EP. 376: Rethinking How We Learn (Because It’s Not Working) with Deena Kara Shaffer

Summary

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ADHD for Smart Ass Women with Tracy Otsuka

Episode 376: Rethinking How We Learn (Because It’s Not Working) with Deena Kara Shaffer

Release Date: March 18, 2026
Guest: Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer, founder of Awakened Learning

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Overview

In this episode, Tracy Otsuka sits down with Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer, a leading learning strategist and fierce advocate for inclusive, strengths-based education. Together, they dig into why traditional approaches to learning fail many—especially women with ADHD—and what a more holistic, humane, and effective system can look like. Dr. Shaffer, who is not officially diagnosed with ADHD but has dedicated her career to supporting neurodivergent and struggling learners, shares her practical insights on how to make learning feel good again, explains the crucial difference between "study skills" and "learning strategies," and spotlights the invisible labor and emotional burdens women with ADHD often shoulder. The conversation is filled with actionable tips, powerful reframes, and compassionate wisdom for anyone seeking to build a learning (and living) strategy that works for their brain.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Breaking Podcast Rules for a Reason

• Tracy reveals that Deena is the first non-diagnosed guest on the show (03:53), and acknowledges “kismet” or fate in having her on, given her deep expertise and passion for empowering learners “pushed to the margins.”
• Quote:

  “We’re in action. Breaking every single rule.” — Deena (03:53)

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The Personal Side of Learning Struggles

• Deena shares her background as a first-generation student, her experiences with the trauma of bereavement, and how these informed her awareness that so many struggles are “off the diagnostic radar” yet directly impact learning (07:08–12:24).
• She stresses the power of radical inclusion and the often-unseen burdens (race, finances, grief, medical issues) that influence educational outcomes.
• Quote:

  “There is a layered story that comes with every learner who steps into a learning space.” — Deena (09:30)

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From “Study Skills” to Holistic “Learning Strategies”

• Deena reframes the idea of “study skills” as far too narrow; holistic learning strategies, by contrast, encompass everything a learner must do—pay attention, manage time tasks, communicate, recall, handle wellbeing, etc. (18:53–24:39).
• Tracy notes the particular importance of this distinction for neurodivergent learners, who need systems that align with “how [their] brain naturally works.”
• Quote:

  “Holistic learning strategies trump executive function coaching because it’s still broader.” — Deena (21:34)

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The Role of Well-Being in Learning

• Both agree: You can’t learn if you don’t feel good. Deena describes how her approach is always tailored to the person’s actual, urgent need but is always married to wellbeing—there’s no point hacks for time management if you’re eroding your sleep and burning out (24:39–28:04).
• Quote:

  “We try to marry them all the way along… Don’t let anything touch your sleep.” — Deena (25:40)

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Startable, Doable, Finishable, Sustainable

• Deena introduces her four-part framework for making any task or learning process manageable:
  • Startable: Reduce friction, break through inertia
  • Doable: Assess the conditions needed for focus
  • Finishable: Limit scope to something concretely achievable
  • Sustainable: Avoid intensity/burnout, focus on long-term capability
    (28:04–32:07)
• Powerful insight: Most task lists are overwhelming and unfinishable because items are too big and unconstrained.
• Quote:

  “My approach would be, let’s give you learning strategies for that and let’s see if we can get you where you want to go.” — Deena (28:36)

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Reducing Overwhelm—Practical Techniques

• Dr. Shaffer advocates for “subtasking the crap” out of to-dos: break tasks into “smallest, most imperfect, tiniest starting place,” and then contain them (by number, time, or other concrete measure), so you know when you’re done and can feel accomplishment, rather than endless guilt (32:07–36:05).
• Quote:

  “We subtask the crap out of something to make it the smallest, most imperfect, tiniest starting place…we didn’t contain it.” — Deena (33:05)

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Self-Awareness Over “Realistic”

• Both discuss the problems with "realistic" as an external standard. Instead, cultivating awareness of your own rhythms, capacity, and patterns is more empowering and humane (36:05–41:18).
• Deena suggests the word "awake" as a replacement:
• Quote:

  “Maybe it’s around this growing of awareness, the willingness, the commitment to on purpose practice, reflection, so you get to know yourself.” — Deena (41:00)

• Tracy highlights the value of understanding when and how you work best as foundational ADHD insight.

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The Critical Value—and Messiness—of Sleep

• Deena and Tracy lament toxic productivity and the glamorization of all-nighters, emphasizing that sleep is critical for memory consolidation, emotional regulation, and creative thinking (41:18–44:59).
• Quote:

  “Work fit around sleep instead of sleep around work.” — Deena (42:30)

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Concrete Study Strategies (Not Myths!)

• Deena busts the “learning styles” myth, arguing research doesn’t support fixed styles—multimodal, active learning is best.
• Effective studying isn’t reviewing notes, but practice questions and “spaced retrieval.” (44:59–47:49)
• Quote:

  “The only thing that counts as studying are practice questions and practicing them over time.” — Deena (44:36)

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Favorite Digital Tools for Neurodivergent Brains

• Deena recommends:
  • NotebookLM: A free Google tool that creates audio and video overviews of your study material, great for multimodal learning, catching up after missed classes, and reducing overload (45:02–47:49).
  • Magic To-Do: Free app for breaking down big tasks into actionable steps, essential for moving from “theory” of subtasking to practical lists (47:54–50:39).
  • AI for Reflection: Use ChatGPT’s "study and learn" function for custom support (“What did I do well? What can I improve?”), letting AI fill in where you’re unsure how to self-assess or reflect (50:44–55:32).
• Quote:

  “Holistic learning strategies reveal the how so it’s doable.” — Deena (55:15)

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Why Aren’t Schools Teaching This?

• Deena calls out the failure of education systems to teach universal learning strategies at scale—lamenting the narrow, siloed approach and the lack of systemic integration (55:46–59:54).
• Quote:

  “Learning strategies can multi-solve for, in an unsiloed way, inequity and injustice in the classroom… I’m on a mission.” — Deena (57:51)

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The Invisible Labor & Emotional Load of Women

• Tracy asks about “invisible labor” for women with ADHD—a concept Deena unpacks as all that’s required to simply show up as functional: trauma, caregiving, grief, chronic illness, racism—and how this impacts working memory, learning, and energy (60:11–65:50).
• Quote:

  “For me, invisible labor is like the ancestral stuff, the contextual stuff, the behind the scenes stuff that we carry with us. That, of course, could you say, how are you? And what would your answer be? I'm fine, I'm good.” — Deena (61:29)

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Tiny, Practical Workarounds for Daily Life (e.g., Laundry!)

• Deena’s laundry hack: Don’t try to do the whole overwhelming task; break it down into smaller steps, interspersed with fun or movement. Get others involved, and make it a dance party if you can! (66:24–68:32)
• Key for ADHD: Is it fun, challenging, or social? Use those workarounds instead of relying on the destructive “urgency” model.

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Prioritization and Avoiding the “Urgency Trap”

• Rejects the Eisenhower matrix as sometimes counterproductive:

  “If you're only doing what's urgent, you're in crisis mode all the time… We want everyone to begin to move away from that urgent quadrant into what is important, not urgent” — Deena (69:33)

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Where to Find Deena & Her Resources

• Website: www.awakenedlearning.ca
• Instagram: @awakenedlearningca
  • Free resources, low-cost inclusive group sessions for students, parents, educators
  • Training and talks for organizations

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “You were never the problem. You just have a different brain, which means you need different systems.” – Tracy (13:24)
• “Learning, leading, work, parenting doesn’t have to feel like suffering.” – Deena (68:12)
• “Maybe the riff on that is that we don’t often give ourselves the opportunity to reflect on our rhythms, on our pacing, on our chronotype.” – Deena (36:05)
• “Our goal is to change the conversation around ADHD, helping as many women as we possibly can learn how their ADHD brains work so that they too may discover their amazing strengths.” – Tracy (73:50)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00–03:53: Tracy’s show intro, how Deena became an exception to the guest criteria, moving day chaos
• 07:08–12:24: Deena’s personal learning and life challenges; broad definition of what impacts learning
• 18:53–24:39: Study skills vs. holistic learning strategies; what “counts” as learning, inclusion of wellness
• 28:04–32:07: Four-question framework: startable, doable, finishable, sustainable
• 32:07–36:05: How to reduce overwhelm; subtasking and containing
• 41:18–44:59: The practical (and messy) importance of sleep for learning
• 44:44–47:54: Best study methods and tools; myth-busting “learning styles”
• 57:51–59:54: Why these strategies aren’t standard in schools; systemic barriers
• 60:11–65:50: Invisible labor, trauma, and their impact on women with ADHD and all learners
• 66:24–68:32: Deena’s real-life laundry hack and lesson in micro-tasking
• 69:33–71:04: Humane prioritization and escaping the “urgency” trap

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Final Thoughts

This episode is a compassionate, energizing permission slip to do learning—and life—differently. Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer’s expertise in learning strategy offers practical tools for ADHD brains and beyond, helps listeners do away with outdated systems, and puts the focus where it belongs: on human needs, strengths, and adaptability. Tracy’s reflections and shared stories create an engaging, validating atmosphere for any “smart ass” woman ready to embrace her brain and reimagine what’s possible.

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Transcript

[A]

Before we start, a quick note. If you've been listening to this podcast and thinking, I need more than insight, I need support, this is for you. Your ADHD brain is not broken. It just never came with a map. That is why I created you'd ADHD Brain is a okay academy. It's my patented step by step framework to help you build a life. And that finally fits how your brain works. Ready to get started? Click the link in the show notes to sign up or book a free discovery call with me now. On with the show. Richard Branson, Michael Phelps, Justin Timberlake, James Carville. Wait a minute. Where are the women? Greta Gerwig, Lisa Ling, Audra McDonald, Simone Biles. That sounds like a list of highly successful titans in a variety of industries. They all have adhd, but you don't hear much about that now, do you? You know what else you don't hear about are the 43% of people with ADHD who are in excellent mental health. Why aren't we talking about them and what they are doing? I'm your host, Tracy Adsuka, and that's exactly what we do here. I'm a lawyer, not a doctor, a lifelong student, and now the author of my new book, ADHD for Smartass Women. I'm also a certified ADHD coach. And the creator of youf ADHD Brain is aok, a patented system that helps ADHD women just like you get unstuck and fall in love with their brilliant brains. Here we embrace our too muchness and we focus on our strengths. My guests and I credit our ADHD for some of our greatest gifts. And to those who still think they're too much, too impulsive, too scattered, too disorganized, I say no one ever made a difference by being too little. Hello, I am your host, Tracy Otsuka. Thank you so much for joining me here for another episode of ADHD for Smartass Women. You know that my purpose is always to show you who you are and then inspire you to be it. What we always do is we always screen for two things for guests for this podcast. Number one, do you have ADHD? And number two, are you a woman? Dr. Deana Kara Schaefer, who is our guest today, she met me here on Riverside, which is the platform that we record on. And she said, tracy, did you get my email? And I said, no. Did you maybe send it to our podcast email? And she said, yes. So apparently she does not have adhd. And I thought, not long about this, but hard about this. And I had actually looked at Deana's work for Dr. Deena Shaffer's work. And I am just making the on the spot decision that we're gonna go ahead with this podcast because there is a first for everything. For those of you who have been following the PODC, you know that I am leaving my 25 year house, the house that I raised my kids in. And so Dina, what you don't know is that this whole week has been basically a shit show. And you booked in. I don't know how you booked in. I had basically said Friday, nothing. I'm moving. So we are moving today on top of all this. But once you booked in, I thought, oh, you can do a 9am podcast.

[B]

We've broken every rule. We're in action. Breaking every single rule.

[A]

Absolutely. So let's just go for it. Because I know that you have so much value to share and personally I am so interested in learning and neurodivergent brains. Because typically the students who don't have neurodivergent brains, they cannot be interested in subject but they can still learn versus learn the traditional way versus students that have neurodivergent. They can learn. They can learn as well as anyone, but they need different skills and different strategies. So I know you're going to be able to help us with that. So why don't I start by introducing you. I don't know what happened to our filtering system, but you know, we've been running this podcast now. I think we're in our seventh year and this is the first time this has happened. So I believe in kismet and karma and all of that. And there is a reason that you are here and you need to be here speaking with us. So let's go. Dr. Deena Karasaper is the founder of Awakened Learning where she helps students, families, educators and organizations rethink how learning actually works. From one on one coaching to community workshops, global keynotes to municipal trainings, Deana is on a mission to make learning feel good again. You know, I gotta tell you all of your strategies about feeling good again. And I always say in order for us to actually do something, get something done, we have to be in positive emotion. If we up all this negative emotion, our prefrontal cortex shuts down and we can't learn anything. Let me keep going. She's the best selling author of Feel Good Learning and Raising well Learners, a TEDX speaker and co creator of the International Thriving in Action program, recently recognized as a higher education best practice. She's a regular on CBC Radio talking all things learning she teaches the popular how to Learn course at Toronto Metropolitan University and has won awards for her teaching. And she's a former two time president of the Learning Specialists of Canada. At the heart of it all, Dr. Dena Schaefer believes learning should feel empowering, inclusive and human. Her work is about helping people build strategies that don't just work on paper, but actually work in real life. Welcome, Deana. Did I get all of that right?

[B]

Yes. And it's always so humbling, like, thank you for making less of a mess out of a messy life. And also thank you for welcoming me here and to all the listeners who haven't said, oh, she doesn't have adhd, I'm out. I trust too that there's a reason why we've encountered each other and why I've slipped through the cracks. And my entire life is spent in service of learners who have a really tough time, who have been pushed to the margins of whatever it is they're trying to learn. And so it is an honor and a delight to meet you in this space and have this conversation. Thank you.

[A]

Absolutely. The pleasure is all mine. So I am curious, did you struggle with learning as a child?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So do you have learning challenges?

[B]

So my challenges come from the place that I think sometimes is under recognized. We know. And I was a learning specialist for more than six years within a disability services office. I was only, only working with students who had adhd, acquired brain injury, cancer, and the medication would impact memory, all kinds of profound kind of roadblocks and hard edges along their learning journ journey. But I was also aware of, wait, who's not in this room? Who isn't able to afford a psyched assessment, who isn't familiar with the language and the pathways within higher education systems. And my background before that had been years ago. I was a high school teacher for students here, where I'm located in Toronto and also in Valencia, Spain, for students who had very, very difficult pathways, addiction, mental health challenges, learning disabilities and adhd. But again, the question there was, wait a minute, like there are other challenges that maybe aren't documentable. So for me it is around broad and radical inclusion. So how did I come to this work? I am a human who is first generation. So there was nobody charting the path for me about, wait, you go to this service, there's a helper for that at what? And perhaps the biggest imprint on my life has been bereavement. So I lost both my parents in my mid-20s and that has been the galvanizing force because I Am acutely aware that everybody who steps into a learning space, whether it is online, whether it is in a big lecture hall, whether it's one on one in the learning strategy coaching we offer, there is a layered story that comes with them. So even if a student, and I would say 90 900% of all the students we support at Awake and learning have ADHD, I would say I don't know, 50, 60% of the students I support as an adjunct Prof. At the university have adhd. There are also other things happening. Systemic racism, housing insecurity, food insecurity. They've just themselves lost a parent, they have miscarried. Like there are so many variables that can impact how and if a student can really listen and bring in new information and make meaning of it and remember it and apply it and think creatively about it and generate new knowledge. And so that's the place I come from, where I have lived. Something that really wouldn't have fit on a diagnosis. I guess you could have said ptsd, but like complex grief wouldn't have been on an accommodation plan. But it, it impacted every single situation. My ability to write, to recall, to be present, to motivated. I'm not collapsing, I'm not telescoping or making things the same. But my experience, years and years, decades and decades of working with learners who have a tough time is my goodness, we both have specificity and we have so much that's shared about what makes learning hard.

[A]

Okay, so I'm going to keep going back to. I believe our, you know, our best purposes are those that give meaning to our past. So I'm still curious. As a child, was there struggle learning or were you one of those kids? Because you know what, up until probably first year of college, I mean I now realize I worked harder than everybody else, but I identified as smart. I thought I could learn no problem. I would have never thought that I had adhd. I didn't even know what ADHD was. And so I am curious with you, was there ever anything about learning that was a struggle for you?

[B]

Yeah, there absolutely was. And I was one of those people who there wasn't really a pathway or parental knowledge around. Like do we get you like tested, explored, investigated, examined for how you do things? And so what I suspect now. So I was like part of a gifted program, but what I wasn't tested for was like gifted ld. What would never have been part of the conversation was anxiety. What would never have been part of the conversation was like bullying and the impact of that. So there were features of like school avoidance. There were so many features of my schooling that were disrupted and difficult that at that time in this place there wouldn't have been, nobody would have known to like do any kind of exploration. And so I think that's my commitment to learning strength strategies. That is what drives me is if every student knew, if every student had their own personalized repertoire, if you had the backpack full of strategies that worked for you, that made it possible for you to have access to what is being taught and what is being asked for. Goodness knows, like that is the way that I can be in service. I can, I can act as a stepping stone for students wherever they want to go.

[A]

I mean so many students think that because school is a struggle that they're not smart and they just don't realize that. No, it's just because you learn differently.

[B]

Well, they think the problem resides in them. Instead of that actually the way that curriculum is designed, the way that instruction unfolds. But this is my commitment, right? Is like transformative pedagogy is what actually what is the alchemy between a student and a teacher. It's not that there has to be ease, there must be frustration and growth and challenge. But there are also other things that just don't need to be challenging. Like there are some things that are worth the frustration and sitting with and stress and then there are other pieces that just get in students ways. And I want, I. I can't change policy, but I can fill students pockets full of strategies and workarounds and that's my life's mission.

[A]

Let's pause here. Have you spent your whole life being told your way is the wrong way? If you try to use systems designed for a neurotypical brain, of course you'll feel like you're failing. But here's the truth. You were never the problem. You just have a different brain, which means you need different systems. That is exactly why I created the A OK Academy. It's my six step patented framework designed to help you reconnect with your intuition and build systems based on your unique strengths. Let me help you reconnect with your intuition, trust yourself again and build a life that actually works for you. You've had the answers all along. I'll help you see them. Look, it's time to stop second guessing and start trusting yourself again. Find the link in the show notes to sign up or book a free discovery call. Now let's get back to it. And did you get into this because as a teacher you were so frustrated? You saw these children who were clearly bright but were struggling and they didn't know that they could actually learn for sure.

[B]

Where this began in practice was as a high school teacher. Again, every student, the particular school that I was located in, high percentage of students with ADHD with mental health challenges, addiction was prevalent. A number of my students, learning disabilities, often many of those things together. And what I noticed was this, that my colleagues were so good at teaching the like historical context of George Orwell and this brain who, which was not tested right. Like I, but I couldn't retain it. Like I, I, honest to goodness, I don't care. I'm not very interested and I can't remember very well details like that. And so my colleagues, amazing they could go on and on and bring the lesson to life. I'm like, wait a minute, you know what I'm really good at? And I don't really know if it's a thing that you can be good at. I can teach that student who's bored out of their mind how to read this book or any book that they are tasked to read. They have to, right to, to meet the assessment, to do the thing that they need to do. I can teach them how to do it. I can teach them how to get through any boring ass reading. I can teach them how to build relationship with any teacher, whether they like them or not. I can teach them how to do work. If the sentence out of their mouth every day is I'm not motivated, I can teach them how to study that doesn't take hours and hours and hours and feels like suffering. That is the magic I can bring. And that's been the fuel for this life.

[A]

And you've never been tested for adhd?

[B]

No.

[A]

Because there's so many things that you've said, Dina, that, you know, if you're not interested, forget it. Poor working memory, how creative you are, your ability to build connection, you know, it is on a spectrum and some of us are lucky, like me, where the symptoms, honestly, the symptoms really weren't bad at all. I had all the positive symptoms, you know, the driveness, the joy and excitement and fearlessness. It wasn't until perimenopause that all of a sudden, you know, it fell off a cliff. So so much of what you're describing, it's like I can really relate to

[B]

this woman totally, and I will say that. But I was with and received tremendous support from a grief counselor for years. And she had a background in sort of mindfulness based psychotherapy. And she absolutely said to me one day, like, you could, if you like, you really meet the criteria here and you could if you wanted to. For me, that didn't feel. Because I have some wariness around medical model of disability. As a person who worked within a disability services office, as a person who is devoted to equity and justice, it was like. But I already know strategies to help. I am more concerned about all the people who either, like, who don't have a diagnosis, who need the strategies more than the diagnostic statement. It wouldn't have been like reorienting for me. It wouldn't have come as a relief for me. What I will say is that the older you get, and I don't know if you find the same way, like, I'm more able and willing to lean in to the things that are like. Like really, really me. The Dina Ness of it. So am I determined? Am I driven? Am I fun loving? Am I. There's like a tirelessness where I tire other people out. Heck, yes. But I don't. I haven't felt the calling to spend my time in a system that I find a little bit complicated. A little bit. I'm not so sure that I'm skeptical of that. Hasn't. That hasn't been a necessary pathway. What is essential is, no matter what your sentence is, whatever the diagnosis you come with, are there strategies that work for you to help you do the things you want to do? That's for me, the goal. Absolutely.

[A]

Lean into your strengths, screw the weaknesses. You know, we all suck at something. So are we going to focus our whole life on what we suck on, or are we going to figure out workarounds and do those workarounds in an area that we're passionate about and that we love? We are totally on the same wavelength here. Okay, so you talk about learning strategies instead of study skills. I want to know what's the difference and why does that distinction matter so much for women with adhd?

[B]

Yeah. What a beautiful question. Okay, so what I would say, study skills for me sounds very narrow. Like it is only about studying. And I know that's kind of like code, I guess, for students in a higher ed institution doing a particular thing like undergrad. But if we think about learning strategies, that is studying. Plus, what are all the things that a learner is asked to do? Well, they have to pay attention to things. Sometimes they are familiar with those, you know, content, and sometimes they're not. They have to take notes about things. What do they take notes about and on what and in what format they have to. I mean, this language just slays Me, but like manage their time. Oh yeah, listen, we can't manage time. We can align what we have to do with our available time. We can calibrate our schedules, we can sequence. I'm a big fan of talking about humane and non toxic prioritization. I could talk about that all day. We also can talk about, wait a minute, what types of tests are we talking about? Are you talking about a multiple choice? A kind of like you know, a standardized test to get into professional program? Are you talking about short answer? What about students who have to give a presentation? What about students who have to work with other humans in groups collaboratively? This is just like a tiny fraction of what learning strategies encapsulates study skills part of it. But even that, and this is my whole bent around holistic learning strategies study skills does not let on the crucial well being components that must be integrated in order for studying to go well. What is studying? It's trying to remember stuff. Well, we could spend all the hours sitting, rereading, rewriting or not. Oh my gosh. If there's any parent of a learner out there, please ask your student, stop rewriting your notes. It doesn't work. It just eats up our time and digs into our sleep. And there's nothing better. Nothing better for a beautiful ADHD brain or all humans than sleep, than protected nourishing sleep that helps restore our ability to focus.

[A]

Doesn't it also consolidate our learning too?

[B]

All of it like the, the, it sweeps away the unnecessary. It helps us creatively think. It consolidates the information, the new content we've learned. We could go on and on about sleep. So, so that is also part of holistic learning strategies. My preference is not study skills. Tutoring is okay, but tutoring is very, very like content specific. I need help understanding derivatives or whatever in calculus. They still won't know how to do that on a test. So tutoring is not equivalent. Like I could get some topic help, but I still need to know, but how am I studying in a way that I'll recall that I can retain that information and I would still say, sorry everyone. Holistic learning strategies trump executive function coaching because it's still broader. And here's the other part. We work with leaders. It's not just for students. There isn't one parent who comes. So we offer lots of like low cost, all welcome, including learners and families. Supporters of learners with adhd. Well come, I'll teach note taking, right? How do I know what's important when a person is speaking to me? How do I know what to jot down. And you know what all the parents wind up saying? Oh, my God, that was so helpful. Now I know what to write down. In a meeting, I have this AI note taker. It's taking all my notes. I hate reading a transcript. I actually never even bother. It's terrible. It's long. It doesn't understand nuance or emphasis or gestures. Your lesson to students helped me professionally, and that's why I'm brought into workplaces to speak. Because learning strategies are the same as first year of work strategies. We know about students entering the workforce, crumpling, feeling like, what I have to be somewhere five days a week. I have to sustain my energy. There are deadlines that are firm. I have to interact with people. And it helps in the professional kind of the professional years where you're really establishing and growing your career, you need to be able to project management. That's just like time and task alignment. It's the same thing, just more complex and over longer periods of time. So holistic learning strategies. For me, as boring as those three words are, and if any listener out there has a better way of phrasing that, I am all in, I am so open. But for now, that's the phrasing. It's integrating well being. We honor that we're bodies that need rest and sleep and community and nature and movement and nourishing food and hydration. And there really are skills, strategies, capacities that we can learn to help us pay better attention, stick to the task at hand, reclaim our energy, be able to communicate with others, be able to present our ideas, be able to recall when we need to, be able to manage our stress so we have more access to what we know. Holistic learning strategies.

[A]

So where do you start when you're talking about holistic learning strategies? Is it always starting at well being? You have to feel good to do well. You can't be discombobulated and expect that anything's going to go in there.

[B]

Yeah. What I mean, I love that question. In a way, my answer is twofold. So one is it really depends on the human being in front of me. Because that human might be like, look, I know I got to deal with my relationship with time, but I actually just have a test in four days that I need you to help with. Be like, got it. We'll just zero on that. Or an executive who's come in like, okay, I'm aware that there's some other things I need to deal with, but I have a presentation in four days. I had Beautiful example. I have a lawyer who reached out to me who has ADHD, who also is exploring a diagnosis of autism. And they share like. Okay, so the thing is is we have to bill in six minute increments and all of my colleagues are really good at keeping track and I can't. So yes, I need to do some deeper work about strategies that can help me with an, an odd DHD diagnosis. But what I really need right now is can you just give me time management strategies so I can do the thing? Because I have to do the thing today. Yes. So the first part to answer your question is it depends on the thing that is most pressing, that is top of mind and heart, the person right in front of you. That's what's going to guide what happens first in that encounter and conversation. The second part I would say is, well, being alone doesn't necessarily help us with systems. So what I tell a student, look, here's some study strategies. Do them first and then we'll work out on your sleep. No, we try to marry them all the way along. So if we're going to talk about time, we're going to talk about strategies to help you do the thing by a certain deadline, within a time frame, not spending too much time ever at one go, how do you start so that you make the most of your time Time. We're also going to marry that with and don't let anything touch your sleep. And here's how we're going to boundary and protect that. So it's always going to be married together but it's usually, usually a conversation around time awareness and time alignment and integrating well, being from the gap.

[A]

I was just thinking of one of our students and she is in a really high powered career and the reason she is good at what she does, which is just constant like, you know, things flying at her from all different places. She never really, she tries to close her door but it never really works because that is her job. And so I'm thinking, you know, just ADHD generally. Often we can have these perfectionistic mindset and this kind of savior sort of like, well we can save the day because then people are gonna be so happy with us. And I was talking to her about this and she has these two or three little kids who are not gonna be, you know, three and four for the rest of their lives. Two kids. And it just seemed like everything she's trying to accomplish, it's just not realistic. And so she was doing things like cutting into family time, not, you know, working really late at night, so she wasn't getting her sleep. Can you speak to that? Is that basically what you're saying?

[B]

Yeah. So that's exactly who we love to support. So you know the questions like if we think, okay, well what would we advise? How could we help that person in front of us? Well, we might ask around if we're borrowing from the things that we value and cherish the most. Our family, time with family, precious little humans. And I'm a mom of three, so I all the way get it. And they're not little anymore and I long for that. So all the way I get it. The first thing that we would ask is what could we do? What strategies, micro interventions could we do to make the start of the task more useful? How could we reduce the friction so we can buy you some increments of time? It's not about hyper efficiency. It is not about toxic productivity. We're not asking anybody to do more. That's dangerous. That's like that toxic positivity stuff too. Like we, we want to be really careful about that. But if that person said, I have this job, I have these aims, I have these ambitions, they mean something to me. I want to do this project, this project, this project. The first thing that I wouldn't ever say to them is it's not realistic. I'll tell you why. It's one of the problems I have with smart goals. Smart goals for me are a disaster. Smart goals come out of performance reviews and middle management. They're not real and they're, and they're not helpful for people. And you know what the usually is in smart goals? Realistic. And if you ask most students with ADHD what their early schooling was like, they will tell you the hurt of a teacher that said to them early on, that's just not realistic for you or a high school teacher who said about a potential career path or doing a more advanced course. It's just not very realistic. Like that is spirit crushing, life changing. We're just stop, we're closing a door for someone else. My approach would be let's give you learning strategies for that and let's see if we can get you where you want to go. So back to this lovely professional human with small children. We ask about learning strategies makes work more startable. So what are the starting roadblocks? I mean in ADHD world it's like task initiation. Starting is hard. The inertia right of where like we're doing one thing, we're in a groove and maybe that's like I'm on the commute or I'm setting up my, you know, start of the day and it's really, really hard to move from that thing to the next thing. How do we ease that friction point? How do we smooth out that bottleneck? Then we might ask this lovely human, what makes the work more doable so that you can actually do that work the 30 minutes of this or the 45 minutes of this? Not about hyper scheduling. We don't need that anxiety. It's not hyper vigilance when we're planning, but it's asking when you're doing it. What else are you doing? What is it like to do your work? What are the conditions around the doability of your work? And then we would ask around finishability. That's what we ask with learning strategies. What makes this finishable for you? What is the thing that for folks with ADHD and beyond? I'm overwhelmed, right? I'm stopped in my tracks. I'm immobilized by overwhelm. Okay, so what can we do to lessen and ease overwhelm? And then we ask in learning strategies, how do we make this sustainable? Because there is no point overdoing it. Overworking, doing all of the things on one day and then we're in a state of collapse by the evening or the next day. So that's the heart of holistic learning strategies work. We make it startable, doable, finishable, sustainable. That's the premise. And so can we look, can we use strategies? Can we create systems for this lovely, well meaning, ambitious person with two small children? How do we help you do your work that you want to do and get you home on time and get you to bed on time? And we're going to actually come from a place of uplift and hope because it is possible. It really is possible.

[A]

So when you talk about what can we do to reduce overwhelm, take us through that.

[B]

So one of the things that's born out of ADHD literature and practice, and this is where for me it becomes beautiful because I am here all in to support students and learners and leaders and executives with adhd. But remember, I'm also a human who believes there's lots of, not just other diagnoses, but there's other things that impact that would never go on a diagnostic sentence like that. Just, just, it's like the fullness of a human's life. So you're, for example, perimenopause. That's not gonna, you're not gonna, what are you gonna get a diagnosis that's not gonna go on an accommodation plan.

[A]

No. They just assume right that, oh well, that's just what happens.

[B]

That's just what happens. So and, and that happens all of the time. Somebody who's experienced gender based violence, Somebody who's been broken up with or is going through divorce. You tell me that doesn't impact memory. A cognitive clarity. Again, I'm not collapsing. I'm just allowing for more variations of human life. So how do we reduce overwhelm? Whether you have ADHD or any other number of things that are really getting in your way of starting a thing or doing a thing? Well, what do we know from folks with adhd? What do we know works chunking. We subtask the crap out of something to make it the smallest, most imperfect, tiniest starting place. But it's not just that. We actually contain it too. Here's what students always do. They'll have a to do list. And on that to do list will be a bunch of easy stuff. And then they'll have stuff like study bio or write essay. You know what is impossible to do? Write essay or study bio because we never subtasked it. We don't know what the component parts are. But also we didn't contain it. So what do most people, students and professionals? Well, I'll just do it for as long as I can. I'll do as much of it as I have energy for. I'll do it until I get tired. This is an exhausting strategy because when do we know that we're finished? How do we know when we can put the work down? But if instead that student put I'm going to do 15 bio practice questions. I am going to write a hundred words of my essay or do it by space. I'm going to write five sentences or do it by type. I'm going to write one paragraph or the, you know, five bullet points towards the outline. Now we have it not just subtasked, we have have it in a container. So it's not going to just like ripple out into the rest of our day. We've contained it in space. I know when I'm done. And I think one of the conundrums that we all experience is we never actually know or feel like we're done work. And so the work could just eclipse the whole day for each one of us.

[A]

So that goes back to our lovely professional because I think that is exactly it. If you think I should be able to get these hundred things done,

[B]

how,

[A]

you know, versus if you pulled out maybe three of them and they're not too big. So you're right, you're always gonna feel negative emotion because you're never gonna feel done versus if you would pull those small things out, you accomplish them, okay, you're done. So, so much of it sounds like is changing our. And I hate to change someone's expectation. Cause I completely relate to what you're saying. You never want to tell someone you can't do this, but sometimes we really can't. And we're beating ourselves up over something that nobody could do.

[B]

Or like maybe the riff on that is that we don't often give ourselves the opportunity to reflect on our rhythms, on our pacing, on the, you know, our chronotype. Like, when are we actually likeliest to be alert as opposed to like when we're in a dip of energy and aligning our work that way. Because we're in go mode so much of the time, there isn't usually a pause. So it's like we don't even know what's realistic for ourselves if we want to use that word. We don't really know what is satisfying. Like, when is enough enough? What is my pace? You know, there's some beautiful, like, you know, beautiful influencers who talk about like in the ADHD world who talk about like 150, 30. So what is your 100% day and setting, like to your point, expectations around that? This is my morning routine. This is my afternoon routine. This is my workflow for a day where I have like a hundred percent. The sun is shining, Finances good. Relationship good. I listen to the best song on the way to work. My kids were amazing. And then there's a 50 percenter where you're like, well, whatever, I had like six hours of sleep. It's good enough. Cloudy state of the world is kind of a mess. And then there's the, yeah, moving. We're moving on the same day as we're doing a podcast or 30%, where actually it's pretty tough. And so then if we're going to go with this word realistic, we have a couple of different realities that we've named because we're not just one way whether we have ADHD or not. We don't just show up with one amount, one bucket of energy every day. It's not the same wellspring every day. So I really like for this person, this professional, to borrow not from their sleep time, from their work time, because it is work to grow not in their sense of what's realistic, to grow in their awareness of, wait, when am I likeliest to have energy with me. How many tasks do I wind up getting done? If I do like a little kind of self diagnosis here, If I look back the last two weeks or two months, turns out that on average I get kind of four main things a day, like one big project, two smaller ones, and then one really simple task like, you know, that's more or less my rhythm. You get to know yourself. So it's not about anybody imposing that's realistic or not. It's you getting to know to have the life. I want to move forward on the tasks that are important to me. Me, I'm actually not going to put anything more in my planner or anything more on my plate or anything more in my, like in my heart than sort of this. And look, I might even have a backup list here. Here's an ongoing. If I want to tackle a couple otherwise to exactly what you said, I'm going to be in a constant loop of and I didn't do this, and I didn't do this and I didn't do this and I didn't get to this. I might have done 15 things, but I failed somehow today or I have to keep going until they're all done.

[A]

Done. So it really sounds like it's about what, you know, so much of ADHD is about, about awareness and really understanding when are you the most productive? How much can you typically get done then? And I think also especially for us, you know, some days we are going to get three times done what anybody else gets done, but then we might crash for the next two days. So it's just a different pattern, a different cycle.

[B]

That's right. And to ask yourself, what were the conditions of me getting stuff done.

[A]

Yeah, why were you so productive? Exactly.

[B]

Because those are the variables you might have some control over. Now I'm less interested in like, oh, we've arrived at global peace, so my heart is soothed, I can get my work done, talk about something we don't have much control over, although many of us wish we did. But I what, what could have gone into that productive day was, man, I had a great sleep. And then we go back, what, what were the conditions for that great sleep? You know, and it's not just I had a bubble bath. No, I had a best case, worst case scenario, you know, ready to go blank piece of paper beside my bed in case I woke up with the worries, in case my brain woke me up racing, heart going, what about this? What about this?

[A]

This?

[B]

I had a strategy for that. I would write down okay, what's the worst case? Assign a percentage. What's the best case? Assign a percentage. What's likeliest? Okay, I, I look at that strategy. It helped me sleep or it helped me calm my, kind of like my activation in the middle of the night. I went back to bed. I had a great morning routine. I gave myself a little bit more time in my routine in the morning. I moved in the morning or I moved towards the end of the day. When you adjust those variables, right. You get to know what supports, what uplifts, what renews your capacity and what depletes. So maybe not realistic. Maybe it's around this growing of awareness, the willingness, the commitment to on purpose practice, reflection, so you get to know yourself.

[A]

Okay, so what is a better word than realistic? Because I agree with what you're saying.

[B]

I'm a big fan of the word awake.

[A]

Okay, talk about that. I think you're a big fan of the word asleep too, though.

[B]

I am. And it's my, it's my daily wrestle. Like I, I know it because I live it. Right. So I, my partner, my husband is chronically ill and for years I woke up in the middle of the night. Is he still breathing? Right. He has chronic lung challenge.

[A]

I can relate.

[B]

Right. And especially if your life has been imprinted by loss, you're like that kind of hyper vigilant.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

When you have children, you're like scanning, scanning like a cat with their ears. Like, is that, Is she crying? Are you breathing? Totally. So that has been a really hard place to quell. So I take sleep, I guess to heart because day in, day out, whether podcast radio, other forms of media, Instagram, get your sleep, get your sleep, get your sleep, get your sleep. Sleep optimizing protocols. And I just find it a little tiresome because where's the, like, the messiness, the reality of people's lives, of the things that make it very difficult to sleep, that aren't just blue light on your phone, like it's a. It can be a little bit more complicated for people than that, you know, or we shame people. You're not getting enough sleep. So sleep is important because we often have. I often work with students and leaders. I'll sleep when I'm done my work. And what we actually want to do is have work fit around sleep instead of sleep around work. And because I worked on a campus for so long, you'd go into a bathroom stall or you'd see on the wall, there would be, literally in the MBA program, there would be an icon of a student Downing coffee and promoting all nighters. So I want students to know that actually that, like, myth and that, like, cliched narrative of you're walking around in your pajamas with deep, dark, exhausted circles under your eyes. Like, it actually doesn't have to look or feel like that at all. Okay. Like, at all.

[A]

I don't get that. You know, because, like, all you have to do. One time in college, my freshman year, I stayed up all night, took no dose. I can't handle caffeine, by the way. But I didn't know that about myself. And I literally bombed. Like, I couldn't even think. So I don't understand students who do that. And it works.

[B]

Well, let's. I think we would need to interrogate works, right? Like, work for how long? You could do great on the quiz. Do you remember any of that material on finals? And instead we learned. We do learning strategies so that we learn. We study incrementally over time. And just for any parents listening, look, we tell students, ditch rewriting your notes. There's no such thing as quote, unquote, review. Forget like, like, whatever students say. I'm going over my teacher's lesson notes or my lecture notes. None of that is studying. Studying is practice questions. That's all you need to know. Have you ever, like, I'll come on a podcast again. I mean, we would break the rules twice. Then I could talk all about studying. But the only thing that counts as studying are practice questions and practicing them over time just to. I can't not say that because that's my life's work. Like, I just need everyone to know that.

[A]

So studying is. Is practice questions. That's it.

[B]

That's it. And what is incredible, if we want to talk about, like, humane efficiency for students, the tech tools, the ethical AI that is available to students, Notebook LM is my ADHD and autism tool for life, but also for all students.

[A]

What is it? What is NotebookLM?

[B]

Wow, I'm so glad you asked.

[A]

Can adults use it too?

[B]

You could use it immediately. So here's the most amazing thing about Notebook lm.

[A]

Okay, so this is why you had to come on.

[B]

I know. So I'll get a retroactive diagnosis and then it'll be like, full permission. I know. Wouldn't it be funny if, like, it turns out in a year be like, all right, Tracy. Well, so it turns out well.

[A]

And then the anxiety, you know, when you've got that brain that's constantly totally

[B]

a mile a minute. I know. I hear you. So what is NotebookLM? It is a Free Google product that does not scrape the garbage Interweb. It is like you set the container back to containers. You set the container. So for a student put in all your lecture notes and it will this is amazing ADHD friends. It will create an audio overview which means podcast of two AI voices that sound like real fun animated podcast hosts. Like as fun a conversation as you and I are having in less than 20 minutes. Download, go on a walk and what it will do for you is give you a kind of priming broad strokes under beautiful understanding of your lecture material. So now I can move and I can get it in a multimodal way. I can revisit it. And in learning strategy land that's called an advanced organizer where I'm laying the foundation. I'm making sure that I a filing system in my brain so new content I can, I can bring in. Because if I'm just being like sensory overload, more content I can't understand, I can't absorb, I can't engage. So we can up our engagement by making sure that the foundation of knowledge is solid. How do we do that? Boring language again. Advanced organizer. How do we do that? Notebook LM Audio overview. Not just that, that for all my pals out there who miss class because they're not sleeping. Because life because they wrote it in the schedule wrong. Because, because. Because you can take the lecture deck that your Prof. Or your instructor posts, put it into NotebookLM and then ask for a video overview and it will create with a voiceover a canva style lecture like deeply engaging video. So I work with humans who miss class for a lot of reasons who will avoid class. This helps you get back in. This helps fill in the gaps when you've missed. And this is the kind of work that I'm so devoted to. It's access. It's wild access for the variety of human experiences.

[A]

Will Notebook LM also give you practice questions or where do you get them? Yes.

[B]

So love it. You can ask it. Give me a. Give me a mock exam. Give me 15 practice questions. Those were too easy. Make them more difficult. Give me five practice questions about that one. That was really, really challenging for me. Can you give me a walkthrough? I got it wrong again. Can you help me understand? But if you want to talk ethical AI I want everybody with ADHD to be using magic to do. Do you know about magic to do? Best tool out there for subtasking. So much fun. What is its tagline? Magic to do? Breaking things down so you don. This is so beautiful. Because if we're talking about executive function, so I'm trying to convince somebody to say, all right, the key is subtasking. Well, that's not going to help because where do I even begin? I don't know what the component parts of this essay are. I get what you're saying in principle, but what did I say that Learning Strategies was about? We have to make it startable. Magic to do is going to generate that task list for you. And it's so sweet. Sweet if when you go on again, it's free. I'm not a sponsored human, by the way. I. I don't get any benefit. Like, it's very important for me to say I am just not. I'm not into that. Maybe that's a little Canadian in me, but I'm just recommending the things that I love and I trust and I use and students recommend to me. So Magic to Do, you'll see in the top right. I think it's chilies. More chilies. More spiciness means more detail in the subdasking. Fewer chilies means less. Less. Everyone can go right now and try Magic To Do. And it is a wonderful support for learners and grownups, professionals, parents, because you could do anything. Spring clean my house. And it will give you all the component parts. And if any of them feel sticky, you can also press the magic wand and it will subtask that item, too.

[A]

I tried it years ago when it first came out and the interface was just so clunky, I couldn't. Is it much prettier now or simpler or cleaner?

[B]

It's simple. It's really, really simple and friendly. And I will say that my favorite thing, because it's all based on trust. I mean, look at the trust that you have given me to welcome me on today to say, oh, goodness, you've shown up here. You've shown up here. I don't know. And the trust you've shown. These are tools that are from students with ADHD to me that we use together and that then I share with other students, professionals with adhd and they say, mind blowing. Mind blowing. Now, every tool has to be tailored. It has. You have to make it work for your life. But I like for the things that are difficult, that don't need to be difficult to be made easeful by useful, ethical tools and systems.

[A]

No, I. Both of those. I am going to. I'm going to go there.

[B]

Okay. Can I give. I want one more. Which is. If anyone's using Chat GPT out there, click on the like More options. I want folks to go down to study and learn that mode you can ask for, hey, listen, I'm having a really hard time with this lesson or lecture or topic. Can you help me? You could even write in and I'm a student with adhd. And it will then say to you, great, Tracy, how do you like to learn? Now, as a, as a tangent, it's not going to ask you your learning style because learning styles are fake. They're not real. Nobody has a learning style that is a myth that perpetuates. So I'm not gonna be like, are you an auditory learner? That's not a real thing.

[A]

Oh, really?

[B]

That's all B.S. it's not a real thing because it

[A]

always frustrated me because I couldn't pick which one I. What I always joke is, I am an all learning style. So that's what I give everybody.

[B]

You know, let's just all agree with each other that if, if you see a system that tries to typify a student or a human, let's like, let's walk in the other direction. What? You're a type. You're like a, you're only auditory. So first of all, that's not how learning happens, right? We learn with all parts of, with senses. Second, we might have preferences. I, you know, I, I'll have students use read and write, or I'll have students use other kinds of assistive technology, and they will benefit tremendously. If there are challenges with working memory and all kinds of things, it will benefit them if the book, the text is being read to them aloud and it's being highlighted at the same time, great. My eyeballs are laser focused on the text. I'm absorbing it. That's not about learning style. You can have a preference and you can benefit from that, like multimodal form of instruct action. But even if we were to go down this path and say, well, learning styles are real, which they are not, and are still weirdly perpetuated in teacher education. My kids have been taught it in public school. I'm like, this has to come to an end. Like, all the learning scientists and the cognitive psychologists out there know that. They all know it. And we just can't seem to break through yet and saying, like, stop.

[A]

Well, because it's been done the same way for 150 years. And that's why we should keep doing it that way. Way.

[B]

Right? Like we just were. So even if it was a thing, in order for learning to be durable and sticky and robust, you would be better to Learn in the style that is not yours. Like that's the. So it's the ill logic, right? You would have to stretch, you would have to grow, you would have to push outside of that comfort zone, which is where learning and skill development happens. So the whole thing is a mess. And then students walk around being like, well I'm this, I'm not this, I can't possibly, I need it this way. Like, nope, nope, nope, nope. You can prefer and we can reduce the cognitive load and we can offer it. You can have choice, you can have things that are combined so that there are multiple pathways of access. But let's stop convincing you that you are a type of human, especially so early on in your life,

[A]

right?

[B]

So study and learn will give you. Hey Tracy, how would it be best for you to learn this thing you want to learn? Do you want a case study? Do you want a big thinking question? Do you want a couple of quiz style questions? Beautiful. If you use perplexity or copilot, you can do this. My favorite with students. Write in anything about your learning profile. I have adhd, I have a learning disability. Then write in. Here's how I went about studying for my chemistry test. Or here's how I went out studying for my history test last week. I studied for this amount of time. This is what I did. I rewrote my notes or I read over the chapter and this was my focus level between 1 to 10. These are the other things that were going on. Was my phone, there were any distractions. And then ask your preferred AI platform. Give me a little critique. What are one or two things I could do better in my study process? Give me some reflection on my study habits because I'm aware even if I say to you about that professional, take some time for reflecting, that person might not even know where to start. I don't judge them for that. This is, this is not just shame free work. It's shame healing work. So it's okay if you don't know what prioritization means. It's okay if you don't know what it looks like to reflect on something. That's what learning strategies do. They reveal the how so it's doable. It's so funny to me with Simon Sinek, like everyone loves the what's your why? What? Like that's the starting place. I get it. And also your why can feel so abstract sometimes? Because how do I get there? Right. How do I do the thing?

[A]

You get there by learning, right?

[B]

Yeah. Yourself? Yes. And with tools and techniques that are grounded in lived experience and learning science together. Holistic learning strategies.

[A]

So why aren't all schools teaching this subject?

[B]

You know, so here's the funniest thing, right? I'm this little human. I mean I'm six feet tall, but like I'm a little human in Toronto, Canada. Like shouting from the rooftops, hey, here's a thing. Learning strategies can solve for, can multi solve for in an unsiloed way. Inequity and injustice in the classroom takes luck out of it, right? Solves for student mental health. It's fundamentally neuro inclusive and supports academic performance. So you don't need to all the time. Students in academic distress go see a counselor. Okay, you have a learning disability, you should go to the accessibility consultant. Why are we not trying learning strategies at scale? So I go into any parent council that will have me. I'll do any keynote anyone will have. I mean, and the introverted part of me, like after today I will, after our session I'm going to need to lie on the floor. But I go anywhere where they'll let me or where I'm invited because it is the one thing we've never tried. What do we try instead? One to one, we're going to build up one to one. That's not a sustainable model. School systems will never have enough professionals to meet with the increase as awareness grows, as diagnoses grow to meet that one to one demand. Why are we not embedding this in the curriculum? This needs to be in teacher education. This needs to be in K to 12. 12. I go, I go and teach whole faculties. Whole school. K to 12 faculties. Because it can begin early. This is how you break up your time. This is how you prevent. You feel stuck because you're overwhelmed. Yeah, who wouldn't? This is how you can tackle that. So you can actually do your work and see your pals and play basketball and go to bed on time. This is how you can have a really nice life. Here's the big pitch. Ask any grownup you know whether they have ADHD or not. How are you doing? What are they going to tell you? I'm stressed, I'm busy, I'm depleted, I'm tired, I'm overwhelmed. And they'll probably use the B word. I'm burnt out. We want better for our learners. We want better for ourselves. We want better for our learners. We want different for them. So I'm, I, like I, I'm on a mission.

[A]

Do you think it might be because schools just can't get past a Curve, like they just want a certain percentage of kids to not do well. You know, so then we can rank them and we can figure out what, you know, certain kids, they have all the support. They're the ones that get to go to the good universities and like, why else?

[B]

I feel so confronted by that question that is so powerful because I can also hear the hurt in that. Right. It's like schools have hurt so many people that that's, that, that's the skepticism and the distrust that is the consequence. So that's what I hear. I'm like, oh, that's so painful. I think what I see is that there is such a divide between. It's not just research, because I get really tired and bored of like, well, evidence says, or research says, that's fine. You have to always marry research studies with lived experience. Like, we can't, cannot overemphasize the quantitative studies that are funded by. We don't know. We can't always. We can't prioritize that over narrative, like over what people's stories are. It has to be in tandem. It has to be together. You have to take in people's lived context all the time. So my suspicion in part or my experience is there is some very interesting stuff happening in Learning Strategies land. And there's some really interesting things, things like in learning science and cognitive psychology. And then there's things that happen around mental health. And they're very academic and they're very, like, discreet. They're separated from each other and they don't trickle down because of political reasons into the curriculum that is taught at school boards. Like that. That's what I see as kind of not likelier, but the, the from my vantage point. But I'm tired of it and I want it to change.

[A]

And they're so, they're so integrally connected too. Right. If you can't, and you don't know why you can't do well, of course you're gonna feel crappy. And that's what leads to all these other things. And then you're gonna try to regulate your own nervous system with the only thing that you've got at that point. Cause nobody's taught you any skills.

[B]

And can we add on? I mean, this is amazing. As we speak, humans are beginning to take the mega tech corporations to court for being on purpose, addictive and stealing lives.

[A]

Totally, totally, totally. So, yeah, it's getting worse and worse. Okay, before I let you go, I do want you to talk about something that I've always fascinated by, but I know you speak a lot about invisible labor, so I want to know how does. What do you mean by that? And how does invisible labor show up in learning and productivity for women with adhd?

[B]

My goodness. This question is like, right? Like an arrow to the heart. And I've just been invited actually by like, Canada's Mega Telecoms, National Telecoms, to be their International Women's Day speaker this year, in a way, to talk about this. It's funny what we consider effort and not we effort all day at work. And we can see the artifacts of that. We can see the things that are made, the emails that are sent, the projects that are moved forward, the presentations that are given. But we don't often think about the cost to get there, what it costs a human to be able to produce. And so from my lived experience as a person who was a mom and was bereaved, like there were no other helping hands. And we've lived with financial precarity, and my husband has chronic health issues. So it's like, what is in. In your hands that you're carrying? Like, what are you scooping and still showing up to work on time, Professional, using the language that is, you know, appropriate, the convent tension of the space you're in. And I'm also seeing that as a person born into a white cisgender body, like that is already coming with an enormous amount of privilege and ease. So what I think about invisible labor is the unseen, unnamed, unrecognized effort of what it is to be a person. And especially the cost behind the scenes before ever stepping into a professional space, the personal cost to get there. What had to happen? What are the conditions? What are the contextual factors? How was childcare arranged? How did sleep happen when there was a baby crying at night? Or they also caregiving an elderly parent. And I mean this again, not my lived experience. I don't have autism. But did they have to mask if there's race and somebody had to deal. I mean, this, like, language of microaggressions is nonsense. Like, had to deal with outright aggressive racism day in, day out, had to tackle. If I think about, you know, all of that I've learned from indigenous colleagues and writers around, if you've been harmed by systems and then having to interact with those systems, the paperwork of those systems in order to access what you need to access. One of the things that I did when I was the learning specialist list at TMU was like, wait a minute, can we just have a blanket statement that if you're an indigenous student, you don't have to fill out paperwork because I'm just not going to perpetuate like medicalized bureaucratic harm for, for students who've been generationally harmed. So for me, invisible labor is like the ancestral stuff, the contextual stuff, the behind the scenes stuff that we carry with us. That of course, course you could say, how are you? And what would your answer be? I'm fine, I'm good. And I'm not advocating that we do more than that. I think we do more than that with the people we love and we trust and can hold the fullness of our answers. It's a lot to sometimes say what is fully going on. So sometimes people advocate, like tell everyone how you really are. I just trust people's wisdom and their discernment about when it feels right and safe to do that. There are power structures, I mean, the number of meetings I've been in where I'll have a white, straight male boss telling everybody how it should be and all of the people with much less institutional positional power being like, okay, I'm never going to do the things that you're talking about. I feel like I would jeopardize my job and I need my job because I'm actually the sole provider. I need my job because I'm actually taking care of five other people. And I wish it were definitely different. And I am going to be an advocate and activist in other ways. But I just really name and take to heart that people try so hard all of the time to do the things they want and need to do. And so that's what I take into my practice in designing curriculum and assessments and keynotes and trainings is like, how can I ease some of that? How can I, if I'm teaching, not make it so cognitively demanding? How can I give lots of examples so that people can find their way in? How can I say, look, here's a bunch of writing and reading, but also, if you just need to get to the heart of things, how can I help you consolidate this by remembering it a couple days afterwards? How can I give you a bunch of different pathways? Because maybe right now you just can't read a wall of text. So my life is spent in service of if I know my starting place of universal welcome is that I just assume universal. You have bags and bags and burdens and burdens that you are carrying. Whether it is ADHD diagnosis and you don't have the strategies yet, or whether it is life, life, life in all of its forms. How can I, through learning Strategies lighten the load.

[A]

So when you talk about invisible labor, you're basically talking about trauma and how trauma affects our cognition.

[B]

Yeah, well said.

[A]

So on your TED Talk. Your TED Talk is about laundry, but it's really not about laundry, which is honestly why I think thought, of course she has adhd, because she has the same problem that we all do, you know, with laundry. What is your workaround for laundry, which. It sounds like it's been a big struggle for you. Not so much doing the laundry, but actually then what you have to do after the laundry is done.

[B]

Yes. Well, my number one strategy is my husband does it.

[A]

Yeah, I like that strategy.

[B]

I know, right? That's pretty good. That's pretty good. What I encourage folks to do is to never, ever try to do the whole of anything that feels overwhelming in one go. When we try to do the whole, it usually stops us in our tracks, and the thing that we had intended to do slips away. It gets pushed to the next day, and it doesn't feel good, and it doesn't help. So. So what? I share in that TEDx, and you're so kind. Thank you. I think you might be the 19th person to ever watch it, so I appreciate it. Anyone listening?

[A]

You.

[B]

You're welcome to join. You're welcome to join. It's very.

[A]

Have the link in our show notes.

[B]

You're so thoughtful. Thank you. So what I. What I mention is, look, if. If the starting place is don't do it all. Don't. Don't tackle the whole thing. Okay, well, how do you parcel out laundry? And I talk about doing it with my kids and teaching them. Teaching them how to do things that are overwhelming, numbing. We do it in the smallest, most imperfect part. I'm just gonna. I'm. And it's like I'm just gonna get out my pajamas. Like, if I. If I could just pull out from this jumble. Like everything feels jumbled all the time. I'm just gonna pull out my PJs, I'm gonna put those away, and then I'm gonna do something else. I'm gonna do jumping jacks. I'm gonna do inchworms. I'm gonna laugh. I'm gonna tickle my kids. I'm gonna listen to one song, and then I'm gonna do a pants and. Oh, those pants are so annoying. Right? One leg in and one leg go. Okay, I'm just going to do the pants and I'm going to do something else. And then I might do my shirts. I'm never going to Try to do the whole thing of the thing I have to do or should do instead. I know better now. My system is right. I break it up, I spread the work out, I contain it. I'm really clear. I'm just doing the pants. And I intersperse it with things that keep me uplifted. Movement, song, dance connection. And then the laundry gets done, gets put away.

[A]

And it sounds like you also use my favorite strategy, which is who else can I get to do it?

[B]

Totally. We make it a dance party. Ultimately, we try to make everything a dance party. Like if we can blast the whatever they happen to be in Journey. Oh, my kit. My older ones into Carol King because. Yeah, because of Gilmore Girls. Blessings. Thank heavens for Gilmore Girls. Like, you know, we make it fun. It doesn't all have to be so dreary. And maybe that's really the thread for learning and leadership is so much of it. Without systems, without learning, strategies can feel like suffering. And that's what I want to kind of tease apart. Learning, leading work. Parenting doesn't have to feel like suffering.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, if it feels like suffering, it's hard to get out of bed. Bed.

[B]

Yeah. Who would want to do it? Who would want to do it?

[A]

We always talk about with the ADHD brain, you know, there's three work. Well, there's four workarounds. Urgency, but you know, that trashes your nervous system, basically. Is it fun? Is it challenging? Is it social?

[B]

Totally. And blessings. Thank you for you naming that. Urgency is not where we want to live. Because if we go back to when I, you know, if you ask anyone how are you? And they say I'm stressed, I'm burnt out, you know, one of the models. So funny. Right. Whenever people talk about prioritization, which is like one of my favorite things to talk about ever. Humane prioritization. And just as again, an aside, I learned from somebody that the word priority was only ever meant to be one. And this idea of multiple or competing priorities is like doomed to fail. But what do people always get taught if they're taught at all? Around prioritization. Urgent and important matrix. Right, Right. The Eisenhower matrix, sometimes called the dump and sift method. And then we do everything in the quadrant that is urgent and important. I've even seen it languaged in that urgent important as crisis. I'll do the thing that feels like crisis first. And yet we're also holding like student mental health crisis, on the other hand. So I'm in crisis land. But I also want to protect and heal mental health. I actually want to have a health promoter upstream approach. So I want everyone to begin to move away from that urgent quadrant into what is important, not urgent. And we can only do that when we chip away in small increments over time with contained tasks and all of the well being and uplift around it.

[A]

That matrix thing, I couldn't even pick what's urgent and important. I don't know.

[B]

Yes. And we'd have to ask to whom because if we're only doing important and urgent. So who determines what's important? Because what's important to me is like I really like doing this watercolor class.

[A]

Yeah, well, like, you know everybody else's fires out, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Oh my gosh, this was lovely. So Dina, where can people find you if they want to know more about you and what you do?

[B]

What a blessing. Thank you. So you can look me up at www.awakenedlearning.ca. you can find me on Instagram @awakenedlearning ca where I promise I do not dance, I do not point at stuff. It is social media for good. I offer lots of free resources. I think I want to be part of changing how we interact with platforms like that. And when you go to my website or you go to my Instagram, you will notice that yes, of course we do. We are Canada's and maybe beyond like best best learning strategy team but we're aware of what it takes to do one on one coaching and so we offer lots and lots of free resources and free sessions and low cost at scale group sessions. I just ran one yesterday. 15 bucks. Come every parent. I will teach you the AI tools that you need to know that you need to teach your student. Next week is one on. Do you avoid deadlines? Is there just dread when you get a deadline deadline? We will help you heal Procrastination this weekend job searching for students who are feeling like they're scrambled all over the place over and over and over again. Group small all welcome wildly inclusive learning spaces for students, families and educators. So you will find that and then you'll also find ways to be in touch if it feels like a talk or a training would be useful because let's get learning strategies in the hands of every learner and everything leader.

[A]

Dena, thank you so much for spending time with us here today. I am so happy that this all worked out because well, I certainly learned a lot so I know our listeners will too.

[B]

Thank you for taking a leap of faith on me and to people who have stayed to the end of this podcast episode I'm so glad you have. I, I, I don't pretend to be like of this world but I am in it with you as an ally alongside doing my best to get learning strategies everywhere. So thank you trust Tracie and to the trust of your listeners. I am really grateful.

[A]

You're very welcome and it was a pleasure. So that's what I have for you for this week. If you like this episode with Dr. Dena Schaefer, please let us know by leaving a review. Our goal is to change the conversation around adhd, helping as many women as we possibly can learn how their ADHD brains work so that they too may discover their amazing strengths. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you here next week. You've been listening to the ADHD for Smartass Women podcast. I'm your host, Tracy Otsuka. Join us at adhdforsmartwomen.com where you can find more information on my new book, ADHD for Smartass Women. And my Patented you'd ADHD Brain is a okay system to help you get unstuck and fall in love with your brilliant brain. Let's pause here. Have you spent your whole life being told your way is the wrong way? If you try to use systems designed for a neurotypical brain brain, of course you'll feel like you're failing. But here's the truth. You were never the problem. You just have a different brain. Which means you need different systems. That is exactly why I created the AOK Academy. It's my six step patented framework designed to help you reconnect with your intuition and build systems based on your unique strengths. Let me help you reconnect with your intuition, trust yourself again and build a life that actually works for you. You've had the answers all along. I'll help you see them. Look, it's time to stop second guessing and start trusting yourself again. Find the link in the show notes to sign up or book a free discovery call. Now let's get back to it.