Hey, everybody, it's Mark here. So this episode is going to be a little bit different. It's a little

shorter, a little more personal, less of a discussion, and more of me just thinking out loud

about something that's been rattling around in my head for a little while. I've been wanting to

try something a little bit more raw on this feed and today felt like the right time. Because today,

I want to talk about ADHD. More specifically, I want

to talk about why ADHD might be both the best thing and the worst thing that has ever

happened to me. I also want to talk about a question that has haunted me since I was about

15 years old. Because here's the thing that nobody really tells you. The traits that hold you

back the most, they are often the same

exact traits that make you exceptional. So the trick isn't necessarily to fix yourself, it's to,

well, it's to do something else. So without further ado, here are some of the lessons that I've taken

from ADHD. When I was 15 years old, my grades were terrible. My room was a mess. I stayed up all night

playing video games and I slept through half my classes. That year, I was diagnosed with ADHD

and put on medication. And it worked. My grades went up. My room got clean. The video games

turned off and I could sit through an entire class without my

brain wandering off to some random thought about whether fish get thirsty or what would

happen if gravity reversed for exactly one second. But something else happened too, which is that

my interests narrowed, my social life quieted. I became quite functional, productive, and completely uninterested in

most things that I used to be interested in. I just figured that this is what growing up was,

trading spontaneity for grades, the messiness for metrics. But then one day, one of my teachers

pulled me aside. He asked me about my ADHD meds and how I was feeling.

I thought I was fine, but he wasn't satisfied. He said, look, Mark, it's great that you're making

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