How to ADHD
- Jessica McCabe, 41, lost or quit at least 15 jobs due to her ADHD symptoms.
- She started a YouTube channel about her ADHD experiences and built a full-time career out of it.
- ADHD symptoms like hyperfocusing and flexible thinking helped her find success.
By the time she was in her early 30s, Jessica McCabe had either quit or was fired from at least 15 jobs.
"That may be an underestimation," McCabe, now 41, told Business Insider.
As a child, McCabe was diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed medication. She was labeled a "gifted kid" by the adults around her and was repeatedly told how much potential she had — if she just worked harder.
Instead, she ended up dropping out of college and hopping from job to job. She was an actor, a ghostwriter, a professional massage therapist, a server, and even worked at a pet store.
It wasn't until McCabe dug deeper into her childhood ADHD diagnosis that she realized how much symptoms like impulsivity and emotional dysregulation impacted her career and relationships.
As she learned more — and compiled her findings in a YouTube channel called "How to ADHD" — she steadily grew into one of the most popular YouTubers covering ADHD, with over 1.6 million subscribers. This month, she published a book that sums up her years of ADHD research and interviews with top experts.
She found success when she tried less
Dan Montgomery
By her early 30s, McCabe was completely burned out. "I was broke, divorced, living at home with my mom, my credit was terrible," McCabe said. "And I realized I was no longer maybe somebody with so much potential."
McCabe knew something had to change. "My brain kind of went on strike and went, 'I am not going to keep working under these conditions,'" she said.
She was trying to lose weight for a TV acting gig at the time, which led her to a life coach for actors. She came away from the meeting with a key piece of advice: do nothing.
"Everybody had been just telling me, 'do more, catch up, make up for lost time,'" she said. "And so this was the first time in my life where I just stopped doing anything extra. I went to work, I came home, I ate — that was it."
Taking the space cleared her mind enough to remember her ADHD diagnosis — and she started to question if it played a significant role in her life. She started making videos on her own, and putting all the information on YouTube because she knew she wouldn't accidentally misplace a whole channel like she could a notebook.
She also decided to make the videos public, in case they were helpful to anyone else. But she never anticipated making a living out of doing what she loved.
She worked with her brain, not against it
McCabe said that the flexibility of YouTubing helped her lean into her talents.
"I was able to solve problems in really kind of unique, outside-the-box ways that I didn't have the freedom to do before," she said.
Her YouTube career also helped her make a living from qualities that used to get her into trouble at past jobs. She once volunteered at a yoga studio in exchange for free classes but got caught Googling a lot on the computer.
"Now, I get to Google things for a living," she said. "This kind of insatiable curiosity that I attribute to my ADHD, that's actually served me really well."
She's found success through her struggles
Her team has grown since the early days, and now she can delegate the tasks she finds overwhelming, like day-to-day operations and community management, to other people. That allows her to focus on her strengths, like writing and coming up with new topics to explore.
McCabe believes her channel is successful because she's lived through all the challenges she talks about.
"I was struggling so hard and everything that I was struggling with, I found strategies for," she said.
"That's the first time I think I've been actually very glad that I struggled with all of these things," she said. The new book, she said, "is a comprehensive manual for hopefully anybody who's struggling."