Product Management Webinar: ADHD in Product

Janna Bastow: Thank you everybody for joining and welcome to this special edition of the Product Expert series of webinars that we run here.

So it’s a series of webinars that we run. We have a bunch of past talks that have been recorded. It’s a mixture of presentations and fireside. We have an amazing mix of experts who’ve joined us. They usually come in with their excellent insights, with a focus on the content and the learning and the sharing.

So today is gonna be recorded and it is gonna be shared with you. So you’re gonna be able to catch up on this later as well. And you will have a chance to ask questions today as well. Now today’s special edition cuz we have a panel. Normally we just have one expert and they’re doing a presentation or a fireside, but we thought today we’d make it a little bit more chaotic and have a bunch of people because I think it’s important to have a well-rounded view of the topic of ADHD.

So we’ll dive into that in just a moment. But before we get too far, I wanted to just quickly talk a little bit about Prop Pad. Because ProdPad is the tool that we build. So it’s originally a tool that was built by myself and my co-founder, Simon, when we were product managers ourselves, and we needed tools to do our own jobs.

We needed something to keep track of the experiments that we were running to try to hit our business objectives and solve our customers’ problems and to keep tabs on all the ideas and feedback that made up our backlog. So building Propa gave us control and organization and transparency, and so it wasn’t long before we shared it with other product people around us.

And today it’s used by thousands of teams around the world. So it’s free to try. And we even have a sandbox mode where it has example product management data. So you can see how lean roadmaps, OKRs, experiments and everything else, all fit together in a product management space. And our team is made up of product people.

So try starting a trial today and then get in touch and let us know your feedback. We’d love to hear from you.

Now let’s jump in and hear from our panelists. I’ve gathered a group of people here today. I’m gonna call them my internet friends. These are people actually I’ve met Donna in person. But I haven’t actually met everybody else. These are people that I’ve had a chance to chat with or converse with online or through Zoom windows and all that.

It’s wonderful to have them here. And I reached out to them because they all have ADHD like me and have all been willing to open up and chat about it because I think it’s something that is really important to share. Every time I talk to somebody about it, I find that I learned something about myself and somebody else learned something about themselves as well.

And I want to start by having each person in the panel just briefly introduce themselves and we’ll kick off from there. Let’s start with Toby. Yeah, so I’m 

Toby Rogers: Toby. I’m product lead, a digital agency based in Newcastle called Hedgehog Lab. So I’ve got about 10 years experience in product across various industries, sectors and stuff like that.

Prior to becoming a product manager, I used to be a freelance music journalist, and there have had a pretty secret route into product in, across all sorts of different things. 

Janna Bastow: Excellent. I think we’re gonna find that, say a trend. The roots in it’s a product is pretty normal and I think it’s pretty normal for people with ADHD as well.

All right. Na you wanna talk to us about your story? 

Najva Sol: Oh yes. So I am the head of product at com Company fund. And. What does the product even do at a fund? That’s a great question. We build a lot of internal platforms also. We built a whole operating system and I work with a no-code team to do that.

But this is actually the first time I’ve had the word product in my title. However, I was a fashion designer and had my own fashion line, so I learned physical products for two and a half years and supply chains and design. And then I was head of digital for a media company where I was in charge of all of our websites.

The UX and design and hiring all the agencies for that and making the scopes. So I’m sitting down with engineers trying to figure out why our site’s not fast enough. So basically circuitous route into the title product, but actually probably worked on it for more than 10 years, just in different formats.

Very good small spaces. 

[00:04:18] Janna Bastow: I love that. That’s brilliant. Felipe, would you like to go ahead? 

Felipe Castro: Sure. I’m Felipe Castro. I basically help organizations focus on outcomes. They use OKR to change how they work, shifting from delivery features to focusing on outcomes. I work a lot with the product team for our organizations, but I’m not a product person per se.

And I was diagnosed with H D like five years ago, so I was 42, 

Janna Bastow: Excellent. Welcome to the family. Yeah. And Donna. Hi, 

Donna Lichaw: I’m Donna and I’m an executive coach. I work with unconventional leaders and typically they’re on the younger side, catapulting up into senior leadership very quickly, whether it be founders or executive leadership at a startup or some type of senior leadership position, a big tech company.

And what helps people do is just be more of themselves rather than changing who they are and ultimately being the best leaders they can be. Probably half my clients have had and that’s especially the founders who I work with. And that’s how I first ended up on this journey as I was trying to learn more about what I do that works best for them.

I’m sure we’ll talk about this but. Yeah, so that’s how I came here. Previous to executive coaching, I was working as a product strategy consultant, product leader. And previous to that I was a filmmaker, so I also have that circuitous route. It’s all the same to me.

I still do the same thing I’ve been doing for 25 years, and I’m currently writing a book on what I call story driven leadership. And that’s how to see the story and what you wanna accomplish, the story and who you are and how to make that amazing. It’s not actually about storytelling. And so apparently that’s another ADHD thing of seeing patterns and things that people can’t see and needing to explain it to them and be contrary about. 

[00:06:08] Janna Bastow: Excited to be here. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much all for joining and to give some people some background about my own history. I fell into product management accidentally. Before that I had dabbled in building some tech myself, just hdmi, css and before that I’d done a little bit of graphic design.

Before that, I tried my hand at publicity, marketing. Tried to hack away at a bunch of different things and never quite fit in anywhere until I learned about this rural product and realized it was a really great fit and did it for a number of years before I fell into the world of pounding something.

I was a product manager. Making something and needing to bust outta that and do something. And it’s, I think something that we’re seeing in common is how many different things people with ADHD get their hands into and carve their own path. And it sounds like that’s the same for everybody here at the table.

And I bet that’s probably the same for people in the chat as well. If anybody here has interesting stories about their own paths drop ’em in, the different paths that you’ve taken. I’m sure people would love to hear about your past lives. Before the product now had its attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Now, some people are more of the inattentive type, some are more of the hyperactive type, and it has a wide range of different symptoms. Personally, I was diagnosed with inattentiveness with a touch of the hyperactive. It’s where I was swaying. Like for you all, what symptoms characterize your ADHD the most?

Felipe Castro: For me it is an attention deficit by far . Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. And by the way, has anyone in the panel here been diagnosed as a kid or you already were an adult? 

Toby Rogers: I was, yeah, I was, as a kid. I never got a, I’ve never bothered to get an adult diagnosis, so I’ve just turned 44. So that was back in the early 1980s when I think ADHD was just becoming a recognized thing.

Yeah. And it was very much the kind of diagnosis was your kids having too many e numbers, stop giving them Kiara and bongo and stuff like that. My mom was like it doesn’t make any difference, I think and the kind of tendencies that I added as a kid have carried through everything that.

Done since, And looking back at my school days and stuff, I could actually totally see the kind of impact that ADHD had, but it wasn’t really, it wasn’t really anything that anybody talked about or dealt with at the time. 

Janna Bastow: Yeah. Yeah. It’s actually interesting that you say that cuz in the eighties, nineties and that sort of thing I remember hearing about ADHD, but it was a, I pictured it as like Bart Simpson, and I was like, I don’t relate to that. That’s not what I’m like. But I remember somebody pointing out years later, this is after I even diagnosed, that somebody’s pointed out that all of the Simpsons kids. and Homer Simpson has had, like Lisa Simpson. I’m like, Oh God I was Lisa. There was that hyperfocus and that, that daydreaming and the completely different subset of symptoms that they didn’t recognize. Now as an adult, I actually got diagnosed during the pandemic as apparently half the planet apparently. When did, Yeah.

Sorry, go on. Oh, I was gonna 

Najva Sol: Say I knew I had a, I had an inkling as a child, but we didn’t talk about mental health in my family, an immigrant family. That was not a thing. And then, I accommodated myself. What I think is really clever, it still shows in my work how good I am at just designing a life that works for my brain without knowing what exactly my brain is.

But then it all fell apart when I went to my first ever corporate job in my thirties and I was like, Oh no, I have to work nine to five in a place and people see my face and I can’t just do it just, everything falls apart. And eventually I was like, I think it’s time to look for help. And that’s and that was in 2019 when I made that decision.

I got diagnosed two weeks before the lockdown started. Oh, wow. So they were like, How are your meds doing? And I was like it’s really hard. There’s no controlled environment for me to be like, Yeah. Is it in the meds or is it the pandemic? 

Janna Bastow: Figure it out. Must have been, that must have been bonkers. When did Philip, when did you get diagnosed?

You said four, Four years ago. Four or five years ago? Yeah. Yeah. And what was the tipping point? How did you know? 

Felipe Castro: My therapist told me you should probably look into that. And then I went to a psychiatrist and he said, “Yeah. Diagnosed it? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And he also made the diagnosis. He gave me a book, read this, and if you feel like it.

Like you and the book was a hundred percent me daydreaming and always thinking of the cloud. Your head is always the way. Yeah, that’s, that was me. 

Janna Bastow: Yeah, that’s totally fair. And Donna, what about you? 

Donna Lichaw: As a kid I was not diagnosed. I was one of those kids who, why, I always got told, Why are you so smart and why can’t you live up to your potential?

Oh. And yeah, , that was, I was the slacker who could never do anything apparently, unless I put my mind to it. And then I would get straight A’s. Yeah, either or, but yeah, I think it was last year. I, so I work with a lot of, especially founders with ADHD, but a lot of senior leaders, especially in the tech world who have ADHD and I was doing a bunch of research last.

Holiday break around December and after, I think I read about 10 books, spent the week reading 10 books on ADHD, just going down a rabbit hole. And at the end, I realized, Hang on a second, like that is quite the hyper focus I have here. And I, I just started to see myself in the stories Especi.

Which one? Driven to distraction, which I highly recommend. Oh, yeah. Anyone read. And that’s when I realized I put 10 and 10 together and realized, Oh, okay. I ended up getting a diagnosis, but it wasn’t even necessary. The Psychic, I think I told you, Janna, the psychiatrist and I were, had a good laugh about how I got my birthday wrong on the intake form, like a diagnosis, so it doesn’t even matter.

I have ways to cope, I’m fine. But yeah, so it was last year after many decades of. Being hit over the head with it and not quite realizing 

Janna Bastow: Yeah, I totally hear that. With my own diagnosis it didn’t come out until 2020. Now. I’d previously followed some people on Twitter who were addicted and they would talk about it.

I’m like, Oh, that’s relatable. And didn’t think anything of it. Until the lockdown happened. And before lockdown, my job was basically like run around and evangelize for the stuff I’m building and go to conferences and talk to people and it was okay to be hyperactive and talkative and not fit to a schedule and things that fell behind.

I would always blame it on a conference this week and I was traveling and it’s jet lag and when lockdown happened I was like, Oh, look at all the things I’ll be able to do with all this extra time. I’m gonna write that book, I’m gonna do all this stuff. I’m gonna be so focused. And I sat down at my desk.

And I was like, I’m not focused. So I was like, okay, I know I’m gonna be super good to my body. I’m gonna get all my focus. I’m gonna drink all the water, not drink any alcohol, Like I’m gonna really take care of my body and that’ll help me with my focus and all that. It did, it made me more energetic.

So I’m like wheeling around the house like this, all the energy in the world and still couldn’t do a day’s work. And that’s when I was like, Oh I should talk to a doctor. And I did a couple forms. And it’s painful cuz they make you do forms and I messed up on the forms but I was off the charts and then they make you do more forms and I ended up having to go private because they basically told me here in the UK that I mean because lockdown had happened, everyone was going to, all the psychiatrists is a two year wait.

And I went private and within three appointments it was Dish Bash, Bosh. You definitely have it, here you go. But one of the tough things about being diagnosed as an adult At least in Europe, or at least in the UK, is that you have to prove that you had it as a child. So they make you look back on your childhood.

So you have to get a parent or a guardian who knew you back then to share their side of it. So I was lucky. I could talk to my mom and she could share information about, did Jan tend to lose things? Oh God, yes. Did Jan like this? Oh God, yes. And, helped me, helped give all the check marks on the right places in the form.

And it was a 20-page form I did with my mom over the phone cuz she lives in Canada. Once we did that, it was okay, But not everyone has that, it’s not easy to prove something sometimes 20, 30, 40 years after the fact in order to get your adult ADHD diagnosis.

Now for everyone who got your diagnosis, did things change? Did it make a difference? Did you learn things after your diagnosis?

Felipe Castro: Yeah, I think that one of the important things that I’ve read is reading a book from Dr. Barky who’s the, one of the top doctors resources. And one of the things that Dr. Barker says is, you have to own your H D, right? So you have to understand, hey, your brain is different and you have to own it.

And unless you come to peace with that, I think my brain is different. So you have to manage your day to day differently. So you have to take your meds and do some exercise and all the things that are good for hdg. I think that was the most important lesson of all. I’m still very far away from actually doing all the things that I should, but the idea.

You need to own it is important. 

Janna Bastow: Yeah, that’s absolutely true. And yeah, remember when we had a back and forth on Twitter when I first got diagnosed. And you mentioned yours and you said, it’s important to remember that everyone’s ADHD is different. Yeah. And I took that to heart and I was like, Oh, what’s mine like then?

Cuz I can learn from other people who have it, but what’s, what does mine mean to me? And it took me quite some time to come to terms with that. 

Felipe Castro: Yeah. That’s another thing. The secondary I learned from the same book from Barclay is that he is like a bag of symptoms. So several different symptoms under the same label.

Yeah. But no one has all of them. So you have to understand which symptom you have. So I don’t think any of us here have exactly the same symptoms. So they are all different. Yeah. And that’s one of the things that’s challenging with h a cuz its.

Janna Bastow: Yeah, no, you’re absolutely, we’re all part of the same family, but slightly different expressions of it.

We have different flavors of it. Yeah. Yeah. And there’s other things that are all part of the same group as well, like autism and dyslexia and ocd and there’s all these other things that are interrelated, that blend together and it’s really hard to separate them. I’ve gotta definitely touch dyslexia and possibly other things and not be diagnosed, but obvious when I start looking at them.

Sure. I think that’s part 

Donna Lichaw: of it though. It’s almost like it doesn’t even matter cuz I, I similarly have all these quirks that for years were awful off. Like I can’t read and talk at the same time out loud. And I’m a keynote speaker. You’ve seen me as I’ve spoken to thousands of people on stage. 

Janna Bastow: People can do that. Yeah. Wait, I was like, is that a thing? I know if we can read and talk out loud at the same time, I didn’t know. 

Donna Lichaw: Yeah. Basically I’m trying to ignore that. Oops, that there’s a chat window right now cuz it’s, I just, I can’t, but there are times when I wonder if that smile, dyslexia.

I know I flip numbers all the time. I should not do my own bookkeeping. I still do and I’ve paid for it many times over, but at some point it’s ah, it doesn’t even matter. What matters is what’s the challenge and how do you get over it? Yeah. And what also, what’s the flip side of that?

What is your brain spending its time doing? If it can’t do it, if it can’t pay attention to the order of numbers, what are you working on? And usually that’s when the magic happens I think. Yeah. With people who think like us it is like our brains are working on other things. And when you can embrace that, like Philly Bay said, that’s been my biggest epiphany is really owning.

Janna Bastow: Your superpowers 

Donna Lichaw: and owning your kryptonite and just being okay with it, and also being comfortable communicating that to people and letting them know, Hey, you want me to read and talk out loud? No, thank you . 

Janna Bastow: Yeah. But I will do it in other ways. Yep. That’s absolutely fair. One of the things that I learned was if we want good notes, have somebody else take them, because I’ve got that dysgraphia thing where it’s like, Hey, I.

I can’t take notes and think at the same time, like I can if I go very slowly, but otherwise I, Oh no, it’s just not my forte. Whereas, many other things I’m good at not that and I can’t 

Donna Lichaw: process without taking notes, which is, what you can’t see is I have a whiteboard desk. Yeah. A whole, So I can’t function without,

Janna Bastow: the ability to, 

Najva Sol: Yeah.

Janna Bastow: There you go. Very good. Now, how do you think ADHD has shaped your career path? Have any of you made either deliberate decisions based on you knowing you have had or even maybe in deliberate decisions based on the traits that you think you’ve had?

I can go 

[00:19:14] Najva Sol: for it a little. Yeah. I didn’t know I had ADHD for a long time, but I think that sort of similarly, I thought I was just quirky and . I was like, Oh, I just have these like preferences or like these ways that I, where I didn’t really analyze it too much, but I really optimized all of my work for flexibility.

So I’ve been working remotely since forever. I never actually worked in an office outside of an internship that I had in college. And I just thought, Yeah, that’s cuz I like to travel, but I like my independence. It’s not finally, it’s like 32 was like, let me go to an office and was like, Oh, I, I can’t do this is not, I hate it here.

So I didn’t realize that. And choosing for I decided to accommodate myself and so I was a freelancer. I worked at the hours that made sense for me, but like I always had I could work at midnight , no one was around . I could work whenever my brain worked. I was a digital nomad for a few years and just worked from Korea and worked forever and I think that kind of, again, I thought I was just like cool and independent and flexible, which I, but I really didn’t realize how much I just was actually foundationally giving myself what I needed to thrive in these work environments.

Once I got my diagnosis, then I could just be like, this is not for me. But Any possible time where I could build something and then hand off the management and the details and the daily deadlines to someone else.

I did whenever possible. First thing, I would always hire someone else to 

like the admin work. And I also optimized for never having to do repetitive work. Every job, everything. That’s why I loved clients. I loved projects, I loved novel new things, which led into the product, right? Cause it’s Oh, I wanna, but I don’t wanna work on one problem for years.

I wanna work on a problem and then go to the next one. Go next. Yeah. So that was the, the journey was very much in, 

allowed myself to do it, but I think, to be candid, my earning potential suffered by not ever going to an office in my twenties. Not in a bad way. I had a great life, but I didn’t go down that 

Janna Bastow: typical.

Yeah I can relate to that. I ended up choosing particular paths that worked for my style of working, working in startup environments instead of corporate environments because I could have certain amounts of flexibility choosing to work for myself quite young because I realized that, hey, I could run it my own way, I could work my own hours.

The first versions of Broad Pad were built at 2:00 AM , and that’s when I got up. Like it was just, the most bonkers hours to work with whatever suited me. And there’s always that sense of novelty. There’s always something new. To do, and I was trying to, I think, manufacture that novelty for myself.

I think there’s probably no mistake that as an ADHD person, I created a dateless roadmap, a way of working that didn’t structure the way that mapping worked at that time. So I think I shaped the way that I was working around how my brain worked.

Felipe Castro: Do you, there’s a question on q and around sharing that you have hdt at work. Yeah. Do you think that there’s prejudice against hdt? Do you see that, Donna, you’re Yes. Do you see that? 

Donna Lichaw: I’m gonna say yes and let me see if I can sort my thoughts out about this. I, because I haven’t even really publicly shared.

My diagnosis until right now. 

Janna Bastow: Hi. So you have to have Hi. 

Najva Sol: Hello . Hi. 

Donna Lichaw: We go. 

Janna Bastow: Thank you for sharing . 

Felipe Castro: So I guess we’re all closeted until today, right? So 

Donna Lichaw: in a way. So here’s where I’ve been on the fence and it’s only been about a under a year for me. Here’s where I’m on the fence, which is I think that with certain diagnoses, all diagnoses, it opens up the possibility of people writing your story for you.

So they hear you have ADHD, Oh, you’re careless. Oh, you’re impulsive. Oh, you’re this, you’re that. And I’ve seen on the flip side also people so I work with people in senior leadership positions, so half of them have added. The other half they work with people who are on different spectrums. And so there’s a lot of it sometimes.

Oh, they can’t do that because they have ADHD. It’s no, let them tell you what they can and can’t do and have a dialogue with them. And one time I had my therapist remind me that I’m impulsive and that’s why I did something. Actually, I’m not impulsive. I’m the opposite of impulsive.

I think about something for years before I do it. And I had to tell her that. And I found it annoying that she, for instance, didn’t usually do this, but for instance she told me what I was based on what a textbook said. I think there, I’m a little on the fence and yes it is like being in the closet where it’s pretty ridiculous that cuz I’m queer also and it’s like I’ve been for decades out about that and it’s insane that I’m not totally out about this yet.

But yeah, I just don’t want people to assume things, to judge. I know my business partner, I came out last year. And I was terrified because I was like, Oh my God, she’s gonna think I’m a flake and careless. And every time I tell her, Hey, will you take care of the scheduling? Hey, will you take care of the emails?

Hey, I’ll take care of this. I’m afraid she’s gonna think I’m lazy, I’m pawning things off on her. But we ended up having a great dialogue. I’m like, Hey, this is what I can do. This is what you can do. How do we best work together? I don’t know. I think, and of course I forgot what the actual question was, but no.

I’m not actually public about it, but I wanna be . I think it’s important. I think it’s so important and in tech, most of us, honestly, are on some kind of spectrum or another. It’s just so important. Yep. 

Janna Bastow: Back to you, . Toby, you’re pretty prolific on Twitter. Do you ever mention yours? Do you tell anybody about it?

Toby Rogers: Yeah, it’s something that I talk about, but it’s not something that’s ever been kind of something that I’ve hidden or kept secret. I think in terms of work, I have definitely carved out a path that suited the way I thought about things and the type of work that I wanted to do. So when I’ve worked in bigger sort of corporate organizations, I ended up carving out a very sort of individual role doing strategy kind of stuff, and big picture thinking kind of work on my own and just creating roles, right?

In my own job specs for things. But I think I definitely felt the same sort of feeling I had at school in bigger, larger, more corporate organizations, which is, why can’t you do these things? You’re really good at this thing. What about this? You’ve got a great vision for this piece of work. Why can’t you figure out how to execute it?

And I think as I’ve moved into more start up, Sized companies and more kind of more people oriented organizations, it’s become less of a thing. I think I’ve, I think I’ve learned to live with it and work with it. And I’ve, it’s never been a secret or anything I talk about with people.

Janna Bastow: Yeah. On my side, I got my diagnosis. The next day I told my team, my thinking was that I’ve gotta be a leader to them and I could help destigmatize it for other people. And as soon as I did it, a few other people, actually, a couple other people on the team came out and said that they also either suspected or definitely had.

And I’m like, Cool. Excellent. It’s not a surprise in some cases. And, let’s see how we can make sure that this will work for you. But also, It allowed me to have them help me with various things. So I was like, actually, here’s what I’m good at and here’s what I’m not good at now.

You all knew that already cuz you’ve seen me working for years. But here’s why I’m not good at this stuff and here’s what I’m gonna do about it. And one of the first things I did when I got diagnosed was I promoted somebody who was in our team, had been working with me for years, and I made her my chief of staff and basically to help handle the executive part around some line management stuff.

And handling like OKR championship and management of the process, a lot of that process stuff that should be a breeze for a typical founder ceo but wasn’t necessarily the best use of my time or skills. And it made a huge difference to be able to lean on my team in that way and say, Here’s what you are really good at and here’s what I’m really good at.

Let’s. Divide this up and make sure we could do that. And then the day afterwards, I announced it on Twitter. Cuz I’m pretty much open with a lot of things. I just wanted to see what would happen. And I just wanted to see are there any other product people out there? And turns out there were like literally hundreds of other people out there.

And this sort of gave me the idea like, oh, ADHD and the product is pretty prevalent and the fact that there’s like several hundred people signed up for this today listening in I think it is pretty rampant amongst the product world. Yeah, I think I, I end up finding my people in a roundabout way.

Felipe Castro: The estimate is that 10% of the population has hdt at some level. So it is pretty common. Just like diabetes, the same level of prevalence in the population, yes. 

Donna Lichaw: 10% is a lot. I think it’s tech. 

Janna Bastow: In tech it’s even higher. I was gonna say what percent in tech and in founders and in product people and that sort of thing, 15% of founders.

Donna Lichaw: I think, and again don’t pull me on that. So Yeah. Using my numbers, but no, it’s something, And I know for me my anecdotal is 50% of the founders I work with Yeah, absolutely. And 50% of all the senior leaders and executives I work with. 

Janna Bastow: Yeah. Very common. So we do something, Oh, sorry.

No, go on. We do 

[00:29:00] Najva Sol: something at our company that I love and its user manuals when you join the team. And it gives everybody an opportunity to share things like what’s, how they work, how they receive feedback, how they, some things that help them work well, some things that they struggle with. And this sort of answers the question that someone put in the chat.

It’s coming. And this was, this team was the first team I ever joined after my diagnosis. So it was really fun and. I was able to get ahead of some things by saying, Hey, my working memory is actually in the lowest 10% of the population for my thing. Like I really like super smart software.

Broken hardware. I love that, I can borrow from that actual quote that my brain is cutting edge software running on a Mac desktop from 1994. So sometimes it just can’t process very quickly inside itself. So I wrote out a lot of things that were important to me, like having no meetings, days everything being in my calendar.

If it’s not on my calendar, I’ll miss it. I can’t take notes and listen at the same time. So we need to talk about that, if that’s something that needs to happen in a meeting. I love when you leave me looms cuz I can listen to it at two x speed, which is this brain, which is the speed of my brain.

I also have a thing which might be that stutter thing that’s in the, I wrote that hey, if I make a face in a meeting that looks like I wanna say something, I’m not trying to interrupt you. That’s me swallowing, wanting to interrupt you. I can’t change my face , but please know that if I don’t unmute myself, you’ll see Im mute myself regularly.

It’s so I don’t blurt things out. It’s a habit of meetings. , if I unmute, it’s cuz I have something to say, but for the most part I can’t help looking like I wanna say something. But if you start in like Naba, you look like you have something to say. No, I swear, I just always have something to say.

It’s fine, Let it go. , . I’m not rude. I can’t help it. But just doing that because it’s like, To other people. When you make a face or react in certain ways, it’s oh, they need to say something. So like having these little bits and tells is super helpful. I also am like, if I slack you in the middle of the night, that doesn’t mean I expect other people to be working.

It’s just that sometimes I take a nap at 3:00 PM because my brain isn’t working, and then I’m gonna send you a bunch of emails in the middle of the night. That’s the kind of stuff where I think if you did it without explanation, That could show up in your feedback as to how you can improve. But if you get ahead of it, it’s Oh, this is why this is what I do and this is why it’s happening.

And if it’s not working for you, I’m very open and we can talk about it. 

Janna Bastow: Yeah, absolutely. I have that face too, by the way. I know that one. I love that. And so what sort of coping mechanisms do we all have here too to help us with that? I use schedule send, like I have thoughts in the middle of the night and I will schedule them and go, Okay, make sure this goes out at eight in the morning and not at three in the morning or whatever else.

What else are we all using here? 

Felipe Castro: One thing that I learned recently is that it’s very common for people to change contact all the time. The same day, same morning. It’s very tiresome, right? Yeah. So for example, you’re doing something for work and then have to schedule your dentist or, and then you do this, so it’s.

Contact switching is hard for humans, but for HH is way harder. So I’ve tried some of those techniques where you scaffold where you do time, block your schedule and, but they’re completely different topics and are terrible. I suffered for a week because I kept, and it’s different tasks so I have to do it, no.

Okay. So if it’s personal stuff, it’s a whole afternoon. Okay. I’m doing personal stuff either for my house or health or whatever, so I need longer blocks of around the same topic cuz contexting, it’s really hard. Yeah. If it’s different areas of my life, like I know. So dealing with my daughters and dealing with this has to be contained.

Yeah. At least for me, when I heard that in a podcast, I said, Yeah, , that explains everything. So trying to make those blocks really 

Janna Bastow: helps. And it’s such a curse that we’re not good at context switching, and yet we flip from one thing to the next so quickly. Anybody following this conversation is probably what are they talking about now?

apologies for anybody trying to follow this conversation, but Yeah. But 

Felipe Castro: it’s, you’re still the same topic. Yeah. What’s hard for me is when you change, stop x, when you, Yeah, we talking about now I’m talking about now I have to, I know my daughter’s school and then now I have to do this, and then I have to go back to a client and then do, So 

Najva Sol: It’s talked about as different, almost like different frames of reference.

So it’s totally fine with context switching, but it’s a little different than that, right? Yeah. It’s like, I started working in an agency and when I had to switch between clients multiple times in the day, it sucked. But I could do lots of things for one client. There are different kinds of things, but as long as it’s all like I’m going deep on something, then you can do a really good job.

And that’s absolutely true. It’s if it’s a personal afternoon, it’s a personal afternoon. I can do all of my personal chores. I can’t 

Janna Bastow: do anything else. . Yeah. One of the things that I’ve found has helped me the most is limiting my work in progress, which the concept from KanBan and I don’t use a KanBan board or anything like that.

I’ve tried. I’ve tried all the task managers and digital task managers just don’t work for me cuz it’s one of those things where I create the tasks and then I forget them. One of the big traits of ADHD that a lot of people suffer from is the out of sight, out of mind. So I make a task, it’s outta sight.

I’ve forgotten about it. So what I do, I carry around and it’s quite started off as a bullet journal, but now it’s quite literally a pH fax that I’ve customized. And on one side of the page I have my schedule, which I literally make myself hand write and then my to-do list. And it’s the forcing of the writing outta the to-do list and making yourself like, Each task has to be broken down into a one liner.

So it has to be broken down to do this thing. Like it’s a small piece. And you can only have so many tasks on the page and you can physically see yourself checking them off. And if you miss one, you have to write it out again the next day. And so it’s a bit of a punishment to miss them.

And so this is the one thing that I’ve actually found is kept me on track and on task with things and like prevents me from just going, Oh, I made my task list and now I’m gonna go wallpaper the cat, or do literally anything else that I was, trying to avoid at that point in time.

Najva Sol: Oh, just if you’re not familiar for anyone in the chat, the joke is that ADHD people just love 

Janna Bastow: to make lists. We just love each other . Make lists Yeah. As to how to finish them. It’s a whole, that’s a whole other story. And so yeah, having it physically there and having it as part of a page that I have to flip over and I can’t move my little marker to the next day until I’ve done that at the end of the day.

Some days it’s absolutely painful, but it’s like I have to make myself do it. And yeah it comes back to the point that was made earlier around Philip, it wasn’t you who said owning your ADHD, saying, this is what you have to work with, you have to make it work at some point.

But yeah, it started off as a bullet journal and I just added to it and removed from it until it turned into something that worked for me. I hate full journals. . . Why do you hate journals? I cannot be 

Donna Lichaw: I cannot be bothered. It’s just too much process. But What’s worked for me and I know, I have friends it doesn’t work for, but I have a Trello board.

Yeah. That I have lived my whole life in Trello. Even. We can see 

Felipe Castro: from your background that you like . 

Donna Lichaw: When I need to go outside, I go outside. That’s how my book started. It’s completely changed since then, but I keep that up there just to that. I don’t know why I keep that probably cause I’m, I can’t be bothered to take it down. 

Najva Sol: Six months. 

Donna Lichaw: Old, but I go outside when I need to. I can’t do remote collaboration very easily. I do it cause I have to. But yeah, I don’t love collaborative boards. I prefer to do sticky notes, but Trello works for me, but I make sure that I purge it every year. So every January I just archive it and I create a whole new Trello board and I figure if anything was important enough from the previous year, it’ll pop itself back up because that’s how my brain works and it’ll nag me until I get it on there.

And then I just make sure I have the place for all things to go. Either it’s been Evernote for years, but I cannot use that anymore as the software’s just gotten weird. So I’ve been trying Apple Notes and it’s fine. But I need a place for the thoughts to go and then a place for all the ideal things to do to go, and that goes in Trello and it seems to work.

Wow. Excellent. 

Janna Bastow: But not for everybody, which is important. Excellent. All right. So everyone else, other tools? Cause this is actually a question from somebody. What tools have you guys found to complement the ways that your brains work? 

Felipe Castro: I think that one of the things that I’ve learned is that you have to shape your environment.

And if you’re going to work, your phone has to be in another room. , it’s not right, you sometimes need to turn down the wifi. Okay. I need to write, I’ll turn, shut down the wifi and set up a timer and that’s it. But whenever I’m writing or doing some type of, type of deep work, my phone is in an underground room.

Yeah. At least for me, it’s crucial. And Toby, I think you about, 

Toby Rogers: I think mine’s pretty similar in that I use it for pretty much everything. I went through a period of getting really massively hyper-obsessed with productivity systems and ended up spending all my time working on building stuff to do is to never know instead of actually doing any real work.

And there, I, what works for me is having a, like a concise list of. A limited number of things that are today, this week, next week later, someday maybe, and they’re just throwing stuff onto those lists. But it’s always five to 10 things in a day. That’s about how much I can handle in terms of a task list.

And then I still use Evernote even though it’s messy and horrible just to throw web clips and ideas and all the other stuff that I’ve thought about or think I wanna remember that I’ll never look at again into

Janna Bastow: Yep. Absolutely. 

Najva Sol: I love Asana, which we, for the team because I can reorder my stuff. I mean like my own private board always, and then reorder all of my things the way I need to, But I. I think I would say honestly more important than the tool that I use because you can, any tool that’s like flexible or you can train the tasks to be a calendar or a board or whatever that works for your brain.

Its strategies. So what I heard a lot of here is like limited numbers of things. The Eisenhower Matrix is also great for that. Like I use, essentially anything that allows me, gives me help to prioritize. Some people do the three to one, like one big thing, two small things, whatever it is to get it to that.

It whittles down to just a handful of small tasks each day and I know which one is the most important. And a lot of times I need a lot of support figuring out which one is most important. But once I’m there, it’s good, let me add this is what I’m doing now. . Yeah. But also for that noise-canceling headphones, playlists of different kinds of music that really help with focus.

I use a lot of alpha wave music. It’s really boring. Brain . Yep. . Like anything that can help me block things out, essentially. I live in a do not disturb mode. I do keep my phone here, but I don’t, I’m never interrupted ever. If I don’t want to be, except for having a dog, dogs do and trip.

Oh yes. I can’t not disturb pets. And 

Janna Bastow: I’ve turned off all the notifications on my phone. I can’t be trusted with my phone. I, the focus mode on your phone, I’ve got it set up so it’s on 24 hours a day and it only allows me to look at any of my social apps or any of the apps that consume my attention.

I can only look at them for five minutes at a time. So if I press on the Twitter button, it says, Ooh, it’s focus mode time, anytime of day. Do you wanna use this? You can have five minutes and I have to say yes. And after four minutes it goes gray and after a minute it just closes. And I’m like, Ooh, okay.

And if I wanna use it more, I can say, Okay, a little bit more, but I have to make that decision cuz otherwise I’ll just get lost in the Twitter doom scrolling and yeah, it’s just not good. So yeah, some of those tools to just limit digital distraction is important. Most 

Donna Lichaw: These tactics are making me anxious, just thinking about them, like noise canceling headphones or no noise or pets.

Like my dog is here cuz it calms me down. It’s 

Najva Sol: Your dog is chill, clearly . 

Janna Bastow: Yes, he is. He is chill. Which 

Donna Lichaw: help. But it’s yeah, I, it’s oh, it’s so important to know what works for you because I’ve found all these weird quirks that I can leverage instead, which is, so for example, apparently I read really fast if I take every 10 minutes or so, a tiny little phone break and then I pop right back in after 30 seconds.

It’s really weird. But I discovered that recently and it’s so counter to what you would think, put the phone away, sit and read a book. But apparently if I read for more than 20 minutes, I just lose my focus. That’s like a weird thing. But then, Also, oh, what are the other things? The big thing I found working for me is not just the tools, but it’s having a focus, big picture focus.

If I don’t have a big picture, focus on purpose, focus on goals and how I’m gonna know I got there and like the purpose and reason behind it and values that bolster it. I cannot function. And I know we talked about this earlier. I’ve had an OKR thread going with one of my good friends, Christina Woodkey for many years now.

And the okr, I hate OKRs, I botch them every time. Most of my clients, they panic if you say okr and they’re like, Fuck, more, it’s okr season up and this, but the, it’s the focus that really works. So if I know what my focus is for the year, I’ll do it. And if I know what the focus is for the quarter, I go do it.

And I’m like that slacker who shows up at the, I literally did it this morning. It’s the end of the quarter, and I showed up. I’m like, Cool, awesome. Quarter . I’m like, I did not keep anything up until this morning. I’m like, How did I do this quarter? Ooh, great.

Janna Bastow: Awesome. But I 

Donna Lichaw: knew what my focus was and I had it in the back of my mind the entire time.

I can’t function without the big picture narrative there. It can’t 

Janna Bastow: work. Yeah. And Philipe, you’re an OKRs trainer. What’s your take on OKRs and how they work with the ADHD brain? 

Felipe Castro: The thing is that people tend to, some people like to use OKR for personal OKR starting Okay. For personal life.

And the thing is that. I think we were chatting before the webinar and Donna said she likes to break out the rules with opioids when she’s setting her own. Another 

Donna Lichaw: ADHD treat. Apparently needing to break all the rules all the time. 

Felipe Castro: Yeah. And that’s what I see when you use personal OKRs, cuz it’s very hard to quantify.

I had to measure it. So my first opinion is that okay, they don’t fit really nicely into personal life cuz we don’t have metrics for everything. And I don’t personally, I don’t want to have metrics in every part of my life. So I think that the big challenge is that you can use some of the concepts of okr, like having focus, but Donna says, Hey, I have focus.

I understand why I have to achieve the most important things in the quarter that’s useful. And that’s, you can say, Hey, OKR has that, but the measurable part of OKR is really hard to do in your personal life. So we end up with really sucky OKRs, things that don’t look at OKRs at all. So why are you doing, why are you calling it okr?

Just take what works and folks on the f and don’t call them, call it, call them OKRs. It’s just. Because again, most of the things are personal life, and don’t have metrics. How do you measure if you’re, happy or talking to your family and friends like you want to, or, so in business, way easier to have metrics, 

Donna Lichaw: right?

When, So my life is my bus. I am a solo business owner. I work with other people. I have contractors, but I am a primary business owner. So I think for us, the line is fuzzier. And it definitely, yeah, definitely. I agree with you. 

It’s the focus. It’s the focus.

I’ve done some things with my kids. Hey, this quarter I really wanna work on them. I don’t tell them this, but when I’m working on something it’s the focus that helps the actual. Actually this is something I learned from, so I’m. I’m a Gestalt executive coach, which means I was trained by Gestalt therapists and Gestalt coaches and so there’s a lot of touchy feelings with what I do with my clients, and I’ve had to force myself to learn how to live like that as well because I’m a very analytical person.

And I like now, even though I flip numbers, I was, my nickname in high school was Physics Wizard and I was a calculus tutor. I’m obsessed with numbers and systems but what I think. Its key is like measurements don’t always have to be numbers. We can measure things with how we feel. And I think for, actually, for people like us, that’s so essential because our s spy senses can tell us when something is working or not, and we have to be attuned to that so that we can advocate for our personal oss or advocate for our quirks or our superpowers.

So all of this is so important, but as soon as we get into like analytical automatons I, that’s my, one of my kryptonites and I will spiral and need to get outta that. So I agree with you. 

[00:46:23] Felipe Castro: Yeah, that totally makes sense for a personal life. But if you say to people that, No, you’re okay, you KRS can be touchy, that’s probably a terribly different organization as a whole.

It can be great for your personal life and you as a leader and exec, but if organizations start to use all things that are qualitative in OKRs, it loses the whole point of using OKRs. So I think that things are very different from personal life to business and. You have to understand the two are measurable.

Thanks. That’s the whole point is to have you get more data and be more data-informed decisions. That’s the whole point of using okr. Yeah. And not every single problem under the sun requires measurement. So the tool has a specific use. Yeah. 

Janna Bastow: That’s good. Thank you so much for sharing all that.

And there’s a couple actually really good questions in here that I wanna get to before we go, which is this starts getting pretty chunky. So do any of you have any experience with rejection sensitivity dysphoria? I’m not sure if you’re all aware of that. It’s something that often goes hand in hand with ADHD.

Rejection sensitivity dysphoria is also known as R S D. It’s one of the dark sides of ADHD, which is that sense of shame that goes. Times that you feel like you’ve done something wrong where you’ve embarrassed yourself or you’ve let somebody down. And it’s, it comes out in the times that you come back with you’re embarrassed about something years and years later.

Or you feel like you wronged somebody cuz you said the wrong thing and now they must hate you forever. Or you had that perfect comeback, but you remember. Two minutes too late and you’re still thinking about it 20 minutes later. It’s this sense that just follows you around and you just don’t let it go.

Turns out not everyone feels that way. Some people just apparently move on and get over it. I have rsd, I have hang ups over things that I did wrong when I was a child and I’m like, Why won’t I just let this go? And you know what? I didn’t realize RSD was a thing until I looked up ADHD and into some of the symptoms of it.

I was like, this explains so many of my problems. turns out, like I don’t have to feel this shame. I can actually just let go of this stuff because it’s not normal to feel terrible over a lost friendship or a forgotten birthday or a thing that I screwed up and did something silly years ago. How about you?

You’d lot. Do you have any experience that you could share? You don’t have to if it’s a tough one.

[00:48:54] Najva Sol: Go or if someone else, maybe Toby, who is , You look like you maybe had something to say. 

[00:49:00] Toby Rogers: It’s not something I’ve thought about or realized. This is the first time I’ve really seen this as a thing. But last night I was thinking about the time that I. For my mom a rubbish Christmas present 15 years ago.

So I think that definitely, it definitely is a thing that I’ve never really thought about, but this, yeah, 

Janna Bastow: A couple people in the chat have a couple points here. Like Deborah says, it’s a part of emotional dysregulation and how we can hyperfocus on very negative feelings.

Yeah. I feel that. And actually somebody pointed out it’s actually just a comment to hosts and panelists that they can’t watch cringe humor. I can’t watch cringe humor makes me wanna crawl outta my skin. And somebody just pointed out that they have the same problem Yep. Tiffany said that they associate it with perfectionist tendencies, which yeah, that’s something that goes along with ADHD.

Like it was a time when I was imperfect. There’s been a lot of those. Ooh, 

Najva Sol: Say I have, for the first time in my life, I think. Not the first time, but like the dynamic at work that I have is really healthy. We have a healthy team culture and the r s D gets a lot better when you have a manager who can tell you when you’ve self had enough about a mistake that you’ve made.

Cause I made a mistake a few weeks ago and I came in and I was like, Here’s my plan to apologize to everyone for the mistake that I made. 

Like, and he is Okay, it seems like you’ve already really taken responsibility. These things happen. Let’s talk about something else.

Janna Bastow: Yeah, absolutely. They’re like, Just move on. That’s fine. Yeah. And 

Najva Sol: Having people around you who can check that in a kind but firm boundary way is just so nice. It’s rare, I will say, but it is nice not, I didn’t have to say, I have rejections with, he just was like, Listen, you yeah, let’s just yes, you apologize, Jim.

You took responsibility. I see that. And we can go forth now into the next thing. You do a lot of good. Let’s focus on the stuff that you did well and one of the things that happens with ADHD is you can get really into your head. So I don’t know if that’s a coworker, a colleague, a manager, someone in your working life that you can be honest about where you are.

Spiraling about and they won’t judge you and they can give you like a, is it normal to spiral about this or am I actually doing a good job and I’m just being too hard on myself? I can’t tell that inside my own head. Sometimes I need someone else I can trust to have some perspective for me. 

Janna Bastow: Excellent. Thank you for sharing. And do we have time for one more question,

maybe? Sure. Yeah, sure. So there’s one more in here, which was really interesting from Frank. So during interviews when asked what’s your biggest weakness? And he says that he tends to bring up that he’s not the most organized person. Fair. That’s probably something that many of us share here,

So what’s the best way to answer the weakness part without impacting you negatively? Or rather, how do you position ADHD so that you can understand your traits really, so that you can succeed in the workplace in interviews and that sort of thing. Any tips? 

Felipe Castro: I think that when people ask that question, they’re looking for what’s your approach to dealing with your weaknesses, right?

That’s what they want to learn. Is this person mature enough that knows what he or she’s good at and bad at, and how to deal with it. So I think that what you just said about, I hired a chief of staff and I deal with this, and this and this. It’s a great example of, hey, how do you deal with whatever weakness you have?

So I think I’m just saying I’m not a very organized person. Not a complete answer. You have to, What you do with that, you have to own it. Whatever weakness you have to own it and shape your, the way you work or have coworkers that help you or deemed or, I don’t know. Yeah. What effect?

Janna Bastow: A good way to frame it. I like that. 

Toby Rogers: Think it’s about framing it in terms of not weaknesses, the, and kind of areas for development where this isn’t a thing that I, what can develop and improve. It is a thing that I cannot do, but this is my strategy for making sure that it doesn’t affect the work that I’m doing and the job that I’m able to do.

Donna Lichaw: I don’t like that question at all. I think I would, and it would be hard for me to conceal my nice life, but I would just flip it, which is a weakness. It’s, again, there’s a there’s a, I really struggle with details. I really struggle with details.

I should not be handling details yet. I’m very attuned. Like I, and I’m not a, I can measure things to a pixel and, but like I shouldn’t be doing that. And . But I’m a big picture thinker. I’m a big picture thinker. My superpowers are patterns, connections, seeing things that others can’t see. And so I just, who cares about the weakness?

It’s focused on what’s working. You’re a big picture thinker. Great. But yes, so I think I agree with Felipe there, which is I make sure I always hire someone to handle the details or I can outsource it or I do not have to ever worry about details. 

Janna Bastow: And it’s a good chance to figure out if it’s a good fit for you as well. On that note, we’re running late, low on time, and I wanna be respectful of everyone’s time here. Now I do recognize that there were some questions outstanding, and the chat has been absolutely on fire.

In the meantime, I wanna say thank you so much too. Everyone here in the chats getting involved and of course our panelists here today. So everyone, a big thanks to Donna, Philippe, Toby, and Naba for sharing their stories and sharing their experience and expertise. I know this hasn’t been the most conventional topic, but I think it has been eye opening and very useful for everyone all around.

So once again, thank you all. Take care and see you soon. 

Felipe Castro: Thank you. Bye.