted to do a follow-up to Fast and Normal about three years ago. I wanted to do a follow-up about, I could do two chapters alone on surviving a Zoom call when you're ADHD, right? But my publisher actually said, you can't write another book because Fast and Normal is still selling really well. If you write a follow-up, you'll screw up the algorithm. I'm like, so I'm getting punished for doing well? She goes, yeah. I'm like, well, okay, that sucks. So because of that, I said screw it, and I wrote a kid's book. And I just wish I'd written the kid's book earlier because the... the kids book is if I could teach kids at age seven that they're not broken as opposed to them learning this at age 30 and then having to go to therapy for 20 years to undo all the brokenness that they believe they were, that would be a game changer. So for me, it's really about being able to, if I could do anything with the book, I'd probably add a whole chapter in AI because AI has really changed my life. It's allowed me to work so much smarter and so much faster. Yeah. I mean, there's AI in this conversation right now. Transcribing this meeting. So, how do you use it? I'm always really curious. So one of the things I love about AI is that when I get stuck for ideas, I can have it generate 10 of them. I can pick one and then write on my own based on that idea. So for me, it's idea bank, but it also allows me to do the boring stuff. I hate doing when you're ADHD, you love doing certain things. You hate certain things. Like I hate doing Excel spreadsheets. I hate doing PowerPoints. I like talking. And so I can speak into my computer, talk about a whole bunch of thoughts I want and say, build a PowerPoint for me. And it will. Yeah, that's awesome. I don't even use PowerPoints in my speeches, but when clients need them, I'm able to do that. That's just phenomenal. Yeah. No, definitely. It is an interesting one. I think it's something that you're still getting to the grips of the limits of, but we have a neurodiverse team. Most of the people in our organization have ADHD or something like that. And everybody's just jumped on the AI technology. And I don't know if this is the case. Do you feel like neurodiverse people, we're sort of in a position to really benefit from that kind of? Oh yeah. We benefit from technology as a whole, because we get technology much quicker than other people. No question about that. We get technology so much faster than other people. So being able to utilize that to our advantage is a big change. Yeah, definitely. I've seen that in my team compared to people who are like, no, thank you. I'll give it another 20 years. And we're just like in there writing the emails. Definitely. What about those strategies that are, you know, tried and true? And I'm thinking particularly about the exercise one, which is so important. And, you know, I literally did it this morning to prepare for this meeting. And, you know, all kinds of things like that. What are the things that you still think are crucial? I mean, there's going to be heaps, but do you want to pick one or two that you still use every day? Yeah. I mean, I still exercise every single day. I wake up before in the morning, I'm on the bike every day. I still use a website called or a tool called Faster than Normal. I'm losing my mind. I use a tool called Follow Up Them. That's almost the podcast. I just assumed you'd made an app that I didn't know about. I was like, that makes sense. Yeah, exactly. And I'm so pompous that I would speak about it like, I just found it and I didn't make it. Follow Up Them is this amazing email. where you basically send the email to any address. So you send the email to four minutes at followupthem.com and four minutes later, we'll send you back an email and remind you, but you can do it like two days, 15 hours, whatever. It's great because anything I need to get off my plate, but I need to remember to follow up with, it does automatically form. That's amazing. I'm gonna look that up. Huge fan of that. Followupthem.com, huge fan. 

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The other thing that you're really known for is your business success. I was very curious about this. You've built and sold several companies. HARO is the one that I used even before recognizing. I've found that very, very helpful and there's plenty of other ones that I know that you've done as well. If we're talking business development with ADHD, that's an interesting concept because if you are starting a business, that bit's really fun, but then you get to that... It's working, things are going. Has, how's your ADHD been kind of a strength and then also made functioning harder in that kind of building stage of business? My number one rule is to hire people who are great at what you suck at. I am terrible at the minutia. I am terrible at remembering to put things on my calendar. I'm terrible at this. So basically I hired someone who makes sure that I'm deal with that. My assistant. I don't have right access to my calendar. She took it away from me probably 10 years ago. I literally cannot schedule anything. She has to. So allowing her to do that guarantees that I'm not going to screw up, not going to miss it. There's no more excitement in the world than running your own business, but find people who are brilliant at what you suck at. Yeah. And I think you're speaking exactly to that point. You know, talking about Megan, who you shout out in the book and was still helping organize this meeting, which is amazing. But there must be so much trust there. in terms of trusting somebody else to support you in those things that you suck at. How did you develop that trust with people? Because that can be tough in business as well. You have to find the right people. I mean, I got lucky with my assistant. I found her right out of the box. But yeah, I've worked with employees who I had a fire. I've worked with people who have been my right hand, who had a fire because they just don't get me. It takes a certain person. Absolutely no question about it. It takes a certain person. Yeah. And when you say don't get me or don't get, do you mean that your organization is a bit different? Yeah, they don't necessarily do the same things I do or they might not understand why I need a certain thing a certain way. Barry Diller, the head of IAC, was notorious for this. He would, if he ever got a press request, he would have his PR director write an email name, subject, title of magazine or print, copy what they want to talk about. And he and they'd have to do that because that's how he wanted them to read it. And it worked for him. Mm hmm. Yeah. So you're sort of weaving the ADHD strategy of it all into the business development phase. Exactly. Yeah, no, that's awesome. So because I think that is true. It's sort of like, okay, great, we're running a business, we have ADHD. Now we're going to do this in a neurotypical way. But there's a neurodiverse friendly way to run a business and grow a business as well. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, no, that's awesome. And in terms of with ADHD, and I'll put my hand up here, you know, it's hard to spell the difference sometimes between something that is a good idea and an impulsive distraction when you're doing something. you know, and you want to go in all these different directions. Has that been the case for you? What are your sort of advice in that? Andrew? Yeah, I mean, you have to understand that sometimes you have things you have to do. You simply have to get them done. You want to play, you want to do that, whatever. Fine, that's fine. Get the stuff done first. One of the things for me is like when I want to do something exciting, I have no idea. I should follow through. I remind myself that I'm not going to enjoy my new idea with this thing that I currently have to get done. So hanging over my head. So I forced myself to finish that first thing first, and then I could fully enjoy the new idea that I want. Right. But you have to give yourself that first time. Yeah, definitely. And I guess in terms of business growing, and I think it's interesting with HARO, the way it's built is so... It's so well built. I can imagine that there's times where it would have been easy to say, we're going to tack on this sort of appendage here, and this bit here. Everyone wanted me to make it HTML emails. I'm like, no, we're keeping it as basic emails because that's what works. And yeah, that was... I was adamant about that. You know, when you have a good idea, you follow it through. Yeah, no, definitely. Even if the person who wants to add the appendage is you. No question about it. And so what kind of like advice there would you give to other people who are ADHD business, who are, you know, they were excited, they have this thing, but now they're kind of weighed down. Would you say just go out, hire those people who are going to help you make that team work for you, and then you'll be able to get through those admin. tasks that have become part of the business. Yeah. I mean, you're going to have to start doing some admin tasks when you first start anyway, just deal with it, right? Except the fact that you're going to have to do it both for a run beforehand to give yourself some dough, maybe get it done over time. As you start to bring people in and hire people, you don't have to worry about that as much. You can just let it go. That's always been important. Yeah. No, that's awesome. And in addition, and you referenced this before, to everything else, you have also written a book for neurodiverse children, which is The Boy with the Faster Brain. And I'd love to know, because you talked about the importance of this book. in general. And you also talked a little bit about why you wrote it in terms of not being able to rewrite the other one. But what was it about this book specifically and now as well? I think we're finally starting to talk about mental health on a regular basis. Thank God. And so for me, I want people to understand that it matters, right? Mental health matters. And you need to be able to talk about it. If you can't talk about it, if you're keeping it to yourself, if you're not getting in front of it and helping yourself, what's the point? you need to make sure that you are talking about it. And if that means getting help. I wrote the book for the simple reason that I never want any kid to ever go through his life feeling as broken as I did growing up. And that has nothing to do with my parents. My parents were amazing. They did incredible things for me. I'm talking about, you know, going to school and being told, Peter, just sit down and don't say anything. You're interrupting the class. Yeah. Being able to sort of let yourself just do things. Mm hmm. and just understand that you can live and you can have your thing and you can do whatever it is you're doing and be fine with it and you're not broken. There's nothing wrong with it. If I could teach that, it's worth everything. Yeah, and you did. I mean, it's had a huge, you know, people have been talking about it quite a lot and I'm sure you get a lot of responses from parents and children. I'd love to know what some of the responses that you've gotten since writing the book have been. I have gotten. tons. I mean, I get emails from parents every night. I mean, fast and normal, I still get emails every day. And I'm getting them from the Booth Festival, bringing as well people who, my son read the book last night and he burst into my bedroom, three pages ends crying and saying, daddy, it's a book about me. It's a book about me. No one ever said I could do anything good before. I spoke at a school and a fifth grader came up to me. I'm going to start crying every time I tell the story. I start crying. Fifth grader came up to me after I finished speaking at the school and said, it was dad. He goes, thank you for writing something. Thank you for being the first person to tell me that I'm not failure. Wow. And I just, I mean, how do you respond to that, you know? I just gave the kid a hug. Yeah. But that's what I want to do. I want to be able to help kids. I don't want them to grow. You know, I've been in therapy for 30 years and God bless my therapist. He's a wonderful man. I've had him for like the past 20. But if this book can help kids at five, six, seven years old understand that they are not broken and they're gifted as opposed to. at age 30, having them start the process of teaching themselves that they're not broken and that takes 20 years. Yeah. And retrospectively. Exactly. That to me is the key. Totally. I mean, we were just looking at research the other day about how the cognitive effects can make it difficult with quality of life, but those emotional effects are huge and sometimes even bigger in terms of how it affects us with ADHD. So you're right. If we can do anything to support those when we're younger and help other people as well. It's totally worth it. I'm curious. One of the things that keeps coming across as we've been talking today is like, you do something, you write a book, or you speak about your experiences with ADHD, and you get this huge flood of responses from people. And listening to your audio book, you often stopped and said like, hey, do you wanna chat here? I'd love to chat to you, which is unusual. I've never heard that before in an audio book. What is it about you do you think that makes people wanna talk to you? Because not everyone's gonna get that response. I think it's the fact that I offer it. I don't think a lot of people offer it. Yeah, I don't think so either. How can I talk this talk about it if I'm not walking this walk, you understand? And like, how can I talk about all this stuff and talk about the things I do if I'm not willing to say, Hey, I'm happy to listen to your question. I think that's just, that should go without saying that people do that. And yet often it's, it's the opposite. And that's, I think because people are trying to manage their time and with ADHD, that is a factor. So how do you respond to all of those people that message you, you know, how do you manage all of that? I'm happy to do it. It takes five seconds, you know, quick reply. Hey, thanks so much for emailing me. Happy to help chat occasionally though. Want to talk more and I'll be like, no, I'm happy to help. I'm happy to, you know, sometimes it'll lead to speaking gigs for me. Why wouldn't you take that opportunity to reach out to a new audience? Yeah, no, a hundred percent. I think that's so true. I mean, that's literally why you're on this podcast because I reached out. It's like, Hey, so, you know, and much to my surprise, you know, probably not actually now that I've read the book again. I did want to ask, because this is something that I hear a lot from people when we talk just even with friends about kids and family members ADHD, parents can often be reluctant to go through the ADHD diagnosis because they say, I don't want to label my kids. What is your... Well, your kid right now is being, if you don't do it, your kid's being labeled as mischievous or as difficult or as unable to learn and you'd have no actual, absolutely no reason for it. Right? So wouldn't you rather have a reason that allows you to work on that and fix those issues? as opposed to having the kid just constantly be labeled to disrupt it. I mean, think about how lucky we are. Think about how lucky we are that ADHD exists right now, that we have a label for, a name for it. When I was growing up, it was sit down, you're directing the class disease and that did not do much for me. No, you can't really, you can't really write a book on that. Well, you might be able to, but it would be much harder to share and have people connect on. Yeah. Awesome. 

Well, I just have a few, they're called ADHD quick questions, but they're just questions. They are always quick. You're talking with ADHD. But, um, one of the questions I had was just tell us about one professional achievement that you're the most proud of. Hands down with book, fast and normal and the boy with the faster brand. I think those two are just changing lives every day. Other than that, prior to that, it was, it was helping, selling help we're going around. Yeah. I mean, writing a book is an amazing achievement. I know you flew all the way to Tokyo back to finish, you know, the last one. And it works. I've done a master's thesis and I understand how hard that is. So I appreciate that. What about a professional failure that has embarrassed you maybe in the past it did, even if it doesn't now, how did you deal with that? I don't know if I look at failures as embarrassing. I look at failures as learning opportunities. So, I mean, my second company, I sold it, made no money off of it, basically just broke even, which was fine. But I also think I was ahead of my time. Like if I had done my second company 10 years later, I would have been more, more in line. I was a little ahead of my time, but you know, Again, what did I learn from that? I learned a ton from that. So as far as, as long as you learn from something, I would consider it a failure. Yeah, no, definitely. Do you have a favorite dopamine activity and is it? Skydiving. Skydiving, yeah. Yeah, I thought that would be it. And also, also boxing. Boxing is quickly starting to overtake skydiving online. Awesome, yeah, yeah. We've got boxing just down the road, actually. If you had an ADHD life motto, what would it be? You can only control what you can control. Focus on that. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for taking the time to share your story and all of your skills and all of your experience with us today, Peter, really lucky to have you. Where can people find out more about you? I'm at Peter Shankman everywhere. I'm not really using Twitter anymore because it's evil, but I'm everywhere else. I'm, my big thing is Instagram at Peter Shankman on Instagram, faster than normal is the podcast. You can find me, Peter at shankman.com. And as you said, I answer all my own. Yeah, he does. It's amazing. Also, well, thank you so much for coming on. It's been amazing. I'm so glad we got to talk to you and I'm know people are going to love this conversation. Looking forward to next time. 

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