ADHD In The Workplace

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Opinions expressed in this episode are personal. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this streaming platform. [00:00:14] Speaker B: Good day, everyone, and welcome to another edition of let's be diverse. I am your host, Andrew Stout. This episode is dedicated to all my loved ones who supported me through this journey. A lot of talk I've heard lately is the assumption of someone who has ADHD. I had a talk with one of my clients the other day and they were asking me some questions about ADHD and the workplace, what's acceptable and what's not acceptable. So I thought tonight would be an interesting time to delve into that. So our topic today is ADHD in a workplace, and my guest today is Carol Jean Whitington. Now, Carol Jean Whittington is a trailblazer in the neurodiversity space dedicated to empowering ADHD autistic professionals and fostering sustainable energy in their lives. She is the author of Unleashing Sustainable Energy, a strategic approach to transforming spicy burnout for ADHD aesthetic professionals. As the founder of Mind Artistic Brain, her company stands out as one of the largest and only autistic ADHD owned staff consulting firms globally, focusing on burnout, restoration, accessibility and neurodiversity. With her vast expertise, Carol Jean hosts a popular weekly talk show, Beyond Autistic Burnout, where she engages in insightful discussions with influential figures in the autistic online community and beyond. This show reaches over 93 countries with more than 550,000 avid listeners and watchers. In 2022, Spotify ranked beyond autistic burnout in the top 5% of podcasts in the self help category. As a burnout restoration strategist, Carol Jean employs her signature solutions, the unveiling method of neurodiverse communication ecosystem, to empower companies, teams and individuals of cognitive profiles to authentically connect and thrive. Her dedication to making a world more accessible and embracing biodiversity is truly commendable. My first conversation with Carol was unlike any other conversation you could have with somebody for the first time time, it is something to say that you feel a connection to somebody immediately 5 seconds in. And that is exactly how I felt talking to her, and I thought, what a great opportunity tonight to have her on. So I want to say welcome to Carol. And I tell you, Carol, I am extremely honored to have you on today. [00:03:00] Speaker A: Oh, andrea, that is such a kind and sweet introduction. And I totally felt the same. Like, the minute we got on and just started talking, it just felt so good. They were just like sparks of joy, right? [00:03:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Sometimes people would say, oh, you're crazy. It just was that instant connection. I could feel it, the conversation. I'll take the audience, whoever's listening, that it lasted about close to 40 minutes. But in reality, if we both didn't have something to do, it probably would have lasted a good two, 3 hours. [00:03:32] Speaker A: No joke. Definitely no. [00:03:34] Speaker B: No joke. No joke. So, Carol, how were things with you? What is new in Carol's world? [00:03:42] Speaker A: Oh, man. In Carol Jean's world, I just landed. I took eight days, and I did a transcontinental tour. Essentially, I'm located here in central Alabama, and I flew to the west coast for the very first time. I put my toes in the Pacific Ocean in California, attended a business conference there, had a great time finally getting to meet one of my business partners in person for the first time after working together and co authoring a book together for three years. And we got to hug and actually sit down face to face, which was so magical. And then I flew home. I had four and a half hours to change my suitcase from warm weather west coast to cold weather clothes. And I got back on a plane that morning at 430 and flew to New York City. So I am coming off of this huge trip. I crammed in here at the end of the year, and it's been really fantastic. Well, I was in New York. I went specifically for. I'm a member of Profound, which is a professional networking group for disability inclusion leaders in the workforce. And we had a breakfast there with networking event, and it was amazing. Oh, it was so great to get to meet some of my profound network members in person, to meet some of our new members there. My friend Kem came with me, and then I got go to my friend Hal Eisenberg's school in Flushing in Queens and talk to sophomores, juniors, and seniors, and really just be able to connect with them in a way that I think nobody else ever had. So we had a lot of conversations, and it was interesting because the teachers, I think, were as aptly listening as the students were. So I came back, and, of course, I've had a couple of days of things that I had to get caught up on. Did lots of laundry today, because when you travel and you do that, you've got all this laundry that usually you gotta do. And now I get to visit with you today, this evening, which is really exciting. I've been looking forward to this. [00:05:46] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. I'm glad that you had a chance to have such a great trip. When I was in New York a few years back, I absolutely loved it. Just standing in Times Square, I think I just stood there and looked around at everything and I was just in amazement of what it was just to be there. We stayed close to where good Morning America is about a block away. So every day we walked out, we walked by good morning America, so it's pretty cool. We got to see Lagasse one day, so it's just cool to see all of that. So I thoroughly enjoyed it. [00:06:19] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. It was so funny. This was my first trip into the city proper and I was like, okay, either I'm gonna love this or I'm gonna hate this. It was totally binary. There was no gray area in between, and I absolutely loved it. So I did get to go to 30 rack, I got to go visit and talk to a new friend at NBC there and did see the taping of the Today show, which was so fun because that is one of my goals, is to be on the Today show. [00:06:44] Speaker B: Oh, awesome. Awesome. So I think that's pretty cool that you had a chance to do that. It is a magical place, especially now during the holidays. It's actually even more magical there as well. So I'm glad to hear that you had such a great time. Before we begin, I always have a fun question to ask my guests to get things going. Are you ready for yours? [00:07:08] Speaker A: Lay it on me. [00:07:09] Speaker B: So your question today is, if the important thing is to get up after falling, why don't we just learn better balance? [00:07:18] Speaker A: What's the question? To me, it's just a statement. [00:07:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Why? [00:07:25] Speaker A: My beautifully, wonderfully wired brain went, yep. Why don't we. Why don't we learn to fall in a more strategic, less painful way? [00:07:34] Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely. No, no. [00:07:36] Speaker A: So there's my answer. [00:07:37] Speaker B: There's your answer. Why don't we fall strategically in a better way? Awesome. That is a great answer, for sure. I love it. There's no right or wrong answer with these. They're just there to have fun. So I love, I love that. [00:07:49] Speaker A: That was so funny. [00:07:51] Speaker B: You did a great job and you came up with a really good answer pretty quick. So not knowing what the question was going to be, I'm pretty impressed. Pretty impressed. So thanks for having fun with me. Like I said, why don't we start off with you telling us a little bit about you, your story and your. [00:08:06] Speaker A: Why I always love this question. For me, it started at the age of six, and at the age of six, we don't always have the vocabulary. However, I had a pretty vast vocabulary at the age of six. I now know and they now term who I would be described as in education as twice exceptionally so. I am autistic and ADHD. I also have dyscalculia. I am mildly dyslexic. I have an auditory processing delay. However, I have an iq of 138, so it's considered a genius iq. And they knew my iq was very high from an early age. But I wasn't identified as autistic and ADHD until I was an adult. And I didn't learn that I was autistic until I was 39 and ten months old. Going through the process with my eldest son, who was ten at the time. And when I look back and I reflect on why life was so challenging for me, why I was constantly exhausted when I learned that my son was autistic. And then I also am autistic, I thought if I was missed, and I know how much I've struggled and how hard so many things have been for me, I want to make sure that my son has everything that he needs. And in that process, I poured everything that I had into making sure that he got everything that he needed. And in that entire process, not once did I say, what do I need? And two years into that journey, he was thriving and doing really well. And I was probably at one of the worst burnouts of my life. And at that point, my body had started to shut down. This is what I, in my global spicy research, I term as a level five burnout, a ghost pepper burnout. When you're so hot, you're not. When your body starts to shut down, because your needs have consistently gone unmet for so long. And for me, that burnout began at the age of six. And although I had an expansive vocabulary, I didn't have a vocabulary to accurately describe what I was feeling. And so at that age, the only thing that I could say as I was sobbing, sitting on my little frilly french provincial bed in my school uniform on a Friday night, my mom walks by and sees me just sobbing. And she says, honey, what's wrong? What's the matter? Like mamas do. And she puts her arm around me. And I was at a place where I was so out of spoons that communicating was even hard. And for me, I didn't have meltdowns, I had shutdowns. So I would be nonverbal. I would be very quiet. I would very. I would get very quiet and turn inward. And at that moment, the only thing that I could express to her, through tears running down my face, soaking my shirt in my uniform, was, I just don't want to be here. And I've been both the child that has said that. And I've also been the parent whose child has said that to them. And for so many of us who are late identified, and even for those of us who have been identified, but we haven't had enough of people in our life to let us know how to navigate the world when we are wired in a way that perceives and processes in a very nonlinear fashion and in a very sensory centric way. So for me, from the age of six to the age of 42, I experienced some degree of burnout, and that's considered a chronic cycle burnout. I never got out of burnout. I might have moved down the scale and the degree lessened, and I thought I was out of burnout. And that's that restoration, illusion trap that I talk about and teach, but I never was fully out of it, not until four years ago. And so right now, I'm 49, I'll be 50 this year, and I am, as of right now, in December. I have now entered year four of living burnout, shutdown, and meltdown free for the first time since I was six years old. And I didn't even know that this place was possible. So my why comes from this. My why is what is possible with a thriving, sustainably energized, completely restored autistic ADHD population, what is possible for humanity? [00:12:38] Speaker B: I just love everything he said there just was so magical. I just loved everything there. First off, it's amazing to hear what you went through or feel like you went through from ages six to 42. I myself am ADHD, and I only realized that I was at a later stage in life. And I, too, feel I'm in a better stage than I was years ago because I felt like I was in a stage where I was afraid to say that I had ADHD. I was afraid to talk about it. And now I'm not afraid. There's lots of things that I'm not afraid of. That's one of them is telling people that I have it and I don't feel any different after telling them, or I don't feel different that I need to tell them. It's just I'm not afraid to say it. And I feel I'm the same person, and I feel that I still have the capabilities and this knowledge, the skills and abilities to do whatever I put my mind to. And that's the stage that I feel. And I can tell that you're at that stage as well. So it's amazing when we arrive there it is. [00:13:48] Speaker A: And there's also. There has to be this harmony in the conversation, there has to be compassionate curiosity for ourselves and others because so often we can, and especially in burnout, this happens. We bypass the struggles. We think, oh, I'm going to minimize that, or I'm not going to acknowledge it, I'm going to push through, or I'm going to focus on my strengths, I'm going to focus on what I'm really good at. But we forget to stop and check in. We forget to ask ourselves the question that most humans, no matter their neurotype, fail to ask. But we ask it of everyone else. What do I need? We ask all the time, what do you need? What do you need at work? What do my coworkers need? What does my partner need? What do my kids need? What do the dog need? What does the cat need? What does the plumber need when he comes to fix the dishwasher? We think of the needs of everyone else, but we so very rarely, unless it becomes this place of critical mass, do we stop and say, what do I need? Just right now, in this moment, for five minutes. [00:14:52] Speaker B: I agree with you 100%. And I think we're harder on ourselves too. So that's probably one of the reasons, is that we're so hard on ourselves that we, when we ask people, like you said, what can I do for you? How can I help you? It's easy for us to get asked that, but when, like you said, if someone was to ask me, what do I need, I don't know. Sometimes you have to think about, okay, what do I need? Do I need anything? And it's difficult for us, but very easy for us to ask somebody, for sure. Today we're going to be talking about ADHD in the workplace. What are some of the most common ways that ADHD appears in the workplace? [00:15:31] Speaker A: So all of the things that make someone wonderfully wired show up in different ways under burnout or during burnout. So this is something that's really important to talk about because in my global spicy research, I have questioned over 500,000 people in over 65 countries. And what I'm seeing is that over 39% of people are in a level four habanero spicy pepper burnout. And that is when you are really hot. But it's before you enter the shutdown of a spicy pepper, ghost pepper level five. So the four and the three, which is the cayenne pepper, these two are the largest chunks. So over 60% of people either fall into a level three or a level four burnout within our neurotype population. Now, globally, the workforce is saying 88% of us are experiencing some degree of burnout right now in the job that we're in, no matter our neurotype, how our skills and abilities and how our optimum well being is impacted by burnout is very much a part of that experience. So when we're talking about what are some challenges that show up in the workplace for people who are ADHD, I think we have to also talk about the degree to which burnout is impacting how that's showing up for us. One of the ways that, for me in particular, and a lot of my clients and a lot of the teams that I work with in corporate, when we're looking at what are the things that you're really finding challenging within your work environment or within your performance? We're always looking at performance metrics and work, and that has a lot to do with executive function, like how are we completing tasks from point a to point b and being able to distinguish all the steps that are necessary to begin and end a project. So for a lot of us who are ADHD, we can see the big picture. Some of us can see the big picture really well. I'm autistic in ADHD, so I can see the big picture and I can see all the details. But then sometimes it's like all that comes so fast that I can't sort the steps for that. It takes me a little longer to process that so those kid things can get exacerbated and become more challenging and more disruptive in the way that you process them. The other thing is time blindness. This is a really big one. For a lot of us adhders, time blindness is when we have a difficulty processing the experience and movement of time. So I can get into a hyperflow state and I'm like, in the zone. The next thing I know, it's 4 hours later, and all of a sudden I'm like, oh, my lord, I'm about to explode. I have got to go to the bathroom. I haven't eaten, I haven't had anything to drink. And you catch yourself. And when you're at burnout, it can be impacted in two different ways. One way that time blindness can be impacted is that it becomes even harder for you to how you feel and experience the passing of time. Now, first of all, time is this linear construct on a clock that somebody somewhere decided, this is how we track time, but that's not necessarily how we feel the passage of time. So then the other way that this can be impacted on the opposite end is that with time blindness. It's like all of a sudden it's, I'm so hyper vigilant of time that I have so much anxiety around watching the clock because I'm so afraid that I'm going to forget where I'm supposed to be or where I'm supposed to be going. You can either get so absorbed that you lose track of time, or you're so hyper vigilant of time, that's all that you think about and see. [00:19:29] Speaker B: And I could totally see that because I know myself sometimes I'm looking at something and I'm doing something, or I could be sitting at home doing something in the computer, say, okay, today I got to do this. And then you're starting to do something, and then you're, oh, yeah, I remember I had to go do this, then you go do that, and then the next thing you know, you look and it's like 11:00 and you started at nine and you're like, oh, my God, where did the time go? It was just 09:00 so I definitely could see that. And then I could definitely see the burnout part, because you're so worried about the time and not getting stuff done and you're worried about the consequences and stuff, and that's when you start to get worried, and that's when burnout can possibly happen for sure. [00:20:15] Speaker A: Oh, definitely. And for most of us, too, one of the things that happens is we have not identified and clearly communicated our peak performance hours. For a lot of us who are ADHD, our peak performance cycles are different from a traditional nine to five. So on my neurodrive team, we have a global team, and we are all adhd, autistic, dyslexic. Everyone has some sort of a neuro distinct brain and body. And so we identified, as the director, I said, okay, we've got this very team with lots of different strengths, but we also have different challenges and we've got to recognize and honor that and what your accessibility needs are. But then we also have these different peak performance times. And it's really important because as a team, this is one of the things that I love and what we do here at mind your autistic brain. And the reason I set up an all neurodistinct team was because I'm a researcher, I'm a scientist. So we were diving in and I wanted to know what. How do we operate as a team of all neurodistinct folks? How do we do this? Because canary in the coal mine approaches. If this works for us, this will work for all teams in a really beautiful way. So one of the first things that we do, especially if we bring a new team member on, is we identify what our individual peak performance performance hours are. And that's usually a three to four hour window. And our team runs 24 hours a day basically based on our peak performance cycle. So we've got some early morning folks, we have mid morning folks, we have afternoon folks, we got the evening and the late night folks. And what was really important is that we sat down and if we were working on a specific project, if there were two or three of us, first thing we say is, okay, what's your peak performance time? And we would know, okay, I'm a morning person and we would have paired with a late night person. But the conversation that happened was, if I send you something first thing in the morning because that's when my brain's firing, that's when my brain is creating and writing and doing the stuff. I know that you're a late night person and that you start slow, so it might be two or 03:00 in the morning before you see it and get back to me. And that's all. Okay. That's okay. We have a way that we coordinate, hey, if we have a deadline and we have a time factor that we're planning or that we're honoring, who actually has the most optimum way to approach that based on our peak performance times. But then we also talk about our preferred communication styles because not everybody likes to get email. I hate email. I will just be honest, email. For me it's just overwhelming. I get 900 emails a day on one thing. On one account I've got three. So I get, multiply that, 2700 emails a day, something like that. And that's a lot. Even with my assistant filtering it, I still have to look at some stuff. So for me I'm like, if you guys really need me, if you need me to see something, you need to text message me. And like some companies use slack and use other different kind of communication tools, but we have to be really cognizant. We have to look at this. It's not about, oh, I'm going to do it for this person because they say they need this. It's, we need to ask everybody, when are your peak performance hours? What are the expectations in communication and what is your best way to communicate? Like I will send a voice clip a lot of times, especially it's late in the day because my peak performance time is from nine to one by 203:00 I'm crashing. My brain cannot hear or process anymore. So the later in the day that it gets, sometimes I have to send an audio clip to somebody because I just can't type. So it's when we start to have these kind of conversations in work. But this also translates to home, folks, because we don't end how we communicate when we leave our workspace. That actually impacts our relationships more than anything else. The person you sleep next to, folks, I love it. [00:24:30] Speaker B: To those in the workforce, what are some reasonable accommodations that they can request in their workplace or request with their supervisors or leaders? [00:24:42] Speaker A: Right? Okay, so I'm just going to buck the system here all over the place. I will just disrupt the status quo all over on this one. Number one, if we're approaching this from the American with Disabilities act, then most human resources departments are going to say, you need to have an official medical diagnosis for us to consider and honor any reasonable adjustments and accommodations. First of all, I hate the term reasonable adjustment because it is not, the onus is no longer on the individual who's requesting what they need. It's on the workplace to then determine whether or not it is reasonable to them and to provide it, which I think is really not the way that we should be doing this as human to humans. So I look at this in a very different way. I say, from a corporate culture standpoint, if you really care, number one, you already have a neurodistinct workforce. Whether you are intentionally hiring for neurodiversity or not, you already have a wide variety of neurotypes. You have at least 28% or more of your people are neurodistinct somewhere in that workforce. And so when we are creating a culture where we are communicating our needs as individuals and our needs collectively, then we are not making distinguishing differences between someone needing something and someone not needing something. We all have needs. We have 30 basic human needs. No matter what your neurotype is. And when those 30 basic human needs, depending on what season of life you are in and what you specifically are needing, in that moment when those needs are chronically or consistently unmet, you will experience some degree of burnout. And the three biggest unmet needs in my global research, number one is emotional safety, and that is internal emotional safety more than external. So when we're really looking at corporate cultures and we're looking at business, we have to look at leadership, and we have to look at what type of environment are we creating and what are, what do we value as a company. So, number one, are we creating a space as leaders for people to say, hey, I have a need and this is what it is. And we meet that need without the shame, without the blame, without the, you have to go through this HR process for us to even accommodate you. And then by the time somebody, I'm sorry, I'm just going to say it. By the time we have asked for an accommodation, we've already been silently struggling and we're probably already in some degree of burnout. And it took a whole lot for you to go and ask for that. Most processes take three to six months. And I will tell you from my experience and the clients that I work with, what comes out of that is usually the need is not accurately met. It would have been a simple solution, yet it is made into a giant mountain instead of this little, okay, no big deal. Most of these accommodation request needs are free. It's just a simple human to human shift in maybe how we create accessibility for someone to be able to do something that meets their need and processing style. So number one, I say we have to start, we have to start at the culture level. We have to start the conversation of what do we really value as a company. Number two, if you're playing in the sandbox with somebody that they probably haven't really thought about this, then we also have to look at employment, branding. Where are we working? What is the culture in which we're working? Because a lot of times it is not safe to disclose because then what happens is, oh, you've been here for however long, we've never had a problem. You've always gotten accolades, you're doing a really great job and then all of a sudden you're struggling and you ask and maybe you decide to just, I have had this told to me from several people who have disclosed and been in this situation. And then all of a sudden anytime that something doesn't work out or they have a challenge or something comes up, it always gets blamed, assigned that, oh, it's your ADHD or, oh, it's because you're autistic and there's a lot of disclosure has to come from a place of the other people that are receiving that information have, number one, earned the right to hear it. And number two, they have the skills and ability to understand what that means for you. And you have also the responsibility to be able to explain and advocate and articulate to other people in whatever form of communication that is best for you, what it is that you need and what it means for you. There is two sides here. We can show up and be total jerks and say, this is what I need, and you give it to me or you don't. Sorry, folks, that just doesn't work. That's not how the world works. It'd be great if we said, this is what I need, but we have to come with that compassionate curiosity for ourselves and others. We have to come with a place of grace and space that we extend to ourselves and other people. Because the minute that we think everyone has to do something the same exact way is the minute that we cut 75% of the world out. [00:30:01] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, absolutely. The first thing that we just said there, my first thought is diversity of thought. There's different ways of doing stuff. That's my first thought. The other thing is what jumped out at me is the communication factor. I would say that should be discussed right at the beginning in the orientation process, and you're talking with your manager and they're giving you their clear expectations of what they're expecting from you for this job. This is where you would come out and say, listen, I have no problem with these expectations. Just want to let you know I have ADHD and this is how I learn. This is how I understand things. When you're showing me something, I learned better this way rather than this way. And that's where you can have that discussion with them. Like you said earlier, they're not surprised. Three to six months in, we were saying, oh, you never disclosed that with me before. From the beginning, right from that get go, that's the time to say it. Then you can have all your conversations, and then they can say, okay, no problem. We will take a note of that. You tell me what you need in order to do the job, let me know. And if there's stuff that you can't think of right away and a week or two in, you think of it, let's get that stuff for you right away. But the communication factor has to be put in play right from the get go. [00:31:23] Speaker A: It does. And I think part of some of the things that we come up against is that I think we've all experienced this to some degree. In some element is a lot of times managers are promoted to a manager job because they excelled in the job that they did. But that doesn't mean that they're an excellent people manager and managers are people managers. They task orient, but they are people managers first. And so not all managers are great people managers, and so they don't think to ask these things. And a lot of times, too, if we come into a job, we may not know that we're autistic or ADHD. We may not have that diagnosis. We may suspect it. We could be self identified and coming into the door sometimes that is not a comfortable place to disclose. But what we can do and what I love how you modeled this was, you can say, hey, I process things in this way. This is how I work. This is how I best communicate. This is how I tend to take a project and handle it or break it down. Just so you know, this is my particular working style. And you haven't had to disclose in any of that, but you've communicated your needs in that. And I think that is equally as powerful. [00:32:33] Speaker B: So we talked a little about disclosing. Do you think that someone should disclose their ADHD diagnosis at their job? [00:32:40] Speaker A: I think it is absolutely the most personal decision that someone can make. [00:32:44] Speaker B: I agree. [00:32:45] Speaker A: It is one of the bravest, courageous, and probably most terrifying things for a lot of people as well. And as I said, I think it is a very individualized choice. There are situations where you are in a position with a company where you have people that are going to receive that, who are going to honor and respect that, who are going to be compassionately curious, who are going to say, hey, wow, okay, so tell me what that means for you. How can I support you? And they're going to listen, and then you have some, that is not going to be the case. And that is an individual and very personal decision, because when we're talking about our jobs, we're talking about our livelihood, and there's a lot of factors that come into that. So it's not a clear cut yes or no answer. That is a very personal decision, and it's one that requires sort of a checklist, I believe, on both sides of the table. Are the people in my life trustworthy, or am I working for a company that understands? Have they already demonstrated that they know and understand or are open to learning more about different neurotypes? [00:33:57] Speaker B: I love what you said. They're trustworthy. A lot of people use the word toxic work environment. It's not my favorite word at all. So I like to call it a safe work environment. And I think that's when it would be a perfect time for somebody to decide whether they want to disclose or not. And it goes by that safe work environment in my mind. And if you feel comfortable and safe to disclose, then I would say that would be the opportunity to do it for sure. How can someone with ADHD stay focused while they're working? I know we have a lot of people that are working remotely, so how can they stay focused when they're working remotely at home? [00:34:39] Speaker A: So this has been interesting. I love that you asked this question, because this is something that we've actually pressure tested in our neurodrive team because we got a lot of Adhders, and I'm also in this really wonderful entrepreneur group of women. And so this has been something we've talked about a lot lately. So I love that you've asked this question, and it comes down to a couple different factors, and it's definitely an individual based thing, but I think it's a lot of playful exploration in finding out what is going to work optimally for you. And here's the thing, guys, one thing that you might figure out that works for you, all of a sudden, one day, it does not work, and it does not matter what you try. There is nothing that's going to work. And some days you just got to say, okay, I did my best. This has just not been my day for my brain to do all the things I needed to do. Number one, one of the things that I learned for myself is I always felt like I was behind. I always felt like I was late. I always felt like there was so much more I needed to do, and I was trying to cram everything in. And this is something that comes up a lot, especially for ADHD women in particular. We have a planner. We have a scheduler like my calendar. My Google calendar has got colored blocks. One of my friends looked at it and said, your calendar scares the crap out of me, Carol Jean. And I was like, but you're not seeing that blue color that's there. That's my restoration time. But I have to put it on that calendar so that there's a reminder coming up and saying, okay, in 30 minutes, it's time for you to stop what you're doing and you've got to go do these other things that fuel and pour into you. So, number one is you need to know your peak performance hours. What is that three or four hour zone where your brain is firing on all cylinders? It is where your optimum output and creation and productivity mode is. It's really important to know that so that you can block that on your calendar and you start to communicate with a healthy boundary to the people that are in your life. This is my zone. Don't interrupt it. Do not pass go. Do not put dollar 200 in the box. If you put $200 in the box, just don't tell me you did it. I will find it when I get through. Don't distract me. It's also a lot of harmony in the sense that we can have a to do list that is not a to do list. My friend Cameron Huben and I talked about this on the show recently. We have project lists. We have these massive project lists that somehow to us is a to do list. And when your brain, and when you're a nonlinear thinker, your brain is solving and looking at all of these different elements very quickly and in rapid fire. And the thing is, we have solved so many problems. We are so far ahead of where everybody else seems to be. But for us, we feel like we're behind, but we fail to recognize we're actually ahead, right? So we have to recognize, number one, our brain is nonlinear. It thinks in all these really beautiful ways, which is the incredible asset that we are to ourselves and to other people, because we're going to see things that other people don't and we're going to see them faster in a lot of times, in a lot of situations than other people do. But we fail to recognize that we've moved so quickly in that processing, in that solution. So we always feel like there's more to do. The other thing is you really got to check yourself or you wreck yourself, because do you have a to do list or do you have a project list? So if it says clean out closets, plural, this was my friend Cameron's example, and I thought it was so good, I'm just going to steal it and use it. She said I had projects I didn't have a to do. So a to do would be, you know, clean out the closet, period. But it would be on our list. Clean out closets, plural. So I'm cleaning out all the closets in the entire house. That is a project, yet we would look at that giant project and go, I should be able to do that in the weekend. Really? And when you factor in time blindness and how we experience time, and we underestimate what we can do in a year, and we overestimate what we can do in a week. We've all heard this. And when we are ADHD, that applies so strongly to how we approach things, so we can focus. And no human is meant to focus. Guys, let me just take this off your plate. Let me just give you a little love. No one is meant to focus for eight straight hours. No, sorry, we're just not. No human. I don't care what your neurotype is, so please take that false belief off your plate. We are created to optimally work for two to 3 hours in a window in 90 minutes cycles, and you gotta have some breaks in between. So Microsoft actually did this really cool research, and they said, okay, what's going to happen? We're going to use two groups. First group, they are going to have back to back meetings, 1 hour meetings. There's going to be four of them. We're not giving them any breaks in between. And we're going to look at their brain in fMRI, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and we're going to see where the brains lighten up. What does it look like? And then the second group, they're going to have four meetings, but this group gets 30 minutes in between each one of their meetings, and we're just going to see what their brain does. So they conducted this experiment, and then they compared side by side the two groups. What is your guess, Andrew? What do you think happened in this experiment? [00:40:20] Speaker B: Oh, it didn't go well. [00:40:22] Speaker A: For which group? [00:40:23] Speaker B: I'm going to say my guess would be the second group. [00:40:26] Speaker A: So the second group that had 30 minutes breaks, that didn't go well or it went well? [00:40:30] Speaker B: The ones that didn't have breaks, I'm going to say it didn't go well. [00:40:34] Speaker A: You would be correct. I think we all know this. We feel this, right? Because think about how we've worked for the last couple of years, and you got back to back meetings. It doesn't matter if it's on Zoom or if it's in person. There is this chronic and consistent pressure and demand, and our brains are not created to sustain that type of concentration and focus for that long, no matter the neurotype. And this was not distinguishing neurotypes, okay? So what they found was the brains all started out cool, and that's this nice little blue color. And then they heat it up, and you see more orange and yellow and red. And then by the third meeting, it got really red. And like, you saw very little cool, like blue, which is really the brain being calm and. And doing well. And then it just turned totally blue for the fourth one because it cut off. It stopped working, period. Think about your day. Think about all the stuff you try to cram in, all the stuff you're trying to do and how you're actually functioning, how your brain is responding. What was really beautiful is when they looked at even just 30 minutes in between those four meetings, the color in the brain, the functioning, the operating, the oxygenation that was happening, the blood flow stayed pretty consistent. So what are we doing with that small, even 15 minutes? What are we doing to fuel ourselves? Because the way that we get into burnout, folks, is that we are so busy spending doing to the point that we stop and we do not ask ourselves, what do I need? Do I just need five minutes to walk outside and take a breath? Do I just need five minutes to sit here and actually take a breath that I inhale all the way? And I exhale, I drop my shoulders that have been up by my eyeballs that I didn't even realize open my jaw because, dang, I didn't even realize that I could hold tension in my jaw and just take a minute. But we don't do that because there's this voice inside of our head that says, you don't have time. [00:42:36] Speaker B: Time. Yeah, I agree with you. And I think we are so hard on ourselves. We're harder on ourselves than we are anybody else, and we don't give ourselves grace. I know myself. I will admit it, people. I am one of the hardest people. I'm so hard on myself more than anybody. I'll give grace to others and tell them, listen, you're okay. But for myself, I am very hard on myself. So I think we have to understand that. And one thing that I started doing is if I comprise a list of things that I'm doing, and if I go off and start doing something else instead of coming back later on and saying, oh, I didn't get anything on my list, then if I go off on something, I'll add that thing that I did to my list, and then I'll cross it off because I've put it on my to do list. It's something that I do, and I may not cross everything off on my list, and who cares if I added it on? But it's on my list. I crossed it off. I did it. And I tell you, I felt so much better. It's been a month that I've been doing on, and I felt so much better because I was one of those people who would look at my list and go, oh, I ain't getting anything done that I wanted to do today. And now I may not still get everything done, but I look at it and say, you know what? I didn't get everything done, but I still got some stuff done, so I'm happy. [00:43:58] Speaker A: Yep. Andrew, what you're talking about is something that we do in phase two of the unveiling method in our integration, which is the self care plan from the inside out. And this is called the energy appraisal, the things that end up on our to do list and that end up on our calendar for a lot of us when we are unintentional or we're intentional, but we haven't done it with a lens of alignment. What we do is we step back and we say, I want to reassess my values in a new way because we can mask and camouflage values specifically if we are late identified. This is something that's become a survival mechanism. So I would adapt or adopt values for people around me. So when I started, family was in my top five values because, oh my gosh, you should value your family. But what I discovered as I started to really connect with my authentic self and what my true needs are and what I really value families in my top ten, but it's not in my top five. My number one value is my health. And the reason is because without my health and I've lost my health before, I've been completely bedridden. I was in a wheelchair because I had a horrific burnout and I have co occurring health conditions. So my whole body started to shut down. And my kids were little. And at that moment I learned through that really big contrast that gave me such clarity. Is my health really, is the number one thing? Because without it, I can't show up for my kids, I can't show up for my family. I can't show up for me. And when we start to look at what we put on our to do list and what we say yes to that ends up on our calendar, when we start to pressure test that in alignment with what do we really value then what's on that list? It doesn't matter what I do on it. It's going to fuel me because it's in alignment with me. And there's a researcher, an engineer called and his name is Lighty Klotz. And so lighty did research into giving people a particular problem to solve. It was a structural sort of engineering type drawing problem. And what was interesting is that we found that no matter the neurotype, people were going in and they were trying to add things to solve the problem. We all do this as humans. It's our natural tendency that if I'm going to solve a problem, if I got like a million things on my to do list, or I have all these things on my calendar and I got to figure out how to cram them all in and make them all happen because I don't want to disappoint or tell somebody no. Then I'm looking at how do I add things to solve the problem? But we have a subtraction bias. As humans, we don't want to remove things because we have this fear of missing out. We have this fear of I'm going to let somebody down. I have this fear that if I don't do it, then something might happen. And so I think that one of the things I challenge pretty much every group that I work with is, number one, really take a look at your values, pressure test them over time. I did this every six months for 18 months to get to the place where I've got these five core values now that absolutely in this season of my life, those are what I value most. And I use those to say yes or no, or even maybe to things that are proposed for my calendar and they go on my to do list. But then I also look at, do I really have the time, the energy, and do I choose to? Do I want to? Does it meet my needs to say yes to this? If not, I can say not now. I don't have to say no. I can say not now. [00:47:37] Speaker B: Interest. I love those thoughts. Beautiful thoughts there, Carol Jean. I just love them. If you could choose one word to describe yourself, what word would it be? [00:47:47] Speaker A: Playful. [00:47:47] Speaker B: I love that word for you. [00:47:49] Speaker A: What word would you use to describe yourself, Andrew? [00:47:52] Speaker B: You're probably the third or fourth person to ask me this, so I have been told that they would use genuine. So I'm going to say genuine for myself. I try to be somebody that whether you're talking to me on a zoom, talking to me on the phone, talking to me in person, whatever circle it is, that I am the same individual, authentic and genuine person all the time. So I would say genuine for me. [00:48:18] Speaker A: I like that. Playful is a new one I've embraced and really started to embody, because I was always so very serious my entire life. Because I couldn't be playful even when I was a child. Because that wasn't safe. Yes, because I was different, and people told me I was doing things wrong and I was weird. And why would you think that? Why would you do it that way? And so I couldn't relax. I didn't feel safe to be playful. And so at almost 50 years old, this is something that I stepped into. That is my words for 2024 are gratitude and play. And so I have stepped into this place, taking compassionate curiosity and grace to a whole new level of gratitude and play. [00:49:05] Speaker B: I love that. Any final thoughts today? [00:49:07] Speaker A: If you are listening today and anything in the conversation that Andrea and I have had has stood out to you, take five minutes to ask yourself, the one question that we don't ask nearly enough. And that is, what do I need in this moment for the next five minutes? And what is the path of least resistance, the low demand, fun, playful way for me to meet that need and fully receive it? [00:49:38] Speaker B: I love that. I love that. I want to take the time to thank you for coming on today. As I said at the beginning, we just hit it off right from the first five minutes of our conversation. I knew that this was gonna go like this. It was a wonderful, heart warming, vulnerable conversation that was so true, authentic, and I just absolutely loved everything about it. And I just admire you as a person, as a professional. It was an honor to have you on today. Carol Jean. So thank you very much. [00:50:14] Speaker A: Thank you for having me, Andrew. And I so am a huge fan of yours and such a huge champion of the work that you're doing in the world to transform how people are communicating and how people are really recognizing one heart to another and not a difference, but a heart. [00:50:31] Speaker B: I love that. Thank you so much. On behalf of myself and my guest, Carol Jean, I would like to thank you all for listening today. Until next time, remember that if we all work together, we can accomplish anything. [00:50:47] Speaker A: You have been listening to. Let's be diverse with Andrew Stout. To stay up to date with future content, hit subscribe.