Learn and Work Smarter

131. Why We Know What to Do But Still Don't Do It

• Katie Azevedo • Episode 131

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It’s one thing to know what to do, but it’s a whole other thing to actually DO it.

This is a struggle that so many of my private clients – students and professionals – deal with. They have the information, they’ve been instructed on what to do … and yet, they still aren’t taking action.

For people with ADHD, this phenomenon is even worse.

There’s a reason why this is happening, and it might not be what you expect.

What You'll Learn:

  • The reason you know exactly what to do but still don't do it 
  • The identity-based question to ask yourself instead of "do I feel like doing this right now?"
  • How to make future consequences feel real enough to actually move you to act today
  • 2 critical mindset shifts you need before taking action is even possible
  • 3 practical strategies that close the knowing-doing gap immediately

🔗 Resources Mentioned:

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Got your own burning question you'd like me to answer on a future episode? AWESOME! You can submit your questions via the form on my homepage right here.

Please follow the show and leave a review if what you hear is helpful. Doing so helps me more than you'll ever know. Thank you!!

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You know you should start your assignments earlier. You know you should review your notes after class instead of waiting until the night before the test. You know that cramming doesn't work. We've talked about that one a lot on this show. You know that you should break big projects into smaller steps. You know you should probably be using a planner. You should stop using your school portal as a to-do list. You know you should ask for help when you're confused instead of letting it fester until the week before the exam. You already know. So here's the question I am asking today, and I want you to answer it for real. If you already know all of that, why aren't you doing it? Now, before we get into the meat of the show, the answer to that question is not what you think it is So hang tight. Hello and welcome to the show. I'm Katie Azevedo. This is the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, and we are on episode 131. If you're watching this on YouTube, please make sure you're subscribed to the channel. If you're listening in a podcast app like Apple Podcasts or Spotify, just hit that follow button so you never miss an episode. You can also find me on Instagram at SchoolHabits. That's where I share tips and strategies between our Thursday episodes, and I love connecting with listeners over there. And then one more thing before we begin, and I am gonna say this at the top of the show because I think it's gonna help frame the conversation. If you are a parent listening to this episode, I am so glad you're here. This episode is gonna speak directly to students, but I really want you to stay with me all the way through because I think that by the end of it, some things are gonna kinda lock into place for you in a meaningful way as well. Because if you have a student in your life who you feel like you just can't figure out, who you know is capable and you can see the potential in, but they just keep falling short, I'm kinda air quoting short, but in ways that don't make sense to you, I think that today is gonna give you some real language and paradigms for understanding what is actually going on. Okay, let's begin So here's how I wanna structure today's episode. I'm gonna start by naming the gap between knowing things and doing them, so what it is and why it's so easy to miss. And then I'm gonna talk about what the gap actually looks like in real life, 'cause I think that a lot of people experience it without realizing that that is what's going on. And then I wanna talk about why the gap exists, because that's the part that is gonna lead us into the strategies that I'm gonna give you. Of course, I'm gonna give you something to do about it, right, at the end. There are gonna be two mindset shifts and then three practical strategies that you can use right now or when the episode is over, no matter where you are, no matter what you're dealing with. So grab a pencil if you wanna take notes. Also, the transcript is always in the show notes or in the description box as well at learnandworkssmarter.com/podcast/131. But let's begin with what this gap is, 'cause that's kinda the premise of the whole show. There's this gap between knowing something and doing something, and that is exactly what it sounds like. It is that space between understanding what you're supposed to do and then actually getting yourself to do it in any way that's consistent. And it sounds simple, right? Like almost too simple to deserve this entire podcast episode, but I promise you this gap is one of the most significant things that I see is derailing students. And the reason I think that it doesn't get addressed a lot is because of shame. First of all, that's why, you know, a, a key reason why we don't talk about a lotta things, and it has a tendency to hide in plain sight. Here's what I mean by that. Most of the advice that gets thrown around at struggling students is information based. So study more, get organized, use a planner, start earlier, don't procrastinate, manage your time, review your notes, ask for help, right? It is all information. It's all things that honestly most students already know they should be doing. But most students I work with are not short on information. They have heard the advice. They've probably Googled it. They've sat through some general study skills lecture before. Not that helpful. They may have even listened to a podcast or two about it. Hi. So the information is there, and yet the doing still isn't happening, and it's that gap, that very specific gap between the knowing something needs to happen and the getting yourself to do it is where so much academic struggle lives. And it's, it's not being addressed in the spaces that I'm in because everyone keeps Chucking more information at the problem, more tips, more hacks, more strategies, more listicles, more advice, when the problem in many cases is not even a lack of information in the first place. So does that make sense? So I wanna paint a picture of what this looks like in real life, because I think that sometimes when we're in the middle of it, we don't always have a name for it. So like you can't read the label when you're inside the bottle, is how the expression goes, right? And naming something is the first step to doing something about it So here are some ways that I see, at least in, you know, my professional capacity, which I work many, many, many hours a week one-on-one with private clients, private students, okay? And this is what it looks like. It is the student who knows that cramming doesn't work. They have been told this. They have experienced it. They've crashed and burned after a night of panic studying more than once, and yet every single test cycle they find themselves doing the exact same thing. They are not dumb. They don't like to fail. They hate it more than their parents hate it. They don't want their parents to be mad. They don't wanna have to retake their class. They don't want the impact it's gonna have on their GPA or their confidence. But because knowing that cramming is bad and knowing how to build a different preparation system are two different things, they have that gap. That's the gap. Here is another one. It's the student who buys the planner, maybe they even decorate it. They are genuinely excited about it on September 1st. They got the highlighters and the markers and the stickers. I have so many, like, adorable students I work with who, like, get really excited about it, and they're gonna get it together this year. Like, this is the year, But then by mid-October, the planner has been shoved under the bed, or maybe it's missing entirely, and they're back to relying on their memory or their school portal to keep track of everything, which does not work. Does that sound familiar? It might sound familiar to some of you. It might also sound very, very familiar to some of the parents listening right now too. Or a third one, the student who completely understands, like genuinely understands the concepts being taught in class. They are following along. They are nodding along. They're feeling good sitting in class like, "I get this." They might even participate in the class discussion, again thinking like, "I got this." But when they sit down for the test, they're like, "What? The front door? Like, I don't know jack about anything." Why? Because understanding something in the moment when someone is explaining it to you, and being able to retrieve it independently when nothing is in front of you and the stakes are high, like in a testing environment, those are completely different cognitive skills. Knowing the material in class is not the same as knowing how to study the material so that you can access it and apply that information into, you know, in different questions and different manners on an exam. And it's this specific gap that I see so often, and I think it's worth digging into what closing that gap looks like or requires. I am not gonna talk about the full system and the full strategy. We're gonna get there. But just so you can see what I mean when I say this is a skill problem and it's not an effort problem at all. I mean, there's some scenarios in which, like a kid isn't putting in any effort at all, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the times where you have a student, maybe it's you if you're a student, and you're genuinely, you're like, "I don't want this pain and suffering for myself. I want this to be better. Why isn't it happening? I know what I need to do. I just literally can't bring myself to do it." That's what I'm talking about. Now, the reason, just to go back to that, that most students can't retrieve information on a test even when they genuinely understood it in class comes

down to two things:

they were never taught, all right, how to space out their studying, and then how to actually study. On the spacing piece, most students study the night before, maybe two nights before if they're feeling ambitious. And I've talked about this on the show before, but spreading your study sessions out across multiple days, even just 45-minute sessions over maybe, like, a week or so instead of one big three-hour block the night before, that changes absolutely everything about how your brain understands and stores and remembers and can regurgitate what it is it is learning. That's called spaced repetition. Now, more time with your face in the book doesn't equal more learning at all. But because every single time we come back to the material after a period of time has passed, our brains have to retrieve it again, and every single retrieval opportunity strengthens our memory of what we're learning. That is, again, called spaced repetition. And it's not complicated, but it is a skill to build it or to know how to build it into how you prepare for your test. And most students don't know that this is what they're supposed to be doing. They just know they're, like, supposed to be studying, and so they are, but they didn't even think about spaced repetition. And then on the actual, like, how to study piece, this is big, too, because most students, they're rereading their notes or they're highlighting things in their textbooks, feeling like they're good doobies. Maybe they're passively rewatching videos. You know, they're using AI in ways that don't make sense. Maybe they're looking over their slides, just kind of flipping through it, going, "Yep, yep, yep, I know that." Again, not checking their comprehension. And none of that improves test performance because none of it is requiring you to retrieve the information. That is recognition, not recall. Those are, like, totally different things. The only thing that works to get information from outside of your brain inside your brain are active recall methods. There's a few that I wanna name here so that you have something concrete to, I don't know, think about or Google after this episode. There's the Feynman technique. Then there's the blurting method. You can use the three-two-one method There's of course flashcards. Like old school analog flashcards work amazingly well. In my study skills program, SchoolHabits University, I teach the grid quid study guides method. And then there are practice questions too, right? Like struggling through practice questions without the answer key in front of you. That discomfort that we feel is our brain building memory. Like memory is a thing. It's like neurons all webbed together that form like a concept. We, we need to form those neurons, and we only do that through active recall. Listen though, none of what I just rattled off, like the Feynman technique, the blurting method, 3-2-1, none of that is like a secret. You could Google active recall methods right now and find, you know, a bunch of this information just sort of scattered around. The information I would say is generally freely available. I mean, I even have a podcast episode called How to Learn Things. That's episode seven. I'll leave it in the show notes in the description box, so you can go there after this one, right? So the info is out there, yet most students are not doing it. Again, because knowing a method exists and then knowing how to integrate that method into way, into the way that you learn and your preferences and your schedule, those are just completely different skills And that's the dang gap. That's exactly what I mean when I say this is a skill problem and it's not an information problem. Okay, I could keep going with examples. I really could. I see this gap in so many forms. It's the student who knows that they should start their paper early, but doesn't know how to break a paper into actual steps, like, like smaller increments, and so they don't start the paper even though they know they should. It's the student who knows they need to be more organized, but they don't know what a real organization system looks like in, in real life. It's the student who knows that they're not understanding the material, and they should do something about it, but they don't know how to ask a good question or who to ask or when, or even how to check their comprehension along the way. They just know, like, something's off, but they don't do anything about it'cause they don't know what to do. And all of these are versions of the same gap, and they look from the outside like maybe laziness or apathy or defiance or some, like some kind of personal failing of some kind, but they're not that at all. I promise they're not that at all. A quick word, I know I'm talking to students here, but a quick word to parents. I know that it can feel, when you're watching this from the outside, like your kid just isn't trying. And I know it can feel like if they would just apply themselves or just take it seriously or just listen to what you're telling them, then everything would be different. And I am not dismissing how genuinely frustrating that is. I have two teenagers myself. I know exactly what that is. But what I am saying is that in most cases, not all, but most, what you're watching is not about motivation. It is, again, I feel like a broken record, but that's okay, we learn by repetition. It is a skill gap. Oftentimes, your kid knows what they're supposed to do. They have everybody telling them what they're supposed to do, but they don't know how to do it in a way that makes sense for them, and we cannot motivate somebody into a skill that they don't have. But we can teach it to them. All right, so now I wanna get into why this gap exists because this is the bridge into some of the strategies. Now, the most common explanation I hear from parents and teachers, I'd say sometimes even students themselves, is willpower or like, uh, motivation. Like if they just cared more, if they just wanted it badly enough, if they just tried harder, then that gap would close. But I am respectfully challenging that because I think that explanation is actually doing more harm than good. I think the thing about willpower and motivation is that they are incredibly unreliable sources of consistent behavior. I'm not being cynical. I'm actually quite a Pollyanna, but I'm not being syli- cynical when I say this. It is just how human psychology works. We do not do hard things consistently because we feel like doing them. We do hard things consistently because we have systems and skills and habits in place that make those things happen regardless of how we feel on, I don't know, any given Tuesday afternoon. The feelings aren't a strategy, and knowing that is a higher level thinking process. But the bigger issue here is that when we tell students, or when maybe even when students tell themselves that the reason they're struggling is because they don't want it enough, or they're not disciplined enough, or maybe they're lazy, we are pointing them completely, totally in the wrong direction. We're pointing them at a, at a mirror to like examine like who they are when we should be pointing at what they know how to do, and that is a really costly mistake in so many ways. The gap between knowing you should do something and getting your bum to doing it exists because hear this good, academic skills are not automatically transferred through education. You can go to school for 12 years and not once be explicitly taught how to study or manage your workload or how to retain information long term or how to break like a big project like an essay or a final project into smaller steps or how to prepare for a high-stakes assessment so that you can confidently, confidently walk in and kill it. Even well-meaning people assume that students have these skills because they're like, well, in school. And yeah, sure, for some students they do figure it out on their own. It's usually through some kind of, you know, serendipitous trial and error or maybe 'cause they have someone in their lives who knows this stuff and, and they've modeled it. Or maybe they just got lucky, and they stumbled into the right strategies along the way But for many, many students, and not just the struggling students, but students of all levels, even like the top performers, but they're just so stressed out that they've, you know, they're incapacitating themselves. The skill was never named, it was never taught, it was never practiced, and so therefore they never mastered it And we cannot do something well that we were never taught how to do well. That is just the reality of how skill acquisition works. All right, so before I get into what all of this means for you going forward, I promise that's coming. I wanna give you something practical to walk away with because that is how we do things here on the Learn and Work Smarter podcast. So I'm gonna give you two mindset shifts and then three practical strategies that you can use right now no matter your age, your situation, whether you're a student or you're a working professional. I'm gonna do that. But first, I have to address ADHD for a second because I know that some of you are listening and you're already thinking like, "Okay, but Katie, this is different for me. I have ADHD, so it's different for me." And I hear you. If you have ADHD, that gap between knowing, you know, that you have to do something and actually doing it isn't exclusively a skill issue. There is a neurological factor involved here specifically around task initiation that's rooted in emotional regulation. If your brain doesn't feel urgency about a task until it's immediate and it's high stakes, right? Which is why everything tends to happen at the last possible second, then you're probably not gonna do it until the last possible second. That's just how your brain is wired. But what I want to be so darn clear about is that everything I'm about to share works for ADHD brains too. In some cases, it works even more effectively than for a neurotypical brains. Okay? So stay with me. You can learn skills. If you have ADHD, you can learn skills just as well or even better than a neurotypical brain, so someone without ADHD. You may not learn them organically like others, you may have to spend more time learning them explicitly, but you can learn these skills just fine. There is no excuse there. Okay? I'm calling you out. All right, so there are two mindset shifts first, and then I'm gonna sh- uh, go into three strategies. So the first mindset shift is about identity, and I think this one is more powerful than it may sound like.'Cause like identity sounds like very vague, but here's what I mean. When we're standing at the edge of the thing that we know we should do but we're not doing it Starting the paper, maybe, you know, opening the textbook, sending the email, going to the gym, making the appointment. The question most people ask themselves is, "Do I feel like doing this right now?" But we are gonna stop asking that question because, "Do I feel like it?" almost always gives us the wrong answer. Almost nobody feels like doing the hard thing. The good feeling isn't coming anytime soon, and waiting for it is how that gap widens even further. So the question I want you to ask instead is, "What kind of person do I wanna be in this moment? What kind of person do I wanna be in this moment?" Because that question is not about a feeling. It is about a decision, an identity choice. Do I wanna be the kinda person who keeps saying they'll do it later? Or do I wanna be the kind of person who just does the thing and gets the thing done, who does the work even when it's uncomfortable? And then I get to feel good about it afterward. Right now, in this moment, what kind of decision does that person make? And that question, asking that question makes it not about willpower anymore or about feelings. It makes it about identity, and that is stronger. Like who we are in our core and our values and who we… how we see ourselves is much, you know, stronger and mu- much more powerful than some passing temporary feeling that we just h- let hijack our action. It makes it about identity, about the person we want to be or the person you know you are if you could just get out of your own way. Now, the second mindset shift has to do with how we think about future consequences.'Cause this is how it usually plays out. You have a paper to start, you know somewhere in the back of your mind That not starting now is gonna create a problem later. Like intellectually, you know that. But that consequence lives in the future, and that future is not here. It's abstract and it's then. And right now, starting is uncomfortable. And discomfort is very, very real and very, very present. So our brain does what it's designed to do. It trades that fuzzy future potential maybe pain for a very present moment relief. And it does that over and over and over again because pain right now is realer than that abstract pain in the future. So what we can do in these moments is to make that future consequence, that future pain, even more specific and more concrete and more real and essentially more painful. Not, "If I don't study, then this probably won't go well." That's too weak. That's not gonna motivate us. Instead, if I don't start right now, this week, today, I am gonna be cramming the night before the exam, and I am going to sleep terribly, and I am gonna walk in that, into that class feeling sick to my stomach, already knowing that I blew it And I am gonna have to live with that feeling, and I'm gonna be mad, and everyone's gonna be mad. Now, that is specific, and it's visceral, and it's something that our nervous system can actually feel as if that pain were happening to us right now. Now, to be fair, this mindset sh- all mindset shifts, all of them, like ever, take practice But this one can be challenging Because we have to get uncomfortable letting ourselves marinate in what future pain feels like. And that's, like, not a preferred activity for many people. So the next time you catch yourself putting something off, don't just note that it might be a problem."Yeah, I know that's probably gonna be bad. I should do this." No. Ask yourself, "What does that problem actually look like? What's the physical shape of it?" Get specific, get weird with it, get uncomfortable because that discomfort is what makes the future consequences compete with the friction of starting now, which is exactly what you need. Okay. That was the mindset shift. Just do that and you'll be fine. It takes two seconds. Obviously not. But the practical strategies, I have three of them. The first strategy is environmental design, and I'm not talking like,"Just clean your desk so you feel inspired." You can do that, too, but this one's a little bit, um, I guess a, like, more mechanical than that. Our environment is always working on us, whether we design it intentionally to work on us or not. If our space is full of things that are competing with our attention, our phone within reach, the TV's on that we claim we don't notice, but, you know, our cognitive resources do notice it. A desk that's just, like, shh… Like, absolute chaos. You are starting every single work session at a disadvantage before you even begin. So the goal is simple, and it's to make the right behavior the easy behavior. Okay? We wanna design our environment to make the right behavior the easy behavior. So before you sit down to do the thing, you set up your environment to support yourself doing that thing. You put your phone in another room, not face down on the desk, another room. Okay? Have everything that you need already out so there's no excuse to get up and, you know, lose the thread of, of your thought. If you work better with sound, use some, you know, pre-prepared, non-lyrical playlist that signals to your brain, "We are working now." We do this all the time. Think about, like, if you were to prepare a bath and you're like, "Okay. I am gonna relax. I'm really stressed out. I'm gonna prepare a bath. I'm gonna light a candle. I'm gonna dim the lights. I'm gonna use, like, bubbles. I am gonna, like, you know, s- put my slippers here and my bathrobe here and I'm gonna, like, literally surround the table, the bath with candles," or whatever it is to set the mood. You know that your environment can create that space of, like, relaxation, of letting go, of deep peace, and we do that in, like, many scenarios. We go… You know, why do you think restaurants design, um, their, like, environments a certain way to stimulate with certain colors? To stimulate appetite. Like, environment is so powerful. We can maximize this and use it for our advantage. If we curate a space with the same cues consistently, we do eventually begin to associate that environment with focus. This is just basic psychological conditioning. It's like the Pavlov's dogs of productivity, I guess, and we can use it to our advantage. Now, the second strategy is body doubling. If you haven't heard this term, it's exactly what it sounds like. It's doing the task, um, in like the physical or virtual presence, you can do it online too, of another person, even if that person is doing something different, they're not doing the same thing that you're doing. Maybe you're not even talking at all, and in fact, it works best when you're not even talking at all. You're just working in parallel Having another person nearby creates this low-level external accountability that can help us initiate and sustain a focus, and this is really helpful for people with ADHD, um, because, you know, you've got the task initiation challenges just right out of the gate.

But again, I do want to be clear:

this is not just an ADHD strategy. I hear from all kinds of students and professionals who say, you know, they simply cannot work alone at home, but they come- become completely productive and locked in in the moment that they're in a library or a coffee shop or with other people around. So that's body doubling, whether they knew it or not. It can look like going to the library with a friend and working silently side by side. It can work- look like a, a virtual co-working session over a video call. It can look like setting up your laptop at the kitchen table instead of a bedroom desk. I have a whole episode about body doubling and how to use it for various kinds of work. That is episode fifty-five. And then third strategy is time blocking with specificity. Most people, when they decide that they're gonna do something, say something like,"I'll get to it this weekend," or, "I'll work on it tomorrow," or even worse, like, "I'll do it later." But declarations like that are just intentions, or even worse, just concepts of intention. It's not a legit commitment. Like, this weekend has no shape or meaning, which means we can't hold ourselves accountable to it. So we use specificity instead. So not, "I'll study this weekend," but, "I'm gonna study it Saturday

at 10:

00 AM at the kitchen table for 45 minutes." It's the day, the time, the location, and the duration. All four are like the sweet sauce. When you get that specific, two things happen. First, in order to nail down a specific time, you have to check your calendar to see if it's actually feasible, and that's the first step because sometimes we make these plans, but we never actually check the calendar to see if we're, you know, even in… fully booked, and so the plan never even had a chance. And then second, because you made it real and specific, you're more likely to guard that time from opportunities that threaten it. So if someone's like, "Hey, do you wanna go to that thing at 10:00 AM?" Like, they have brunch at the whatever. You're like, "Shoot, I can't because I have that other

thing," studying at 10:

00 AM. If you didn't name your study session at 10:00 AM, you can be like, "Oh yeah, I'm just gonna study later." Later is not a time This works whether you're a high school student trying to start an essay, maybe a professional who's trying to tackle some project that's been on your to-do list for three weeks and is making you feel sick to your stomach. The task doesn't care who you are, what level you are at. You give it a day, you give it a time, you give it a specific place, and if you can, a duration. You do that and you have meaningfully increased the odds that that thing is gonna happen. Now, these strategies are not the full answer They are a starting point. They're the kinda moves that just reduce friction enough for you to get into the thing. But it would be disingenuous of me if I were like, "Just try these three strategies, and, you know, you'll always accomplish your goals," right? Because closing that gap between knowing what you need to do and actually doing it, closing it for good, building a system where the doing happens consistently and automatically, not just when you remember to try a strategy, that requires a little bit more, and that's what I wanna talk about next. Because I just told you that the gap between knowing you need to do something and doing it, it's real, it's common, we all experience it, and it has nothing to do with who you are as a person, and it's created because we lack a particular set of skills. That's wicked good news, 'cause all skill gaps can be closed. And I know that might sound obvious after everything I said, but think about it. If a problem were some permanent thing about who you were, then, like, yeah, that would be really hard to change. Like, who we are is hard to change. But that's not what's happening at all. This is a skill gap, and skill gaps are closed through learning and practice. That's it. That's all it takes, and I'm not like, you know, I'm not discounting the fact that learning skills is hard, but it's not complicated. Learning what they are and practicing them, that's all it takes. That's the nature of skill development. I'm gonna be straightforward, the way I am always on this show like it or not. I am not about to give you some three-step strategy right now. I am not holding out on you, though. Okay, you know me better than that by now I would hope. But the real answer to closing that skill gap is not a tip, or a hack, or a listicle, or some quick-hit strategy. The right answer is to build a full system, an integrated set of skills that makes the doing happen automatically, so that students are not relying on willpower or motivation or remembering to remember something. Now, the system looks different for every student because every student has a different skill gap. Some students have the planning piece down, but they, you know, they can't handle the follow-through for whatever reason. Some students know how to manage tasks, but they have no idea how to study the material so they can score what they're capable of. Some students have really good intentions, but just terrible methods. And this is exactly, and I mean exactly, what SchoolHabits University was built to do. SchoolHabits University is my flagship program, and it's a complete academic skill system that comes with a full year of live coaching. It is not a collection of tips, or it's not a motivational course. It's an actual system. The study methods, the The task and assignment management, the time management skills, organization, note-taking, the habits, all of it, built together. So that the gap between knowing and doing finally closes for good. I've worked with thousands of students over 20 years, and let me share that the students who close that gap for good are not the ones who tried harder or had more willpower or better technology or access to weird little hacks they got from TikTok. They're the ones who got the skills. And if you're a parent listening and you've been watching your student struggle and you are wondering, like, what the missing piece is, I want to gently suggest that more pressure, more reminders, more conversations about how they need to try harder is probably not gonna move the needle in the direction you want it to. What they need to be taught is skills, and SchoolHabits University does exactly that. You can find all the details at schoolhabitsuniversity.com. I will also leave the link in the show notes and in the description box if you're watching on YouTube so you don't have to go hunting for it. All right. Let me bring this home. If there's one thing I want you to walk away with today, it's this: the gap between knowing you need to do something and actually doing it is a skill problem. And the good thing about all skill problems is that they're the best kind of problem to have because they are completely, entirely solvable. As my mom always said, "All problems are meant to be solved." Oh my gosh, I promised myself I would never say that. You already know what you're supposed to do, and now it's time to learn how to do it and to have someone in your corner teaching you the system while you do, and that's what I'm here for. All right, that's it for today, my friends. Thank you so much for being here. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with a student, with a parent, with anyone you think who might need to hear that the gap they are experiencing is not about who they are because I think that message has the power to be revolutionary. All right, that's it for today, my friends. I'll see you next Thursday. Until then, keep showing up, keep doing the hard work, keep asking the hard questions, and never stop learning

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Katie Azevedo

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