Ep 132 Transcript: Why The System Is the Problem Not You with Susanne Schotanus
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors in spelling or inaccuracies in the spoken words.
Shauna Lynn Simon (01:49.966)
Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business Podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And my guest today is Susanne from the Passionate Writer Coaching. And here's what I absolutely love about Susanne's story: that she didn't set out to create a new kind of coaching. And in fact, her clients showed her that they needed it to exist. And we have talked about this on the show previously about how sometimes demand can end up dictating the direction of your business. And this is an example of when that is actually a really good thing.
So Susanne is the world's first ADHD writing coach for adults. And after more than five years of coaching hundreds of ADHD writers, she's on a mission to change a narrative that affects far more of us than we realize. And that is that you're not broken. You just need strategies that actually work for your brain. And something we're gonna be covering today is that even if you are not neurodivergent, I want you to stick with us here.
Because just any woman who has hit capacity because you've got so many things that your brain is holding on to, there are ways to work through what you're navigating. And we're going to dig into some of the tools that are available to support you on your journey. Now, Susanne helps novelists, academics, memoirists, and business owners who have a story to tell get their thoughts on the page without battling themselves in the process. She holds a BA and MA from the University of Amsterdam, and she has brought some serious
academic and publishing industry experience into the coaching world. So, Susanne, I'm so glad you're here. Welcome to the show.
Susanne Schotanus (03:19.912)
Shauna Lynn, what an introduction. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Shauna Lynn Simon (03:24.6)
Well, thank you for being here. And I wanna start by just kind of understanding how you got into the work that you're doing because I find that sometimes, you know, the path itself tells a lot about who a person really is. So let's go back to the start of this. Tell us how you found yourself in this world.
Susanne Schotanus (03:40.75)
Yes, it is a very unique story, I think. In 2019, I met a lovely American in the Czech Republic of all places, and I decided to follow him home after a couple of months of conversing back and forth. Thank you. That's how I ended up spending six months in Phoenix, Arizona, doing nothing much except trying to write, trying to be productive.
Shauna Lynn Simon (03:55.596)
Very brave of you.
Susanne Schotanus (04:06.118)
And I also had a part-time job as a director of publications of an international research network. The six months in Arizona were very nice. So we decided that we wanted to spend some more time together. And if we were going to do that in the same country, we might as well get married and make it easy on ourselves. So I went back to the Netherlands in January 2020. And you may see this coming if you remember 2020.
And we got married on March sixteenth, the first day of social distancing in the Netherlands, being stuck at my parents' place for a year and a half because all the borders were closed and we were planning on moving to Italy. I hadn't worked in six months because I had spent or eight months, I had spent all that time in Phoenix, Arizona. So I decided to figure out if there wasn't a marketable skill that I could put online and find some clients for.
And I realized that I had actually been in a very interesting position as that director of publications, knowing quite a bit about how the publishing industry works and what publishers are looking for. So I decided to start helping people get publishers for their book. And then I threw up more and more pages on my site with other things that I thought I could do until ADHD Writing Coach, which was searched for on Google, but didn't have any other pages or websites attached to it
became the most popular page on my site. So a year later I pivoted my entire business around the ADHD writing coaching thing. And now there's 10, 15 of us in the world. So it's a growing field. Yeah.
Shauna Lynn Simon (05:41.986)
And okay, so I just I want to talk about this for a moment because for those of you who have tuned into the show before, you may be familiar with my background, but I actually have a Bachelor of Mathematics degree. So I love being anything that is data driven. And one of the things that comes up frequently with my clients, so I work with what I call my Accidental CEOs, and these are women who followed more passion than plan, which means that when we don't have a full plan as to what it is that we're going to do, it's easy to let things in the external factors like
Demand dictate the direction of our business. And a lot of women end up waking up one day and saying, like, this wasn't actually the direction I thought my business was going to go in. And it's just sort of where the demand was. But in your case, you did a version of that, but one that is backed by data. So you actually said, okay, I'm passionate about this. This is something I want to do. And then you realize that that's where you're getting most of the search results. And you're saying, well, that's where I'm going to lean into it even further. And I think that's just such a beautiful way of doing that, showing that you can follow demand.
when it aligns with your passion. So I love that you actually like dug into the numbers and said, okay, I can go in this direction.
Susanne Schotanus (06:48.366)
Yes, it's backed by data and passion. There's a reason why my business is called Passionate Writer Coaching, because both I and the writers I work with are very, very passionate about their work. I think that you're absolutely right. If you just follow demand without any question as to whether or not this is what you want to do, you're getting yourself in trouble and you're going to end up in a position that is probably even worse in the corporate situation that you left to make yourself happy.
So yes, definitely passion has to be a factor in it. But it is often posited as a conflict, yes, either passion or data. But I think that you and I are both passionate about data, so that helps. But yeah, but also you need to be led by both. And they aren't mutually exclusive. That's the term I was looking at.
Shauna Lynn Simon (07:22.113)
A conflict?
Shauna Lynn Simon (07:30.562)
Yes.
Shauna Lynn Simon (07:38.592)
Yes. Well, and it's so true though, because you can be passionate about something, but it doesn't mean there's a business in that. Sometimes there's a variation of finding a business in it. But I have people that will often come to me and saying, like, well, this is my business idea. I'm like, cool, go and do some market research and see if people actually want it. They're like, no, but like I love doing this and I know if I put it out there in the world, people will love it. Sure. But if you've done the research on it to make sure that that's actually what people want, and I know it like slows down the process and it's not.
As sexy as just doing what you love, but we want everyone to be successful. So a bit of a tangent. I know that we just went on there, but I love that this was data driven. So let's go back to your ADHD clients. So for ADHD writers that were out there, what were some of the things that they were experiencing? What were the gaps that you were seeing maybe that made you realize that something was missing for them?
Susanne Schotanus (08:29.592)
Well, there's a lot of different gaps. As many ADHDers as there are, there are ADHD problems. Of course, we have a lot in common. But one thing of ADHD is that it is often seen as a lack of attention. We have a hard time focusing. What it actually is, is a problem with all the executive functions. So executive functions are pretty much all the programs that your brain runs to get things done. Organize yourself in time, organize your files.
Figure out the logical path from one point to another, starting tasks, finishing tasks, motivating yourself. Everything that you need to get anything done is affected when you have ADHD. So the problem that I saw was there was a lot of information out there about how to do laundry when you have ADHD and how to stay on top of household chores when you have ADHD, and even how to run a business when you have ADHD.
And there's also a lot of information out there about how to write, but there was nothing in the middle. There was nothing that taught ADHDers how they could manage their symptoms as it showed up in the writing process. Because if you are trying to write anything, whether it's an email or a book that is going to put your business on the map or a memoir about all the amazing experiences that you have had in your life.
You're going to have to motivate yourself, you're going to have to start tasks, you're going to have to organize your material, you're going to have to organize yourself in time. You're going to have to do all those things. So of course, ADHD affects the writing process, but no one had ever talked about that before.
Shauna Lynn Simon (10:03.192)
And I like that you're also referencing, I think this is an important distinction to make that writing isn't necessarily writing a book. Writing can be writing a blog, it can be writing a social media post, it can be writing an email, a proposal, website copy, any sort of client communications. There's so many different times that we have to sit down and write. And I will admit, like I'm not neurodivergent necessarily, although, you know, there's always
Little bit in there, I think almost everyone has just a little bit of that. but I do find sometimes I get overwhelmed by the number of communications I need to have. And just even just texting back a friend sometimes can seem like a lot of work, not because I don't want to or not because I don't know what to say. It's just, I don't have the energy to start this conversation and go back and forth with them. And so just that getting started sometimes of like, what do I say to kind of just get this out there and end the conversation as quickly as possible?
Can be a little bit much for people sometimes. And I really like the way that you described executive function because I think it's a term that has become a bit more of a common term that's used in everyday language that still a lot of people are kind of like nodding along to, but saying, like, I don't really know exactly what executive function or executive dysfunction is. So I like the way that you explained it. That's all the programs that allow you to do all the things, whether it's getting started, getting finished, or somewhere in the middle, it's all the things that you need to be able to actually do things and execute
things essentially. Yes. Okay. So I know that a lot of women that are listening to the show are business owners. So they're probably thinking of like the emails and proposals and all the things that come up with that. And again, even if they're not neurodivergent, we've talked about women who are overloaded with just so much work on their plate, they've run out of bandwidth. They've run out of capacity. And that can, you know, we use the term stuck. I see so many I'm trying not to use the word stuck in my own marketing because it's such an overused term these days. But it is true that so many of us just kind of like almost
Freeze and get stuck on things. So, how do we get people to be able to move forward with things like a simple email? Like one of the things that you talk about is that this a simple email versus a complex report basically doesn't really matter when you're neurodivergent. I think the same thing goes if you are maximized in your bandwidth, if you are at the absolute max in that, it doesn't really matter how simple it is. It's sort of like those memes that we would see, especially during COVID, where it shows like,
Shauna Lynn Simon (12:19.532)
Someone drops something on the ground and they're bawling their eyes. I was like, they're not crying because of the thing that they just dropped on the ground. It was just that it was one more thing that they just couldn't handle. And I think that's what happens a lot of times going back to the executive function element of things. So you're saying that, you know, both the simple email and complex report can feel almost impossible to finish, but for completely different reasons. Walk us through that because I think a lot of women in business have experienced exactly that and just don't have any language for why it is. And then I think we end up shaming ourselves and feeling like.
I just need to get motivated or I just need to do this or I just need to stop being lazy or whatever our inner dialogue might be telling us.
Susanne Schotanus (12:53.816)
Honestly, about eighty percent of my job is dealing with that shame. That shame of clearly I'm a terrible person because I can't even respond to this email. Or I should have finished this months ago and I haven't yet. And that can only mean one thing. I'm just not cut out for this. I'm not cut out for anything. I can only fail. It's a lot to deal with. Yeah. There's a lot of emotional load when it comes to these weird practical things, right?
I think the way that I really talk about this a lot is to focus really on that capacity element. To elaborate a little bit more on that computer analogy that I made. So if executive functions are programs that are running in your head, right? I have a little bit of an old computer. I'm saving up for a better one. If I run too many programs, my computer freezes. Sure. If you try to run too many programs at once, your computer freezes too. And that's when you get stuck. Okay. So what you want to do is
For example, if you are it could even be true for an email. So for an email, there's often a disconnect between what we think it is and what it really is. For example, sometimes an email is not an email, it is a task pretending to be an email. Why haven't I just responded to this email? Well, you haven't responded to this email because you're expecting yourself to just type a little bit of text and then hit send. But what you actually have to do is you need to check your calendar, check your files, check in with someone.
And it has become a project with multiple tasks. But you're still treating it as though it is one task. And that is why you don't do it. If you take it apart and you say, well, actually, this is not one task, this is five tasks. So let's start with task one. You're a lot more likely to actually do it because you're no longer trying to run those five programs simultaneously. You're only running one and then the next and then the next.
Shauna Lynn Simon (14:37.592)
So true. I will say that my inbox gets a little bit overwhelming. I have my admin that she handles a good chunk of my inbox now. We're working on getting more and more over to her, but I've also started using Claude to take my emails and turn them into tasks when they're actually tasks, because I think that is exactly why my email gets so bogged down. And I'm living in my ClickUp for all my tasks. But then there's also all these tasks hidden in my email, and then I get overwhelmed when I see it. So that absolutely
100% you nailed it. It tracks. I think that we often mistake an email for just being an email, but there's a decision that needs to be made. There are other information that we need to pull up or other things that we need to check off before we can actually respond to it. Yes.
Susanne Schotanus (16:11.244)
So that is the distinction between an email and a task. But there's actually one more distinction that I would add here too. And that is between a project and a task. Yeah. Because a task is something that you do once and then it is complete. A project is composed of multiple tasks. Yes. I actually have a free gift for your listeners, which talks about this.
It is a workbook that will help you take an overwhelming task list and make it just whelming. One of the strategies tools that I use here is the APT System, APT: area, project, task. So a task is something you complete once. A project is composed of multiple tasks, and an area is something that you want to pay attention to, that you want to spend time on, but that doesn't have an end date and it has multiple projects within it.
Shauna Lynn Simon (16:58.566)
Okay. So an area might be like a business development sort of thing that you want to use to grow to your business. And maybe it's a matter of like you want to increase your revenue. In order to increase your revenue, you have multiple other projects and campaigns you're going to run, which each have their own individual tasks. Yes.
Susanne Schotanus (17:11.66)
And meanwhile you're telling yourself, I just need to do my business development.
Shauna Lynn Simon (17:16.108)
Okay. And I do want to talk about this for a moment too, because you also just used a phrase there that I just want to pause for a moment and acknowledge it that a lot of times if you're neurodivergent or at capacity where your brain is just overwhelmed, you end up telling yourself this goes back to the shame element where you say, I just need to. And what we're doing with that phrasing is really demeaning ourselves. Like we're undermining just how much if I just need to do this, we make it sound so simple.
It's not necessarily as simple as I just need to do this. And it's a phrase that I would like us to all stop using, quite frankly. Like it's a very toxic phrase to use. And it's actually a bit of self-sabotage that we don't even realize we're doing when we tell ourselves, I just need to do this. And I think a lot of it does come from there's external factors, like especially if you are married, for example, or if you have, you know, grew up with parents that were like, why can't you just? And we reflect that back on ourselves.
And it's something that I'll admit that I've been training myself to not say to myself, I just need to do this. Because what I end up doing instead is if I notice that something isn't getting done, I stop to identify why do I think this isn't getting done? You're probably gonna get further into this, but that's to me, like it's instead of saying like, why can't I just? I actually stop myself and say, okay, why can't I just? And that's when you start realizing, well, this is a project as opposed to being just a task. So tell us a little bit more about this
APT. So the resource that you have has this APT method. What exactly does this look like then in practice?
Susanne Schotanus (18:49.922)
Well, the first part, the APT part, is very straightforward. I want you to list out all your tasks and then ask yourself, is this really a task? Or is this actually a project? Or is it actually an area? Because if it is a project, then I need to list out what my tasks are. I can't just say I just need to. I need to figure out what the actual steps are. If it is an area, then I need to figure out what the projects are and prioritize them and figure out where I'm actually going to start with this. Okay. If I tell myself I just need to clean my home.
I'm not going to clean my home. Where am I going to start? Am I going to start with the floors? Probably not. That's not the smartest thing to do. Am I going to start with the bathrooms? Where am I going to start? Because if I say that I need to clean my home, I don't know where to start. And in a project that might be a little bit easier to figure out in an area where you say, I need to do my business development, I need to do my marketing, what does that mean? And there, of course, data can come in again to figure out what will actually push the lever and what
projects you should focus on, but that is a whole process that is its own task. So you first you need to figure out what your priorities are and what your process is before you can get started. So the APT System is just very simply is this actually a task or is it a project or is it an area? And each one of those needs a different strategy because we very easily default to just calling something a task. And then there's the TOAST System that will help you figure out how to
Shauna Lynn Simon (20:05.973)
Just a categorization, essentially.
Susanne Schotanus (20:17.344)
make your task list shorter because when you take a task and you say, well, actually this is a project with 10 tasks in it, suddenly your task list gets very long.
Shauna Lynn Simon (20:25.794)
Exactly what I was just thinking. So we just went from having a task list of say twenty items that just became like fifty items because these tasks actually turn out to be projects that have things embedded in them. So what is the TOAST framework that you have then?
Susanne Schotanus (20:37.528)
The TOAST System is something that my wonderful friend and business coach Siobhan Fox developed and I shamelessly borrowed from her with permission.
Shauna Lynn Simon (20:47.896)
With permission and with credit given where credit is due.
Susanne Schotanus (20:51.298)
Absolutely. Yes. The first T in TOAST stands for template. So if you have something that you need to do often, is there a way to template it? I have templated a lot of the emails that I keep sending because I realize that I've spent two years just retyping the same email over and over again. Yes. Templates make such a big difference. The second one you just mentioned, outsource. Do I really need to do this? And do I really need to do this myself?
Outsourcing can be done by hiring someone, but AI is also very capable these days. Automations can also help you with outsourcing, just to make sure that things get done, but it's not you who does them. Right. Then there's automations. Is there anything that can be automated that you don't necessarily have to do manually? Systematize. We keep reinventing the system.
We keep thinking, I need to do this. How am I going to go about it when we've already done it five times? Is there a way that you can create a checklist for yourself so that you don't have to rely on your executive function to map out the path every single time? So all of these things are going to and the and the final one is toss it in the bin. She's British. And the toast and the toss it in the bin.
Shauna Lynn Simon (22:00.59)
Or trash it or whatever we want to call it. Yeah. And you know what? I love this because this is very similar to some of the things that I teach as well, because I think that a lot of times people think of doing some of these things when they have another staff member. So you're going to template things when someone else needs to use it. You're going to systemize things when someone else needs to use it. And people are often surprised when I show them when I do hire someone and I offload any task to them, they're shocked that the SOPs for it already exist.
And the reason is because if I am doing something more than once, I am writing down how to do it. Not because I'm necessarily thinking I need to offload it to someone else, but because it makes my life easier. Yes. Especially if it's something I'm only doing once a month or once a quarter, even if it's once a week, it is so great to have the here's how you do this. Because we forget sometimes how much time it takes to try to figure out, like, how did I just? and let me look back on the last.
One that I did, and I'll just copy this previous one. I live in my ClickUp, my ClickUp is where everything is. So all my SOPs, like if I have a task, there are instructions for how to complete that task for anything that I'm doing repetitively. So when it comes to outsourcing or automating, I already have the process documented and it's so ridiculously easy to do. Also
Susanne Schotanus (23:15.018)
It saves you a lot of time, but it doesn't just save you time. It saves you bandwidth. You're relying a lot less on your executive function. You are running a lot fewer programs in your head because some of those programs have been externalized. And that means that you are actually increasing your capacity because you are not drawing on it so much.
Shauna Lynn Simon (23:34.288)
I love this conversation so much because I talk often with clients that are holding things in their head. And I don't think they realize how many things we're holding in our heads at times. And this is precious real estate that you don't want to crowd it with things unnecessarily. So even so much as like I plan out my meals every Sunday, I plan out what I'm going to eat for the rest of the week. And that dictates what my grocery list is. And
This evening, I'm going to walk into my kitchen and I'm going to look at the my little sheet on my fridge that says, here's what you're having for dinner tonight. And I just go ahead and cook it. And I plan my meals out based on what is my schedule like on heavier days. I'm going to have a quicker type of meal. Whereas on lighter days, I might do something a bit more in depth, but I don't have to think about it because it already exists for me. And when I explain this to people, I'm like, listen, I'm not doing this necessarily out of convenience, so much as I just don't want to.
think about one more thing at the end of the day. And I want to make the best choices. And so I don't even think I realized that I was helping my executive function by doing all this. But I've just always said like holding things in your head, that's just not the right place for them. Because there's so many other things that we need to do that this is not an important enough one to do. Yeah.
Susanne Schotanus (24:49.282)
Yes, absolutely. This is something that I work on a lot as well with my clients because it same through when we're writing. So when you're writing, let's say something longer, let's say you're writing a blog post or an article or you're writing a book, why not? Then what you're doing is you're trying to keep in your head where you came from and where you're going so that you can make it flow.
You're trying to keep in your head all the information that you need to weave in. You're trying to keep in your head how your audience is going to react and who your audience is. You're trying to keep in your head what the structure is, the rules of spelling and grammar. You're doing a lot of different things at once. You are running a lot of different programs simultaneously. And then of course at some point it will freeze.
Now there's this beautiful concept in the productivity communities. There's a guy who's very, very well known called Tiago Forte. I am not a huge fan of Tiago Forte. I'm a huge fan though of his concept of the second brain. Because what he says, our human brains were never developed to store information. Our brains were developed to produce information, to make connections, to create new things, to teach, to develop, to grow.
Now, if you use all your brain power to hold on to information, then you are going to diminish the space in your head that can actually focus on creating something new. What you want to do is you want to build a second brain outside of your head, for example, your click up, that keeps the information for you. So your brain doesn't need to anymore. And I think that a lot of us already do this with appointments in our Google calendars, but it can go a lot further.
Shauna Lynn Simon (26:11.637)
interesting.
Susanne Schotanus (26:29.974)
If you are going to for example, in your ClickUp that holds your tasks, I think, and your SOPs. There's also things that can hold your notes, your ideas. There can there are things that can hold the information, the websites that you found, the amazing people that you might want to have on your podcast. There's a lot of stuff that can be organized outside of your head, so you don't hold onto it anymore.
But when we are writing an email, we still think we need to start with a blank page and we need to keep it all in our head and then we need to put it out on the page. So why not do it one step at a time? Why not figure out, okay, so what are the highlights, what are the bullet points, what are things that I really need to cover? If that is too much and you're responding to an email, why not print off the email and highlight with an actual physical highlighter the things that you want to respond to? Keep it next to you.
Then you don't have to hold it in your head anymore or keep scrolling back, which can be incredibly annoying, and you know exactly what points to hit. Then you make your bullet point outline. You're no longer starting with a blank page. You know that all the important information is already covered. That program can be closed. Right. Right. Now we can focus on how we want to make it sound. Or now we want to focus on actually turning it into prose and then rereading it again and seeing, okay, so knowing this person.
What are they going to find insulting in here? What are they going to misconstrue? What should I tweak? Right. So instead of thinking I need to sit down and create it all from scratch, start to finish, perfectly, so that I can hit send as soon as I type the last period. Why not run one program at a time and use this second brain concept to make sure that your brain doesn't need to hold on to things anymore because your second brain is holding all the information?
Shauna Lynn Simon (28:17.25)
This is brilliant. Yeah, I love this. And even like, yes, I use ClickUp. For some people, that might be too complex of a system. And I understand that as well. Like for some people, project management is not where it's at. A Google Doc works great because there's different headlines in it. You can use the search feature within the page to search for specific keywords to find what you're looking for really easily. So we actually have all of our SOPs also in a Google Doc. And so, for example, if my admin needs to send an email for, say, an overdue invoice.
There's a template for that. She doesn't have to think about what's the nicest way to phrase this. We've already figured out the perfect phrasing for this. So she just goes into the SOPs, finds the overdue invoice, email template, clicks on that, brings it up. It's just in Microsoft Word. Like there's nothing overly fancy about the programs that we're using for this. So it doesn't have to be a complicated program. Like, and not that clickup's complicated. I personally love it, but there's a learning curve to using any sort of project management software.
Highly recommend it. But if your brain's not quite ready to grab onto that, keep it simple. And what makes sense for your brain. And even, you know, one of the things that I teach my clients to do is we talk about task triage, which is kind of what you've been talking about with your TOAST System and with your app system. And I feel like in the task triage, one of the things that I ask my clients to do is identify what are the three things that you're going to get done today if nothing else gets done. And then the old school system.
Write it on a post-it note and put it on your computer. One of the things that I feel like we have done is we've tried to overcomplicate things with technology. And sometimes, to your point of like print out the email, physically highlight it. Sometimes that does just make the most sense. And shut down anything that's telling you like, it's not environmentally friendly or whatever. Like, if it's going to help you to get your job done, what is best for the world? If it's going to help you to get through that day, just
Print out the piece of paper. Like sometimes we try to overcomplicate it with digital resources to things, but the problem with digital things is that they can hide unless you're forcing them to pop up on your screen. So if you need that reminder, so I always have a post-it every day that has three things on it, every single day. I start my day, usually figure out those three things the day before, and I put that on my computer of like if nothing else gets done today, these three things are going to get done. So I can feel like I've accomplished something at the end of the day as well.
Susanne Schotanus (30:39.95)
I love sticky notes. One sticky note based task management system that I love is what I call the "sticky stack." So sometimes you have a task list that is big and overwhelming, and you look at it and just the length of your task list makes you want to quit. Let's be honest. Yeah. So one thing you can do is take sticky notes, put one task, write down one task on each sticky note, and then stack them up.
Shauna Lynn Simon (30:54.702)
Right.
Susanne Schotanus (31:06.686)
You can let go of it because you know that everything is written down, but you only see the one that you're working on right now. You only see the top one. So you can feel safe trusting everything is there, but you're not constantly confronted with the entire list.
Shauna Lynn Simon (31:21.302)
I like that too. That's a great system. In my ClickUp, I have a priority list that I can pin things to the top essentially. And then what I like about ClickUp is it also holds all of my thoughts, talking about how we don't want our brains to hold things. Let's say I've started on a task but haven't completed it. I can write down all the notes of like these are the websites I've already checked out, or this is where the draft of this is. This is my conversation I was having with Claude about this. And all those get saved in that one task. So if I don't look at it for another week.
And I go back into it, I don't feel like I'm starting from zero because I know that used to be a bit of a challenge too. When you feel like, I've left this for so long, it's gonna take so long to get back into it. But when you've documented exactly what was already there, it's so easy to go back into it. So my ClickUp is where I have my stack of tasks and I have a long stack and then I also have my short stack at the top. But then I also still have my post-it note because I still feel like
There are times where 'cause also sometimes I look at my list, I'm like, I don't want to do the things that are on the top of the list though. And I feel like doing something else. And so my post note helps me to not get too distracted.
Susanne Schotanus (32:23.438)
I do the same thing with Notion and one thing and Notion is I think as complex as ClickUp, maybe even a little bit more complex. Because it's not a project management system, it is a database system that you can use however you want. I have linked it to Claude, and that means that Claude actually just updates all of that for me. Where I was, what I've done, etc. It is magical. But yes, there's a reason why I keep looking down. I am
taking handwritten notes during our chat yeah whatever your brain needs gravitates toward at that moment if it makes your life easier do it I do think that when it comes to note taking on the whole these notes I take just for the duration of the conversation but on the whole I do think that notes in a digitized form are easier because they are easier to find again.
Shauna Lynn Simon (32:55.158)
And I think
Shauna Lynn Simon (33:17.932)
Yes.
Susanne Schotanus (33:19.648)
One thing, Apple released about a year or two ago an option of using hashtags in your Apple Notes. And I know a lot of people use Apple Notes to quickly put things down and aren't familiar with that functionality yet, which can make it hard to find anything in Apple Notes. One tip that I would give is if you are already using things to store your notes, but you don't have any way to find your notes, which is a very common problem I have found. People are brilliant.
Note takers, very bad notefinders. But what you could do is just spend five minutes every morning looking at YouTube videos about the tool that you're already using, whether it's Apple Notes or Google Docs or something more advanced, and just see what the new functionality is, because they're constantly adding new functionality. Then if you find something that resonates with you, play with it. Try it out, see if it works. And if you start using it naturally, then it was meant for you.
If you don't start using it naturally, you're not a terrible person. It was just not designed for your brain.
Shauna Lynn Simon (34:23.648)
It's almost like you actually like read what my next question was going to be. First of all, yes. Thank you for exactly that. Because I think the key thing that you mentioned there is not just about going and finding what the latest features are, but identifying which ones you actually want to adopt. Because I think sometimes we're like, it's got all these great features. And I should be using more of them. Use the ones that make sense for you. My system doesn't necessarily make sense for everyone else. And I think we're often looking for like
Who has figured out a system that I can borrow? And that's great. Sometimes that does work, but we also have to figure out what makes the most sense for us and for our brains because we are all unique in how we function, how our lifestyle is, like what's going to trigger us. Like some people might have a dish for keys at the door, and other people might be like, I'm never gonna have a dish with keys at the door. So I need to find another way to remember where the heck I put my keys. Like we got to figure out what works for them. So for someone who has spent years telling herself that the problem is.
Her, like her discipline, her focus, her willpower. What's the first step for her to actually believing that the system is the problem, not her? Because we've said this today, but how do we actually shift our brain? Because our brain has spent a lot of time drilling that into our heads. So how do we shift our brain to actually understand that the problem is the system? It's not me.
Susanne Schotanus (35:43.694)
I'm not sure if I can convince anyone in a what is it 30 minute interview that what they have believed for the last decades of their life is wrong. But there is one question that I would ask. You have tried to become better by telling yourself how bad you are. Has it worked? And if it hasn't, haven't fixed it by beating up on yourself, then maybe try something else. Maybe try blaming the system instead of yourself.
Shauna Lynn Simon (35:49.322)
Yeah.
Shauna Lynn Simon (36:11.854)
That is incredibly powerful. When I have clients who have team members, like employees that aren't getting the work done, I'll often challenge them of like, is it the employee or is it the process? Like, is it the person or is it the process? Don't blame the person when it's usually a process issue. And whenever I say that to them, like you can see a light bulb going off, like, I hadn't actually considered that. But it's easy for them to think about it when it's somebody else and they can offer someone else grace.
And often we actually find our it's really easy sometimes to offer other people grace. And then we don't extend that same thing to ourselves. So I think just flipping that switch of just even just starting to train yourself to ask that question more frequently of when you get into that, like, if only I could just do this, if only I could just I, you know, I really should do this. And then asking yourself, is it me? Is it actually me? Or is there a system that's
failing me essentially and do I need to change the system. You make a really good solid point there that if it hadn't been working for you to beat yourself up all this time, maybe we we try a slightly different approach to this. Susanne, I've really enjoyed everything we've covered here today. I think we've covered so many different facets of this. And again, what I like about this is that I think a lot of my clients and my audience tends to
see themselves and identify themselves with neurodivergence, even if they're not necessarily diagnosed that way. And they might not even feel that they will be diagnosed, that like they actually qualify for a diagnosis, but resonate with so much of the neurodivergence. Because like we identified earlier, if you are just overwhelmed, if you're on the verge of burnout, if you've already burnt yourself out, your bandwidth just doesn't exist because we do have a tendency to overwhelm our bandwidth at times. So you've brought so many great tools to the table.
We're gonna make sure there's a link in our show notes for the workbook that you have with the APT and toast frameworks in it, which I think is fantastic for our listeners. If there is one thing that our listeners could take away from today's episode, I know we spanned so many different conversations, but what's the one thing that you want today's audience to take away?
Susanne Schotanus (38:18.498)
Your audience is here because they have a lot of heart. But it could be helpful to think about yourself as a computer once in a while. Think about all the programs you're trying to run at once. And when your computer freezes, don't throw it out the window. Just close a few tabs.
Shauna Lynn Simon (38:32.918)
It's so simple. It's so simple. I love it. Thank you. That I think that is absolutely perfect. Like let's just start thinking about ourselves a little bit more like the machines that we rely on every day and understand that we're we require a little bit of TLC just like our computers do sometimes. So I appreciate that. Susanne, thank you so much for joining us today. Again, we'll make sure that that workbook is in the show notes. It's at passionatewritercoaching.com/RWRB. So we'll make sure that that's in the show notes for everyone to grab that.
And again, thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate you.
Susanne Schotanus (39:04.184)
Thank you for having me. This was a wonderful conversation. I appreciate it.
Shauna Lynn Simon (39:07.576)
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