16:59Ruri Ohama · Listicle
I Tried 113 AI Tools, Here Are the 7 That Actually Helped My ADHD
How one creator filtered a hundred-plus AI tools down to seven that each kill a specific ADHD friction point.
June 11thThe argument in one line.
Fading interests are not a character flaw: measured across a lifespan they compound into skills and opportunities, and people who burn hot and short can reach goals by sprinting instead of forcing daily consistency.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You start hobbies or projects with total obsession, buy the gear, then lose interest within weeks and feel guilty about it.
- You have ADHD or a novelty-driven brain and every consistency tip (tiny habits, a little every day) has failed you.
- You want to test an idea like becoming a YouTuber without sinking money into gear before you know you like the work.
SKIP IF…
- You already have a stable daily routine that works and just want deeper technique advice for one craft.
- You want clinical guidance on ADHD. The creator states this is personal experience, not medical advice.
The full version, fast.
Interests fade because novelty and discovery, the fuel of an interest-based nervous system, run out once you understand a topic. The creator argues the real problem is the guilt, and that the right unit for measuring commitment is a lifespan, not a week. Old hobbies connect later in ways you cannot predict. To avoid wasting money, run a tiny experiment for a set period before buying gear. To reach real goals, sprint: set a deadline half as long as seems reasonable, cut everything that does not serve the goal, shorten the feedback loop, add novelty, wait a few days before big purchases, and use body doubling to finish.
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00:00 – 00:41
01 · Why obsessions fade
Cold open on the hobby-obsession-abandon loop and a promise to skip standard consistency advice.
00:41 – 02:26
02 · The interest-based nervous system
Discovery and dopamine drive early interest; the keyboard obsession shows how pull fades once there is less to learn.
02:26 – 05:23
03 · Why can't I stick to one thing
Reframes commitment as lifespan rather than weekly frequency, and describes sprinting instead of daily habits.
05:23 – 07:58
04 · Random interests as an advantage
Makeup tutorials to English to YouTube, plus the Steve Jobs calligraphy story: interests unlock each other.
07:58 – 08:58
05 · Sponsor break
Sponsor read for Build Your Store and AutoDS.
08:58 – 12:02
06 · Before going all in
Tiny experiments, the YouTuber coaching example, and waiting before buying gear.
12:02 – 13:50
07 · Ambitious goals with a bored brain
Sprinter approach: front-load effort while the drive is there.
13:50 – 15:06
08 · Ruthless prioritization
Shorten the deadline so every action is filtered by the goal.
15:06 – 18:11
09 · Shorter feedback loops
Rewards that come sooner reinforce finishing; milestones inside bigger goals.
18:11 – 20:20
10 · Finishing what you started
Novelty, a wait rule for gear, body doubling, then the community and quiz pitch and comment prompt.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Dopamine drives wanting, not enjoying, which is why you can chase something intensely and still not like it much once you have it.
- A week is an arbitrary unit for deciding whether you are a runner. Measure commitment across a lifespan and a three-year break stops counting as quitting.
- Some people are sprinters, not marathoners: all-in for a short stretch, a long break, then another thing.
- Makeup tutorials led to fluent English, which led to a YouTube channel, which led to a full-time job. You cannot plan the chain in advance.
- Test a dream identity with a four-week experiment (one video a week) before you buy a camera and decide you are a YouTuber.
- Coaching students showed that the day-to-day reality of being a YouTuber differs from the image, and most only learn that after making videos.
- If you know your drive will vanish soon, front-load the effort instead of spreading motivation evenly across the month.
- Halving the deadline forces prioritization, because every action gets judged by whether it moves the single goal.
- Focus is subtraction, not addition: anything that does not get you closer to the goal is a distraction.
- Rewards that arrive soon motivate more than rewards months away, so shorten the gap on purpose.
- Hitting 100K subscribers in three months feels far better than in twelve, even though the result is identical.
- For big goals, keep the overall target and add smaller milestones inside it instead of shrinking the goal.
- Novelty and urgency are two of the four levers of an interest-based nervous system, so add them deliberately to keep going.
- For gear above a set price, wait one to three days before buying and see whether you still want it.
- Friends often do not hold you accountable, because they are not interested in the same thing. Body doubling needs people on the same task.
Quitting is exploring, and sprints beat streaks
WHAT TO LEARN
Judge your interests across a lifespan instead of a week, test before you commit, and chase real goals in short, intense, deadline-driven sprints.
01Why obsessions fade
- Interest fades when discovery runs out, and dopamine drives wanting more than enjoying, so a cooled obsession is a normal result rather than proof you cannot commit.
03Why can't I stick to one thing
- Measure commitment across your lifespan, not weekly frequency. You can still be a lifelong runner after a three-year break, and picking a hobby back up is not starting over.
04Random interests as an advantage
- Interests connect in ways you cannot plan: makeup tutorials led to fluent English, a channel, and a career, so guilt about switching can block your best future options.
06Before going all in
- Run a tiny experiment first, such as one video a week for four weeks, to learn whether you like the work and not just the idea of it before spending on gear.
- For purchases above a price you pick, wait one to three days. If the excitement survives, the gear is more likely to get used.
07Ambitious goals with a bored brain
- If your drive is short-lived, front-load your effort. Treat your motivation as a window that closes instead of assuming it will stay even across a month.
08Ruthless prioritization
- Cut the time frame to half or less, then judge each action by whether it moves the goal. A tight deadline turns prioritization into a filter.
09Shorter feedback loops
- Shorten the feedback loop so rewards arrive sooner. Split big goals into smaller milestones, since near rewards reinforce finishing better than distant ones.
10Finishing what you started
- Add novelty and urgency on purpose, such as a new gym or a friend to train with, and use body doubling or a check-in partner to get through the last step.
Terms worth knowing.
- Interest-based nervous system
- A framework describing how interest, novelty, challenge, and urgency drive engagement, especially for people with ADHD, rather than importance alone.
- Body doubling
- Working alongside another person, or checking in with them, so their presence helps you stay on a task until it is done.
- Tiny experiment
- A small, time-boxed trial of something new, used to learn whether you like it before committing to it. Taken from the book Tiny Experiments.
- Shiny object syndrome
- The habit of dropping current plans for each new interesting idea, which stops steady progress on any one goal.
- Feedback loop
- The delay between doing the work and seeing a result or reward. Shorter loops keep motivation up.
Things they pointed at.
09:06bookTiny Experiments (book)
Lines you could clip.
03:10
“The measuring unit isn't the week, it is the lifespan.”
14:40
“Focus is all about subtraction than about addition.”
16:00
“Rewards that are far away can be less motivating than rewards that we can reach sooner.”
Word for word.
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You know that feeling when you discover a new hobby, suddenly it is your entire personality? You're researching it at 3am, watching all the videos you can find, and buying all the gear. You are convinced.
This is it. You're finally going to stick with something. And then two weeks later, the stuff is sitting in your drawer, and you couldn't care less.
Only to repeat this process within a few weeks. So in this video, we're going to unpack the neuroscience behind why this thing happens. But more importantly, I'll share a paradigm shift that completely changed how I see my own obsessions.
And unlike other videos, I'm not going to tell you to just be consistent or like tiny habits or atomic habits or something like that. So let's get started. So how does something go from being all you can think about to something you couldn't care less about?
The mechanism works like this. At the beginning, you're constantly discovering things. Every question leads to another question.
And if you're learning a skill, you can actually see yourself getting better over time. That gives you a plenty of reasons to come back. dopamine plays a role here but unlike everyone thinks dopamine isn't actually a pleasure chemical it actually helps you to drive to pursue things because wanting to chase something and enjoying that thing are actually not the same thing for me this was like definitely keyboards i had this phase where i was obsessed with keyboards and i was watching keyboard youtubers all day comparing switches listening to typing sounds and there was always another detail to investigate another keyboard that might be better and some of my custom keyboards cost literally over $300 and every time I was convinced that okay this is the one this is the perfect keyboard and then i would find another one but eventually you watch the videos you understand the differences and there's less to discover especially if it started as like an obsession like you might still like the activity or the topic itself but the pull isn't strong as the start this is actually especially relevant for those with adhd because there's a framework called an interest -based nervous system a way of describing how things like interest novelty challenge and urgency can help us get engaged
Even knowing something important isn't enough. Like you don't necessarily need ADHD to be driven like this, but it is more prominent in people who have ADHD. And this is essentially like the intraspace nervous system.
literally explains how i got obsessed with keyboards and the funny thing is i don't even like type anymore i voice dictate everything so i don't even touch majority of my keyboards and god knows how much in total i've spent over that what bothers me the most isn't necessarily the obsession itself but it is the internal voice that after every single obsession and you lose interest there's this like internal voice that goes like here we go again i couldn't stick with anything once again like i quit it again like why do i do this it's that like negative internal voice that keeps in your head and that is the part that i actually want to question and change your change your perspective on it i think we look at this in a wrong way usually when you talk about this topic the advice is always about how to be consistent with something how to stick to things but i don't necessarily think that every single interest that you have needs to become something you do every week for the rest of your life for example let's say like running we have this idea that to identify as
a runner or like when you tell other people that you are a runner they ask how many times per week you run but why is a week the unit we are measuring the sin why do i have to do something every single week to be eligible to even identify myself in that space because in my opinion we actually need to look at things through our lifespan the measuring unit isn't the week it is the lifespan even if i don't run like for the next three years i don't necessarily think like oh I actually quit running again, like I want to get back to it.
No, like I can pick it up again later and I still see myself as a lifelong runner. And it's not necessarily like I have three different hobbies and I rotate like between them. It's more like I have 20 different hobbies and pick and choose and do something and I might like get tired of it and pick something new and then add it or maybe return to another one that I already have explored a little bit.
The thing that I'm trying to explain is that not doing something right now doesn't mean I'm not going to be doing it again. It's not like I quit it. When we look across my lifespan, I am actually doing it.
Does that make sense? So like when I get interested in something I don't immediately think about how I'm going to keep it going forever. I'm interested now so I want to explore it now so I do.
And I personally I find it more exhausting to force myself to do a little bit every day when I'm not interested to spend a few hours on it when I am. And like personally when you ask people how not to quit things people will usually tell like oh do a little bit every single day so that you know. you keep it going i actually tried it and i recommend it for a while but i'm actually disagreeing right now because for me continuing things a little bit every single day is way harder than to go all in short periods of my life take a long break and come back at it i mean this might be because i have adhd but i like to see myself more of like a sprinter rather than a marathon runner when i'm interested i can go really deep i can go like very intense all day long doing only that thing for a short period of time but then i'll take a long break i'll do another thing very intensively and then a break again instead of doing a little bit every single day so i would rather work with those like periods than keeping trying to spread my effort evenly across every day and another thing is that these interests don't really exist completely separately from the rest of your life sometimes actually one leads to another and one unlocks another thing that you will never have like thought about it other
wise like a lot of people feel guilty about hobby switching interest switching or like even changing their ideas or changing their opinions but change is an inevitable part of life and it allows you to discover new things for example like this channel like for me it all started with getting obsessed with watching like makeup tutorials in english i would watch like makeup tutorials six hours every single day i was watching youtube videos like 10 years ago 11 years ago even and i was obsessed which allowed me to become fluent in english which was not even my goal but after getting exposed to so much of like english content i became fluent in it and that also allowed me to create a youtube channel because i was obsessed with watching youtube videos about like makeup i opened my first channel and it was about makeup even though i sucked at it and over time even though it wasn't it wasn't in english at that time over time like after a few years i opened this channel in english in youtube which led to a full -time job of mine where i'm like a youtuber so you don't
know what interest unlocks to the next one. I couldn't have like sat down at the beginning and be like okay I'm going to watch make up tutorials and then become fluent in English and then open a YouTube channel and then do that in English and so on.
I didn't know any of that was going to happen. I was just following something that I was interested in. And if I would never let myself explore that because I thought, well, I'm probably going to lose this interest anyway, none of these would have happened.
And creating my YouTube channel was one of the best decisions that I've made in my life. And Steve Jobs talked about taking a calligraphy class because he found it interesting. And years later, he actually used that knowledge in typography.
of Macintosh. At that time, he didn't know he was learning something he would use to design a computer. So a lot of times when we are learning things and we're quitting them, you feel guilty, but you actually acquire that skill and you might use it somewhere.
that is completely irrelevant. Or like you meet a lot of different people through a hobby, whether that's in real life or online, and that person introduces you to something else. There are all these things that can happen that you can't really predict beforehand.
That's why I think like experimenting with your own interests is important. You're finding out what is available to you. But this thought of, I have to be consistent, I have to keep going, I should never quit things, is a thing that is stopping us to explore our options and experiment with various areas.
Okay, quick question. How many business ideas have you had at 2am that never actually happened? Because with ADHD, the idea itself is rarely the problem.
It is the execution part of it. It's the setting up, theme, product, and figuring out the descriptions. And by the time your store is actually ready, your excitement is already gone, looking for something new and more shiny.
That's why today's sponsors are Build Your Store and O2DS. Build Your Store uses AI to create your show. store for you.
What you need to do is connect to Shopify, pick a niche, and in a few minutes, you've got a professionally designed store with products already in it. It is free to build, so there are no barriers to get started. And then OtoDS takes over the boring, repetitive part, which is finding trending products and fulfilling orders automatically.
Now, this isn't obviously magic money. You have to promote it yourself. You have to do the marketing, but this is the part where most of us quit.
So what I want you to do is go to buildyourstore .a Okay, so you might be thinking that, so Ruri, are you advising towards quitting the old one every time you find a new interest? No.
I don't really mean that. I actually mean that you can try things on a way smaller scale. Actually, in the book Tiny Experiments, the author talks about this.
And that is that you choose something small to try for a defined period and use it to learn rather than immediately deciding it has to become a permanent part of your life. So let's say maybe you're curious about making videos and being a YouTuber. The idea of being a YouTuber sort of like interests you.
Instead of like suddenly committing that you're going to become a YouTuber and buying all that gear, what you can do is that You can commit to making one video per week for the next four weeks. And based on the results, based on how much you like that experience, you can decide whether actually the thought of becoming a YouTuber is attractive as it sounds.
You don't need to decide that you're going to become a YouTuber and commit to it before you even made your first video. And no, I'm not going to do any pitches to my YouTube course or anything, but... You know, I had a phase where like about a year ago or maybe even more, I was coaching a bunch of students to grow their YouTube channel.
And one of the things that was happening quite often was that people would come with this idea of being a YouTuber. But the reality of being a YouTuber and the day to day actions that you need to do for it is completely different. So they had this like flawed image of what being a YouTuber looks like because they never created videos.
And once we started making videos and once I would give them like homework assignments and stuff, they're like, this is not. as fun as i thought i actually don't want to become a youtuber and like yeah like it's not for everyone You might not like the lifestyle.
You might not like the things. And they're like, but I bought all the gear. Now I have to become one.
You know, like we want to avoid this happening because not only it costs your time, but it also costs you financially. So you first, you have to test it for certain periods of time. And during that time, let's say like you don't have gear, you can film with your phone.
If you actually want to film with a camera, you can rent one for a short period of time. And then if you really like the experience and you want to go all in for that, you can go all in for that. Like, did you actually like doing it or did you mostly like the idea of doing it?
And if you don't want to continue, you still learn something. You might use those skills later. You might just know like, okay, that's not for me.
You learn something new. about yourself so now i look at the random interests that i had in the past i don't necessarily see them as past failures anymore they're actually all these skills and all these interest areas that randomly got connected to each other that opened up new future possibilities that i never know when they're gonna get connected like it is so interesting that a old chapter of your life suddenly comes back into your life and you're like oh i know that thing so obviously if you have the means and if you have the time i don't think you should be guilty about it at all try out things and experiment things if it is actually draining you financially do the tiny experiment method even if that is not enough the another thing that you can do is wait for about like one to three days before you buy all the gear and going all in to that activity so now if you're doing this for fun obviously this method is enough but if you want to see results and you're like an idea hopper and every single time you see a shiny
new object you're like changing all your plans and you are never making a progress obviously the playbook that we're going to follow is going to be completely different because this one was for hobbies and for fun stuff that you wanted to do. I get asked quite often that as a sprinter, as someone who has this mind key mind and this shiny new object syndrome, how do I get results?
Even though I don't achieve every single goal that I've set, I would say I have pretty a good record of hitting my goals and hitting the milestones that I've set. The way that I do is by completely leaning towards how I function as a sprinter. not a marathoner so whenever i have like this idea or whenever i have this interest and the goal that i want to achieve i go deep in that and i go like very very intensely in that goal so for example like when i actually decided that i'm going to be a youtuber i was creating videos i was thinking about videos i was writing scripts all day long from the moment that i woke up to the time that i'm going to sleep every single hour of my free time was going towards youtube some might say it's not really sustained so you should keep it more slow you should maybe allocate two hours or something but no that is a way more dangerous strategy for me to follow because assuming that my interest is going to continue for a long time is a wrong assumption anyway so while the interest is there while the obsession is there like I already have the strong drive to engage and I know that drive is going to disappear very soon so I front load the effort instead of assuming I can spread that motivation evenly across the month if let's say I give myself about a month to
achieve a certain goal, to go very intense and to go towards a specific direction and not just like, you know, like burn myself out. What I do is I try to figure out how can I get the same result in half of the time or even maybe shorter. So let's say if my goal is to get to 100.
subscribers in a year my question is how can i get there in six months three months in a month and even though this might sound very intense and unrealistic there are actually few reasons behind it so the first one is it forces you to prioritize a lot of times if you have this like monkey shiny object syndrome brain you have like a lot of ideas and you discover new things and you want to try that out you want to try this out you heard that thing you saw that thing right like there are endless possibilities that you want to explore but if you do that you're just going to wait time and that interest that short period amount of time that you were supposed to use is going to be used for some irrelevant so you're not going to get good results but by making the time frame half of it right like by giving yourself a very short deadline you're actually forcing yourself to prioritize because now you have a lens that you can filter through things out you're asking every single time that is this the action that is going to get me closer to this goal if not you just eliminate it because over the time i learned that focus is all about
subtraction than about addition anything that is not getting you closer to the specific goal that you want to achieve is a distraction so you let that go the second reason is you are shortening the feedback loop it's also about like trying to get the rewards as soon as i can so that i can reinforce the behavior of finishing things so you create like a positive feedback loop and the delay of you doing something and getting a reward or getting some sort of feedback actually matters quite a lot because rewards that are far away can be less motivating than rewards that we can reach sooner especially with like adhd think about social media the way that they designed it is by like studying the mechanism of how slot machines work and how the reward feedback loop is so fast every single time you scroll you get like some sort of a real action and then reward is immediate and that is the thing that we're trying to achieve to create the same obsession and to create the same intensive period of you focusing on that thing like what a skill or a project you might put in efforts for weeks before you experience the result so i want to deliberately shorten that gap rather than expect myself to stay equally motivated while the reward
is like somewhere months away and personally getting a reward feels much more rewarding like hitting 100k subscribers in three months which i did is way more rewarding than hitting it in 12 months even though it is the same result you value it way more and it gives you it boosts your dopamine so much that you keep going and going and going that's how i like stick to you many of the habits that i established as someone with adhd who never builds habit because nothing is a habit in my life every single thing is as hard as the day one but that is shortening the feedback mechanism is one of the things that keeps me hooked to continue things and continue my interest for a long time and the another reason why i like the sprinting method so much is that when i usually give myself a long time frame what i did is that not only i don't reach the goal that i actually set but most of the time i go like slow because there's no urgency there's no feedback loop that is fast enough to keep me going and i get bored of that thing and i just like waste my time and because i feel so guilty about not doing it i also don't explore new things so i'm just like wasting my time but like obviously some goals are too big to finish in one sprint in that case i get like smaller more frequent goals within the bigger one i'm not like making necessarily the overall goals
smaller but i'm giving myself specific results to reach along the way instead of waiting until the very end to get any sense of achievement and also like i don't necessarily only rely on intensity and sprints i also like add things like novelty that could be like if i'm like working on something i might like explore new areas if i'm getting very obsessed about weight lifting and i want to get results fast i might try a new gym or i might buy workout classes or i might do it with my friends right like always adding that part of novelty is well because it is one part of the intraspace nervous system.
Novelty, urgency, those are the two things so i try to add those elements so that i can motivate my brain to keep going on that thing and i also like don't necessarily think buying something is automatically bad if it's affordable and actually helps you do the activity but i also have like 20 keyboards around my house so that clearly needs a rule so for gear over a certain price wait until like maybe one or three days before buying and see if you still want it instead of ordering everything the moment you get excited and sometimes with all that i lose interest on the last step as well that's where i actually use body doubling and accountability like someone working alongside me or someone i've agreed to check in with me right like whether i'm doing the thing and actually like body doubling keeping yourself accountable with other people is way more effective than you might ever think wait that's where the community side of the kaizen comes in having people to work alongside and check in with getting through those last step is difficult actually this community part of it the accountability and body doubling part of it is extremely difficult with your friends because you
might not be always interested into the same thing because you're also like friends you kind of like don't keep each other that much accountable from my experience at least so i'm working on something that will help us to keep going keep being consistent and accountable to do things and continue doing things so this could be in forms of body doubling accountability maybe like workshops maybe different challenges that we run i'm still in the process of creating that and i will launch it next month so i'll give more details later and if you get my Kaizen system right now from my link, rudyohama .com, which helps people struggling with procrastination, consistency, follow through, and introduces the frameworks that we've been using to shift your mindset and actually work with the way your brain is working instead of like constantly fighting it.
If you get that system right now, you're going to get a big discount when I launch the community next month. I'll leave the details in below if you're interested. And if you're feeling stuck in life but can't really figure out why or what is your body I actually have a free quiz so that it will help you to identify the season you're in, what is keeping you stuck, and personalize and tailor strategies for over the course of a few days.
If you're interested, I'll also leave the link in the description below. I hope this video helped you to shift your mindset around quitting things and being consistent on things. And I'm curious, what was the last thing that you actually quit that now you think, oh, I actually didn't quit that.
I had that phase that I might go back again. Let me know in the comments down below. below and i like and respond quite often so let me know about your thoughts see you soon
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Everyone with a drawer full of abandoned gear knows the loop: obsession, purchase, silence. Ruri Ohama skips the usual advice about consistency and asks a different question, whether quitting was ever the problem.
Named ideas worth stealing.
02:00model
Interest-based nervous system
- Interest
- Novelty
- Challenge
- Urgency
Engagement is driven by interest, novelty, challenge, and urgency, not by knowing something is important.
Steal forunderstanding why motivation tricks aimed at importance fail
09:06concept
Tiny experiment
Pick something small to try for a defined period and use it to learn, instead of deciding it must become permanent.
Steal fortesting a new hobby or career idea cheaply
12:45list
Sprinter method for goals
- Go deep and intense
- Halve the deadline to force prioritization
- Shorten the feedback loop
- Add novelty
- Use body doubling to finish
Lean into bursts of intense focus with short deadlines and fast rewards instead of spreading effort evenly.
Steal forany goal where long timelines make you drift
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
19:16product
“If you get that system right now, you're going to get a big discount when I launch the community next month.”
Pitched late and framed as a tool for the very problem the video covers, after a mid-roll sponsor read.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
AFFILIATECommission earned if you click.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
