Kill Your News Feed, with Nick Berry
Have you tried the FTN Course yet? 38 videos to help you benefit from your ADHD, and gain back three hours a day of your life!
Sometimes, for people with ADHD, inspiration comes from the most random of places. For this week’s guest, Nick Berry, it arrived in the form of a military enlistment, followed by a tour in Operation Enduring Freedom.
Once out of the military, Nick used the hyper-focus from his ADHD to launch SendLift, an online service that sends handwritten thank you notes all around the world. He’s a huge believer in therapy, and knows he has his ADHD to thank for his success.
Best tip of the episode: The Chrome Extension “Kill Newsfeed.” (See below.)
In this episode, Peter and Nick discuss:
- Nick’s background (02:07)
- Thank you cards (03:18)
- Military life (05:07)
- Routines and schedule (06:45)
- Tips for daily life (07:27)
- Work and family balance (08:45)
- Hyper focus (10:58)
- Working on tasks that you hate (12:39)
- Notifications (13:49)
- Additional tips and tricks (15:21)
Links/Mentions
- Nick Berry (Facebook)
- Sendlift (Nick’s company)
- Bulletproof Coffee
- Pomodoro Method
- Kill news feed (Chrome extension)
As always, leave us a comment below, drop us a review on iTunes (PLEASE!) and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven’t already! Know of anyone you think should be on the FTN podcast? Shoot us a note – We’d love to hear!
Peter –
Your program and “survival manual” (pod casts) for adults with ADHD, kids with ADHD and Parents of kids with ADHD has been a revolution in my life! I forgot to mention listening is probably essential for spouses or soon to be spouses of persons with ADHD too.
Thank you for making me feel normal and more importantly able to feel hopeful again in my life. I’m struggling to adapt to my diagnosis of ADHD and what needs to change in my life knowing about it now. Your program is the first thing I’ve encountered in my research on ADHD to give me actual hope, encouragement, new tools and just a speck of optimism. A lifetime of not understanding has taken its toll on my heart and soul and digging out of that is messy, painful, exhausting, and a discouragement a lot of the time. I wish I could go back and start over at about 2 years old. Maybe I should write a book about what my life would be had I known all along and how things would have turned out if I’d been guided by proper support. Then, see if that’s where I should be now instead of where I am and just go there. Interesting prospect.
I was diagnosed just over 2 years ago at 52 after my sister was diagnosed. I have to tell you about her first…Her story is much more compelling than my own. She was 54 when diagnosed and in the second year of her graduate program (Occupational Therapy). It was literally killing her with overwhelm. No one in the family, including me, understood what she was experiencing and a great deal of impatience and judgment was being sent her way. She was advised to go get a psych evaluation with someone who specialized in ADHD, don’t know who, and was diagnosed with severe ADHD with an unusually high intellectual ability (surprise!). While it answered a great deal of the life long questions she had about her behaviors, it was too late for her to be able to get appropriate support to finish her program. She could do the work but it took so much longer for her to complete assignments, get through the academic information and produce timely outcomes for her projects than everyone else, that they finally failed her out of the program. But not before she experienced horrible judgmental treatment from her professors, her Dean and even some of the other students in the program. Her Dean was purposefully discouraging, emotionally abusive and downright discriminative. This was devastating to her. I cannot tell you how emotionally disabling this was for her. I dare say the experience was even worse than losing her 3 month old baby to SIDS 20 years prior and subsequently experiencing a horrible divorce (the second divorce in her life). It disabled her emotionally in ways that started to make her feel completely hopeless and useless as a human. She already was medicated of depression and her depression got dangerously worse. It was heartbreaking to see and is still difficult for most of our family to understand how deep her wounds are. She did pursue a Civil Rights case based on the discrimination she experienced but lost.
The best thing for her would to be able to find success in her own way, by her own design and regain her lost confidence, sense of purpose and well being. She’s working on it with a broken spirit and a handicap that hangs her up a lot. She really needs a coach but cannot afford one. She’s struggling to survive and to continue to believe there is still hope and success in her future, but it’s complicated at her age, our age. We are trying to work through that.
Your podcast has become one of my lifelines. The other being my faith in God. I believe because of the encouragement I receive listening to others on the pod cast who have struggled, failed and tried again, sharing the strategies they have found, I am slowly rebuilding my self esteem, my hope and my fortitude to try again myself. I share everything I learn there with her and I have been pushing her to subscribe.
I know there are so many others out there whose lives have experienced great destruction by not understanding why they are what they are, and because of that they cannot reconcile their frustrating reality because of their “undiagnosed” disability.
My purpose in sharing with you today is two fold. First, I want to thank you for doing the Podcast. It’s been a lifesaver for me. Secondly, I want to pose this question to you. “What do we do about all of those others who still don’t know why they are the way they are and what may be holding them back, even damaging their lives?” I don’t have anymore brain power to continue this line of thought, but I’m wondering about it now….
Thanks for all you do. It’s been very helpful to me.
Kind regards, Joan
I use all kinds of Chrome extensions, but I never knew one like this existed. I’m going to give it a try and see if there are others that are similar I can use at work.
Also, I had the opportunity to hear Peter speak at the ICSC in National Harbor a couple of weeks ago and it was great. I don’t normally go to a site or read a newsletter that is offered by keynote or guest speakers, but I immediately wrote this one down to make sure I would remember to check it out. I’ve now shared it with the personal growth and leadership development teams that I am a part of within the company I work for. Great content and I look forward to listening to all past and future podcasts.
Thank you!