Workshop · two live days, then nine weeks of light self-experiments · for researchers and the institutions that train them
Finding Focus with ADD/ADHD:
Working With the Brain You Have
Not a workshop about fixing your attention. Nine weeks of understanding how it actually works, testing evidence-based strategies against your own data, and building a roadmap you designed yourself.
Who this workshop is for
This workshop is for researchers whose attention has always worked differently, and for institutions whose standard focus advice keeps failing a portion of their people.
This is for you if:
- You are diagnosed, suspect you might be, or simply know your attention does not behave like the advice assumes
- Conventional productivity systems have repeatedly failed you
- You want strategies tested against your own brain, not a one-size template
It is a training built around how your attention actually works, not a clinical assessment or a diagnosis service.
Attention is not a willpower problem
Many researchers with ADD/ADHD have spent years telling themselves they just need to focus better, try harder, plan more. The advice rarely works, because attention is not a willpower problem. It is a brain that is wired to follow what is interesting, not what is important.
“That is not a defect. It is a pattern that made sense at some point, and may still serve you in ways you have not noticed.”
Paul Sinclair, who has lived with ADHD since childhood and co-leads this training
This training is not about fixing your ADD/ADHD. It is about understanding how your attention actually works, and learning what to do with that information. We start with two questions most workshops avoid: where did this come from, and what is it costing you to call yourself by that label. From there, we look at the neuroscience of attention, what supports it, what degrades it, and which evidence-based strategies actually hold up under scrutiny. You leave with a plan you have tested against your own data and refined with the group four weeks on.
It is built for researchers with a formal diagnosis, for those who suspect they may have one, and for those who are simply struggling with fragmented attention and want to understand why.
Why this runs across nine weeks, not two days
You can learn about attention in a day. You can only learn about your attention over weeks. Generic advice fails people with ADD/ADHD for the very reason that it is generic; a strategy that transforms one person’s working day does nothing for the next person’s. The only true way to find out which interventions are worth your time is to test them against your own data, in your own working life, and that takes time by definition.
So the training is structured the way behavioural change actually happens: gather your own data first, work on it intensively together, then implement with support and come back to compare notes. By the time we meet in person, you are working from your own picture, not a generic one. The in-person days combine teaching, interactive exercises, group discussion and individual reflection. The follow-up is where we troubleshoot and decide what stays.
What you will take away
- A clear, science-based understanding of how your attention works and what shapes it: why it behaves the way it does, what supports it, what degrades it.
- An examined relationship with your ADD/ADHD: what it has cost you, what it has given you, and how the label itself shapes how you see yourself.
- Evidence-based strategies that survived contact with your actual working life, and the reasoning to know which interventions are worth your time.
- A personal roadmap you designed, tested against your own data, and refined with a group of researchers who face the same thing.
One condition, stated plainly: this is not a lecture series. It is a working format, and the value you get out of it tracks directly with what you put in. What is required is curiosity about how your own attention works, willingness to engage in open discussion, and commitment to the pre-work, the buddy group and your own implementation.
The format at a glance, every stage, and how much it asks of you
What the training asks of you, how the pre-work runs, and the first frank look at your relationship with your attention: what it has cost you, and what it has given you.
Two weeks of structured observation of your own attention in your real working life. Not a diagnosis, and not homework for its own sake: this is the raw material the in-person days are built on.
How attention works in your brain: its subsystems, working memory, why focus fails the way it does, and what the diagnosis itself does to how you see yourself. Then the evidence: which strategies hold up under scrutiny, with the science behind why each one works. You end the two days with your own roadmap, built on your own data.
Four weeks of living the roadmap, supported by a buddy group. Some strategies will work immediately. Some will need adjusting. Some will fail, and that is data too.
What worked, what did not, and why. We troubleshoot the roadmap against a month of real evidence and you decide what stays.
For coordinators
The training is designed for doctoral candidates at all stages and postdocs, from any faculty, in English. It runs hybrid by design: virtual kickoff and follow-up, two intensive days in person, with a maximum of 15 participants so the group work stays real. A minimum of 7 participants is needed to run it.
Where the full nine weeks is more than a group is ready for, a one-day mini-workshop or a talk works well as an awareness-level introduction, for example within a wellbeing or neurodiversity week. We will say plainly what the shorter format can and cannot achieve: it creates understanding and a shared language; it does not produce a tested personal roadmap, because that takes weeks by definition. Both formats sit squarely within the wellbeing and mental health themes strengthened in the Vitae Researcher Development Framework 2025.
Tell us your group, your timing and which format you are considering, and we will come back with a concrete proposal.
Who leads it
PAUL SINCLAIR
Paul Sinclair is a Managing Director of Mind Matters and has lived with ADHD since childhood. A former athlete and Royal Navy engineer, he now advises high performers on resilience and how to work with the brain they have, not the one the advice assumes. He is a certified Compassionate Inquiry practitioner, one of a small group personally trained and certified by Dr Gabor Maté over two and a half years.
DR. NADINE SINCLAIR
Dr Nadine Sinclair is a Managing Director of Mind Matters and a scientist by training; she conducted her doctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. She bridges research and real-life application, advising researchers and leaders on sustainable high performance and mental wellbeing. She has 30,000+ hours of hands-on project management experience, built across 18 years as a strategy consultant, at McKinsey and as an independent consultant. She has trained over 1,500 researchers across Europe.
Frequently asked questions
No. It is built for three groups: researchers with a formal ADD/ADHD diagnosis, researchers who suspect they may have one, and researchers who are simply struggling with fragmented attention and want to understand why. The work starts from how your attention actually behaves, not from a label.
Because generic advice fails people with ADD/ADHD for the very reason that it is generic: a strategy that transforms one person’s day does nothing for the next person’s. The only way to know which interventions are worth your time is to test them against your own data in your own working life, and that takes weeks by definition: two of structured observation before the intensive, four of implementation after it.
A virtual kickoff; two weeks of structured self-observation in your real working life; two intensive days in person, where the science, your own data and the evidence-based strategies come together into a roadmap you design; four weeks of living that roadmap with a buddy group; and a virtual follow-up that troubleshoots it against a month of real evidence.
No, and it does not try to. The premise is Paul’s, who has lived with ADHD since childhood and co-leads the training: this is not a defect but a pattern, and the useful work is understanding how your attention actually operates, keeping what serves you, and building tested strategies around what does not. You leave with a roadmap you designed, not a promise of a different brain.
For the researchers generic advice keeps failing
If some of your researchers’ attention has always worked differently, and standard focus advice keeps failing them, this workshop with nine weeks of light practice replaces it with a method each participant builds from their own data.
