#ADD? This #iNote might help you and help others help you.
#ADD can be debilitating. It can also be a #Gift. There are some well-known very high-achieving ADD/ADHD entrepreneurs including Richard Branson, Bill Gates and Walt Disney. Richard Branson had no interest in anything academic. Still, once he was able to harness his #Talents and #Imagination in his own way, he began to build a phenomenal business empire.
#World #Experience (the setup)
This section of the article is merely for my #Diversity of #World #Experience and evaluation of your own #Understanding. If you are a close LinkedIn relationship, feel free to skip the next 3 paragraphs and go right to the purpose of the article.
I’ve spent the last 18 months digging deep into better #Understanding myself and better #Understanding the #world. Increasingly over my Global Executive career mostly starting by opening a major technology hub in Beijing, Xi’an and Shanghai, China in the 2009 timeframe, I’ve learned a lot about the #world. More recently, I’ve traveled the world around more than 3x this past 12 months, visiting #Cultures of #Thailand, #France, #Japan, #London, #Turkey, and the #Continents of #Asia and #Europe and of course #USA, where I was born and raised. This isn’t my first #Experience traveling, either. This has been my #Life since #Birth. #Travel
In my career, I’ve started and sold 6 #Technology Companies and invested in many others as an Investor and Board Member. I’ve run #Global #eCommerce businesses for Razorfish/Publicis and IBM (and started my career at Procter & Gamble when I graduated from Purdue with a Mechanical Engineering degree). More recently, I sit on 3 PortCo Board seats for PSG Equity (a mid-market Software / SaaS Fund) in the Private Equity Space (Yottaa, Stylitics, AppHubb), have several current startups that capture my #Focus including Bambu Capital, a Private Equity firm.
Bambu Wallet is also being brought to life with a former first time Technology Startup partner of mine, Dylan Runne who founded Fenom Digital, and Kyle Pretsch (former Executive at a recent IPO, Leslies Pools and Fenom Digital’s first client in 2019). Fenom Digital went from birth to exit in 4 short years and is now integrated into Wunderdan Thompson, a leading Global Digital Agency in the family the largest Agency in the world, WPP, HQ in London, England. Fenom Digital exited in a high profile deal as a darling 2022 Technology acquisition (note: my last digital Agency startup, Crown, was also sold in 2014 to the largest Agency in the world at the time, Razorfish/Publicis HQ in Paris, France.
#Helping #ADD (the transition)
I was texting with Dylan Runne (current Fenom Digital / WPP-Wunderman Thompson USA CRO) a few days ago while he was working our F1 US Powerboat team and he started asking me about my increasing usage of #Hastags in our texts and emails. It came to me this week, while watching AlphaGo on Youtube talking about Google and DeepMind that our exchange could help other people with ADD and even help other people understand those of us who have ADD (Dylan, Richard, Apple’s own Steve Jobs and many many more).
It’s a brief exchange, but hopefully enlightening. Hope you enjoy.
Dylan & Richard Text Thread (the conversation)
Me: Hey. Wenjie and I are talking about ADHD and really working to understand it. Don’t go do anything but something for us connect on in the next couple months is Dopamine levels. Long term it isn’t good to manage it with illicit or prescription (Paxil) drugs (reader note: not suggesting anybody is doing this). And there are even brain implants. Nonetheless. Keep this for a future dig deeper. (#). And consider Paxil in very small doses. More later.
Dylan: Should definitely chat on that. I haven’t taken adderall in a long time, but still struggle with focus sometimes.
Me: I believe it’s what I’m unwinding. I don’t take adderall either anymore (shortly after meeting Wenjie). As a quick start, create the following iNotes and Pin them.
Dylan:
(Off subject. Such are text threads!)
Me:
#QuickNotes, #Mental #Health, #Thoughts, #Connect, #Reconnect, #Diary, #Book, #Life, #B (mine is #Wenjie), #Mom, #Dad, #Learning, #Movies, #Art, #Business
Me: Use them to capture any thought you might ever want to follow up on. Just put a bulleted note down. If you don’t know where to put a thought, put it in #Quicknote and follow back up on it later. #QuickNote is your ADD capture. I look at #QuickNote all the time. Probably 20x a day. It sparks my thoughts. When I learn how to categorize the thought, it goes in the other # Pinned iNotes.
Dylan: I like it ❤️
Me: Unpinned notes just free-flow “below the line” if you will. They can be pinned and unpinned at any time. These notes might be #FenomVentures, #FenomDigital, #WPP, #CRO, etc. i have unpinned (free floating) notes like #Dylan, #AppHub, #Malta, #2023Christmas, #Yottaa, #Susan, etc. they just sit and flow up and down in my iNotes as I search for my # and update them. Every meeting has an iNote and a # to connect them all together. This is when I started to get #’s and Twitter.
Me: Now, birthing is a part of my everyday thoughts, ideas, activities, actions. I interrupt conversations person to person a lot and say, “hold on, I’m taking a quick note” and pop something into #QuickNotes to just capture it and let it go. That way Incan (reader note: misspelling noted, but left for text fidelity) return to the person and keep being in the #Moment with them. I am able to keep #Focused on them that way and therefore really engage deeply with them. Weirdly, interrupting is actually helping me #Engage.
Me: I do this over and over, day in and day out. And, I get really good at it. Things start organizing for me in my head and digitally. And the #Stress falls away from my body. Slowly at first, then rapidly. It’s changed my life.
Me (❤️ by Dylan): Maybe I’ll write a blog about this to help all ADD people. And to help all people to work with and # Understand #ADD.
Me: My #ADHD is an entirely different thing. I haven’t even begun to start digging into #ADHD or #Hyperactivity
Dylan: I live and die on lists, but it’s not organized, I like this
So What??? (the punchline)
I find that following this process significantly de-stresses me and allows me to go on with my daily #Life much more in the #Present. Apple has included the #Idea of a Note Pin. Involving this also helps to keep certain notes Present and at the top. I even use other #Hashtags at the top to keep me #Mindful of the note’s purpose. Sort of like the Hashtags under the image above at the top of this article. These # are like Clues for my Brain to connect certain #Neurons it my Neural Network. It feels like I’m re-wiring my Brain. I feel confident Apple has studied this in depth. This is worth me looking into more, later.
There is so much more to expound upon here. My thoughts run to additional #Learnings and other ways this can #Help others. I #Think I need to upgrade my computer because the RAM and CPU are too slow now for iNotes to process my most #Hastags ridden notes. I type and the computer catches up 1 minute later. #Cool and scary at the same time. The neural network of #Hastags on my own laptop is already outpaced by my 1 year old laptop, that at the time, was the most poweful laptop of its kind. I can’t wait until my new M3 chip Apple MacBook Pro arrives next week, the most powerful laptop on the market for Apple. Or, maybe it’s the #Cloud needing more #ComputingPower to catch up (#NVDA). I do notice that sometimes I go back into a #Note and it’s faster the next day or next week. My most complex # #Notes are still very slow though. Laptop or Cloud? I’m not sure.
Yes, this Note was written by following this exact #Process. If you got this far, it might work for you also. Happy #Hashtaging! For those of you already ahead of us ADD’ers, we’ll catch up. ;)
I write my own LinkedIn articles. #Authentic
#Richard Hearn (Linkedin) // Richard Hearn (Blog)