My Recent Appearance on ADHDifference
- dougkatz8
- Feb 23
- 2 min read
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’ve been diagnosed as an adult, you know the feeling. You replay your career. Your relationships. The friction. The missed cues. The intensity. The wins. You start asking: Was that ADHD? Was all of it?
Here’s what I would say to you now — and what I had to learn myself:
Even if you discover late in life that you have a superpower… you still have a superpower.
The question isn’t “why me?”The question is “what now?”
For me, “what now” meant shifting from being a consumer to being a producer. ADHD brains are wired to build, to explore, to create, to move. When we drift into passive consumption — endless scrolling, algorithmic magnetism, numbing out — we suffer. When we make, build, write, design, solve… we light up.
That realization set me down the path I’m on now — building a speaking practice focused on helping others with ADHD find their productive selves. Not by denying the downsides. Not by romanticizing it. But by tethering it correctly.
I’ve always been uncomfortable with the idea that ADHD is purely a disability. Has it cost me? Yes. Has it complicated things? Absolutely. But it has also fueled every meaningful thing I’ve built.
Push the chips in.
Build something.
Be a producer.
That’s where the joy is.
🎙️ Grateful to Julie Legg and ADHDifference for the conversation that changed my trajectory.
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