You don’t need a niche — you need a newsletter

9 reasons every ADHD creative should start a Substack

Jun 10, 2025

Hello you, with a million ideas and a new hyperfixation every month.

Hello you, with three separate Instagram accounts.

Hello you, who clicked on this because you're sick of trying to fit yourself into a niche and want to simply show up as you are.

The good news? You don’t need a niche — you need a newsletter.

Here are nine reasons I think you should start a Substack, especially if you’re over Instagram and have been personally victimized by the idea of a niche.

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1. A newsletter can be anything you want

Forget everything you know about newsletters — this isn’t your typical “business update” or email marketing blast. I’m talking about the kind of newsletter that gets to be your creative playground. A little weekly container for your thoughts, your personality, your ideas, or whatever’s exciting you at the moment.

This could look like:

Updates on your life, career, or how your garden is coming along
Poems, drawings, lyrics, or whatever you’re creating
Roundups, recs, and deep dives of your favorite media
Research dumps from your current rabbit hole or hyperfixation
Any of the absolute gold that’s wasting away in your camera roll and Notes app

You don’t have to provide “value” and it doesn’t have to be strategic. Your newsletter can be unserious and messy.

Newsletters as a concept have become one and the same with e-commerce marketing, so we forget what they actually are: a vehicle to send whatever you want to whoever wants to receive it. That’s it!

And that’s what makes it the perfect tool to express yourself online. There’s no character limit. No algorithm to conquer. No rules — except all the ones you may have made up.

Which brings us to…

2. You don’t have to niche down (thank god)

If you have ADHD, a million interests, or just fully allergic to the idea of a niche — I’m begging you to start a Substack.

We’ve all been brainwashed to believe that we need a tight, marketable identity in order to be discovered on social media. That we need to wrap our personality into a one-sentence elevator pitch or a color-coded content strategy.

And THAT is why Instagram feels so hard. It’s not built for the whole person, it’s built for personas, for personal brands.

So instead of paying $444 for a mindset course to overcome your blocks around Instagram, you might just need a different platform — one where you don’t feel those old constraints.

On Substack, you don’t even have to think about a niche. people follow your voice, not your topic. You get to evolve in public. You get to show the full picture of who you are, not just a filtered version of it.

Doesn’t that sound nice?

3. Long form gives your ideas room to breathe

You know the feeling:

You have a deep, layered idea, and you try to cram it into a seven-second reel or a tiny Instagram caption. You keep cutting it down, making it punchier, more digestible… until it eventually sounds like a vanilla, PC version of what you were trying to say.

Then you post it, nobody engages with it (because it’s boring and void of any flavor), and you’re left feeling like you have so much more to express.

But that’s Instagram for you — a short-form content factory.

In a newsletter, you don’t have to flatten your ideas. You don’t have to trim off the edges. You can explore the nooks and crannies of your brain in real time, connecting thoughts you’d never be able to capture in a reel or carousel.

It’s a place to stretch out and be your actual, weird, deep, thoughtful self — without worrying whether or not the algorithm will approve.

4. Newsletters helps you build a writing practice

This is a big one!!!

You can only do so much thinkingggg — at some point, you have to get your ideas on paper, see them, and workshop them.

A newsletter helps you build a creative rhythm. When you publish consistently, you stop hoarding ideas in your head and start actually getting them out before overwhelm takes over.

Writing consistently, even if you don’t consider yourself a writer, helps you make sense of all the concepts, hypotheses, and connections that won’t leave you alone. Your ideas become real when you write them down.

Even if a successful publication isn’t your end goal, the habit of writing a weekly newsletter will strengthen your creative muscles and end up benefitting your main zone of genius, whatever that is!

5. Newsletters gives you built-in accountability

A weekly newsletter gives you a reason to show up. It puts you on the hook!

Without some kind of external pressure, perfectionism can run rampant — you’ll tinker with your ideas until the end of time. But if you’ve told even a few people to expect something from you every Monday or Thursday or Sunday morning… suddenly it’s real. Suddenly there’s a reason to finish.

You don’t need a giant audience to benefit from this. Even one reader can create enough motivation to keep showing up and hitting publish.

If you have ADHD, are a lifelong procrastinator, or want to challenge your perfectionism, I fucking dare you to start a newsletter.

Accountability is uncomfortable, but it works.

6. Substack isn’t just another email platform

Substack is a fucking unicorn.

Platforms like Mailchimp were built to help brands sell products. Substack was built to help people share their writing.

Substack is a cool hybrid of a social network and a blogging platform, but you still get the benefits of it being an email platform in that you own your audience's email addresses — which isn’t the case for Instagram or TikTok.

But it actually feels like a social network. Following someone on Substack feels like any other social media follow, not just an exchange of your email address.

You’re not handing over your email to save 20% on your first order, you’re gladly opting in to hearing from interesting people.

That’s why it’s easier to grow. People want to follow writers and creators on Substack. People are more liberal with clicking subscribe than if it were your brand’s marketing list.

The best part is that it feels like TikTok in 2020 — the algorithm is great, there are a lot of people consuming on the app right now, and if you show up and you put out work that people resonate with, your people will find you.

7. Substack gives you introvert-friendly visibility

Having a newsletter is great for the sensitive, shy, creative folks who feel weird being witnessed by everyone from high school, college, and that one job you had in 2018.

We all know how strange it is to post on Instagram knowing your aunt, your old manager, and someone you dated for two months all follow you. Talk about a mindfuck — that kind of hyper-awareness makes it hard to show up as who you are now, rather than the version of you they remember.

Substack doesn’t feel like that. It feels quieter, calmer, easier to be yourself.

And if someone’s presence on your list makes you clam up and shut down, you can remove them! They’ll never know.

Right now, Substack is full of weirdos, creatives, nerds, artists, introverts — people just like you (respectfully). Which makes it a great place to start feeling comfortable being seen again.

8. Your newsletter can grow with you

You don’t need to know what it’s going to become! You don’t have to map out your niche or have a long-term plan — it can evolve weekly. It can reflect your real thoughts in real time.

Fuck strategy, the point is to build a habit of creative expression.

Because half the time, the long-term strategy you make today leads you somewhere you no longer want to go. By the time you “get there,” you’ve changed!

A newsletter gives you permission to pivot every week. It helps you practice showing up without spiraling about the plan.

Think of each post as a dot on a scatterplot. Over time, those dots connect into something that makes complete and total sense for you — you just can’t see it ahead of time, only in hindsight.

When you practice being in process, your newsletter grows with you, and you grow with it.

Isn’t this what you’ve been wanting???

If you’re ready to dive into Substack, but don’t want to lose yourself to a niche, check out Substack School for Creative Overthinkers, our new audio class!

9. Writing a newsletter opens doors

Your Substack publication becomes a portfolio. But not just of your writing! Of your initiative, your voice, and your willingness to show up.

Having a Substack you can share with someone shows that you have something to say — and that you had the guts to say it, even when no one was asking. Even when you weren’t being rewarded for it.

Anybody can post a video of their dog with a trending sound. Not everybody can write something, give it shape, title it, and hit publish when only 13 people are going to read it. But you can!

And when you do that 10 times? 30 times? You’ve got yourself an entire body of work.

You can send it to someone you want to collaborate with. You can include it in a pitch. You can use it to open doors you didn’t even know existed — to freelance work, to job opportunities, to creative partnerships, to a totally different life path.

You know how you wish you would’ve stuck YouTube back when you were younger, because the people who kept doing it have completely different lives?

That’s what a newsletter could do for you.

A closing pep talk :)

You don’t have to know where it’s going, you just have to be willing to try.

Since you’re used to “having it all figured out” before you begin, expect this to feel messy, haphazard, and wrong. But that’s your Instagram-brain talking.

So when the excitement wears off and you start craving structure and a niche again, remember, that’s not why you’re here. You’re here to practice being in process.

Not to perform. Not to filter yourself. Not to build a following.

You came here to show up honestly and get something down, not think something up. The whole point is to not know, because that’s what makes your inevitable success sooo much more fun when it arrives.

Thanks for reading!

If you’re feeling nostalgic about the days of no-fucks-given, online creative expression that MySpace, Xanga, and Tumblr granted us — Substack could be your new internet home.

I’ll be in the comments if you have thoughts, ideas, or questions!

Take it easy :)