SHOWNOTES
In this brand new podcast episode, I chat with Tracy Otsuka, the host of the podcast, ADHD for Smart Ass Women.
In this episode, Tracy shares:
✔️ what ADHD is (and isn't)
✔️ why ADHD looks very different in women than it looks in men
✔️ how every person with ADHD has an area of brilliance
✔️ how having an ADHD brain affects entrepreneurship
✔️ strategies that work for entrepreneurs who have ADHD
✔️ apps and tools that are helpful for ADHD brains.
Don’t miss this episode and let me know your thoughts after you listen. I always love hearing from you.
RESOURCES
ADHD for Smart Ass Women Podcast
Five Days to Fall in Love with Your ADHD Brain - tracyotsuka.com\ilovemybrain
I always love hearing from you. Let me know your thoughts after you listen in the comments below.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:04.030] - Gary Vee Hey guys, it's Gary Vaynerchuck and you're [00:02.590] - Gary Vee Hey, guys, it's Gary Vaynerchuck, and you're listening to the Front Row Entrepreneur Podcast with our girl, Jen.
[00:10.790] - Jen Lehner Our guest today is host of the podcast ADHD for Smartass Women. With almost two and a half million downloads. It is ranked in the top one-half percent of all podcasts in the world on any subject. Her listeners are quick-witted, high ability, and, like our guests, see their ADHD traits as more positive than negative. She's a certified ADHD coach who masterminds your ADHD brain is A OK, which uses her patented Coretography system to help ADHD women discover their strengths, step into their purpose, and live to their potential. She's also the creator of the A OK Everyday planning system for the ADHD brain and founder of the Facebook group ADHD for Smart Ass Women, which has more than 60,000 members. In a former life, she graduated from Georgetown Law School, investigated cases for the US Securities and Exchange Commission. And if that wasn't enough, built a high-end women's wear company whose clients included Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, and Nordstrom. Welcome to the show, Tracy Otsuka.
Read more...
[01:24.050] - Tracy Otsuka I'm so delighted to be here. Thank you for having me, Jen.
[01:28.010] - Jen Lehner I have been wanting to talk to you for such a long time. So I'm so glad you're here because I have a million questions. And the first one I want to start with is, what the heck is ADHD?
[01:40.070] - Tracy Otsuka Okay, so before I go there, I just want to let your listeners know that you are basically the one who started everything.
[01:51.110] - Jen Lehner I started ADHD?
[01:54.410] - Tracy Otsuka Not the ADHD part, but I was a big follower of yours. I did all of your programs. I think I went to your thing. I don't think I went to your thing. And were we in Charlotte?
[02:05.250] - Jen Lehner Charleston. Charleston. Not Charlotte.
[02:08.510] - Tracy Otsuka Yeah, I booked the wrong airfare first. I was going to Charlotte, and then once I got into the airport, I somehow thought I was going to Charlottesville, and so I missed my flight. I mean, it was a nightmare. It was so ADHD. But anyway, you were the one who kept telling me, do what you're passionate about because I was doing something else, which I ultimately parlayed into ADHD. And finally, one day, I still remember I was in Palm Springs and you sent me a message and I was like, you know what? I'm going to do what I really want to do. But I didn't think I could do, which was talk about ADHD. So first of all, I just want to thank you and for your listeners that are listening to this year who also follow you. Just listen to what Jen says. Let me start there.
[02:53.510] - Jen Lehner Well, thanks, Tracy. I really appreciate that. But it's true. You were so passionate about this topic. You were talking about it a lot, and you were researching a lot. And you had made your own discoveries right around that time. And you were just really passionate. You just lit up when you talked about it. So that was kind of a no-brainer. But I'm glad you followed your bliss, let's say, and you've helped so many people in the process. I mean, this 60,000 people that we're talking about in your Facebook group, it just exploded. It just exploded, right? This just happened. It just happened so fast.
[03:32.310] - Tracy Otsuka Yeah. And I mean, the thing about it is I didn't know what it would ultimately become. All I knew is I was really passionate about the subject. And there were a lot of things that I liked that I did before that which some of them worked. Some of them didn't work. But there was something about when you're really really passionate about it. I wasn't only passionate about it for my son the subject matter. I ultimately became passionate about it for myself when I discovered that, oh my gosh, it's about as inheritable as height. And guess who we got it from, right? But it looks very different in women than it looks like in boys and men. So once I figured that out and I really went with what it was that I was really interested in, it just became bigger than itself. So it was easy. I wasn't struggling anymore because what I was saying really resonated with these women. And what I always say now is that your people are never going to know that you're their people unless you're willing to get visible about it.
[04:43.010] - Jen Lehner Yeah, that's so true. That's so true. Alright, so let's go to square one real quick for our listeners who we hear ADHD left and right, the people throw it around now the way that we probably very incorrectly throw around the term OCD, we use it in the vernacular like, oh, I'm so OCD, or that's just OCD. We're throwing ADHD around the same way. But what really is it?
[05:06.510] - Tracy Otsuka Okay, so the first thing I want to do is I want to start by addressing those listeners who are thinking there's no such thing as ADHD. It's just part of modern society. We all have some ADHD. After all, in France, there's no such thing as ADHD. This is nonsense and it's misinformation. Every mainstream medical, psychological and educational organization has concluded that ADHD is real and that those children and adults who have it, benefit from treatment. Period. We're talking about the National Institute of Health, the American Medical Association, the US Surgeons General, the American Association of Psychiatry, the US Department of Education. They all state that ADHD is a neurobiological condition, which means that it involves the nervous system and the brain. So ADHD, as I said, is genetic. It's about as inheritable as height. We have twin studies. We can also see on brain image scans that the ADHD brain is actually different. It affects anywhere from five to 10% of kids and 4% of adults. And it does not mean that you are stupid, you are unmotivated, you're destined for failure. Actually, far from it. So if you have ADHD, you may have trouble paying attention, you may have trouble controlling impulsive behavior.
[06:24.650] - Tracy Otsuka You may be overly active. They call it hyperactive. In short, though, no one knows exactly what causes ADHD, but the belief is that it's a deficit in the neurotransmitter dopamine that that's what's responsible for it, and that this is what affects our brains ability to regulate emotions, muster motivation, and what they call executive function, which means that we know how to schedule and organize and exhibit time management. So me personally, this is what I choose to believe. I believe that ADHD is evolutionary. There's a psychologist named Tom Hartman who had a theory, I don't know, 30 years back that works for me, that were basically just leftover hunters in a farmer's world. And so what that means is we have a different set of skills if you think about the skills that a farmer needs. Right. They need to be very plotting and very linear and plant their crops and then sit there and watch them grow, pick the bugs out, pick the weeds out. Yeah. Not for me, ever. Although I do love to garden versus a hunter. Totally different set of skills. Right. It's really helpful if they're impulsive, if they're chasing after a rabbit, thinking, okay, this is going to be dinner for tonight.
[07:40.250] - Tracy Otsuka And suddenly a deer runs by, oh, my gosh, that's dinner for weeks. So maybe I'll forget my linear plotting plan going for the rabbit and I'll run after the deer, I'll go kill the deer. So ADHD brains are brains of interest. Think of like a light switch, right? You can turn it up and the lights are on, or you can turn it down and the lights are off. We have two speeds. We are either utterly obsessed at those things that we are really interested in, or we could care less about the things that we're completely uninterested in. What I have discovered with the hundreds of ADHD women that I have worked with because I work with women, some men. So it's not just a man or woman thing. It's the same. Every person with ADHD has an area of true brilliance and other areas where they're totally uninterested and they can't be bothered. And it's not that we won't do it. So parents, teachers, bosses, spouses, they try to make it a moral failing, a character flaw. We don't want to do it. And it's not it's that we literally can't do it. It is painful to do it.
[08:54.940] - Tracy Otsuka And this is why school can be so difficult for so many people with ADHD. But keep in mind, you'll go to doctors today and they'll say, oh, Tracy, you went to law school. You can't possibly have an ADHD. That is not true. There are people with ADHD who that was one of their areas of interest. They were really good at school. Now I could have been better. I had to work a lot harder. But school was not a problem for me. For my son, it was a serious problem. And it's interesting, the higher up in education we tend to get, and if we're working in an area of extreme interest, the better grades we have. Because if you think about education, education goes wide, right? It doesn't go deep. We have to learn all kinds of crap that really we're never going to have to apply and we could care less about. So when we finally get to the point where, let's say we're working on the PhD short of the dissertation, that's a problem for people with ADHD. But when we finally get to the PhD level, we are so hyper focused and so interested in what it is that we're studying.
[10:01.910] - Tracy Otsuka So our education system, it hasn't changed in 150 years, right? So there's nine to eleven different types of intelligence depending on who you talk to. But school really only tests two logical, mathematical and linguistic. So it's not that we can't learn. We just often learn. We don't learn the way they want us to learn. In fact, most people with ADHD, we are lifelong learners. We are highly curious. We learn really quickly, and we're still learning way after school is over. And this is because of something that I just alluded to called hyper-focus when we're really interested. And it also has to do with the fact that we have no concept of time. We're kind of time blind. And again, not everybody. So the problem with diagnosing ADHD is everybody's symptoms look a little different. So you don't really know what ADHD looks like, which is sadly, a lot of medical professionals, you can end up with people who are like, oh no, that can't possibly be ADHD because you appear to be too successful. You are running a company, those sorts of things. So if we find something we're interested in, I mean, we'll sit there all day, every day until we're satisfied that we know everything.
[11:22.790] - Tracy Otsuka But the problem is that's only on what we're really interested in. Right? So time will pass where you'll spend 5 hours on something and you look up and oh my God, it felt like it was maybe a half an hour. So I've never met an ADHD person. Literally all the ADHD women I've worked with, I have never met one who wasn't truly brilliant at something. The problem, though. Did you have a question? Sorry, I'm just trying to go ahead. No, you go ahead.
[11:49.930] - Jen Lehner I'll jump in a minute.
[11:51.010] - Tracy Otsuka So when we talk about the term attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, it is a horrible name. None of it is true. So, for example, the beginning part attention deficit. We have a deficit of attention that is totally untrue. We actually have a surplus of attention. We notice everything often all at the same time. But that distractibility and curiosity also explains why we are also so highly creative, because we can take all these disparate ideas and put them together into novel ways that your neurotypical person won't normally think of. Now you go to attention deficit, then hyperactivity. Some of us are hyperactive, but some of us, especially women, are inattentive. Many of us are combined type. And we'll talk a little bit more later about the inattention and what that means. But okay, so then we go attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. And I will tell you, I do not consider ADHD a disorder. I consider it a condition, a series of traits. And I just liken us to Mac in a Windows driven world, right. We just use a different operating system so our brains are not defective. Our brains are just different.
[13:13.190] - Jen Lehner I love that. And hence your brand. Your ADHD brain is A-OK. It's like a completely different way to look at this. Not as a disorder, but as an asset, really. So I want to dive in a little more and talk about you mentioned a couple of times that ADHD presents itself a little bit differently in women. How so? What does that look like?
[13:39.110] - Tracy Otsuka Unfortunately, like, in most anything that has to do with medicine, most studies on ADHD are done on men or boys. Specifically, in the case of ADHD white prepubescent boys, women have generally been excluded from the studies because they have this pesky thing called hormones that constantly change during their cycle. And this influences so many things. So research basically has just ignored women and only included men or boys. And the problem is it can look really different in women and girls. So you know how I mentioned before about you can have three types of ADHD. You can have hyperactive, purely hyperactive. You can have inattentive, which I'm going to talk to you about right now and how it looks different in women. And then you can have combined type, which is a little bit of inattention and a little bit of hyperactivity. Most adults, men and women are combined type. I don't really know anybody that's purely hyperactive, but I've been told that there are people out there like that, a lot of women and some men and boys and girls are inattentive. And so inattentive ADHD looks more like you're kind of Spacey.
[14:49.650] - Tracy Otsuka You have this dreamy quality. Think of, like, the girl in the back of the classroom. She's zoning out while the teacher's talking. She's shy. She's forgetful. For women, it may resemble kind of an absent-minded professor. So in your area of interest, you are freaking brilliant. But anything outside of that, like, oh, I don't know, getting your kids off to school, remembering meetings, making sure that you've got food in the house, completely clueless, because I care less. Now, ADHD women are twice as likely to have inattentive ADHD than men. And often what happens to women is they're diagnosed with everything but ADHD because the doctors don't know what it looks like in women. So they come with anxiety, diagnosis of anxiety or depression, Dysregulated eating, learning challenges like Dyslexia, which I want to make sure that everybody knows that I think the statistic is 50% of people with ADHD have Dyslexia, and an equally scary percentage of people who have Dyslexia also have ADHD. So what I always say is if you're diagnosed with one of them, you need to go get tested for the other, because that can also really screw you up with school and life.
[16:07.980] - Tracy Otsuka Boys tend to externalize their symptoms, right? They're typically hyperactive combined type. And they're the ones that when you think of what does ADHD look like, you think of boys, they're climbing the walls, they're trouble, they're not paying attention to their teachers. They're disruptive. Versus most girls internalize their symptoms. So what they do is they take them inside and they beat themselves up. And that's exactly why men fare so much better when they're diagnosed with ADHD than women. Societal roles and stereotypes. Right. Women not only have to manage their careers, but they're also expected to manage the family, the household, the children. And so what can happen is they do great in school because they're really smart, and then they're okay in their career, but they're struggling a little bit more. But the minute kids fall into the mix, the demands exceed their ability to compensate. So we see a lot of women, once they're of childbearing age, that they really start to struggle. And then they're told that it's anxiety, it's depression, it's all of these other things instead of ADHD. And I mean, if you think about it, you can understand why women struggle so much more than men.
[17:23.700] - Tracy Otsuka Have you ever heard a man beating himself up about the fact that he can't keep his house clean? No. I mean, most guys make jokes about they can't do that. Right?
[17:32.530] - Tracy Otsuka Versus women think that they're expected to be able to do all these things, and then when they can't, I mean, I have women that are literally rocket scientists. They are so brilliant, but they can't even see their brilliance because when they go home at night, they feel like total failures. It creates a lot of problems. We also know one more thing. Let me just say this, because this is really important. We know that estrogen impacts our dopamine levels, which in turn affects our ADHD symptoms. And we also know that estrogen levels change dramatically during our lifespan. Right. So during puberty, it's also very high in pregnancy. It drops after pregnancy, and then it drops in perimenopause. And that continues into menopause, where we, frankly spend a third of our lives. So what we notice is that older women start to think that, oh, my gosh, I have early onset dementia. I got tested for Parkinson's because they start to struggle with ADHD symptoms, which they were able to cope before. And then they start getting anxious and they start getting depressed. And they're diagnosed with anxiety and depression instead of ADHD. And often you can put someone on all this medication for anxiety and depression, and the ADHD symptoms can actually get worse.
[18:53.030] - Tracy Otsuka But if you put them on ADHD medication or at least allow them to understand that, okay, it's ADHD. Their brain just works differently. Let's figure out some workarounds that work for you, even if you're not trying medication that can really make a difference. But often you put them on medication and the anxiety and the depression dissipates or goes away completely.
[19:15.650] - Jen Lehner Wow. I hadn't really thought about that. But I do notice that, like, I show up for appointments on the wrong day more now than I used to and that sort of thing. And I'm like, am I getting early on Alzheimer's? Yeah. Okay. I want to talk about entrepreneurship and ADHD. And I've heard that there's a high percentage of people with ADHD that are entrepreneurs, and I'm quite certain I heard that from you. So I want to know, can you validate that? Is that true? I'm sure it is if you said it. And why is it that there are so many entrepreneurs with ADHD?
[19:50.220] - Tracy Otsuka Okay, so ADHD is a spectral condition. It's not like being pregnant, right, where you either are or you aren't pregnant. It's more like height, meaning that you can fall anywhere on the spectrum that goes from shortstand height to tallest in height. So, yeah, I'm going to say something really controversial that I say often. I believe that all entrepreneurs fall somewhere on the ADHD spectrum. This means that they have ADHD traits, but their symptoms may not have reached the level of impairment in home, school, career, relationships, et cetera, to warrant an ADHD diagnosis. And I'm talking about real entrepreneurs. And don't send me emails because people get upset when I say real entrepreneurs. I am not talking about ones from that own, like the corner laundromat or the neighborhood grocery store or part of like an MLM. And I'm sure there are some that are totally entrepreneurial that do that, but most aren't. Right. I'm talking about those who've created a business, something new that requires ingenuity and creativity and something that hasn't done before. So I'm talking about businesses that require a high level of creativity. And we have different kinds of creativity. And this is one of when you talk about people with ADHD, we are all creative.
[21:11.530] - Tracy Otsuka And you can be creative in, like the fine arts, right? You can be a musician or an artist, I don't know, dancer, filmmaker, painter. And that's what people normally think when you say that you're creative. So a lot of people with ADHD will tell me, women, because that's who I work with will tell me, well, I'm not creative well. But there's also another kind of creativity because you are creative. And it's called creativity of thought. And scientists say that our biggest strength as people with ADHD is ideation. So we can take all of these brilliant ideas and put them together in novel and brilliant ways. And that's really what entrepreneurship is, right? You might see something that's been done before, but then you're doing it in a different way. You're bringing new ideas to the table. And so our impulsivity and inattention, because ADHD is impulsivity, inattention, and hyperactivity. Right. A combination of those. That's what's responsible for our imagination. We have all these thoughts and ideas swirling around in our brains, which, of course, can lead to rumination and anxiety. That's the downside of ADHD. But the upside is that this same inattention is what's responsible for creating businesses.
[22:32.410] - Tracy Otsuka It's responsible for new inventions, new forms of thought. And the ADHD brain is really spontaneous, out of the box, tenacious, which combined with hyperfocus, means that we can achieve more. We work harder, often, we are faster than others in how we get to what it is that we want to do. But again, it's got to be in our area of interest. So it creates that kind of brain. And I really believe that if you go back in history, you're going to discover that it was that neurodiverse ADHD brain created most of what has moved society forward, and that includes the wheel. So whenever I talk to someone with ADHD, I'm also always blown away by how much they've done. Right. Many of us have really high levels of energy, and we've discovered that we're much happier when we're in action, because when we're not, we can slip into rumination, we can slip into anxiety and depression. So we are prime victims for entrepreneurial pursuits, like just doing a lot. And when you take those who have hyperactivity or the combined type ADHD, we often have little fear. We just kind of jump right in. We're doers.
[23:51.370] - Tracy Otsuka Right. That's the impulsivity. So there's no fear. We dive right in. Sounds like an entrepreneur to me.
[24:00.110] - Jen Lehner Well, my listeners and all the entrepreneurs that I work with are always looking for strategies on how to get stuff done. And since you believe that all entrepreneurs are on the ADHD spectrum, are there strategies that tend to work better for entrepreneurs?
[24:15.900] - Tracy Otsuka I think there definitely are. So I started in this online business world in 2015, as I said, with another business that ultimately morphed into what I'm doing now. And I have to say, I think it's the hardest thing that I've ever had to do. And as you mentioned, I had this high-end women's wear company. We designed three collections a year. We had sales reps all around the country. Twice a year, we went to New York City to show our collection, and before the shows, we photograph our designs. We had a marketing firm create a postcard. We took orders, and then we delivered them, and we started all over again. I still think this online world is so much harder than even that. And part of it is I think it's so much harder for the ADHD brain because there is so much to consider or not consider. And we love new ideas, right? We love the bright, shiny. So we're constantly getting distracted. And for me, it was this ongoing bombardment of, excuse me, new ways to market social media, Facebook ads, funnels, email automations. Take this course. No, take this course now. And all this packet was all changing so quickly.
[25:32.710] - Tracy Otsuka And so if this isn't in your area of interest, like it wasn't for me, it was really hard. So as I said before, my first advice is pick someone like a Jen Lehner and stick with her. Do what she tells you to do. You don't get to look at anything else or anyone else until you've mastered, like the Jen Lehner way. Because what we tend to do is we trick ourselves into thinking that all this action is actually moving our business forward. But we have to consider what kind of action is it? Are we procrastilearning? Which, yeah, I was totally doing that. Right.
[26:09.650] - Tracy Otsuka All the brightest, the newest. I love to learn. So all the different courses, all the different programs, and so what happens is you get stuck in the stuff that makes you comfortable, like the learning, because you don't want to be uncomfortable. And so it's doing this scary stuff. Getting uncomfortable actually increases your dopamine. And that's the neurotransmitter that we struggle to not get enough of. So when we do the scary stuff, we become proud of ourselves, and that fires our dopamine. And it makes us feel so much better. So we need to consider, okay, we know we need to get into action, but what kind of action is actually moving our business forward? I also think that building your foundation is so important. We with ADHD have to know exactly what we value, what our strengths, talents, skills, passions, the neighborhood of our purpose, where that is. And it's the sweet spot where all of those things overlap. And that sweet spot is where you should be building your business within. Now, if you're ADHD, it is imperative that you get clear on that first. And this is what I spend my life teaching, because remember, we have brains of interest.
[27:23.940] - Tracy Otsuka So if we're not interested, we can't get out of our way. So starting any old business on a lark, that's just not going to cut it. We have to be connected to it. There must be serious intention behind why we're doing this particular business. I did a poll in our big Facebook group a couple of years ago because I was just sure there was one main difference to the ADHD brain. And so I asked the question, do you feel that you have more of a desire to live to your potential and create a life of meaning, make a difference in other people's lives than your peers? 98% of the women who responded said yes. And that is one of the common traits that I have seen around all ADHD people. So it is so important that we really hone in on that intention. Okay.
[28:19.670] - Jen Lehner So no, please keep going. Keep going.
[28:21.640] - Tracy Otsuka So the next thing would be procrastination. Right? We struggle with Procrastination. For some of us, like Neurotypical folks, procrastination can be about fear. And for us, it might be a little bit, but for most of us, it's about emotion. For us, time and emotion, they're actually linked. So it's our feelings about time and planning and goal setting that can be the problem. What we're doing is we're often waiting to feel like doing it. So the reason most of us can't schedule our task by that awful thing that Neurotypical suggests called time blocking is because we have to feel like doing the task and we don't always know when that's going to be. So we don't want a time block because what if we don't feel like doing it when we say that we're going to do it?
[29:11.690] - Jen Lehner Can I ask you a question here?
[29:12.930] - Tracy Otsuka Yeah.
[29:13.360] - Jen Lehner Does this apply to when you pack way too much because you don't know what mood you're going to be in when you're on your trip? Because I do that.
[29:22.370] - Tracy Otsuka Oh, totally. Absolutely.
[29:24.950] - Jen Lehner Okay.
[29:25.590] - Tracy Otsuka Yeah. And then you use, I don't know, 10% of it. You're wearing the same thing with even.
[29:32.270] - Jen Lehner Exactly. Sorry to interrupt you.
[29:35.310] - Tracy Otsuka Some of it, I'm sure, is if the weather is going to be. But if this is a consistent thing that you normally completely over pack. Yes. Those of us with ADHD brands, we kind of tend to overdo everything. And remember now, just because I say we struggle with time blocking, I've met people with ADHD don't struggle at all with time blocking. They have no problem with time at all. I'm thinking of my son. He's always ten minutes early. That doesn't mean you don't need all the symptoms. These are just some of the symptoms that most people with ADHD can relate to. So to wrap up as far as your question, I'm talking less about strategies and more just kind of big picture concepts of how our brains work and how that affects entrepreneurship. So I hope that's okay.
[30:27.990] - Jen Lehner Yeah, it's great. But when you talk about all the bright and shiny that we get distracted by as entrepreneurs. Speaking of bright and shiny, do you have any apps or tools that are helpful?
[30:41.190] - Tracy Otsuka I do. I have certain tools that I can't live by. And so I would say the first one is the Apple Watch. I love the timers. As you know, it uses haptic feedback, so it's not an irritating, like, buzzer sound. It kind of vibrates on your wrist. So one of the things that we tend to struggle with is wash. And since I have the Apple Watch and I set my timers, I no longer wash one load of laundry three times. I mean, sometimes I would wash a load of laundry and I would forget. Two days later I would come back and it was all disgusting, that smell where it was mold. And I no longer burn food or forget because I can actually forget that I'm cooking in the middle of cooking. Also, probably the best thing about it, it helps me find my iPhone, especially when it's in my hand. Have you ever done that where you're actually talking to someone?
[31:33.250] - Jen Lehner I'm laughing because I've done everything that you've said, every single thing you've said. I'm like, yes, I do that, yes, I do that.
[31:39.550] - Tracy Otsuka I love it. The other app, there's a couple I love the Bear app. And what I love about Bear is unlike, although I understand. I thought someone told me Evernote does this now too. But one of my problems with saving things in like Dropbox or even Google Docs or Evernote, because I have tried them all is I can't remember where I file things and so I can't ever find anything. So the deal with the Bear app, I don't get anything for telling you this. I think it's $15 a year. I don't have to remember where I file anything. And I put everything in Bear from the paint colors that I painted my son's room three years ago to people that I want to interview for my podcast to like literally Photos that I don't want to lose. I put everything in the Bear app and all I have to do is search with the keywords of what it is. So there's no like in Dropbox where there's a structure and you give it all these file names and then I can't remember, well, which file did I put it in? So I have to put it in five different files and then inevitably when I go to look for it, I didn't think of the right file that I was actually going to remember.
[32:54.810] - Tracy Otsuka So I love the Bear app.
[32:57.390] - Jen Lehner Evernote does do that, though, I got to tell you, it always has. It does have all those folders and notebooks and all that, but the key is the tagging and so you just have to tag everything. So I always make sure I tag things in the weirdest way. So if it's a plane ticket, I'll tag it like ticket and then wherever I'm going. So like Miami, and then I'll add the tag like Delta, if it's Delta Airlines, and then I have to add like ten Tags because if I don't like you said I'll go in there and I'll be like, what did I call it? But the Tags help me find it and it's supposed to also read the text of things. So if it's like a PDF, it will pick up the actual content. But I'm looking at this Bear app right now in the iTunes store, and it looks like a beautiful user interface.
[33:43.890] - Tracy Otsuka It's so good for our brains because it's very clean and simple and elegant. So the difference, it sounds like between Bear and Evernote. And I haven't used Evernote in, I don't know, five or so years is that you don't have to tag anything. You just put in what you want. And it has never not found what I put in there. And I've been using it for probably three years now. It has saved me because you know what I would do? I would save, like, paint colors. That was the bane of my existence. Because then when you need to go back and you need to touch up. I couldn't find the paint color. I didn't know where it was.
[34:20.370] - Jen Lehner I can't remember. Swiss coffee?
[34:22.800] - Tracy Otsuka No.
[34:23.790] - Jen Lehner White? No. What's that paint color? Whitish.
[34:30.010] - Tracy Otsuka You don't know what I would do is I would put it in my iPhone and I would put it under contacts. And inevitably, because I didn't want to lose it. Right. Inevitably, I get the new iPhone and all my contacts would get wiped out and I would lose everything.
[34:45.390] - Jen Lehner How would you put a paint color in your contacts?
[34:49.710] - Tracy Otsuka I wouldn't put a photo, but I would literally make a contact of Marcus's bedroom paint and then in the nose.
[34:58.070] - Jen Lehner Smart.
[34:58.770] - Tracy Otsuka Yeah, I would know it wasn't smart because it would constantly get wiped out. So I'm still looking for paint colors. I'm thinking we have a bathroom upstairs in our barn. And I don't know, the toilet paper holder. I mean, my brother, my son had a party, and it got. Yeah, and they ripped off the paper towel holder. This was years ago. So there's still this. We've patched it all up, but there's still this spot of, like, where it was patched because I can't figure out how to get the right paint color.
[35:28.300] - Jen Lehner Right. And the right paint color would enable you to just do touch up paint. But if you don't do touch up paint, you have to paint the whole room. Yes, the whole room. I feel your pain. Okay.
[35:38.010] - Tracy Otsuka You feel my paint.
[35:40.410] - Jen Lehner That's very funny.
[35:42.330] - Tracy Otsuka Okay, so Tab Resize, which I know you've probably talked about ad nauseam, but that is a. You have to have Tab Resize or whatever. That's for the Mac. I don't know what the counterpart is for the PC. You use that, I'm sure. Right where you can.
[35:55.460] - Jen Lehner I use one tab. I don't know what you're talking about. Tab.
[35:58.180] - Tracy Otsuka Oh, my gosh. Okay, so part of what our brains struggle with is distraction, right? So I am on a project, and I'm doing research, and every time I have to do research, I get out of where I am to go look for what I need, and then I get distracted. And an hour later, I'm like, what the hell was I doing? Right? So the beauty of Tab Resize is I can get everything up on. I have a giant Thunderbolt screen, which is off to the side of my laptop. And what Tab Resize does is it divides my screen into either four parts, two parts, three parts, whatever you want. So I can have everything that I'm working on right up there, so I never leave that one big screen, and so I don't get distracted. You've used it. I'm sure you've okay.
[36:51.490] - Jen Lehner I'm looking at this thing that I use. Mine is called Magnet. That does that. So I'm going to look at tab reset. Yeah, that's exactly what I use it for.
[37:00.160] - Tracy Otsuka And that is a complete game changer. If you don't have that, you have to have it. Okay. And hopefully she's not going to hear me. Well, I'll spell it. I'm all Mac. But I use Google Calendar because it's just to me, so much better than iCal.
[37:18.240] - Jen Lehner I love it.
[37:19.440] - Tracy Otsuka I was forgetting appointments, and so I need to have my appointments show up everywhere. So what I've done is I've linked Google Calendar to my Alexa using an app called Fantastical. And that is an Apple. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's only Apple. And so what happens is it links to my Apple watch. So, for example, we were recording this podcast today. I got a message on my wrist, and I put the Apple watch face that has the calendar right in the center of it. I can't remember what I think it's called modern. I can't remember what it is. So that pops up on my wrist. I see it there. My Alexa sends me a message in audio. It's also on the screen that says, in ten minutes, you have an appointment with Jen Lehner. And then I also get a message on my laptop. So I'm getting messages everywhere. I just don't miss meetings anymore. So I tried to change during the holidays to the Google one. What's the Google one called? Google Home. Google Home. It won't do it. It won't announce my meetings. So I had about a month that I was trying to get used to it, trying to figure out if I could do it.
[38:39.770] - Tracy Otsuka And I kept missing meetings again. So I got rid of it, and I just bought a bigger Alexa.
[38:46.410] - Jen Lehner Yes. Perfect. Okay. These are slick.These are great!
[38:48.950] - Tracy Otsuka Superhuman. Do you use superhuman?
[00:38:51.360] - Jen Lehner No.
[00:38:51.860] - Tracy Otsuka Oh, that's saved my life. So it's expensive. It's called designer email because it's like $30 a month, which is insane, but it has saved my life. I'm literally inbox zero, and I truly probably had 15,000 emails. So what it does in this beautiful, clean, elegant way is it only sends me messages that I actually need to see, and it allows you to Boomerang message. So it does a lot of what Gmail does, but in just a much more clean, sophisticated way where I just hit God, I can't even remember what it is. I think it's control K, and a whole list of, well, what do you want to do? Comes up, and it's just so much more user friendly so that I can actually get to inbox zero at least once a week. Initially, I was doing it every day. But as you know, I've just been so busy this year, I'm now in box zero once a week.
[39:53.910] - Jen Lehner Amazing. Yeah, that's fantastic.
[39:56.910] - Tracy Otsuka I love it. And then the last thing that I'll share with you is the Date X TimeCube. So the Pomodoro method is probably great for a neurotypical. Neurotypical is just like a nonadhd, non Dyslexia kind of average brain. What was I talking about? Hold on. Your Cube brain. My data is Cube, so it's like the Pomodoro method. But my problem with the Pomodoro method is I don't have problems. My problem is starting. If I don't want to start, I'm procrastinacleaning. I'm procrastilearning. I'm doing everything but what I'm supposed to be doing. And so sometimes what you have to be able to do is just beat your brain and get into action. And so I have this thing called the Data X Cube, which is like the Pomodoro method, except for my problem is to start. Once I start, I can't stop. So the Pomodoro method is you do something for 25 minutes and then you take a five minute break. If I started, the last thing I'm going to do is go take a five minute break, because then I'm not going to be able to get back into it. So what I love about this betax Cube is it's got time on every side of it, and it's a timer.
[41:10.680] - Tracy Otsuka And so I just flip it on its head. I always use 25 minutes. And so the deal I strike with my brain is all you have to do is start. You just have to do 25 minutes. If you want to stop after 25 minutes, you can stop. And so it allows me to stop the brain going right about all the reasons I don't want to do it. And I get into action by literally just flipping the Cube. The deal is all you have to do is 25 minutes. And what I know about myself is once I start, I never stop. And so you'd think my brain would be like, well, okay, you think I'm stupid? I know how this works, but it works every damn time. So what I do is I just keep flipping the 25 minutes timer on its end, the Cube to the 25 minutes. And often I don't even have to do that because once I start with the 25 minutes, it beats it's off. 25 minutes is over. I just put it on its end then I don't need any more timers because I've already started. And so I'm totally into it.
[42:11.060] - Tracy Otsuka So that is one of the hacks that I would say is probably the most popular one from all the ADHD women that I've talked to and worked with.
[42:22.050] - Jen Lehner Well, these are just fabulous. These are great. And, you know, I'm a tech person, and I love all the apps and the gadgets and the toys, and I have the Cube, but I didn't know about the other stuff. So I'm super excited to try it all, because I'm not saying I have an ADHD brain, but I'm saying I probably do.
[42:42.910] - Tracy Otsuka As brilliant as you are.
[42:45.850] - Jen Lehner Oh, well, I don't know about all that, but I do know that I carpool with another mom, and we go one week on, and then we switch week, right? So I pick up her daughter, takes my daughter and her daughter one week. She takes my daughter and her daughter the next week. It's very straightforward, very easy. I don't have a problem getting up on time or anything like that. So I get up, and all I had to do was the routine is I go to the garage, I get my car out of the garage. I drive up next to the house, my daughter gets in the car. We go from there to pick up her friend, and from there to school. Very simple. We do it all the time. But the other day it was my turn, and I went and I got my car in the garage, and I just drove to school. I didn't pick up my daughter. I just got in the line at school, no children in my car. And then suddenly my phone rings, and I see it says Scarlett Lehner. And I was like, oh, and I didn't have to answer the phone.
[43:48.570] - Jen Lehner I knew at that moment what I had done. But it was launch week, and everything in my head was all about my launch of my program. So I don't know.
[44:01.420] - Tracy Otsuka I think, oh, my God, that isn't an Advertisement. I don't know. What is it?
[44:08.390] - Jen Lehner All right, so I'll just assume I am. And I'm going to follow your steps. I'm going to follow all your tips. And I do love your perspective. I love it so much. And I have no doubt that that is why your community has grown as fast as it is, that your podcast is well listened to as it is. And I want to send people. So let's send people to your podcast. It's called ADHD for Smart Ass Women. So everybody look for that. And then where's the next place we want to send people Tracey?
[44:37.680] - Tracy Otsuka On March 21st, I am going to be running our free master series that goes for five days every day. And the link is tracyotsuka.com\ilovemybrain. And it's called Five Days to Fall in Love with Your ADHD Brain. So if you've been diagnosed or you think you might have ADHD, we are going to talk about what does ADHD actually look like in women? And we're going to be creating a toolkit on how to work better with our ADHD brains because what I do want to say is I've talked about all the positives and how great the ADHD brain is. But the truth of the matter is, there are a lot of women who are really suffering with their ADHD brain. And I'm going to tell you, it is primarily due to shame. If you are hiding it. If you are feeling that, oh, my gosh, there's something wrong with me. If you think that it means that you're stupid and you're never going to be successful, that is just a bunch of baloney. And so, yes, there are things we struggle with. We didn't really get into a whole lot of them other than kind of the emotional part which can serve us well.
[45:44.550] - Tracy Otsuka But I think that a lot of the people that really struggle with ADHD it's because there's also trauma and it's like what comes first, right? The ADHD or the trauma and blah, blah, blah. So it's five days to fall in love with your brain and they can find me at tracyotsuka.com\ilovemybrain.
[46:01.910] - Jen Lehner Okay. We'll definitely put that in the show notes and I'm definitely going to show up for this and I'll make sure that this airs before that workshop because I want people to be able to participate in that. That's awesome. Well, thank you. Well, Tracy, it's always so great talking with you. Thank you so much for sharing your very gosh, vast knowledge of this. I don't know. When are you going to get your MD in this and your PhD in this?
[46:28.290] - Tracy Otsuka Because that is all about the pathology, right? You're sick, you're broken. You're weak. Because I actually thought about that. But then I was like, I wouldn't want to do what I would need to do with that and I don't have enough time anyway.
[46:44.130] - Jen Lehner Right? Well, I guess. And to me, it really sounds like what you bring to the table is just so much more valuable. Honestly, like you said, they're looking at the pathology. You're giving practical tips like, okay, I'm living with this. What can I do? How do I work around this?
[46:59.530] - Tracy Otsuka And the beauty of it is when you then get the psychologists and the medical professionals and the PhDs that are referring their clients to your ADHD brain is OK or ADHD for smart ass women. So I know that there's a hole and it needs to be filled.
[47:16.850] - Jen Lehner Thanks for doing your best for filling it. You're doing a great job.
[47:19.930] - Tracy Otsuka Thank you.
[47:20.700] - Jen Lehner All right. Thank you so much, Tracy. It's been a pleasure. I'll see you next time. Bye.
