95. My Emergent Ventures Application
Below is my application to Emergent Ventures for a grant to move closer to solving ADHD. I submitted this application late last week and while reflecting on it it seems ridiculous that I had the audacity to apply. Whether or not I receive the grant I am glad I did take this step. Emergent Ventures and their partners are to be lauded for offering such a program. They are indeed contributing to a new renaissance just like the Medicis. The ideas I present below will not be new to regular readers of this blog but I hope you find value in viewing them as a single argument.
In 2010 one afternoon, I realized failure was inevitable. I was incapable of passing Systems and Simulation, a 3rd year university course. I put my head down and surrendered to my fate while walking to my car. I was never going to graduate. My friend, Sagaar, noticed the dejected me and felt sympathy. I told him my problem. You see I couldn't study. I tried to force myself to study several times for many years. Luckily, I managed to wing it so far, but my luck ran out. Studying was necessary to overcome the difficulty of the courses I faced. The only thing left was to accept my fate, but my friend didn't let me. That day he and several others saved me. They welcomed me into their study group. The camaraderie we felt spurred us on. Not only did I graduate but those were some of the best years of my life. I owe them my degree and career.
My name is Christopher Calvin Govender. I am a South African-born mechanical engineer. In 2020 during the pandemic under lockdown, I discovered I was not a lazy, underachieving, loser. I just had ADHD. I stopped trying to be more disciplined and became Eddie Morra from Limitless. 52mg of Methylphenidate HCL will make you feel that way. It was amazing but just like Eddie, there were costs. I had to take SSRIs to sleep due to the side effects which was a downer. As good as the stimulant felt this situation didn't feel right. I settled for coffee and turned my hyperfocused gaze towards figuring out ADHD, not just managing it.
One mainstream view I agree with is that personal growth and productivity are not only desirable but essential for living a meaningful life. Every person who has ADHD desperately desires to grow and succeed in life. Society values effectiveness, goal achievement, and personal development, and I am no exception. My journey has centered on becoming more productive, solving complex problems, and, ultimately, helping others do the same. This belief in continuous improvement is at the core of my work as an engineer and as someone dedicated to solving difficult problems. ADHD is a difficult problem and I wondered where I should begin.
My problem-solving process typically begins with a question: What if they all were wrong? By “they” I am referring to the experts and authorities attempting to solve hard problems. If they were right it should just be a matter of time and energy, brute force, before the problem dissolves, but it doesn’t seem that way. In the following paragraphs, I am going to start from the bottom and work my way up as I form an argument suggesting an unorthodox method of tackling ADHD.
Let’s start with the mind. Since ADHD is regarded as a neurological issue it makes sense to examine how we think of the mind. What if they are wrong about the mind? What if the mind is not like a bucket, a passive receiver, to be filled with data? Instead, it is more like an ecosystem of ideas that selectively illuminates reality. It is theory-laden, filled with ideas, all created within it. This view extends Karl Popper’s Searchlight Theory of the Mind, which suggests we do not see reality as it is. What we see is informed by the ideas in our heads like a light projecting its rays.
Speaking of projecting, let’s talk projects. Every person with ADHD struggles with traditional project management philosophy. What if they are wrong about projects? I asked this question when trying to answer Patrick Collison’s question, “Why do there seem to be more examples of rapidly-completed major projects in the past than the present?” The traditional definition of a project is “A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.” What if a project was more like an interconnected series of claims about the value and benefits of meeting goals for stakeholders, accounting for requirements, strategies, and constraints, including through omission, inevitably tested against reality? It is an assertion about reality more so than an attempt to achieve a goal.
One of the major goals of every person with ADHD is to develop good habits. What if they are wrong about habit creation too? Instead of relying on rigid, prescriptive methods of habit-building, what if we took a flexible diagnostic approach, allowing individuals to correct errors creatively instead of falsely assuming success at the onset? The SMARTER-OS framework could be such an approach. When people struggle with habit formation they can check the Specificity, Measurability, Attractiveness, Relevance, Time-boundedness, Ease, Reflective practices, Obviousness, and the level of Satisfaction of the habit. As a diagnostic tool as opposed to a prescription for success, the user understands that there may be other factors to consider but they have a starting point.
I have been bold with my claims but it is about to get worse or better depending on your opinion so far. What if they are wrong about ADHD? Calling it “A chronic condition including attention difficulty, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness” only seems to scratch the surface. What if we took an epistemological approach? What if ADHD was more like a condition where one's theory of fun and meaning dominates behavior and forms rigid boundaries, acting as gatekeepers over what feels engaging? These preconceived ideas of what is fun and meaningful are resistant to criticism, limiting the ability to find enjoyment or value in tasks outside these boundaries. This stubbornness can make everyday activities feel like a struggle, even when there is value in doing them, as it becomes difficult to transform seemingly boring or mundane tasks into something enjoyable and meaningful.
I have made these daring declarations but what if I am wrong? I certainly am. Fallibilism is a fundamental idea for me. I understand that my theories contain errors because there are no authoritative sources of knowledge nor any reliable means of justifying knowledge as true or probable. This applies to the experts and me. I want to find out what the errors are and fix them. I want to accelerate the error correction process and move closer to solving ADHD.
Over a year, I want to work with 5 to 10 individuals with ADHD at a time but hopefully dozens in total, using my core ideas to help them break down their rigid theories of fun and reframe their experiences. I will provide free coaching and personalized support to participants, documenting their progress as they apply my methods in real-world situations. The ultimate goal is to refine these ideas and create a system that can help more people and myself overcome the limitations imposed by ADHD. To identify participants, I will use social media platforms such as Reddit and X to reach out to individuals struggling with ADHD. I will focus on people open to experimenting with unconventional approaches and are willing to provide detailed feedback throughout the process.
I am requesting enough funding to devote myself full-time to this work for a year, allowing me to step away from my engineering role and focus on testing and refining these methods. My estimated budget is $50,000, which will mainly cover living expenses. After the year-long pilot, I plan to compile my findings into a book, online course, or app, with the potential to expand the impact of my work on a larger scale.
I made a commitment to myself: I would solve ADHD. Determined to go beyond conventional treatments, I dove into hypnotherapy, NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), and critical rationalism, searching for deeper solutions. The work of David Deutsch, especially his principle of optimism—"All problems are soluble"—gave me the framework to believe that ADHD isn’t just a condition to be managed; it’s a problem that can be solved. There are no laws of physics preventing us from creating the knowledge necessary to solve ADHD, and I intend to do exactly that.
What makes this belief real for me is my progress. When I first tested my conscientiousness using Jordan Peterson’s Big Five personality test in 2019, I scored in the 1st percentile. By 2023, my score had jumped to the 28th percentile. While still low, this increase was a breakthrough—a sign that my unconventional methods hold promise. I believe this grant can enable me to take the next leap, dedicating myself fully to this mission and testing my methods with others.
I want to reduce the rigidity of our theories of fun. I plan to do this by uncovering our models of reality, revealing what we assert about ourselves and the world, so we can figure out where they are wrong. Through a process of error correction and by understanding the complexity of our minds I hope to improve these models of reality and create more flexible theories of fun thereby solving ADHD.
Update: The application was rejected