How to excel with ADHD according to this neurodivergent entrepreneur

Entrepreneur Peter Shankman credits an unexpected source for his career acumen. “My massive attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is responsible for all my success,” he said.

The author of Faster Than Normal: Turbocharge Your Focus, Productivity, and Success With Secrets of the ADHD Brain (TarcherPerigee) — dubbed the ADHD and productivity bible — and the children’s book The Boy With the Fastest Brain, among others, recalls . growing up in the 70s and 80s as a public school kid in NYC when ADHD was not accepted.

“Getting into LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts saved my life because everyone there was weird, just like me,” recalls the 52-year-old.

After graduating from Boston University with a degree in journalism, Shankman said his first position was earned “in the most ADHD of ways.” He was wasting time in an America Online chat room when someone mentioned that they worked for AOL and were looking for editors for their new online newsroom. Shankman knew he would be perfect for the gig, even though he had no experience.

“But that’s the beauty of ADHD — say ‘yes’ and figure it out later,” he said.

The young reporter ended up working at AOL for three years, just as the Internet was taking off with a wealth of dot com knowledge.

“I discussed this to create my own public relations firm called Geek Factory. We represented all the darlings of the dot com cluster,” he said, noting examples such as Napster and Juno. “I sold the agency in 2001 and tried to relax. It turned out that I didn’t know how to do this, so I started consulting and writing.”

Because of his disorder, networking comes naturally to Shankman, as he talks to just about everyone.

“If you’re on a plane next to me, if you don’t fake your death, I’ll know everything about you by the time we land. So I have a big Rolodex,” Shankman said. “Reporters would call me and ask me for people I knew to help them with their articles. That led me to create something called Help a Reporter Out, or HARO, which, in three years, became the de facto standard for how reporters and sources connected.”

In 2010, Shankman sold HARO to Cision, “which changed my life,” and this year he launched Source of Sources, which he called an improved version of HARO.

With a psychiatrist, Shankman also co-founded a company in 2023 called Mental Capital, a consultancy that helps companies attract, hire and retain neurodiverse employees while helping companies become neuro-inclusive.

“Neurodiversity is the diversity of all diversities: the cross-cutting nature and impact on people within all groups,” he said. “People who identify as neurodiverse often have strengths that companies look for, even though they are overlooked, [causing companies to miss out on] amazing contributions. “Companies are finally starting to understand that and realize that they need help from people who understand these workforce strengths and how best to leverage them,” added Shankman. Current client list of Mental Capital goes from Morgan Stanley to Adobe.

“When you’re ADHD, there’s only two kinds of time, now and not now,” he said, meaning he tends to come up with an idea, implement it, and it either works or it doesn’t, all within a period of time. too short a time frame. “For the neurodiverse brain, moving forward is absolutely exciting. This is how I get the dopamine I need that my body doesn’t produce enough of naturally.”

Along with work, he attributes his dopamine intake and focus to exercise, whether it’s on his Peloton, running through Central Park at 4 a.m., swimming or skydiving. (He is a licensed skydiver who has made more than 500 jumps.) He also has a prescription Concerta for ADHD that he takes once or twice a month.

As a father, Shankman is open and honest about how he is neurologically wired.

His 11-year-old daughter Jessa “knows that Daddy’s a little weird, but she also knows that Daddy’s happiest when he’s weird,” he said. “I have told him since he was a child [that] weird is just a horrible side effect.”

While she hasn’t been diagnosed with ADHD, “she has my quirkiness — and she embraces it,” Shankman said. “For me, that’s the best lesson I can teach my daughter.”

Skeptical that a perceived shortcoming could actually be your superpower? Consider this: In 2015, Shankman was contracted to write a book with a “big breakthrough” and a one-year deadline.

“I did all the research the first month, then forgot about it. Two weeks before the deadline, the publisher called and asked how it was going,” Shankman said.

He lied and said the book was almost ready — before proceeding to buy a round-trip ticket from Newark, NJ, to Tokyo.

“I got on the plane with my laptop, headphones, a power cable and a sweatshirt. I wrote chapters 1 to 5 on the plane to Tokyo. Landed, went to the lounge, had a coffee and showered, then got back on the same plane, same place and wrote chapters 6 to 10 on the flight home,” he said. “Others may think I’m crazy. I know how my ADHD works, and that kind of hyperfocus is totally and completely real.”

For other aspiring career climbers with ADHD, Shankman has no shortage of advice. First, he’s a proponent of the concept of owning your ADHD as your superpower.

“We’ve been told all our lives that we’re broken,” he said. “However, your neurodiversity is what makes you different from everyone else—and different, when understood, is your talent.”