This week I’ve got an awesome conversation for you with Jodi Lasky -
Jodi is a seasoned entrepreneur, coach, and author with extensive knowledge in neuropsychology, accountability, productivity, and introversion. Drawing on her background in Communication, Culture, and Technology, as well as law, Jodi has dedicated her career to understanding leadership and personal tendencies. Her coaching program, 'The Introvert Founder', leverages her understanding to help introverted entrepreneurs navigate the complexities of business success, encouraging them to work in harmony with their natural tendencies rather than battling against them.
In our conversation today, we talk about using the ideas from Agile Product Development and implementing them for personal goal setting and planning. But we also explore issues around neurodivergence, particularly focusing on ADHD and introversion.
William Curb: Let's start with, well, what is Agile product development? And then we can kind of jump into how we would apply it to ourselves.
Jodi Lasky: Fantastic. Agile product development is probably 10 or 15 years old now. It is a way to literally develop software faster instead of using traditional project planning with scheduling everything and knowing exactly how everything's gonna go, which you don't know at the beginning of a development process. And it's all guessing. You plan a couple of weeks in advance. You start with understanding what the big goal is and you break it down into smaller and smaller details and you use those things to develop what's called a product backlog. And that's a to-do list.
All of the things that have to be done. And then Agile teams work in sprints, which are often about two weeks, four weeks, something like that. And at the end of that cycle, there is always something that is done, that can be shown to people. It's real progress being made on the project. So instead of we're gonna go into a back corner and develop some software and we'll show it to you in six months and it'll work and it'll be what you want. It gets shown to a representative of the customer every two weeks with new features and new elements and they have to work.
And one of the rules of that is whatever you decide at the beginning of the scrum will be part of that scrum. That's it, closed. You don't add more. No good idea fairies can change the scrum. They get sent to the product backlog. Beginning of every scrum, you sit down as a team, look at the priorities, sit with the customer representative if there is one and decide what are we gonna do for these two weeks. And everything is broken down to about how long things will take. Not down to the minutes, which is part of the ADHD brain and time management. We can't do it, but we're talking a popular way of doing it is clothing size. Small, medium, large, extra large.
That's it. And you get to know, okay, in a week period and a two week period, whatever, as a team, we can do this combination of sizes. So it becomes easier and easier and easier and faster and faster and faster, both to develop and to know what you're gonna do in the two week period. And any good idea fairies that come along in the middle of the scrum get sent to the product backlog. Great idea, we'll reevaluate it later. So it keeps you focused on what you said you're gonna do in that period without losing any of the actual good ideas.
William Curb: Okay. And just to be clear, the scrum is just like a beginning process where you're figuring out what's going in that plan.
Jodi Lasky: It's actually the two week period.
William Curb: Okay.
Jodi Lasky: So you have scrum planning at the beginning. You have a daily scrum session, which is like a 15 minute stand up where people say, you know, I'm working on this, but I'm having trouble with X. 15 minutes. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
What do you need? Keep things moving because the whole process is about keeping things moving. So for personal goal-setting and productivity, I personally work in one week cycle, and I work from Sunday night to Friday night. I do my planning on Sunday night. So everything is set for Monday morning, and I can get into it, and I finish on Friday, so I'm not doing it over the weekend. Because that's really important to me. And to all of us with ADHD, like we need our time to not have to think about anything. And it's really about being careful with not saying, well, I know that these things are my top priorities, and they're all extra large, and I'm going to get them all done in one week. No, you're not.
But you're seeing that more. So what is really the top priority? You know, how long are those phone calls that we spend forever not doing? Because we just think it's going to turn into a huge thing. But we can rationally look at it when we're separate in the planning process and say, it's a phone call, it's small. It may feel big, but it is small once I actually get to do it and do it that way.
William Curb: I like the idea also when we have these ideas, we're going, okay, I'm not going to just dismiss it. I'm going to write it down and give it thought about it. Because often also be like, yeah, I'm going to do this thing. And then I have written it down and look at it a week later. I'm like, maybe also that doesn't need to happen too.
Jodi Lasky: And so it just becomes a lower priority. You still don't have to say, no, I'm never going to do it. But you know what, it felt burning at that point. Now, it's not a bad idea, but it's not top priority. I write novels, in my spare time. And I get that a lot with ideas from the novel. Like, these clever little oh, wouldn't that be hilarious? Yeah. And the moment it was. And then I go back and look at it and say, that's not a whole book. It's kind of funny, but it's not a whole book.
William Curb: Yeah. I have a lot of writing ideas. And it's often like looking back on them. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's a concept that could go into a book, but on its own, it's not much.
Jodi Lasky: Exactly.
William Curb: And I think that also applies to a lot of like the ideas we have for things we should do. We're like, oh, I should reorganize something in my kitchen when it's really like, oh, it's not a complete idea on its own. That needs to be part of a bigger project. And if it's part of a bigger project, that means I need to give it more weight.
Jodi Lasky: So I was watching a Tik-Tok today of a woman who reorganized her pantry. And step one is ignore the stack of dishes in the sink, which which, yeah, is what we all do. And then by the end of it, she was totally bored and just shoved everything back in. It looked pretty if you looked quickly, but you couldn't find anything. It's really knowing how long things are gonna take. Again, we're bad at that, but you know it's gonna be an extra long project. And do you have it in you right now for an extra large project? Maybe you wanna find a medium or even a large.
William Curb: Yeah, and I think really a big key there is like figuring out what you are capable at the time and then having some sort of reference to what you're getting into is a good idea. I love the idea of kind of applying these ideas of how to do finding maybe in a more fun way and a way that's going to work with the fact that we have so many ideas and want to implement so many new things along the way.
Jodi Lasky: Yeah, there are no bad ideas, okay? We all know that's not true, but when we have them, we usually don't think they're bad ideas. But if they're a really great idea, they'll be a great idea in a week.
William Curb: Yeah, which is funny, because we're like, oh, I don't wanna lose my momentum on this idea. And I'm like, you won't lose momentum if it's a really good idea to do. You'll be excited to start again later too. You're only excited to start one time. That's also like a huge reflect that, hey, you're also not gonna keep up that system either.
Jodi Lasky: No, sometimes being excited to do things one time is totally all you need. Or housework, housework is my downfall. I'm never gonna keep up on it. I know I will never keep up on it, but I will take doing something once over not doing it at all.
William Curb: Oh yeah, definitely. I would just in terms of like often our ideas are like, I'm gonna set up this new system, how I'm gonna do this thing. And then turns out maybe I don't like that system.
Jodi Lasky: The kindest thing we can do for ourselves is accepting who we are and what things will never change. I convince myself to massively clean my house twice a year. That's it. And as part of that, every time, I would always bring all my shoes from the front door area up and put them away in the bedroom. And within a week, they were all back at the front door. I've given up. I arranged them neatly at the front door. That's something I can maintain. They're not gonna stay upstairs. They're just not. I've accepted that. It took me way too long to accept something that simple.
William Curb: And it also like looking at things about how you actually use them versus the envisioned perfect system, even though that system clearly isn't perfect.
Jodi Lasky: Embrace who you are.
William Curb: Yeah, I think that's a huge key to working with your ADHD because it's so easy to be like, this is how things are supposed to be, but I can't make that happen.
Jodi Lasky: We have a limited amount of working memory capacity, spoons, whatever analogy you wanna use, use them where it counts.
William Curb: All right, I wanna switch gears here a little bit too, because we also have a bunch of stuff. We have to talk about introversion and extroversion, which seems really interesting in regards to ADHD, because for a lot of people it's like, oh, ADHD must be this super extroverted trait. I myself feel fairly introverted most of the time. From what I've seen is, high percentage of ADHDers are also introverted.
Jodi Lasky: Yeah, and the reason is that both are based on a lack of dopamine. So introverts, leaving ADHD aside, have fewer dopamine receptors than extroverts. And the reason why it's a spectrum and you'll hear some people talking about how they're ambiverts and sometimes they like the big loud crowds and sometimes they need the quiet because it's not like either you have a ton or you have few, you have a number of receptors. And anything that your brain can't absorb, you don't have enough receptors, it goes to a different neurotransmitter that takes a longer pathway through the brain and winds up a lot of the symptoms of ADHD look a lot like introversion.
Spending a lot of time in your head, the full conversation, very rich in our life. Is that ADHD? Is that introversion? The verbal processing delay that a lot of ADHDers have. Well, introverts have it because information literally takes a longer path through our brain. So when you add those on top, you're getting that even more.
William Curb: Yeah, because I know one-on-one, I tend to be very good with talking to people, but you put me in a group of like five or six people, suddenly they're like, oh, why is Will so quiet? It's like taking me such a long time to process what people are saying, and then I can't jump in at the right moment ever.
Jodi Lasky: And introversion is more about how you get your energy. When you're tired, when you're drained, do you get more energy going out and being in a big crowd? Or are you happier either alone or with the people in your life you don't consider people, as I tend to put it, like the good friends who you're comfortable with, who you don't have to mask around, who you don't have to pretend, three or four people top, maybe your wife, your daughter, a good friend. Which way do you get your energy? That's the best indicator of introversion versus extroversion.
William Curb: Yeah, and it's also interesting to think about with like the things like masking itself is a very draining process. So if you are constantly masking, then you're going to naturally kind of be inclined to be more introverted because you're being drained by all that extra work you're doing.
Jodi Lasky: Exactly.
William Curb: And so with what you do, you do a lot of like leadership coaching in regards to this introversion, right?
Jodi Lasky: Yep.
William Curb: What are you looking for in that coaching there?
Jodi Lasky: If you go and you read the different leadership books, a lot of them are pushing or start from the assumption that you're an extrovert and you want to go out and you're great with people. Interverses aren't necessarily bad with people. We hate small talk. So remembering everyone's name, I personally am bad with names, but remembering, oh, that person's life has been sick, that person's father has had ex. That's just not where we're strong. But it's those little touches that make employees feel like they're cared for. So it's finding the balance of I tend to forget about small talk. Like I jump in to what I need to say. I don't want to engage with people for any longer than necessary. That's not 100 % true, but whatever it is that's in my brain when I go to see someone else, that's what comes out.
And I have to make a conscious decision, sort of like masking, to stop and remember to say, hey, how was your weekend? Hey, how's that project you're doing? Hey, what's going on? And then do that without forgetting what I actually wanted to talk to them about. So tricks for remembering those things. And it's okay to keep lists, whether they're on your phone or on a notebook, whatever you need, so that you review quickly, right? This person has this going on. Use your tools, use the electronic tools to remind you of those things. That's what they're there for. Don't try to remember. I don't try to remember anything anymore. That's the tool before.
William Curb: Yeah. And we were talking about our deficits in working memory earlier. And like, this is a accessibility issue for us. Literally, I mean, I've done somebody groups who are like, okay, we'll go around the circle and introduce everyone. I'm like, I'm not going to be able to keep that. Like, I'll be able to be keep this exact pattern of names for a little bit. But once we break the circle, it's gone.
Jodi Lasky: Oh, I won't even keep it for that long. Partly because the whole time everyone else is introducing themselves, I'm going to be thinking about what I need to say and what I want to say and how I want to say it. And will it come off weird or will it come off funny? Like, what is the tone of this group? Where can I fit that sweet spot?
William Curb: That or I'll be like, zoom in on one person like, okay, I remember your name. And then like three people later, I'm like, oh, I needed to remember their names too. And then forget that first person's name.
Jodi Lasky: Working memory capacity.
William Curb: So yeah, using the things to write things down and keep notes is definitely a great thing for us to be doing. I'm sure some people will push back that we have a lot of like, shoulds in our head like, oh, I should just I shouldn't do that or I should.
Jodi Lasky: Well, it feels inauthentic. And everyone is all about authenticity. In reality, what people care about is that they are caring about. So is it creepy to write it down? Maybe? But I remembered to ask you, like, I remembered it enough to write it down to take the note. I wanted to make sure I followed up. Is it creepy? Or is it caring? And that is always in the eyes of the beholder.
William Curb: Yeah, I do like that reframe of being like, okay, is this negative or is this a way that I'm showing that I care about what you're saying? Because I know I'm not going to remember it on my own.
Jodi Lasky: Yeah. And it is important to me, but my brain is my brain.
William Curb: Yeah. Which is I think having that reframe is if someone like approaches you like, why are you doing this? You can be like, Hey, this is why.
Jodi Lasky: Yep.
William Curb: Probably me doing the introverted overthinking things, but yeah Jodi Lasky: As we do.
William Curb: Yeah. So I'm also just thinking about how our introversion might be interacting more with our ADHD here as well.
Jodi Lasky: Very much so. Between the two, we are told a lot that our ways of communicating are wrong. And that can't possibly be. There are so many of us suffering from different executive dysfunction issues, different brain delays, whether it's caused by this neurotransmitter that takes too long or by ADHD. It's just not what we see in popular media. It used to be that it was about 50 50 introverts extroverts until about 50 years ago in the US. It is now something like three to one extroverts to introverts. I think that is people not wanting to embrace their introvert nature. If you look at the number of people who had trouble going back to the office post COVID saying, I'm just so tired now, I used to be able to go to work and then go out and do X, Y, and Z.
And now I can't. They were masking their introversion for years. And that time away from it all allowed them to embrace their nature. If you watched friends, no one wanted to be Ross, who was the closest to an introvert on that show. Like he was the one everyone made fun of. He was the introvert. Everyone wanted to be Joey or Chandler or Monica or Phoebe. We didn't want to be the introvert. We don't want to be the one with ADHD unless it comes off as quirky and fun.
William Curb: And even then it's sometimes just like, do they like me or do they like my ADHD?
Jodi Lasky: Do I have to keep up the show? Am I just here as entertainment? But the more you can embrace and accept your neuro differences, whether it's ADHD or introversion or both, the more you stop fighting it and the more you can find ways to work with it.
William Curb: All right. And thinking about what are some ways we can work with our introversion then? Because I talk a lot of ways about working with our ADHD, but I'm thinking specifically with introversion how that might work.
Jodi Lasky: In a lot of ways, it's going to be the same thing. It's embracing your need to be in your head, your need to be alone, not feeling, because I coach a lot of startup founders and soloplaners, you don't have to go to every networking event. You should not go to every networking event. Pick the ones that are most important. Pick the ones where you will really be in front of the people you need to be with. Set a set work day. If you decide that you're going to work a 10-hour day, that's fine, but the whole puzzle culture thing, no, it's not going to work. You're going to burn yourself out.
I very much embrace a Monday through Friday schedule with my way of doing the Agile stuff for a number of reasons. I do have two exercises I do one on Saturday, one on Sunday, but neither one takes more than 30 minutes. And it's something I have to do when I'm not working because I need the clear mind separate from the work day for it. Take your weekend, take your evening, take your early mornings, whenever you need, but take that time to let your brain rest.
William Curb: Yeah, I think that's really important for people to hear because I know I used to be in that mindset of like, I'll just work till I don't want to work anymore. And sometimes I'm working to 10 at night or something and it's like, okay, well, now I have to go to bed and get up and immediately start things again. And I'm skipping all this rest that I really do need.
Jodi Lasky: And look, once in a while it's going to happen. We hyper focus, it's who we are, fine. But once a month, not once a week.
William Curb: Yeah, yeah, this was more like
Jodi Lasky: Every day.
William Curb: Yeah, I had to really review how I was spending my time. It's easy with ADHD to just want to do all of the things all of the time.
Jodi Lasky: Yep, on a day where we can work, we can't waste that brain day. As opposed to realizing if I didn't hyper focus for 12 hours yesterday, perhaps my brain would be working better today.
William Curb: Yeah, I mean, I do think that's also a really important point to be like, yeah, when you do overdo things, you're going to have more of those days where you can't do anything. For some people, that's going to be a trade-off that's worthwhile. You know, like they do like really big projects once a week, right? That works for you. But I know for me, I can't keep, I have kids, so I can't, they dictate a lot of my schedule now, and I have to be able to be like, okay, if I wanted to have more of even energy flow, I need to be taking rest and, you know, really defining what my maximum limit is and not getting close to it.
Jodi Lasky: That's it, exactly. So I am a big fan of virtual because we know we do not create habits. So there will not be habits. But every morning when they come down for the day, day, I journal and then I do an hour of work on the boring part of the business, right, every day. At the end of the day, which I define as 5 p.m., I put things away, I write down my list of priorities for the next day, and then I close work for the day. And now I am home. And having those definite triggers in the brain, nope. And again, the product backlog, the good idea, write it down when you think of it, deal with it tomorrow. Officially add it to the backlog tomorrow if that's what you need to do. Scribble the to-do list, whatever it is, capture it, but capture it and let it go. Because after your work day is over, be home, be resting, be dealing with these other things.
William Curb: Because it's easy to not do it and having those clear triggers gives you like, hey, and I think the other advantage to this, which always comes up for me, is that it is easier for me to ignore distractions. Like I've been like, I really want to play some video games if I know I'm going to have time for it later. If I'm just going by the seat of my pants and maybe I'll just do a little bit right now because I know I'm not going to do it later.
Jodi Lasky: And there's no doing a little bit when it's something like play a video game or watch some television or, and those kinds of triggers for me usually mean that I haven't given myself enough downtime. If in the middle of the day, I'm like, I really want to go watch the next episode of whatever show I'm binging. I know two things. One is that I have not given myself enough downtime and two is that I'm not going to watch one episode. If I could watch one episode, I wouldn't be me.
William Curb: It's like being like, I'll just watch two TikToks.
Jodi Lasky: Sure!
William Curb: Yeah, that's not how that platform works.
Jodi Lasky: Nope. It's not designed for that.
William Curb: Yeah. All right. Well, I think we can wrap up here. I think that was a really good overview of a lot of topics that I think a lot of people get a lot out of. Is there anything you want to leave people with here?
Jodi Lasky: I am going to put together a sort of one-pager on how I do agile. If any of your listeners are interested in agile for personal productivity, what my daily schedule looks like, what my weekly schedule looks like, and make that available for your listeners if they're interested at the introvertfounder.com. They can also find me on LinkedIn, but all of that is available from the website. Well, limit what anyone has to remember. Yeah.
William Curb: And also it's a feel like social media is kind of an upheaval time right now where we're all like, where do we really want to be? All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Jodi Lasky: Thanks, Will.