Hi, my name is Keith. I’m from Yorkshire in the UK, and I’m a retired IT Manager. I spent my working life in IT, starting out as the lad crawling under desks wiring things up, then moving through development, service management, leadership, and eventually quality management before retiring. I’ve always been a thinker. I was good at seeing the bigger picture, leading teams, spotting talent, and helping people grow into what they were capable of becoming. Early in my career, I remember sitting with an older colleague who had been at the place for many years. He said to me: “There are two types of people, son: thinkers and doers. I’m a doer, lad, but I can’t do anything until I get a thinker to tell me what to do. You have to decide which one you are.” That stayed with me. For a long time, I thought I simply had an overactive brain, full of ideas, plans, and possibilities. At work, that was fine because I had good people around me. I could build a team, share the vision, and together we could make things happen. Retirement has shown me something different. For the first time, I am not only the person having the ideas, I am also the person who has to carry them out. I have to be both the thinker and the doer, and that has not come easily. I now realise there is some kind of block that stops me from turning my ideas into action when I am working on my own. I still have plenty of thoughts, plans, and creative ambitions, but without a team around me, I often struggle to move them forward. That is part of why I am here. I want to understand myself better, find new ways of getting things done, and work out how to build a life after work that still feels purposeful, creative, and connected. I also want to find a new way forward with friendships. Outside work, I have come to realise that I do not have the same kind of support network around me. I miss the sense of teamwork, shared effort, and people pulling together towards something. So this is me trying to find a better way. A way to keep thinking, keep creating, keep moving forward, and hopefully build the right friendships and connections for this next stage of my life.

Just finished all 3 sections of my ADHD Snapshot and realised the chaos in every room of my house and the way I lie in bed re-writing the same to-do list until I run out of morning are the exact same loop. I always thought it was laziness. Turns out it's my brain trying to feel safe enough to start. Onto the full report next.