Trying to be “normal”
Prior to launching Notion Mastery, I was a quiet person on the internet, writing whenever I felt like it, trying not to ruffle feathers, and basically being a much more shy, censored, and quiet version of myself. Being on camera, in front of groups of people, or on center-stage was not a natural, enjoyable, or comfortable thing for me.
I’ve written in detail before about all the weird and wonderful things I’ve done in my life to help me work through all the fear I’ve had around being visible.
Having impact and leaving a legacy is important to me, so overcoming fear and focusing on my impact has been a priority for many years. I always knew that if I wanted to make a difference at scale, I was going to have to keep doing the work.
For most of my life I have felt a great discordance between how the world sees me, and how I see myself.
I’ve worked with coaches and therapists for many years to work through this tension, and continue to do so, but the biggest missing piece of the puzzle finally fell into place in 2022.
One morning as I was scrolling through reddit, I stumbled upon this video:
I decided to give it a watch because my sister has ADHD, and there were a HUGE number of students in Notion Mastery with ADHD. I wanted to learn more about it to be able to understand and relate to my sisters’ experience, and to the specific challenges of those with ADHD.
I even did a livestream with my sister where we addressed ADHD and Notion in a live build. ADHD was something I was learning about in order to better relate to the people around me who had it (ha ha).
Watching that video was eye opening.
Wait a second… is this me?
My ears perked up when he spoke about the incredible difficulty of waking up in the morning. This is something I have struggled with my entire life and has been a serious point of embarrassment and frustration. It’s a huge part of why I’ve designed my business to not have any calls before 10am. This has caused problems with school, professionally, and even in relationships (not with Ben though, that man lets me do my thing without judgment, BLESS THAT MAN).
In middle school and high school I had three separate alarms in different parts of my room, and I still wouldn’t wake up until someone (my sister) would burst into my room, irritated at all the noise. I could sleep through a fire.
Obviously I went down a hyperfocus research rabbit-hole. I started reaching out to people that I knew had ADHD. I started reading more about it, watching videos, and getting curious.
I spoke to my sister more deeply about her experience.
“OBVIOUSLY you have ADHD, yes,” she said, laughing.
I was still skeptical. My sister and I are SO different. She’s the poster child for ADHD, and I’ve been running my own business for over a decade… surely we couldn’t possibly have the same diagnosis?
I can get 3 months worth of focused work done in a few days… that’s not ADHD is it?
I watched and listened with an open mind.
I started a Notion document where I logged stories, symptoms, and behaviours from childhood until now, which quickly turned into a 2500 word document. I actually laughed out loud reading it.
In early 2021, there was not a single fibre of my being that would ever have suspected I would have ADHD. Not even one inkling. I was so used to struggling with certain things, I just got used to them. It was my normal.
And yet, when I looked at many of my behaviours over the course of my lifetime through this lens, a lot made sense. It was one of the most bizarre and yet wonderful experiences to go from “there’s absolutely no way” to “holy shit everything in my life suddenly actually makes sense now” so quickly you get whiplash.
For most of my life I have felt like a highly intelligent person with a stupid brain.
A flood of emotions came up during this process.
What does this mean?
How on earth did I miss this?
Is it for real for real?
What if [behaviour] is just… trauma?
Does that explain X? Or is that just my personality?
There were so many basic things I struggled with that seemed to come so easily to other people. I straight up assumed I was a little stupid. And YET I thrived in so many other ways and have so many different skills! I was in my school’s “gifted” program, but always wondered how exactly I’d gotten there.
Why had I read every single productivity book, but basic things always fell through the cracks? What was wrong with me? My last partner frequently referred to me as “a calamity.”
I was so good at so many things, and yet struggled with seriously basic stuff. It was embarrassing.
I realized how much of my social anxiety over the years was fear that my ADHD would highlight the parts of me I was ashamed of.
I was already fairly sure by this point after my research and exploration, but I decided that for my own peace of mind I wanted to explore diagnosis. SPOILER ALERT: it’s ADHD.
Getting a Diagnosis
Getting a diagnosis here in Canada was relatively straightforward. I was able to do this online using both a self-assessment form alongside virtual diagnostic sessions with a doctor. Admittedly I was laughing through most of the assessment because when you have to answer a pile of behavioural questions in rapid succession, it feels like a highlight reel of all your very obvious executive dysfunction.
“Have you ever had a relationship end because of X”
“Have you ever lost a job because of Y”
“Have you ever had friendships end due to Z”
- Difficulty with sequential processing
- Difficulties with instructions (especially verbal)
- Being “all over the place,” or “moving too fast”
- Social awkwardness
- Messy house habits
- Impulsivity and risk-taking
- Poor memory
- Trouble finishing tasks
- Thrill of working last minute
- Difficulty relaxing or “turning off”
- Hopeless with directions
Even though it seemed obvious, I was still skeptical even after the diagnostic sessions. I asked the doctor if he was sure, and he laughed. Yes, of course, he said.
Doesn’t everyone experience X? Couldn’t this be considered CPTSD or social anxiety? Aren’t we all just addicted to our smart phones and have information overload?
I will fully admit that I was incredibly ignorant about ADHD before, and had a lot of assumptions. I am sure that I myself contributed to the stigma of ADHD before I did my own research.
Most of us experience many of the common ADHD symptoms from time to time, and to varying degrees, so it can be easy to identify with them and even dismiss them as being normal. Assessments look at behaviour across your entire life until now, and assess how disruptive the symptoms and behaviours are to your life. When those symptoms have a noticeable and measurable impact on different areas of your life (job, relationships, health, etc), that’s when they go from “normal things everyone experiences sometimes” to “actually disruptive to your life.”
The unraveling, confusion, and clarity that happened over the course of the few months before, during, and since diagnosis is hard to describe.
Seriously, how the F did I miss this?
Knowing that I have ADHD has allowed me to understand my behaviour more deeply at the neuro chemical level.
Everything in my life and business was designed around my energy and motivation, and I didn’t even realize. It’s so obvious looking back, I have to laugh.
I now partly understand why it felt so difficult to be visible, or be the center of attention. My brain is moving so fast and my impulsivity is so high, that I frequently found myself oversharing, jumping around in my thoughts, or blurting out things I would later regret and play over and over again in my mind in cringe-inducing horror.
Deep down I felt like a weird person who was spending an inordinate amount of energy trying to be “normal.”
I could have a conversation with anyone, anytime, about anything, but preparing a presentation with a logical progression and clear outcomes was the most draining and difficult thing in the world.
Consistency was my kryptonite. I couldn’t even imagine or understand how people created content on any kind of consistent schedule. (A weekly newsletter, are you serious??)
I even signed up for Ship30 to give consistency a go! The adrenaline of a deadline and making a public commitment is great for ADHD. I am super proud that I was able to ship 30 essays in 30 days!
I also pretty much energetically collapsed after and couldn’t write for a while.
How can you plan your content creation for next Tuesday when you don’t know how you’re going to feel on Tuesday?
I felt a lot of secret shame that I never acknowledged, even to myself. I didn’t have the vocabulary for it, just a sense that something was off.
It explains my extreme bursts of hyperfocus/fixation and motivation, followed by an inability to do anything.
At the end of the day, it also explained why Notion was such a life-changing tool for me. It helped me not only function with my poor working memory, but actually thrive. Notion is my outsourced memory.
2021 was was the year I finally embraced that I AM a little weird, and it’s time to own it.
What could life look like if I didn’t fight against my nature?
Embracing my weirdness
Slowly, as I learned more and more about some of the more “uncommon” symptoms, it felt like my life truly started making sense. It wasn’t about having an excuse for my perceived bad habits, it was an explanation for who I was. This self realization also brought some additional insight…
I never realized how much energy I was expending… trying not to be myself.
A gigantic weight was lifted from my shoulders. Fear began to melt away. I decided to get curious and ask myself, what would it look like if I embraced my ADHD? What if being more honest and vocal about my struggles and strengths could actually help others? What if it was ok that I swear sometimes, struggle with boundaries, overshare, or say awkward things? What if my quirks do make me more interesting?
Trying not to be “too much” was exhausting.
Why was I spending so much effort trying to be something I’m not? Because strangers on the internet might figure out that I’m weird? WHY DO I CARE??
This is the year I found my people and came out of my shell.
I found an ease and a confidence I had never felt before. I stopped trying so hard to disguise my quirks and flaws, and was learning to work with them, and lean on my strengths (and my team!).
Knowledge is power, and know I can equip myself (and others) with strategies tailored to help me succeed.
I still get a bit emotional about it when I think about how much young Marie struggled and didn’t even realize. It gives me so much compassion for others who have even more extreme symptoms than I do.
I feel incredibly privileged that I’ve been able to find a way to make my life and business ADHD-friendly. Having a supportive partner is one of the biggest factors in my thriving.
I’d also like to thank amazing folks like Jesse J Anderson and Norman Tran for also being vocal about and sharing their experiences ADHD. I have learned so much from chatting with these folks, and am so grateful for their sage wisdom.
I know that this is just the beginning of the journey!
For most of my solo-preneur journey I assumed I was a workaholic, and added that to the shame pile with all the other stuff I struggled with, including low self-esteem.
All the coaching, all of my obsessive learning about systems & productivity, and all of my mindset work was an attempt to overcome what I had internalized as personal flaws.
This helps explain why I’d worked so hard to craft a business around only doing things I really want to do — I was optimizing my mental focus out of necessity.
And after all of that, it turns out that my brain just works differently.
The brain that makes me ill-equipped for certain types of work has also enabled me to excel in other ways. My ADHD brain is why I’m good at what I do today.
More than anything, I have a great deal more self-compassion these days. I have given myself permission to discover who I am when I work with my nature, not against it.
This discovery has also greatly shaped my perspective on workflow design. I realized we all process information differently. What feels beautiful and spacious to one person might be overwhelming for someone else. Blanket advice and approaches simply don’t work. We need to find what works with our own nature. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to this stuff.
It’s about being aware—and brave—to follow your own path.
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