In the Stacks on Deck season 1 finale, brand strategist and coach Jen Benford, diagnosed with ADHD at around 30, talks with me about what work asks of people whose brains don’t match the workplace, and why it’s not laziness. Learn three things you can use tomorrow: 1) A prompt for the task you can’t start2) Two columns for the feedback that sends you spiralling 3) What to say before you answer that urgent request For most of my life I had a set of words for myself: Scatterbrain, space cadet, and the one people call you when you’re smart but you can’t do a thing they think is simple: lazy. The problem was that, over time, I started believing it about myself. In this, the last episode of Stacks on Deck Season 1, I’m joined by brand strategist and coach Jen Benford, who writes The Divergent Talent Alchemist. She was diagnosed with ADHD at around 30. I was diagnosed a few years ago, as an adult, and I found her the same way I found every guest on this show: by reading her. I told Jen a story about an email I was trying to write. I’d finished a whole project. It was done and ready to send, but I couldn’t press send. Jen had a name for that: task initiation. AI can be the voice of reason in those moments when you are too scared to hit send. I thought my habit of saying yes to everything and my need for clear, direct instructions were two separate flaws. Jen’s answer is that they’re one brain. I get vibes. I also need the brief in writing. Both are pattern recognition, and most workplaces weren’t built for that. Six episodes, six writers I read. Thank you for listening to all of them. There’s a bonus episode still to come, and after that a new season about another kind of future. Can’t get enough of this conversation? I’m joining Jen for a Substack Live on Friday, November 20 at 1:00 p.m. ET: Human AI: Making space for how our brains work 💜. Save your spot here. What you’ll learn Why the job feels like it needs mind reading I read Jen a line from her own newsletter: “Apparently the job now includes clairvoyance. Compensation has not been adjusted.” Jen starts with the grief of a late diagnosis a lot of ADHDers feel, and then talks about the neurotypical system that neurodiverse people live within: moving goalposts hurt nonlinear thinkers most, and hierarchical workplaces are where “you’re just supposed to go along with things.” In her words: “You don’t get the best work out of people if you, one, don’t get to know them, and two, if you keep changing the goalposts and changing the expectations.” (3:49) Interest based nervous system Jen brought this term up and it I hadn’t heard of it. Neurotypical people have Importance-Based Systems: People without ADHD can typically generate motivation based on a task’s theoretical importance, future rewards, rules, or long-term consequences. They can engage with important tasks on demand. ADHDers have Interest-Based Systems: People with ADHD don’t lack willpower or discipline. Instead, their dopamine-driven brain engages primarily when a task triggers specific emotional or mental sparks. Although I knew about how we’re differently motivated, hearing it put this way was a bit of breakthrough for me. (11:08) AI as an executive assistant, and the risk of using it too much Jen’s version: “AI helps me. It doesn’t think for me.” It shortens the time from idea to execution, and on the days executive dysfunction is working against her, it keeps her organised. She’s honest about the other side. When she first started using AI she was using it “a little too much for too many things,” and mentors in her corner nudged her to walk it back. As a small business owner she says she wouldn’t be where she is without it, and she still holds the line: she does the thinking. (10:21) The email you can’t send My experience. I’d done a whole project, it was ready to go, and I could not press send on the email. What finally worked was a prompt I now use for any task my brain won’t start: “I have ADHD, I’m having trouble sending the email. Tell me step by step what to do.” Jen uses it the same way. “It’s so helpful for coaching in the task initiation space.” (13:52) We are not lazy “I think especially as ADHDers, we receive a lot of negative feedback. You must be lazy, or you’re too much, you’re too high energy. Okay, go find less. I don’t know what to tell you. I think that’s the thing. I’m done shrinking myself for other people’s comfort. We are not lazy.” (17:00) Rejection sensitivity at work: what to do RSD is rejection sensitivity dysphoria: someone says something to you that isn’t a compliment and you take it as proof they hate you. Jen’s tools for it: * Two columns. Get a piece of paper and “have a column for what’s reality versus what are you thinking.” (She references automatic negative thoughts, or ANTs) * Space. Put “space between you and your next interaction with the person or people.” She says it takes her a couple of days to work out what somebody meant. * Don’t act on impulse. Where it backfires: “when we don’t give ourselves the space and we act on impulse.” My own version is a pause: “let me get back to you.” (17:26) Clear instructions vs good vibes I asked Jen about a contradiction I couldn’t explain. I need clear, direct instructions. I also get vibes, I can intuit things. How do those two live in the same person? Her answer is pattern recognition, which she thinks “many of us possess,” and which may be tied to giftedness, ADHD, or both. From there we get into boundaries. “When you set a boundary with a healthy person, it’s typically received with love and care, and there’s some sort of compromise involved.” The people who get angriest at a boundary are the ones who benefited from you not having one. She’s clear she didn’t make that line up. (22:55) When everything is “urgent” The payoff I promised in the intro. “If everything is a fire drill, then nothing’s a fire drill.” Her script for the next ASAP: “I’m working on X, Y, and Z. So if this comes on, then Z needs to come off.” Two more things she says to notice: sometimes “we put more pressure on ourselves. In our head, it’s due right away.” And some leaders expect everything right away on purpose, and “it drips into the culture.” (26:26) What to look for in an ADHD-friendly workplace Jen starts with safety and nervous-system regulation, then the inner work of “getting to know yourself intimately and your triggers.” Then the practical questions: what type of boss, what team culture, “Is it open concept? Do I have an office? Is it really loud? Are the lights super bright? What do I have to wear?” Her bottom line: “you can accommodate yourself.” On disclosing a diagnosis at work, she’s careful: “it’s not always the best choice. It’s situation dependent.” Mine: noise-cancelling headphones and ambient music, and the dress I wanted to cut off with scissors. (29:59) Just diagnosed? Start here I asked what she’d tell a woman who has just been diagnosed later in life. Her first answer is one word: “Rest. It sounds funny, but rest.” Then: “nobody knows you better than you know yourself.” She knows most people will research first (“fifty hours of research on yourself”), so: rest after you research, too. Two people she follows for ADHD content: Dr. Kojo Sarfo and Dr. Sasha Hamdani. (34:08) The best part of having ADHD “The creativity and the ingenuity and the special interest.” She once started a business over a weekend. On capacity: “One day I could give 200%. The next day I might be able to give 10.” And: “I wouldn’t trade my ADHD, actually. I really wouldn’t.” (37:39) Get full access to Human+AI at nicolleweeks.substack.com/subscribe
