As an anecdote, some of the brightest founders I’ve met, and have had the pleasure of working with - would certainly fall into this category.
Some of these folks have expressed their challenges in functioning optimally in traditional structured 9-to-5’s, open-office environments and the like. Perhaps they are motivated by creating an environment that works for them, rather than being a product of a one-size-fits-all approach.
We need to embrace neurodiversity, not stigmatize it.
“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.“
Getting diagnosed and therefore getting labeled probably has advantages for the people that get a diagnosis. It will likely provide them with (medical/psychological) support that will make their lives a little easier. I don't know why you think there is no need for this?
Because to people who are neuro typical, these terms suggest that other people are just making things up to not seem stupid, incompetent or lazy, unfortunately.
They allow people qualified to diagnose the condition to identify those of us who have a pervasive developmental disorder with well known brain correlates that give rise to our behavior that appears as lazy, selfish, forgetful and stubborn.
If anyone wants to tell me "nah man, you're just a bad person" I'll tell em right back "Nah man, you're just an ignorant cunt."
Normally when you meet such people they are explicitly trying to reject the label based on a single data point and a piss poor understanding of the condition. It usually goes something like "But you can't have ADHD because you're a successful software engineer, so you must be able to focus right?".
Sorry, but yes, yes I can and if you want to try and comment on whether I do or do not have ADHD then you'll have to go through the full diagnostic assessment and that first entails getting board certified and then gaining significant clinical experience with ADHD or being under the supervision of someone who does.
I agree with you here, but this raises an honest question: for all practical purposes, what is the actual difference between "being neuro atypical" and "being stupid, incompetent or lazy"?
Wow, that's not very nice to read as someone neurodivergent (in my case Autism). I'll use ND further on since it's pretty long to re-read.
ND people are all very different, with their own strengths and needs. A lot of it can be environment based, autistic people struggle very commonly with environmental overstimulation.
Moving from an open place office to my own living room seems to have freed up about 30 IQ points previously dedicated to constantly scanning a busy room for threats, I'm suddenly more productive. My neurodivergency did not change, if I appeared incompetant before I suddenly appear far more competant now.
For all practical purposes, what's the difference between "pain fatigue" and being stupid? "dyslexia" and incompetance? "receiving chemo" and laziness?
My apologies, but I was not trying to imply what you seem to have read. My point was -- how do we define any of these things? Neurodivergency is a scientific term, and it ios reasonably well defined -- but the other set of terms ("lazy", "stupid" etc) are labels that have been used to generalise some, for lack of better term, "traits" perceived -- by some people, in some historic periods -- as undesirable.
Or to put it another way: neurodiversity is a real thing; "laziness" and "stupidity" probably isn't.
The problem with diagnostic labels such as ADHD is the science behind them is rather weak. For example, [1] concludes that the distinction between ASD, ADHD and OCD is not biologically valid–in other words, it is not an accurate distinction in terms of what is actually going on in the brain. (And that's just one paper, I can share plenty more that reach similar conclusions.)
No denying that many people have found diagnostic labels to be very helpful in practice. Gatekeepers make services/support/treatment dependent on receiving a diagnosis (or even a particular diagnosis – some labels get you more help than others – in particular, ASD generally gets much more resources than ADHD, creating pressures for people with ADHD to be diagnosed as having ASD as well in order to get better services [2]) However, they shouldn't do that – people should get services based on their actual need (severity of symptoms, level of dysfunction, etc) not on whether and which diagnostic labels they've been assigned. Limiting services based on diagnostic labels is actually discrimination by diagnosis [3], and surely we can all agree that discrimination is wrong?
Anyway, the fact that people get these kinds of benefits from diagnosis is a social/cultural/political fact, not a scientific one. It is a set of facts about the configuration of mental health systems, insurance systems, education systems, government disability funding, etc – and all those facts are ultimately rooted in policy decisions, and policy is determined by politics, and politics is part of culture. Some critics argue that the entire DSM-5 diagnostic system as a whole is more a product of society/culture/politics than of actual science [4].
>We need to embrace neurodiversity, not stigmatize it
I probably have ADHD as I've been told by everyone since 5th grade.
I feel normal and function fine. I have an engineering degree and IMO perform better than most.
I'm pretty anti medication ever since I got addicted to caffeine. Since then productivity plummeted when I wasn't on caffeine. On a similar note, I found myself addicted to weed because it made me extremely productive and I was using that after work. (I'm off everything, and not very productive)
My point is, drugs should be the last resort. Once you start them it's nearly impossible to go back. It seems this is the first step with every Physician.
They are highly effective, fairly cheap, and usually well tolerated. I'm not saying that a few years of learning coping mechanisms won't help, but as you've experienced... Without the executive function to put it in practice, or the memory to compare, it's rough going.
Since I'm aware of the fact there is such a thing as starting everyday at 9 and ending at 5 I know this would be horrible for me. Founding is definitely a thing, but it's okay'ish when there are flexible working hours and flexibility in the planning.
> We need to embrace neurodiversity, not stigmatize it.
At the moment I kind of see a reverse trend. I think 10 years ago tech was much more open to differently thinking people, almost requiring it. To me it seems right now that many companies look for teams that work like everybody else
this is a fundamental misunderstanding of how ADHD affects adults and what amphetamines do. Amphetamines (in appropriate doses) do not make you impulsive and hyper, at least not if you have adhd. They make you focused and better at finishing what you start. Little miracle pills.
This is true, and the same is true of other stimulants in ADHD sufferers. For example, it ticks a box in ADHD diagnosis if a patient reports having had a paradoxical reaction to cocaine (drowsiness, focus, a feeling of quietness), because although the pharmacology is, to say the least, not as precise when compared to e.g. lisdexamfetamine, the impact is the same: both block the reuptake of dopamine in the brain.
I have no misunderstanding about ADHD. The article is not about ADHD. Its about what they term ADHD-like behaviour, like sleeplessness, hyperactivity, etc. Things stimulants definitely induce in "normal" adults. Especially cocaine.
> stims [...] provide even more impulsive tendencies
In people who suffer from ADHD, stimulants actually have the opposite effect, and are prescribed specifically to reduce the disregulation of executive function.
There is some preliminary evidence to suggest that poor sleep can be a significant factor in ADHD.[1]
Do you believe that the various intertwined chemical disregulations of confirmed ADHD diagnoses have no commonality with those who experience poor sleep? There seem to be a lot of studies indicating that poor sleep results in temporary decreases in dopamine receptor availability.[2]
Either way it seems like the authors should specify the control within both samples for confirmed ADHD diagnoses (can't find it if they disclosed it), and shift away from "ADHD-like" if they don't mean to draw an implicit comparison.
The research in question is of low quality. They use of the term ADHD is possibly as research SEO, and to cover-up the fact that they are not measuring a well defined phenomenon, but some self-reported answerers about sleep quality.
I have no interest in discussing ADHD here, and I don't understand why you bring it up.
1. Low quality research paper draws euphemistic link between sleep issues and ADHD which are common bedfellows,
2. Authors either ignorant of the fact that sleep disruption is commonly interlinked with conclusive ADHD diagnoses, or deliberately attempting to get clicks (and very probably both IMO),
2. Study concludes, like many others, that sleep is a contributing factor to some of the the neurological precursors to ADHD (i.e. some "ADHD-like symptoms" and "ADHD" are due to the same dopamine disregulation, even if one is a naturally occurring issue in an ADHD sufferer whilst the other is directly caused by sleep disruption in the aforelinked study)
3. You said: "So what about stims like amphetamine or cocaine? They provide even more impulsive tendencies and hyperactivity than a bad nights sleep." I understood this to mean that you could proceed to take stimulants after a bad night's sleep to heighten the impact on your ability as an entrepreneur, but I see from your confusion at my reply that it's possible you meant something closer to "If you want to be a better entrepreneur in line with the outcomes of this bullshit study, don't bother depriving yourself of sleep, just take stimulants which also cause the same behaviours."
4. My point: given that we are talking about the same chemical disruption, it seems likely that just as ADHD-sufferers experience paradoxical effects from stimulants, the impact of stims you are proposing would be ineffectual in heightening the behaviours of people who are sleep-deprived, and is more likely to have the typical paradoxical effect.
Thanks for the feedback! You come across as being upset about something, but it's not clear why.
> instead of replying to other's and pound some tangentially related point that you see [sic]
I'm trying to be kind by explaining this to you because as you said, "I don't understand," and it doesn't feel like you've read what I said to you in the previous post. The starting point I used was that I had been unclear and needed to consider other interpretations of your comment given your confusion. Maybe you could extend me that same courtesy and think about ways in which you might be misunderstanding!
I'll simplify things again to see if that helps you out. It must be really confusing for you if you think that I'm replying to you with a comment which could be added to the top post instead of something which is only conceivable as a reply to you.
1. It is established that sleep dysfunctions cause short term dopamine disregulation and other imbalances,
2. This study links (spuriously) those imbalances and their associated behaviours to an increased desire for starting one's own business,
3. You commented referencing cocaine and other stimulants in a manner which was suggestive to me of a belief that they could heighten the imbalances referred to at 1 and 2,
4. I commented to observe that in individuals suffering from such imbalances, stimulants are often prescribed because of the paradoxical impact that they alleviate the symptoms by treating the imbalance.
> It's just not really related to my comment.
You are the only person in this thread discussing the impact of ingesting stimulants to either cause or extend the behaviours which the article discusses.
Agreed. Seems very likely to perpetuate the myth of ADHD sufferers as being gifted with neurological superpowers when actually the "ADHD-like" symptoms they describe are debilitating for many.
The premise is just warped from the start. "Hey kids, impaired executive function may make you more likely to succeed in life."
I mean... what?
Starting a company (or three) because your impulse control is shot is statistically more likely to financially ruin you than it is to make you succeed. Not to mention how useful properly functioning executive function is in actually running a company that has a chance of succeeding. Take it from me...
That point is what really gets me going. This experiment is badly designed from the start. Experiment 1 is especially useless, as it tries to correlate answers that people gave while being sleep deprived to their general sleep patterns and assumes that the outcome is the same. What?
What does ADHD have to do with sleep deprivation?!??
Why are we conflating poor sleep habits with ADHD unless someone is abusing ADHD medication and not getting enough sleep? Why do I let poorly written articles bother me so much?
Poor sleep is not just caused by poor sleep habits. Sleep apnea, as an example, is a disability that causes poor sleep and often goes undiagnosed. ADHD is not a disability per se, it is classified by the symptoms and is not classified by any underlying cause.
A lot of people in the comments appear to have a misunderstanding of ADHD and sleep disorders. It is possible to have both conditions simultaneously, and likely very common. ADHD is a condition defined by a sustained period of symptoms, not underlying causes or biological tests. It is 100% consistent for someone to have ADHD in one environment and not in another. This is how it is viewed in psychiatry. If you spend many years as an accountant focusing on detailed work in your job, but you can’t focus to complete your work, you may be diagnosed with ADHD and treated with medicine. If you then change careers to be an artist in a creative field, but face no dysfunction or difficulty in completing your work, you would no longer be diagnosed. The same applies to having a sleep disorder and then getting it treated. Though it is not clear if sleep disorders in childhood cause irreversible changes to the brain.
Just to be clear, your diagnosis may change, but you’re not any less ADHD (assuming you actually were in the first place). ADHD is a product of the brain developing in a different way. It’s not contextual, even if it’s most obvious symptoms might be.
>Just to be clear, your diagnosis may change, but you’re not any less ADHD (assuming you actually were in the first place). ADHD is a product of the brain developing in a different way. It’s not contextual, even if it’s most obvious symptoms might be.
My son had fairly extensive two day evaluation for ADHD. The test itself was not even close to finding out how things worked in everyday life. It was activities and exercises designed to understand how his brain worked. It was super-enlightening to me to get an idea of what challenges he was facing. Simply having the evaluation and having the results shown and explained did wonders for our ability to support him in school and beyond.
In any cases, this is a really long-winded way to agree with you. It's about how your brain works, not about functioning in life situations. That said, some situations will make it more or less apparent that your brain works in a certain way.
Check out Dr. Barkley’s 30 essential ideas for ADHD parents, and know that either you or your spouse are also ADHD, even if you’ve long since learned to cope and overcome.
Absolutely. Going through the process made it clear to my wife that she'd been coping with ADHD for a long time. It also made me realize that I was outnumbered. ;)
I’m sure there is disagreement among some doctors over this, but ADHD in the current medical literature is not defined by brain function, it is defined by sustained dysfunction in life situations.
The brain forms differently in ADHD individuals. Certain regions have slower or stunted growth. If you’d like to know more, it’s explained in the beginning of this lecture: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SCAGc-rkIfo
A key factor in ADHD diagnosis is symptoms appearing in multiple areas of life.
I am a tech consultant and I also play the piano. My ADHD makes it hard for me to do both, one a hobby I love, another work I do to pay the bills - the idea that you posit makes it seem like a motivation thing but that is hardly the case with ADHD.
I have ADHD (and chronic sleep issues) that were undiagnosed until I was in my early 20's.
With a less than stellar childhood under my belt with an abusive, narcissistic father and enabling mother, I ended up being a social recluse and only recently in my mid 20's have I figured out that I'm severely lacking in my "executive functioning" skills (along with other ideal skills like social skills, people skills, etc.) thanks to finally seeing a psychiatrist about it... (5 years seeing them on and off and I'm still working through my issues - for those with problems, please stick with your mental health care, it helps a lot even if it doesn't seem like it most times)
It's insurmountably hard to dig out of the hole I've dug with numerous issues (ADHD, anxiety, depression, chronic issues with restful sleep since a young age - not helped by my obesity and my apparent "ability" to convince myself not to exercise even though I think about doing it - and get angry when I don't do it
- fairly often)
I guess I can congratulate myself that I was able to make it through college and have a full-time job in Engineering making somewhat decent money.
I get angry at myself pretty much almost daily for the things that I've failed to do, awkward situations I've been in, things I regret doing or not doing... It's taken (and is still taking) a very big toll on my mental health and I don't think any medication will help me with that. It gets to the point where I'm so frustrated, I'll make angry "noises" out loud (when alone - that's weird to do publicly) in a way to try and help get what's bugging me out because I can't talk to anybody around me about it.
Now, with that MASSIVE tangent - I can see the paper making sense in that ADHD will allow people to take more "risks" without thinking of the consequences too much, which could be interpreted as "entrepreneurial", however I think it's just renaming/re-badging something that should be addressed and corrected/adjusted, not celebrated...
Nonsense. We need to create a society that allows people outside the narrow band of “can sit focused on a narrow set of tasks” for 8 hours to have successful. Careers. Create space for the risk takers to take risks.
ADHD makes normal life/jobs/college harder, which leaves entrepreneurship as a viable option. It might be less chosen and more that you don't fit as well into regular societal work expectations. That was my case. Worked out well for me, but when I failed grade 12 and then failed out of college it didn't seem great at the time.
I have seen this pattern in the vast majority of successful entrepreneurs I know personally. Fail at school, fired at work, fail, fail, fail, something works, focus, convince everybody that they are actually a genius, tres commas. Prior to success, they have seemed indistinguishable from the many others that ended up just plain failing and going nowhere.
Personally I was a reformable failure in that I once had ‘entrepreneur’ potential but succumbed to just enough conscientiousness to chase a traditional career path from behind.
Maybe there is hope that someday I will screw up badly enough in the traditional path to force myself into doing something great.
52 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 116 ms ] threadSome of these folks have expressed their challenges in functioning optimally in traditional structured 9-to-5’s, open-office environments and the like. Perhaps they are motivated by creating an environment that works for them, rather than being a product of a one-size-fits-all approach.
We need to embrace neurodiversity, not stigmatize it.
“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.“
Or stop needlessly labeling things
They allow people qualified to diagnose the condition to identify those of us who have a pervasive developmental disorder with well known brain correlates that give rise to our behavior that appears as lazy, selfish, forgetful and stubborn.
If anyone wants to tell me "nah man, you're just a bad person" I'll tell em right back "Nah man, you're just an ignorant cunt."
Normally when you meet such people they are explicitly trying to reject the label based on a single data point and a piss poor understanding of the condition. It usually goes something like "But you can't have ADHD because you're a successful software engineer, so you must be able to focus right?".
Sorry, but yes, yes I can and if you want to try and comment on whether I do or do not have ADHD then you'll have to go through the full diagnostic assessment and that first entails getting board certified and then gaining significant clinical experience with ADHD or being under the supervision of someone who does.
ND people are all very different, with their own strengths and needs. A lot of it can be environment based, autistic people struggle very commonly with environmental overstimulation.
Moving from an open place office to my own living room seems to have freed up about 30 IQ points previously dedicated to constantly scanning a busy room for threats, I'm suddenly more productive. My neurodivergency did not change, if I appeared incompetant before I suddenly appear far more competant now.
For all practical purposes, what's the difference between "pain fatigue" and being stupid? "dyslexia" and incompetance? "receiving chemo" and laziness?
Or to put it another way: neurodiversity is a real thing; "laziness" and "stupidity" probably isn't.
No denying that many people have found diagnostic labels to be very helpful in practice. Gatekeepers make services/support/treatment dependent on receiving a diagnosis (or even a particular diagnosis – some labels get you more help than others – in particular, ASD generally gets much more resources than ADHD, creating pressures for people with ADHD to be diagnosed as having ASD as well in order to get better services [2]) However, they shouldn't do that – people should get services based on their actual need (severity of symptoms, level of dysfunction, etc) not on whether and which diagnostic labels they've been assigned. Limiting services based on diagnostic labels is actually discrimination by diagnosis [3], and surely we can all agree that discrimination is wrong?
Anyway, the fact that people get these kinds of benefits from diagnosis is a social/cultural/political fact, not a scientific one. It is a set of facts about the configuration of mental health systems, insurance systems, education systems, government disability funding, etc – and all those facts are ultimately rooted in policy decisions, and policy is determined by politics, and politics is part of culture. Some critics argue that the entire DSM-5 diagnostic system as a whole is more a product of society/culture/politics than of actual science [4].
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-019-0631-2
[2] https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/health-and-wellness/the-phr...
[3] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1440-1754....
[4] https://cepuk.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Diagnostic-syst...
I probably have ADHD as I've been told by everyone since 5th grade.
I feel normal and function fine. I have an engineering degree and IMO perform better than most.
I'm pretty anti medication ever since I got addicted to caffeine. Since then productivity plummeted when I wasn't on caffeine. On a similar note, I found myself addicted to weed because it made me extremely productive and I was using that after work. (I'm off everything, and not very productive)
My point is, drugs should be the last resort. Once you start them it's nearly impossible to go back. It seems this is the first step with every Physician.
The disorder part comes from it interfering with your life. If your life is fine, you don't have it.
This is like everyone claiming "Oh I probably have OCD, I like having my furniture align".
This is ok. Having a dependence on a drug is not a bad thing and should not be considered as such.
> We need to embrace neurodiversity, not stigmatize it.
At the moment I kind of see a reverse trend. I think 10 years ago tech was much more open to differently thinking people, almost requiring it. To me it seems right now that many companies look for teams that work like everybody else
To be honest its sound to me like they are getting the effect backwards.
In people who suffer from ADHD, stimulants actually have the opposite effect, and are prescribed specifically to reduce the disregulation of executive function.
Do you believe that the various intertwined chemical disregulations of confirmed ADHD diagnoses have no commonality with those who experience poor sleep? There seem to be a lot of studies indicating that poor sleep results in temporary decreases in dopamine receptor availability.[2]
Either way it seems like the authors should specify the control within both samples for confirmed ADHD diagnoses (can't find it if they disclosed it), and shift away from "ADHD-like" if they don't mean to draw an implicit comparison.
[1] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:7MuIr-...
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3433285/
I have no interest in discussing ADHD here, and I don't understand why you bring it up.
2. Authors either ignorant of the fact that sleep disruption is commonly interlinked with conclusive ADHD diagnoses, or deliberately attempting to get clicks (and very probably both IMO),
2. Study concludes, like many others, that sleep is a contributing factor to some of the the neurological precursors to ADHD (i.e. some "ADHD-like symptoms" and "ADHD" are due to the same dopamine disregulation, even if one is a naturally occurring issue in an ADHD sufferer whilst the other is directly caused by sleep disruption in the aforelinked study)
3. You said: "So what about stims like amphetamine or cocaine? They provide even more impulsive tendencies and hyperactivity than a bad nights sleep." I understood this to mean that you could proceed to take stimulants after a bad night's sleep to heighten the impact on your ability as an entrepreneur, but I see from your confusion at my reply that it's possible you meant something closer to "If you want to be a better entrepreneur in line with the outcomes of this bullshit study, don't bother depriving yourself of sleep, just take stimulants which also cause the same behaviours."
4. My point: given that we are talking about the same chemical disruption, it seems likely that just as ADHD-sufferers experience paradoxical effects from stimulants, the impact of stims you are proposing would be ineffectual in heightening the behaviours of people who are sleep-deprived, and is more likely to have the typical paradoxical effect.
You clearly have something to say. It's just not really related to my comment.
> instead of replying to other's and pound some tangentially related point that you see [sic]
I'm trying to be kind by explaining this to you because as you said, "I don't understand," and it doesn't feel like you've read what I said to you in the previous post. The starting point I used was that I had been unclear and needed to consider other interpretations of your comment given your confusion. Maybe you could extend me that same courtesy and think about ways in which you might be misunderstanding!
I'll simplify things again to see if that helps you out. It must be really confusing for you if you think that I'm replying to you with a comment which could be added to the top post instead of something which is only conceivable as a reply to you.
1. It is established that sleep dysfunctions cause short term dopamine disregulation and other imbalances,
2. This study links (spuriously) those imbalances and their associated behaviours to an increased desire for starting one's own business,
3. You commented referencing cocaine and other stimulants in a manner which was suggestive to me of a belief that they could heighten the imbalances referred to at 1 and 2,
4. I commented to observe that in individuals suffering from such imbalances, stimulants are often prescribed because of the paradoxical impact that they alleviate the symptoms by treating the imbalance.
> It's just not really related to my comment.
You are the only person in this thread discussing the impact of ingesting stimulants to either cause or extend the behaviours which the article discusses.
Hope this makes sense now! :)
It's actually reporting on a 2nd order effect sleep deprivation has via impaired executive function on impulsivity.
Should be titled 'Sleep deprivation may be linked to increased entreprenurial behavior'.
It reads like low-quality, hot garbage.
I mean... what?
Starting a company (or three) because your impulse control is shot is statistically more likely to financially ruin you than it is to make you succeed. Not to mention how useful properly functioning executive function is in actually running a company that has a chance of succeeding. Take it from me...
I think there is an overlap in the two personalities for sure
Here's what a 5 second Googling got - there's a ton more to it than that though.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5662391/#:~:tex....
And, just so you know, ADHD medicine (stimulants/amphetamines) actually helps people with ADHD sleep. Like, tremendously
I know you specifically said abuse - but I still think that'd worse mentioning.
P.S. - did you know methamphetamine is a prescription drug? (U.S )
My son had fairly extensive two day evaluation for ADHD. The test itself was not even close to finding out how things worked in everyday life. It was activities and exercises designed to understand how his brain worked. It was super-enlightening to me to get an idea of what challenges he was facing. Simply having the evaluation and having the results shown and explained did wonders for our ability to support him in school and beyond.
In any cases, this is a really long-winded way to agree with you. It's about how your brain works, not about functioning in life situations. That said, some situations will make it more or less apparent that your brain works in a certain way.
I am a tech consultant and I also play the piano. My ADHD makes it hard for me to do both, one a hobby I love, another work I do to pay the bills - the idea that you posit makes it seem like a motivation thing but that is hardly the case with ADHD.
With a less than stellar childhood under my belt with an abusive, narcissistic father and enabling mother, I ended up being a social recluse and only recently in my mid 20's have I figured out that I'm severely lacking in my "executive functioning" skills (along with other ideal skills like social skills, people skills, etc.) thanks to finally seeing a psychiatrist about it... (5 years seeing them on and off and I'm still working through my issues - for those with problems, please stick with your mental health care, it helps a lot even if it doesn't seem like it most times)
It's insurmountably hard to dig out of the hole I've dug with numerous issues (ADHD, anxiety, depression, chronic issues with restful sleep since a young age - not helped by my obesity and my apparent "ability" to convince myself not to exercise even though I think about doing it - and get angry when I don't do it - fairly often)
I guess I can congratulate myself that I was able to make it through college and have a full-time job in Engineering making somewhat decent money.
I get angry at myself pretty much almost daily for the things that I've failed to do, awkward situations I've been in, things I regret doing or not doing... It's taken (and is still taking) a very big toll on my mental health and I don't think any medication will help me with that. It gets to the point where I'm so frustrated, I'll make angry "noises" out loud (when alone - that's weird to do publicly) in a way to try and help get what's bugging me out because I can't talk to anybody around me about it.
Now, with that MASSIVE tangent - I can see the paper making sense in that ADHD will allow people to take more "risks" without thinking of the consequences too much, which could be interpreted as "entrepreneurial", however I think it's just renaming/re-badging something that should be addressed and corrected/adjusted, not celebrated...
Personally I was a reformable failure in that I once had ‘entrepreneur’ potential but succumbed to just enough conscientiousness to chase a traditional career path from behind.
Maybe there is hope that someday I will screw up badly enough in the traditional path to force myself into doing something great.