You’re in good company

David Neeleman has started or co-started five airlines, including JetBlue, Azul and Breeze. In 1993 his airline Morris Air became one of the first to fly passengers without paper tickets. He builds teams of organized people around him so the ideas get finished.

With two weeks left before a book deadline, Peter Shankman flew round-trip to Tokyo and wrote ten chapters on the planes. He says running, swimming and skydiving are how he gets his brain going.

Paris Hilton was diagnosed with ADHD in her twenties. She has described being called lazy and dumb as a kid, and says the diagnosis was a relief.

Simone Biles has won 11 Olympic medals and 30 world championship medals, more world medals than any other gymnast. In 2016, at 19, she told the world she has ADHD and takes medicine for it.

Michael Phelps won 23 Olympic gold medals, more than anyone in history. As a kid he could never sit still, and a teacher told him he would never amount to anything.

Noah Lyles won the Olympic 100 meters in 2024. He shared this list himself the same year.

Molly Seidel won Olympic bronze in the marathon. She says that when her brain is healthy, running and her brain fit each other.

Michelle Carter won Olympic gold in the shot put in 2016. ADHD and dyslexia made school hard. She was tutored four days a week in elementary school and learned to break big tasks into small pieces.

That’s what Dav Pilkey calls ADHD. As a kid he couldn’t stay in his seat and was always daydreaming. His second-grade teacher tore up his drawings. He now writes books for kids like him.

will.i.am is a musician and producer who founded the Black Eyed Peas. He has also said music keeps his attention in order.

Ty Pennington hosted Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. When he was a kid nobody had a name for what he had. Art and building became the place his energy went.

Trevor Noah was diagnosed as a child, when it was called hyperactivity, and again as an adult after a friend’s diagnosis.

Heston Blumenthal was diagnosed as an adult. He describes a busy mind and a somewhat obsessive personality.

Jessica McCabe was diagnosed at 12 and says she didn’t understand her ADHD until 32. She built How to ADHD to keep track of what worked for her, and shared it.

Jimmy Donaldson says a doctor told him he has ADHD. He says he sits and obsesses over things constantly, and that he is happy with how his brain is wired.

Lisa Ling was diagnosed with inattentive-type ADHD at 40, while making a documentary about ADHD. She says she felt relieved.

Leonardo took a deposit for a painting in 1478 and never delivered it. He worked on the Mona Lisa on and off for about 16 years. Only 17 surviving paintings are surely his, and several are unfinished. Two researchers have argued the pattern fits ADHD, and both say nobody can diagnose a man who died in 1519.

That was Franklin on electricity. He left school at ten after failing arithmetic twice, then taught it to himself from a book. He ran away from his apprenticeship at 17. He wrote that he was “incorrigible with respect to Order”. No researcher has studied whether he had ADHD.

Edison went to school for only a few months. He earned 1,093 US patents and gave up on an estimated 500 to 600 more applications. He vowed to turn out a minor invention every six weeks, and his lab let him run ten or twenty projects at once. A popular 2003 book borrowed his name for a theory about ADHD. No researcher has published a study on whether he had ADHD.

Mozart never went to school. He composed while walking, riding and playing billiards, and once wrote three numbers of an opera in two or three days. Friends remembered him leaping over tables and chairs. One review said his behavior “may indicate” ADHD, then said there isn’t enough evidence for any diagnosis.

That was Twain’s rule for writing his own life story. He wrote Huckleberry Finn “by fits and starts” over five or six years, in three different inks, and left dozens of manuscripts unfinished. One psychiatrist has suggested the pattern fits ADHD. It was a talk and a book, not a study.

Churchill’s school tutor wrote home about his “forgetfulness, carelessness, unpunctuality and irregularity in every way”. He then wrote 43 books, painted more than 500 pictures and dictated until two or three in the morning. Two clinicians have floated an ADHD reading of the young Churchill. Neither published a study.

Byron wrote that at 23, and added that he found “a want of method in arranging my thoughts”. His headmaster complained about his conduct. He ran up debts at college, kept a pet bear there because the rules only banned dogs, and left his longest poem unfinished. One psychiatrist asked in 2001 whether this fits ADHD.

That was Bell describing inventors. He left school at 15 without graduating and never finished his degree. Alongside the telephone he worked on kites, airplanes, sheep-breeding and hydrofoils, and ran more than 1,200 flight experiments over 31 years. No researcher has studied whether he had ADHD.

Roosevelt was a sickly boy with asthma who trained his body hard and went on to box in the White House as president. He read about a book a day as president, usually several at a time, and wrote as many as 150,000 letters. No researcher has suggested ADHD for him.

Earhart went to six high schools in four years and left university twice. She taught English, worked in a hospital, did social work and took photographs to pay for flying, then held several aviation jobs at once while lecturing in two cities on the same day. No historian or doctor has suggested ADHD for her.

Dickinson wrote that at fourteen, about learning to bake bread. She wrote almost 1,800 poems and published fewer than a dozen. In 1862 she wrote nearly a poem a day, on envelopes and scrap paper, wherever an idea found her. No researcher has suggested ADHD for her.

That was Newton on how he worked. He pushed alchemy, theology and mathematics with equal effort and left much of it unpublished. When Halley asked for his proof in 1684, Newton could not find the paper with his own answer. A 1760 biography says he could set a subject down and resume it at the point where he left off. No researcher has studied whether he had ADHD.

That was Andersen on his own life. He left home at 14 alone to try the theater in Copenhagen. He failed as a dancer and actor, and started school at 17 beside children half his age. He later wrote travel books. No researcher has studied whether he had ADHD.

That was Wright on himself as a boy. He left the University of Wisconsin in 1887 without a degree, and a professor’s note said he had “failed to appear in class.” He designed 1,114 buildings and 532 were built. No researcher has studied whether he had ADHD.

That was Duncan on school. She was teaching neighborhood babies to dance at six. At ten she told her mother that school was a waste of time. She later started dance schools in Germany, Russia and the United States, and none of them survived. No researcher has suggested ADHD for her.

That was Bly on getting inside an asylum. She had herself committed in 1887 to report on the conditions there, when she was 23. She then went around the world in 72 days. Later she ran a barrel company and patented inventions. No researcher has suggested ADHD for her.

Carver tried homesteading, art and piano before he settled on botany. He was the first Black student at Iowa State. At Tuskegee he ran the whole experiment station alone for 47 years and published 44 bulletins. His 1916 bulletin offered 105 ways to prepare a peanut. No researcher has studied whether he had ADHD.

That was Disney on Disneyland. He started two studios that failed, one after a month. When he lost the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, he made Mickey Mouse instead. He ran films, television, a theme park and an art school at once, and died before his planned city was built. No researcher has studied whether he had ADHD.

That was Picasso on how he worked. He made about 50,000 artworks and kept at it for nearly 80 of his 91 years. He found the Madrid academy’s teaching stupid, spent his time in cafes and the Prado, and as a teenager rejected his family’s plan for him. One psychiatrist named him in a 2010 talk about ADHD and creativity. No research team has tested the idea.

Dalí was expelled from art school twice, the second time for telling his examiners they were incompetent. He worked in painting, sculpture, film, fashion, jewelry, writing and ballet. His Disney film was dropped in 1946 and only finished in 2003. No researcher has studied whether he had ADHD.

That was Galileo on his critics. He left university without a degree, then built a compass, a thermometer and a series of telescopes in about 12 years. He found four moons of Jupiter in eight days. He gave up a lifetime post at Padua to move to Florence. No researcher has studied whether he had ADHD.

That was Humboldt leaving Europe in 1799. He spent five years measuring South America with 50 instruments. He once took an 800 mile detour because of a wrong newspaper report. His trip became 35 volumes, and he wrote about 50,000 letters. He died with the fifth volume of Cosmos unfinished. No researcher has studied whether he had ADHD.

Fuller was expelled from Harvard twice, once for missing midterms. At 32 he lost his business, then spent two years in near silence working out what to do. He went on to 25 patents, nearly 30 books and 47 honorary degrees. He designed a house, a car, a bathroom, a map and a dome. No researcher has studied whether he had ADHD.