The Real Impact of ADHD on Planning, Memory, and Time Management (Mike Legett)

If planning your week, remembering the small stuff, or keeping up with admin feels harder than the actual work, you're not imagining it.

This week, Skye sits down with Mike Legett, an ADHD coach and executive functioning specialist who was diagnosed with ADHD as a child. Mike studied molecular genetics at Emory before leaving graduate school when its vague, paperwork-heavy demands became unworkable. She went on to build a career as an internationally recognized swing and blues dance instructor and now helps adults with ADHD build systems that work with their brains instead of against them through the Center for Living Well with ADHD.

Together, Skye and Mike unpack why ADHD isn't a lack of effort. It is often a mismatch between the person and the systems they are expected to work within. They explore why planning, memory, time management, and admin can become the biggest sources of stress, and what actually changes when you stop relying on willpower alone.

If you've ever wondered why the "boring parts" of running a business seem to drain you more than the work you love, this conversation will leave you with a clearer understanding of what's really happening and what you can do to make life easier.

What We Cover

• Why planning and admin create so much friction for ADHD brains
• How paperwork and unclear expectations led Mike to leave academia
• Why "just push through it" usually makes things worse
• What changed when Mike stopped trying to manage everything alone
• How better systems reduce mental load without requiring perfect discipline
• Why working with your brain beats fighting against it

Connect With Mike Legett

https://www.mikelegett.com/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The hyperactivity is the easiest thing to spot. It's the most disruptive thing in classrooms. And so when that's what you're looking at as the primary thing you notice, it kind of makes sense that people thought people grew out of it because that's the piece which you are most likely to outgrow. You don't outgrow ADHD, you outpro the hyperactivity and the inability to sit still to some degree.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the ADHD Skills Lab. Today we are joined by Mike Leggett, a wonderful ADHD coach and executive functioning skills coach who works with clients worldwide. She has a unique background. She was diagnosed with ADHD as a child. She pursued graduate studies in genetics, which I'm sure we'll get into. And then she spent more than 15 years as an internationally recognized swing and blues dance instructor. So we're gonna, you know, get into her brain, ask her all of the fun, researchy things, and have a really good conversation. So wonderful to have you.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Yeah, thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

I'm so glad. I'm so glad. And then before we jump into this, for those of you who don't know, and most of you do at this point, we are fractional COOs for ADHD business owners. So if you're a business owner, you're looking for a fractional COO that understands your brain and you want to get some things unblocked, you can just click the link down below, and that's what we'll help you with. So I want to know from you. You were diagnosed as a child, which is a little bit unusual for women. So tell me about that.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Yeah, so not only was I like young for my age, right? I'm 43 now. So I was diagnosed like in the 90s. I was a girl and I was inattentive, which tells you two things. Number one, I was going to a school that was much fancier than my family could have afforded, because my dad was a teacher there. So it was a good school, small school. And also, you could say my case was a bit extreme.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

A little bit acute.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Yeah. My dad, who loves me and supports me, and just great. He he recently said that, like, you know, he was given a list of like the milestones that kids should be meeting at certain ages, right? And he said, and I quote, I looked at it and just laughed. So my case was pretty bad. You know, it's funny because I think kids who are diagnosed now, right, and move forward are gonna have a really different experience because in the 90s, what I was told is like, oh, here's Ridlin. I was like, cool, I don't like it. And they were like, okay, have a good life. And there was no education to be had, there was no, you know, training, there was nothing. It was like take the meds or don't. And I was like, it's in fourth grade, I think. And I took the meds for a couple weeks and didn't like it. And that was the end of the story, which these days, like, there are multiple medications. There are like more than medications. There is education, which is probably the biggest piece that then people can make their choices around like things like that.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

So yeah, yeah, 100%. I think it's really interesting the different ways we've been going through the history of the DSM recently on the podcast, and it's interesting the way that the ADHD that we know it today has really only been around since the 80s. So it's very new. And so when you were when you were diagnosed, it would have been such a recent addition. And I think the even the idea that adults could have it didn't come up until later, and and you know, the idea of what it is and inattentive and people are are so often surprised by how new this is as a concept, not as a thing that happens to people. We know that that's been happening for a very long time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

There's some, you know, it's fascinating the more I learn about like the different presentations and and the way that they shift over a lifetime. And it actually makes the story make a little bit more sense because, you know, it used to be that the thing was identified was hyperactivity, right? Because that's what's really easy to notice, unless you have a kid who can't close her desk because of all her, you know, papers and that kind of thing. That was me. You know, but the hyperactivity is the easiest thing to spot. It's the most disruptive thing in classrooms, right? And so when that's what you're looking at as the primary thing you notice, it kind of makes sense that people thought people grew out of it because that's the piece which you are most likely to outgrow. You don't outgrow ADHD. You outgrow the hyperactivity and the inability to sit still to some degree, right? And so, like, it makes sense that they said you're gonna outgrow this if they thought it's the hyperactivity.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Yeah, that's a really good point. And it's funny because when people come to me and and maybe as well to you, impulsivity and hyperactivity isn't really what we're speaking about often. It's things that the DSM doesn't even really consider. It's more along the lines of time blindness, working memory struggles, things that don't get touched on as much, um, but they form the internal landscape of the person's experience. And that, you know, especially there is some research to indicate that even with medication, the time blindness doesn't seem to dissipate. So there is a lot of like much more ingrained struggles there. Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Well, I want to know about your uh graduate studies in genetics. I was a neuroscience nerd. I went into postgraduate for neuroscience and we did a little bit of genetics, study of consciousness, things like that. Um, so tell me about your experience. What was that like?

SPEAKER_00 5:16

You know, it's funny. As a kid, like I leaned on my interests to get me through life, right? And those were many and varied. And so I was originally, you know, idea number two or three from when I was an undergraduate was like, okay, I'm gonna be a vet. And then I took a class my second senior year with a genetics teacher, and I was like, this is so cool. So I started a program at Emery for molecular genetics, cell biology and molecular genetics. And like I thought it was super cool how the puzzle pieces fit together, right? And the sort of mechanical nature of this, of something that was invisible and yet had all these effects, right? So the thing that I like was working for a PI primary investigator, basically you're like head nerd for those of you who do not speak grad studies. So he was studying the way that certain circular chromosomes in flies, fruit flies, behave. Fruit flies are used a lot in genetic studies. For one thing, you can get a lot of generations very quickly. Hard to do that with like humans, you know. Not to mention the ethics, of course. So we were studying like the way that they behave and the way that they twist and the way that supercoiling is what it's called. The way that supercoiling makes certain pieces of DNA more or less accessible and how it works. And I loved puzzling that together. What I didn't love, of course, is that in grad school there are a lot of like unspoken, or at least in my experience, right? There was a lot of like unspoken expectations. There were a lot of a lot of vagueness around what is enough, around like what you're expected to do. And I think in a different program or with a different PI that was a better fit for my brain, that story might have gone very differently. I still really love reading the science, you know, and I still really love taking something that is a dry set of thick papers with big words and turning them into like, like in grad school, one of my favorite things I did was make I got some like twisted it wasn't rope, it was like fancy stuff, but basically rope, right? And made snaps so that I could take it apart, twist it more, put it back together, and show how instead of being a circle, then it wants to coil up to relieve that stress. And that I still love that game of like take the complex science, make it so easy and so accessible that somebody can go, oh yeah, duh, that makes sense. I get it.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Yeah, I I think it was you. I remember saying something like, you know enough not to be intimidated by big words. And I relate to that. And that's also what we do on this podcast. We review academic research and we bring it to life and we talk about it because it doesn't have to be that intimidating, but it can often be intimidating because it's behind this screen of just lots and like sometimes you'll read something, and even I to this day, and I have to read papers for my job now, I'll be like, this one might be it. I might have hit a wall, and then eventually you're like, oh, they just mean it went up instead of down. Like, why did they say it like that?

SPEAKER_00 8:33

Right? I feel like the whole is it Charles Dickens who's paid paid by the word? Sometimes it feels a little bit like that with with journal articles, like paid by the jargon.

SPEAKER_02 8:43

Yeah, which is funny because the word is needs to be less, which usually when you're writing that you're cutting things.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

Right. You know, it makes sense to me given that a lot of people don't have a really strong science background. It makes total sense to me why it's intimidating when you don't know where to start with science, right? So, like, you know, if I casually mention the VM PFC, right? And somebody's like, what's that? And I go, Oh, the ventromedial preforfrontal cortex. Like that is no clearer unless you know.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

Sorry. I was like, yeah, no, I know what that means. But you're right, it's still no clearer. Yeah. Right? But if you say it's this part of your brain and it's associated, it might not be this part. But you know, if you say it's a certain part of your brain, you point to it, you explain it. It's pretty straightforward at that point.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

So, like the way I like to explain that is that first off, anatomy is just it's just geography, but of your body, right? So, you know, the ventromedial, well, okay, that's the lower middle part of prefrontal. Well, that's like the front of the front, right? And so, like, very quickly you can get down to the fact that it's like, you know, kind of this this part. Like, if you were just to like poke yourself right there, that would be the MPFC, right? But like, if you don't know that, it's very hard to know where to start.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

I agreed. I think it's so important, and it's funny because, you know, uh to your point about academia, you know, we recently spoke about the struggle with systems and with admin specifically in entrepreneurship, but also in other areas. And there's a lot of research, and it's isn't even related to ADHD, that one of the big reasons people quit spaces like academia, but not just academia, is actually because of the paperwork. You know, in some cases it's paperwork, then burnout, which is accurate to my experiences of being in that environment, and it sounds like for you too. Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

I also like another piece for me, and I, you know, this is I think I didn't even hit burnout, honestly. I felt so unsupported and felt so hopeless. It felt like there was just no path forward because I was diagnosed as a kid, but as you'll recall, I hadn't been on medication. I didn't have the the recent paperwork. And then as now, universities were terrified of going anywhere near providing Adderall or Ritalin or anything. So when I went to my university and I said, hey, I'm diagnosed and I haven't needed meds, I need help now. They said, Cool. All you have to do is go get re-diagnosed to prove you didn't outgrow it. We don't do that, but you can find a provider on your own, pay out of pocket, uh, sure, in grad school. Yeah, you know, do all the paperwork to maybe get reimbursed, prove that to like it was a million steps. You know, sure. All you have to do to get your knee repaired is go to that fourth floor walk-up three times. No problem. Right? Like, I can't do it. And at the same time, I had, you know, grad school, which had been one of my passions, but now just looked like all of my weak spots assembled into one horrifying monster and no support. And on the other hand, at the same time, I had an artistic hobby that was trying that like wanted itself to be a career. I was like, you know what? I'm gonna choose that. I'm gonna do the thing that doesn't make me feel like my brain is on fire every single day.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Yeah. And I feel like a lot of people who are listening to this, because I've spoken to a lot of people in academia or in similar industries, will resonate with that. I mean, in many ways, entrepreneurship is that. I mean, it is a move away from structure that doesn't feel like it's gonna fit to a way of supporting the environment. Because to your point, you know, medication is very helpful. Obviously, strategies is very helpful. That was what I did. I was like, okay, cool. I have journal articles and a library full of books. Let's learn about ADHD. But then I ended up, you know, studying that as much as I was studying my actual PhD, and that became the business, and I ended up running this business. So ultimately, it helped me, but it it was also still still a struggle. So I want to know from you. You went into being an internationally recognized swing and dance instructor. That is an entrepreneurship in itself, that's its own business. So take me through what it was like to now have full freedom of your environment, but also full freedom of your environment, if you know what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Perfect way to ask that question. I feel like I got I've gotten really, really lucky several times in my life. And one of them was stumbling into swing dance because that's a hobby that I may or may not have come upon. Um, and it just, I mean, it lit me up like from day one, right? In that 80, that way that all of us ADHDers know when something just makes the world covered in glitter. And it's funny because most people think, oh, you were a dancer. You must have been very graceful. I wasn't, actually. As a kid, I was I took like, you know, a couple years of after school dance classes. And my parents apparently were the one in the back, like, ooh, that's whose kid is that? Because I'd had I'd had arthritis as a kid. So I was like behind physically. So when I started dance lessons, partner dancing, as a college kid, I was immediately like, oh my gosh, following makes sense. Touching somebody and understanding what they are doing makes perfect sense to me. It was had to come to the dance part later, like the dancing side of partner dancing, right? But like that immediacy of touch someone and understand. Touch someone and get a whole new perspective and like a whole new experience of perceiving the world and yourself and the music. And then I moved into teaching, which was like, okay, you take this thing that you're super passionate about, and then you add this other thing you're really passionate about, which is being a nerd, right? So sharing sharing my love of that thing and geeking out about it and problem solving and answering questions and watching people discover the joy. And it was so much of it was so immediate. Like so in the moment, so reactive, so exploratory, and like that stuff that I loved. I mean, it was just like heaven's part and like you know, the beam. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

Yeah, like it's this is it. We found it. Yeah. I mean, God, finding your long-term hyperfocus is an amazing thing.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

It is. It absolutely I mean, it is like I must I I joke that I must have like died saving a litter of kittens from a barn fire in a previous life to have been so lucky, you know. And the flip side of that, of course, is the administrative side, right? Which is the like, oh yay, you have all the freedom. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

Yeah, we talk about that in depth. There are several uh episodes devoted to that problem.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Luckily, I think I stumbled into a couple of healthy coping mechanisms. So one of those is having collaboration. So just by having a teaching partner, you know, if somebody's gonna say, Hey, will you, you know, fly out to our city and teach a workshop? They would reach out to me and a partner. And so now there's two of us. And that is a very different scenario for me than somebody emails me and I have to get back to that someone. It's just a whole different thing when I can engage that social piece of my brain. So that helped with some of it. You know, I combined multiple coping mechanisms, like taxes, right? Okay, luckily taxes do have a deadline, and they're so impossibly complicated that they present kind of a nice challenge and like a bit of a special interest hyper focus kind of a thing because I was like, wait, this is this is a really long word problem. We're talking spreadsheets, I love me a spreadsheet. We're talking like, since I don't keep good records in the first place, it's forensic accounting. That's kind of fun, right? Go back and recreate my past for the last couple months. So, like, I would sort of lean into like, would it have been better if I'd been every time I took a trip, like making careful notes as I went? Absolutely. In the sense that like it would have made it easier. But I was never gonna do it that way without more support than I had, without more ADHD education than I had. So I feel like I was able to kind of make it work, even if it wasn't the best, you know, did it mean crying before tax time?

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Who hasn't cried before tax time? Guys, put your hands up. You know you've been there.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Sure, sure. Sometimes, yes. You know, hating my hating like the world for a couple days here and a couple days there. Like, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Honestly, to go back to academia, I cried before my ethics application. I'm not ashamed to admit it.

SPEAKER_02 17:09

So it was never gonna, it was never gonna not be a factor.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

Right. So I think I got one of the reasons I was so lucky is that there was very little of the more strict admin and the more routine admin when I talk to somebody who's a therapist and the notes that they have to do, right? Or when I talk to like a lawyer about billable hours and like how difficult that is, that sounds worse than what I had to do.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

So you're yeah, I love that. So tell me a little bit about your role because it says internationally recognized. So you went on to do, you know, quite a lot in this industry. And I guess my question for you is like, did you consider this as a business? Were you ever like, right, what is my profit margin? What is my revenue? Did you do that kind of stuff? Or was it more about the dance or both?

SPEAKER_00 17:58

It's funny because I at the time I would have said, like, absolutely not. I kind of felt, and I'm so sorry to MBAs who are listening, I kind of felt like business, eh, right? And yet the business, with the perspective I have now, right? The business is just the thing that makes that possible. Like, I have a kind of a funny relationship with Schedule C's, which is the, you know, the American, an American tax forum for sole proprietors. And like, I kind of really like that word problem, that puzzle. I enjoyed talking with fellow dance instructors about like their contracts, because the more, like the better the quality of your contract is, right? And for us, that kind of includes like writer, like how you're gonna be housed, how you're gonna be fed, what kind of flights you're willing to take, that kind of thing for the for the type of dance I was doing, right? Like the better the quality of your contract, the less likely you were to have a situation where you couldn't sleep all night and then wanted to go do a great job all day. It absolutely was a business. And I think I associated the word business for the love of money, money, money, money, business, business bro guys who like I had kind of known in undergrad.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

Yeah, moving money around somewhere.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

Yeah. But these days I realize that like business is just a structure that supports the thing that you're trying to do. And sure, there are some people for whom making money is the game, right? And that's that's totally fine. But it doesn't have to be. You know, like I just I've been getting ads for Hank Green's company, which is like supporting all of these companies where the whole purpose is to like do good. So their profits go to solve problems in the world, right? Like that's a business. That's absolutely a business, and it exists to do good. So my my perspective on that is really different these days.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

Yeah, I understand that. I've sort of come to see it as a home for ADHD people because so many entrepreneurs or you know, contractors or people like that are neurodiverse, and that was one of the reasons they left the academic world or the corporate world, because it was a it was a safe home for the way their brain worked. I'm curious then, uh, we're gonna talk about your obviously coaching as well, but across any of your spaces, have you ever had an assistant?

SPEAKER_00 20:18

I have joked on hundreds of occasions that like if I ever win the lottery, right? Like I will continue to do my work, but I will fly first class instead of coach, and someone else will answer my emails for me, will do my scheduling for me, will like make sure that all of the administrative stuff is just handled. I actually, something that I have that's closer to that now is that I work with a group of coaches. We're called the Center for Living Well with ADHD. And so instead of having to do the work of like choosing a billing software and choosing a scheduling software and interacting with the billing software company and the this and the that, like like we kind of go in on that stuff, and we have one person who started the business who deals with them directly. We started by two women, but one of them sort of deals with those companies directly. And so I don't have to do I don't I don't do advertising now. I don't figure out the best billing options. I just say this is what I charge. Here's a link to the button. You can pay through that. And that is that is huge. So in that sense, like I have the the pieces of an assistant, some of the pieces of an assistant that Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

No, you almost got a CEO, which is which is great. Just as a note to people, you do not have to win lotto to get an assistant. You absolutely do not have to win lotto. You you barely have to win like a small prize. But okay, so tell me, you know, you you're doing this swing and blues dance, you're internationally recognized, you're doing really well, and now you're a coach. Like, what happened there?

SPEAKER_00 21:53

So, way back in 2020, there was a little thing that happened. Uh huh. Like, Suddenly, the idea of having people come together from multiple countries to dance, to hug while exercising seemed like a less good idea. To be fair, there was kind of a sneaky lead up because I knew that dance was not, couldn't be my full-time thing forever, right? Like swing and blues is way too small a community for me to like have a good retirement plan from that. And like bodies just don't, bodies don't last forever, right? And so, you know, I I knew that that wasn't gonna be forever. And also, I never had I'm fun to play never have ever with because like I've never had a paid day off. I've never had, you know, a boss contribute to a 401k, like, because I've never had like a corporation nine to five job, which meant though I also never had corporate overlords telling me, like, don't talk about mental health on Facebook. Like, I had no pressure of that sort.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

Same actually. You and I would both not be able to drink, and that never had I ever.

unknown 22:57

I five.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

Right? It's it's a very different situation. A lot of people are pressured to not, you know, expose weaknesses publicly because it could get wielded against them, right? In corporate settings. Without that, I was quite happy to talk about having ADHD and what was hard about it, what worked, and how things were going. And so I kind of I don't know, I would say stuff on Facebook about you know about these issues, and people would say, Oh my gosh, like I got diagnosed because of you. We're like, thank you so much. It's you know, it's so brave for you to talk about it. I was like, it's really not. I don't have anything at stake, honestly. Like it would be brave for somebody else, right, who had different stakes in my position. Absolutely. I didn't have anything really that I was risking because it's just me and my dance nerd friends. And like, so I didn't have that same pressure to not talk about it. So I was really comfortable. And when stupid pandemic hit, I was like, okay, I think I want to enter the field of like advocating or educating around mental health because there's a big need. And knowing how my lack of pressure had been so helpful for me, I wanted to kind of pay that forward. So I was like, okay, do I do I pivot to being a science writer? And having just come off of being a dancer, right? I was like, I don't want to be an independent contractor, I don't want to be a solo entrepreneur, I don't want to do that again, you know? And then I ended up becoming a coach. So like swinging a miss on that, but it's another job that I absolutely adore.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

So you've got you've got kind of got it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

Yeah, yeah. I got I got very again, I got very lucky because I found another dream job and I don't have to do all the admin by myself. So worth it. Saving those kittens in that previous life must have been worth it.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

Interesting, interesting. So so yeah, so you moved into ADHD coaching around about the same time I did, actually. We had a food business. I was an academic doing my PhD, but then also we were running a frozen food business, and the government was like, that doesn't exist anymore legally, New Zealand. So we were like, right, okay, cool. Well and then ended up online and and moved to coaching, and then that just took off. It was like crazy. I mean, I think a lot of people now who I've spoken to a lot of coaches who've talked about that time period as being quite an extreme, just everybody wanted to know about ADHD coaching or and a lot of other things as well, but but that kind of stuff. So now you're doing you're doing this. Is this your full-time role as an ADHD coach?

SPEAKER_00 25:21

It is. I still do teach dance. I still get to travel and teach dance, but we'll be in Australia later this year. But I'd say that's now kind of a side gig. ADHD coaching is a a full-time, is my sort of my day job, if you will. That and you know, renovating my house.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

Take me through, like what have you learned being an ADHD coach? Because one of the great things about these roles, I've got to do this as a coach and now as a COO, is you see the inside of so many different worlds people let you into.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

I got so into the description of as you were talking about seeing these different worlds that I forgot the question.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

I guess my question is like, what have you learned from going from you and your experience to having access to these different worlds?

SPEAKER_00 26:03

In fair disclosure, to what I'm or in fair, in fairness, I can't sail, but I feel like when I was young, my ADHD strategies were kind of like if you were inventing sailing, right? Got a boat, you got a big sheet, get pushed by the wind. Maybe you can kind of steer a little bit. The more I learn about ADHD, and the more people I get who like I get to sort of be let into their world, right? Their ADHD world, the more I'm starting to see the ways that ADHDers can charge into the things that are their weaknesses or things, ways that they can work around them. So like sailors can actually sail into the wind, not straight on, but by going, like if the wind is coming this way, they can actually go pretty close too, like about to here, and like about to here, and about to here. And so what that means is that like you can basically sail into the wind. And I feel like with ADHD, it's it's kind of like that. Like in the beginning, you're like, okay, I can I can follow my interests, no problem, right? The things that light up my brain, awesome. Things that are hard, not so much. Like I can't really steer my brain, you know, and then starting to see the different ways that like we can either lean into an interesting part of something, or that we can sort of support the weaknesses so that they are not as meaningful, they are not as impactful to us, and sort of steering ourselves that way, and we get like a really big range of ways that we can go, and we know how to cope with the fact that we can't go straight into the wind, right? We go a little this way, a little this way. That perspective is really different than like early on in my ADHD education. I mean, in the beginning, right, I knew nothing, like until I was in grad school and learned what ADHD was and how it was impacting me. And then I was like, there I was like ugly crying in the grad school library because there was this article that just told me my whole life was explained by ADHD, right? Even once I started learning about ADHD, it was like, okay, strength space, we focus on your strengths. Okay, and like the weak stuff is is kind of hard, you know, and it's hard to put this into more concrete terms because it's so individual, it's so specific. But the way that we can get right up on the things that are hard and like we can make progress in that direction. And of course, like there are times where we can just make it easy, you know, like hiring an assistant. But it turns out I think we have a wider range of what we can do than I had originally thought or interpreted.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

Yeah, I think it's a very hopeful thing in many ways to do because when you see someone else and they're like, that's it, we're done here, I can't do anything. And you're like, oh no, no, like you're actually really good. Like you're you're struggling and you got these little pieces. But if we just make this adjustment and we just do this and we do this, you're actually gonna run quite nicely. So it is really, I think I find it quite a hopeful thing to do and a really fun, fun role.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

I think that's a great way to put it, a hopeful thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

Well, I want to ask you the three questions we like to ask everybody. So, first question I have is what is a, you know, what would you consider to be the professional accomplishment or achievement that you're the most proud of? Okay, I have two. Is that okay? You can you can totally have two.

unknown 29:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

One is actually you reached out and you were like, hey, so-and-so recommended you for this podcast. And I was like, that's kind of my professional hero. So I won't name any names because I'm already embarrassing myself, but that was pretty cool. I did a little happy dance in the hallway.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

Oh, that's so cool.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

And the other actually is getting to speak at the conference. I love speaking at the conference. I love it a lot. Um, the international conference on ADHD this year happening in Baltimore, uh, first weekend of December, for the curious. Yeah, I've done it a couple times, and like every time I'm like, this is so cool. This is this feels really good.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

Yeah, that's awesome. That's so cool. And then on the other side, do you have a professional embarrassment or failure? And how did you deal with that?

SPEAKER_00 29:49

Oh, I have so many. Actually, I'll tell you a recent one. A coach who, a fellow coach who I super admire, was taking a couple of months off and sort of suggested me to one of her clients, and they were like, Yeah, totally. And then we failed, like we we thought we had a scheduled time, and then we had to rearrange, and then I dropped the ball. And not only did I drop the poll scheduling, I dropped the ball on canceling her billing. So then I had charged this client for multiple months of coaching, which we hadn't done. And I had to tell my my like fellow coach who I admire so much that like, oh, by the way, uh, yep, I didn't work with that client, actually. And like, it's mortifying. Now, I'm not shame spiraling the same way that I would have not that long ago. It does, it really does happen. Like, every now and then our systems, you know, they're not perfect. And so, again, the admin stuff.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

If you had a, you know, quote, something you like to say to remind yourself or tell other people, what would that be?

SPEAKER_00 30:50

You warned me that you were gonna ask me this question. And I and for like weeks I've been like, I don't know, I don't have a quote, I don't know, I don't have a quote. And then today, in this moment, I'm like, actually, I think two come to mind, which are kind of my like mantras for ADHD stuff. And one is like, if it's hard, it's hard. As in, it doesn't matter that it's not cognitively problem-solving difficult, that it's not like advanced calculus. If it's hard, it's hard. Doesn't matter why. That's the reality. It's hard. Start there. And the other one is use the tools that you know work. Like when I start falling off of stuff, it's because I have I have stopped using one of my tools without noticing. And I I just remind myself, I'm like, hey, use the tools that you know work, you know, and that I have my ritual, my routine of like what that means, getting back started again. It is much kinder for me, like it's a much kinder self-talk than the other things that would be happy to pop up as thoughts in that moment, you know, like, hey, use the tools you know work. You don't have to beat yourself up, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You know the tools. Just pause and remember to restart them.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

Yeah. And you would be surprised how helpful that is. For some people, that's a whole, that's a whole coaching session worth of knowledge right there in that one sentence.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

Yeah, I've had I've had several clients who are like, oh, this thing that we'd work on, it was working, blah, blah. I'm like, okay, what are the tools that you're not using right now? And like that's that's all they needed.

SPEAKER_01 32:14

Amazing. Well, so wonderful to have you on, Mike. Tell the people where they can find you.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

You can find me at two places. They kind of lead you to the same place. One is miclegget.com, and that is M-I-K-E-L-E-G-T.com. The other is Center for Living Well with ADHD.org. I won't spell that. Those are mostly whole words though. And then you can you can that has like a blog on it, which I'm a contributor to, and that's got like, you know, my about page, and you can you can reach me through either of those. And also you can see me at the conference. I will be there.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the ADHD Skills Lab. If you liked it, leave us a five star review. It helps other people learn more about us. And thank you so much to our wonderful team for making us sound good, look good. We couldn't do it without you.