What This Episode Is About

If your brain generates ideas faster than you can execute them, this conversation will make you feel seen. Sarah runs five businesses and has developed a systematic approach to managing what I call the "burden of creativity"—that relentless flow of inspiration that can fuel or derail you, depending on how you work with it.

This isn't about picking one lane or shutting down your creative engine. It's about building frameworks that let you honor your ideas without drowning in them.

Who This Episode Is For

1. Founders juggling multiple business ideas or revenue streams
2. Creatives who struggle with follow-through despite abundant inspiration
3. Consultants and coaches who feel scattered across too many offers
4. Anyone who's been shamed for having "too many interests."
5. Serial entrepreneurs who want to build interconnected businesses without burning out

The Big Idea

Having an ADHD brain means you're wired for abundant creativity. The challenge isn't generating ideas—it's knowing which ones deserve your energy and how to move them from concept to completion without burning out or abandoning ship halfway through.

Sarah's approach: treat your ideas like they matter, but give them structure so they don't hijack your focus.

What to Listen For

The Reality of Being a Creative Polymath

For many ADHD entrepreneurs, being interested in multiple things isn't a distraction —it's how they’re built. Sarah explains why being a polymath is actually an advantage in today's business landscape, as long as you set boundaries around what gets your attention.

The "Catching Butterflies" System: Capture, Connect, Structure, Iterate, Express, Reflect

Sarah walks through her six-stage process for managing creative output. It starts with capturing every idea without judgment, then moves through connecting related concepts, building structure around the keepers, iterating on them, expressing them in the world, and reflecting on what worked. Simple in concept, powerful in practice.

Using AI as Your Digital Thought Partner

Both Sarah and I use AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude) to externalize our thinking. Instead of letting ideas swirl in our heads, we dump them into our AI assistants to help us organize, connect dots, and build project folders. It's like having a patient colleague who never gets tired of your tangents.

The 3D Jenga Model for Interconnected Projects

Rather than treating each business or project as a standalone tower that could topple, Sarah visualizes her work as a 3D Jenga structure. Each piece supports the others. When one idea doesn't work out, the whole thing doesn't collapse—the remaining pieces actually get stronger.

Energy Management Over Time Management

Reflection isn't self-indulgence—it's how you build a feedback loop that keeps you moving forward. Regular check-ins about how you feel, what your vision is, and whether your projects still serve that vision help you stay aligned instead of spinning your wheels.

Why This Matters

If you've ever been told you're "too much," or felt guilty about having too many interests, this episode offers permission to work with your brain, instead of trying to conform to any norms. You'll walk away with practical strategies for managing creative chaos and the confidence that being a polymath entrepreneur isn't a problem to fix—it's a creative operating system that needs the right infrastructure.

Connect With Our Guest, Sarah Dowd

Sarah Dowd is a cultural strategist and creative entrepreneur with 25+ years of experience transforming heritage and culture into immersive, inclusive experiences and developing cultural organizations.

She is the founder of The Tricolor Collective – a £1m-turnover agency behind pioneering initiatives such as the UK’s first social-impact heritage disposals program– as well as Les Raconteurs and Heritage, Culture & Crafts for All.

Navigating a late ADHD diagnosis, Sarah champions neurodiverse leadership, proving that creativity, joy, and disruption are powerful tools for lasting change.

Sarah’s Substack on Chasing Butterflies: https://substack.com/inbox/post/177719859?r=pzapf&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

Sarah’s website - Podcast - Instagram - LinkedIn

"I believe the key to happiness is someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to."

-Elvis Presley

How do YOU capture your creative ideas and see them through to the finish line? I’d love to hear from you!

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© 2025 ADHD-ish Podcast. Intro music by Ishan Dincer / Melody Loops / Outro music by Vladimir / Bobi Music / All rights reserved.

H: Sarah, one of my favorite subjects is the burden of creativity. And you know what I'm talking about. When your brain just generates so many creative ideas that figuring out which ones you're going to develop and how to stay interested and how to stay motivated and how to stay focused and consistent so that beautiful idea has a chance to make it all the way to the finish line and into the world. And that's one of the things I want to talk to you about today because you know how to do that, don't you?

G: I like to think that I do, it's proving pretty, pretty successful so far. I've got five separate businesses, and they're all in different states of play. But I think I've got some really useful tools and tips that have helped my brain certainly over time, and they've developed over time that I think other people could use as well.

H: That'd be fabulous. And you also have a unique perspective on being the owner of a brain like this. Like, we both know we have ADHD, but you have specific beliefs about why entrepreneurs tend to be not only creative people, but people who I guess we could think of as polymaths, right?

G: Absolutely. So for anybody who doesn't know what polymathory is, essentially a polymath is someone in traditional senses it's someone who has a breadth of knowledge, but also a depth of knowledge. And they will refer to polymaths as, like, Einstein or Beethoven or, you know, people in history, notably men. We can talk about that, trust m women are polymaths as well. If you need anything done, ask a busy woman that's, you know, the old adage, isn't it? And polymathory is this idea that we can develop a depth of skill, knowledge, experience in not just one thing.

So you can be an exceptional accountant, but you can also be an amazing vocal coach or musician and they do tend to like to compare math and music and things like that. But I believe that being an entrepreneur means you have to be a polymath as well and that's because we have to. Especially when you're starting out, you need to know how to do your marketing. You need to know how to think about a creative process. You have to think about, are you developing a product or a service, and you have to know it all. And, you know, we don't always get the depth of knowledge in all of those areas, and sometimes we reach out to other colleagues to help us with that.

But by and large, we are polymaths and I think people, and particularly entrepreneurs with ADHD have that natural ability to be polymath in a way that other people might find particularly overwhelming. And what I'm hoping for is that, you know, I can share sort of how I develop my way of thinking creatively and that creative process to help A help other entrepreneurs, but also, you know, to show how having a process to think about the longer term vision for things can actually give you a framework for helping to organize your creative thoughts, to birth them, as I say. But also to work through which ones you need to leave in a basket and float down the river and others that you need to actually say, I'm staying with this one and how do I keep coming back to it.

How do I keep sense checking it that it's right and not lose it in this amazing way of creative thinking. And yeah, I'm really happy with how this process, which I call the Capture, Connect, Structure, Iterate, Express and Reflect process, I haven't come up with a snappy title for it yet, but I'm really happy to try. But how that process helps me think about the longer term vision, the breadth of things I need to think about, and then gives me a real iterative methodology for coming back to it and refining, reflecting, diverting, et cetera, without losing some of those beautiful things that our beautiful brains.

H: This is so, so valuable for brains like ours, Sarah, because I remember the first time I said to somebody, you know, it's really a burden to have so many brilliant ideas. Now that may sound like an arrogant statement or even a humble brag or like I'm fishing for compliments, but in truth, if you are a creative person with ADHD, you are probably generating more ideas. Not all of them are brilliant, but more ideas than you could ever hope to implement. And when they're all crowding for your attention, it's really hard to know which ones are really deserving of your time and talent, which ones you're not going to lose interest in long before it gets fully developed, which ones are going to sustain your passion through the midst of all kinds of distractions and which ones are actually going to bring value to be some sort of contribution and not just an indulgence that takes up your time and your energy and maybe some of your money.

So I think there's a real need for this. And when you have a process that you've tested and as you said, you own and have run multiple creative businesses, you don't have to use up so much of your executive functioning, making the decisions as though every creative idea is auditioning for a part and you're starting from scratch. So let's break it down and you also have another name for this. You have it doesn't work well for an easy acronym. But you, I think the first time you mentioned it to me, you referred to it as capturing butterflies and I said, oh, that's how I think about hanging onto my ideas too.

G: Yeah, exactly. It's like a butterfly net and that I sort of drag around with me. And I've sort of created different sort of versions throughout my life. Starting off with talking to myself, I've always talked to myself ever since I was a kid. And that's been my way of getting ideas out, almost scenario testing them and then going, right, that's the way I want that to go. And sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. And then over time it's allowed me to, as technology has gained traction. You know, I've gone from talking, just talking to myself to making notes. I leave little notes in my, I used to leave little notes in my wallet now it's all on my phone.

And I know so many people, you know, open their notes app on their iPhone and it's like all the way through and just trying to go, how do I even get through this is difficult. And now with AI, it's actually given me someone to talk. Say someone, something, someone, however you want to look at it, to talk to at the time when my brain is seeking its dopamine. And also I'm not going to be annoying relations, friends, colleagues. I say, do you want to talk about this now and they're going to go, no, I do not want to talk about this now as well. So it's essentially my process is a designed human centered design approach, essentially to capturing all of this, these ideas which we have loads of.

And I should say that I started to be cognizant of making this a framework probably about 10 years ago when I was getting more and more frustrated. And this is before I had even any concept that I may have ADHD. But I was getting more and more frustrated by people saying, oh my God, enough with the ideas. Can we focus in on these things and it started to become like a negative that actually because I had all these ideas, people assumed that I couldn't deliver on them and I'm like, whoa, man, I could totally deliver on these.

H: You're like shall I, accepted.

G:Yeah. So I kind of had to go, right, I do this naturally. How can I turn this to something that is replicable. How can I turn this into something that my team can use, my clients can use? You know, my businesses are consultancy businesses, a podcast as well as a variety of other creative endeavors. But it was all about how do we come up with solutions to problems that often people cannot articulate. And it all comes from that okay, we need to start with A capturing the ideas, but only after we have empathized and really gotten down to what is the root of the problem that we're facing.

And that's something that you can do internally or, you know, as I do with my clients, something that we do externally. So I went through a qualification and change management. I highly recommend it if anyone's not done it, for me that really helped me to even though we weren't talking about neurodiversity at the time, there is a lot of work in terms of neurochemical behavior and change that they're doing a lot of research over. And that really started to bring things together for me. So is now a good time for me to sort of talk through the steps in the process or you want to me go more.

H: I think we should get into that but I wanted, if you wouldn't mind, I wanted to circle back to something you said a couple of minutes ago because I share with you the talking to myself. I share with you the abundance of ideas. And the only thing I like more than having an abundance ideas of share is sharing them with others, but getting the feedback that enough with the ideas, like being told, you know what, you have wasted more good ideas than most people could ever hope to have. So I really don't want to hear another one that you're not going to do anything with okay. So that I was like, literally I wanted to come back screaming to that, but I didn't because it was true.

This was a number of years ago and I really felt convicted. Like it's a gift to have so many ideas, but if in fact you don't know how to channel them, if you don't know how to like bring them through a process of vetting and protecting and developing and defending and defending them from being stolen away by your own distractibility and dopamine seeking and just losing interest in them and later finding it and going, wow, did I do this? Yeah, you forgot all about it, it was 10 ideas ago.

But how other people interpret that, it was like, wow, I really didn't realize that how other people saw me was, yeah, maybe wildly creative, but she's not going to do anything with it, so why should I even listen? That was an inflection point that was very painful. But like you, I realized I'm a verbal processor. I need to think my way through something by talking my way through it, but not always with other people. And so Claude has become like you call, you know, ChatGPT a second brain. It's literally a thought partner when I need to verbally process something but I don't necessarily just want to talk to myself or annoy the hell out of other people who may be less interested. Do you feel butthurt about any of that or you're just like, well, now I have chat, so just keep on doing what I do.

G: I mean, I think anyone with ADHD suffers from that rejection sensitivity dysphoria. So to be told at any stage, yeah, I'm kind of tuning out or enough with the ideas. The words that I used in my brain was, Sarah, you're coming across like you're flaky. And then that really makes me angry because I also know how patriarchy also looks at women like this.

H: Yes.

G: So I was like, okay, you know what helped me to develop that framework outside of it, and then the mechanisms of using, I use both Claude and ChatGPT, and I'm really nerdy as well. So I try to stay on top of all the new developments. And I'm constantly making sure I knew where personally or with a project I wanted to be in like three months time, six months time, one year's time, et cetera and without overly defining that, but saying, what does that look like? I think it's really important, and this is something that creative people can do really easily, is they can describe what that vision looks like to them. Because we're able to paint pictures with work.

H: Yes, yes.

G: And which I think other people who are, you know, either neurotypical or different types of neurodiversities, they don't have that same innate ability to visualize what that looks like and then to articulate it and having those sort of little touchstones of saying in my personal life or in my business life to say, where do I want to be? And just write it down, write it down on a piece of paper. But actually, I would highly recommend, you know, make sure that you've got a Pro version of ChatGPT or Claude or something like that, where you can actually create project folders and you can keep things organized because the AI it knows how to organize things.

So I have, in my Chatgpt, I have a whole bunch of project folders. And some of them are all clients, but then others are like, that's my vision, that's my structure, that's what I want to get to. And I will go back into that folder knowing that the AI uses all the content of that folder plus anything else I ask it to search and then always ask for citations and exact links to anything that it brings off the Internet to actually say, okay, here's some more ideas. Does this fit with that vision of where I want to be and that's my sort of capture phase of the work.

And because I've set up the framework to allow me to basically, you know, verbalize and I often will speak into my ChatGPT on my phone, in those folders, and then it keeps all of those notes and I'll say, okay, right, that's nice. What kind of connections are we thinking about this and I do it until I'm tired. And I think that's when I know internally to switch off because I know that once I'm getting tired or I feel like my brain's starting to lose interest, my creativity level's going to go down.

H: Yes.

G: Just leave it. You're only going to put rubbish in now going forward. No, a little bit of self recognition to know when you're losing steam and then leave it.

H: Can I ask you a question about the capture phase?

G: Sure.

H: I'm thinking if you're, you know, and I love that because you're a verbal processor like me, it's why you're a good storyteller and why you took to podcasting so beautifully is that you're able to capture wherever you are. And you could even be driving and you're speaking, so you're not, you don't have to pull over to the side of the road and scribble a note, but because you're verbally processing it and you don't have to worry that you're not going to get it all, you can really free associate, you can really fully express an idea, and if you don't find it helpful, you can get rid of it. But deciding to just keep adding in the capture phase until you start getting tired, is there any shortcomings with that? Because I think sometimes people have a lot of capacity to just keep going and going and going. Like, do you just notice as soon as you're tired it's time to stop because you notice a diminishing returns or would you ever, for example, just decide on an arbitrary amount of time, like I'm just gonna, I'm gonna use an hour or a week or a month for the capture phase and then I'm gonna move on.

G: I don't particularly, because I think that again, it goes back to this concept that we will never stop having ideas. But what I find really useful about the ChatGPT, whatever you want to use is I can have a folder that says vision or capture or whatever and I can just keep adding in separate ideas into it. But then when I move on to okay, I kind of want to know what all of this is, which is the connect phase is I can run that connection both in my own mind of going, ah, that's making me think about this. And then I will ask the AI to sort of say, what connections can you think? But then I will also say to the AI what isn't really jiving for you? Because yeah, it's a large language model. It looks for patterns. That's its nature okay, is looking for patterns and that's what ADHD minds also do, is look for patterns.

So I can iterate those folders or whatever in those that represent those stages in whatever way I want to and then I could say, right, that idea. Tell me what you think is the strongest and why. Tell me what you think is the weakest and why. Tell me and so it's giving me this back so that I'm now making mental connections as well. And then I will say, and this I think is one of the most important parts of the, of the sort of process is structure. I cannot structure things easily. Someone asks me to write a two page, a one page, you know, summary of something. Oh, it's the hardest thing in the world.

H: Being concise or creating a structure?

G: Both being concise because but I could put that much more in. But I could put that much more in and you're writing like you're verbalizing. And so that was the thing that I found that AI really helped me with in this process is around, you're structuring the potential areas within those ideas that you've put in that you've asked for connections over. And then you say, okay, right, let's look for, let's theme these things, theme this against my vision for where I want to be in three months. What are the key things that you're seeing send this back to me.

I'm looking at this going, right, and what does that mean in terms of I need to then iterate this through conversations with other people, the outside environment. Always make sure you have human beings as part of your process. AI will never do it all you know, it's fallible, just like all human beings. And you do not get the same creative response from AI that you do from a human being. So I'm a big advocate that this is not something this, that replaces going and talk to other people.

H: It amplifies, it doesn't replace your creativity or even your creative process. I almost think as you're walking us through this, it's like in a way we're sort of outsourcing our executive functioning, but we have executive functions, they're just not robust. So you're not saying, okay, you handle this, you're collaborating with the AI and you are using the AI to amplify your original observations and ideas.

G: And to organize, so, you know, being a completer finisher is so hard. So for me, you know, condensing ideas into something that's digestible by other human beings.

H: That's the thing more about that because I think that's something that we're not always so comfortable articulating. But when you have what I call big ideas in a busy brain. Oftentimes talking over, around and past people, even the ones we're trying to connect with, collaborate with and contribute to and you deal with that too. How do you use this process to not do that?

G: So it starts with that empathy question again and so when it comes to the sort of structuring phase, I start thinking about, right, who is my audience for this? And I'll often think about specific people I know who represents certain archetypes. So I will think about my husband, who it can be very detail oriented on certain things, but is not interested in numbers at all, but thinks about the messaging to other people. His background was in PR. I think about my business partner who is a self identified pedant and he will go through and pick up on all the places where I haven't included the right comma and the right full stop. But he could also see, he also sees the big picture, but he's looking at this going, right, if this is going in front of our bank manager, Sarah, these are the things they're going to be looking for.

So I'll think about, right, how do I get this through what Frank needs to see, what Mark needs to see, what Jane, my managing director needs to see, because that's where they come from, where their interests lie. So I almost create these little archetypes of people and how they represent the different phases of getting an idea into fruition, so to speak. So once we get past the creative process of creating something, you know, which ends up at the end of the sort of reflection process and we're into, okay, it's now here, we need to implement it, what are going to be all the barriers to actually getting this implemented? And I find thinking about creating audiences in my own mind and thinking about, with empathy, what is it and where is their mind going to be when I'm asking them to read this or to listen to me.

And oftentimes is there's children running around in the background, there's dinner to be made, there's other meetings that they're trying to get to, they're on a train. How can I do this in a way that they are going to go, Sarah, this is awesome? Because I know their definition of awesome is going to be different from each other. So I kind of, I do that and then I tell the AI, right, we're going to be writing this structure for these three different people. I want you to sort of finesse the structure of this document. Whether, and I do decide what that product looks like, whether it's an email, whether it's a document, whether it's a presentation, a video, whatever. I have it clear in my mind about what are the kinds of things that are going to get each one of those people. Ah, okay, yes, that's great.

And the reality is that there's overlap between all of them. Whether they're big picture people or detail people, they're still human beings. They respond to a story, they're just going to have different questions at the end of the story. And so I tell my AI, right, this is the kind of thing that these people ask me questions over whenever we talk to them. And so we start preparing that in advance, which then allows me to almost have these different versions of my idea prototype that I can send to people. And then as they send me questions back, I'm able to tell the AI, well, these are the questions that we got back on this. What do we think of this? And I always tell the AI, because AI is built to be positive and like support the confirmation bias in our brain.

So I always say, right, you have to challenge this, this needs to be more critical. What would somebody who is not interested in this be saying? And so I also bring that into the iterate and express sort of phase of the process where we have, you know, we create these sort of what's the best word for it, variable versions. But they are only two or three variable versions aimed at different audiences that then actually we start to overlap and build out in the reflection phase. And it becomes like a learning loop of right this is how this responds to this kind of person who wants to know about the costs and the money about this. They want to know about the timescale, they want to know about the resources.

Because what they're worried about in their job and in their life is, I don't have enough time. I don't have time to deal with this. I don't have enough time to deal with everything else that you're going to throw at me, Sarah, how do we deal with that? And so I'm able to bring all of those things into that sort of reflection phase that says, and this is how we're going to minimize the time. This is how we're going to think about resource and ultimately, at the end of the process of capture, connect, structure, iterate, express, and then reflect. What I've created is what I call the 3D Jenga model. And so everyone knows what a Jenga tower looks like and how they're built with interconnecting but crisscrossing bricks.

And when you crisscross bricks in the same way that if you were building a cathedral or a new house, the more you do that, the more structural integrity you bring to the concept. So if each one of those bricks represents the viewpoint that I have gotten different people and my AI to explore, and they're viewpoints that intersect with each other rather than overlap each other, my concept builds in strength, builds in robustness, that even if 1, 2, 3 or 4 bricks or, you know, bars come out of it, it still stays standing.

And that's the process that's allowed me to have five businesses, because I started out with a vision of where I wanted to be, and that is in a year's time, five years time, all the way through to I've actually said, where do I want to be when I'm 70? Where do I want to be when I'm dead? I've actually asked myself that question, what do I want? And I'm a big believer that we're all made of energy. And when we die, we go back to the universe and the universe gets that energy. Universe gets that energy and I think about how all of that needs to go somewhere. All of that energy that is currently in me is going to go somewhere, but I want to go on the journey with it. So I have this I create the 3D Jenga model and my businesses are all interrelated with each other so that, yes, I have a podcast history, for fuck's sake. I apologize for swearing.

H: Oh, never apologize for swearing on my podcast. I haven't done any yet.

G: We're doing really well history ffs. And I had somebody say to me, Sarah, this is just a passion project that you're spending loads of time and energy and money on. And I said, but it's not a passion project because A my vision and understanding what I need to be like and to have in my life, to have joy, to have satisfaction. That's all part of that vision of, like, I need. I don't know if this actually Elvis did say this, but I always like to attribute it to Elvis. Having someone to love, something to do, something to look forward to, those are three really good things to have in your quiver, so to speak. And whenever I'm designing or thinking about all these new ideas, it's like, how can my podcast, for example, bring me joy?

Well, it brings me joy because I get to talk to all these amazing people about untold history and history of film, literature, how we look at history through film, literature, etcetera. But it also connects back to my consultancy businesses, which one is all about management consultancy for arts, heritage, culture, creative industries, where you need to know your arts, heritage, culture, history, or they kind of look at you and go, you have no concept of what it's like to work in this sector, and they blow you out the door. So by doing my podcast, I get joy. I also get to keep up with my history, what's going on, that kind of thing. It also helps in terms of marketing, social media. It helps my other business, which is about creating and producing experiences in real life or digital channels or television media. It's about storytelling and so on and so forth.

H: That's exceptional. Not just for a human being, but to be a person with ADHD, because, as you have said, we're really good at starting, but not so consistent about finishing. And so because you understand this about yourself and because you have this everything is connected belief system, you want to finish what you start and you want to enjoy the entire process, not just the starting. Because a lot of us, I think it's one of the reasons why so many people with ADHD are serial entrepreneurs, because we're really good at starting and we really suck at finishing. So we just abandon ship, let someone else run it, and move on to the next thing so we never really learn. And I understand we have issues with distractibility, we have issues with shiny object syndrome, we have issues with consistency, we have issues with not being able to make and distribute enough of our own dopamine. So we're always jonesing for the next place we can find it.

But this process of capture, connect, structure, iterate, express, reflect, it's. It's such a way you can keep looping back around and going deeper into whatever you're doing, which means you're renewing your energy, you're renewing your interest, you're renewing your excitement, you're renewing your creative problem solving, you're creating more connections, you're creating more dots, and you have the 3D model that allows you to see the interrelatedness of all the different things you're doing. Because normally, I'll tell you, normally, before I met you, when someone would tell me, I have five businesses, they would get a little either a side eye or a stink eye.

Because in most cases, there's one that's fairly well developed, a couple that are languishing, and two that are still in their head. And you actually have five functional businesses because of your ability to create the scaffolding that holds them together so they're not all competing with each other for your limited executive functioning and bandwidth. What I would love to know is, is one part of the process more stimulating, more exciting, more appealing, kind of like your happy place and you're willing to do the others. Or do you actually find dopamine satisfaction, meaning purpose, in all aspects of it?

G: I think I find it in all aspects of it. And I think the reason why is because when I'm coming up with new ideas, I'm challenging myself to say, okay, you know, I could have a million ideas. But I'm sort of saying, how does this fit within the wider vision and the wider Jenga model and actually the things that I really enjoy doing. So I think we have to lean into our passions as well. Like I'm not the kind of person that as a serial entrepreneur goes from running a management consultancy business for arts, culture, heritage and then says, I want to start a gardening business. Yeah, all right because it's so different from what I find I'm passionate about.

So it's like I'm tapping into the things I get hyper focused over as well. And I think that there is a that's something I would encourage other people with ADHD to do is recognize where your hyper focus is because that's your passion or it's a late. Or if it's not a passion and you're hyper focusing on it because it terrifies you, then you can turn that into a passion with skill building, et cetera as well and so I have that sort of wider net. So it's almost like a series of interconnecting nets, you know, big nets, medium nets, little nets. That allows me to just keep dumping ideas in and going, right, how does it fit within the sort of all the wider nets? And when I'm tired of that subject and gonna move on like is, we are naturally.

And it may just I'm not physically tired, but I'm like, I'm bored of this now. I'm gonna go look at something else. I need to get dopamine from somewhere else. I have got a variety of ideas already half formed, like half in the oven. It's like a par baked loaf of bread okay I could take that par baked loaf of bread out of the, out of the freezer and stick that in the oven because that's going to give me another dopamine lift. And that's where the capture connect is really great. And then sort of trying to finish that when I capture connect with that structure, I can go back to those structures and say, okay, I want another structure about this and it gets me back into it. So in terms of it, the stages bringing me more joy. I don't think there's anyone that I love more than the other. I'd say the ones that are the most anxiety producing are the ones where you're talking to other people about it.

But what I have certainly found is that because the AI has helped me develop the structures, the things that I found the most difficult to do, it didn't need to help me do a lot of the capture and connect, other than to keep me a bit organized. But it really did need to help me create the structures and the sort of right and how do we tweak this for these individual people? Once that sort of slotted in, a lot of my anxiety around the iterate and express stage actually went away. I'm a lot more confident because it's filling a gap that I know is not something I'm strong in, but I'm giving it all the things that it's not going to do anything with. And then other people are giving us both, you know, that sort of feedback that neither I'm able to see nor perhaps, you know, the bots can see.

And then that becomes, right, let's think about the feedback loop on it. And that's how I stop myself from just completely going off in a wild different direction and trying to think about businesses and whatnot that are not connected to my 3D Jenga model. Because I'm asking it, you know, here's my connections that already exist. How does it connect? How does it not connect? If this is random, is it worth expanding the wider net? Or do we need to say, you know what, this is a great idea, give it to somebody else. And so I'm whether they love it or hate it, I can't tell sometimes I will often talk to other people and say, hey, do you know that, like, you love doing gardening? Have you ever thought about doing this for yourself? Especially when they're going, oh my God, my life, I'm so bored. Work, I don't want to do this.

H: I just happen to have an extra idea I'm not using.

G: Here, you can have it. Exactly. Here's my idea, here's how you create a new gardening business. And actually, again, this goes back to the empathize part. That's what a lot of my friends have said that they love about me, is that I will always, when they're having a problem with work or whatever, I will always come to them, not just with a listening hat on. And it's not about solving problems, it's just like, okay, what about some ideas you know? And then they'll go, thank you, that's enough, Sarah and I'll be like, they're all yours.

H: So being generous with your idea, you're reminding me of one of my ideas for people with extra ideas is, wouldn't it be cool if there was like a swap meet for ideas where I have so many ideas that I'm not using. It's kind of like, you know, when you donate extra clothes or furniture that you're not using. Wouldn't it be great if those of us who have an abundance of ideas could have a place to just go park them and people who love developing things, but they're not as good at the ideation part. They can just go pick it up and run with it. But you're also reminding me of two other things, and I want to make sure we get a chance to say this before we wrap. You are demonstrating two of the things that I consider my core concepts in working with entrepreneurs with ADHD. One is that you are demonstrating a level of radical self acceptance.

That is how I operate, these are my strengths, these are my struggles. And I'm going to really lean into the things that naturally fascinate me that I'm really good at that I can hyper focus on like nobody's business. And then I'm going to not focus on getting better at these things. I'm going to use tools and I'm going to provide supports to myself in the form of other people so that I can just really live in my zone of genius and just continue to develop that more and more. And I think that really does come from a place of radical self acceptance because the rest of us are trying to fix what we think is broken. It does not work and the other thing is boundaries.

Like, you have made peace with the fact that you need to say no well, the more good ideas you have, the more often you need to say no. And you've accepted that and so you're like, nope, this is my framework. This is my Jenga model, these are my hyper fixations. This is my flavor of polymathory. And if it doesn't fit with that and doesn't expand on that, it's no and I'm not going to indulge it. I'm not going to entertain it. I'm not going to waste two brain cells thinking, yeah, but maybe how can I make it fit? You're like, fuck no and that is an absolute necessity if we want to get to the end of this life without regret when you have this much creativity.