Latest / Humanity Working / Bonus Episode: ADHD, Modern Life, and the Systems That Help Us Thrive, Featuring Carol Pearlman

Transcript

Bonus Episode: ADHD, Modern Life, and the Systems That Help Us Thrive, Featuring Carol Pearlman · Humanity Working

• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Hi everybody.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, way back on this podcast, in fact, before we were even called Humanity Working, I chatted with the ADHD specialist Ned Hallowell shortly after the release of his book, um ADHD 2.0.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And if you go back into our archive, you'll you'll find it there.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a big part of that conversation focused on something that I've kept coming back to since this idea that a lot of people today show ADHD-like symptoms that aren't necessarily ADHD at all, but what Ned calls a severe case of modern life.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been thinking about what that means for the rest of us for some time, and that eventually led me to the work of today's guest, who's Carol Perlman.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Carol is one of the pioneers of cognitive behavioral treatment programs for adult ADHD.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And she's also spent over a decade working with the general population on what she calls healthy habits, the practical systems that people can use to function better day to day.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Carol's got a really good podcast that I recommend called Healthy Habits for Life.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm an avid lead uh avid uh listener now.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it covers actually many of the same themes that we explore in our fixed episodes.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um so if you like those, I'm sure you'll love uh Carol's part as well.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll put a link to those in the show notes.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um we're gonna split today's conversation loosely into two parts.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: First, we're gonna talk a little bit about Carol's work on adult ADHD, really kind of as a lens for understanding modern life.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it will be interesting to anybody, regardless of whether they've been diagnosed with adult ADHD or not.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then in the second half, we're gonna zoom out and we're gonna look at the systems and uh the habits that employees and leaders uh can use to navigate today's more ambiguous, distracting world.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a long intro, but Carol is here.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the pod, Carol.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_03: I'm happy to be here today.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, really looking forward to the discussion.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: So let's uh let's start a little bit with your background.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned, you sp you spent a lot of time working in the field of adult ADHD developing and researching and using CBT-based programs with clients.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I think one of the really interesting things is that also for quite a long time you've been more working more with the general population on these healthy habits.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: So what did that work, that that work that you've done working with people with adult ADHD teach you about how adults more generally struggle with things like a time, uh attention, time, energy, things like that?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, perhaps to best answer that, I can tell you a little bit about the journey connecting one part of my career to the other.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_03: And that will, I think, answer the question.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_03: So my training, as you mentioned, is in cognitive behavioral therapy, which is a skills-based approach to understanding problems and patterns that play out today.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_03: So in CBT, we look at the connection between situations, the thoughts you're having in a situation, and how your thoughts impact your feelings and how your thoughts and feelings impact your behavior.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_03: And that whole cycle either leads to a positive outcome or an unwanted, negative, less healthy outcome.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_03: So um, so that was my training using CBT for a variety of problems: anxiety, depression, trauma.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_03: At the time, I was at Mass General Hospital in Boston in the CBT program, and my colleagues and I were asked to work on a program for adults with ADHD to develop a CBT program.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_03: Because at the time, this was, gosh, this was over 20 years ago now.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_03: There really wasn't much out there.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so we were embedded in the field in the department of psychiatry.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_03: There were a lot of people coming in, they were utilizing medications, which were helpful to a certain degree and for some people, but they weren't the be-all-end-all answer because some people couldn't tolerate them.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_03: There are a lot of side effects and they can be kind of hard to manage, you know, to get the effect you need and to get it to last all day long.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_03: So they were good, but they weren't perfect.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_03: And what we were finding was that people, even when we when they were what we would consider to be adequately medicated, they still had residual symptoms.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_03: So they were the meds were kind of doing the best that they were going to do, but people were still struggling with distractability, procrastination, hyperactivity.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: And so we were asked to create the CBT program that would help address the rest that the medications weren't helping with.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: So to make a long story short, we did a lot of research to understand to interview patients and understand what the troubles were.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_03: We then developed a program based on what we knew from CBT was working for other difficulties like anxiety and depression.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_03: And then we tested it.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: We did various research studies to make sure that it really worked, that it worked better than other programs that were out there.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_03: And then we turned that into a published treatment manual that's been out now for many, many years.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_03: And we've been using it clinically.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, there they are right there.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Very interesting, I would say.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um, thank you.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_03: I wish I had the number for you.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_03: I tried to get it um in time, but I didn't.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_03: But it's been translated.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_03: The program has been translated into many, many languages now, which is just crazy.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_03: So I have a library of some of the translations, but I don't have all of them.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway, so this program has been around for 20 years and we've been using it clinically in our practices.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_03: And um I left Mass General shortly thereafter, but my colleagues continued the research program there.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_03: And I moved into private practice where I was working more with the general population in the suburbs and continuing to help a lot of people with ADHD, but I also saw, you know, the general public who were struggling with day-to-day life problems.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I found myself talking about time management, time management all the time.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_03: So it wasn't always ADHD per se, but it was just the difficulty getting things done, figuring out, you know, I have all these things on my to-do list.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a busy mom, I'm a working professional, you know, how do I figure out what I need to do today?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: What's my priority, and how do I get it done when there are so many competing priorities?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_03: And so I was using the protocol, you know, with a lot of patients.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_03: And then in about uh 2020, this was just at the start of COVID.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um, well, so I started doing health coaching maybe five or seven years prior to that, and exploring online platforms for courses were very new at the time.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_03: And so it was just arriving.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_03: So I was exploring different platforms.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_03: How do I take the skills that I have as a psychologist and make them available to a wider number of people using these amazing social media and online platforms to help more people than I can do one-on-one in my private practice?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: And so I decided to take what we had done for the ADHD uh clientele and turn that into a program that was relevant for the general population.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_03: And instead of teaching it through one-on-one um uh counseling or coaching, to do it in group format and to use social media platforms to advertise it.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_03: So I basically cast a very broad net looking to help people who were just stuck.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_03: I I just love Ned's um led's term, acute, no, a severe case of modern life.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's just so accurate.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_03: And that's really the work that I've been doing.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_03: And so that has evolved over the years as the platforms have involved have evolved and social media has evolved.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_03: It's just given us really amazing ways to influence people.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_03: And so the way I like to think of it is I'm sort of sitting on people's shoulders and I chirp.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_03: I try to share messages every day throughout the day, chirping positivity, sharing tips, sharing guides for habits, how to create healthy habits for productivity, as well as wellness and health habits.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: I try to model it so I show what I'm working on, what's hard, what's working, the skills and the tricks that I use that help me, and try to relate peer-to-peer, but also use my professional uh expertise to guide people along the way.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_03: So that's kind of the journey of how I've integrated the two.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I continue to do both.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_03: I have a private practice where I work in more of a clinical setting, and then I continue to use the online platform to help people.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_03: And my newest segment of the business is consulting with organizations, a lot of healthcare organizations, because I understand healthcare from the inside.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_03: I know what it's like to be a clinician, I know what it's like to work in a very busy medical setting, and I also have the executive functioning skills to teach others and to kind of look at their workflow more objectively and teach them strategies for improving and streamlining the day.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_03: Really, my goal in my work these days is to help people work more efficiently so that they can free up more time for self-care, rest, relaxation, fun, put it all the way at the end of the day, and go live your life.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that sounds like an amazing goal for everybody.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um I wanna I want to start this part of the conversation though with something um that I know from from my own work is something that that confuses a lot of people.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um today in my work I see people all the time who are struggling with many of the things that um would be traditionally associated with ADHD.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you've touched on this, right?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: So the so they're struggling with distractability, right?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: They're struggling with with their ability to be able to focus for for any prolonged period of time.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think a lot of those people today are wondering is there something wrong with them?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Is there something wrong is it just a sort of like a a feature uh of model life?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um or is there are they somewhere in between if that makes sense?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: So um I guess as I looked as I looked through your work specifically on ADHD, um in the therapist guide, you point out really, really early on that um there are a series of factors that are used to determine if somebody has adult ADHD.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then you point out rapidly afterwards, well, a lot of people could feel like they have these things and yet they would not necessarily have adult ADHD.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: So so for those people that are out there right now that are going, man, I struggle with this, I struggle with this, I struggle with this.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I have ADHD, uh maybe I have ADHD, maybe I need to be on medication right now, and maybe they don't know a lot about um CBT at this point.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: How do you and I'm obviously not asking you to diagnose anybody, right?
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: But but but how does one go about even determining whether they have this severe case of modern life thing or whether they have the specifics of what are uh of what is adult ADHD?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Can you help us understand the difference between the two?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: You've hit the nail on the head because there are so many people out there.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, ADHD has gotten more exposure over the years, and um, you know, there's a lot more information out there.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_03: There are a lot of influencers out there sharing information, which is amazing.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: So, but it makes it very confusing.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_03: So I recently did an episode, I think it was maybe mid-December, early to mid-December of 2025, and it was called, I think I may have ADHD now what?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: So if you're listening and you fall into this category, um, I'll elaborate.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna give you some of the highlights today, but I'll elaborate a lot more on the whole process in that episode.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: But and of course, we'll put a link to that in the show notes as well.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_03: Super, thank you.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_03: It's really tricky because, you know, unlike some things that you could, you know, you think you have an infection, I think I might have mono.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_03: Let me go to the doctor and they'll do a blood test and they'll confirm yes, you do or no, you don't.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_03: And if you do, there's a protocol and they know what to do for that.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we can't really do a blood test and say, oh, you're minus this, therefore you must have ADHD.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_03: And so it really requires a lot of clinical judgment and a skilled expert to really make sense, to hear the story, to do an interview and understand what your symptoms are or what a person's experiences are, what are the challenges day to day?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_03: And then we have to sort out does that fall in the realm of average challenges, or is it more significant that we would put it in the category of meeting uh criteria for a clinical diagnosis?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: So we have to go through the symptoms one by one.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_03: There's something called the DSM, which you may be familiar with.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's our Bible in the world of psychology and psychiatry.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_03: And so it basically has the criteria for all the various psychiatric illnesses.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_03: So we can go through and say these are the agreed upon criteria, and then we have to decide based on the interview is this does this person's story match up with what we think, uh, you know, how we understand the criteria are.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: So we use a variety of instruments.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: So there are some paper pencil, some computer testing that can be done, um, but a lot of it is clinical interview, and the expert really needs to be able to determine is this a common struggle or is it above and beyond?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, is it impacting this person more significantly than the average person, in which case it warrants a clinical diagnosis?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: So that's sort of step one.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you can go to a clinician who can do the interview and understand and you know, decide if you meet those criteria, and or you can also do a much more elaborate type of testing called neuropsychological testing.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's unfortunately really expensive.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_03: Some people find a way to get it covered by insurance, some people don't.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but it's much more elaborate, um, usually done by a neuropsychologist, and they do more testing.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_03: They go into more detail, more in-depth to really understand what's happening and um, you know, whether the diagnosis is warranted.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_03: The benefit of that is that you get a lot of information.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, really at the end of the day, with this psychiatric or medical field, the point of a diagnosis is to inform treatment.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_03: So we have all this amazing research out there that now we can look to to say, oh, for people who have this problem, these are some of the top treatments that have been tried, and here's what we know works.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_03: This is the best, the industry standard that we have for what works.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_03: CBT is the industry standard for many psychiatric illnesses.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_03: So if we know what the that the diagnosis fits, then we can say, well, what's the industry standard for treatment, whether it's medication or whether it's psychological treatment, whether it's coaching, executive functioning coaching.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_03: And then we can create a treatment plan for the person.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_03: So if someone can make that neuropsych testing happen, it's always really informative and really helps the person understand their brain, not just in terms of what's causing the struggle, but also where are the strengths.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_03: There are the ADHD brain has a lot of gifts.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of people don't realize this because they they're just seeing the struggle.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_03: And this the struggle is, you know, what's showing up and getting all the attention, but all the attention, but there are a lot of gifts that go along with ADHD.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_03: There's amazing problem solving, the ability to connect pieces of information or connect separate concepts in ways that the average person might not.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it can set the stage for really great creativity.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: So in my work with my clients, I always like to talk about these gifts and help people see them because it's something that they've just really not been able to notice because they've been so weighed down by the difficulties.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that thank you.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's super, super helpful.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: As I say, we'll we'll put a uh a link in the in the show notes about this.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: In your uh in your experience, obviously you mentioned there's online influencers who talk about this a lot.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of like online tests associated with ADHD as well.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if you score 16 out of 20 of these, you have ADHD.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any validity to those?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Should people look out for and and be concerned about those in terms of misdiagnosis?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that I'm really glad you brought that up.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_03: That would not be the first place that I would turn necessarily.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_03: There are what we call validated measures that have been studied that have been part of research programs to really make sure that they they're valid.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_03: And by valid, we mean they measure what we think we want them to measure, and the questions are written in a way that they can really differentiate between the group that has or doesn't have whatever we're looking at.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: So I would definitely want to look more towards the validated measures and they are published and they are out there.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, take those online quizzes with a grain of salt, and you know, they can maybe help steer you in the direction of whether this is something that's not at all relevant for you or, huh, I scored high on this fun little online test?
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe I want to then go seek professional guidance and and get more formal testing done to really understand this.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then obviously another concern that people have about this is the medication side.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: So when it comes to adult ADHD, what proportion of people with adult ADHD uh end up requiring or needing medication in order to uh in order to manage um manage the ADHD?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_03: That's a good question.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_03: I can't give you a number per se.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_03: I can say, you know, from my standpoint, having sat with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of clients over two decades, you know, a lot of people do benefit from them.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_03: And um, but I always say that it's never a great, well, I guess never say never, but it is really my philosophy is that medications, you a person does best with medication when it is combined with therapy and coach, coaching, executive functioning coaching in the case of the ADHD.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, they're they can be really helpful in in turning the volume down on the noise and on the severity of the symptoms.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_03: But at the end of the day, medications aren't going to teach you how to prioritize.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_03: They're not going to teach you how to clean out your email.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: They're not going to teach you what's the most important thing that you need to do at nine o'clock on Monday morning.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_03: But they will they will help quiet the noise and help you focus.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_03: But at the end of the day, it's going to be the systems and the strategies that are really going to help you thrive and learn how to coexist with your ADHD.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's not going to go away, but it you can learn how to coexist and thrive with it as part of your life.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's a beautiful segue into actually the next part that I wanted to talk about.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um about I would say about a year ago, um, I did some work with some people who had um traumatic brain injuries.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: And these were high functioning individuals with with um that had had traumatic brain injuries and were recovering, uh, were recovering from them.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the most fascinating things that I um that I learned from these people was that in many cases fairly rapidly because of the fact that they were highly functioning before and they were looking to recover that, they had built really effective systems for them that allowed that that allowed them to can to continue to work at a at a fairly high level, but also that the rest of us could learn from, right?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so I'm curious as to whether you've encountered something similar yourself.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you've worked with a lot of people with ADHD, and I'm sure some people with ADHD who've uh who've done extremely well in the workplace and business settings and so on.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Have you found that there are things that that the rest of the population can learn from those individuals as to how they overcome some of the challenges associated with it that could be applied to everyday life?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is that has that influenced the work that you've done with with the more with the broader population?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, I guess I think it's kind of the same.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if I necessarily am comparing clinical versus non-clinical populations so much, but because I think it's all of us.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I don't have a diagnosis of ADHD, but I have a planner.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_03: I don't have it up here with me at the moment, but I have a planner that a paper planner, by the way, yeah, that I still live by.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I create time every Sunday to sit down and look at the week ahead and set everything up and check the calendars and make sure I have the Zoom links and figure out what are my priorities, what am I doing when, not only with my work task, but also with the things that are important to me in my personal life.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a big tennis player.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_03: I want to make sure I know when am I playing tennis this week?
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_03: Do I have enough court time, you know, scheduled, or do I need to find some people and get some more in there?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_03: Do I have time for meal planning?
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_03: Do I have time to go food shopping?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_03: So these are systems that everybody benefits from.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: But not everybody's brain intuitively thinks about it.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_03: And not everybody has been taught it.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_03: So um most people have not, right?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_03: And so at the end of the day, I really think we're all more similar than we are different.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_03: When you're looking at an ADHD, a clinical ADHD population and a non-clinical population.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_03: The world is so busy right now.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_03: There is so much stimulation coming at us, digital, environmentally, mentally, in our own minds.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there's just so much, we're so distracted that we all benefit from having really good systems.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that's so true.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um going back to that that work, one of the interesting things that I found in talking to those uh to those people was that in many cases before the traumatic brain injury, they were able to get away with certain things that were not uh that that they would not get away with otherwise.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, in other words, they weren't writing, they weren't writing everything down.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: They were holding some stuff in their head.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: And now they had to write everything down because the full knowledge that if they didn't, then they would lose stuff.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now they were losing stuff before, but they were but it wasn't, but it was not obvious.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then it became obvious through uh through these various other things.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's almost like there's a there's a consequence that that in quotes the general population might have to certain behaviors that are less strong than the consequences of people that, for example, have had a traumatic brain injury or something like that.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's the that that to me is the interesting thing.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then I, having worked with some of those people, revisited them, they were fully recovered, but they kept the processes in place because they realized the process how essential the processes were, which I think is so is so fascinating.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know what's really interesting?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_03: So um I didn't mention this when we were talking about diagnosis, but one of the criteria for a true diagnosis of ADHD is that you have to have shown symptoms in childhood.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_03: The age has changed over the years, but you have to have some symptoms um present in childhood.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_03: So we don't think it's something even so I exclusively work with adults, so I don't see kids, but we don't think that people just spontaneously develop adult ADHD.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_03: The roots have always been there.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_03: But here's what's really interesting is that there's a group of adults who will come in.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_03: I've seen it a million times in my own practice.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure other clinicians have as well, and they'll say, you know what?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_03: I never really had a problem.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_03: I did fine in elementary, middle school, high school was fine, you know, college things started to get a, you know, a little dicey, but it wasn't until I got married and had kids that the wheels really started to come off.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_03: And then I just couldn't keep up and I was falling behind.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I, you know, I just couldn't, I couldn't perform at such a high level.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_03: And so we don't think necessarily it's that the brain changed, it's that the demands got bigger and bigger.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_03: And so the brain could handle the demands in elementary, grade school, middle school, high school, and those, those um periods of time in a child's life are structured such that there are adults involved providing what we call scaffolding and helping you, helping the kids to manage things.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_03: So you have parents who are reminding you that you have homework to do.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_03: You have teachers who are saying that big paper is due in two weeks, so I want your outline by Friday.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_03: So there are people there guiding you, but then as you get older, as you get to college and beyond, that all goes away.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_03: And now you're left to your own, on your own, to be able to do all of that.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_03: And that's where some people really start to flounder, and that's where the symptoms show up.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_03: And now they say, I think I have ADHD.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_03: And so the other unique thing about adults, so I would say this is true really for anyone I think over 20 at this point is that they got kind of missed as kids.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there just wasn't as much information out there as there is now.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_03: Now, if you're a hyperactive five, six, seven-year-old child, you're getting noticed.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: The teachers know what's going on, the parents probably know what's going on.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_03: There are meetings, there are plans in place, there's some testing, there's intervention, there are supports, like things are happening for these kids.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_03: But for the adults, that was not happening.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so you have this whole group who really struggled.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_03: It might have been internal, they might have been not outwardly, behaviorally, you know, showing problems, but inwardly they were distracted, they couldn't focus, their mind was wandering, they couldn't listen to the teacher.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_03: They were really struggling, but no one knew it, or no one really recognized it, or no one did anything.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe they got the diagnosis, but no one did anything.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_03: So they've gone all these years really struggling with inadequate treatment and feeling terrible about themselves.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_03: So by the time they get to me and they're in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, even 70s, there is there's so many secondary problems going on because of all those years of struggle.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_03: So I call it the trauma of having either undiagnosed ADHD or inadequately treated ADHD.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: Not trauma in the same sense of other big traumas, but you know, we call it sort of little trauma of like it was really difficult.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: And some might actually argue that the impact can be such as great, can be equally great, the impact on self-esteem.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_03: So how it impacts a person who always feels behind like other people have something, you know, have an ability that they don't, that they're weak, that they're lazy, that they can't meet expectations, that they're always disappointing their parents and the teachers.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_03: It's really, really demoralizing.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_03: So a lot of the work that I do with my clients is to heal from some of that trauma, rebuild the self-esteem, tap into the gifts that I was mentioning earlier, and um and help them see that they are a wonderful, capable person.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_03: They just need some systems, they need to be taught systems that no one ever taught them, so their brain can now follow them and they can do great in this world.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: So let's jump into these systems a little a little bit.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I guess my first question is given now that you that you work with people with adult ADHD and you work um with the general population, the systems themselves are are the systems themselves do the systems themselves need to be need to be different?
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: Do they need to be tweaked in certain ways in order to for them to work for people with ADHD?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Or are the systems Is it just that the systems need to be supplemented with, say, medication and uh and and therapy in a way that is not necessary so much for the general population?
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: Talk to me about the systems themselves.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Are they either the same or are they different?
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_03: Well, everybody is different.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_03: People have, you know, eight whether there's ADHD or no, but people also have personal preferences and people's minds work in unique ways.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, it's funny.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if you caught this actually.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: I'm curious what you if you did when you read over the books.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we published those originally in, I think it was 2006 or 2007.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_03: They've been updated um since then.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_03: I think it was 2017.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_03: But in the original version, Palm Pilots had just come out.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_03: And but there's a lot of reference to notebook and paper systems, and then maybe, oh, if you're really special and you have a Palm Pilot, maybe you're doing it this way.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_03: But nobody was digital.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_03: There was no Outlook, you know, there's like these digital calendars didn't exist.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_03: Now we have so many more tools.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_03: So now most people, you know, live in the digital world and have, you know, some sort of digital organizational system.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_03: Some people still like paper.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_03: Like I said, I, you know, I do use a digital system for my be-all end-all record of what's happening when.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_03: But visually, I like the paper system as I'm setting everything up, as I'm making decisions about how much space I have to work on tasks versus you know, meetings that I'm in.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um, just visually, as I'm planning it, I like to see it on paper.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_03: So I use what I call a hybrid system.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_03: Some people are all digital.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_03: What I love about our tools today, most of my work is remote.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, I'm working on Zoom, but I love that we can screen share.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_03: So for people who are digital, they're using Google Calendar, they're using Outlook, I'll have them screen share with me.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_03: I'll roll up my sleeves and we're in there and we're color coding and we're making adjustments and helping them figure out how is this going to work or how do you need this to work for you?
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_03: Some people are juggling multiple calendars.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_03: So they might have a personal one, then they have all these kids' activities calendars that have to get imported.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_03: Then there's a work calendar that has a firewall that won't talk to the personal calendar.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_03: So I I think it it's all very individual, and we have to think, you know, what's in your landscape and how do we want to organize it so that the workflow works for you?
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_03: So I teach a general system, but I really love to have the one-on-one time so I can get in there and really help people figure out how to make some adjustments to make it work best for them.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: So it's more differences between individuals, period, than than differences between the ADHD population and the non-ADHD population.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Would that be accurate?
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think so.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's uh that's certainly obviously I've not um worked individually with people with ADHD, but I've had many people who've gone through programs that I've designed that have ADHD and have provided uh provided feedback.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's certainly been been my interpretation as well.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the point that you make is so important about the fact that that the most important system is the system that works for you as an individual.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you know, behind me I've got dozens and dozens and dozens of books of dozens and dozens and dozens of systems, and sadly the the most evidence that most of these have is it worked for the person that wrote the book and a couple and a couple of and a couple of their friends.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it will not necessarily work for you if it doesn't resonate with you, or it will not resonate uh work with you if you are naturally not uh not that way inclined.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um I mentioned this on a previous podcast, but um uh when I was at at Microsoft, um Gmail came out, and Gmail had has obviously a very different approach to email than Outlook traditionally did.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: So Outlook lots of folders and people were organizing things into folders, and it actually was reflected in a lot of the design of Microsoft tooling as well.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Things like OneNote, for example, is very is very filing-centric in creating these various files and folders, and then you had as a competitor now to uh to Outlook, you you had Gmail as a competitor to OneNote, you had things like Evernote that used tags instead of folders and so on.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I was fortunate enough to do some some work with productivity users to to see how they how they worked with these with these various tools.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a it was a real challenge because um Microsoft's whole premise, its whole building structure was that was we need to file, we we file appropriately uh and file things in folders appropriately, we'll be better organized, etc.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: etc.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: But they found that in many cases people preferred the sort of kind of like dump it into Gmail and use really great search to find it later approach.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: They designated these people filers and pilers.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and in other words, sort of what naturally were we or we naturally did we naturally gravitate towards filing or did we naturally gravitate towards piling?
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: And they found that about 80% of us naturally gravitate towards piling.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: We don't we don't want to file.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: And and so if the system is kind of like forcing us to do this in a very, very structured way every day, but our brains are rebelling against it, it's really hard for us to uh to keep doing it.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and so there's always this this balance, isn't it, Carol, where whereby you're you're trying to you're trying to do something that you feel is perfect or best for you, but it comes back to that the only system that will work will be the system you can stick to.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're trying to do something that is creating a bunch of work for you that your own brain is rebelling against, it's not gonna function.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_03: But I I have the feeling you would agree with me on this, which is that you know, if you were someone who reads a lot of personal development books and you listen to podcasts and all that, we're learning little bits from different people.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_03: So when I when I think about how I live my life and the habits and the flow of my own life, it's a combination of systems and strategies from various people I've learned from over the years.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I can, you know, I can um credit certain people for certain parts of it, but you know, I don't do everything exactly how they do, but I've kind of taken from them what works for me and found my own balance of structure and freedom or filing and piling, like the you know, the balance that works, works for me.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think a lot of this, I mean, there are some people who say, tell me exactly what to do, and I'm just gonna do exactly how you told me.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_03: Like they don't want to have to make the decisions.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_03: There are some people.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I've also worked with other people who fought me tooth and nail in terms of having a system.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_03: Like they just did not want to feel constricted.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_03: They didn't want to feel like they didn't have the freedom to be spontaneous and creative.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I've run groups, so I've worked with people individually and I've worked with groups.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_03: I've had people take my groups two, three, even four times, and they have fought me until maybe the fourth time.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_03: And they're like, nope, nope, I don't want to use a calendar.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to have to write down exactly how I'm gonna use my time.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_03: And then by the fourth, they see the light and they say, Okay, I'm I'm now ready.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_03: But I kind of have to break down all the resistance and all the stories that they have in their head about what it means to set an expectation for the day.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, this is a whole nother conversation.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_03: I I shared this in the notes.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if you caught it before we got on.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_03: But the stories that people have in their head are really, really powerful.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_03: And so, I mean, it's not something most people probably think about unless you are signing up to work with an executive functioning coach.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_03: But we all have stories about what it means to structure your day, to set a plan, to have an expectation, to have a to-do list, to make a promise to yourself or someone else.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: And depending on what those stories are, they might be helpful and they might not be helpful.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_03: And they're going to impact how we execute what we set out in front of us.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_03: So it's also really important to learn, as much as we talk about productivity and systems, it's also really important to learn about what's going on in those thoughts in your in your mind and to really get to know and identify the stories that you're telling yourself about all these things, about what you're capable of, about your ability to follow through, about whether or not you'll be successful starting something new.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_03: And we can work on those stories and we can work on dismantling the ones that aren't helpful that were programmed years ago when you were a different person in a very different environment.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_03: And we can create new stories that are more fitting for what's going on right now and are going to be more beneficial.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I love the point that you made there about the people that are fighting you because um I I don't know whether you'd agree with this or not, but what I believe is that in in many cases the people that are that are fighting you are vocalizing something that the people that are not aren't.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: So what I mean is that the the the people who are like, oh yeah, I'll try that.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're still having that fight.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: They're just having that fight internally and they're not uh and they're not openly openly sharing it with you.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: So why why do you why do you think it is at a at a fundamental level?
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: What would be the top one or two or three reasons why when people try to move from a I'm not in charge of I'm not in charge of all of this, I'm not work is happening to me and I'm not doing, I'm not, uh, or life is happening to me and I'm not in charge of life, they've kind of got from a point, presumably the people that are meeting with you have got to a point where they're they're like stuff is happening to me and I'm I'm not controlling it, and I want to be able to control it.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: They've but they've got to that point.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: You're now working with them on trying to instill systems that give them a measure of control.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: What would be the main reasons why those systems don't stick when they don't?
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_03: So I think there are two things going on.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_03: So, one, this is where that trauma that I mentioned is playing out.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_03: The trauma of having tried things before, anyone who who I work with will tell me, I've probably bought 10, 20 planners in the past, and I used them for about three days, and then they got dusty and they sat in the corner of my desk and I never looked at them again.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_03: And there was all this hope, oh, this new one came out and it has this new layout and this new beautiful color cover and this color, this is gonna be the one that's gonna finally fix me.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_03: And then lo and behold, it doesn't.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_03: And it's because there is no perfect planner and no planner is going to fix your world.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's a tool that you can use as part of your systems and habits, but it in and of itself won't change your life.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_03: But people are so demoralized from having tried and failed in the past that they're just honestly afraid to try again.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so we have to look at that and we have to really do a lot of cheerleading around that and understand why it maybe didn't work.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_03: The fact most people never worked with someone one-on-one, side by side for a long period of time, who really helped them establish the habits, provided accountability, checked in on them, helped, troubleshooted, you know, as necessary.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, most people haven't had that.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_03: So when they say it it failed, they didn't really get a good dose, a proper dose of that intervention.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_03: But they think they did.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_03: And then they but they just have all those stories of failure.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_03: And so they're just afraid to even hope or even try or even tell you that they're gonna do it because they just don't have the confidence based on their past.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_03: So I think that's one thing um that's going on.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_03: And oh God, I had another good one.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um well, while you'll get into that, yeah I'll ask you, we'll we'll see if it comes back and I'll ask you a clarifying question about the first one because previously when you talked about that, you talked about in the context of um of the trauma associated with people with ADHD.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I assume this this sort of applies to the to the general population, and it probably applies to almost any habit.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: I I think about, for example, in my own life, I've struggled with my weight my entire life.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: My father struggled with his weight his entire life, my grandmother struggled with all on my father's line, struggled with her weight her entire life.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I have gone through, like many people who struggle with their weight, I've gone through myriad types of different things that I've tried uh across the years.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of know at this point that anytime I try again, at least part of my subconscious is going, this isn't gonna work, right?
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: No matter how, you know, it's it's early January when we're having this conversation.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm on the surface, I'm all about my my next go.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: But behind it, there's enough trauma there for me to go, it's not gonna work.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever, whatever I do is not gonna work.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: So would you would you say that that that trauma thing you were saying, that really kind of applies to anybody who has tried these multiple systems and felt that it's not sticking, that just they're subconscious in a sense to say to them, it's not gonna work.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think that's a great example, it's a great parallel, whether it's weight loss, whether it's other things, you know, not biting your nails, whatever.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_03: You know, everybody has their thing that's hard for them.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_03: And if you have struggled with it all of your life, you have you, anyone, you know, we've all struggled with something and we've tried a million and one things.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so when someone presents the million and second thing, yes, you're gonna have a lot of thoughts about that based on your past.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_03: And so, um, so it's really important to have someone who can support you, who can point out what's different this time that maybe gives you reason to believe that things can be different.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_03: And oh, this was the other thing I was gonna say.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, is that um most people haven't been taught that we have the ability to change our thoughts.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that there's this whole world in our head that guides us all day long.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_03: We I forget what the number is, but we have a bazillion thoughts going through our head all day long.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_03: Most people take them at face value and just think, well, that's life.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, these thoughts come at you and they're real and they represent your reality.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_03: And that, you know, it just is what it is.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_03: But you and I both know that that is so far from the truth that we have the ability to impact what thoughts come into our head, what thoughts stay in our head, and what thoughts we kick out flat out from our head.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it's a skill, it's something we have to work on, we have to practice, we have to work on it every day.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_03: But that's also, as an example, that's part of my daily process is to write out my affirmations, the thoughts that I want to keep circulating that maybe if left unchecked, might not.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um so I'm teaching my brain, just like you know, we can't have a glass of water on Sunday and remain hydrated for the rest of the week, we have to keep drinking all day long, every single day for the rest of our life.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_03: If we want our thoughts and the culture in our mind to be a certain way, we have to nurture it all day long, every single day for the rest of our life.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_03: But it can be done.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_03: And then as you work on that and you start to see that those old thoughts start to fizzle away and the new ones start to take hold.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_03: And then you become a believer, a believer, and you say, Wow, I really can impact my thoughts.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe there is hope that I could turn around the These negative thoughts and the negative stories about my past trials and maybe think about it differently.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_03: So I once we identify that that story's in there, I would be assigning an affirmation that says something along the lines of even though I have tried many, many, many times in the past and not achieved the results, I am a different person and I am committed to learning new strategies every day to increase my likelihood of succeeding with where I'm at in life right now.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_03: If that's the thought that you're writing out every day that you're imprinting in your brain, it's going to stick and you're going to start to feel more hopeful.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_03: And then your behaviors are going to change.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_03: You're going to adhere to your plan better.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, you might even start to get even more excited about it, and you're going to see the outcome that you want.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_03: But people need to be taught that they have a relationship to their thoughts and their things they can do to change the channel in there.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: I completely agree with those.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think I would add another one, um, which is that I think many times we tend to go after the really intractable thing, um, because it's the thing that worries us the most, right?
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's the thing that bugs us the most, versus asking ourselves simple questions like, okay, what's the relatively easy small thing that I can do that will make a that will make a difference?
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: May not make a massive difference.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: But it will make a but it will make a small difference and it will make my life better, and it uh and it's possible for me to do, versus the what is the massive overhaul that I need to make across my across my entire life.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: You pr if you try to change anything, if you try to behave completely differently tomorrow than you do today, without having gone through these sort of repeated cycles of practice to to get there, um, it would almost be like you as you mentioned you you you play tennis.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: It would be like I today I am uh I'm me, tomorrow I want to be Serena Williams, and if I don't know within three weeks, I'm a failure.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like we set ourselves unreasonable expectations as to what is even even possible, and then we fail at those uh at those massive expectations, and then we think of ourselves as a failure because of it, versus actually going, okay, well, what is the thing that will I believe in that 1% better thing, right?
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: What is that thing that will make that will make me one uh 1% better and is actually uh is actually achievable?
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um these are really, really interesting things.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: We're uh sadly running sh uh running a little short on time, so I want to get us towards the towards the end.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'd love to talk just a little bit about the role of leaders uh leaders and and leadership in this new world of work.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: So part of the reason we're even having this conversation today is because work itself has fundamentally shifted.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um I loved what you were talking about earlier, where you were saying that that basically there were all these support systems, these support structures around children that kind of disappear as they enter, enter into modern life.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um the model that I've sometimes used with people on uh on that, talking to the general population, is it's almost like jug juggling, right?
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say you've learned to juggle three balls and you can juggle three balls really well, but now you've got seven balls, right?
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: Just because you can juggle three balls today doesn't mean that you can juggle juggle seven balls tomorrow.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: All you know is you can juggle three three balls.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so when you're kind of before you're entering the workplace, maybe you're juggling three balls.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then as you're entering the workplace, you're now juggling four or five, and then as you're having kids, now it's six or seven, and as those kids are becoming teenagers, maybe it's eight or nine or whatever it happens to be.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: And as your parents get sick and you have to manage that, and your own health starts to struggle and you have to manage that, there's a myriad of different balls that you're trying to juggle, and unsurprisingly, you drop some of those balls.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: So um the part of the challenge here is that work itself offers many fewer guardrails and structures than it used to be.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: It used to be that you turn up to work, you arrive at work at nine o'clock, you finish work at uh at five o'clock, you take a break here, you take a lunch break here, you close the door physically on work, you can close the door mentally on work, your boss isn't even contacting you.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: And now it's this unstructured mess of up to 10 different modes of work that you're sort of seamlessly shifting in and out of, and you might get a call about at 11 o'clock at night in relation to the following morning and all this kind of stuff.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: So work's different, and that's true, those structures are not there anymore.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_00: So given that, if you're a leader in this world of work, what do you need to do to manage all of that for yourself?
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: But also what do you need to do in order to role model the right kind of behaviors for the people that are working with you?
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm so glad we were going to have a chance to talk about this because I think it's so important.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_03: You know, leaders are successful by they by the time they come to you or me, they, you know, for in whatever capacity we are consulting or what have you, you know, they have achieved success.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_03: They have achieved this leadership position.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_03: So they're doing something right.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_03: They have some innate skills and talents, and that's been recognized.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_03: But my observation is that they have achieved this place in their career with at the expense of other things.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_03: So there's been a price to pay.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_03: So they've had this success, they're in these leadership roles, they're reaping a lot of benefits from that.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's meaningful.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_03: Most leaders I know love the work that they're doing, they love the industry that they're in.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_03: So they're kind of okay working around the clock and giving everything they've got to it.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_03: But the cost is, you know, just as you've mentioned, it's their self-care, it's their health, it's their mindset.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_03: There's anxiety, there's constant stress, there's constant guilt because they haven't been able to give enough time to family and friends and themselves.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's a setup for burnout.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_03: So, yes, they they are managing this leadership role, but it is a huge setup for burnout and dissatisfaction, which is really problematic for the companies who don't want to see turnover and don't, you know, want to have to um deal with the impact of that.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_03: So it's been kind of surprising to me, to be honest, as I have moved into a consulting role to see how much the leaders are struggling.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_03: They might not admit it in front of a group, but when you get them one-on-one, then you get to peek behind the curtain and see the struggle and see the email boxes with 50,000 emails from the past three years that need to be addressed somehow, or the utter chaos, you know, like they somehow show up to meetings, but there's chaos in terms of managing long-term projects and moving projects forward that don't necessarily have deadlines and being able to implement new ideas and new um new programs.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_03: There's, like you said, like that scaffolding, the internal scaffolding is not there in the way that we would ideally want it to be.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's been so, so rewarding to be able to teach these strategies and just make these little adjustments and really see how much breathing room that can offer our leaders so that they continue to can continue to do what they love, but with a whole lot less stress.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's a great place to leave it.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, really, really appreciate your time today.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, as I mentioned, folks should definitely, definitely check out uh Carol's podcast, um Healthy Habits for uh for life, which you can, I presume, find on any podcasting any podcasting platform.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: I've certainly got it on my uh on my pocket casts.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um and really, really appreciate uh your time.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: We'll put links to all of Carol's uh work in the in the show notes as well today.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: And uh thanks for chatting to me about something that I find fascinating and I know our audience does as well.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks a lot today.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks so much for having me today.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_03: It was a pleasure.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: Humanity Working is produced by Matt Neal.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_01: If you liked this episode, please take a moment to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_01: It makes a huge difference in helping others find us.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: And don't forget, you can find all episodes and get our weekly newsletter at humanityworking.