What ADHD Coaching Actually Requires: The Other 167 Hours

‍A week contains 168 hours. If you work with an ADHD coach for one hour each week, that leaves 167 hours when you are not sitting across from your coach. This may seem obvious, but I have come to believe that what happens during those other 167 hours is far more important than what happens during the coaching session itself.

It took me a very long time to understand this.

Why therapy wasn’t enough

For many years, I attended therapy. I had good therapists, meaningful conversations, and plenty of insight. We would identify patterns, connect experiences, and arrive at observations that felt important. I often left sessions feeling hopeful and optimistic that things would be different.

Then I would walk out the door and, almost immediately, the conversation would begin to fade. Within a day or two, I would struggle to recall what we had even talked about, what conclusions we had reached, or what I intended to do with any of it. By the time the next appointment rolled around, I often had only the vaguest memory of the previous session.

Looking back, this seems like a glaring problem. At the time, however, neither I nor my therapists recognized it as one.

Part of the issue was that no one had identified my ADHD.

ADHD adults often have a peculiar relationship with time. Many describe their experience as consisting of only two categories: now and not now. Information that feels vivid, urgent, and important in one context can become surprisingly inaccessible once that context disappears. A realization that feels life-changing while sitting in a therapist’s office may be difficult to retrieve a few days later while standing in the grocery store, responding to emails, or trying to get dinner on the table.

As a result, therapy became a somewhat amnesic experience for me. Helpful conversations occurred. Yet very little seemed to change in my daily life because there was no bridge connecting what happened in that conversation to the rest of the week.

To be fair, many therapists are not trained to recognize ADHD in adults, particularly in women. Anxiety and depression are often much easier to spot, and ADHD frequently hides underneath them. Looking back, we were largely focused on the symptoms of my struggles rather than the underlying cause. We talked extensively about overwhelm, procrastination, inconsistency, burnout, and self-criticism without recognizing that ADHD was shaping all those experiences.

What ADHD coaching does differently

‍Years later, when I began training as an ADHD coach, I encountered a very different way of thinking about change. First, I learned general coaching skills through an ICF-accredited program. Later, I pursued more specialized ADHD coach training. One of the things that struck me almost immediately was how much attention ADHD coaching places on what happens between sessions.

In coaching, insight is important, but insight is not considered sufficient. The assumption is not that awareness automatically leads to change. Instead, coaching treats awareness as the beginning of the process rather than the end.

‍A client may realize that they are overcommitted, avoiding a difficult conversation, relying on a system that doesn’t fit their brain, or pursuing a goal that no longer matters to them. Those realizations are valuable, but coaching immediately follows them with another question: What are you going to do with this information?

‍The final portion of a coaching session is often devoted to answering that question. Together, the coach and client identify some action to take before the next session. We usually frame this as an experiment rather than an assignment. The goal is not to succeed or fail. The goal is to learn.

‍This distinction is particularly important for ADHD adults. Many of us have spent decades feeling judged, corrected, and evaluated. ADHD coaching is not about earning a passing grade. It is about gathering information. What happens if you try this approach? What gets easier? What gets harder? What surprises you? What gets in the way?

‍The following week, the client returns and reflects on what they learned. This creates a cycle of awareness, action, and learning that gradually builds momentum over time.

‍The memory problem no one talks about

‍For ADHD clients, however, there is another layer to this process. It is not enough to identify an action. We must also consider how the client will remember that the action exists.

‍Neurotypical people often underestimate how significant this challenge can be. My guess is that many of my therapists assumed I would retain the content of our sessions and apply it in a rational, straightforward manner throughout the week. Unfortunately, that was not how my brain worked. Once I left the room, the signal rapidly weakened until it was nearly impossible to detect.

‍As an ADHD coach, I make no such assumption.

‍If a client identifies an action they want to take, I am immediately interested in how they will remember it. We might put something on the calendar during the session. We might create reminders, visual cues, or accountability structures. Sometimes I send a text message during the week. Sometimes we spend several minutes simply figuring out how to strengthen the signal enough for it to survive outside the conversation we’re having right now.

‍This may sound like a small thing, but I have come to believe it is one of the most important aspects of ADHD coaching. Insight is surprisingly fragile. Without some mechanism for carrying it forward, even profound realizations can evaporate long before they have an opportunity to influence behavior.

‍Executive function challenges make this especially true. The gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it isn’t a motivation problem or a character flaw. It’s a self-management problem, and building structures that bridge that gap is central to the work.

‍What showing up between sessions actually looks like

‍This is also why readiness matters. ADHD coaching is not difficult because the actions are necessarily large or time-consuming. Most between-coaching-session experiments are relatively modest. What coaching requires is a willingness to stay engaged with the process during the other 167 hours.

‍I ask my clients to agree to show up to the next session even, and especially if they didn’t do what they intended to do. I ask them to reflect honestly on what happened. Together, we get curious about obstacles rather than turning them into evidence of failure. For it to work, you also need to spend a few minutes preparing for your next session rather than arriving with no idea what you want to discuss.

‍In my own practice, I ask clients to complete a brief form before each session. Part of the form asks them to reflect on what happened with their experiment from the previous week. Another part asks them to identify what they would like to focus on during our upcoming conversation. The purpose is not administrative. It is simply another bridge between the coaching session and the rest of the client’s life.

‍The cycle that creates change

‍Ultimately, ADHD coaching is not about what happens during a one-hour conversation. It is about what happens afterward. The conversation creates awareness, but awareness must eventually find its way into action. The action produces learning. The learning generates new awareness. Over time, that cycle creates change.

‍An ADHD coach cannot change your life for you. Only you can do that. My role is to provide structure, reflection, encouragement, and accountability while you do the work of living the other 167 hours.

‍If any of this resonates, I’d love to talk. You can book a free introductory call to learn more about how ADHD coaching works and whether it might be a good fit.‍ ‍