A (3:14)

Yeah. But I think it's also what this is especially, I think important in regards to people that are doing like self diagnosis and these ideas because like there is, when we're looking at adhd, there is a line of where you can be diagnosed and where you can't be diagnosed, whereas they're like, yeah, you have, you know, can't remember, is it like 5 of 7 of the symptoms? But so if, then you have 4 of the symptoms, 4 of the 7, you'd be, they'd say, can't diagnose you. And that's where this idea of subclinical might come in, where it's like, you do have a lot of ADHD symptoms, but not a clinical level. It's not the same kind of diagnosis.

B (3:52)

Yeah. And I think it's really interesting that this conversation comes up in a paper about entrepreneurship because, you know, I work exclusively these days with entrepreneurs who have ADHD symptoms. And the reason we talk about it as ADHD symptoms is because so many people will come to me and say, well, I don't know if I. I haven't been diagnosed, I don't know if I will be diagnosed, but I definitely resonate with the symptoms. So it was when I saw that there was a paper that kind of did the same thing, but in an academic context, I felt I was like, oh, okay, this is not just me, this is actually a thing that's coming up in the research.

A (4:29)

Yeah. And this, I mean, it was reminded me of another paper that we went over recently that talked about that even if you, if you were a kid with a diagnosis but didn't have that, they didn't keep that diagnosis off, you still had the worst life outcomes.

B (4:44)

Yeah.

A (4:45)

And I'm seeing the very similar, like, so with subclinical, even if you don't have the ADHD diagnosis. If you have this symptomatology, you still have. You could. We'll talked about the paper. But yet you would still have worse.

B (4:58)

Yeah. Which is a bit brutal. Gosh. I mean, I'm. It makes me glad that I got that diagnosis and that was, it was across the line because it would be so frustrating to have subclinical ADHD and still have the outcomes.

A (5:11)

Yeah. And it's also like, I've talked a bit before with, on the podcast that I have subclinical autism diagnosis because that's, I mean, and that makes a lot more sense with how strict the diagnostic criteria for autism is. ADHD is a little bit looser because of the different presentations, but it is something where I'm just like, it makes it hard to talk about when I'm like going, I have subclinical autism. And people like, does that mean you don't have it? I'm like, yes. But also, no.

B (5:44)

One of those questions was about trains and I just didn't because I've done the test before and I'm not a math person or a numbers person. And so a lot of those questions were about like, do you like systems? And I was like, I know.

A (5:57)

Yeah. It is always funny with like some of the, some of the questions on there where the, the, especially for like the autism diagnosis where you're like, yes, but also. And it's like a multiple choice thing and you're like, how do I answer this? And apparently that is part of the point that if, when they're, they go through the assessment with you, if you are bringing up further things, it is. They want to know.

B (6:23)

Interesting. Well, I have adhd. There's no way I'm not going to bring up further things. It's literally built into the diagnosis of Jeff.

A (6:30)

Yeah. So it's. Yeah, it's one of those things where like. Oh, yeah, you have to like, they want that interaction to, to have better understanding of like, you know, are you good at like, do you enjoy being at parties or being at the library? They want you to because that gives them a better understanding. At least I should say some clinicians want you to just want to get through that day.

B (6:51)

Yeah. I'm like, well, you know, you could have a library, you know, a reading party. I've done those before. They've. Anyway, we are getting so far away from the point of this paper.

A (7:02)

Yeah. All right, let's go into this methodology that we.

B (7:05)

So if we look at the methodology, basically what they're looking at is, well, if we go to the theory, they're looking at this idea of the demands abilities fit dimension, which is the degree to which ability individual abilities comply with the demands of the work environment. So the first thing they want to know is, are you in a position where your ability is matched with the amount with the work environment that you're in? And the idea is, is that if it is, then you're going to be happier. And then they also talk about this idea of a needs abilities fit. But we'll come into that in a second. Sorry. Yes.

A (7:42)

Yeah, yeah. This paper has a lot of terminology that's like, okay, we got to make sure we know exactly what we're doing.

B (7:47)

It definitely had a lot of terminology. But in terms of the materials they used a randomly selected sample of 190 entrepreneurs at 186 organizational employees. So respondents were considered entrepreneurs if they were partially or fully owned a venture and participated in this management decision making process, which, you know, seems right. And then the sample, and the sample recruitment and interviews were conducted by a market research company, et cetera, et cetera. And it was people between the ages of 18 and 65. So it was quite a broad sample. They said it was unrepresentative of the population of Hungary, which is where the study was done. But they did try and get as many different people as possible. And that was quite a large number in terms of the numbers that they got.

A (8:34)

Yeah, yeah, almost 400 people.

B (8:38)

They really went for it. And in terms of the actual ADHD symptomology, they did a 12 item test questionnaire. So they asked questions like, do you feel restless a lot of the time? Do you not enjoy doing quiet leisure activities? Things like that. So they basically asked some ADHD symptomology questions and they also asked questions about your subjective income perception. How comfortable are you on the income that you have? How satisfied are you with your life nowadays? How anxious did you feel yesterday? Things like that as well, to kind of get a sense of where you felt you were at. So a lot of this was subjective. A lot of this was like where you feel you're at, not necessarily where you're actually at.

A (9:25)

Yeah, which is, which is sometimes feels like a bad distinction. But it is a very important, like how you feel is a very representative. Like it doesn't really matter if you got eight hours of sleep.

B (9:37)

Yeah, it's a big pro. Conversation in psychology is this idea of, you know, if you're in a society, for example, that's very stratified, you will tend to feel Worse than if you're in a society that's less stratified, but you are, you know, and it might even be that you would have done better in the more stratified society. So things like that come up in psychology all the time.

A (10:00)

Yeah. The other example I can think of here is like basing your income how satisfied your. What your income is based on what your neighbor has. And so even if you are making a very good income, but your neighbor is making more.

B (10:13)

Exactly. So this is kind of the subjective concept and we'll talk about that in terms of entrepreneurship in a minute because I do think that that might have potentially had an effect. But what did they find?

A (10:24)

Well, they found ADHD traits negatively affect almost every aspect of well being.

B (10:30)

Sometimes it's. These cases are brutal, you know. Yeah.

A (10:35)

Worse physical health, lower happiness, worse subjective financial well being, higher anxiety, lower life satisfaction. Although that one was probably the least representative. And I think this is. While that is an interesting thing to like start with, like, oh, all of this is worth. I wonder if this is something where if we looked at well managed adhd, if that.

B (11:03)

Yeah, well, I think this is the thing. Like the reason I wanted to bring this particular paper in subclinical ADHD is this is very, very close to my. The reason I get up in the morning, if that makes sense. Which is, which is to. To on some level fight against this concept that ADHD people have worse outcomes. Because I do believe, and I have seen in my own life and in the lives of other people that well managed ADHD in environments, and they do talk about the benefits of the entrepreneurial environment specifically, can have really good outcomes. And I've seen those good outcomes happen. But it's. If you just put somebody in an environment that isn't built for them, you don't give them any tools and you say, oh, look at that, the demand. The demand set isn't working very well, then you're probably right. Yes.

A (11:52)

Yeah. Yeah. If I took my cat to the doggy daycare for the day, my cat would have a terrible time because that's.

B (11:58)

Not the right place for me. So as much as they did talk about, and they did go into it, and they referenced a few academics that I've actually spoken with before and connected with before on these topics, the benefits of entrepreneurship spaces for people with ADHD versus workplaces because it is more flexible and you have the ability to have more novelty, they didn't really go into the idea that you still need to have systems that work for these particular spaces. And did the people that they were talking to have this or were they just in this position? They kind of referenced this idea of like, but now you do have to manage yourself, and that's more difficult. And that's very true.

A (12:39)

They found entrepreneurs were hit a lot harder by the income perception, which, you know, makes sense. If you're running your own business, you probably are a lot more aware of what your financials are doing because you're like, I have to. This fails the business.

B (12:54)

Also, you're seeing a lot more stratification again, to that conversation before you're hanging out with entrepreneurs that have a million dollars or $2 million. Like, a lot of entrepreneurship is about looking at people who are doing better than you and getting advice from them. So it doesn't necessarily, you know, mean that you're. Yeah, like you said, you're just more aware of it.

A (13:15)

Yeah, I was interested with the feeling worse physically, like the entrepreneurs feeling with worse physically than employees, because I. This made me wonder about is the. What kind of entrepreneurs are they looking at here? Are they looking at, like, you know, Silicon Startup Valley kind of people? You know, I mean, I know this isn't hungry, but this. Or is this, you know, people just running their own.

B (13:39)

That's a good point because I work with a lot of people who work in trades. A lot of entrepreneurs that work in trades struggle with ADHD symptoms. And a lot of the conversations we have is, I have to get off the tools because this is going to hurt my body or is hurting my body to a point where I need to. I need to build those new systems. And again, the systems that you had when you were in your 20s and you could just do it yourself versus the systems you had in your 30s are really, really different. They did find one thing. They said higher ADHD symptomology may fit entrepreneurship better than employment on the needs supplies dimension. So do you want to take us through what that.

A (14:19)

Yeah. Well, so to just further remind it, like, the need supplies was this, like, how well the job provides you with these things you mentally need, like autonomy, novelty, flexibility, and stimulation. And so finding that for entrepreneurship makes a lot of sense because you are getting novelty and autonomy and all these things that you really want. There are, I mean, there are certain aspects of entrepreneurship where you definitely don't get that, even though if you feel like you should, where you're like, well, I have to do the. I have to do my taxes. And that feels awful. But not, not because I don't want to pay my taxes, but just because they're complicated. I don't like. Yeah, it's not, it not. Does not have a lot of novelty and stimuli has a lot of novelty but not the stimulation part of the novelty.

B (15:02)

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So there was some, some there. But yeah, as they pointed out, it's not all, it's not all that. And in fact that's one of the reasons why I often recommend and you know, you'll hear this again, advice for entrepreneurs with ADHD is different from advice for people who aren't entrepreneurs with adhd because we are different. And so for example, one of the recommendations that I make is hire an assistant as soon as possible to help you with some of those, you know, more admin tasks. And a lot of times you'll hear entrepreneurs who don't have ADHD say hire an assistant as late as possible or there'll be million dollar businesses that don't have an assistant because they're like, well, I'm pretty good at those admin tasks. I need to hire someone to come up with a creative vision in marketing, places like that. So again, it's, it's like this was an interesting conversation because it was, it was, it was like they wanted to understand something and they did, but they didn't have like maybe a full understanding of why they were getting the results that they were getting.

A (16:05)

Yeah. And it's, I mean, I think this is a first step to being like, oh yeah, we are seeing these worth outcomes. Let's explore why. I mean they did have, you know, some suggestions of what they were finding and why, but it, there's no, like, you don't have any like evidence of that.

B (16:25)

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And a lot of papers are like this. A lot of papers will go in and they will look at something and they'll be like, that's not good. And then they'll just kind of leave. And when you have adhd, one of the things we were just talking about before we jumped on air is like, it can be really brutal reading these papers. People often talk about, you know, talk to me and talk to us about, oh well, did you find this in a paper? You know, the system, the strategy kind of like provided presented to you. And the answer is absolutely not. Most of the papers were very negative. And then you had to kind of like look within them to see, oh, that is interesting. They did find this. I wonder if it's affecting this. You know, it kind of gives you clues to find the next paper and so on.

A (17:07)

Yeah, like, because we can see like, okay, well, life satisfaction is Buffered by entrepreneurship. And we can see, oh, well, the, the reasons of that, you know, are, you know, that, you know, there's like, oh, yeah, we got the autonomy, the novelty, we're very self directed. And then that is something that we can then further apply to. Oh, how could we apply that to an employee? Because there are ways as employees that you can ask your dog, your boss for that.

B (17:34)

Exactly. And with the, with the ADHD side of it. Okay, well, if we're getting this novelty and that's what we want, then how can we make the business continue to have those benefits? And how can we reduce the difficulties? The admin side, the boring side, the routine side, you know, that is very much what I teach. And one of the things that it was interesting to see come up in.

A (17:57)

This paper, I mean, it is very interesting because we did get this, like, oh, yeah. Very typically we think of entrepreneurship as a clear path for adhd, but it does have some real hardship associated with it.

B (18:10)

It really does. And, you know, I mean, I was curious about this because you, you've been an entrepreneur for a little while. What resonated or didn't resonate with you in this paper?

A (18:20)

I definitely felt the, you know, like, financial hardships where you're like, like, even though I'm doing fine, it's just like, oh, I could be doing more. And like, the things that I was thinking about with like, oh, yeah, worse health outcomes. If you don't set boundaries early on in your entrepreneurship journey, it can be easy to be like, I got an email at 11:30 and this person wants me to do something, I'm going to take care of it right now. Whereas now in my life I'm like, I wouldn't even know if I got an email at 11:30. I'm not checking my email at that time. There's never been a time when I checked my email past my working hours that I've ever been happy about it. Yeah. So, and I think it's. To me, it felt very similar to a number of studies where you've seen where this is the base outcome. But if you apply good ADHD management strategies and are not being run by your adhd, then you probably don't have those same outcomes.

B (19:21)

And it's interesting you should say that actually, because this paper to kind of bring it all back around is about subclinical adhd, which is the one that people are potentially less likely to be managing because they didn't even know that they had it in the first place.

A (19:33)

Yeah. Regardless of if you know, if you have ADHD or not or subclinical adhd, it's still going to happen.

B (19:38)

Yeah, that's the unfortunate part about, about it. You know, people say, oh, well, I didn't get the diagnosis, and so should I get support and executive functioning? Support is great for so many people. I highly recommend it just as a, as a way of being if the way that you're currently being doesn't feel like it fits you.

A (19:57)

Yeah. I mean, because I've talked to so many people where they're like, I don't know if I really have adhd, you know, and even people that have been diagnosed where they're like, yeah, maybe I'm just faking it. And I'm like, well, are the things you're doing helping your brain? And they're like, yes. And then I'm like, well, it doesn't matter then your diagnosis doesn't matter if what you're doing is helping.

B (20:17)

Especially because, you know, we're talking about different ways of using the Pomodoro method to manage your transition times. You know, like, it is okay to, to be like, that system doesn't work for me because five minute transitions aren't really my bag because it's never gonna, like, I'm never gonna transition that fast. Like, things like that are, are so fine. And when I worked with, you know, governments, the first thing everyone said when I told them the systems and strategies is like, oh, this would be really helpful for everybody, you know, at certain times of the day, at certain times of the week. And that is very, very true. So if anything, this paper, you know, if we think about what we can take away from this, it's an, it's an invitation to consider doing things in a different way because, you know, you can hold yourself to a really high standard where you go, well, I got the diagnosis or I took the test. I didn't hit the criteria. So therefore, all of this support is, is, is. Is closed off to me know you have that feeling. But these, these papers are not doing that. They're thinking about subclinical adhd, so maybe we should as well. Hello. So you were just listening to a research recap. I'm Sky Waterson of Unconventional Organization. If you like that, there's lots more information about ADHD and support for you at unconventionalorganization.com you can go ahead and check that out. Lots of free resources, lots of strategies, and if you want to join programs, you can do that as well. And we'll see you there. Unconventional organization.

C (21:58)

Marketing is hard. But I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now, and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion.

A (22:15)

And.

C (22:15)

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