Well, it’s 2025…. It doesn’t quite feel real yet; I mean, we’re a quarter of the way into the 21st century, but it feels like we got here fast. I’m not quite sure I’m ready, but regardless, time marches on.
I know a lot of you are working on making plans for the year, so we’re going to be starting this year with Chris Wang, CEO and co-founder of Shimmer, an ADHD coaching platform designed to meet people where they are. I had a lot of fun in this conversation, where we covered a bunch of stuff about goal setting and how to make sure you’re doing the important stuff in your life. Along the way, we discuss the power of community, process-oriented goal setting, and what it means to live in alignment with your values.
Of course we also discuss Chris’s coaching platform, Shimmer, but Chris does a great job bringing a lot of actionable advice to this conversation, so whether you’re looking for coaching or just want some extra tips to help with planning this episode’s got you covered.
William Curb: All right, so it's great to have you here and a great place to start to be if you could just tell me a little bit about shimmer.
Chris Wang: So shimmer is an ADHD coaching platform in its the less words form in the longer word form. When I was diagnosed two years ago, which I'm sure we'll get into, I was looking for something behavioral. Part of the reason was because I grew up in an Asian family and Western medication is usually not the first line of defense.
Doesn't mean I, well, I now do take medication, but I didn't want it to be the first thing I tried. And so when I was hunting for a behavioral solution, I couldn't find one that was a good price and I ended up doing 12 plus consultations and couldn't figure out which coach was right for me because every coach was saying that they were right for me. So shimmer started off as essentially finding my own coach. So I found the first two shimmer coaches for myself and they both started coaching me. And as I went through that process, basically more and more people with ADHD started finding me and more and more coaches who are ADHD coaches started finding us as well.
And so it kind of continued to organically grow. And so nowadays it is essentially a coaching platform that we now have almost 50 coaches, which is super exciting. And have done over 40,000 sessions for our members. And it's really a platform that one facilitates the ADHD coach and client connection and facilitates every single one of those interactions. But also it is a place for ADHD coaches to get trained, get upskilled, supervised, make sure that what they're practicing is at the latest and greatest. And our members are also able to engage in things outside of coaching. So we do body doubling, there's accountability tools within the app. That's kind of the high level version of where we came from and kind of who we are today.
William Curb: Yeah, one of the interesting things I was reading about too, and like looking at shimmer is just also this focus on cultural sensitivity within organization to, which is not something we see everywhere with ADHD coaching.
Chris Wang: It has been so important to my own journey and therefore with our coaches and for some of our first coaches as well. So our first coach, Noelle, what's really important to them, they're non-binary and they're queer. And what has always been important to them even prior to shimmer was creating a culturally competent coaching practice specifically for the queer community and extending outwards from that.
For me, I'm Asian in case it's not a video podcast and my last name is Wang. And so for me, finding someone to coach me who has that cultural competency for both being queer and being Asian has been really important. And we've learned time after time after now, thousands of members coming through that it has been important for almost every other, I would say underrepresented community as the intersections with ADHD just completely changes your experience of what ADHD looks like.
Because when you're, I'll give a personal example, when you're Asian and you grew up with ADHD, there's exacerbating impacts of your family not really talking about feelings. And there's also more about, I mean, already touched on it that your family likely doesn't believe in Western medicine. And on top of that, they probably overvalue things like studying and being quiet and being obedient and taking a specific few paths for your career and all those things just don't jive well with ADHD. So it adds an additional layer on top of ADHD struggles that someone might be having.
And so you can train a coach to be culturally competent for sure, but there is just this extra layer of understanding when you know that this other person has went through the exact same thing that you have been through. And it's already so tiring. You've probably felt it like explaining your ADHD over and over to people. And if you have to explain that subtle layer of whatever your intersectionality is, it can be a lot. So an already vulnerable experience. So that's why for us cultural competency and also not just beyond competency, but also making sure that we have coaches that match different types of underrepresented populations is really important to us. And we kind of bake pretty deeply into our hiring and recruiting processes for our coaches as well.
William Curb: Yeah, that just seems so incredibly important to me, especially as like I look at the current landscape of ADHD stuff and how much stuff is I feel bad sometimes. And I'm like, man, as, you know, a white content creator that presents male, like I'm in the majority and I want to make sure that I don't drown out voices of people that also really need to be heard, because it's so important that these other ideas come forward because I know there are a ton of strategies I see from like white content creators that I'm like, this is not relevant to me even at like, because I had such a different upbringing sometimes than what they had.
Chris Wang: Everyone, regardless of if you're an underrepresented community, I think just has such different experiences. And the more we can have people feeling empowered to go out and tell their version of the story is so important. I think it was at the last ADHD conference where some people were raising their hands and the audience. It was an influencer panel and they're like, oh, I don't know if I should start my Instagram. There's already so many creators out there that are talking about ADHD and the person who responded just said it so eloquently and that everyone's voice is necessary.
Like even if five people have the exact same experience as you and you share your story and they reach out to you and said, hey, I feel comfortable coming out with my ADHD or I figured out I have ADHD because you showed the exact version that matched my story that started that thought process for me that then brought me to a healthcare provider or whoever it is. You can change even a couple of lives. And so I think it's really important that people try not to share expert tips if they're not an expert, but instead share their own experience because that can really open up something for someone else who looks like or grew up like you.
William Curb: Yeah, 100% because everyone's voice is going to have that effect differently on other people. And even if you're not necessarily saying something new, you might be saying it in a way that really resonates with someone who otherwise would not have gotten that message.
Chris Wang: Yeah, exactly. And I think with ADHD, the hardest part is not the symptoms. The hardest part is the shame, the loneliness, the messages you tell yourself. And all of these things are just so much exacerbated when you feel like you're the only one in the world who looks like you who's going through this because everyone you see is telling a story that doesn't look like your story.
Even though you feel like you're supposed to resonate with it, but then you don't. And so getting that community of whatever your intersectionality is can be so powerful. For example, Jay Lin and Stephanie Wang and a couple of other Asian ADHD'ers and I started the ATTA's AAPI ADHD peer support group. And it's a lot of letters, but basically Asian American Pacific Islander ADHD support group in ATTA and that space that runs every two weeks.
It's like constantly people coming in of all walks of life and just tears of happiness of sadness of just things being bottled up, just being able to flow out because you finally have a space where you all the things that you used to think came out as like crazy or weird or whatever you call it. Other people are saying it too. And when you hear someone else saying it, it's like reading a book where you're like, I kind of knew this stuff in the book, but I can't believe someone else wrote it. It really feels like that. And I've heard similar stories within many other kind of Latino, black, queer, other communities as well. And it's just so powerful hearing those stories.
William Curb: Yeah, I think that's one of the greatest things was like the peer support groups is not necessarily what you're bringing to the group, but what you hear from other people. And you're just like, oh, I didn't even realize that was something that I could think about.
Chris Wang: Yeah, exactly. And I think another huge power of support groups is when you feel like you're in a spot where you're constantly struggling and taking and people need to like you feel like you're a burden to other people being in the support group just by existing just by sharing your story. You see that you're helping other people. And when you're in a tough spot, the ability just by existing to help other people and to make other people's lives better, I think is also a really powerful piece of support groups.
William Curb: Yeah, it's understanding other people's stories and that you're not alone with your own story. It's so easy to be like how I exist is I'm the only person that's like this and that makes me bad somehow. And I've often gotten stuck with like, why am I like this? And then I go, well, it's the ADHD and then I also know someone else that has this problem. And I'm like, OK, I can work on this.
Chris Wang: Yeah, exactly. You're part of a larger immunity in whole. And I can't even sometimes I talk to some of the folks who have been in the space for 10 years or woman even who have been in the space for like five to 10 years. And they talk about like five, 10 years ago, how they were the first person to start this for woman with ADHD or they're like the first of five woman ADHD creators. And they completely didn't think that their story resonated with other people. I know that there's still so much that we need to do and so much that needs to be fixed.
But it's also crazy to think about, I think just the how far we've come as an ADHD community in the last like five to 10 years in terms of what people know about us, what we know about ourselves, the different micro communities. That have felt the permission to be able to to lift up. So just a moment of gratitude there.
William Curb: The power of community is amazing, which is one of the reasons that I was like when I was reading through this, this is like great because we don't have to go through this alone. So one of the things we talked to pre-podcast about a little bit was goal setting, which is just a huge part of like coaching is like figuring out where you want to go. And if my timetables are right on episode releases, it would be very relevant when it comes out.
Chris Wang: Watch it be like September.
William Curb: Yeah. It's like, whoops. But you know, that's also if you don't know where you're going any times a great time to set goals. Yeah. Maybe we could go into a little bit talk about how as coaches you approach goal setting.
Chris Wang: One of the first things I'm just going back of when we first met our clinical lead and advisor from NYU Dr. Anil Chakro. I was like, this was so early on in my ADHD journey. I was like, just give me like the most impactful thing as a person with ADHD. I can do to support my ADHD. And he said some version of essentially when you don't have a direction or North Star or something, a call it a goal, whatever you want to call it, some thing that's in the future that you're looking at and saying, hey, that's where I'm trying to go. That is actually one of the things that is most detrimental to people with ADHD because then you start saying yes to everything.
You go in this direction, you go in that direction and you keep going in circles until it gets to the end of the day, whether you call it at the end of the year, the end of life, whatever you want. You look back and you said, hey, actually this didn't make me happy or this didn't help me achieve what I wanted to achieve in life. And so for us at Shimmer, the concept of goal setting is so important and it breaks down into a couple of levels. I mentioned the word North Star. The North Star is the most important piece. It goes beyond goal setting. It's kind of your super long-term vision of how you want to live your life. And long-term doesn't mean it has to be into the future. It's just something that always exists.
So it could be a combination of your values, things that are important to you. The exercise that I really like to use is the eulogy exercise. Some people don't really like it, but this one, there's many of them. This one's my favorite where you imagine that at the end of your life, what people in your life are saying about you. So is it that your daughter is there and she's saying like, oh, Chris was like the best mom in the world. She's always super energetic and makes sure that I have everything I need. And so when you take it from that lens, maybe the fact that I'm currently spending like 60, 70 hours on work and de-priorizing certain things in my life, it helps you see if something is maybe off check from that.
And that's kind of on a very far scale. But goal setting specifically, I think is really important. It doesn't have to happen on January 1. I actually really advocate for seasonal goals and so treating each season because if you have ADHD, looking that far forward in time for a year is kind of scary and you end up just abandoning it and not making it to the end. And you're like, oh, it's September or whatever. I'll just like wait until January again.
And so I think that one tip is to set goals in terms of seasons. Or you can play around with that. Maybe it's monthly. That's best for you. Maybe it's quarterly. However, it works. And so the other big tip that we give on goal setting and I can kind of like dig into any of these is the biggest one that has been really helpful for me is to set process-oriented goals instead of setting goal-oriented goals.
So process-oriented goals are going to be instead of saying, hey, I want to lose 10 pounds. Instead, I pick something that is within my control. So I want to do five active things every single week and that could be the gym. It could be whatever that type of goal is going to be in my control and also it resets every single week or every single whatever time frame. So those are kind of two of the top tips that we have.
William Curb: Well, I love the idea of sort of like the values based goal setting where you're like, am I following what's truly important to me? I think it's such an important place to start with because often we're like, especially with ADHD where we have this impulsivity and we're like, I want to do that. That sounds cool. But then, you know, your month in, you're like, oh, you know what? This is not actually what I'm all about.
Chris Wang: No, definitely. I think that the knowing the why behind your goals and actually starting with the why instead of the goal is so important. So in our session, sometimes we ask people to choose how in the next quarter they want to feel or some area in their life that they want to be better and starting off without thinking about the golfers. So if you want to feel, let's say, love and calmness in the next quarter, because in the last quarter you are full of chaos and stress, then knowing that why or whatever value is underpinning it and then being like, okay, what goals can I set that will allow me to have more love or more calm into my life and moving it feels a little bit backwards for folks, but starting with kind of like the how you want to feel or what value you really want to drive home because that value has not been super present for you.
So for example, adventure is one of my values and I've been in kind of major working mode for a while now. And I know that that adventure is one of my values that I haven't had the opportunity to express in a while. And when you don't have the opportunity to live in your values, that's when you start to feel misaligned. So I already know going into my Q1 planning that cultivating a sense of adventure is going to be really important for me. So I'm going to need to set some goals that are around that so that I can feel kind of whole in how I am and living my values for the next quarter.
William Curb: Yeah, because it's so easy to be to just focus on what's right in front of you rather than what's the broader picture of what you want.
Chris Wang: Exactly. And the minute goals too, I think people get, let's say the working out five times a week one, you're just so frustrated and you've been trying to do it for so long that you just forgot why you want to do it to begin with. And maybe you want to do it so that you can have a maybe in the beginning was so that you can have a healthy loving relationship with your boyfriend too. And they love sports, but you're so hung up on it that you've actually not even been going together and you've been going separately. And so you lost track of why you started it to begin with.
And so really thinking about why you're doing the goals instead of like, I think we often just hyper fix it, especially if I'm just not doing well on my goal. I'm just gonna get so stuck on my goal and I want to do it so right that I just lost maybe calm was the original reason why I wanted to meditate. And then instead of meditate, I moved to yoga, instead of yoga, move to Pilates. And then suddenly I'm like upset that I'm not doing my Pilates well enough compared to the next person. And I completely lost sense of the calm that I was trying to achieve with that.
William Curb: Yeah, 100 percent, because there are so many things where we're like, this is how it has to be because this is the goal I set. But it's like, is that actually doing the things I think it's doing?
Chris Wang: Yeah, exactly. And taking that for me, it's quarterly, but quarterly re-evaluation to look at these things and seeing if you still intentionally want to do it or if you're just doing it kind of out of principle or hyper fixation.
William Curb: Yeah, I do also love that idea of really revisiting things, doing it kind of seasonally. I mean, I think seasonally planning things is great because getting outside is going to change depend on the like, you're like, oh, I wanted to get more exercise in. You're like, oh, I can't do that as well in the winter. In some places I can't do that as or in some places in the summer. It's going to be way too hot. So it's like and being like with my kids in school, like there's the seasons that going to depend on how much time they're in school, how much time they're out, you know, like summer vacation. And so if I plan yearly, but without that in mind, it's going to be a big problem at the end.
Chris Wang: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
William Curb: Yeah, one of the funny things I will do with my planning is purposely not have anything that I can check off on January 1st. So I can't have like a perfect year of doing something because perfection is something I have to fight a lot. And it's like, yeah, just January 1st. that's not a real day.
Chris Wang: Yeah, I don't do anything in like the first five days of January. But I think I read a quote recently that talks about how habits are actually formed in February. And I've been thinking about that a lot. And I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to change our lives on Jan 1. And we're still in the food coma of like the end of December being with family.
We're probably in a different way, a little bit burnt out from maybe holiday related stress and overwhelm. And it might just not be the right time. And if you need to start on Jan 10, there's nothing special about the number one. And you can start on Jan 10, Jan 15, whatever makes sense for you.
William Curb: Yeah, I also think birthdays are a good place to start. As long as you're not partying too hard on your birthday.
Chris Wang: No, I do like that because I mean, that is when your year started. When your life started.
William Curb: I think I'm like, oh, and my daughter has her friend that has her birthday on January 1st. So.
Chris Wang: Oh, hope she's not listening to this podcast. She's like, damn it.
William Curb: Yeah. And then the last part you brought up about process goals, I think is also just something people really need to hear because we get so much mileage out of the idea of we need to have this very concrete vision of what we want to have out of a goal. And that can be good. But the process part is going to be so much more important for us actually attaining the goal.
Chris Wang: Exactly. It helps us define what we're personally going to do and what's within our control. And it also helps us collect wins along the way because you could fail against your outcome-oriented goal, but still, I mean, back to the gym example, maybe you didn't lose 10 pounds, but you showed up five times a week to the gym almost every single week. Every single one of those weeks is a massive win for you because that was hard for you to get there.
And it was a big win for you to actually do that. And it's important for us to collect wins as people with ADHD because we get beat down so much just by our day-to-day, just by existing and just by struggling through the things that we struggle through, that wherever we can collect wins, that's going to have outsize impact because it's going to add to your self-confidence. It's going to add to your view of yourself and therefore what you can achieve and how you can show up the next day and the next day. And so instead of just having one specific benchmark that you can pass fail on, instead, why not collect goals along the way?
Why not have some feedback so you can also adjust? Maybe five times a week is too much and you decide, okay, well, maybe I'll do three times a week instead. And then you start checking off the three times a week. And that ends up you show up better on your day-to-day for your family, for your loved ones, show up at work, all of these things you'll show up better if you're just more confident and happy with yourself. The goal is not always to just reach the goal. It's to live a better day-to-day and have a more well life. And so wherever we can do that, and I think process-oriented goals is such a big part of that that I think doesn't get talked enough about.
William Curb: And I think one of the biggest pieces there is, yeah, what you have control over. Going, choosing the number of days you go to the gym per week is something I have much more control over than the being like, if I want to lose 10 pounds, I don't actually have direct control over how that happens you know.
Chris Wang: To give a couple more examples, because I think the gym one is always overused and it's very easy to understand. But even in the category of relationships, let's say you want your intention or your goals to have more time or to have a better relationship with your partner. That sounds like, how do I even do that? So breaking that down into smaller things. So for example, maybe it's setting aside 10 minutes in the evening where you're just catching up about your day. It doesn't have to be very long, or maybe it's once a month that you arrange for a babysitter to come and you go out on a date together.
And so these small things, if you can set them in the beginning and know that these things are intentionally creating this better relationship with your partner, those are within your control. And so once you align on that with your partner, you can do those things instead of just being like, hey, we want a better relationship, something isn't working and we want to get better and kind of not knowing what to do. So I think it also gives clarity in knowing that there is a plan there and that you're both working on it. And this can go for things with yourself as well.
William Curb: Yeah, I do the same thing with a lot of the episodes for the podcast are monologue based. And so I have to do a lot of writing for that and just being like, write an episode. That takes a lot of work to just be like what's defined is done there. Where it's been like, oh, if I'm going to spend like an hour writing that will move me forward towards getting it done. And it's within my control of what I'm doing rather than just being like, I'm going to finish this and it doesn't matter what the end result looks like.
Chris Wang: I think specificity is something that is so important for our brains. Even as you said that I recently started redoing the way that I write my to-do lists. I used to write things like email to William or things like that. And it would just be like an item as if I could picture the item in the sky. And instead now I would literally be like, check if William responded email and send my calendar. And so something super specific because it also helps when you actually go to that item that there isn't this like resistance against it because it's something that requires you to think so much to even understand what you need to do there.
So wherever possible, the more kind of specific and process oriented we can be so that we can separate out the like planning phase and the execution phase so that when you get in, you're like, OK, today I can just can like execute through these things. It's going to be a lot easier than task switching between planning and thinking and kind of philosophizing and which is like a separate part of our brain than just like executing and going through it.
William Curb: Yeah, I also find that it's incredibly important to be specific to make sure that I'm not adding a project as a to do or it's like fix a sink. And I'm like,
Chris Wang: that hits so hard.
William Curb: And sometimes I need to have like the project as the first two, but I need to have like some like sub tasks to be like, OK, well, what's the problem? Do I need to go to the hardware store or two? Or all the other parts of this?
Chris Wang: I'm just laughing now as you're saying this. Most of our team has ADHD. So every time we have a random idea of a thing that we think is going to be a small thing, it always ends up being a massive project that everyone's involved in. And it just slowly, slowly balloons. So that scoping and making sure that there isn't scope creep is something that is super difficult, that I have so many examples from a personal level and also now a team level because we have a team full of ADHD'ers.
William Curb: You know, I'll be like, I need to call my dentist and like call dentist. Well, fairly specific, but I'm like, OK, but if I also like include maybe the phone number there, what message I need to send them is that kind of thing. It makes it so much easier to actually execute on that task.
Chris Wang: Yeah, it's almost like you need to write like an instructions to your future self as if your future self is someone who's not you. So giving like a little bit more context so that they can just pick it up and do it like an assistant or something.
William Curb: Well, and especially if you're not going to immediately be doing the task because there's stuff I'll like find like a sticky note with like an instructor to do something and I'm like, I don't know what what is this for? Is this still relevant even?
Chris Wang: Yeah, I have infinite probably everyone does infinite notes on my phone that just have like two words on the title and I'm like, of course, I thought I could remember what this is. I have no clue what this means.
William Curb: Yeah. And it's like, OK, if I spent a little bit more time really to find it, then maybe I can either decide, hey, yeah, that was a terrible idea. Don't want to do that. Or like, oh, yeah, that's let's get this actually in the to-do list and make sure it happens.
Chris Wang: I know totally.
William Curb: So thinking with this, too, what are some other ways that people could like then utilize coaching after? So we have like building goals, but then what's like a further stage that they could go through?
Chris Wang: Maybe where it makes sense to start is so our plan tab in our app. So in our web and mobile app, there's a tab that basically has your shimmer plan. And on that plan, basically, it starts with your North Star, which we talked about where you kind of talk about your long term vision and your values and we keep that at the top because it's easy to forget that after you've gone through the process to define that. And then underneath it, what the bulk of the structure is essentially setting goals with actions that lead up to it.
So, for example, in my plan, my North Star is to build an incredible, durable, impactful company while building a life with my partner at home, heart emoji. And underneath that, there's going to be this different colors with goals. So this is a goal and this is a goal. And then within each goal, there's going to be action. So, for example, my first goal is I want to be a physically healthy person. So I don't use outcome based stuff. I don't put weight and things like that. But that's my goal. I want to be a physically healthy person.
And so I have two actions that sit underneath it. One is I try to get sunlight before noon every single day. That has a big impact on my personal health. And two, I try to do some sort of movement slash exercise five days a week. So that is one of my three goals. And the three goals hit different areas of my life. And so with my coach, what we do is we'll periodically look back at the entire plan. So the North Star and the goals and think about, OK, do we need to change something? Do I still want these things?
How am I doing with these habits? Every about three months we do that. But on the day to day, what's happening is we are helping me either delete roadblocks for me actually getting those actions done. So if we notice that, OK, I haven't been going to the gym for the last two weeks, what's behind that? What's happening? What happened in the past that allowed me to get to the gym? And do we maybe need to change up my systems now? Maybe because my life looks different, maybe because the old ones I just got tired of.
And so do we need to change that system to be able to help me continue to achieve these goals? That could be one thing we're working on a session to help remove roadblocks. And another thing could be to help me look forward. For example, if I come to a session and there's nothing specific in terms of challenges that I'm facing, we could talk a little bit about how I'm thinking about the future.
So, OK, we haven't talked about where the company is in a bit and are you happy with where it is and your role in it and kind of what you're bringing to the team and do a really evaluation on that. So I think that a lot of the times people think that coaching is only kind of tips and tricks or skills based or fixing things that are wrong with you. But it's really holistic. It's really about setting up a system to help you live the life that you want to live, which the way that we've structured it is from the North Star downwards. But really, it's about if I had to boil it down, it's about how do you keep doing the things that are important to you and so that you can live a life that feels good for you?
William Curb: Such a great way to go through it. I mean, I love the having the constant reminder of what that North Star is because, it feels like we should remember that, but I know we don't.
Chris Wang: The way that we build our product in our app is very iterative with our members. And actually, the first time when we launched our North Star, we had them set it and then it would just disappear into a profile page. And we would talk about the North Star and people were like, wait, what's my North Star?
I'm pretty sure I said one, but I have no idea what it is. And it had only been like a few weeks. So we kind of learned from that experience where people, even after had going through the exercise, wanted it to be more front and center. So now even in the coaching sessions, you have your webcam on the left side with your coach. And on the right side, there's an area for you to take notes and you can just click a button and it goes to your plan tab. So you and your coach can look together at your plan tab. And so it's constantly there.
And in the pre-session flow, it's there again. And so we want to basically like annoy people with their own North Star so that it's so ingrained in their head that they continue to do things that are important to them. And the other part that helps kind of one layer below the North Star too, within the app, we have this thing called the wheel of life. And it's essentially the different areas of your life and how you feel like you're doing in them and where you choose to focus on. A big part of coaching is agency and choice. And you can't work on all of them all at once. So after you do the assessment, you look at the different areas. And these areas were defined by Russell Barclay through his functional, like adults, functional impairment scale.
So they're been proven to be correlated to kind of where people with ADHD generally have challenges. And so using that as a coaching tool, you can have that conversation and everyone takes it about every three months and you can have that conversation with their coach to say, hey, look, like I know we've worked on work and home for the last few months. I'm feeling pretty good about it.
My score has went from here to here. So in the next few months, I would actually like to shift our focus and talk a little bit about love and relationships or whatever other area that you choose to go towards. So it gives this kind of common language and focus so that folks on our platform can be able to be a bit more focused in where they choose to direct their coaching energy and their personal energy towards.
William Curb: I love that. And it does sound like it's also incredibly helpful to have a coach there because I know I'm personally very inclined to be like, oh, well, I can just do all of the things. Like why would I not do all of the domains of life at once?
Chris Wang: Yeah, yeah, no, I completely feel you. We actually added a feature where at any point you're supposed to choose two focus areas. And you can do it with your coach if you have decision paralysis. It doesn't mean that you don't focus on any other areas. But if you don't choose something or a couple to focus on, your attention ends up being spread on everything.
And then it's very difficult to push forward like 10 lego pieces all at once in all opposite directions and keep an eye on all of them. So I agree. It's very difficult to choose. And that's why we sometimes we we say that it's not you're not choosing it forever. You're just choosing it for the next, let's say three months. And if you decide in a week that you want to change it, it's just a button. You just go there and you change it.
William Curb: Yeah, awesome. Is there anything you want to leave the audience with?
Chris Wang: One thing that recently I've been thinking a lot about and kind of is baked into our methodology is just the concept of the neurodiversity model. So and being more strength based and changing this narrative. And so I think a lot of us with ADHD, we're so used to just fixating on the things that are wrong, the things that are hard for us.
And not that those are not an important part of our journey, but I think there's this important part of to balance and to keep our kind of sanity is to look at the parts that maybe you're so focused on looking at the things that are hard, that you don't see some of the strengths or the parts of yourself that whether or not related to ADHD, but are beautiful and that can be honed. And I think that the exercise of working on our strengths is a very empowering exercise that I believe needs and we believe needs to be done in conjunction with also working on our weaknesses and things that are bad and things that are hard for us as well.
And when you can do those two things together, the journey is a lot more positive than only kind of beating yourself up over things that are hard for you. So really, it's not either or, but taking a strength based approach in conjunction with figuring out things that need to be better is an approach that I think that I'm always kind of pushing and reminding people that there are tons of whether ADHD or not tons of beautiful things about you and kind of identifying those things and making sure that we spend time also focusing on those is really important.
William Curb: Well, I love that strength based approach and thank you so much for coming on the show.
Chris Wang: Thank you for having me.
This Episode's Top Tips
Work on setting process-oriented goals where your focus is on the actions you can control, like “exercise 3 times a week,” rather than outcome-based goals like “lose 10 pounds.”
Make sure you are specific and write your to-do lists with clear, actionable steps to avoid overwhelm and decision paralysis. You want to know exactly what your next step is when looking at your to-do list.
Leverage your support systems. You can use community and coaching to provide accountability, remove roadblocks, and refine your systems. Remember there is no gold star for toughing it out by yourself and it’s okay to get help.