ADHD Liberation, Coaching, and Productivity with Brittany Smith

Welcome back to Autistic Techie.

Today I am joined by the awesome Coach Brittany Smith, the mastermind behind Devise and Conquer productivity coaching.

She blends her expertise in cognitive neuroscience with a passion for helping neurodivergent individuals, especially those of ADHD, master the time, energy, and

attention.

Brittany's unique approach combines practical productivity strategies with tech coaching, empowering her clients to make their brains and their gadgets work in harmony.

Whether you're multiple tasks, feeling overwhelmed, or just looking for ways to make life suck less.

Brittany's insights resonate with anyone navigating life with a neurodivergent brain.

Brittany, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

Of course, I have had a career coach in the past, I first-hand understand the value of what it means to have a coach, as distinct from a therapist.

Can you sit us off and talk about what is career coaching in general?

So specifically I do ADHD life coaching, although we may touch on somebody's career, no worries.

Yeah.

So we meet the client where they're at and we usually talk about the future.

don't like accept where it comes to.

learning from the past to apply it to the future.

Mostly we're doing future planning because I do a lot of productivity coaching.

I'm often helping people get stuff to work where stuff isn't working and that can be anything.

It can be my morning routine, getting out of the door on time.

It could be like planning out somebody's business because they're stuck on go and can't figure out the next action.

Like when something's stuck.

anything, like I help people get it moving.

There's a lot to unpack there, and I definitely feel that a lot of those things resonate with me having an autistic brain.

In your case, your focus is on folks who have ADHD.

How would you say you specialize in folks who have ADHD with your particular life coaching?

So I also have ADHD and I have ADHD coaching training in addition to the cognitive neuroscience stuff.

And so we'll look for places that are commonalities where, yeah, this is a common problem, et cetera.

More of a learning on the job is I do also have AuDHD clients, so autistic ADHDers.

And so...

I've learned by working with people more than formal training, some of those places where we want to maybe try something slightly different when I am working with a client who's

ADHD.

I keep pronouncing it as AudiHD or AudiHD.

I don't know if there is one.

social media, right?

Not like, because I know a lot of AuDHD people, if I say AudiHD or AudiHD people I feel like it refers to the same concept, but I think every time I say that word I flip a coin

and I pronounce it a different way.

And I hope nobody gets mad at me for my pronunciation.

and since it's not an official term, it doesn't matter, right?

But there are so many people out there who both have both autism and ADHD.

I don't know that I have ADHD, I sometimes wonder if I do, but it's never at the point where I consider myself getting seriously checked out for it.

But how would you say that the needs of an AuDHD person are different from those who have ADHD?

This is gonna sound weird to anybody who's familiar with life coaching because you're supposed to be open to the individual anyway, but I'm almost more

watchful because the two tend to combine differently in each person.

And some people will present a little bit more autistic dominant or a little bit more ADHD dominant or we're specific.

I've got one client, we're specifically working on their ADHD stuff.

And then they're working with my partner in the ADHD guild who is AuDHD on the autism aspects.

And yeah.

and I work with a lot of people who do both, usually they're coming to me because it's a thing specific to their ADHD that they're wanting to work on.

But because they combine so differently in each person, I may watch out for those things that I know are common.

Like, for example, this one's a little bit more visceral.

you get a fair amount of sensory sensitivities with ADHD, but even more when you add in autism.

And so if I'm talking to somebody about like, hate going to the grocery store, they may not have even realized how much the lights and the noise bother them at the grocery store.

Like they may not have realized it consciously.

And so we might bring that up.

We might even just say, hey, maybe we look at delivery options or pickup options if they really are avoiding going to the store all the time, right?

What is that experience like?

It feels like an epiphany for people when you work with folks to cast light, not to be a pun, but when you cast light on something that they didn't even know was there, what does

that feel like for them?

What do you see when you see that epiphany happen?

Because I had an adult diagnosis for ADHD also, but it's often like a...

that's not just me.

And you get that also when you watch somebody else's struggles, like there's this weird thing with laundry and ADHD, and it sounds like this simple task, but like there's

something awful about that time delay.

And then there's, I did the laundry, it should be done, and now you want me to put it away?

And it sounds so weird because you're looking at these often brilliant people who get stymied by the laundry.

And...

because it feels so, well, I can do all these things.

I should be able to do the simple one, which really isn't true, but we act like it's true.

It can be this revelation of like, I'm not just a morally weak person for not making myself do it all the time.

This is a struggle other people have.

Can be first relieving and then empowering eventually.

an interesting transition when you go from this sense of relief, I can identify with a diagnosis because of my problem.

My problem is because of this diagnosis.

And then the follow-up is not necessarily what do I want to do about it, but what can I do about it.

Yeah, yeah, and there'll be different options and that's why you see a coach is for individually tailored solutions.

If you want something blanket recommended, there's plenty of other places to do that.

But what you want to do is find something that works for you.

But that first of like, just trying to push through it, which hasn't been working, isn't gonna work.

And to know that concretely, then we can make different choices, like you said.

I know a lot of people struggle with this idea of wanting to be able to do something versus not being able to do it.

This idea of pushing through stubbornly and trying to force something to happen that isn't there.

How do you approach that?

If somebody really wants to accomplish a goal, but either they don't have it within themselves to accomplish it, or just aren't capable of it?

What does that look like?

And may talk about a different way, but what I'll talk about is how much energy they're pouring into this thing that's not a good fit for them.

And we don't often think about all the other ways that impacts our lives that I don't now have that energy to do this big important thing.

And so it may show up as...

I'm falling behind in my work, but it's because I'm putting so much pressure on myself to do all of these little things around the house that I feel like I should be able to do.

I've known ADD'ers who had like their accommodation was that they always buy, even though they're more expensive, pre-cut vegetables.

Because if they're not, they just won't eat them.

They just won't get around to using them and feel guilty.

Or, yeah.

and is it more expensive?

Sure, but also you're paying for this convenience.

You're not necessarily like paying for the quality of the vegetable you're cutting.

You're paying for the not having to spend the brain energy to do something that maybe you don't have the capacity for or don't have the don't have the knowledge to do.

Yeah, a lot of times we'll talk about, because people like to talk about executive functioning, and so now it's this term, which is weird for me as a cognitive scientist,

but I'm just trying to work with, go with it, because it's now just in the vernacular.

But I think of it as like our executive function currency, which is a totally different form of currency that is also limited.

And where people have the resources to get it, it's not a big deal.

But when you don't, you do sort of have to do that like...

Okay, but can I afford the executive function curse?

Like what else is gonna fail because I didn't do it that way?

If I stack myself up with too many things, I might miss that parking ticket and now it's doubled and I'm paying the ADHD tax on that because I was overloaded on this other thing.

So we often don't think about that trade off that can turn into real financial consequences.

Cause you're like, well I didn't, know, I was too busy feeling guilty about cutting the vegetables and making sure I did it right that I missed this.

more expensive thing.

heard of this term before and I've experienced a form of this ADHD tax.

For me it's definitely like an autism tax where like I'm afraid to do something or I'm anxious about it or something else and then that it eventually snowballs.

Can you talk more about what what that term is ADHD tax?

I mean, the ADHD tax is very broad and I feel like it can incorporate that like anxiety tax too.

That's a good point.

And now I wanna like dig into it more, but I won't go there.

It's really anytime we drop the ball on something and it costs more money.

I sort of jokingly say that my biggest ADHD tax was not getting around to having kids sooner so I had to pay for fertility treatments, right?

But it's more commonly seen as things like I didn't pay the parking ticket and it doubled or I missed that bill and I had all of these back payments to do.

know, people who, and multiple people, not one, who didn't get around to doing, like filing a tax return, and then that became a habit for years, and at some point that will

catch up and it will cost more money, right?

In lawyer's fees, if nothing else.

And just like these very common things where it's like, we'll get either stuck on how, like if we had an unanswered question.

A lot of times the thing doesn't get touched.

And that probably sounds a little bit more like the anxiety one too.

Like I didn't make a decision on how to handle it, so I didn't handle it.

And then there's the forgetting about it too.

Or just got overloaded with other things.

A really, really common form of ADHD tax these days is subscriptions we never got around to canceling.

Right?

Yeah.

wife and I try to keep track of those, but even we still forget sometimes.

It's hard.

And you get to a point of, and I think our subscription situation has gotten there for most people, but where they are just too hard to keep track of.

And so we do let a lot of things slide that we might have paid better attention to if we had fewer of them.

Oh yeah, one of these taxes that I recall very vividly was when I was going in for an internship and I was looking for apartments to rent.

It was in Massachusetts actually.

And there was an apartment I really wanted to rent but I was very afraid of picking up the phone and talking to a stranger.

I was very nervous about it, very anxious I didn't do it.

And it was like a Craigslist listing so it was just a guy and his phone number.

It went up and I was so nervous, I was so...

anxious and antsy and I finally pick up the phone two weeks later and the listing isn't available anymore and I ended up like paying more in rent for an apartment that was a

little bit further away had I not just like I almost wanted to get over myself and pick up the phone but like at that point in my life I was still nervous and anxious and very I

don't want to say very autistic but it was definitely not a strength of mine to have a conversation with a stranger it was a very spooky thing for me

And I think when we can get to the point where we're not just wrapped up in our guilt of I should be able to do this and recognize consciously the struggle we're having further in

advance, we can pause and decide, is this something I need to ask for help with?

Which again, is a very hard thing to do, but sometimes it's the best way.

My friend and I would sit down and swap undesirable tasks at one point.

So I can't remember what I did for him.

but he called potential doctor's offices to see if they were taking new patients with my insurance because I just could not bring myself to do that.

And so we arranged a thing where we were going to swap awful tasks, but we have to be aware of it enough to be like, this isn't, if I'm being honest with myself, this is going

to be a gigantic struggle.

Is there another option?

One of my favorite nerd-versity memes is a Power Rangers meme, where it's the five Power Rangers, one of them is like, I can do the groceries, and the other is like, I can pick up

the phone, and it's like, I can do the yard work, and it's like, together we make one fully functioning adult.

It's one of my favorite memes ever.

I'm gonna have to find it now and link to it in the show notes somewhere, but every individual is different, and like, I know autistic people who struggle in all the same

ways that I succeeded and vice versa, like...

Mm-hmm.

me, executive functioning, me, like chopping vegetables, laundry, not a big deal for me, but my struggle is definitely more the sensory social space where they are all really

great.

My wife and I, my wife is neurotypical, so we balance each other really well.

Like she's really good about, like she's really organized and she's very clean and she'll hold me accountable for that.

And.

I kind of balance her out in different areas.

I'm a little bit more like good with the calendar.

I'll plan things out really far in advance.

So we balance each other out.

We'll remind each other to do things.

And then we also gravitate around like a shared system.

I just put like a big calendar on the side of a refrigerator.

And that's been great for us to like have the same source of information for things and write stuff down on it.

That's been a great way that we work together.

But like, that's a really interesting example of like,

having someone else call on the phone for you.

Yeah, and my partner that we run, the ADHD Guild, which is a neurodivergent nerdy community.

because their AuDHD lines up in such a way that things I hate, like the first draft of an email or the first draft of like a post, they'll just whip it out, no problem.

And then I'll come in and be like, well, we wanna make sure that we don't make this impression or like the tone on this.

But once there's a first draft, I can do it.

It's just that first draft that kills me.

And when it's not something with them, I'm, yeah, I may now use chat GPT, like for certain things because that first draft kills me.

So much at GPT at the end, right?

mm-hmm, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Tell us about the ADHD guild a little bit.

Yeah, so it's our community for nerdy ADDers, any neurodivergent person who wants to get more done and meet their people is invited.

We do talk more about ADHD, but autism absolutely comes up.

have, I don't really know our percentages, but it's somewhere between...

30 and 60 % are on AuDHD, guess.

It's a non-zero number.

Yeah, so it's a Discord community.

We have a basic tier that's the text.

We have a middle one that has like co-working body doubling, so you can hop on a voice channel and work on stuff with other people.

And then our top one has weekly coaching and comes with a once a month coaching session.

You mentioned body doubling for a second, and I only recently learned this one in the last few years or so.

What is body doubling and why does it resonate with neurodivergent folks?

It is where you don't work on something all by yourself.

Usually you're working on your own thing with another person.

Sometimes it works out where people work on the same thing, but you're often like, I have this task to do.

It is so hard for me to face it.

It's usually when there's like, either it's boring, it's painful, it's scary.

having somebody else there that is also doing something unpleasant and scary sometimes helps us face it.

Seeing, because we have the option to be on camera or off camera, seeing that there's another person there makes us feel a little bit worse about going and playing games on our

phone instead of getting the work done.

Not feel bad, but less likely to do it.

So we have a couple people who work from home and are on a large percentage of their working day.

just beyond whoever comes on it's great they're excited but they just realize that they get more done when they're there.

You said something that really stood out to me.

Like, I think I'm very rare for autistic people who I like going into the office.

I go to the office a couple days a week and I enjoy that.

I like the social aspect of it.

I like the organization.

I get to go do things.

And when you say all of that, it's like, I actually think that I also like going to the office because I kind of hold myself accountable to doing work a little bit more.

Cause when I'm at home, I'll play with my cats.

I love my cats.

I might dawdle a little bit.

I might get distracted.

Yeah.

Not that those are all like bad things, but if I have to like focus, I do think that being around other people who are also focusing, there's definitely an energy there and I thrive

off of the energy as a narrative-origin person.

Now I'm having this epiphany.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's also a place where sometimes in the chat someone might complain about the thing they have to do because then that complaint can get out of their system and they can

actually do it.

Like, or declaring to another person, I'm starting this now, even though I really don't want to.

It's, yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm, yeah.

And knowing other people will celebrate with you.

I love that.

Now my brain is spinning.

was like, is this why I like going into the office?

Is this really what it is?

I also think that like office time is so different like pre and post COVID too.

The whole networking in person setup is completely different.

At least for me, I work for a company that like

pretty flexible and pretty hybrid.

But I know a lot of my friends who are neurodivergent have had to go back into the office with like a mandated at least three days a week and they like it a lot less when they have

to go in versus when they want to go in.

Yeah.

Well, and I know some companies post COVID have moved to like very big brother tactics of like mouse monitoring and stuff, which is not great.

Like even if you know that they're all too busy to ever look at the data, it doesn't feel good.

It doesn't feel like a healthy relationship.

So there's a somewhat trust thing there, and there's also a neurodiversity thing.

Like somebody who has ADHD, like they might have the appearance of doing a lot of different contexts, doing a lot of different tasks and get distracted.

That's just how their brain works.

Like they might be going on Reddit, checking their email, doing something personal, but that's like a way that they get an outlet for their stress or to process something and

look something up.

And getting up and going for a walk is, in all people, like a well-documented problem-solving tactic of I've hit a wall, rather than continue to fight it, I will take a

break, and it lets your brain relax, it solves in the background, and we often solve problems by moving, by taking a break.

I don't say that I have shower thoughts anymore, I have running thoughts.

I'll be running and I'll be like, that's it!

That's the solution to my problem, and that's what I've been thinking about.

This happened to me the other day, not for work things, but for D &D.

I was running and I was thinking of a story for Dungeons & Dragons, and I'm like, that's it!

That's the idea!

That's the really strong thing that I have to do!

And it was such a brilliant idea, I had to stop it and write it down, because it was such a strong idea.

Yeah, I have aqua notes in my shower just in case I got to capture something.

Although these days it's usually like, don't forget to whatever, go buy something.

But like having that place you can write stuff down.

My favorites I've seen with the internet memes are videos where people will leave voicemails to themselves or voice notes to themselves of song or lyric ideas.

I keep seeing the meme of Roundhouse Rock, this guy who made the NBA basketball intro, and apparently it started with just a voicemail to himself.

And I'm like, it feels like an ADHD thing to do, but it's also very smart.

You're sending yourself a note to the future.

Yeah, yeah.

And any capture tool that works, right?

have a pen and paper notebook, I use the AI notes in Zoom honestly so helpful for me so I don't have to focus on writing notes down.

Yeah, I do find myself using the AI note taker in Zoom because I normally write pen and paper about everything, every meaning that I'm in, but having the note taker do that for

me, it's, I'm not like looking down from the camera, I'm not like looking away, and that's kind of a masking neurodiversity thing.

Like I want to show that I'm looking at the camera.

right?

Okay, okay.

I thought you mean you were taking your own notes inside Zoom and I was like, really?

That seems awkward.

Like what I meant was I was taking, pen and paper notes before, yeah, like, but this was before I had the AI note taker in Zoom, I would just do pen and paper for everything.

I have notes that go back to October here.

But more recently, because one, I'm in the office, I don't have this notebook with me all the time.

And number two, the AI note taker doesn't need notes for me.

I don't have to like be so conscious about the notes.

I just all kind of brain dumps in here.

Yeah, yeah, I'm always taking notes on my iPad, so.

I love that.

No, notes are really cool.

And I think that's a really important ADHD neurodiversity hack.

It's that executive functioning.

And whether that's a career thing, whether it's a life thing, it's just how do you need this thing to happen?

And how do you help people find their own thing?

You mentioned that like everybody's a little bit different.

Everyone has a different set of strengths, different set of challenges.

How do you help people

And you don't have to give away your secret sauce, I get it.

There's a reason that you do this for a living, but what is the strategy that you employ to help people figure themselves out?

I mean, first we're gonna talk about what's not working, right?

Like I want this thing to happen and we're gonna talk about it.

Occasionally there'll be a thing where I'm like, that's often related to other thing.

What do you think about that?

If it's possible that.

Because a lot of times the things people notice about themselves initially are not the source of the problem, right?

It's telling me you have a cough doesn't tell me if you have the flu or COVID or a cold or allergies.

It just tells me you have a cough.

And so somebody, my favorite is I have issues with time management.

It always means there's something else, right?

Like always.

Often...

Often it's that their work is incredibly demotivating, so they're not, like they run out of juice to keep working on it, so they find themselves scrolling and run out of time,

like, or something like that.

That's really common.

Sometimes I'll get a feel for like, ooh, are you doing anything fun in your life at all?

Cause you're gonna run out of juice if you're not.

or sometimes, you know, it may be a morning routine thing, but a lot of times we'll just start working on the thing itself.

And so we want to find where their barriers are specifically.

Sometimes they already know, sometimes they don't.

So there's just some detective work.

And then if they have any ideas to try, I want to do those first, because sometimes that's their unconscious being like, this really is the answer, but they don't trust themselves

enough to have done it without somebody else asking about it.

They need the validation.

It helps.

And I felt this too.

I will ask someone, has anybody tried this before and has it worked for them?

People will say yes, people will say no.

That validation is really important too.

I might ask, what worked in a similar situation?

And that's usually a good first place to go.

If they've got nothing, then I may throw out like, so I know a client who had a similar situation who tried this.

Does that resonate?

What I really want is a counter proposal.

Sometimes we just try that thing.

But what I really want is to just get the ideas going.

Because usually, if somebody comes up with themselves, it's going to be better, but not everybody has any.

I've tried all my ideas already before I came to you.

They don't have anything left, right?

So it just depends on the person.

And then sometimes it's just really, it's an investigatory game.

So we're gonna try it out.

But especially a lot of ADDers may like try something.

but try six things at once and not be sure if they're gonna stick with one.

And the magic thing about having an outside person who provides accountability is I'm asking you to try one and next week tell me how it went.

So that means this week you're only allowed to try that one thing, not like this thing and then this thing and this thing.

of like, try one thing really well.

Don't just try it and half ass it and be like, ah, okay, I did it, I'm gonna move on.

But no, actually give it a concerted effort.

Even if it's painful, even if it sucks, let's do the thing for real.

And I have felt that and experienced that.

Yeah.

I think of it as like a science experiment, exploratory style for anyone who has a science background.

Like we're doing an exploratory analysis.

Let's try it out, see how it goes.

Don't feel bad if it doesn't work.

If you come back and say, didn't do the thing, let's figure out why.

It's not a thing.

The last thing most neurodivergent people need in their lives is more shame or guilt.

Like that's not a helpful thing.

No, like that's a frustrating thing too.

And actually, you mentioned like ChatGPT before, I encourage people to use it just to kind of like bounce ideas around and be a sounding board because you can ask it a million,

bajillion, trillion questions.

It's not gonna judge you.

It's not going to think less of you.

ChatGPT is not going, and now it has a cool temporary mode too so they can like forget things if you tell it to.

And I do definitely think...

ChatGPT tools like it are very good superpowers for neurodivergent people to employ.

Just to have it in your toolkit.

Yeah, I know somebody who is using Gemini, like a specific character that they asked Gemini to create for them to be their accountability partner for certain things.

Because, yeah, it's specifically a character from Baldur's Gate 3.

I'm, no I have to, I kinda wanna guess.

is it a star?

I remember which character from Baldur's Gate 3, is that, sorry.

I mean, you can email me later and I'll ask, but I just, can't remember.

And so, cause I haven't actually played it myself.

All the characters I know about is from this person telling me about the characters.

And I know the two it's not.

Like, it's not Gale and it's not Astarion.

I was gonna say Astarion, no, that's disappointing.

That's okay.

Astarion's...

Okay, that's funny.

they thought that he would be too judgy for an accountability partner

mmmm you know what I who is it

you need somebody non-judgmental for an accountability partner.

Okay, I'm gonna have to come back to you of who I think it is.

So we got distracted by Baldur's Gate, the chat GPT person.

The avatar.

Avatar is what I looking for, not an agent, was an avatar.

Yeah, yeah, it's, I mean.

because you can't usually text your coach all day every day, that's a good stopgap, right?

But if you need to do something bigger, and well, somebody with experience, yeah, I'd go for an actually trained, experienced coach.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is.

anyway, we...

problem-solve, but then we check in on it.

Like, how did it go?

What do we need to change?

Sometimes we get it right the first time.

Sometimes we have to adjust.

Sometimes people have built up very large and complex relationships with their inner critic, which is very loud and has created a subsequent, like, inner rebellious teen who

just doesn't want it because they've been yelled at all the time by the inner critic.

And so sometimes we have to, like, work on those relationships.

Which veers a little close to therapy, the fact is that it still has to happen for our coaching to progress.

So it's still, there's still topics we have to talk.

I definitely felt myself kind of like battling with that inner version of me being like, like you should push through it, you should be stubborn, you should try this thing.

And I'm like, eh, I don't know if I want to, I don't know if I can.

Like that internal clash can be so tough for people.

Because it creates ruts, it creates grooves.

Yeah, yeah, and it makes it way harder to do stuff because we used up our motivational juices arguing with ourselves and now there's nothing left to actually do anything.

The well has run dry.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

That, and I felt it too when it's like, I did the one big task I to do today, now I'm going to go recover and play video games for three hours.

That, two weeks ago, I cleaned the whole house upside down and then I played video games for three hours.

That was like me using my energy and being like, okay, I did the very important scary thing that I had to do, now I'm going to go do the exact opposite.

To like recharge the batteries.

I have noticed that video game recovery is super common with my AuDHD clients.

I started, I got a new Windows PC finally, which where they can actually play like mods of all these games I've played for years and it's breath of fresh air, because I will

normally play the same game over and over and over, but I'm bored of them.

And now that I have like mods and randomizers for them, it's different, it's new, it's exciting.

Yeah.

So we're wrapping up on this episode.

What's the one thing you want to leave people with about ADHD coaching or just about working with ADHD folks in general?

Whatever you're going through, whatever your neurodiversity makeup, you're not alone.

Somebody else has experienced it and somebody else has experienced a more extreme version.

And that's the nice thing about talking to people who do this all the time is no matter what you bring, we've seen something else that's more extreme.

seeing something extreme, really working with people, those are all really insightful and awesome tips of advice.

No, I love that too, like, you are you.

Don't make someone make you feel like you're less than.

Don't let someone like get to get the best of you because you're still you and you still got it.

we wouldn't have these neurodivergences in as high a population as we do if they didn't convey some advantage to the population at whole.

We are so much more than the sum of our neurodivergent parts.

more than some of the parts.

100 % 2000 % agree with that.

Britney, if people want to find you, if they want to work with you for coaching, join the ADHD guild, where can they find you?

So I'm at Conquer.consulting on a lot of social media.

I'm ADD liberator, like ad liberator, but ADD.

And the ADHD Guild is at the ADHDGuild.com.

I'll make sure I put all the links in the show notes and the website is Conquer.consulting.com.

That is the website, which is really cool.

I love that.

I love that.

I'll make sure that's all in the notes so people will know how to find you.

This was an awesome episode.

Thank you so much, Brittany.

I learned a lot.

I hope that listeners learned a lot.

Thank you again for coming.

Thanks for having me on.