Hacking Your ADHD

Hey Team!
This week, I'm talking with Christine Lane, an accredited financial counselor (AFC) with a master's degree in psychology. Christine has ADHD herself and, luckily for the rest of us, her hyper-fixation happens to be on personal finance. She's the founder of Mind Over Money, where she focuses on the psychological hurdles that make traditional budgeting feel like a personal failure rather than just a glitch in your executive function.
In our conversation today, we get into her "Four-Bucket Banking System" and why we need to stop making our money multitask. We also explore the concept of using "friction" as a tool for impulse control and why simulating the physical loss of cash can be a great way to get your limbic system to play ball. We also talk about the specific tools she uses to gamify spending, why detailed categorization is often just a form of productive procrastination, and how to set up "set it and forget it" systems that protect your bills from your worst impulses.
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/296
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD
This Episode's Top Tips
Modern digital spending, such as our cards and phones, provides a "gain" without the physical feeling of money leaving. To help bridge this gap, tools like a calculator, where you can subtract the cost at the moment of purchase, can help the limbic system register the loss, balancing the emotional input so you feel protective of your remaining funds.
When we let our savings accounts multitask, we can end up imagining that the same $5,000 can cover both an emergency and a vacation. By using something like the Four-Bucket Banking System (Bills, Variable, Periodic, Emergency), you create "object permanence" for your money, ensuring that essential funds are physically separated from your spending urges.
Willpower is a finite resource that often fails when we are stressed. Instead of "trying harder," we want to focus on bending external structures (like deleting the Amazon app or removing saved credit card info) to create enough friction to let our executive function outpace some of our more impulsive spending choices.

In this rebroadcast of Hacking Your ADHD, host William Curb returns to the fundamental concept of coping—redefining it not just as an emotional reaction, but as a proactive problem-solving toolkit designed to mitigate predictable ADHD mishaps. Curb explores the critical shift from "reactive" stress management to "proactive" strategies, such as building calendar buffers and utilizing visual organization systems like hooks and "point of performance" reminders. By distinguishing between effective tools and maladaptive habits like self-defeating humor or impulsive spending, the episode emphasizes that the ultimate ADHD coping skill is "giving yourself slack" and building systems that work with, rather than against, your unique brain.
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/120

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This Episode's Top Tips
While ADHD coaching and therapy can seem similar, they are distinct practices, with therapists often focused on healing in the past and present and coaches more focused on future-oriented goal setting.
When seeking out help in either of these domains, it is important to remember that they do not work like magic, and you are going to have to put in work to see results. Additionally, the individual you see will usually become much more important than their profession.
Accountability is a tool that we can use to take ownership of our actions, and when used in conjunction with others, it can help create salience and clarity in what we are doing to follow through with our intentions.

Hey team, today I'm talking with Liz Tenuto, more widely known as the Workout Witch. Liz is a somatic specialist with a degree in psychology from UCSB, who has spent over a decade helping people release chronic stress through movement. She's also the author of Moving Through Trauma, which hit shelves in January. Liz's work bridges the gap between psychology and physical health, specializing in how trauma and stress manifest as psychological issues like gut problems, insomnia, and chronic pain. In our conversation today, we're diving into the world of somatic exercises, which are slow conscious and gentle movements designed to enhance the mind-body connection and nervous system regulation. 
We talk about how traditional no pain, no gain fitness often backfires for the ADHD brain, the nuances of introception, and why your body might feel stuck in a functional freeze without you even realizing it. If you'd like to follow along on the show notes notes page, you can find that at hackingyouradhd.com. All right, keep on listening to find out how to get your body and brain on the same page.
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/294
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD
This Episodes Top Tips
While random stimming may help us cope in the moment, it doesn't necessarily lead to long-term nervous system regulation. By intentionally performing certain somatic exercises, we can actually shift our baseline physiology over time.
When we are in a state of functional freeze or understimulation, the goal isn't to lower our energy levels, but instead to move from a shutdown state up into a regulated and alert state of ease known as the ventral vagal state.
Because ADHD involves a bottom-up nervous system, our mental state is often a direct reflection of our physical tension. By consciously relaxing, we can trigger an immediate emotional shift, even if we don't realize our own stress levels.

Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Today, I'm joined by Skye Waterson for our research recap series. In this series, we take a look at a single research paper, dive into what the paper says, how it was conducted, and try and find any practical takeaways.
In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called "Prevalence, Patterns, and Predictors of Sleep Problems and Daytime Sleepiness in Young Adolescents with ADHD." And so this is a study that's investigating the high prevalence of sleep-related issues in adolescents with ADHD, and this paper is also trying to distinguish between, like, nighttime sleepiness disorders and daytime sleepiness. So the story here being that, hey, maybe ADHD might not be caused by poor sleep quality alone, but there are, like, strong links to other things like sluggish cognitive tempo, which we'll all get into. So how about that? Let's dive in.
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at https://HackingYourADHD.com/293
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Hey Team!
Today I'm talking with Jenna Free, a Master's-level Canadian Certified Counselor and ADHD coach, who focuses on polyvagal theory, which is to say, she helps people understand their nervous system. She works specifically with neurodivergent adults to move them out of the "fight, flight, or freeze" responses that make ADHD symptoms feel ten times heavier than they need to be.
In our conversation, we're moving past the usual "tips and tricks" to look at the biological hardware of the ADHD brain and, more specifically, on nervous system regulation. We discuss the mechanics of dysregulation, why we often use anxiety as a secondary motor, and how to identify when our bodies have been stuck in survival mode for so long that we've forgotten what "calm" actually feels like.
Be sure to check out Jenna's book The Simple Guide to ADHD Regulation: The Secret to Finding Balance, Getting Things Done, and Enjoying Your Life
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/292
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD
This Episode's Top Tips
It's important to recognize that dysregulation is a physical state where blood flow moves from the brain to the limbs to prepare for danger. When we are in fight, flight, or freeze, our ADHD symptoms are amplified because our brain's higher-level processing is offline in favor of survival.
While it is easy to rely on anxiety and panic to provide the "urgency" needed to start tasks, this can create a "frantic-crash cycle" where we use future resources to survive the present. When we focus on regulation, it can allow us to find a "sweet spot" of motivation that is sustainable rather than explosive.
People-pleasing is often a survival strategy intended to keep others regulated so that we feel safe. By recognizing that our safety doesn't actually depend on everyone else liking us, it allows us to stop over-committing and resenting our schedules.