How to Recognize and Manage ADHD with Jake Brown
Jake Brown shares about identifying and living with ADHD, speaking to how it impacts work and home life, and the importance of finding outlets for expression. Through personal stories and practical advice, Jake emphasizes the need for community support and the value of embracing one’s unique design.
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What helps someone with ADHD thrive? For Jake Brown, it starts with knowing you were designed differently, on purpose, and that there is an approval available that doesn’t depend on sitting still. Jake is an artist, designer and ADHD coach, and Chris Howard’s former coworker at a marketing agency. He joins Mike Mobley and Chris to share how he was diagnosed in his late twenties, why “just pay attention” is the worst thing you can say, how doodling became his way to calm his mind, and how mapping his “high tides” and “low tides” changed his work and his marriage. Below: the key takeaways, the Scripture discussed, and the full episode transcript.
Why “Just Pay Attention” Backfires
ADHD stands for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. ADD is just the older name. Jake explains that many people with ADHD also have some degree of rejection sensitivity dysphoria, a deep craving for approval tied to a dopamine deficiency. Telling them to pay attention layers failure on top of failure, and over time they start to change who they believe they are. “I’m short, and people are like, ‘Hey, reach up there and grab that.’ I would if I could.” ADHD is an executive function issue, like a glitch in the operating system every other program runs on.
From the Crows to a Late Diagnosis
In first grade, Jake was put in the lowest reading group, the Crows, and handed coloring sheets so he wouldn’t distract the other kids. He leaned into art, but reading and communication stayed hard, and he also has dyslexia. In his late twenties, while seeing a counselor about re-entry after living in France, he was diagnosed with ADHD. When he called his mom, she said, “We know. Anybody who’s talked to you for five minutes knows.” It felt like playing a card game for 20 years and finally being told the rules.
“I Reckon It’s a Good Day to Draw”
When Jake had his first panic attack as a young boy, his grandpa put butcher paper on the coffee table and taught him to draw. For years, whenever he got worked up, his grandpa would say, “I reckon it’s a good day to draw.” But when drawing became his career and every piece was judged, he lost his outlet. His advice is to find output that isn’t judged. He teaches a two-minute doodle you wad up and throw away, because approval is a judgment too, and the goal is the calm, not the product.
Honor the Low Tides
Jake maps his focus on 24-hour dials for a week at a time and found that his high tides come right before meals. If he honors his low tides with a walk, a doodle or 10 minutes outside, he can get 10 hours of work done in four. If he fights them, he gets 10 minutes done in 10 hours. Like leg day, you have to rest to recover. His warning sign is simple: if the people around you, especially your spouse, haven’t smiled in a while, you’re probably out of sync.
ADHD at Home and in Marriage
Jake says neurodivergent people often spend the first 20% of their capacity at work just trying not to get caught, so they come home empty. Home feels safe, so that’s often where things erupt. His wife first saw only his “high tides” while they were dating, and the “low tides” were hard on her. After lots of conversations and therapy, they now use the language of tides together, and he spends some of his best focus time making breakfast and dinner for the kids and investing in his marriage. Mike shares that he didn’t learn about his own anxiety until his early thirties, and that his wife’s calm support helps him.
Designed Differently, On Purpose
Jake’s grandpa once asked him, “Can you love them through their ignorance?” He says ignorance isn’t bad, but staying ignorant is. If he could talk to his younger self, he’d say, “You’re different, and it’s okay.” He’d tell him he didn’t have to work for people’s approval. Instead of hearing “disorder” as “broken,” Jake tells people with ADHD they were designed this way, and he watches the burden lift. Mike adds that many people with ADHD or anxiety don’t know it’s safe to talk about it, and conversations like this can help them embrace how they’re designed.
Scriptures From This Episode
No verse is cited by reference in this episode. The conversation centers on being designed by God on purpose and finding an approval that does not depend on performance.
Go deeper: Your Identity In Christ · Where Do You Find Your Value? · Scripture on Self Worth · The Struggle With Anxiety is Real · How To Find Rest In Jesus · Scripture on Rest
Full Transcript, Not Quite There, Episode 43: How to Recognize and Manage ADHD with Jake Brown
Jake: I remember I was kind of having my first panic attack. I was probably about seven years old, and my grandpa was like, “Hey, it looks like a good day to draw.” He put some butcher paper down on the coffee table and just sat there and taught me to draw. There were signs behind it that I know now, but he didn’t know. He just knew me.
Chris: Mike, I think we need a new segment called Sandwich of the Week.
Mike: Sandwich of the Week? Are you a massive sandwich guy?
Chris: I am. I really like a good sandwich.
Mike: Just a bunch of bread.
Chris: I asked you a question while we were at church the other day: “Have you been to Portillo’s?” And what did you say?
Mike: I said get a hot dog.
Chris: This is a Chicago place. And do you know what else Chicago is pretty popular for?
Mike: Hot dogs, deep dish pizza.
Chris: Rivers. Wind. Fire. All those things. But you know what you eat while you’re experiencing all those things?
Mike: Go ahead and say a sandwich, man. We know you want to say sandwich.
Chris: It was an Italian beef sandwich.
Mike: Ooh. Who doesn’t love beef?
Chris: Nobody I know. A little Italian beef. And what made it really good was the au jus. The moist maker, as our friend Neil would say.
Mike: Wasn’t the moist maker from Friends? Neil does not get to quote Friends.
Chris: I heard it first from Neil.
Mike: Ross has a turkey sandwich with the bread in the middle. It’s the moist maker.
Chris: Well, Neil is the one I remember saying it, not Ross from Friends.
Mike: Shout out to Neil. We can’t say his full name on the record, because he would get in trouble. Okay. Are we wasting three minutes on this?
Chris: I want to introduce Sandwich of the Week because I think I need to help the public.
Mike: Sandwich of the Week: Portillo’s, Italian beef. Go get yours. Thank you, Portillo’s. End of sponsor content.
Chris: Oh, you’re really trying to make it? How was your week? Did you have a good sandwich?
Mike: It’s weird to keep talking about sandwiches, man. No sandwiches for me this week. It’s been a good week so far. Oh, you know what? Hot dogs. I actually have something here. If you had all the time in the world to make a hot dog, how would you cook it?
Chris: I might use a Blackstone.
Mike: Would you use the microwave? As a preference?
Chris: No.
Mike: Never. Never ever, right? I know some people who prefer the microwave for hot dogs. It’s their number one choice. I understand the perplexed look you’re giving me right now.
Chris: So they’re taking a mystery meat and putting it in a mystery cooker.
Mike: They want the radiation to pulse through their veins with the mystery goo.
Chris: Why don’t you say that person’s full name right here?
Mike: I really want to, but we’ll protect his identity. He knows who he is.
Chris: You can contact us, mystery person, for some help. And maybe for a better sandwich. Speaking of mystery people…
Mike: Is there a mystery person on today’s episode? Am I on track?
Chris: Not a mystery to me. Maybe a mystery to you, maybe a mystery to other people.
Mike: Mystery to the universe!
Chris: Somebody I actually worked with in a corporate setting for a while.
Mike: So you wore your shoes in that setting?
Chris: Well, he knows I don’t like shoes. But I would say this guy has a lot of depth to him. You never know what he’s going to be doing, where life is going to take him or what his next project is going to be. Very interesting guy. I think you’re going to find him interesting. Other people listening are going to find him interesting, without putting too much pressure on him.
Mike: No pressure at all. Who is it?
Chris: It’s my very good friend, Jake Brown.
Mike: Jake Brown in the house, everyone. He is here live, in person, at the NQT studios. You did not clap near the microphone, so we could not hear that.
Chris: It’s so close to my face.
Mike: The mic is kind of in Chris’s mouth right now. Jake! Thanks for being here. Thanks for not putting the microphone in your mouth like Chris, and for keeping your shoes on. Always a pleasure.
Jake: I did wear sandals. Kind of meet halfway.
Chris: We met each other when we were working at the same marketing agency.
Mike: Do you remember?
Chris: I remember first meeting you. Can I share this story?
Mike: Do we need to use fake names? Okay, go ahead.
Chris: I walked into this agency. I was about to have an interview, and I was expecting somebody to meet me at the front. There wasn’t really anybody there, and I figured, “Okay, they’re just a busy agency. Somebody’s going to come out here.”
Jake: Well, hold on. You have to go in through a glass door, and then you walk, I don’t know, 30 feet down this concrete walkway, and then all of a sudden you’re in the office.
Chris: It almost felt like a dare: “Do you continue to walk through here or not?” And the first person I see is Jake. And I’m like, “Wow, who is this bearded fellow coming my way? Must be the guy who’s about to greet me.” Well, he does greet me. He’s like, “Are you here for an interview? Sit down over there.” I think he went to go get somebody, but I can never confirm it.
Mike: Where were all the employees?
Chris: They were working.
Jake: It turns out we had actually been going to church together for a year or so and had seen each other across the room. I didn’t recognize him out of context. I was focused. I was going to do something, and he was in my way. And I’m just like, “Hey, why are you here?”
Mike: “Get out of the way, man. Trying to work right now.”
Jake: So, totally not nice. They took away all hospitality duties after that: “Don’t let Jake see people.”
Chris: Didn’t faze me. Got the job. Jake and I became friends pretty early on.
Jake: Over a couple of frozen burritos.
Chris: Yes. Jake was very thrifty. He was able to make a sack of burritos last several months, at least.
Mike: That’s really a resume builder right there.
Chris: But he made the office a lot of fun, too.
Mike: Did you tell him about our appetizers?
Chris: I think Jake may have listened to an episode or two, so he won’t be too frightened by the appetizer round.
Mike: Let’s go. Hit him with it. Can’t overthink it.
Chris: Are you ready to go?
Mike: I had coffee. I’m ready to go.
Chris: All right. Question number one. Mr. Jake, what’s the greatest creative project you’ve ever worked on?
Mike: Oh my word. That’s a really hard question. “What’s the greatest thing you’ve ever done?”
Chris: Okay, let me revise it. What’s a creative project you’ve worked on that you enjoyed?
Mike: That’s better.
Jake: Creative project I enjoyed. It’s funny, because “creative project I enjoyed” instantly changed everything.
Mike: If it helps, just think about the greatest one you’ve ever worked on.
Chris: Let me preface this with the fact that Jake is one of the most creative people I know. So it’s not like asking a random guy off the street. I’ll give him the floor now.
Jake: All right. A few years ago, I got to work with a brewery in Texas. They just asked me for artwork for something, but through our conversations, I ended up getting to name beers, come up with their slogans, write their copy and all this kind of stuff. It was Alice in Wonderland themed, so I got to come up with all kinds of crazy stuff. There was one can that won a bunch of awards. It was a red IPA, and I got to name it Off With Your Red, with an executioner’s hand on an axe handle. The tagline was “To the bitter end.” Everything we got to do was like that. Imagine just sitting around chasing every joke until it died and then running an extra mile with it.
Chris: If we give you a character, can you recall the actual brand?
Jake: We used a lot of characters.
Mike: Do you have a character in mind?
Chris: I was thinking the White Rabbit.
Jake: Well, we didn’t use the White Rabbit, because he represented the brewery. We had one called the Teleporting Cat project.
Mike: That’s your second guess. Come on, Chris.
Chris: What about the two fat boys?
Jake: Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. We had a beer called Tweedle Yum.
Mike: Man, that sounds awesome. Did you get an unlimited supply after you worked on this? Do you have a gold card? Okay, he can’t talk about that. That’s a personal question.
Chris: Better move on. Number two. Best game to play in a corporate setting involving a hallway.
Mike: Which, by the way, we clearly ask every guest.
Chris: Why would we not? That’s a natural question.
Jake: A hundred percent: Hallway Assassin.
Mike: Hallway Assassin. What is it?
Jake: Do you want the backstory or just the game?
Mike: Just tell me the game.
Jake: Basically, you’re sitting at your desk, and you hate it, and you want to interact with people. So you go to the bathroom, or whatever, you sneak off to the hallway, and if you see another employee, you assassinate them. But it has to be in the most random, weird way possible. You see each other and yell out the random way you’re killing them, and whoever has the weirdest one wins.
Chris: Like “Chinese star!”
Mike: You yell it out?
Jake: Yeah, in the hallway. Poison darts. Giant Kraken. Whatever it is.
Mike: That’s the classic cubicle office setting. “I need to get up from my desk.” That’s why you came up with these games.
Chris: It was glorious.
Mike: What was one of your best kills? What was the most random thing you yelled out?
Chris: Godzilla with a pen. Something like that.
Jake: Thousands of them.
Chris: Bruce Lee nunchucks.
Mike: Did anyone ever go with a block of cheese? Grate a block of cheese over someone’s eyes?
Chris: No, it might have been a poisoned taco or something like that.
Jake: There were a lot of food-related ones.
Mike: Everyone’s hungry while you’re playing the game.
Jake: Basically, you’re walking to or from the bathroom and yelling at people.
Mike: That’s the perfect time. That sounds like a wonderful game. Church. “Chinese star in the throat.”
Chris: Okay, here, you take the rest of the appetizers.
Mike: Here we go. Favorite part about living in France.
Chris: Which we ask everybody.
Jake: It was the food.
Chris: Give us a little bit of a meal there. I gave you a sandwich earlier.
Jake: I’m hurting right now. I’m missing it.
Mike: To the audience: we don’t have a camera on, but Jake really is shedding a tear over France.
Jake: My favorite thing, and what I miss, was walking by a boulangerie and grabbing a baguette, fresh, straight out of the oven, so hot it burns your fingers, and they’re like 50 cents. So you’ve got this whole thing, and you’re walking around eating it, and then you get fresh Nutella. You rip off the end of the baguette, hollow it out, and now it’s a cup. You fill it full of Nutella and eat it, and you’re crazy hyper, and it’s melting everywhere, and you’re walking down the street and everybody’s like, “That’s an American.”
Mike: Isn’t the bread dramatically different over there than it is here?
Jake: Yeah. Their flour is different.
Mike: Just for my own edification, because you might know: you were walking by where to get a baguette. What did you call it?
Jake: A boulangerie.
Mike: What does that translate to?
Jake: Bakery.
Chris: French bakery, Mike.
Mike: All right, I’m hungry now.
Chris: Me too. Let’s pause this show and get some bread. Not from here. Let’s go to France.
Mike: Next one. No hot dogs.
Chris: Most memorable sports accomplishment.
Jake: Most memorable sports accomplishment.
Chris: I’m sorry for these questions.
Mike: Greatest creative project. Favorite part. Most memorable sport. Just tell us the greatest things of your life.
Jake: Well, I think I know where he’s going with this. I played American football in France. Semi-pro. It covered costs for our team being there. Mike is looking at me right now going, “This dude’s like 5’8″.”
Mike: Maybe 160. You could have been a kicker. Were you the center?
Jake: I ended up playing slot receiver, free safety, gunner and returner.
Chris: Jake is lightning fast, by the way.
Mike: Wait, gunner?
Jake: When you kick off, the guys on the side who streak down the field and try to make the tackle.
Mike: Those are the gunners? How do I not know that? I didn’t call them gunners. It doesn’t matter.
Jake: In high school, I played kicker for one year, because I was on the soccer team and could kick a ball. Then I go to France, and I’m playing ultimate frisbee, and they put me on the football team. In my first game of the season, once I was legal to play, 42 tackles.
Chris: One game.
Jake: Second game, I scored a touchdown on offense, defense and special teams.
Chris: Wow. Lightning quick.
Mike: Do you think it was the Nutella? Do you think that gave you the fuel you needed?
Jake: I figured it was because they were about as good as eight-year-olds here.
Chris: It really felt like a ringer. Tackling machine.
Mike: That’s awesome, man. I didn’t know you played American football. So you didn’t play in high school?
Jake: No. I played with my friends growing up. And then you go to France, and you’re instantly better, because you’ve watched enough of it.
Chris: What was the name of your French football team? What was the mascot?
Jake: The Marseille Blue Stars.
Chris: The Blue Stars. Are you afraid of a blue star?
Mike: I don’t really know what a blue star is.
Jake: It’s literally a blue star.
Chris: You rooted for blue stars growing up, didn’t you? The Cowboys.
Mike: Nice little segue there. Speaking of the Stars, aren’t the Stars playing the Avalanche soon and crushing them?
Chris: They start on Saturday night.
Mike: Prepare to die. Inigo Montoya.
Chris: “You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
Mike: Here we go. Last appetizer question.
Chris: What do you expect to be able to do a year from now with AI?
Mike: Wow. Great questions today. These are not easy ones.
Chris: We had a lot of talk about AI on our last episode, so it’s spilling over. Mike likes platforms like Grok and ChatGPT and Perplexity.
Mike: That was you. That wasn’t me. Just a normal, everyday softball question for you. What’s your favorite color? Also, what do you expect to be able to do a year from now with AI?
Jake: So part of what I’m hoping… Actually, dude, by the way, we figured out how to get hot dogs from Germany when we were in France, and we would stack them side by side on a baguette.
Mike: Wait, wait, wait. You figured out how to get hot dogs?
Jake: When we were in France, they weren’t commonly available, so we’d get them from a German store, take a fresh baguette, and put two hot dogs side by side.
Mike: All you did in France was baguettes, everywhere.
Jake: They’re awesome.
Mike: Everyone tells me, “Go eat the pasta, go eat the bread over there. It’s nothing like over here.”
Jake: Completely different.
Mike: Have you been to that side of the world?
Chris: I have. I’ve traveled around from France to Switzerland to Italy to Morocco to Spain.
Mike: Wow. Okay. Did you eat a lot of baguettes?
Chris: I had a lot of baguettes. Phenomenally different from a baguette here.
Jake: You eat French bread here and you’re like, “Liars.”
Chris: Not even close. Imitation.
Jake: Did I dodge the AI question?
Mike: Did he answer?
Chris: He didn’t answer it.
Jake: So honestly, the thing I hope for is help with executive function. Some of the deciding and making decisions I struggle with, I want to be able to delegate, and use ChatGPT or some kind of AI as a virtual assistant. Right now it exhausts my wife, because I have to talk out loud to understand what I’m thinking. And I’m like, maybe if she doesn’t have to take all my output pollution all the time, if I could have a tool to do that, that would be amazing. And it would make me better.
Chris: That helps us with a segue, because now we can get into the meat course of our interview.
Mike: Because we’re talking about verbal processing?
Chris: No. You mentioned what it is you deal with, so why don’t we just let it out of the baguette here? In case you didn’t know, Jake knows quite a bit about ADHD. Mike, listen. Pay attention. I’m literally looking at you. Mike, pay attention.
Mike: I’m all over the place.
Chris: Jake knows a bit about ADHD, and he’s going to help us understand a little more today.
Mike: Let’s do it. What does ADHD stand for?
Jake: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Mike: Hyperactivity is the H that was throwing me off. You know why this is a good conversation? I have anxiety, and when anyone says anything, you have to drill down on what they even mean anyway, right? I hear people talk about ADHD, and then they say ADD as well. I always thought ADD was attention deficit disorder, but I never knew what the H was. I also don’t know if they’re the same.
Jake: ADD is a generation outdated. That’s what they used to call it, and now they call it ADHD. Same thing, just an outdated name.
Mike: So no one really says ADD anymore. It’s really ADHD.
Jake: Yeah. When people say ADD, it’s like when somebody says something and you’re kind of like, “How old are you?”
Mike: Chris does that all the time. Every time he’s talking, it’s like, “Dude, what generation are we talking about here?” Bread was a nickel.
Chris: The baguette wasn’t a nickel, Mike. But I do appreciate you bringing up your anxiety.
Mike: I knew you were going to say that.
Chris: Because you did mention that during that episode.
Mike: You know what would help? Nutella. With a baguette. On the other side of the world.
Chris: Put some hot dogs on it.
Mike: Microwaved.
Chris: Gross. This segment is sponsored by Grossness.
Mike: This ADHD episode: we’re all over the place.
Chris: But when you talked about anxiety, you mentioned that you used to think, “If you’re anxious about something, just stop worrying about it.” I imagine there’s some crossover here, because when people think about ADHD, sometimes they might think, “Well, just pay attention. What’s so hard about it?” I think we have an opportunity to speak a little more about that and why that’s not the case.
Jake: For sure. When somebody’s struggling with ADHD, telling us to pay attention is actually the worst thing you can do. There’s something called RSD, rejection sensitivity dysphoria. Most people with ADHD have some degree of RSD. We’re constantly looking for approval, and we have a dopamine deficiency. It’s kind of like we have a deficiency and an addiction both. So we’re constantly looking for positive feedback, affirmation and approval. Our brain is seeking that chemically. So if you’re saying, “Pay attention,” you’re layering failure on top of us. It’s something we’re failing at, and you’re telling us to do more of it. It’s like, “I don’t have any of this. How can I do more of it?” And it adds layers of “I’m failing.” There’s the rejection sensitivity, but when it becomes the dysphoria, we start to change who we believe we are based on that feedback. So it’s, “Pay attention. Pay attention more.” If I could… It’s like I’m short, and people are like, “Hey, reach up there and grab that.” I would if I could. Just telling me to reach higher isn’t going to fix anything.
Mike: Again, it’s probably a vicious cycle. I have a follow-up question, sorry. Do most people with ADHD have RSD? I think a lot of people want approval, even if they wouldn’t call it RSD. Why would it be more common with someone with ADHD?
Jake: I wouldn’t necessarily say most, but it’s very, very common, to some degree. Again, it’s because of our executive function. Think of an operating system that runs a computer.
Mike: It’s called an OS, Chris.
Jake: You’ve got that running below, and all the other programs are on top of it. That’s kind of your executive function. That’s the baseline that runs everything. And ADHD is an executive function issue. So the program all the other programs are built on has that issue. And part of that program is that we know we’re different. We don’t fit. We can see that things make sense to us differently, and we’re always trying to fit in. Everybody has some of that rejection sensitivity. But the problem is, we very quickly start to change who we are to try not to stand out. We want to fit, not stand out. So we change how we see ourselves.
Chris: That takes us back to when you first found out this was a reality for you.
Jake: I’m going to back up a little further. First grade was the first time I realized I was different. I didn’t know I had ADHD until I was in my twenties. But in first grade… First off, this was not high-level education. My dad was in the Air Force, and I was at a school on the base, so it was, you know, somebody’s wife was my teacher kind of thing. They were dividing us up into little groups based on our reading skills: “Eagles, everybody come over here. Blue Jays, come over here.” And then there were two of us, me and the kid who sat in the back of class and ate his boogers. We were the Crows. And I remember thinking, “Nobody wants to be a crow.” I was so excited about how the teacher would see me and how I was going to fit in with a group. I was just a little kid, and I was a crow.
Mike: You were thrown in the back with a kid eating his boogers.
Chris: Was he happy to be a crow?
Mike: He probably didn’t care. He was eating his boogers.
Jake: We didn’t even practice reading. They gave us coloring sheets. It was kind of like, “Sit back here and don’t distract the other kids.” And I was like, “Okay.” That’s the first time in school I remember going, “This is weird.” So I just leaned into it and enjoyed art the whole way through. And there were lots of moments like that, where the way I understood things and the way things worked was just different for me. Communication was always kind of hard. Reading was hard. I also have dyslexia, so reading was very hard. Then in my late twenties, after we moved back to the States, my wife and I were going to a counselor because of re-entry. I was having a lot of trouble with the culture change, especially having so much English around me all the time. I was talking really fast, and I think the counselor was like, “Let’s give you this assessment.” I was assessed and diagnosed with ADHD. I remember getting that diagnosis and going, “Really?” As we’re walking out of the building, I call my mom: “Hey, I have ADHD.” And she’s like, “Yeah.” I’m like, “No, no, I just got diagnosed with ADHD.” She’s like, “Right. We know.” I’m like, “Wait, y’all knew and nobody told me?” She’s like, “Well, anybody who’s talked to you for five minutes knows.” And I was like, “That would have been helpful to know: that there are tools out there, and that I’m not just on this island fighting for acceptance.”
Mike: How old were you when that happened?
Jake: Late twenties.
Mike: And she’s like, “Yeah, obviously you’ve had that the whole time.” And no one had said anything to you. Wow.
Jake: Honestly, when he told me that and I looked at some of the documents about it, it was like we’d been playing a card game for 20 years, and all of a sudden you told me what the rules were. “Oh. Whoops. Now I know what we’re doing.”
Mike: It would have been nice to know the whole time.
Jake: “There are red cards in this deck? They mean something?”
Chris: I just want to touch briefly on the fact that Jake is a very talented artist. You mentioned that you worked on your art while the Eagles were flying and the Crows were eating boogers. Is that part of what drew you to art even more?
Mike: They weren’t letting him read.
Jake: I can read. But yeah, art was something that made sense, and my mind calmed down with all the inputs. Honestly, I didn’t realize at first that art did that for me. My grandpa taught me, when I was little, to just sit down and doodle and draw things. I remember I was having my first panic attack, probably about seven years old, and my grandpa said, “I reckon it’s a good day to draw.” He put some butcher paper down on the coffee table and just sat there and taught me to draw. And for years, anytime I would get worked up, even in college, I’d reach out to him, and he’d say, “Hey, I reckon it’s a good day to draw.” It became a reminder: “Okay, I’m going to draw.” There were signs behind it that I know now, but he didn’t know. He just knew me. I would sit down and draw, and eventually all the stuff scattered in my mind or hanging on to me would just kind of rest. It would let go. That’s where art made sense to me, and when I needed to process stuff, that’s where I could go. Another part of it is probably that I have synesthesia, which means I process information through the “wrong” senses in my brain, so imagery and drawing are tactile. There are a lot of senses that go into it. And because that was comfortable and calm for me, I actually went into a career in drawing and graphic design, and basically abused my therapy to the point where things started falling apart. I had nowhere to go for the calm, because that was my job, and it was all judged.
Mike: Oh, I see what you’re saying.
Jake: People were constantly judging, and it was like, “I just don’t want to draw anymore. I don’t want to do this.”
Mike: So it almost ruined the calming effect.
Jake: A hundred percent it did. And then, to loop back here, at one point I had moved into a management role and wasn’t doing much design anymore. That’s when the brewery came in: “Hey, do you want to draw some stuff?” And I just started drawing for them, in a different style than I’d ever done before, really sloppy and loose and fast. I kind of rediscovered it and started doodling again. I have no idea where we started with this question. Oh, school doodling. Teachers would put me in the back of the room and say, “Sit back here and draw, so you don’t distract the other kids.” And I was like, “Okay, cool.” It was the only thing I knew I was good at when I was little.
Mike: When it became more of your job and not an outlet to release, or slow down your brain and calm down, what did you do during that time? Did you have another outlet?
Jake: I just got angry.
Mike: So you didn’t really have one.
Jake: I lost it.
Mike: Do you think everyone with ADHD needs to find some type of outlet like that?
Chris: Because it’s probably not drawing for everyone.
Jake: The way I look at it, what you need to find is some kind of output that is not judged. From age four, we’ve all been conditioned to know that our output is judged. It’s work, and we’re rewarded, and people respond differently based on our outputs. So we get our value from our outputs, which is not healthy at all, but it’s our society. At age four, kids recognize that and start to change their behavior and how they act, even their identity. And we spend a lot of our life, at work and in everything we do, knowing all our output is judged. So when we go to relax, we immediately go to unjudged input. In 2020, everybody reached the bottom of Netflix: “There’s nothing left.”
Mike: We’ve literally watched it all. It’s over.
Jake: That’s what we do. But that actually overstimulates your brain as well. It just doesn’t hurt in the same way. So what I’ve found, from talking to doctors and going through this, is to find output that isn’t judged. A lot of people say, “Well, I go on a walk.” And I’m like, that’s great, if you can do it without counting your steps.
Mike: Yes. Not evaluating your health.
Jake: When I teach people, at conferences, people with ADHD or whoever, I teach this doodle technique. And the part everybody hates… I thought I was going to get beat up at an event in October. I have them do a doodle that takes less than two minutes, and then you wad it up and throw it to the front of the room. You throw it away. And people are so mad, because they’re like, “I just made that thing.” We are addicted to that judgment, to that approval. You want to show it to your nephew, your kid, your wife. You want to look at it next week. Well, somebody’s going to judge it, and approval is a judgment. So, back to doodling: find a thing nobody is judging you for. Don’t ingest more. Make something, put it out there, and then it’s trash, because you’re not aiming for the output. You’re aiming for the outcome, which is that calm, relaxed state.
Mike: That’s good. That’s smart. So whatever you’re doing, be willing to let it go, because you’re not evaluating it. I don’t know if “hobby” is the right word, but some type of outlet or output, like you’re saying. At conferences, what are some different examples? Some people draw. What else comes to mind?
Jake: I like doodling, because it’s paper, a pen and the trash. It’s super simple. A lot of people do walks. They like exercising. Some people do dancing, things like that. Another thing about doodling is you can do it in a room and people won’t notice. If you start dancing in a restaurant…
Mike: Chris, sit down. We see you dancing.
Jake: Anything that burns energy, moving or making something. Another one is music. A lot of people say music, and I’ll ask, “Do you pay attention to what you’re playing?” On a guitar, for instance, it’s really easy to hit a wrong note. There’s something called a strum stick. I think it’s three strings. It’s like a guitar, but everything’s open, and you only put your hand on the bottom string, and anywhere you go, it’s a chord. There’s no way to be out of tune on a strum stick. Any rhythm you play is right.
Mike: So it will carry you off. You can just play it.
Jake: And if other people hear you, you’re not going to be judged, and you’re not going to judge, because you’re not practicing. Judged input is practice and study. So if you have a way to make something that can’t be wrong, it’s not going to be judged. The only reason something is wrong is that it’s judged against something. Most people find that doing something they’re not trained in is the best way to find this space.
Mike: Because they’re not evaluating. They’re just letting it go.
Jake: They haven’t had it beaten into them to judge what they’re doing.
Chris: You mentioned you help people at conferences, but you’ve also been using LinkedIn as a platform. “Doodle to calm your noodle” is how you’ve described it. That’s great, by the way, that you’re showing other people how to do it. I imagine the hard part is when they message you, “Hey, Jake, what did you think of my doodle?” Or they put it out there for people to see, and it kind of defeats the purpose. How do you guide them there?
Jake: I just don’t answer that. I’m not going to judge it. I’m like, “Hey, I’m glad doodling is working for you.” I don’t comment on the doodle. I comment on the act of doodling. And when people comment on my doodles, I try to do the same thing, because, and this sounds really bad, I view LinkedIn as the trash bin. I doodle, I usually take a video or something, and I post it out there. A lot of times, whatever I write in the post has absolutely nothing to do with what’s going on in the doodle. And it’s ridiculous, because I’ve more than doubled my LinkedIn following. Thousands of people are following me on LinkedIn now, because I’m the seven-year-old doodling on LinkedIn.
Mike: The kid with the boogers is probably following you on LinkedIn.
Jake: He’s probably on there.
Chris: He’s probably Banksy, right?
Mike: Wouldn’t that turn into an immediate evaluation of the doodles? Do you post it because you’re trying to encourage people about the practice, not the actual doodle? Is that your goal, throwing it in the trash bin, so to speak?
Jake: Okay. So I’m done with it. But there was a point where I actually created a spreadsheet: “This was the doodle. These are the reactions.” Like social media marketing: “What are my numbers?” And I remember looking at it, getting up and going to get a drink. It was apple juice. I walked back in, sat down and was like, “I’m literally measuring and judging all of it.” I had to step back out of it. So at that point, I took the numbers 1 through 31, and every day in the month of January, I turned that day’s number into a dinosaur. I just videoed that and posted it, and I got to the point where I was like, “I’m using this to calm myself down. I’m going to video it or take a photo and post it.” But I had to separate it from helping people and engagement. I didn’t view the artwork as being judged. The posts, the interaction and the community I was building could be judged, because I wanted to grow that. The doodles were basically trash. In my mind, “I’m done with this.” But it was what got people’s attention, and then we got to talk about something important.
Mike: It’s like a doorway. I think there’s a good tension there. It was a way into a community. You weren’t really evaluating the way in, so to speak, but it encouraged other people to find a practice.
Jake: There are a lot of people who say, “I can’t draw,” and I’m like, “Awesome. We’re not drawing. We’re doodling.” If you’re judging the doodle… Seriously, would you walk up to a four-year-old and go, “I don’t know, it’s kind of…”
Mike: Chris, did you want to tell Jake your confession, how you did that with a child a couple of weeks ago?
Chris: What universe was this? Why would I do that?
Mike: You hate children. Okay. Moving on to the next question.
Chris: Stop dancing. Well, first of all, I think you’re filling a wonderful role for people who are just oversaturated with measurement at this point. They want to know how they’re doing, what kind of likes they’re getting. Even in digital marketing, which your world covers quite a bit, it’s about measurement and return on investment. Everything we can measure, we’re going to try to. And you’re teaching people to take a step back and say, “This is for your mental health. This is for you to calm yourself down in the middle of all this chaos.” When people think about ADHD, they probably think, “Well, that’s just being distracted.” What are some of the things you run up against, where people say, “Oh, it’s this or that,” and you have to say, “No, really, it’s this”?
Jake: Back to my grandpa. By the way, I loved my grandpa. He was one of the wisest people I ever met. A couple of years before he died, I was frustrated with something, and we were on the phone, and he said, “Can you love them through their ignorance?” I try to go back to that. So when people ask about ADHD and it hurts, well, they don’t know. They can’t know. One of the questions that grates on me is when people go, “Well, doesn’t everybody have a little bit of that?” And I’m like, “Doesn’t everybody have a little bit of not normal?” That doesn’t make sense. It hurts me and grates on me, like, “You haven’t even cared to know what we’re talking about.” But they don’t know. So I can either love them through their ignorance, and ignorance isn’t a bad thing; staying ignorant is a bad thing. I can love them through that. Or I can just get angry because it hurts. But maybe it won’t hurt the next person if they know. That’s kind of the thought. Did I answer that question? Because I started chasing something.
Chris: Don’t take my acceptance of that answer as something you have to have. That’s what I’m learning.
Mike: I don’t know about that. We’re completely judging this interview.
Chris: Mike has to have measurement.
Mike: I think that makes sense. That’s a good word. Incompetence or ignorance doesn’t necessarily mean bad. That can just be where someone’s at, because they’re ignorant on a topic. It doesn’t mean they’re stupid.
Jake: They don’t know yet.
Mike: They just don’t know. Chris, you tell me: I wonder if when someone hears “ignorance” or “incompetence,” they think, “Okay, so I guess I’m stupid.” That’s not what the word means.
Jake: I wouldn’t say that publicly. If somebody said something, I wouldn’t be like…
Mike: “Let me help you through your ignorance.”
Jake: “Let me love you through your ignorance right now.” No, you don’t do that. But we do respond to ignorance as if it’s a bad thing, like, “I’m not enough.” Well, you’re not enough yet. You can’t be what you want to be yet. Yes, you’re ignorant. If you’ll own that and change, then it’s not bad. That became huge for me, specifically with ADHD, and in talking to other people with ADHD, because Chris and I have talked about this before. I’m just going to go on a tangent. Are you guys good with that?
Mike: Yeah. Go.
Jake: I read a statistic that if you’re neurodivergent, so ADHD, autism, whatever, when you go into work, the first 20% of your capacity, your anxiety, stress, cortisol, all of that, goes to not getting caught and not getting fired. So you only have about 80% available to do what everybody else has 100% to do. And you’re limping, because your executive function’s not there all the time. We go through tides, highs and lows. So what we try to do is get everything done while we’re on the highs, and then we crash, feel guilty and judged, and try to hide our lows, which causes the problems. Talking to people who have ADHD, especially late diagnoses, it’s like, “Okay, everything has been wrong. It all kind of makes sense now. Now where’s the playbook? Where’s the manual?” Helping people realize, like, I was 28 and completely ignorant: “Okay, great. Now I know what’s different about me, but what do I do with that?” All the rules I’d been told, “Focus more, put your head down, don’t listen to music while you work,” all the stuff people say is how you focus, and I’m like, “Those rules don’t apply here.” It’s like playing Uno with somebody else’s house rules, and you’re like, “I don’t like those rules. They don’t work for me.” So I have no idea where we started on this, but it’s going back to ignorance and asking, “What does it mean for me? What does it mean for other people?” And you just go, “Not yet. We don’t know yet.” Then you can ask, do you want to know or not? Because there are some things I’m fine being ignorant about, because I haven’t needed that information.
Mike: Do you have the same thing at home, that 20% spent on not getting fired? Does that apply in other areas, or is it more segregated: here’s work, this is where it happens, and home is different?
Jake: It’s more apparent at work. When people first get married, it shows up. A lot of times, ADHD divorce rates are really, really high, because you get to a point where you feel safe, or you feel like you’re okay, and you get vulnerable. Or you just can’t hold it together anymore. It’s held together by anxiety and baling wire, and at some point something cracks, and the way it floods over other people is not safe for them. If I look back at my marriage (sorry to my wife, if she’s listening to this), when we started out, I did a good job of holding it in and containing it. I didn’t even know I had ADHD, but there were definitely parts where I had to compartmentalize and try to hold something. It’s like a co-pilot nobody knew about. Afterwards I found out, “Oh, it’s the co-pilot, but it never gets to be the pilot.” Okay, now I know that. But in the first however many years of our marriage, there were times… I remember one time we were playing ultimate frisbee, because I did that a lot, and a guy ran into my wife. I charged down the field, planted my knee between his shoulder blades and rode him to the ground face first. Broke his nose. And she was like, “What just happened?” She was afraid of me. And I’m like, “But I just did the guy thing.”
Mike: “I defended your honor.”
Jake: The guy slammed into her intentionally, trying to take her out of the game, and I took him out of the game. A hundred percent no Jesus in that moment. That was the first time she saw me uncontrolled. It was all reaction. Everything was there, and I just couldn’t keep it contained.
Mike: And you didn’t know at that point, right?
Jake: I knew that was in there. I didn’t know what it was or what was causing it. I thought everybody else was just better at containing it than I was: “They don’t let theirs out. I’m not going to let mine out. Can’t let them see this.” It was all bubbling just under the surface. Later on I found out that’s actually part of me. When the stress doesn’t have a steady outlet, it becomes this beast, and when I don’t have that extra 20% to keep it together, it’s going to erupt. So does that happen at home? It can be more stressful at home, but eventually it’s going to explode, and it almost always explodes at home, because she signed the paper and she has to love me. You guys know what I’m talking about?
Mike: Oh, yeah. I actually wonder if home is a little more freeing, if it’s a loving environment, anyone’s home where they believe they’re not being judged or reviewed the way they are in the workplace. There could be more freedom there. There’s probably a tension: I have more freedom, but because I have more freedom, and it’s the end of the day, I might erupt.
Jake: If 20% went to not getting caught, and you spent everything else you had at work, you’re coming home empty. You have nothing. And at the same time, you feel safe. With my wife, think of the tides. When I’m focused, things are good. When my executive function is really struggling and I don’t have control, I call those low tides. If I’ve only shown her high tides, because we’re dating and I want to show my best, same as at work, and maybe the mids, then she sees the top 60%. When that bottom 40% shows up, it’s scary, and it’s not fair. You might even say I lied to her. And I did, because I was lying to myself. I had no idea what was going on. But she was the safe place, and she caught the brunt of it. Not fair. But we’ve had lots and lots of conversations and lots and lots of therapy. We’ve gone through this, and she has been amazing at helping me and giving me the space and the grace to figure it out. A lot of times I’ll just say, “I need a nap,” or, “I can’t.” Now we use the terms high tide and low tide. She’ll say, “Hey, we need to look at this stuff,” and I’ll say, “I’m low right now,” and she’s like, “Okay.” And I have a map, a way I help people map their tides so they can see the patterns of higher and lower tides and project them. We know there are times we can expect to have conversations. Basically, if I’m hungry, I’m good. If I’ve just eaten, low tide. Nothing’s going to get done. I can’t process information quickly. I’m just going to sit there and stare at you. As an example: the last time I booked my own travel to go out of town, it took me three hours to book a flight on Expedia.
Mike: Because you ate right before that?
Jake: I ate, and then I sat down: “This is the task I have to do.” I turned on some music and tried to get it done, and I just couldn’t make myself do it. I started researching different airlines. “Let’s go back over to Southwest, because they have free luggage.” I don’t even need luggage. I don’t have luggage anymore. Back and forth, chasing every rabbit. And then, “Oh, wait, my timer just went off, because it’s dinner time.” “Oh, this one’s the cheap one. It’s a direct flight.” And I booked it, because I was in a time crunch. I just did not have the focus capacity to keep myself contained. And that’s where parents and everybody growing up say, “You just need to put your head down and focus. You’re not going outside to play until you finish your math homework.” And I’m like, literally the best way to get me to do my math homework is to give me 15 minutes outside.
Mike: That’s a good point. How long have y’all been married?
Jake: We got married in ’06, so we’re coming up on 19 years.
Mike: That’s exciting. Congrats. It sounds really supportive. In my situation, which is not ADHD, I didn’t learn about my anxiety until my early thirties, I think. But my wife’s been great. Now I can identify certain symptoms, almost like a tide, where I can tell I’m approaching max capacity. We’ll be talking, and I’ll say, “I can’t do that thing right now.” I can identify it, not always perfectly, and she’s so great about it: “All right, cool.” Because if someone around me kept asking, “Are you sure? Are you okay?” that would be the worst. I’d need them to back off.
Jake: It ends in arguments, loud voices. Or if they ask you to do something and then belittle you, or we feel belittled, like they’re taking it away from us, “Oh, you’re a child, you can’t do this,” then it’s, “Watch me do it.” Now I’m accomplishing a task at her instead of for her, and it’s ugly. It’s half done and it’s garbage work, and then I don’t get to recover, so I’m not good afterwards. There’s this wake of damage. All the kids are sitting there crying, and I’m like, “But we have macaroni.”
Chris: One of the things I noticed about you right off the bat when we met, and Mike, I’ll put you in this category too, is that you know yourself very well. You can describe what you’re going through and your feelings. You have a good understanding of who Jake is. Part of understanding yourself is knowing how to manage when you can feel a low tide coming on. What happens when you stop managing it, when you stop doodling? What does that look like for you?
Jake: I hurt people. Not physically, but relationships start to deteriorate. What I say is, honor the low tides. If I don’t relax, if I don’t let those low tides happen and rest and recover… Imagine leg day. You work out, you do leg day, and then you stand up with jello legs. The next day and the second day, it hurts, and you have to take some time off. If you try to do leg day three days in a row, you’re actually causing damage, and your productivity goes down. It’s the same thing. If you don’t honor the low tides, you’ll lose the high tides. And I also know I really like people praising the high tides. But if I honor the low tides… I actually mapped this for a while. I can get about 10 hours of work done in four hours if I sync it up with high tides. If I try to sync it up with low tides, I get about 10 minutes of work done in 10 hours. It’s just not going to happen. But if I honor the low tides, if I doodle, split tasks, go for a walk… Spring right now is really, really difficult for a lot of people with ADHD. Flowers are blooming in bright colors, trees are green, the colors are bombarding you, birds are chirping at a higher pitch and more often than before, the sun’s warm. Think of all the senses. It’s kind of overload. We’re being bombarded with more stimuli. And biologically, our bodies are depleted of vitamin D, so we want to be in the sun. Our body’s yearning to be outside. All these things are distracting us, but I have a task list, and I have to write two more LinkedIn posts, or whatever else you’re doing. It is hard. What I’ve realized, especially this spring, is that if I just acknowledge it in a low tide, “Okay, low tide, I just ate,” I’ll go outside and spend 10 minutes acknowledging that these birds are loud and high pitched and having fun singing. “Okay, spring is happening.” I’m normalizing it. I go to it, acknowledge it and experience it, and then I can go back in and get work done, as opposed to doubling down in a low tide: “No, I have to focus. I have to drag myself up and appear to be at a high tide.” So I get those high tides, I get that work done, and I’m happier. And now that you asked this, here’s what I’m going to start telling people: if you’re missing other people’s smiles, you’re probably out of sync. You need to look at that. If my wife doesn’t smile for a couple of days, I’m calling the counselor right now: “We’re getting this on the calendar. I am so far gone.” We love laughter in our house. Silly things, irony, goofy nerd humor, puns. We love puns. So if you don’t see joy around you, something’s probably out of sync. For me, that’s what happens, and it becomes almost a doom spiral if I don’t intervene.
Chris: Part of why I’m excited about you understanding yourself is that you wear a lot of different hats, and I’m not just talking about the hat you have on right now. You do a lot of different things, and you get a lot done. People might think that contradicts their idea of somebody with ADHD. But you do consulting, graphic design work. There’s a lot you can do.
Jake: I’m multi-interested.
Chris: Very multi-interested. But you’re also creative, and you’re able to get projects to the finish line and do them really well. That’s always been something I’ve noticed about you. And where I’m going with that is that you’re sharing part of your journey with other people so it can help them. If you got in a time machine and went back to Jake in the back of the room with his crow buddy eating the boogers, well, not Jake, the crow buddy…
Jake: He wouldn’t share.
Chris: What would you tell young Jake about the journey he’s about to go on?
Mike: To ADHD land?
Jake: A couple of things. “Kid, you’ve got a condition.” No, I’m just kidding. To be honest, there were a couple of big moments. One of them: I graduated from college, and my dad looked at me and said, “I’m proud of you.” He told me that while dropping me off at the airport, and I wept the entire plane ride home. That was the first time I could remember hearing it. I didn’t even realize I’d been striving for that until that point. So, backing up: if I were a little kid, I’d want to know that I did not have to work for people’s approval. That there was an approval available that wasn’t dependent on me sitting still and not rocking my desk back and forth, or not drawing off the edge of the paper and onto the desk, which happened a lot. Just somebody saying, “You’re different, and it’s okay.” Having tools to come out of that would have been amazing, but just, “You’re different, and it’s okay.” My dad said, “I’m proud of you.” I don’t ever remember my grandpa saying it, but I knew it was always there. He was always with me. He would get down on his knees and come to me, to talk to me and help with that stuff. So if I could go back and say something, it would be to acknowledge, yes, it’s weird. You’re wired differently. Actually, I’ve been using the phrase “designed”: you’re designed differently. I was designed differently, and it’s on purpose. A lot of people with ADHD think we’re broken, and we don’t want anybody to know. Then we’re told we have a disorder, so something went wrong: “Why are we cursed with this?” But if you can turn it around and say, “You were designed with this,” it lands even for people who don’t have any belief system at all. I said that to a lady today on a Zoom call, in a coaching group where I help entrepreneurs who have ADHD. I used Monet’s water lilies to explain it to her, and I said, “We’re designed this way.” And you could just watch the burden she’d been carrying come off her shoulders. We get diagnosed, we’re told something’s wrong, we hide it: “This is what’s broken with you.” That’s not helpful at all. “Oh, great. Now I’m broken. I hope nobody finds out.” But figuring out that we’re just designed this way… Think about it: for a kid, ADHD basically means you weren’t what the teacher was expecting. That’s the biggest issue. I can remember thinking, from a kid’s perspective, “That’s not my fault. That’s your job.” I didn’t know I had ADHD. In fourth grade they said, “You don’t know how to read.” And I’m like, “Right.” And they said, “Why didn’t you tell anybody?” How was it my job as the kid to tell you that nobody taught me to read? So if I could go back, that’s probably what I’d say: you’re wired differently. You were designed differently. It’s not going to fit, and that’s fine.
Chris: I love what your grandpa used to say to you: “It’s a good day to draw.”
Jake: “I reckon it’s a good day to draw.”
Chris: Maybe that’s another book.
Jake: Everything I say, Chris is like, “That’s a book.”
Mike: I Reckon It’s a Good Day to Draw would be a good book. So how would you encourage people who hear you and go, “Okay, that sounds good. How do I identify my high and low tides, so I can find a sweet spot to manage and get through the day”?
Jake: There’s an exercise I use with dials. We can get you guys a PDF to share. What I recommend is a week, Monday through Friday. I don’t do weekends, because weekends are just crazy. Each dial has the 24 hours around it, and you don’t have to do it every hour on the hour. You go with a gut feeling: “Around seven o’clock, I was pretty focused,” and you shade it in for how focused you were. It’s almost impossible for us to feel the tides, the highs and lows. We just feel the gaps. But if you map it, it’s super easy to see the patterns.
Mike: So you take an inventory of your time and where you’re at first, evaluating where you fall on these dials, and then you operate from there?
Jake: You go around the dial. At 7 a.m., this is how focused I was, how well my executive function was working: one, two, three, four, five, how far up the scale. You shade those in as you go. Or around lunchtime you go, “I was working on this and pretty focused, and then I couldn’t do anything at this time.” I have people fill that in for a week, and if we meet weekly, we talk about it: “Do you see any patterns?” And I let them know the patterns I’m seeing, even if they can’t. I look at mine, and there are four spikes, and it’s hilarious, because they’re literally right before I eat. Until I eat breakfast, until I eat lunch, until I eat dinner. And then there’s this amazing 10 o’clock spike, the most focused of the day, until I eat my nightly snack. If I eat at 10:30, everything cracks real fast. That used to be when I wrote my book and did things. And because I make breakfast every morning, and I make dinner, two of my main focus times are spent preparing something for the kids. I’m not actually working. I’m investing in those relationships. I had to look at those as major projects worth high tides. That just means some of my work lands in different places. So I’d aim that 10 o’clock one at, “Oh, man, I can just crush some work right now.” It was really, really great, until my therapist said, “Don’t you have another project you’ve been working on for 15 or 20 years?” And I’m like, “What? No. I can’t focus that long on anything.” He said, “Your wife.” And I’m like, “Oh, snap.”
Mike: Oh, yeah.
Jake: She needs some attention without the kids around. And she’s a night owl, so that’s our time. And if I get up and do breakfast in the morning, she doesn’t have that burden. If I spend time with her in the evening, she needs to sleep in, so I can designate my morning high tide to helping with breakfast and getting the kids started. I’m not saying I’m great at it. I’m saying I mapped it out. Every quarter, sometimes more, I remap and ask, “How am I doing? Is it pretty much right?” How high some of the tides go changes. And when life throws you a curveball, stuff just gets jacked up. But that’s what I’d recommend, and I can get you that.
Mike: We’d love that, in the show notes for people to access.
Jake: It’s a PDF. I keep it on my phone and use a little highlighter.
Mike: That’s great. Awesome. He may not know what’s coming next…
Chris: I’m starting to hear some thunder.
Mike: Are you hearing some thunder? For the last round. I’m sorry for the senses. That audibly just destroyed all of us. This is the lightning round. In the vein of ADHD, you basically can’t think about these things.
Chris: It sounds like a nightmare right now.
Jake: Somebody promised me chips, and they weren’t there.
Mike: It’s the lightning round, and also the nightmare round. Here we go. Without thinking too much: Lord of the Rings, Star Wars or Harry Potter?
Jake: Harry Potter.
Mike: My man. Fiction or nonfiction?
Chris: Books.
Jake: I’m probably going to go nonfiction. I really like memoirs. I like them to have a little bit of real to them.
Mike: I like a memoir. That’s a good segue. Favorite French food?
Chris: You already asked that.
Mike: Not just a baguette. A baguette with Nutella.
Jake: Dude. And if you want a follow-up: crepes. Nutella crepe, strawberry crepe.
Mike: Do you have a Nutella tap in your kitchen?
Jake: In France, you could buy it by the two kilos at Toys R Us. I’m just going to let you sit with that.
Mike: Toys R Us? I don’t understand.
Jake: When God gives you a gift, don’t ask questions.
Mike: Two kilos. Here we go. What book are you currently reading?
Chris: Or a memoir you’re reading.
Jake: This one’s not a memoir. Oh my goodness. What is it? The red one about hurry. Relentless destruction of hurry? You guys know what I’m talking about.
Mike: I know what you’re talking about. We’ll edit this in. No, we’re keeping this in.
Jake: So I also love Andrew Peterson’s Adorning the Dark. I read that every year, and that book’s really cool for me. I’m reading The Wreck and Rise of Whitson Maddox, part of the Green Ember series, with one of my kids. And we’re kicking off one of the Harry Potter books.
Mike: Are you talking about The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry? I think that’s the one.
Jake: That’s an excellent book. I got distracted.
Mike: Are you far into it?
Jake: It’s a book I’ve started three times. I think going through it slowly and leisurely is actually my downfall with this book, because I’m like, “I don’t want to hurry through it. I want to absorb it all.” I think what I actually need to do is power through it and then circle back and enjoy it.
Mike: Have you read that book?
Chris: I have not. That’s unlike a lightning round.
Mike: Okay. I distracted you guys from the lightning round. Deserted island.
Chris: Not dessert island.
Mike: Not dessert island. You have one show you can watch on repeat. What is it?
Jake: Movie or TV show?
Mike: TV show.
Jake: Bob Ross.
Mike: The Joy of Painting. Very calm.
Jake: Very calm. I would need that.
Chris: A secondary question: dessert island. What’s one dessert you’d have on that island?
Jake: Oh, crepes.
Mike: I knew it. I was going to say it can’t be crepes.
Mike: Okay. Who do people say is your doppelganger?
Jake: All right. Well, David Crowder, actually.
Mike: I can see that now.
Chris: You’ve been called Jake Crowder before.
Jake: I have. I used to have the beard and the glasses.
Mike: Sorry, David Crowder. We do not think you’re ugly. Final question. If you weren’t named Jake, what would you have liked to be named?
Jake: Can I tell a quick story about this? In second grade, my parents went to an open house, looked through all the pictures on the wall, and none of my work was there. They’re like, “Where’s your work?” And the teacher came up and said, “Hi, Tony.” At the beginning of the year, I had changed schools, and the teacher said, “If there’s a name you would prefer to be called…” And I said, “I’d like to be called Tony.” So I went a whole six weeks with everybody at school thinking my name was Tony.
Mike: Tony is the answer. Why did you pick Tony?
Jake: I actually don’t know.
Chris: Sounds like a good, strong name.
Mike: Now I really want to call him Tony from now on.
Jake: So I guess that’s what it would be.
Chris: Hey, Tony.
Mike: Well, Tony, thank you so much for being here and sharing. I think it’s vulnerable to share what you’ve gone through, or how you’re designed. I like that way of saying it. It’s hard to learn to embrace how we’re designed, even if it looks different from the rest of the world. It’s cool to hear your journey and how you’ve embraced it to the point of turning around and helping other people with it, because you know where they’re at. I think that’s so needed. There are a lot of people, whether it’s ADHD or anxiety, or they suffer from a Chris condition, shoelessness…
Chris: A condition all people are suffering from right now.
Mike: There are a lot of people out there with different things going on in their lives, and sometimes they don’t know it’s safe to talk about it, or they think they’re on their own, on an island. So I just love conversations like this, because I know it will help a lot of people embrace how they’re designed each day.
Chris: Well said, Mike.
Jake: It’s a lot more fun to sit with people and be present and not hide. I got tired of hiding a bunch of it. And as I progressed, and I’d get on calls and talk to people and they would stop hiding, it was kind of like, “Hey, this is a lot better than whatever we were doing before.” It has taken work. I try to make it more natural and more common for myself, because you have to go first. Nobody else is going to be the person who walks up and says, “Hey, I got lost.”
Mike: That’s great. What are you currently working on, and where can people find you if they want to talk more about it or want resources?
Jake: You can find me on LinkedIn. The fastest way is my website, jakebrown.co. There’s some stuff about the doodling there, and you can contact me there.
Mike: Awesome. Jake Brown, everyone.
Chris: I’m just glad to know you. You’ve been yourself from day one, and I’ve always appreciated that. And thank you for killing me so many times with a flying piano in the hallway.
Jake: It’s been great, man. You’re awesome. I love you.
Chris: Love you too.
Outro: Thanks so much for joining us. Please consider rating and reviewing our podcast and hitting subscribe on whichever platform you prefer. Remember to keep moving forward, because we’re not quite there.
