Transcription
This video, I'm going to show you how you can stop playing ADHD on hard mode and instead start playing it on easy mode. And how that's going to help you in all areas of your life, not only your productivity, but also your self-esteem and just reaching your potential.
I'm going to be using a lot of ideas from this book called ADHD 2.0, which honestly changed my life. To give you some context, my name is Ali Kuli. I am a postdoctoral fellow at NASA Propulsion Lab. I'm also a systems engineer and a part-time entrepreneur. And up until, I think, around a year ago, I did not know I had ADHD, or I did not even know what ADHD was. And my whole life, I just thought I was like a very lazy person, or like someone who's very, I don't know, inefficient, ineffective. Uh, someone like, like I always thought like something was wrong with me.
So when I read this book and I realized my whole life I've been playing ADHD on hard mode, oh man, it was such a relief. Such a weight lifted off my shoulders. And when I went and I studied a little bit and I figured out what's actually going on inside my brain, it all started making sense. I was able to finish my PhD, I grew both of my YouTube channels. And yeah, life just became amazing.
So anyway, what does ADHD on hard mode look like? Well, before I talk to you about, um, that, the really, I mean, all ADHDers experience one thing that's that's in common, which is really overwhelmed. Like too many ideas, there's so much going on in your brain, there's like a lot of voices in your head. You try to start one thing and then you like go end up doing something else, or you might get bored and like find something else that's more interesting. Like there's kind of, there's like too much going on in the ADHD brain. It feels like there's just like a, like a massive dance of ideas and of things going on. And all of that can be really summarized as overwhelmed.
And there are things that amplify it. So like hard mode ADHD is a lot of distractions, no lack of urgency, having a lack of urgency, so no real urgency to do anything. But also maybe isolation. That can be, that can be a huge one. And it really just comes down to how your brain is working. There are neurochemicals inside your brain, and in the ADHD's brain, they these guys are behaving differently or are basically configured a bit differently compared to someone who has a more neurotypical brain.
So, when it comes to ADHD on hard mode, like very easy things that you can do is just minimizing distractions. For example, if you have notifications on your phone, like that's crazy. Like if it's social media notifications or notifications that are absolutely not urgent, you are playing ADHD on hard mode. Like, for example, I have my phone over here, and as you can see, I only have two notifications here. One is from Telegram, which is the software I use to run everything, my businesses, everything, my communications. And then there's my calendar. There's nothing else in here, no social media notifications, no types of notifications for anything that's not like absolutely urgent and important. And even on top of that, like the way my phone is configured is it's designed in a way that has very little distractions. There's only like four apps that you can access at any given time, and it's just like widgets and trackers. So, just, and even in my room, like just around my room, there's a very minimalist room, there's not much going on. Basically just trying to, to, to not have any distractions. If you have distractions around you, on your phone, in your environment, you are playing ADHD on hard mode.
Same thing with lack of urgency. So if you have goals that you want to achieve in your life, such as scaling a business, or doing, I don't know, getting a promotion, or I don't know, losing weight, or getting in shape, or starting a YouTube channel, whatever goal it is that you have, if you have, like, as an ADHD, you're naturally going to have struggles if you don't have urgency and if you don't have deadlines and if you don't have structure. So that's another way of playing ADHD on hard mode.
And then finally, this one, not many people talk about, but since COVID, this has, this one has been really, really strong. This is something that the book talks a lot about as well, and it's actually really funny. Before the book talks about, I don't know, like medication or or exercise or any of that stuff, the very first thing it starts with is people. And it says that for ADHDers, loneliness and isolation is like the worst thing ever. It's like the thing that can make you very, very depressive, it can make your symptoms even worse, and it makes you a lot less likely to be productive and happy. And that can be attributed to these neurotransmitters, which by the way, I've made a separate video on that. You can, you can scroll somewhere in my channel and find it.
So, okay, so that's what ADHD on hard mode is. If you, if you're an ADHD, and I wanted to put you in the most difficult environment possible, I'll surround you with tons of distractions. I'm going to give you zero deadlines, zero urgency, and I'm going to isolate you. I'm going to put you away from people that you like. Then it's going to be really, really playing on hard mode.
So then you might ask, okay, what does easy mode look like? Well, it's actually quite simple. So the way I solve the distraction problem is again, what I call circuit design. And circuit design is just like something I learned from circuit theory. So like, if this, because I studied electrical engineering when I was an undergrad, and I basically learned this very powerful concept, and that for example, in electricity, the electricity is always going to take the path of least resistance when faced with two directions. The electrical current is always going to take the path of least resistance. I'm trying to find a simple example here, but I don't want to overwhelm you with some electrical engineering stuff. But basically, you want to view your life as almost like you always have options, and some options are more alluring than others. And when it comes to dopamine, your brain is always going to pick the option that is easier and more gratifying.
I'll give you an example. If I go on my phone and there's an Instagram app right next to my to-do list app, the Instagram app looks a lot more beautiful. It's like orange and shiny and and and and it's enticing, and it just makes me want to click it. And the to-do list is like very, very boring. So one way I can, I can either try to summon willpower and discipline to like only click on the to-do list, which by the way, never works. I'm myself, I'm not a very disciplined person. Or I could just delete the Instagram app. And then my only option is to either click the to-do list app or or I don't. And and suddenly, because I've removed that that Instagram app, I've just eliminated it altogether, just kind of like how like in the circuit, the only option possible I have is to click the to-do list app, which suddenly becomes enticing. I'm like, hey, you know what? No, actually looks nice. It's like light blue. Oh, I wonder what I'm what I'm doing today. But the only reason I'm able to do that is by basically eliminating the things that are less, lesser, and lesser resistance. So then the to-do list app becomes something of very little resistance. That's what I call circuit design.
So if you want to really optimize your dopamine, there's really no other way around just removing the crap that's like syncing your dopamine, right? The social media apps, the distractions, the notifications, having too much stuff going on, junk food, anything that hijacks your your dopamine circuitry. Like you just got to remove it, just delete it. And and that's pretty much it.
Now, when it comes to nephrine, which is again, the the what really helps you gain a sense of urgency and and a little bit of danger, which sometimes is good for actually getting things done, you want to have time boundedness, right? You want to have deadlines. But you want to have implementation intentions. For example, instead of saying, "Oh, by the end of today, I need to sit down and record a video," you really have to say, "Like today at this time in this place, I'm going to do it." For example, I'm recording this video like right now. It's 11:40 AM here in California, and I told myself last night, I said, "Okay, tomorrow morning, I'm going to wake up, do a bunch of stuff or not, and then around like 11 or 11:30, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to record the video, independent of whether it's good or not. I just have to sit down and do it." And what that did is it created time boundedness. And and within that time boundedness, I went ahead and I whipped up this diagram and I cleaned my room and I made my lighting a lot nicer and why not. And I just turned on my ring light and bam, I'm recording the video. So you definitely want to create time time boundedness. I cannot emphasize how important this is, especially for ADHDers. Normal neurotypical people, they can just say, "Oh, I'll just do it whenever." But us ADHDers, if you don't like set a time to do it, it's never going to get done. So scheduling is something that's very, very important because of this time boundedness concept.
Then finally, serotonin. Pretty easy. You just need people in your life, right? And this is something I struggled with for a while because, um, I do a lot of my work online. And even my business, I'm building online, this YouTube stuff, I'm doing it online. And even though I do go to work for three days in the week in person, I still don't really interact with much people. I'm a postdoctoral researcher, so I am like doing research all the time. I'm kind of by myself for a big portion of the time. And as you, as I just told you, and as I learned in this book, that can be something that's very like lonely and very tiring.
So one thing you want to do is integrate people in your life as much as possible. And the way, for example, I have done that is at my company, Next Level Systems, we meet almost every single day. We have meetings where we just sometimes we we talk about marketing, sales, product, but other times we just show up and get our work done. And that creates like a nice sense of having people around you. Same with my other YouTube channel, my other business, The Dazzling Engineers. We meet very frequently and we sit down, we talk about ideas, what not. So try to integrate people in your life as much as possible. If you find yourself to be higher up on that loneliness curve, and that's going to again improve your happiness, which is going to improve your productivity.
So basically, what it all really comes down to is just if you are able to achieve these things, you're going to be able to achieve like hyperfocus on demand, a lot, a lot more, a lot, lot more quickly. And usually people, hyperfocus is a state that is triggered when something is very, very interesting and you're very, very curious about it. But again, if you're able to do all these things, the circuit design, time boundedness, and and having the right people in your life, you're going to increase the likelihood that things that seem normally mundane or boring suddenly become things that are interesting. And actually so interesting that they trigger you into a hyperfocus state, which is something that's that's absolutely remarkable.
And which, by the way, I'll put a link below to a program I have put together, including a community where we talk a little bit more about hyperfocus. I have an ADHD system which I personally use myself. If you'd like to go ahead and check it out. Other than that, then you can go ahead and watch the rest of my videos and I will see you in the next one. Peace, love.