124: Restarting Adderall

🤔 Want to Win a Free Copy of Creative Doing?

As you may recall from CR#106, my friend Herbert Lui wrote a short book packed with practical tips and surprising stories about how to unblock your creative potential in your work or hobbies.

He's giving away a free copy away to one lucky reader of Cultivating Resilience. Are you interested? No catch, just a promo!

🧠 Restarting Adderall

October is ADHD Awareness Month. My Kindergarten teacher Mrs. Ward wrote this about me a few weeks into the school year.

Jason is very impulsive in his physical movements. It does not appear to be negatively physically aggressive. He just acts quickly without regard for consequences ... He has a high activity level and changes his activities frequently, often leaving areas before reaching some form of completion. His attention span on activities can be brief unless he has adult support to keep him focused. He has a wonderful curiosity about everything and seems to be trying to take everything in at once (or in rapid succession). Jason asks many questions. Frequently Jason will ask a question and not appear to listen to the answer.

These are classic ADHD qualities and a few years later I was officially diagnosed, and began medication, most likely Adderall though I can't remember. I stopped after a few years and lived the next 25+ years medication free.

Two weeks ago that changed.

I'll have more to say about my journey in issues to come, but for now, here's a video that goes over my experience with my first few hours restarting Adderall + a reflection after about a week on the medication.

🖼 The Pain Points Map

When you're building a product or solution, you want to solve a problem that's very painful and comes up very often. In putting this framework together, I realized that AI-powered writing tools address exactly that, and this explains why there are so many right now.

👉 A 1M Impression Tweet and a $125M Raise

I am deeply interested in AI writing tools (as mentioned earlier) and will probably do a whole deep dive in a later issue, but for now, let me share to fascinating tweet threads:

A productivity thread written by an AI tool (Lex):

A Series A valuing a co (Jasper) at $1.5 billion.

Recent Issues

More Resources and Fun Stuff

• Book Notes: Summaries / quotes from great books I've read
• Scotch & Bean: a webcomic about work, friendship, and wellness
• Birthday Lessons: Ideas, questions, and principles I've picked up over the years
• Career Spotlight: A deep dive into my journey as an athlete, PM, founder, and creator.

Work with Me

Working with an executive coach can help you take on bigger and bolder opportunities in a volatile environment—without destroying your sense of self. I currently have 1-2 open slots for new clients so if that sounds interesting, take a look.