The ADHD CEO System

I spit my Ritalin into the bushes at the bus stop for two years. Then I built a system that works with an ADHD brain.

How to get 8 hours of work done in 4, without overriding the way your brain actually works. Take the 2-minute quiz to find where your day breaks, and exactly where to start.

By Kevin Jordan, founder of Actimate

Where does your ADHD hit hardest?

Six questions. It tells you which part of the system to start with first.

Question 1 of 617%

Where does your day most commonly fall apart?

A diagnosis is the beginning of the work. For too many ADHD adults it becomes the reason to stop doing any. This system assumes you want to move past identification and into action. Everything in here requires you to show up for it.

It comes in three parts: the Morning Stack that sets up everything else, the Focus System that gets tasks started and finished, and the Accountability Layer that replaces the willpower that always fails an ADHD brain.

Phase 1

The Morning Stack

Most ADHD adults blow their dopamine budget before 8am. Every notification, every scroll, every email before real work is a hit your brain prioritises over the harder work ahead. By the time you sit down, the tank is already half empty. Here is how to protect it.

No phone for the first 20 minutes

One rule, non-negotiable. Phone face down or in another room until your first tasks are done. The dopamine spike from a single scroll raises the threshold your brain needs to feel rewarded. The world will be the same in 20 minutes.

The supplements I take

Talk to your doctor before adding anything new, especially if you are on medication. This is what works for me, not medical advice.

  • Omega-3: 2g with breakfast. The most consistently supported supplement in ADHD research. Take with food.
  • Magnesium Glycinate: 300mg at night. Removes baseline restlessness and improves sleep onset.
  • L-Tyrosine: 500mg in the morning on an empty stomach. A dopamine precursor. Not within 4 hours of sleep.
  • Zinc: 15 to 25mg with food. Consistently linked to ADHD severity.

Cut entirely: coffee before 10am, energy drinks, pre-workout, anything with taurine. The crash makes time blindness and emotional dysregulation worse for the rest of the day.

The 3-item plan

Open a blank document. Write three things only:

  1. The one task that, if completed today, means the day was a success
  2. The two supporting tasks that feed into it
  3. The specific time you will start task one

Task one is non-negotiable. A full to-do list for an ADHD brain is a document of future failures. Three items is easy enough for anyone to follow.

20 minutes of movement

A 2023 meta-analysis found a single aerobic session improved sustained attention in ADHD adults for up to 2 hours. A walk works if you do not want to exercise. An ADHD brain that has been sedentary since waking spends the first 45 minutes at the desk trying to initiate. Movement cuts that in half.

The rest of the system

Take the 2-minute quiz to unlock Phases 2 & 3

You’ve got the Morning Stack. The Focus System and the Accountability Layer unlock once you take the quiz, tailored to where your day breaks.