Maria Stefanidi

PhD ADHD-Informed Coach | Coaching doctoral researchers with ADHD to build a writing week that survives bad brain days, deadline panic, and week 7 of the semester

You have the ideas. The chapter is still empty.

Yesterday you opened the document, read the same paragraph four times, closed it, and promised yourself tomorrow would be different.

Maybe you hyperfocus for nine hours one day and then can't open the file for two weeks. Maybe you have 40 tabs, 12 half-written paragraphs, and no idea which one to finish.

Underneath all of it, the same question: everyone else just sits down and writes, so why can't I?

You were fine while coursework held the shape of your week. Then it ended, and you were handed a multi-year project with no daily accountability and a supervisor who checks in every six weeks. That removes almost every cue an ADHD brain uses to start.

So you try harder. You buy the planner, you read the productivity book, it works for eleven days, and then you add that to your pile of evidence that the problem is you.

It isn't.

A different week looks like this.

You know what you are writing before you sit down. Your first move is small enough that your brain doesn't argue with it. You still write on low-energy days, less, but you write. You lose a day sometimes, because that is how ADHD works, and you get back in without a two-week guilt spiral.

That is what the researchers I coach build. Not perfect habits. A system that survives a bad week.

If you have already tried coaching, apps, accountability groups: most of that was built for brains that respond to plans. ADHD-informed coaching starts with how your attention, motivation, and working memory actually behave, then builds the structure around that.

The evidence agrees. Researchers reviewed 19 published studies on ADHD coaching, and every single one found it improved symptoms and day-to-day functioning. The biggest gains were in planning, starting, and following through. Exactly what a thesis demands.

About me:

I never planned to specialize in ADHD. I had been coaching doctoral researchers for years when my oldest son was diagnosed, and I watched a bright kid get worn down by a system built for a brain that wasn't his. I learned everything I could to help him. Then I kept seeing the same pattern in the researchers I coached.

I trained in ADHD coaching and built my practice around doctoral work. 40+ PhD researchers so far.

One thing I got wrong early on: I gave people more structure, faster. It backfired every time.

A big new system is one more overwhelming thing to avoid.

One small on-ramp at a time is what moves a thesis!