The Fast Brain Coach · ADHD coaching for high performers (fast brain, no diagnosis or label needed)
You know you can do it.
So why is it so hard?
At your best, you make difficult things look effortless. Then something everyone else finds easy can feel almost impossible.
Six years at Google. Two at Amazon. ICF-accredited coach, and a certified ADHD coach.
Try harder!
Be disciplined!
Get organised!
For 47 years, that was the voice in my head. Sheer white-knuckled effort made me successful until two burnouts and an ADHD diagnosis taught me to stop pushing harder and start looking for what fits.
You’re clearly capable
You’ve built a successful career. You can solve difficult problems, take on responsibility and perform when it matters.
In fact, you’re probably pretty damned good at that stuff. That’s part of how you got here.
Replying to the email. Starting the document. Booking the appointment.
The project that gets to 80% and somehow never quite gets finished. The 40 browser tabs. The thing you’ve been thinking about for six days that would probably take twenty minutes.
You know you can do it. Which somehow makes it even more infuriating when you don’t.
So you learn to make it work
When there’s a deadline tomorrow, suddenly you’re brilliant. When something goes wrong, you’re the calmest person in the room.
But ask your brain to steadily chip away at something boring for three weeks and apparently we have a problem.
So you compensate, create systems, manufacture urgency. You say yes because somebody else now expects you to deliver. You pull off something heroic at the last minute and promise yourself you’ll never do it that way again.
Then you do.
And you can become very good at making all this work.
There are plenty of useful tactics for that. But tactics only get you so far.
Because making it work has costs
You can be brilliant in the room and empty by 11am. You can get the promotion and barely feel the win.
“I didn’t really do anything” says the voice in your head.
You can become the person everyone depends on while privately wondering how long you can keep all the plates spinning.
You hold it together at work, and fall apart at home.
From the outside, it looks like success. Because it is success.
It’s just expensive.
Eventually, you wonder if you’re broken
Why can’t I just do the thing? Why do I need this much pressure? Why can’t I be consistent?
How does everyone else seem to make ordinary life look so bloody easy?
Over the years, those questions pile up. And your brain starts answering them: you’re lazy and undisciplined, too much and somehow not enough.
You promise yourself that next time you’ll be more organised and more grown-up.
And somewhere along the way, you stop just fighting the task.
You start fighting yourself.
What if the problem isn’t effort?
A Formula 1 car isn’t broken because it struggles in city traffic. It’s built for the track.
Put it in the right conditions and it flies. Ask it to crawl through stop-start traffic and do the weekly shop, and it becomes miserable to drive.
You can be like that too.
Under the right conditions, you move fast and think clearly. Under the wrong ones, everything seems to create friction.
So the question isn’t only: How do I get myself to do this?
It’s: What brings out my best?
And eventually: What would fit me better?
“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”
Dolly Parton
That’s the work
Not fixing you or giving you another perfect system to fail at.
We work out how you operate.
And we look at what you’ve been putting up with because you assumed that’s what successful adults do.
Sometimes the answer is tactical
Make the next step visible. Change the environment. Borrow some accountability. Work in a sprint. Stop relying on memory. Make the boring thing more interesting.
Sometimes a small design change really is enough.
And sometimes it’s bigger than that
You can optimise the hell out of a life that still doesn’t fit, and become extraordinarily efficient at doing work that drains you.
You can build elaborate systems to survive a role that mostly asks you to suppress the things you’re best at.
At some point, another productivity hack isn’t the answer.
The more interesting question is: What are you trying so hard to make yourself fit into?
The goal is a better fit
A better fit means more of your week goes on what you’re good at, and less on fighting how you work. Fewer last-minute rescues, less time judging yourself for being inconsistent, and more room for the work, and the life, you want.
You start the boring thing without needing a deadline to scare you into it.
You finish what matters, and let the rest go on purpose.
You’re not empty by 11am, and there’s something left for home.
The voice in your head gets quieter, and kinder.
How it works and what it costs
No commitment until we’re both sure it’s what you need.
1
A Clarity Call
20 minutes, free, and confidential. We’ll figure out if I’m the right person to help you, and if now is the right time.
2
A Strategy Session
90 minutes, a real coaching session, not a sales call. We’ll start with what you want, where you are now, and what is holding you back. You’ll leave with a plan for what to do next, even if it doesn’t involve me.
3
You decide
If you decide to carry on, the Strategy Session becomes the first of six sessions, about every two weeks. Together, we’ll figure out how you can be more successful with less effort.
Your company can pay. Many employers pay for coaching like this, and I can send a proposal they can approve. Company coaching is priced differently from the prices below.
How to get your coaching approved →
It wasn’t valuable: €0
You pay nothing. Tell me what would have made it better, and we leave it there.
It was enough: €200
Including VAT. The Strategy Session did the job and you don’t need to go further. You pay for the session, and we’re done.
You want more: €1,000
Six sessions, incl VAT. The Strategy Session becomes session one of six.
We book five more 50-minute sessions, about every two weeks, accounting for holidays, travel, and other fixed commitments.
These are the prices for individuals.
Need a different rhythm? We can discuss that in the Strategy Session.
I don’t normally publish fees. Compared to my normal coaching rates, these prices are low. I’m doing this because I love this work and I want to do a lot of it. When my calendar is full, the fee for new clients goes up.
In exchange for this lower price, I expect two things from you:
Show up 100%. I will too.
If it was valuable, tell me what changed for you, and if it wasn’t, give me honest feedback. I’ll only use your name publicly if you’re happy to do so.
A 20-minute Clarity Call. Free and confidential.
That was genuinely my first thought when somebody suggested it. I’d spent six years at Google, then two at Amazon, where I led a 100-person organisation. Surely people with ADHD didn’t do that?
Except, of course, they do. I did.
I just compensated, tried harder, forced myself to perform the way I thought I should.
For years I treated my career as evidence that whatever I was doing must be working.
And it was.
It just didn’t tell me how much effort I was spending making it work.
My diagnosis gave me a much more useful way to understand a pattern I’d lived with for decades:
Speed under the right conditions. Friction under the wrong ones.
That doesn’t mean my ADHD is your ADHD. And you don’t need the same label for your experience that I use for mine. I’m not going to hand you my system and tell you to copy it.
The useful question is: How do you work?
What this can look like
Names and details changed. The outcomes aren’t.
From burning out to leading from her strengths
A global head of department with ADHD swapped burnout and self-criticism for leading from her strengths, and has moved from telling her team what to do to coaching them.
Read more
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From seven years at the same level to leading an AI pilot
A senior manager at a Fortune 100 tech company, stuck at the same level for seven years, stopped fighting his ADHD profile and moved into leading a new AI pilot.
Read more
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From "maybe I'm lazy" to leading from his strengths
A bootstrapped founder who’d decided he was simply lazy saw that his brain works differently, and started leading from his strengths instead of carrying everything himself.
Read more
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From "what's wrong with me?" to a pattern he can plan around
A technology leader who kept getting promoted, then pushed out, saw the pattern behind it, and started a Fortune 500 role that fits how he works.
Read more
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You don’t need the label
Some of my clients have an ADHD diagnosis. Some suspect they might have ADHD. Some found out when their child was diagnosed. Some have absolutely no interest in the label, but recognise the pattern on this page immediately.
I often say “fast brain” instead: a mind that’s quick, full of ideas and at its best under pressure, and finds the simple, boring stuff strangely hard. ADHD or not.
You don’t need a diagnosis. You don’t even need to believe ADHD is the best explanation for what’s happening.
If the way you’re working isn’t working for you, let’s talk.
What we actually do
A fast brain tends to get stuck in a few places:
Productivity
Starting before panic takes over. Finishing the last 20%. Deciding what matters when everything feels important.
Enough structure to help, without building another system you’ll abandon.
Attention
Protecting focus. Handling interruption. Getting thoughts out of your head and somewhere you can trust them.
Making the important thing harder to lose.
Energy
Working out what gives you energy and what drains it.
Designing a week that doesn’t assume you have the same capacity every hour of every day.
Emotion
The frustration when you can’t just do the thing. The reaction that feels bigger than the event. The shame afterwards.
Finding ways to recover when the day goes sideways, before pushing harder becomes the only option.
Strengths
What you’re unusually good at, and what you’ve simply learned to perform well. Most fast brains have a spiky profile: unusually good at some things, unusually bad at others.
Creating more room for the work that brings out your best.
Fit
Sometimes the problem is the job, the environment or the expectations you’ve taken on.
Then the question gets bigger: what would fit you better?
How I coach
We start with what you want to be different, and what actually happens now.
Often the first changes are practical. That might mean changing your environment, simplifying a system or preparing for a difficult conversation. We treat it like a startup: try something small, see what happens, keep what works. When something doesn’t work, we learn just as much.
Then we look at the bigger pattern, like how you plan your week and what you say yes to.
And then at what sits underneath: the beliefs about yourself you’ve built a career on, like “rest has to be earned” or “if it was easy, it doesn’t count”. Changing those is usually what makes everything else last.
Know someone this would help?
Here’s a line you can send them:
Richard coaches people who know they can do it, and still find the easy stuff hard. No diagnosis needed.
Here’s the page: https://richardrussell.co/coaching/adhd
Who am I?
I’m Richard. I’ve spent the last decade coaching founders and senior leaders, many of whom have ADHD. I’ll help you understand how you work and build your life around your own wiring. I’m ICF-accredited and a certified ADHD coach.
If I’m not the right person to help, I’ll introduce you to someone who could be.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need an ADHD diagnosis?
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Is this therapy?
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Can you diagnose me or help with medication?
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Is this just productivity coaching?
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Are you going to give me another system to follow?
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Is this confidential?
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How long will I need coaching?
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Can my company pay?
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Not quite what you’re looking for?
Running a company that’s outgrowing how you run it?
Great at the vision for a big change, and finding the follow-through hard?
Wondering whether your job really fits how you work?
Not sure this is the right one for you?