ADHD, big dreams, and the struggle to finish projects (Brandon Hogstad’s story)

Brandon Hogstad — a scientist, musician, big thinker, and co-host of a dream interpretation podcast — talks about how ADHD showed up in his adult academic life. As challenges emerged, finishing projects became a persistent struggle.

A high school valedictorian, Brandon entered college with confidence and a strong academic track record. College didn’t derail him. But it brought him down to earth. For the first time, he realized he’d never really learned how to study — and that raw intelligence only goes so far. The experience reshaped his ego and deepened his understanding of his ADHD brain.

Brandon reflects on working with, not against, his ADHD. And the conversation turns when, right on the spot, he interprets a dream that host Laura Key shares.

• Read: ADHD and the brain

• Watch: ADHD and: Overachieving

• Listen: Brandon’s “Let’s Talk About Dreams” podcast

Brandon Hogstad: I had a huge ego and I was like, I'm so smart, I'm so smart, nobody can take me down, I'm so smart. But then I went to college, there's no grade inflation, nobody holds your hand, and it turns out that I didn't really know how to study and I didn't really know how to manage a schedule. I think once I lost the regular structure of high school, I really struggled when I went to college.

Laura Key: This is "ADHD Aha!", a podcast where people share the moment when it finally clicked that they have ADHD. My name is Laura Key. I head up our editorial team here at Understood.org. And as someone who's had my own ADHD aha moment, I'll be your host.

I am here today with Brandon Hogstad. Brandon is trained as a scientist with a PhD in life sciences and works as an AI adoption and implementation coach for professionals and teams. He also co-hosts a dream interpretation podcast called "Let's Talk About Dreams" and publishes music with his brother Jonathan as the Hogstad Brothers. Brandon, you are a jack of many trades like so many folks with ADHD. Welcome to the show.

Brandon: Thank you for having me here.

Laura: Glad to be here with you today. So let's get into it. Let's talk about when you were diagnosed with ADHD. When was that? Was it recent?

Brandon: It was relatively recent in the grand scheme of things. I was diagnosed essentially back at the beginning of the pandemic, so about five years ago. I was fortunate enough to be living with my partner Eleni, who is an ADHD expert.

Laura: Yeah. Shout out Eleni, who also happens to work in Understood. We love Eleni.

Brandon: I didn't really have a whole lot of awareness about ADHD and what it was. I think before I was under the impression that it was just the thing that kids grew out of, which I know is a very common misunderstanding about how ADHD works--like now I know about this.

When I was a kid, there was like a lot of discussion around like Adderall and Ritalin for children that were very hyperactive, maybe not doing very well in school, things like this, but I was always a kid that got straight A's all through my, you know, elementary school years.

So I guess it just kind of went undetected. But once I started learning about ADHD in my 30s, I started like looking back on my life with a new lens and more clarity where I was like, oh, that's why I was struggling with those certain things.

So my partner Eleni was working on ADHD research for Understood. Her roommate Kelly, who also has ADHD, I remember they were chatting between themselves and they were like chat-chat-chat, whisper-whisper-whisper, looking over at me. I was like, wait, what are they talking about?

And then they were like, have you read this book? Maybe you should read this book, "Driven to Distraction". And I read the book and it kind of sounded like the story of my life where I was like, oh my God, I started all these projects and I always struggled with finishing them. I always got really excited about things. Sometimes I would have potentially difficult interactions with authority.

Laura: I'm going to ask about those later.

Brandon: Reading this book really helped me get a lens on how I had previously struggled and started giving me more awareness of how I can manage ADHD now as an adult and professional, because turns out, ADHD doesn't go away.

Laura: No, it does not. Because of, you know, the relationship you have with your partner and the knowledge that you had gained, am I right to assume that like you weren't very surprised by the ADHD diagnosis?

Brandon: It's almost like a shock and frustration looking back at like, oh, why did I not know this sooner?

Laura: Yeah. Sometimes I refer to it on the show and I can't say that I coined it but like the ADHD grief cycle.

Brandon: Yeah. Whereas I was like, oh, I know this now, if only I knew this when I was in college. Because, you know, I mentioned earlier that I had gotten straight A's all through elementary school and all through high school. I was actually the valedictorian of my high school. You know, I was like riding high. I had a huge ego and I was like, I'm so smart, I'm so smart, nobody can take me down, I'm so smart.

But then I went to college. I went to UC Berkeley, which is a very intense public school. There's no grade inflation, nobody holds your hand, and it turns out that I didn't really know how to study and I didn't really know how to manage a schedule. I think once I lost the regular structure of high school, I really struggled when I went to college. So there were certain topics I did find in. I did okay in biology, I did okay in chemistry. I did terribly in math, like in calculus.

Laura: Yeah. You got your first C in calculus, didn't you?

Brandon: Yeah. I'm sure you love being reminded of that. Yeah. It was--and that was like a very stressful time for me. I went from being a big fish in a small pond in my high school to being tossed into the ocean. And suddenly, you know, I was in a school where everyone was the valedictorian. And suddenly I was not special, I was not smart, and I really struggled to like figure out how to get my act together. I often bit off way more than I could chew, so--

Laura: Right. You were confident.

(05:06) Hitting an academic wall and hands-on learning 

Brandon: Well, I was also very enthusiastic. I was like, well, I'm going to take 18 units of classes. Oh wait, there's these other two classes that are really interesting, so I'm going to get 20 units. Oh, the maximum is 21 units. I might as well take this one extra meditation class for one unit. And then there I am, I'm at the maximum number of units. Of course, I didn't manage my time very well that semester so I ended up actually failing that one-unit meditation class because I, you know, made some poor scheduling decisions.

Laura: And I always find it interesting, like there are patterns that I certainly notice on this show of when people start to hit a wall with their ADHD-related challenges. I hear a lot about middle school because middle school is often where people have to, you know, they have multiple classes instead of one teacher, you know, they have to--there's a lot more executive function demand put on you.

For other people I hear a lot about college, or I hear about post-grad, or I hear about like when they got their first promotion at work and then they had to manage people and other people's schedules instead of just their own. And then a lot of times for women, it's about that moment when, oh, I have a kid now and oh, my kid has ADHD too, oh my gosh, I can't handle this. So your moment, it sounds like you get to higher education and just like a little bit of executive dysfunction coming into play there.

Brandon: It took a lot of experimentation on my part to figure out how I could actually learn in that environment. And one of the key things for me was that I was kind of struggling in my science lectures. I was studying molecular biology, but once I started working in laboratories, that's where everything started clicking in my mind. So I realized, oh, I'm much more of a hands-on learner. Doing DNA sequencing and doing experiments.

Once I started doing hands-on lab research, that's when all of the lecture started making a lot more sense to me. But if you give me an experiment and a mentor to talk through to say, hey, okay, this is what the goal is, like what do you think? And then we start brainstorming and we come up with different ideas, I get to ask questions, what if this, what if that? It became a much more conversational way of learning rather than just sitting and passively absorbing in a lecture hall. My grades did go up over the course of my undergrad.

Laura: If I remember correctly from our pre-interview, was this in college when you banned yourself from starting new projects?

Brandon: When I went to grad school, you know, I ended up doing my PhD in biomedical sciences. I was studying immunology. And I ended up joining a lab. It was a pretty big famous lab and I had to be very independent. And I was super excited, enthusiastic, and I don't know how many--like in my first year I started probably like somewhere between six and nine projects.

Looking back, I was like, oh, there's just so much starter energy, but the doing energy, that focus to actually carry out a project to completion and deciding what projects are actually worth doing, I kind of had to learn that through my PhD program and at a certain point I did ban myself from starting new projects because I knew I needed to focus in order to finish my PhD.

Laura: That's a lot of self-awareness when you don't know yet that you have ADHD.

Brandon: It was a lot of hard-won self-awareness because a lot of this was learned through failure and then eventually realizing the pattern. And the funny thing was that, you know, my PhD mentor, in many ways she and I were very similar. We're both very big ideas people, we love brainstorming, and when we would talk, we would go through something and say, oh yes, and how about that? And how about that?

And then it would kind of like grow the palette of what could be happening when looking back I probably needed somebody that was much more counterbalancing to my abilities, that can like tone me down and help rein me in rather than continuing to expand ever outward and spiraling into less and less focus.

Laura: What's the wackiest idea that you wanted to try that you didn't?

Brandon: Oh, that's a--that's an interesting question. At the time we were looking at these cells that are kind of like security alarms of your immune system. If it's doing all these fancy things, then we could make drugs to target this. But we just had so few tools to actually do that, I would have had to build all of the tools to study this.

I probably would have had a 10-year PhD at least if I--if I wanted to pursue that. I would have had to make mice, I would have had to make antibodies if I wanted to make drugs. Like, it was just a highly overly ambitious project that really didn't go anywhere.

Laura: You would have had to make mice? Like clone mice?

Brandon: Pretty much, yeah. I worked in a laboratory where we did a lot of genetic engineering of mice. It was really fun and interesting, but it's also like all incredibly difficult and time-consuming.

And by the way, I just want to say for everybody listening, there are haters out there who say that people with ADHD aren't smart. Everyone, I would like to introduce you to Brandon.

(10:12) Dopamine thresholds and strong emotional responses to perceived injustice.

Laura: You mentioned earlier struggling with authority. Can you give us a little insight into what you were referencing there?

Brandon: I haven't always had the smoothest relationships with managers.

Laura: So this is an adulthood thing. This is not a growing-up thing.

Brandon: Correct. So when I was a kid, I was like a pretty goody two-shoes, teacher's pet, you know, I was always like friends with the teachers, I was always getting good grades. When I became an adult, I think one of my earlier issues with authority became like I was working in a laboratory as a technician and there were some postdocs that were just like real jerks.

And when somebody's a jerk to me, I do not like to pretend and play nice. I think it's a very common phenomenon people with ADHD have a strong sense of justice. So when there's like a feeling of injustice, then kind of like all bets are off, like I would get really angry and do everything I could to like not work with that person who's treating me poorly.

Laura: The strong sense of justice, you're not the first person who's brought that up with me. What do you think the connection to ADHD is? I mean obviously we're just speculating here. I'm curious to get your thoughts. You were a valedictorian after all, so I feel like we can--you can solve this for me.

Brandon: So I'm going to put on my wackadoo brainstorming hat where I'm going to start making connections that might not make sense, but I'm just going to brainstorm here. So ADHD is about dopamine regulation in the brain. It takes a lot more stimulus to get dopamine responses from people with ADHD brains.

But when they do get that response, essentially like once you get past that threshold, the reaction that you do get is strong, and I think that's where the switch flips between being totally uninterested in something and then once you cross that threshold, you're hyperfocused.

So I feel like this sense of justice is also linked to this phenomenon of hyperfocus where it's like things are fine, but then once you see something's wrong, it's like, hey, I need to fix this. And also I think this is probably linked to empathy when somebody has strong feelings of empathy for others or if you perceive that there is an injustice happening to yourself or to others, then I think it activates that hyperfixation on solving the problem and like resolving that injustice. That's my thought.

Laura: You know, I think I'm buying what you're selling here, Brandon. I have this really vivid memory of growing up and being with like a babysitter on my street. And I remember getting so fixated on something one day and getting so angry at the babysitter and just being like, it's not fair because you said this yesterday and today you're saying this.

And I just remember--the fact that I'm even recalling this just means like how deep of a groove it made in my brain. I could not let it go and I was--I remember being frustrated for like a week about this. And I also remember the babysitter just being like, just let it go, just move on.

And it just like, it got to me. I remember I couldn't sleep that night because I was so frustrated. Yeah, this hyperfocus, hyperfixating on like I noticed this but you didn't.

Brandon: I think that that might be one of the connections.

Laura: We solved it. I mean there--yeah, sure. There might be more to explore. I'm like, no, I think we got it. I think that check, we got it. Problem solved.

(15:17) How ADHD impacts creativity and navigating life's challenges.

Laura: I want to hear about your dream interpretation podcast. Any connection to ADHD and dream interpretation? It's okay if the answer is no.

Brandon: I would say yes. Thus far the guests on our podcast are mostly our friends and a lot of them are, I would say, neurospicy of various varieties. And then I think that my ADHD actually fuels my dream interpretation superpower because I think that the way that my brain works is I am able to make connections between different symbols. My brain kind of like recognizes these different patterns that other people might not necessarily latch on to as readily. And like once I see a little inkling of a connection, I kind of grab on to it and I talk it through and I think that my ADHD helps with that.

Laura: Okay, I'm going to tell you something that I dream about often and I always have since I was a kid. And if I'm going to die tomorrow, just don't tell me, just lie, okay? No, I often will dream about being on a giant tundra alone and it's like icy and cold and I shout and I feel like I'm being so loud, but it comes out as a whisper and nobody can hear me. And it comes with this sense of frustration. Sounds kind of dire now that I say it out loud. People are going to start to worry about me. What do you think, Brandon?

Brandon: Well, I wouldn't be too worried because I think the type of scenario you're describing is like super common. This image that you're describing in many ways is very unique and specific. And I think that that's one of the interesting things about dreams is that the images that we generate in our minds when we're asleep are very unique to each of ourselves as individuals.

The visual lexicon that you develop throughout your life informs those images. So like the visual language that you have in your dreams, there's going to be some overlap but there's also going to be unique things to your situation. I haven't heard of anybody talking about a tundra, but I have heard of people describing situations in which they're alone and isolated, in which they try to use their voice and they can't.

The way the dream interpretation works is often I'll listen to your description and then I'll reflect back some potential interpretations. It kind of has to pass the gut check. So you're standing on a tundra, you're feeling frustrated and alone, you're trying to express yourself. What I'm hearing is that there's a feeling of isolation. When we think about voice in our dreams, it's the way that we communicate with others. Like if our voice goes unheard, that can be a very isolating experience.

I would be curious what else was happening in your life during the times that you had this dream because my guess would be that there was something that happened where you're just feeling very stuck and isolated, whether it's like struggling to do something in your family or at work and you're just not being heard.

Laura: Hmm. Yeah. I don't remember the exact, and we probably don't have time for me to go into all the many times that I've had this dream, but I think that if I, you know, situationally, there were probably multiple times when I was going through something like that in my life and then I had this dream. Yeah, but I do, I remember like such a frustration and almost feeling like something was watching me from like an orb above. I'm like, why is no one doing anything? Yeah, maybe it's related to sense of justice. We can add this to our paper.

What would you say is the most important thing that you've learned about ADHD as it relates to your life?

Brandon: Having ADHD doesn't mean I have brain damage. One of the things that I would get into beating myself up is like when I'm struggling with keeping things together, when I'm struggling to keep all the balls in the air, all the plates spinning, I often will start beating myself up and feeling like, oh, I can't do all this, I have brain damage, like I'm a dysfunctional human. And honestly, like I think the most important thing that I've learned is that like, honestly, it's--it's okay. Like everybody struggles with certain things. I can do certain things to set myself up for success and then some days I'm just going to struggle.

Laura: You are very accomplished in many ways, Brandon, and in particular, you are very academically accomplished. So I think it's a good reminder to folks with ADHD from all walks of life for everything that they do that like no matter how good everything looks on paper, when you have ADHD, a lot of these struggles are really universal. And there's something comforting in that that people aren't alone. Brandon, thank you so much for being here today.

Brandon: Thank you for having me.

Laura: Nice to chat with you.

Thanks for listening today. As always, if you want to share your own "aha" moment, email us at ADHDAha@understood.org or send a message to our voicemail inbox. You’ll find a link in the show notes along with resources and links to anything we mentioned in the episode.

This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Understood.org is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences, like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at understood.org/give.

Laura: "ADHD Aha!" is produced and edited by Jessamine Molli. Say "Hi," Jessamine.

Jessamine: Hi, everyone!

Laura: Video is produced by Calvin Knie and edited by Alyssa Shea. Our theme music was written by Justin D. Wright, who also mixes the show. Production support provided by Andrew Rector.

Briana Berry is our production director. Neil Drumming is our editorial director. From Understood.org, our executive directors are Scott Cocchiere and Jordan Davidson.

And I'm your host, Laura Key. Thanks so much for listening.