The Variance

Late diagnosed. No meds — bad heart valve, stimulants were never an option. For most of my life I was navigating this without even knowing what I was navigating. What I finally figured out through experience is that the wiring wasn't the problem. It was the environment. Find the terrain that rewards what you are, and everything shifts. That's what Children of Chaos is built on. If your wiring has ever felt like the enemy, it probably wasn't. It was the terrain. Learn more →..

Part 3: Maximizing the Value of High-Variance Wiring on Your Team This is part three of a four-part series on ADHD and organizational dynamics. Parts one and two were written for the person living inside the wiring — how to add value as a peer, how to navigate the relationship above you, how to build the currency that funds everything else. This one changes chairs. Thanks for reading The Children of Chaos! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This one

PART 2: Value-maxing as an ADHD Subordinate This is part two of a four-part series on ADHD, leadership and organizational dynamics. Part one was about the team — how to add value as a peer, build currency horizontally, and stop performing as a normative version of yourself that was never going to hold. This one moves up. The relationship with the person above you. Same wiring, higher stakes. Because the person above you controls your terrain, your tasking, and your trajectory

The right structure doesn't suppress high-variance wiring. It gives it somewhere to go. I was recently fortunate enough to have the opportunity to appear on Faster Than Normal with Peter Shankman. Not only is he an amazing host but the interview covered a lot of common ground that can hopefully be beneficial to other Children of Chaos. Not only did our shared neurological wiring have similarities but also the way that we approach focusing it in a productive manner. FULL AUDIO

PART 1: Optimizing as a Team Member This is part one of a four-part series on ADHD, leadership and organizational dynamics. Full disclosure, I use the word ADHD because it’s the common language. Not because I accept the disorder framework. What I carry doesn’t look like a disorder when I examine it honestly. It looks like a mismatch — between the wiring and the systems that were never built for it. I’m not a clinician. Everything here comes from the wiring. In a stone arch ev

A diagnosis explains your wiring. It doesn't author your outcomes. The diagnosis is real. The wiring is real. The friction it creates — in school, in work, in relationships, in systems designed for a different kind of mind — is real. I want to be unambiguous about that before I say anything else, because what I'm about to argue is going to land as contrarian and I want to earn that position rather than dodge the weight of it. There are people for whom ADHD creates significant

The wiring is visible whether you disclose it or not. The only question is who controls the narrative. I have ADHD. I say that directly and without apology, because it matters to everything that follows. Not as a disclaimer — I've written before about the damage that defensive framing does — but because the wiring shapes how I move through every high-stakes conversation I'm in, and pretending otherwise would be both dishonest and tactically stupid. What I've learned, after en

Most people with ADHD spend their lives installing new software. New habits. New planners. New routines. New accountability systems. New therapists. New medications. Different jobs. Different relationships. They swap out the operating system over and over, convinced that this version will finally work. And it might — for a while. Until it doesn't. Because the OS isn't the problem. The BIOS is. For anyone unfamiliar: the BIOS is the firmware that runs below the operating syste

Most self-improvement systems assume you can notice your own behavior before it happens. For minds wired like mine, that assumption is the entire problem. I was not surprised when I was diagnosed with ADHD. The diagnosis did not reveal something new about me — it confirmed something I had already been living. The intensity. The jump-cut thinking. The friction with monotony. The ability to feel underloaded in stable environments and sharply alive when stakes rose. What changed

By Douglas M. Katz | Children of Chaos What Is the Connection Between ADHD and People-Pleasing? Most conversations about ADHD focus on attention — the inability to focus, the wandering mind, the forgotten tasks. That framing misses what people with ADHD actually experience every day: friction. Not just internal friction — the kind that comes from a mind moving faster than its environment. But social and professional friction. The kind that builds over years of missing cues, i

ADHD is often framed as a disability. I personally do not feel that way. For some people, it is—but that experience is shaped heavily by environment. There are theories that different cognitive styles evolved for different roles—some oriented toward structure and order, others toward movement, adaptation, and uncertainty. Both are valuable. But modern systems tend to reward only one. When the environment aligns with the wiring, performance changes. This is about ability—and f

We need to start thinking about what can go right with AI and who it can help. Much of the public conversation about artificial intelligence revolves around replacement. The argument tends to fall into one of two camps: either AI will replace human thinking, or it will diminish the value of human work. The framing assumes that the central question is substitution. But from where I sit, that isn't the most interesting aspect of what these tools are doing. The more compelling d

Aikido as a counterbalance to my chaotic mind My brain runs wide. Always has. But last weekend I deliberately walked into a room where that would get me thrown on the floor. I stepped onto an Aikido mat for the first time in years. I had visited a few seminars over that time and checked out different schools, but this felt different. I wasn’t drawn back because I suddenly missed the martial aspect. I was drawn back because I realized I needed something structured in my life a

Sometimes when you appear as a guest on a podcast, you get the pleasant surprise of discovering something about yourself. This conversation on ADHDifference with Julie Legg was that moment for me. What started as a discussion about being diagnosed with ADHD later in life turned into something much bigger. I realized, in real time, that my diagnosis wasn’t a closing chapter — it was permission. Permission to stop apologizing for how I’m wired. Permission to go all in. If you’

I wasn’t surprised when I was diagnosed with ADHD. I had known for years. The diagnosis didn’t reveal something new about me; it confirmed something I had already been living. The intensity. The jump-cut thinking. The friction with monotony. The ability to feel underloaded in stable environments and sharply alive when stakes rose. What changed wasn’t the label. What changed was perspective. For most of my life, ADHD functioned as an explanation for inconvenience. It explained