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(If the brief was to kick off this blog with a melodramatic title, I’d say I nailed it!)
But I digress. I’m Sophie Hardiman, COO at 3 Sided Cube and resident ADHD spokesperson. Except I’m not at all, but as an ADHD woman managing an agency, I have been volunteered as tribute (looking at YOU marketing team👀).
I’ve been at 3 Sided Cube for 14 years, starting in operations when we were a tiny start-up, moving into project management and eventually becoming COO. For most of that time, I had no idea I had ADHD.
Which, looking back, explains why the factory setting of life has felt like it was toggled to Sisyphus mode.
Project management actually worked incredibly well with my brain. There was always a problem to solve, something happening, something urgent that needed sorting. My brain works at what can only be described as a squirrel on the lash, so I felt right at home in that environment.
The far less fun side of my wiring was the exhaustive effort that went into appearing like the organised, efficient, all-knowing project manager who had everything under control.
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I didn't know why some things seemed to require so much more effort for me than they did for other people, so I did what a lot of women with undiagnosed ADHD do: I tried harder. I overworked. I thought about the Jira board at 3AM. And spent a frankly unreasonable amount of time wondering what the hell was wrong with me.
So, without really realising what I was doing, I built systems around absolutely everything in order to survive…and not get fired. And some of those systems are still part of how Cube operates today.
Turns out, trying harder wasn't a system
I came to understand my own ADHD through my son. Going through the diagnosis process with him meant learning a ridiculous amount about ADHD and autism, and the more I learnt, the more I started thinking... well, he obviously got it from his momma.
Around the same time I read Leanne Maskell's ADHD an A-Z (highly rec for anyone else on a ADHD discovery journey), which inspired me to put together my own A-Z of ADHD for one of our company-wide meeting, Happy Half Hour. I wasn't trying to become Cube's ADHD spokesperson. I thought it might be useful, filled a slot in the diary, and cracked on.
What I didn't expect was the response.
People messaged me afterwards because they'd recognised something in themselves, their partner or their child. It started conversations about things we'd never really had language for before.
So I kept doing it.
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Over time, that language has become part of everyday life at Cube. Someone might say they're struggling with executive function or rejection sensitivity. We talk about body doubling. We know that sometimes a deadline needs to become more urgent or a massive task needs chopping into something your brain can actually get hold of.
Nobody is diagnosing anybody. We're just much better at asking a more useful question than why can't you just do it?
Knowing why doesn't mean I get a free pass
Understanding ADHD doesn't mean every responsibility disappears in a puff of neurodivergent smoke.
I'm completely and utterly time blind. Anyone who knows me outside work will enthusiastically confirm that I am eternally running around like a blue-arsed fly.
But I'm also COO of a company. I can't stroll into a meeting ten minutes late and announce that my ADHD is ADHDing. My ADHD explains why time management is difficult for me. It doesn't excuse the impact on everybody else.
So there are clocks everywhere. Timers. Multiple meeting reminders. Fake deadlines. Public accountability for things I know I need to do regularly.
Earlier in my career, I would have looked at all that and thought I shouldn't need it. I have a grown-up job. I should just be able to remember. But we’re done with that self-loathing era, baby!
Now I think: who cares? Put the fucking clock in front of your face.
That's probably one of the biggest things understanding ADHD has given me. I've stopped wasting quite so much energy trying to shame myself into being better at things my brain naturally finds difficult.
Because you can't hate yourself into getting something done. Trust me, I've tried.
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Turns out, other people need weird little systems too
If someone I manage is perfectly capable of doing something but isn't getting started, I'm not particularly interested in repeatedly asking why they haven't done it.
I want to know what's getting in the way.
Sometimes we break the task down. Sometimes we manufacture some urgency. Sometimes I sit with them for half an hour while they do the thing that's been rotting on their list for three weeks and causing daily anxiety.
That's body doubling, BTW. (much less exciting than the name suggests)
I also have walking one-to-ones with someone I manage because sitting opposite each other in a meeting room wasn't the best environment for us to talk. Eye contact, body hyper-awareness, minimal stimulation, the trifecta of a stilted check-in sesh. So we ditched it. Instead, we walk, we get coffee, we talk. We call them walkie-talkies because we're very sophisticated business people.
And then there's the context cactus. 🌵
I made that up for someone I managed who found it extremely anxiety-inducing when Directors cropped up in Slack asking them for something without explaining why. Which was unfortunate because my brain is stunning at arriving six thoughts ahead and asking somebody for a random spreadsheet with absolutely none of the preceding five thoughts attached.
So if I asked for something and hadn't given enough context, they sent me a cactus.
That was my cue to explain why I was asking, what I needed, and whether there was actually anything to worry about.
Ten years later, people across Cube still use it.
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None of these things came from us sitting down and designing an Official Neurodivergent Workplace Programme™. Usually one person needed something, we tried something, it helped, and sometimes it turned out to help loads of other people too.
That's probably the biggest thing ADHD has taught me about managing people. Fair doesn't necessarily mean everybody needs exactly the same thing; it means meeting them where they are at. Just be curious and flexible enough to accommodate when the need arises.
So, no. Everyone isn't suddenly “a bit ADHD”
Apparently, everyone's got ADHD now.
Or we're all “a bit ADHD”.
Or people just want a label.
Or MAYBE we need to stop pathologising everything and get on with it.
If you have ADHD, or love someone who does, you've probably heard some version of this. And the volume around it feels like it’s just getting cranked up at the moment.
In August, Channel 4 literally broadcast a documentary called The Great ADHD Myth?. The programme was slated by ADHD organisations and some experts, including one neuroscientist who said her contribution had been misrepresented. Channel 4 defended the documentary as an attempt to explore the debate around rising diagnosis. Where the debate was biased af and heavily one-sided.
There are valid conversations to have about diagnosis, access to treatment and the quality of assessments. Of course there are. But there is a human being that has been struggling in ways you can’t see on the other side of the “everyone wants a label” conversation.
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For a lot of us, the label came after years of having plenty of other ones.
Lazy. Disorganised. Difficult. Too much. Naughty. Scatty. Careless.
When my son was diagnosed, I didn't suddenly have a different kid. What I had was context. We could understand why some things were harder for him and put the right support around those things, instead of expecting him to somehow try hard enough to stop having an ADHD brain.
I wish I'd had some of that context earlier myself. I might have spent less time wondering why I couldn't just be better at things everybody else seemed able to do and given myself some damn grace.
And no, it doesn't have to be a superpower either
I struggle with this one.
There are absolutely things about my ADHD that have helped my career. My brain moves quickly. I love solving problems. Urgency can make me incredibly productive. Put me in a crisis, and I'm calm, cool, and collected, navigating my team through the sticky wicket without skipping a beat.
That doesn’t come without a price.
It can be exhausting. It can also make incredibly basic things bizarrely difficult. It can mean working twice as hard to look like you're effortlessly keeping up.
Both things are true.
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And I think that's where I'd like the conversation about ADHD to get to. Less arguing about whether we're all secretly lazy people hopping on a TikTok trend to identify as a manic pixie dream girl, and less pressure to turn neurodivergence into some inspirational Rosie the Riveter moment. More understanding of what's actually going on for the person in front of you, and being curious enough to ask what might help.
Sometimes it's breaking a massive task into something their brain can actually grab hold of.
Sometimes it's sitting next to them while they finally do the bastard thing.
Sometimes it's binning the meeting room for a walk and a coffee.
And sometimes it's just a cute little cactus. 🌵
A quick PSA
That's probably enough ADHD awareness from me for one day. If any of this has you recognising yourself, someone you work with, or the small human currently dismantling your house, I genuinely can't recommend Leanne Maskell's ADHD an A-Z enough. It was a huge part of me understanding ADHD, and eventually myself.
And to my fellow ADHDers trying to navigate a world that wasn't exactly designed with our brains in mind: I see you. Use the timer. Take the walk. Ask for the context. And for the love of God, stop trying to hate yourself into functioning.
Published on 1 October 2026, last updated on 1 October 2026