Jesse J. Anderson

ADHD advocate, writer, designer, developer. Built the Extra Focus newsletter to 59,000+ Substack subscribers in roughly three years and authored Extra Focus: The Quick Start Guide to Adult ADHD. Diagnosed with ADHD at 36 in 2017; treats his entire creator practice as a downstream consequence of that diagnosis. Lives in Puyallup, WA.

Origin and diagnosis

• The T-Shirt Tag Aha — the specific detail that made the diagnosis click
• 30 Jobs Through His 20s — the pre-diagnosis pattern of cycling through jobs
• The Trash Whiteboard That Reframed a Marriage — prospective-memory failure fixed by environment design

Newsletter build and growth

• The Atomic Essays That Became Extra Focus — Ship 30 for 30 cohort as the writing constraint that produced the newsletter
• The ADHD Strategy Guide PDF Lead Magnet — repackaged-essay PDF promoted on X/TikTok delivered the first 1K subs
• 1K to 10K Was Harder Than 10K to 100K — counterintuitive growth-curve observation
• The 30-Minute Parkinson’s-Law Newsletter — weekly writing process: think all week, write in 30 minutes
• I’d Rather Lose Every Other Channel Than Lose My Newsletter — newsletter-first creator philosophy

Monetization

• Patreon Quit, Substack Paid Won — failed Patreon, casually flipped Substack paid switch and built the offer afterward
• The Sponsor Hunt That Almost Killed the Newsletter — sponsor prospecting drained him; abandoned for paid subs

Book

• The Book That Sat in a Drawer for Four Months — editor + beta-reader cohort as accountability scaffolding
• The Wall-of-Text Page He Couldn’t Get Past — bad reading experience translated into design choices for his own book