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Hacking Your ADHD
ADHD-Friendly Goal Setting with Chris Wang
00:39:29
Hey team! Well, it’s 2025…. It doesn’t quite feel real yet; I mean, we’re a quarter of the way into the 21st century, but it feels like we got here fast. I’m not quite sure I’m ready, but regardless, time marches on. I know a lot of you...
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- [00:01]
Mayra Ameth
A Mochi moment from Sadie who writes I'm not crying, you're crying. This is what I said during my first appointment with my physician at Mochi because I didn't have to convince him I needed a GLP one. He understood and I felt supported, not judged. I came for the weight loss and stayed for the empathy. Thanks Sadie. I'm Mayra Ameth, founder of Mochi Health. To find your mochi moment, visit joinmochi.com.
- [00:27]
Sadie
Sadie is a Mochi member, compensated for.
- [00:29]
T-Mobile Advertiser
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- [01:04]
William Curb
Welcome to Hacking youg ADHD. I'm your host William Curb, and I have adhd. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Hey team. Well it's 2025. It doesn't quite feel real yet. I mean, we're a quarter of the way into the 21st century, but feels like we got here fast. I'm not quite sure I'm ready, but regardless, time marches on. I know a lot of you are working, making plans for the year, so we're going to be starting this year with Chris Wang, CEO and Co Founder of Shimmer, an ADHD coaching platform designed to meet people where they are. I had a lot of fun in this conversation where we covered a bunch of stuff about goal setting and how to make sure you're doing the stuff that's important in your life. Along the way, we discuss the power of community process oriented goal setting and what it means to live in alignment with your values. Of course, we also discussed Chris's coaching platform, Shimmer, but Chris does a great job of bringing a lot of actionable.
- [01:59]
Advice to this conversation.
- [02:01]
So whether you're looking for coaching or you just want some extra tips with planning, this episode's got you covered. If you'd like to follow along on the Show Notes page, you can find that@hackingyouradhd.com 207 also, before we get started, as we all know, it's a new year and so we're going to be trying some new things out here, including some live Ask Me Anything events. First of which will be happening at the end of this month. On January 31st at 10:00am Pacific, we're going to be hosting it on the hacking youg ADHD YouTube page. So if that sounds like something you'd be interested in, go over to YouTube.com@hackingyouradhd and subscribe to the channel. Or if you want to submit a question ahead of time, you can do so@hackingyouradhd.com AMA I'm really looking forward to getting to chat with you all, so I hope you can make it and those details one more time. January 31st at 10am Pacific on YouTube.comyouradhd and of course you can find all those details and ask Questions early@hackneyradhd.com AMA all right, keep on listening to find out how with a little bit of planning, you too can Shimmer. All right, so it's great to have.
- [03:15]
You here and a great place to start to would be if you could just tell me a little bit about Shimmer.
- [03:20]
Chris Wang
So Shimmer is an ADHD coaching platform in it's the less words form in the longer word form. When I was diagnosed two years ago, which I'm sure we'll get into, I was looking for something behavioral. Part of the reason was because I grew up in an Asian family and western medication is usually not the first line of defense. Doesn't mean I well, I now do take medication, but I didn't want it to be the first thing I tried. And so when I was hunting for a behavioral solution, I couldn't find one that was a good price and I ended up doing 12 plus consultations and couldn't figure out which coach was right for me because every coach was saying that they were right for me. So Shimmer started off as a essentially finding my own coach. So I found the first two Shimmer coaches for myself and they both started coaching me. And as I went through that process, basically more and more people with ADHD started finding me and more and more coaches who are ADHD coaches started finding us as well. And so it kind of continued to organically grow. And so nowadays it is essentially a coaching platform that we now have almost 50 coaches, which is super exciting and have done over 40,000 sessions for our members. And it's really a platform that one facilitates the ADHD coach and client connection and facilitates every single one of those interactions. But also it is a place for ADHD coaches to get trained, get upskilled, supervised, make sure that what they're practicing is at the latest and greatest. And our members are also able to engage in things outside of coaching. So we do body doubling. There's accountability tools within the app. That's kind of the high level version of where we came from and kind of who we are today.
- [05:14]
William Curb
Yeah, one of the interesting things I was reading about too, and like looking at Shimmer is just also this focus on cultural sensitivity within the organization too, which is not something we see everywhere with ADHD coaching.
- [05:25]
Chris Wang
It has been so important to my own journey and therefore with our coaches and for some of our first coaches as well. So our first coach, Noel, what's really important to them, they're non binary and they're queer. And what has always been important to them, even prior to Shimmer, was creating a culturally competent coaching practice specifically for the queer community and extending outwards from that. For me, I'm Asian, in case it's not a video podcast, and my last name is Wang. And so for me, finding someone to coach me who has that cultural competency for both being queer and being Asian has been really important. And we've learned time after time after now, thousands of members coming through, that it has been important for almost every other, I would say, underrepresented community as the intersections with ADHD just completely changes your experience of what ADHD looks like. Because when you're, I'll give a personal example, when you're Asian and you grow up with adhd, there's exacerbating impacts of your family not really talking about feelings. And there's also more about, I mean, I already touched on it, that your family likely doesn't believe in Western medicine. And on top of that, they probably overvalue things like studying and being quiet and being obedient and taking a specific few paths for your career. And all those things just don't jive well with adhd. So it adds an additional layer on top of the ADHD struggles that someone might be having. And so you can train a coach to be culturally competent for sure, but there's just this extra layer of understanding when you know that this other person has went through the exact same thing that you, you have been through. And it's already so tiring. You've probably felt it like explaining your ADHD over and over to people. And if you have to explain that subtle layer of whatever your intersectionality is, it can be a lot. So in an already vulnerable experience. So that's why for us, cultural competency, and also not just beyond competency, but also making sure that we have coaches that match different types of underrepresented populations is really important to us. And we kind of bake pretty deeply into our hiring and recruiting processes for our coaches as well.
- [07:45]
William Curb
Yeah, that just seems so incredibly important to me, especially as, like, I look at the current landscape of ADHD stuff and how much stuff is. I feel bad sometimes when I'm like, man, as, you know, a white content creator that presents mail like, I'm in the majority. And I want to make sure that I don't drown out voices of people that also really need to be heard, because it's so important that these other ideas come forward. Because I know there are a ton of strategies I see from, like, white content creators that I'm like, this is not relevant to me even at, like, because I had such a different upbringing sometimes than what they had.
- [08:25]
Chris Wang
Everyone, regardless of if you're in an unor represent community, I think just has such different experiences. And the more we can have people feeling empowered to go out and tell their version of the story is so important. I think it was at the last ADHD conference where some people were raising their hands in the audience. It was an influencer panel. And they're like, oh, I don't know if I should start my Instagram. There's already so many creators out there that are talking about adhd. And the person who responded just said it so eloquently and that everyone's voice is necessary. Like, even if five people have the exact same experience as you and you share your story and they reach out to you and said, hey, I feel comfortable coming out with my adhd. Or I figured out I have ADHD because you showed the exact version that matched my story. That started that thought process for me, that then brought me to a health care provider or whoever it is, you can change even a couple of lies. And so I think it's really important that people try not to share expert tips if they're not an expert, but instead share their own experience, because that can really open up something for someone else who looks like or grew up like you.
- [09:33]
William Curb
Yeah, a hundred percent. Because everyone's voice is going to have that effect differently on other people. And even if you're not necessarily saying something new, you might be saying it in a way that really resonates with someone who otherwise would not have gotten that message.
- [09:49]
Chris Wang
Yeah, exactly. And I think with adhd, the hardest part is not the symptoms. The hardest part is the shame, the loneliness, the messages you tell yourself. And all of these things are just so much exacerbated when you feel like you're the only one in the world who looks like you, who's going through this, because everyone you see is telling a story that doesn't look like your story, even though you feel like you're supposed to resonate with it, but then you don't. And so getting that community of whatever your intersectionality is can be so powerful. For example, J. Lynn and Stephanie Huang and a couple of other Asian ADHD years. And I started the ADAS AAPI ADHD Peer Support Group. And it's a lot of letters, but basically Asian American Pacific Islander ADHD support group in ada. And that space that runs every two weeks, it's like constantly people coming in of all walks of lives and just tears of happiness, of sadness, of just things being bottled up, just being able to flow out because you finally have a space where you. All the things that you used to think came out as, like, crazy or weird or whatever you call it, other people are saying it too. And when you hear someone else saying it, it's like reading a book where you're like, I kind of knew this stuff in the book, but I can't believe someone else wrote it. It really feels like that. And I've heard similar stories within many other kind of Latino, black, queer, other communities as well. And it's just so powerful hearing those stories.
- [11:24]
William Curb
Yeah, I think that's one of the greatest things. Was like, the peer support groups is not necessarily what you're bringing to the group, but what you hear from other people. And you're just like, oh, I didn't even realize that was something that I could think about.
- [11:38]
Chris Wang
Yeah, exactly. And I think another huge power of support groups is when you feel like you're in a spot where you're constantly struggling and taking and people need to, like, you feel like you're a burden to other people. Being in the support group just by existing, just by sharing your story, you see that you're helping other people. And when you're in a tough spot, the ability just by existing to help other people and to make other people's lives better, I think is also a really powerful piece of support groups.
- [12:07]
William Curb
Yeah, it's understanding other people's stories and that you're not alone with your own story. It's so easy to be like, how I exist is I'm the only person that's like this, and that makes me bad somehow. And I've often gotten stuck with, like, why am I like this? And then I go, what's the adhd? And then I also know someone else that has this problem. I'm like, okay, I can work on this.
- [12:30]
Chris Wang
Yeah, exactly. You're a part of a larger community in whole. And I can't even. Sometimes I talk to some of the folks who have been in this space for 10 years or women even, who have been in this space for like five to 10 years, and they talk about like five, 10 years ago, how they were the first person to start this for women with adhd, or they're like the first of five woman ADHD creators, and they completely didn't think that their story resonated with other people. I know that there's still so much that we need to do and so much that needs to be fixed, but it's also crazy to think about, I think, just the how far we've come as an ADHD community in the last, like, five to 10 years in terms of what people know about us, what we know about ourselves, the different micro communities that have felt the permission to be able to. To lift up. So just a moment of gratitude there.
- [13:18]
William Curb
Power community is amazing. Which is one of the reasons that I was like. When I was reading through this, I.
- [13:22]
Was just, this is like, great, because.
- [13:24]
We don't have to go through this alone. So one of the things we talked pre podcast about a little bit was goal setting, which is just a huge part of like coaching. It's like figuring out where you want to go. And if my timetables are right on episode releases, be very relevant when it comes out.
- [13:40]
Chris Wang
Watch it be like, September.
- [13:42]
William Curb
Yeah, it's like, whoops. But you know, I've also. If you don't know where you're going, anytime's a great time to set goals.
- [13:46]
Chris Wang
Yeah.
- [13:47]
William Curb
Maybe we could go into a little bit, talk about how as coaches, you approach goal setting.
- [13:52]
Chris Wang
One of the first things I'm just going back of when we first met our clinical lead and advisor from NYU, Dr. Anil Chaco, I was like, this was so early on in my ADHD journey. I was like, just give me, like the most impactful thing as a person with ADHD I can do to support my adhd. And he said some version of essentially when you don't have a direction or North Star or something, you could call it a goal, whatever you want to call it, something that's in the future that you're looking at and saying, hey, that's where I'm trying to Go. That is actually one of the things that is most detrimental to people with adhd, because then you start saying yes to everything. You go in this direction, you go in that direction and you keep going in circles until it gets to the end of the day. Whether you call it at the end of the year, the end of life, whatever you want, you look back and you said, hey, actually this, this didn't make me happy, or this didn't help me achieve what I wanted to achieve in life. And so for us at Shimmer, the concept of goal setting is so important and it breaks down into a couple of levels. I mentioned the word North Star. The North Star is the most important piece. It goes beyond goal setting. It's kind of your super long term vision of how you want to live your life. And long term doesn't mean it has to be into the future. It's just something that always exists. So it could be a combination of your values, things that are important to you. The exercise, the, that I really like to use is the eulogy exercise. Some people don't really like it, but this one, there's many of them. This one's my favorite. Where you imagine that at the end of your life, what people in your life are saying about you. So is it that your daughter is there and she's saying like, oh, Chris was like the best mom in the world. She's always super energetic and makes sure that I have everything I need. And so when you take it from that lens, maybe the fact that I'm currently spending like 60, 70 hours on work and deprioritizing certain things in my life, it helps you see if something is maybe off check from that. And that's kind of on a very far scale. But goal setting specifically, I think is really important. It doesn't have to happen on January 1st. I actually really advocate for seasonal goals and so treating each season, because if you have adhd, looking that far forward in time for a year is kind of scary. And you end up just abandoning it and not making it to the end. And you're like, oh, it's September or whatever. I'll just like wait until January again. And so I think that one tip is to set goals in terms of seasons or you can play around with that. Maybe it's monthly, that's best for you, maybe it's quarterly, however it works. And so the other big tip that we give on goal setting, and I can kind of like dig into any of these, is the biggest one that has been really helpful for me is to set process oriented goals instead of setting goal oriented goals. So process oriented goals are going to be. Instead of saying, hey, I want to lose 10 pounds, instead I pick something that is within my control. So I want to do five active things every single week. And that could be the gym, it could be whatever that type of goal is going to be in my control. And also it resets every single week or every single whatever time frame. So those are kind of two of the top tips that we have.
- [17:18]
William Curb
Well, I love the idea of so like the values based goal setting where you're like, am I following what's truly important to me? I think it's such an important place to start with because often we're like, especially with adhd, where we have this impulsivity and we're like, I want to do that. That sounds cool. But then you know your month in, you're like, oh, you know what? This is not actually what I'm all about.
- [17:39]
Chris Wang
No, definitely. I think that the knowing the why behind your goals and actually starting with the why instead of the goal is so important. So in our session, sometimes we ask people to choose how in the next quarter they want to feel or some area in their life that they want to be better and starting off without thinking about the goal first. So if you want to feel, let's say love and calmness in the next quarter, because in the last quarter you were full of chaos and stress, then knowing that why or whatever value is underpinning it and then being like, okay, what goals can I set that will allow me to have more love or more calm into my life and moving it feels a little bit backwards for folks. But starting with kind of like the how you want to feel or what value you really want to drive home because that value has not been super present for you. So for example, adventure is one of my values. And I've been in kind of major working mode for a while now and I know that adventure is one of my values that I haven't had the opportunity to express in a while. And when you don't have the opportunity to live in your values, that's when you start to feel misaligned. So I already know going into my Q1 planning that cultivating a sense of adventure is going to be really important for me. So I'm going to need to set some goals that are around that so that I can feel kind of hole in how I am and living my values for the next quarter.
- [19:10]
William Curb
Yeah, because it's so easy to be to just focus on what's right in front of you rather than what's the broader picture of what you want.
- [19:17]
Chris Wang
Exactly. And the minute goals too. I think people get, let's say the working out five times a week. One, you're just so frustrated and you've been trying to do it for so long that you just forgot why you wanted to do it to begin with. And maybe you want to do it so that. That you can have a. Maybe in the beginning was so that you can have a healthy, loving relationship with your boyfriend too. And they love sports, but you're so hung up on it that you've actually not even been going together and you've been going separately. And so you lost track of why you started it to begin with. And so really thinking about why you're doing the goals instead of like. I think we often just hyper fixate. Especially if I'm just not doing well on my goal. I'm just gonna get so stuck on my goal and I want to do it so right that I just lost may. Maybe calm was the orig. And why I wanted to meditate. And then instead of meditate, I moved to yoga, yoga moved to Pilates. And then suddenly I'm like upset that I'm not doing my Pilates well enough compared to the next person. And I completely lost sense of the calm that I was trying to achieve with that.
- [20:17]
William Curb
Yeah, a hundred percent. Because there's so many things where we're like, this is how it has to be because this is the goal I set. But it's like, is that actually doing the things I think it's doing?
- [20:26]
Chris Wang
Yeah, exactly. And taking that. For me, it's quarterly. But quarterly reevaluation to look at these things and seeing if you still intentionally want to do it or if you're just doing it kind of out of principle or hyper fixation.
- [20:40]
William Curb
Yeah. I do also love that idea of really revisiting things. Doing it kind of seasonally. I mean, I think seasonally planning things is great because getting outside is going to change. Depend on the. Like you're like, oh, I wanted to get more exercise in. You're like, oh, I can't do that as well in the winter in some places I can't do that as. Or maybe some places in the summer it's going to be way too hot. So it's like. And being like. Like with my kids in school, like there's the scenes are going to depend on how much time they're in school, how much time they're out. You know, like summer vacation and so if I plan yearly but without that in mind, it's going to be a big problem at the end.
- [21:14]
Chris Wang
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [21:16]
William Curb
Yeah. One of the funny things I will do with my planning is purposely not have anything that I can check off on January 1st. So I can't have like a perfect year of doing something because perfection is something I have to fight a lot. And it's like, yeah, just January 1st. That's not a real day.
- [21:34]
Chris Wang
Yeah. I don't do anything in like the first five days of January. But I think I read a quote recently that talks about how habits are actually formed in February. And I've been thinking about that a lot and I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to change our lives on January 1st. And we're still in the food coma of like the end of December. Being with family, we're probably in a different way, a little bit burnt out from maybe holiday related stress and overwhelm and it might just not be the right time. And if you need to start on January 10th, there's nothing special about the number one. And you can start on January 10th, January 15th, whatever makes sense for you.
- [22:13]
William Curb
Yeah. I also think birthdays are a great place to start, as long as you're not partying too hard on your birthday.
- [22:20]
Chris Wang
No, I do like that because I mean, that is when your year started it. Yeah.
- [22:25]
William Curb
When you started thinking like, oh, yeah, my daughter has her friend that has her birthday on January 1st, so.
- [22:30]
Chris Wang
Oh, oh, she's not listening to this podcast. It's like, damn it.
- [22:35]
William Curb
Yeah. And then the last part you brought up about process goals I think is also just something people really need to hear because we get so much mileage out of the idea of we need to have this very concrete vision of what we want to have out of a goal. And that can be good. But the process part is going to be so much more important for us. Actually attaining the goal.
- [22:59]
Chris Wang
Exactly. It helps us define what we're personally going to do and what's within our control. And it also helps us collect wins along the way. Because you could fail against your outcome oriented goal. But still, I mean, back to the gym example, maybe you didn't lose ten pounds, but you showed up five times a week to the gym almost every single week. Every single one of those weeks is a massive win for you because that was hard for you to get there and it was a big win for you to actually do that. And it's important for us to collect wins as people with ADHD because we get beat down. So Much just by our day to day, just by existing and just by struggling through the things that we struggle through that wherever we can collect wins, that's going to have outsized impacts because it's going to add to your self confidence, it's going to add to your view of yourself and therefore what you can achieve and how you can show up the next day and the next day. And so instead of just having one specific benchmark that you can pass fail on instead why not collect goals along the way? Why not have some feedback so you can also adjust. Maybe five times a week is too much and you decide, okay, well maybe I do three times a week instead. And then you start checking off the three times a week and that ends up you show up better on your day to day for your family, for your loved ones, show up at work, all of these things. You'll show up better if you're just more confident and happy with yourself. The goal is not always to just reach the goal, it's to live a better day to day and have a more well life. And so wherever we can do that. And I think process oriented goals is such a big part of that that I think doesn't get get talked enough about.
- [24:40]
William Curb
And I think the one of the biggest pieces there is yeah, what you have control over like going, choosing the number of days you go to the gym per week is something I have much more control over than the, of being like if I want to lose 10 pounds, I don't actually have direct control over how that happens.
- [24:56]
Chris Wang
You know, to give a couple more examples because I think the gym one is always overused and it's very easy to understand. But even in the category of like relationships, let's say you want your intention or your goal is to have more time or to have a better relationship with your partner. That sounds like how do I even do that? So breaking that down into smaller things. So for example, maybe it's setting aside 10 minutes in the evening where you're just catching up about your day, it doesn't have to be very long. Or maybe it's once a month that you arrange for a babysitter to come and you go out on a date together. And so these small things, if you can set them in the beginning and know that these things are intentionally creating this better relationship with your partner, those are within your control. And so once you align on that with your partner, you can do those things instead of just being like hey, we want a better relationship, something isn't working and we want to get Better and kind of not knowing what to do. So I think it also gives clarity and knowing that there is a plan there and that you're both working on it and this can go for things with yourself as well.
- [26:01]
William Curb
Yeah, I do the same thing with a lot of the episodes for the podcast are monologue based. And so I have to do a lot of writing for that. And just being like, write an episode that takes a lot of work to just be like what's defined as done there. Whereas being like, oh, if I'm going to spend like an hour writing, that will move me forward towards getting it done and it's within my control of what I'm doing, rather than just being like, I'm going to finish this and it doesn't matter what the end result looks like.
- [26:26]
Chris Wang
I think specificity is something that is so important for our brains even. And as you said that I recently started redoing the way that I write my to do lists. I used to write things like email to William or things like that. And it would just be like an item, as if I could picture the item in the sky. And instead now I would literally be like, check if William responded, email and send my calendar. And so something super specific. Because it also helps when you actually go to that item that there isn't this like, like resistance against it. Because it's something that requires you to think so much to even understand what you need to do there. So wherever possible, the more kind of specific and process oriented we can be so that we can separate out the like planning phase and the execution phase so that when you get in, you're like, okay, today I can just gonna like execute through these things. Is gonna be a lot easier than task switching between planning and thinking and kind of philosophizing and which is like a separate part of our brain than just like executing and going through it.
- [27:32]
William Curb
Yeah. I also find that it's incredibly important to be specific to make sure that I'm not adding a project as a to do. Or it's like like fix sync.
- [27:40]
Chris Wang
And I'm like, that hits so hard.
- [27:42]
William Curb
Then sometimes I need to have like the project as the first two, but I need to have like some like subtasks be like, okay, well what's the problem? What do I need to go to the hardware store to? What are all the other parts of this?
- [27:53]
Chris Wang
I'm just laughing now as you're saying this. Most of our team has adhd, so every time we have a random idea of a thing that we think is going to be A small thing. It always ends up being a massive project that everyone's involved in and it just slowly, slowly balloons. So that scoping and making sure that there isn't scope creep is something that is super difficult that I have so many examples from a personal level and also now a team level because we have a team full of ahders.
- [28:21]
William Curb
You know, I'll be like, I need to call my dentist. And like call dentist. Well, fairly specific. But I'm like, okay, but if I also like include maybe the phone number there, what the message I need to send them is that kind of thing, it makes it so much easier to actually execute on that task.
- [28:35]
Chris Wang
Yeah. It's almost like you need to write like an instructions to your future self as if your future self is someone who's not you. So giving like a little bit more context so that they can just pick it up and do it like an assistant or something.
- [28:49]
William Curb
Well, and especially if you're not going.
- [28:50]
To immediately be doing the task because.
- [28:52]
There'S stuff I'll like find like a sticky note with like an instructor to do something and I'm like, I don't know what, what is this for? Is this still relevant even?
- [29:00]
Chris Wang
Yeah, I have infinite, probably everyone does infinite notes on my phone that just have like two words on the title and I'm like, of course I thought I could remember what this is. I have no clue what this means.
- [29:12]
William Curb
Yeah. And it's like, okay, if I spend a little bit more time, really define it it then maybe I can either decide, hey, yeah, that was a terrible idea. Don't want to do that.
- [29:20]
Or like, oh yeah, let's, let's get.
- [29:22]
This actually in the to do list and make sure it happens.
- [29:25]
Chris Wang
No, totally.
- [29:26]
William Curb
So thinking with this too. What are some other ways that people could like then utilize coaching after? So we have like building goals, but then what's like a further stage that they could go through?
- [29:37]
Chris Wang
Maybe where it makes sense to start is so our plan tab in our app. So in our web and mobile app there's a tab that basically has your shimmer plan. And on that plan, basically it starts with your North Star, which we talked about, where you kind of talk about your long term vision and your values and we keep that at the top because it's easy to forget that after you've gone through the process to define that and then underneath it what the bulk of the structure is essentially setting goals with actions that lead up to it. So for example, in my plan, my North Star is to build an incredible, durable, impactful Company while building a life with my partner at home. Heart emoji. And underneath that there's going to be this different colors with goals. So this is a goal and this is a goal. And then within each goal there's going to be action. So for example, my first goal is I want to be a physically healthy person. So I don't use outcome based stuff. I don't put weight and things like that. But that's my goal. I want to be a physically healthy person. And so I have two actions that sit underneath it. One is I try to get sunlight before noon every single day. That has a big impact on my personal health. And two, I try to do some sort of movement slash exercise five days a week. So that is one of my three goals. And the three goals hit different areas of my life. And so with my coach, what we do is we'll periodically look back at the entire plan, so the North Star and the goals and think about, okay, do we need to change something? Do I still want these things? How am I doing with these habits? Every about three months we do that. But on the day to day what's happening is we are helping me either delete roadblocks for me actually getting those actions done. So if we notice that, okay, I haven't been going to the gym for the last two weeks, what's behind that? What's happening? What happened in the past that allowed me to get to the gym? And do we maybe need to change up my systems now? Maybe because my life looks different, maybe because the old ones I just got tired of. And so do we need to change that system to be able to help me continue to achieve these goals? That could be one thing we're working on in session to help remove roadblocks. And another thing could be to help me look forward. For example, if I come to a session and there's nothing specific in terms of challenges that I'm facing, we could talk a little bit about how I'm thinking about the future. So, okay, we haven't talked about where the company is in a bit. And are you happy with where it is and your role in it and kind of what you're bringing to the team and do a really evaluation on that. So I think that a lot of the times people think that coaching is only kind of tips and tricks or skills based or fixing things that are wrong with you, but it's really holistic. It's really about setting up a system to help you live the life that you want to live, which the way that We've structured it is from the North Star downwards, but really it's about, if I had to boil it down, it's about how do you keep doing the things that are important to you and so that you can live a life that feels good for you.
- [32:45]
William Curb
Such a great way to go through it. I love the having the constant reminder of what that North Star is because it feels like we should remember that, but I know we don't.
- [32:54]
Chris Wang
The way that we build our product in our app is very iterative with our members. And actually the first time when we launched for North Star, we had them set it and then it would just disappear into our profile page and we would talk about the North Star and people were like, wait, what's my North Star? I'm pretty sure I sent one, but I have no idea what it is. And it had only been like a few weeks. So we kind of learned from that experience where people even after had going through the exercise, wanted it to be more front and center. So now even in the coaching sessions, you have your webcam on the left side with your coach and on the right side there's an area for you to take notes and you could just click a button and it goes to your plan tab so you and your coach can look together at your plan tab. And so it's constantly there and in the pre session flow, it's there again. And so we want to basically annoy people with their own stars so that it's so ingrained in their head that they continue to do things that are important to them. And the other part that helps kind of one layer below the North Star too. Within the app we have this thing called the Wheel of Life, and it's essentially the different areas of your life and how you feel like you're doing in them and where you choose to focus on. A big part of coaching is agency and choice, and you can't work on all of them all at once. So after you do the assessment, you look at the different areas and these areas were defined by Russell Barkley through his functional like Adults Functional Impairment Scale. So they're been proven to be correlated to kind of where people with ADHD generally have challenges. And so using that as a coaching tool, you can have that conversation and everyone takes it about every three months and you can have that conversation with their coach to say, hey, look, like, I know we've worked on work and home for the last few months. I'm feeling pretty good about it. My score has went from here to here. So in the Next few months, I would actually like to shift our focus and talk a little bit about love and relationships or whatever other area that you choose to go towards. So it gives this kind of common language and focus so that folks on our platform can be able to be a bit more focused in where they choose to direct their coaching energy and their personal energy towards.
- [35:02]
William Curb
I love that. And it does sound like it's also incredibly helpful to have a coach there because I know I'm personally very inclined to be like, oh, well, I can just do all of the things. Like, why would I not do all of the domains of life at once?
- [35:15]
Chris Wang
Yeah, yeah, no, I completely feel you. We actually added a feature where at any point you're supposed to choose two focus areas and you can do it with your coach. If you have decision paralysis, it doesn't mean that you don't focus on any other areas, but if you don't choose something or a couple to focus on, your attention ends up being spread on everything. And then it's very difficult to push forward like 10 Lego pieces all at once in all opposite directions and keep an eye on all of them. So I agree it's very difficult to choose. And that's why we, sometimes we, we say that it's not. You're not choosing it forever. You're just choosing it for the next, let's say three months. And if you decide in a week that you want to change it, it's just a button. You just go there and you change it.
- [35:58]
William Curb
Yeah.
- [35:59]
Awesome. Is there anything you want to leave the audience with?
- [36:02]
Chris Wang
One thing that recently I've been thinking a lot about and kind of is baked into our methodology is just the concept of the neurodiversity model. So. And being more strength based and changing this narrative. And so I think a lot of us with adhd, we're so used to just fixating on the things that are wrong, the things that are hard for us, and not that those are not an important part of our journey, but I think there's this important part of, to balance and to keep our kind of sanity is to look at the parts that maybe you're so focused on looking at the things that are hard that you don't see some of the strengths or the parts of yourself that whether or not related to adhd, but are beautiful and that can be honed. And I think that the exercise of working on our strengths is a very empowering exercise that I believe needs, and we believe needs to be done in conjunction with also working on our weaknesses and things that are bad and things that are hard for us as well. And when you can do those two things together, the journey is a lot more positive than only kind of beating yourself up over things that are hard for you. So really it's not an either or. But taking a strength based approach in conjunction with figuring out things that need to be better is an approach that I think that I'm always kind of pushing and reminding people that there are tons of, whether ADHD or not, tons of beautiful things about you and kind of identifying those things and making sure that we spend time also focusing on those is really important.
- [37:37]
William Curb
Well, I love that strength based approach and thank you so much for coming on the show.
- [37:41]
Chris Wang
Thank you for having me.
- [37:47]
William Curb
Thanks again to Chris for coming on the show and thank you for sticking with us all the way to the end. Before you go though, let's do a quick rundown of Today's top tips. 1. Work on setting process oriented goal where you're focusing on the actions you can control like exercise three times a week rather than outcome based goals like lose 10 pounds.
- [38:07]
2.
- [38:08]
Make sure you are specific and write your to do list with clear, actionable steps to avoid overwhelm and decision paralysis. You want to know exactly what your next step is when you're looking at.
- [38:17]
Your to do list.
- [38:19]
3. Leverage your support systems. You can use community or or something like coaching to provide accountability, remove roadblocks and refine your systems.
- [38:28]
Remember, there is no gold star for.
- [38:29]
Toughing it out by yourself and it's okay to ask for help.
- [38:33]
That's it.
- [38:34]
Thanks for listening. I'd love to hear what you thought of this episode. Feel free to connect with me over@hackingyouradhd.com contact if you'd like links or to read this episode's transcript, you can go to the show notes page@hackingyourahd.com 207 if you'd like even more Hacking your ADHD Be sure to sign up for my newsletter any and All Distractions, which comes out every other week in it, I give my best distractions for the week, be they what I'm reading, what I'm playing, or what I'm watching. I also try to give a few bits of actionable advice in each newsletter, although your mileage may vary there. If that sounds like something you're interested in, head over to hackingyouradhd.com newsletter to sign up. I also wanted to let you know about our Patreon that we've been reworking. You can easily find that@hackingyouradhd.com Patreon. We're going with a pay what you want model, meaning that all levels of the Patreon will receive receive the same stuff. You can pay $0 or you can pay $2 or $10 and it's all the same. The only real difference coming from the roles that are assigned on the hacking your ADHD Discord. Which reminds me that I also wanted to announce that we're now on Discord, which you can get access to through the Patreon, which again is pay what you want. So if you want to check out the Discord or the Patreon, be sure to go to hackingyouradhd.com Patreon to find out more. And also don't forget to go subscribe to our new YouTube channel, which you can find@YouTube.com hackingradhd and finally, if you'd like to support the show, the best way to do so is to tell someone about the show, especially if you think a particular episode would resonate with them. Just click the share button on your podcast player. And now for your moment of dad. Did you know that in 3025 years life will either be fantastic or terrible? Really? It'll be 50 50.
- [40:27]
Sadie
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- [40:47]
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- [40:53]
Chris Wang
Out.
- [40:53]
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