Danielle Ralston
MBA · MSW · ADHD-CCSP · PhD(c) · Master ADHD Coach · 50+ Coaching Certifications · AuDHD · Founder of ND Hive
The Between-Session Gap Report
What ADHD and AuDHD adults actually do between coaching sessions.
- 1,331Between-session actions
- 75Days measured
- 42%Engagement rate
- 58Coverage hrs / week
Quick answer
In the standard coaching model, a client gets one hour with a coach and then spends the remaining 167 hours of the week alone with the exact executive function difficulties that made them hire a coach in the first place. That stretch is the between-session gap. It is widely discussed and almost never measured, because most coaching practices have no instrument pointed at it.
We do. In the 75 days covered by this first edition, ND Hive logged 1,331 individual member actions that took place outside of any coaching session. This report publishes those numbers, including the ones that do not flatter us, and will keep publishing them every quarter so the trend is visible rather than asserted.
Why this data does not usually exist
CHADD, the largest nonprofit dedicated to ADHD research and support in the United States, has documented the central problem: difficulties with motivation, organization, and working memory make it hard to consistently apply the very strategies that would remedy those difficulties. That is a description of the population, not an indictment of any coach.
But it has a consequence the coaching industry has mostly absorbed rather than solved. If the intervention depends on between-session follow-through, and the condition impairs between-session follow-through, then the gap is not a side issue. It is the mechanism. Almost nobody instruments it, because instrumenting it requires building something that lives in the gap, and most coaching practices end at the session boundary.
We built the thing that lives in the gap first, for reasons that had nothing to do with research. The data is a byproduct.
How to read this report
Every metric below is defined once and locked, so future editions measure the same thing the same way. Where an edition covers a different number of days than another, we publish both the raw count and a normalized rate so the comparison stays honest.
| Metric | Definition |
|---|---|
| Between-session action | Any timestamped member-initiated event recorded outside a coaching session: a log, a task, a post, a comment, a reaction, a direct message, a timer, a capture, a regulation tool tap, or a support request. |
| Engaged member | A member with a platform account who logged at least one between-session action during the coverage period. |
| Active day | A calendar day on which a given member logged at least one between-session action. |
| Engagement rate | Engaged members divided by members with platform accounts. Deliberately not calculated against total membership, which would inflate the figure while measuring nothing. |
| Actions per engaged member per day | Total actions divided by engaged members divided by days in the period. This is the figure to compare across editions of unequal length. |
| Members lost | Members who ended their membership during the period, by cancellation or lapse. |
The standing data table
Each future edition adds a column to the right. The first column is the baseline.
| Measure | Edition 1 May 21 to Aug 3, 2026 (75 days) |
|---|---|
| Total members | 187 |
| Members with platform accounts | 93 |
| Engaged members | 39 |
| Engagement rate | 42% |
| Total between-session actions | 1,331 |
| Actions per engaged member | 34 |
| Actions per engaged member per day | 0.46 |
| Average active days per engaged member | 8.9 |
| Highest active days, single member | 51 |
| Members active in final 7 days | 21 |
| Members with 7 or more active days | 15 |
| Members with 30 or more active days | 3 |
| Live coached coverage, hours per week | 58 |
| Members lost since March 2026 | 10 |
Action breakdown
| Action type | Edition 1 |
|---|---|
| Mood and capacity logs | 248 |
| Check-in pulses | 218 |
| Tasks created and worked | 175 |
| Reactions to other members | 140 |
| Wins captured | 124 |
| Community posts written | 113 |
| Direct messages member to member | 94 |
| Comments on other members’ posts | 87 |
| Focus timer sessions | 44 |
| Regulation tool taps | 34 |
| Brain dumps captured | 19 |
| Requests for support | 11 |
| Total | 1,331 |
Method
Every figure comes from one of three sources, labelled throughout.
| Source | What it is |
|---|---|
| Platform telemetry | Timestamped rows in our production database. These are actions members took, not survey answers about actions they took. No estimation, no extrapolation. |
| Membership records | Counts maintained across our billing and membership systems. |
| Member self-report | Polls run to our member community, marked as self-report every time they appear. Not clinical outcomes, and not presented as such. |
We are a membership, not a research institution, and this is not a controlled trial. There is no randomization and no control group. What this report offers is something different and, as far as we can determine, currently unavailable anywhere else: a continuous behavioral record of what a population of ADHD and AuDHD adults actually does in the space between coaching sessions, published on a fixed schedule whether the numbers flatter us or not.
Edition 1 findings
Finding 1: the gap is where the work happens
Across 75 days, members logged 1,331 discrete between-session actions. None of it happened in a coaching session. All of it happened in the gap.
The 94 direct messages are worth sitting with in particular, because those are members reaching for each other with no coach in the room and no prompt to do it. So are the 11 requests for support, each one a moment where somebody hit a wall on a Tuesday afternoon rather than during a scheduled hour.
Finding 2: coverage changes the shape of the week
ND Hive runs 58 hours per week of live, coach-led body doubling. Not a scheduled weekly call. A room that is open, with a real human in it, Monday through Friday from 7am to 5pm, plus Tuesday and Thursday evenings.
This matters for the arithmetic. A traditional coaching relationship produces a 167 hour gap. A model built around open coverage produces a fundamentally different week, because the member does not have to hold a plan intact until the next appointment. They can walk into a room at the moment the wall appears.
Finding 3: engagement is 42 percent, not 90
Of the members with platform accounts, 39 logged between-session activity. That is 42 percent. Twenty-one were active in the final seven days of the period. Fifteen were active on seven or more separate days.
We publish that number deliberately, because the alternative is the kind of engagement statistic that does not survive contact with reality. Any figure above 90 percent in this population is almost certainly counting logins rather than meaningful use.
Forty-two percent is what genuine engagement looks like in a group whose diagnosis specifically impairs the follow-through that any tool requires. It is also evidence that the gap is exactly as hard to close as the original question assumed. Building the bridge does not mean everyone crosses it. It means some people can.
Finding 4: the container drives retention
This is the finding we would most prefer not to publish, and it is the most important one in this edition.
Over the previous three years, ND Hive served 787 members. During the stretch when the offering was spread across roughly ten separate apps, with members expected to remember which tool held which piece of their support, more than 500 of those members quietly stopped showing up. They did not cancel in anger. They did not send complaints. They simply did not make the crossing from one place to another.
We then consolidated everything into a single platform. Since March 2026, we have lost 10 members.
For a long time we filed the first number under migration friction. That was a comfortable explanation and we no longer think it is the correct one. Ten apps is not a bridge across the gap. It is ten additional decisions handed to a brain that is already out of decisions. When the between-session container fragmented, members went with it. When it consolidated, they stayed.
The container is not an accessory to the coaching. On this evidence, the container is the retention.
What members report
Member self-report, collected by poll in our member community. Not a clinical outcome measure.
Members report feeling less stressed after a single coached session, less overwhelmed after three days, and reduced stress across multiple areas of life after a week. Eighty-seven members responded to the most recent poll.
We deliberately exclude the widely circulated productivity statistics that appear across this industry without traceable primary sources. If we cannot point at where a number came from, it does not appear on this page.
Limitations
- This is observational data from a single membership. It is not a controlled trial and there is no comparison group.
- Edition 1 covers 75 days. It is a baseline, not a longitudinal finding. The longitudinal value of this report begins with Edition 2.
- Coverage periods may differ in length. Compare using actions per engaged member per day rather than raw totals.
- Self-reported outcomes are self-reported. They tell you how members experience the model, not what a clinician would measure.
- We are not a neutral party. We built the thing we are reporting on. The correct response to that is to publish the unflattering numbers alongside the good ones, on a schedule, which is what this report is for.
Publication schedule
This report is updated quarterly. Each edition adds a new data column, a short findings section, and a changelog entry. Prior editions are never edited except to correct an error, and every correction is logged below with its date.
Our 2026 Coached Body Doubling member survey is open now. Its results will be folded into the next edition, and the method section will be expanded to describe it.
If you are researching this question, whether as a coach, a clinician, a journalist, or someone deciding whether coaching is worth it, you are welcome to cite this page. Please cite the edition number and coverage period, since the figures change each quarter. If you run a coaching practice and want to instrument your own between-session gap, we would rather you did that than took our word for any of this.
The bottom line
The between-session gap is as consequential as it appears. Edition 1 shows 1,331 logged actions proving real work happens there, a 42 percent engagement rate showing how hard it is to reach people in it, and a three year retention record showing what happens when the container in that gap falls apart.
Somebody asked whether anybody is measuring this. Somebody is. Now it is published, and it will keep being published.
You are not broken. You are not too much. You are smart and capable, and you can do anything with the right tools.
See what 58 hours a week of live coached coverage does to your week.
Changelog
| Date | Edition | Change |
|---|---|---|
| August 3, 2026 | 1 | Baseline published. Coverage period May 21 to August 3, 2026. |