Cindy Baker Share How She Unlocked Her ADHD Superpower To Now Help Others

In this conversation, Rob Pene interviews Cindy Baker, an expert in coaching professionals with ADHD. Cindy shares her personal journey from teaching to coaching, her insights on ADHD, and effective strategies for time management and productivity. 

The discussion emphasizes the importance of community support, overcoming procrastination, and the value of taking small, actionable steps towards success.

Takeaways

• Cindy Baker transitioned from teaching to coaching after 19 years in education.
• ADHD can manifest differently in adults, especially women.
• Time management strategies need to be tailored for ADHD individuals.
• Focus is more important than managing time for those with ADHD.
• Procrastination can be tackled by taking immediate action.
• Community support is crucial for individuals with ADHD.
• Breaking tasks into micro steps can lead to success.
• Understanding one's own brain wiring can lead to better productivity.
• Cindy offers a free course to help beat procrastination.
• Positive mindset and preparation are key to productivity. 

Sound Bites

• "Your mess can become your message."
• "ADHD is not necessarily a bad thing."
• "Managing focus is key for ADHD individuals."
• "Break it down into the tiniest little steps."
• "Time doesn't come back once it's gone."

Want to Connect with Cindy?

📌 Join the ADHD Entrepreneurs Community: Productivity for Profits Facebook Group
📌 Follow Cindy on Instagram: @cbc_cindybakercoaching
📌 Work with Cindy: CindyBakerCoaching.com
📌 Grab the Free Procrastination Course: WaitNoMore.net

Transcript

 All right. Talofa lava. You are in for a treat today. I am your host, Rob. Boy, it's nice to meet you. This is the behind the scenes. There you go. The behind the scenes stories of busy professionals. And this episode is actually brought to you by get ghosted. It's a LinkedIn ghost writing and management service, profile management service.

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So you can build trust and record time without writing a single. words. So if you're interested, go to the digital writing firm. com, the digital writing firm. com today is a special guest because growing up in American Samoa,  I don't know if I knew anyone who suffered from ADHD. Cindy Baker is an expert at coaching.

professionals, but also addressing the ADHD issue. She's got over 19 years in the education space. She's, like I said, she's a coach. So I'm very curious and interested in this because once I came to the States, I noticed a bunch of my friends have ADHD and they're geniuses, but then they also have some unique struggles too.

So I'm very curious to learn from Cindy. I appreciate you. Thank you for joining.  Thank you for having me.  Yeah. To start us, I like to ask this one question and this will get the engines rolling.  In the last 12 months,  in the last 12 months of your life.  If you were to turn that into a Netflix special,  what would that movie be?

And what would you call it?  Oh man. Yeah. Start with a tough one, huh? This, the past 12 months have been interesting. They, I think the theme has been changed. So that maybe that would be the title, but I I retired as a teacher. In May, and that was big but lost my mom in June, and that was hard. So that was another big change. I turned 60, that was a big milestone and I won a speaking contest and I'm now. 

Branching out into speaking. So there were a lot of big things that happened. And I think the biggest is just being able to to work in my business full time, if I was teaching school, you and I wouldn't be talking in the middle of the day, So yeah, so I don't know if that really answers your question, but yeah change would be the title of the movie.

And there's a lot of, a story arcs in there from the highs and the low. So that's pretty interesting, which then leads me to the teaching. So you retired from teaching a long time teacher. Did you always want to be a teacher? How did that get started? Yeah so actually I started out in youth ministry and so I always worked with kids.

I worked for an organization called Young Life. Yeah. Oh yeah. Which is interdenominational worldwide Youth Organization. And I just had always been interested in teaching, but I don't know that I would say I always wanted to be a teacher, but I have always been in a helping profession, even now.

I did teach ESL for a while. So that'll be interesting to you. I lived in Germany for 4 years and worked with young life over there. They have a a program  where civilians come and run the youth program on an army base with the U. S. kids whose parents were stationed in the army in Germany.

So that was interesting. I did all that before I was married. And when I came back, I.  I already had a master's in counseling, and so I just took the the certification that I needed to become a school counselor. So that's how I got into it. And then I got into a grant program that allowed me to be certified to teach ESL English as a 2nd language  and and so that got me into teaching because I had to do the student teaching and so it just one thing led to another and and when I was ready for a change, I just decided to start my own business. I'd always been entrepreneurial  when I was a kid, I had a little business, I guess you could call it where I painted barrettes, hair, Brett's  and would put them on a ribbon, like to display them with little number next to each style or whatever or design.

And then I would leave them at. Beauty shops, hairdresser places, and people would take orders, give the lady the money, and then my dad would drive me around, I would go pick them up, and then I would paint those barrettes, and then bring them back, so I've always had that desire to.

Kind of do my own thing,  which is interesting because you mentioned ADHD. I read somewhere that over 60 percent of entrepreneurs have ADHD. I don't know, I don't know if that's true or not, but but it does fit, and how did you end up working with people with ADHD or even that topic.

How did that come about?  Yeah I worked with a lot of students who had ADHD as a school counselor and  I started thinking, I think I have this, I really can relate to these symptoms and I was impulsive. I was late all the time and rushed and forgot things was unorganized and unfinished projects, all the things and I got diagnosed as an adult with ADHD myself.

And then I just became so curious, I wanted to learn everything I could about adult ADHD, because it does manifest differently in adults.  And especially in women, it's a little different, when I was growing up, nobody really talked about it, except in reference to boys. And then they were just hyper poorly behaved boys, and that was it.

And so I just. Read books, went to workshops, learned everything I could and started trying different things to see what worked and what didn't and, because a lot of strategies for time management and things like that don't work for the way an ADHD brain is wired.  And so I, I learned what we would call ADHD friendly  tips and strategies, put together a framework, built some habits and really became successful.

I went from  chaos. Really?  I guess it's the only word I could think of where I changed jobs all the time and I had no stability and  was just all over the place to earning.  To master degrees, having a long term career, almost 20 years as a. Educator married the love of my life. My grandma and I started, and I'm running a successful business all while having a DHD.

And people started to ask me how I did it, started to help other people. And that's when I, and I was all at that time starting to think I wanna do something different. I wanna be my own boss. I wanna have a more flexible schedule. And so it all just came together. I thought, I can.

I can help other people with ADHD, have my, as they say, my mess become my message. There's really no need for anybody else to have to take years to figure it out. Like I did, because I can help them much faster.  Yeah. Can you talk about the time management thing? Cause that's the first time that I've heard that's pretty fascinating where normal time management.

Won't work for someone that has that's a pretty  interesting. Yeah. That's something we work on in my coaching program a lot. People with ADHD have a different. Awareness of time than other people they live in 2 time periods now and not now. And that's it. If, if your boss says, you got a project doing 2 months, your brain says, oh, that's not now.

I don't have to think about it. Now,  instead of  thinking. Okay. I need to plan for the next 2 months to do a little along the way. Instead. It's just. Gone, we don't think about it and then right before is, oh, my gosh, I get this deadline, and you kick it into high gear and do go crazy at the last minute. 

And they call it time blindness where,  you know a person with just, they don't really see the passage of time, like minutes and hours. It's just like this. Long stretch going into eternity and so really, all they're thinking about is what what's in their immediate vicinity, and they can put something, even if something's a priority, even if they wrote it on a planner,  if there's something else that grabs their attention.

Like an interruption or a phone notification their brain reacts and they don't finish the task, so there's a lot of things that we have to do to work  with that. And my big philosophy is, I don't think ADHD is necessarily a bad thing.  There are a lot of people who complain about it, whine about, blame all of their problems on it, but there are tons of super successful people who actually feel like that creativity and that out of the box thinking that problem solving is the flip side of ADHD for them.

And what we do in my program is, yeah, we work on managing challenges, but we also really try to leverage strengths. For instance,  talking about time management, there's a thing called hyper focus where you can just if there's something you're engaged in, you're interested in, you can just hone in on it  and tune out everything else.

And if you can figure out how to. Direct that in the right way  that can that could really be an asset to a job or if you're if you have your own business. So it's not really so much about managing time. It's about managing focus. I don't like that term attention deficit disorder because we  don't have a lack of.

Attention we just pay attention to too many things at 1 time.  So it's a matter of directing your focus on the right things.  So when I work with entrepreneurs we work on prioritizing a lot, you want to, if you're a business owner, you want to make money, right? I'm going to help people, but make money.

If you're wasting all your time doing things that are not revenue producing, you're not going to be successful.  I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah, no, that's good. That's good. Because focus is the area of attention that needs to be looked at, would you. Say three things to focus on is too much, usually okay I have a hit list of ten things and let me do the top three is three too much or should it just be one thing per day  Yeah, no, I actually do tell people to write down their top 3 priorities for the day.

So that, that doesn't mean that you're going to necessarily complete 1 is this giant project. You might, that might just be something that you work on that day, but you're not necessarily going to complete it. But instead of working off this giant to do list with, 50 things on it, you take your top 3 non negotiables and you write those down and.

That gets attention 1st, when those are done, then you can start picking away at the other things. But 1 of the things that I teach people is just to work in sprints. It goes with our natural energy cycles and so you can set a timer and, anywhere from 20 to 90 minutes, depending on your attention span and  eliminate all the distractions and then just focus.

If I have a  timer set for 30 minutes,  then can focus thinking. I only have to do this for 30 minutes and then I get to take a break and it keeps me from getting up and.  Doing something that's off task or being distracted, I tell my clients just put the phone in the other room is a phone is a big distraction.

And so that works, just knowing that you're going to get that break keeps you focused and that little sprint. So that's 1 way to do it.  That's good. That's good. And you mentioned that. Adults can develop this thing later or is it diagnosed later?

No. What I've learned or read, and I'm not a doctor and I don't play one on TV. Is that it has the symptoms have to be present from childhood. When you go in to get a diagnosis, there'll be a questionnaire. And a lot of those questions are, looking back, do  you, have a lot of energy or whatever, and so I could look back now and it's interesting because now that I know that I have it, I look back and I'm like, oh, that's why I did that. That's why, and it makes sense now. And, in some ways it's encouraging because there's a label for it.

It doesn't mean there's something wrong with me. And learning how to work with the way your brain is wired, instead of fighting against it, trying to be somebody that you're not that's actually freeing, and I think you'll appreciate this because you've been in ministry, but a community's big, so in Samoa, a village raises the grade, that saying, right?

Are there a lot of different communities for parents who have ADHD out there? And I know you have a community where people can go to.  Yeah. Since my focus is adults, I have a Facebook group, but it's mostly for adults getting help for themselves.  But but many of them are parents and a lot of times ADHD is hereditary.

And when they there's a lady in my program now, and she's getting help for herself, but the things that she's learning, she's working with her teenage daughter and helping her, so she's able to learn and grow herself and then her daughter sees that and then she can help her daughter.

But, yeah, there are lots of groups. There are, the only thing is I'm in some other  supposed support groups and they don't feel very supportive. So you have to be careful. 1st of all, the person in charge needs to know what they're talking about and, and then it needs to be a place that's positive.

1 of my, we have a little saying in my coaching program called the 3 P power, which is positive, prepared, productive. And the positive is big, I believe we were all created on purpose for purpose and there's. Some reason that your brain is wired the way it is, and there's some thing that you have to add to the world and help people with that.

You couldn't do if you didn't think the way you did, so you have to learn to work with it and go ahead and accept it and learn all you can about it. For instance, if you know that you procrastinate on things that you think are boring, then schedule those 1st thing. Know that about yourself, schedule them first thing, get them out of the way  and instead of waiting until the end of the day when you're tired and hungry and you don't want to do it anyway. 

So there's some things like that, where you, if you know how you operate, you can schedule better,  yeah. Procrastination is a huge issue. How  do you recommend people to tackle it? Like when they.  Have that sense like, ah, I don't want to do it or they just brush it off. Yeah and  I'll answer that question.

But by the way, I do have a free course that I'll offer your listeners. That'll help them beat procrastination. So they can just go to wait no more dot net and then get that. And I'll let you put that in the show notes. But. And where can they find the the Facebook group, your community?

Yeah. The Facebook group is called productivity for profits. And there's a subtitle, but it's got a blue and yellow banner and it's called productivity for profits.  Yeah. But it's back to procrastination. You mentioned, people would, you don't feel like doing something. I always say waiting for motivation is never a good strategy. 

Motivation. You don't have to have a motivation to take action. You take the action first and then the motivation comes. And that is a total paradigm shift for so many people because they want to feel like doing something, but we can't  operate on our feelings or we'll never get anything done.  So sometimes you just have to break it down into the tiniest little steps.

What's the smallest step I can take towards this where I'm guaranteed success, because sometimes we procrastinate because we feel overwhelmed. It just feels too big. And but if you can break it down, let's say right now, I'm writing a book and that's a big project, so let's say I just didn't feel like working on my book, but I can say, okay what's the 1st step?

The 1st step is I need to walk over to my desk and sit down in front of the computer. I can do that. So I go and I sit down. Sometimes you have to break it down. That's small. I can turn on the computer. Okay, turn it on. Wake it up. I can pull up the document.  I can find the last sentence that I wrote. 

I can write the next sentence. I can write the sentence after that, and then you baby steps talking yourself into it. And before you know it, you're in the flow, you're working and you feel motivated. But it, people think that they have to feel good all the time. And  you have to learn how to be uncomfortable  for a little bit.

You have to do that little push because getting started is the hardest part. A lot of times, but once you get over that hump, it's like when you're, if you were trying to push a rock up a mountain, right? When you get almost to the top, that's when it's the heaviest. But if you can just go ahead and live with that discomfort for a while  and just live with it and push it a little bit more a little bit more before, it's rolling down the other side.

And then all that effort, it feels.  Easy, but that's something that people have to practice and they have to learn. And the more you do it, the more you remember last time this was successful, last time I didn't feel like doing this, but this is how I did it. So I can do that with this project too.

And you just learn you learn to live with the discomfort for a little bit, knowing in your mind, this isn't going to last.  I'll feel more like doing this later,  but what we do when we procrastinate, we're really just. Giving away our dreams, we're just not creating the life and the future that we want because we're wasting time and time doesn't, you can't it's not like a  overdraft in your bank.

You can't write a check. It's like writing a check and thinking that you still have plenty of money because the check hasn't. Hasn't been cashed. You don't have that money. You know what I mean? So when you put off things that time is gone. You're not going to get it back. Man, I get on a soapbox with that.

This is so good. Procrastination is like throwing away your dreams. Wow. That's pretty powerful. Last question I have is, You mentioned the small baby steps. Are those micro steps the same in the success blueprint for ADHD people? Do they, will they benefit from taking those small steps? 

Yes.  Yeah. Anytime you have a big project that feels overwhelming,  I always tell people break it into small,  achievable little micro steps, but  don't just stop there. Go ahead and schedule when you're going to do those things. Let's go back to writing the book. So let's say I was going to write the.

 The outline or something like that, I'm going to do that by this date and, you schedule out all the little parts and then when you finish it, reward yourself, have a little celebration, do something, when I get this done, I'm going to get to  go eat my favorite snack or go  watch.

Puppy videos on  Facebook reels or whatever, something that you want to do reward yourself.  Yeah,  that's good. So where can people find you a website? Your socials?  Yeah, I'm on.  Instagram, it's CBC underscore Cindy Baker coaching  website is Cindy Baker coaching dot com  again. If they want the free gift, they can go to wait no more dot net.

And  if they want to email me, it's Cindy at Cindy Baker coaching dot com.  Good. And then for the Facebook group, just make sure to type in the the title of the group. Yeah. It's really I can put the I can give you the link and they can just click that.  Okay. Perfect. And we'll have to look for it.

Yeah. Easy peasy. Easy peasy. That's right.  Thank you, Cindy. You're welcome. For all the information. I think there are some really good bars there. Some t shirt, slogans that you've got on us today. So I appreciate that. And then for the audience, we're grateful and make sure to Visit Cindy at all these different links.

And if you have ADHD or you're a parent that might have a child, definitely join the community and look her up and give her a shout. Cool. All right. Appreciate everybody. Thank you.