567 - Focus Without Burnout with Skye Waterson
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Welcome to the How of Business with your host, Henry Lopez. The podcast that helps you start, run, and grow your small business. And now, here is your host.

Welcome to this episode of The Howell Business. This is Henry Lopez. My guest today, all the way from New Zealand, is Skye Watterson. Skye, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks. It's great to be here. Yeah, absolutely. This is going to be an interesting conversation. So I'm joined by Skye, who is an ADHD strategist and coach. And we're going to explore how entrepreneurs, small business owners can stay focused, consistent, and in control without hitting burnout or approaching burnout.

Sky's going to share actionable strategies that support not only business owners with ADHD, but anyone, I haven't been diagnosed with it, but anyone who struggles with overwhelm and distraction, or as I call it for myself, sometimes shiny object syndrome. So if you're looking for practical ways to cut through the noise and build a sustainable business, a sustainable small business as we all are, then this conversation is for you.

You can find all of the Howa Business podcast resources, including the show notes page for this episode, and learn about my one-on-one and group coaching programs at thehowabusiness.com. I also invite you to please consider supporting this show on Patreon and subscribe wherever you might be listening so you don't miss any new episodes. Let me tell you a little bit more about Sky. Sky Watterson is an ADHD strategist, coach, and the founder of Unconventional Organization.com.

spelled the New Zealand way, helping entrepreneurs and executives stay focused, build consistent revenue, and scale without burnout. She provides ADHD-friendly strategies for sustainable success. After her own ADHD, and again, ADHD stands for attention deficit slash hyperactivity disorder, right, Scott? Yeah.

Yep, 100%. So after her own ADHD diagnosis during her PhD, while she was working on her PhD, she realized that traditional productivity advice didn't work for her. So she developed strategies to help entrepreneurs and executives cut through the distractions and focus on what matters, build ADHD-friendly systems for consistency, scale sustainably,

without exhaustion, and lead with confidence and regain control over their time. Skye has her own podcast. She's the host of the ADHD Skills Lab podcast. As I mentioned, she lives in New Zealand, in Auckland, New Zealand. Skye Watterson, welcome to the show again. Thank you. It's really, really great to be here. Absolutely. Good conversation we're going to have. So let's dive right into it. What are we talking about? I want to kind of set the stage with the types of issues that

either people who have been formally diagnosed or you mentioned before we started recording, which I found interesting. I think you said 50% of people, can we have statistics that have not perhaps been diagnosed? Yeah. So, so I like to say that upfront. So 50% of the people that work with me

are not diagnosed with ADHD. They feel that the executive functioning dopamine struggles fit them, but they haven't gone and gotten a diagnosis. To be fair, it's often very expensive, takes ages. If you don't want medication, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work for you. So one of the things that I do is I don't work in the medication space. Often when people think about diagnosis, they think about that. I work in the how are we going to make

your business work for your unconventional brain so you don't burn out or quit or self-sabotage, which can be often how businesses can end, which is very sad.

Love it. Love it. And so what do you observe is some of the ways that this manifests itself for business owners? What is it that it leads to the symptoms of what this leads to if we don't develop these strategies or apply these strategies? What do you see? What do you observe? Yeah, usually what I see is a lot of chaos.

And it can be, it can creep up on you because I think often startups, you know, very early startups, they have a lot of chaos in them, but it'll get to this point where, you know, the chaos doesn't need to be there anymore, but it's still there and you are the one driving it. And so you'll have conversations with family who are like, Hey,

Why are you still taking work home? You know, why are we still, you know, not really able to have a proper conversation at the dinner table. You're not really being present with the kids. That tends to be the conversation I see or for the person themselves, it's they go to work and then things just come at them and they check emails and they didn't work on the business at all, all day.

And that can be very, very frustrating because you're in that messy middle part. You know, you've got something off the ground. It exists. You're selling it. But you're not gaining traction past that space because you're just constantly firefighting and exhausted. And that's often where I see people coming to me. Yeah. I did an episode actually specifically on this.

because I think it becomes our identity that that's just the only way I know how to do this. How I got here was by being in firefighting mode, by always kind of living in the chaos. And to your point, am I the source of the chaos? Often, like you said, beyond that initial ramp up and times when we have crunch times, I probably am the source of the chaos. It's become my identity because if I create that, I can firefight it, right? Yeah.

Exactly, exactly. And, you know, for some people just off the bat, you know, when we look at the research into how our brains work, it's like you're also the source of the creativity and the problem solving and the out of the box thinking and all the cool things that probably got your business to where it is now. But we now need to look at the chaos side. Mm hmm.

All right. So if we kind of break down the two sides of ADHD, if we look at the attention deficit side, I suspect that those are the things that lead to me not being able to focus on one thing. And therefore, one of the ways that maybe I've conditioned myself is that's why I'm always jumping from thing to thing to thing. Is that fair? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So executive dysfunction is kind of what we're talking about here. And so there's two things. There's a dopamine deficit and there's an executive dysfunction. The dopamine deficit just means our brains aren't taking in dopamine in the way others are. This is mostly true for all entrepreneurs, because if you're the kind of person who's like, who needs to take in dopamine?

It's a paycheck. I'm going to go out. I'm going to make my own thing. You know, we have a higher risk tolerance than most people. And that means that sometimes what it can look like is we can be dopamine seeking, which can be a big problem when it comes to the business. And, you know, we can talk about that later. And then you've got the executive dysfunction side, which is the part where it's like,

Working memory struggles. I'm not remembering things. I'm supposed to go get a thing. I don't write it down. It doesn't happen. Things are getting lost. I'm time blind. I'm telling contracts and things like that that we'll get it done by the end of the week. It's not happening. I'm losing my reputation. That can happen a lot too. And then also transition time. I was talking with a client about this just yesterday.

You can't necessarily get that deep on the business work done in those little pockets of time between things that are happening at work. So you're not getting traction because that transition time is missing. Those are kind of the fundamental building blocks that we need to work on. Okay, so let's explore just that and then I'll come back to that.

Are you saying that one of the techniques that might be able to help me, if I'm understanding correctly, is maybe something like time blocking or making sure that I'm allocating the right amount of time to remain concentrated on one thing? Is that part of what we're talking about here? Yeah. But at the same time, one of the things that I have found is like for me, an hour is about right. Any more than that, then my mind starts to wander and I'm anxious to go on to the next thing. Is that part of it as well?

Yeah, so what we would say there is, you know, there's a time blocking and that's really important, but, and this is why the ADHD stuff is so helpful, is you're also struggling with that dopamine stimulation. So usually we don't do a task because it's too confusing. It's too, you know, it didn't feel good last time we did it. It's too boring. And so we need to work on that side too, so that when we have that time, we're actually going to use it to get things done. And we all know sometimes that doesn't happen. Right.

So how do you, how do you do it for yourself? I'm curious on this point of blocking out time or whatever you call it, what seems to work for you or that you recommend that sees that you see that works for people that are challenged this way? Yeah, that's a great question. So there's a couple of different ways to do it. Um, some people like to have like a half day. I personally like to have a full, like no meetings day once a week. That's kind of the best way for me personally. Um,

Um, and kind of going in with a plan. So breaking it up. So not saying I'm going to get everything done all, you know, cause that doesn't work. Breaking it up into breaks, you know, going out, doing stuff with family, which is what I do in the middle of the day.

And kind of having the sense of, okay, if I'm going to step into focus, how I'm going to do that is I'm going to go in and say, okay, let's give myself a reward for starting. Do it even sitting down to do the task, which is completely not only is it something you've never heard of before most of the time, but also it just feels wrong because you're like, I should be doing it anyway. But when you look at the research into how dopamine works, it's

For some people who have these kind of unconventional brains, we don't get a dopamine spike at the beginning of starting a task in the same way as people who have, you know, quote unquote, normal brains do, which means they get a little spike at the beginning, which is like, good job, you're going to do this. And then at the end, you're going to have done it and you'll feel good and good things will happen, blah, blah, blah. When you are

more unconventional, more on the ADHD side of things, your brain kind of goes, this is boring and lame. And so I'm going to put it off and I'm going to look for reasons not to get started. Exactly. So we're not motivated. So we need to give ourselves something, you know, we have to say, for me personally, you know, I will sit down and I will start my work session with, you know, watching something on YouTube or reading an article, having a cup of

coffee, sitting in a comfy chair, you know, kind of giving myself that like, oh, this is actually really fun. And then we get into, okay, let me write down on a little piece of paper exactly what I'm going to do. Let me break it down to support that working memory. Let me do these other steps, you know, and you guys could just message me focus on Instagram if you want those steps, you know, to understand what I need to do. Brilliant. Brilliant. Yeah. As I think about it, one of the things I do is I,

I have a playlist that is my kind of background music. It makes me feel good. It's background music, no vocals. And then I have my drink. You know, I've been trying to get off of Diet Coke because I was addicted to Diet Coke. So now I have these drinks that are not caffeinated, but that's kind of my treat. I love the taste of it.

And so I guess that's what I've been doing to give me that reward. Okay. Okay. Now we're going to concentrate. Yeah. Yep. Exactly. I do still need to though, all of the other things, turn off the phone, not look at Outlook. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. And it's good to do it. I think sometimes after the treat, so you give yourself a little something to get yourself started. And if you haven't done this before, you're probably not going to give yourself enough. One coffee does not count. Yeah.

So, you know, something good that we actually want. And then from there we say, okay, well now let me turn off my distractions. Email, super big distraction. Get that thing off your browser. Automatically you will click on it. Things like that.

And then from there, you want to go ahead and you want to like, you know, write down on a piece of physical paper, like, what are you going to do? Write it like a recipe. I'm going to call this person, do this thing, et cetera, et cetera. So you're just following that recipe for the rest of the time. And that can help you. Like you said, you can only really make it for an hour. That can kind of help you increase that time batch because you know what you're doing.

I have a little timer like it's running right now just to keep us on time, but I have a timer because that helps me also.

It helps me at two ends of it. I'm curious as to your thought. One is, okay, I can do this for an hour. I can concentrate. And now that I've recorded myself, I will. And it's important. I got to get this done. But it's also keeps me from if I'm working on something that I enjoy that I don't end up waking up, waking up from it five hours later. I've been messing around with this creative thing because I love it, but I got no real value from it.

So I kind of do that. But it also has helped me with, let's say, as I'm behind on QuickBooks and getting the March closed, if I look at it, oh, that's going to take six hours. I got to get it done. I have found that if I break it up to today, I'm just going to work for an hour. And as far as I get it an hour, that's where I'm stopping. What are your thoughts on that?

I think that can be really, really good. And my recommendation for you is, and you probably already do this when you stop, that could be a good time where you write the list of things you want to do with the next little bit of time. You kind of support you because often when we stop a task, when we're in that, you know, what we call like hyper focus or flow, our

Our brain's going, our working memory's going. Sometimes we don't want to put it down because we just forget time exists. It happens all the time. Sometimes we don't want to put it down because we don't want to lose the information. So we want to write that down. We want to bring that to the next working session. Good point. Good point.

Right. The other side of it, the hyperactivity, I think that's what leads us to my shiny object syndrome of I'm always the next thing and spending multiple plates. And sure, we can start that other business. You know, I've caught myself doing that. But what do you see? What are some of the ways that it can manifest itself that can be negative? Yeah. Yeah.

This is a great question. One of my mentors is always saying like, at least get it to a million. He's like a big 10 million, you know, like he's like at least a million. Come on guys, before we're going to do another thing. So, you know, when we're doing this kind of thing, it's really important for you to know when you started a business, the dopamine rush of getting a

somebody to buy your product, getting that to happen multiple times. It is a good feeling. It's probably, you know, a little bit of a high for, for many of us. This is one of the things we like. It feels good. It feels like, ha, they were wrong. We're going to do this, et cetera, et cetera. But then when your business becomes something that's a little bit more stable and

You can't rush in and, you know, say, oh, well, you know, like, give me the phone. I'm going to do it. I'm going to make it happen. Can't be the hero as much, right? Yeah, you can't do that. So we need to get stimulation from something that isn't our business. You know, and there's different ways to do this. You know, you could say, okay, well, I'm going to get it from like,

learning a skill, like learning the skill of leadership or management systems, or, you know, if that's your thing, like maybe that's what it is. But for some people, they don't want that at all. So for some people, they're going to have to go and find something else, you know, and often with people who are very high achieving, and they've been go, go going, and you know, if

If you're an entrepreneur, you probably are that person. I say, okay, well, we need to find something fun to do that is just as focused so that you can say, okay, well, I'm getting stuff done. But then after that, I jump on the quad bike or I do whatever, you know, I'm doing something that like gives me a lot of energy.

So a hobby, an exercise, volunteering, whatever it is it is. Because we don't want to go what I usually do is, oh, let's start another business. I've got time now. No. So you're saying something that stimulates me elsewhere, not business related ideally, right? Yeah.

I mean, it could be a skill development, but you're saying something completely separate and disconnected from the business. If you can do it in the business and you're being honest with yourself that you're not breaking the business or adding unnecessary steps, you're actually just growing in the business, then 100%.

But, you know, this is like bonus points if you can find something that you can do that you can do with your family. Because this is usually where the family starts knocking on the door and they go, hey, you know, remember us? Like we were- Right, you said this was just going to be for the startup and now three years later- Yeah, yeah, now we're doing this. And like, you're making, you know, X hundred thousand dollars. And like, they don't think we're in startup mode anymore. So-

you know, one of the things people say is like, and, and this is a conversation that I get to have. I'm very privileged to have these kinds of private conversations as part of what I do is, Hey, like, I love my family. It's so great. But like,

It's just a little bit like in terms of the dopamine, in terms of the stimulation, it's not super stimulating. What we're hanging, we're just hanging out watching TV. It's not stimulating. So finding something you can do that is a little bit more stimulating that you can bring your family or your friends in on can be a great way for you to get dopamine without honestly kind of coming in and just messing up your business a little bit. Right.

Understood. Brilliant. So one of the things, of course, that keeps us from being able to do that, and I've spent my challenge sometimes, and certainly I see this, is that I'm not delegating effectively. I have kept it all, right? And I haven't empowered my team or I haven't hired a team. So talk to me about that. What are your thoughts on how you can help people learn how to delegate?

Yeah, this is a really important and complicated conversation. And it's funny because I'll work with people who make millions and they don't want to delegate. They still don't have an admin, you know. So when we talk about delegation, there are so many wonderful experts out there. And one of the things I love to do is take that expert knowledge and then adjust it for this unconventional brain system that we have.

And one of the things we want to talk about is, okay, the first person you should bring in to help you is somebody who's going to help you with the things that you are not good at. The executive dysfunction stuff.

So that's usually going to involve some kind of EA, some kind of admin person. You're not necessarily going to have your first hire be in sales because that's your dopamine. Don't get rid of that right now. Like let's find somebody that you work with. And in terms of how to bring somebody on, test projects, 100%. You want to test projects.

something that you're going to do, you can take off because you want to know they're going to work with you because you know, and you might be, if sometimes people are afraid to delegate, cause they're like, I don't want people to know how the sausage was made. Let me just organize the sausage and then we'll do it. And that's never going to happen. So we want to do that, do some test projects, make sure it's a mutual fit. And from there, when it comes to delegating, you know, it's, it's really about kind of coming in and saying like, Hey,

Can you, you know, recording what you're doing or asking ChatGPT, like talking to ChatGPT and saying, this is what I'm doing. Can you write a basic SOP? And then giving that person that to work on, to build on based on their metrics. If you can give an EA your calendar and your email, you're going to be so much better off. And, you know, trying to get it to 80% as good as you. That's really what we're talking about. Exactly. And what I find then is what you'll find, especially with these types of things,

that it's not in your zone of genius or whatever you want to call it, or things that you are best at. So you're going to find those people are going to end up actually doing it better than you have. Oh, 100%. I was about to say. Yeah. For someone with unconventional thinking, as you're putting it, an unconventional brain, what is it foundationally you found that makes it so hard for us to delegate? Why is that? Hmm.

Actually, there's some research to back this up. So one of the things that happens is that, you know, if you have ADHD, unconventional brain, and you're communicating with somebody who doesn't have that, you don't communicate very well. It's like a culture clash. You're jumping from point A to point D and you're like, come on, like just come up with a few new

I want them to read my brain. Just figure it out. Yeah, figure it out. You know, you just get the vibe. Like, we're doing this. And the other person is like, I want it step by step. I want, you know, I want you to build out this SOP for me. And then I want to just follow the play. And this is a real problem. So, and then the other side is sometimes you find someone and they're like, this is amazing. They get me so well. Yeah, they get you, which means they have the same weaknesses as you, which means neither of you are managing the books properly. You're both going to be getting nothing done.

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So to you, to this, what comes to mind is different assessments that are available to help us understand how people that we do have on our team, how they want to be led and how they learn. Does that come into play? Is that helpful here? That can definitely be a part of it. I would say, though, if we're talking absolute like basics that you can take away right now.

Find somebody, like do test projects of things that you actually need help with. A great example of this is, you know, you throw that really wonky email that you still don't quite know how to respond to somebody and say like, de-identified this, like how would you respond? Things like that. And you want somebody who is not the same as you.

You know, we love our neurotypical brains who do their thing. But they respect what you do. They think that what you bring to the table is good. And you respect what they do. There has to be that respect. Otherwise, they're always going to be frustrated that you don't think like them. You're always going to be frustrated that they don't think like you. Yeah. And immediately what comes to mind is the way that my wife and I work together. She has her own business. She's a travel consultant, but she'll help me sometimes.

But she is very patient on if she needs to get on the phone with somebody or track somebody down. You know, she'll spend an hour on hold.

And it doesn't make her, by five, my head would have exploded. Right. Yeah. Yeah. She's on it. She's dogged about it and she'll do it. And she's me. So that's an example of where she can do that so much better than I, and she'll get it done. I'll keep putting it off and off and off because I don't want, I don't want to have that challenge. I don't want to have that. Yeah. So that's again, where, where a VA is a good place to start with test projects is what you're saying is,

And get started that way. It's also a very cost effective way. If it doesn't work out, you can move on to the next person. It's not like you have to fire someone. So it's easy to try that and start there.

Yeah, it's just especially for people who, and like I said, it's always surprising. This is kind of their first person. You know, an EA can be quite a personal thing. You know, you can do multiple test projects. It doesn't have to be one and done. You can do one test project, another one. You can do a day, you know, just keep building at your pace. Have a few people that you like and pick the one that really fits with you.

And the key is you don't want to end up spending all your time complaining about them not understanding you. And you don't want to know that they're going home and complaining that you, you know, you're every, you know, because sometimes I have this, I'll talk to people and they'll be like, oh, business owners are the worst because they do this and this and this and this. And I'm like, yeah, but they're cool because they make

money so we want people to understand opportunities yeah yeah we want to have people who get that part as well because otherwise you're just going to have a frustrated employee and we also want somebody who understands and you need to also think about the benefits of what they do so that's kind of the the basic importance before we get to like personality tests and things like that got it that makes sense

All right, what other systems do you see that help us to implement or areas of systems that help with this challenge?

the challenge of having this kind of brain yeah exactly having this kind of alternative way of thinking what are the things you know we talked about a time blocking system we talked about here you know delegating uh what else have you seen that works well for those of us who are either diagnosed or challenged with similar with similar things yeah yeah the thing that i love to give away actually i have a thing to give away on this is

is a system to help you go from, I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing right now, to I know exactly what I need to be doing. I know what's urgent. It's not as much as I thought. And I know what's important and I have time blocked in my calendar to do it. That process is usually for most people, the first thing that they do when they work with me, we unblock that. Once you get that going, everything just feels so much less stressful. And

And the noises in your head quiet a little bit. And for a lot of people, that's the first time they've even really been able to do that. Is this the focus filter that you're alluding to? Yeah, yeah. The focus filter. So tell me a little bit about what this tool can help me with. So essentially what this tool does is it takes you through going, okay,

What needs to be delegated and discarded? Well, first of all, let me really step back. The first thing we do is we say, okay, what is in your brain, not on your task list, not on your email, just in your brain that you know you have to do? Occupying space, exactly. Learning your ability to problem solve. And it can be work, it can be home, it can be everything. We get you to write that down, put that down. I have a little spreadsheet for you to do it in if you want to, but you can do it on paper. I'm super app agnostic, you know, however you want to do it.

And from there, one, we have a list. It's a little bit stressful because it's usually a ton of things. People do not know how much is in their brain. And then we're going, okay, what from this list, like what can we just take off completely? Because this never happened. And that idea didn't go anywhere. We have a lot of those things.

What could we discard? What could we delegate to family members or maybe even just back to the person who came up with the idea? We were super excited on Monday, but on Tuesday, we're like, I don't have the bandwidth for this. You know, what can we do there? And then from there, we're going, okay, this is where it gets interesting. We say, what needs to be done in the next week?

you know, what needs to be done in the next 24 hours that there will be a significant external negative consequence. Call it a sink. Something that's really going to be a problem. Taxes don't get paid. Obviously that's a thing we're talking about, you know, it doesn't get run. A meeting doesn't, doesn't happen. Those are the things. And for most people, I've done this like hundreds of times with hundreds of people. There's less than five things that are truly, truly urgent and,

for today when we really nail it down that you have to do. And then we do the same thing for the week. What is truly urgent this week? I feel bad, doesn't count. I said I would do it. It doesn't really matter, but I said I would do it, doesn't count. What's truly urgent? It's usually under 10 things.

So just there, we've cut so much waste from your week. And how often, so do I perform this daily or once a week, ideally? How often do I revisit the focus filter? When you work with me, I have a program called Focus Balanced Growth. And one of the things we have as part of that is a daily standard. And reviewing this as part of the daily standard, you don't have to do the whole thing.

But we do want to consider this to be the one list. You know, we don't want to have a whole bunch of lists like trees in a forest and they're all dying and things like that. We have lists everywhere. We've got one list. We're taking care of it. We're viewing it every day. That's what the prioritization focus filter does. Yeah, I think this is brilliant because I can see where if I think of myself and other people, it seems like then, tell me if it's true, that people with this unconventional way of thinking, whether you're diagnosed or not,

We have a hard time assigning a value to all of these things that are in our head. It seems to all be equally critical. Oh yeah. Is that right? Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. I've had people like, you know, come to me and they're like, just so you know, I'm different. This is going to be, everything's going to be urgent and it never is, but I'm always just like, Hey, as long as we writing it down, I'm happy. But the key, the key point is like, once we get through those urgent things,

People are often like, but what about the important stuff? And when people work with me, they get that stuff happening much faster than you would realize because what we can then do is go through the rest of the list and say, okay, now in the rest of this list, what is that 80-20? What is the 20% thing that's going to give me the 80% return in my business, but also maybe at home or in my personal life? And pick one to three things.

That's going to be that momentum mover for you. And then we put that into your calendar, like a doctor's appointment. We block it in and then we do that time blocking thing that we talked about. That comes back to the time blocking now. Yeah, it all works together. Wednesday and that time block that I have, this is what really I need to focus on then. Yeah.

Yeah. And then you don't worry that you're not focusing on the right stuff. And that's the great thing. The other thing that I always say to this is the reality is that as business owners, typically we could work 24 hours a day, seven days a week and still not get it all done. In other words, because when we come to it again with so much of this mentality that we got to check everything off the list, but it's simply not possible. And that just leads to burnout and it's not necessary moreover. No.

Yeah, yeah. And so this exercise helps me again, focus on what's most critical. Everything else can wait until it becomes critical. And a lot of times, a lot of it doesn't, right?

It goes away. 100%. The noise goes away. Yeah. I don't like to say that to people when they've just made that list. I'm like, 100%. But it does. It does over time. It does. It does. Because it goes back to what we're talking about the outset that I think we create that chaos. And one of the ways that we do that is, oh my gosh, I can't possibly take off tonight to go on date night or go to the family thing because I've got so much to get done. And it all depends on me. If I don't get it done, nobody will get it done. Yeah.

All right. Long-term thinking now, tell me about that because that's also a challenge. So how do you help entrepreneurs that have this different way of thinking set long-term goals? Yeah, that's a great question.

When it comes to long-term goals, usually the first thing I'll do is I'll actually ask them for their 25-year goal. That's not from me. That's somebody else. I can't remember his name, but some big guy in the industry. Because it stops you from thinking from a place of anxiety and fear. And it just kind of gets rid of a lot of the stuff. So we want your 25-year goal. Spoiler alert, it probably will get done sooner. Yeah.

But, you know, that kind of gives us a space to go from. And then usually what I'll ask people is, what did you do in the last five years? Because again, time blindness, we don't really understand how time works. So it gives people a sense of like, oh, well, I was over here and this happened and that's really interesting. And then I'll go, okay, let's take that energy. Let's put it five years in the future. Now we've sort of got a sense of how long five years ago was. What could you imagine doing in the next five years?

And then we kind of break it down. So then they have their five-year goal. And then we go, okay, what's the thing you could do this year that would help you reach your five-year goal? That's usually what I'm doing when I'm goal setting with people because when we talk about this quarter, and we do, we get into the system of like, what is the quarter and all that kind of stuff. If we don't have that bigger vision, it can get very mentally gritty. You're like, oh, 30% increase. Why? I don't know. It just makes sense. Like 30% is a good number. We don't want to be doing that.

Is the looking back five years also help us with realizing that sometimes if we would have been more focused, we could have gotten more done on one thing. You understand what I'm trying to ask you? Does it help with that as well? Is that part of the reason we look back five years? I'm not quite following what the benefit is of doing that. It's sort of a bit of both. It really is on the person. So sometimes it helps people with confidence.

Sometimes the problem people have is they're like, oh, I couldn't get anything done in five years. I see. So let's look back at the victories that you have achieved. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or sometimes they're like, oh, I didn't get as much done as I wanted. It really kind of depends on who that person is. Usually people are kind of in one of the two spaces. Got it. Okay. Understood.

All right. What have I not asked you about that is a common challenge or, you know, a technique that's often something you share with business owners that are dealing either with AGST or similar unconventional thinking? What else have I not asked you about? Oh, I love that question. Decision making. A lot of struggles with...

with figuring out, you know, the important stuff, the unimportant stuff. We have a million decisions we have to make. And sometimes people don't struggle with it, but a lot of people will come to me and, you know, look at their research and you'll say, okay, this is a surprising struggle as well. Is it decision fatigue that happens for us or what is it really? It's

It's kind of an interesting thing that happens, which is we'll kind of have a problem that we're worrying at. You know, we'll say, okay, well, it could be something really simple. It could be like, when are we going on holiday this year? Because technically this is the fourth quarter and then this is going to happen. And so we'll kind of, because of working memory struggles, it'll kind of go round and round in our head. And we'll just be like, oh, I don't know. And we'll talk to people about it and we'll worry at it.

And then we'll forget that we even talked about it or worried at it and it'll come around again. And so...

One of the things I teach right off the bat as part of my focus section when you work with me is how to make those decisions in a much more focused way where we say, okay, this is the decision. This is how important it is. It's actually not that important or it's super important. This is how much time I'm assigning to it based on that. And then this is me doing it. So we try and take decisions, bring them out of the ether and bring them into more of a task space.

I see. And then you're prioritizing them or you're qualifying them as well. But, you know, life threatening decision versus, you know, not 100%. Yeah, we look at you take some stuff from like, what academics do in research, and we say like, Okay, well, you know, on the scale of like, you know, life saving medication to which shirt should I wear? Like, where is it? Where is it sitting?

But again, that exercise gets that clutter out so that it doesn't keep coming up. And sometimes in our brain is hard to decipher which is more important. But if we go through that exercise, it helps us put it in its proper quadrant. Yeah. Everything I do is about focus, getting more time, reducing clutter. That's kind of what we do. Tell us a little bit more about what else the services that you offer, the coaching programs and the community. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, yeah. Well, if you guys want to get the focus filter that I talked about, I give that one away for free. I want everyone to use it and feel focused. So you can find that on my website at Unconventional Organization, or you can DM me at Instagram Unconventional Organization, and you can just write focused and I will give it to you.

And then on top of that, you know, we have a coaching program with entrepreneurs. I was just having a meeting right before I came on this call. And, you know, there are other people who have ADHD or have unconventional brains and they want to learn how to have focus, balance, growth in their business. They have something that's working, but they want to remove the chaos from it. They want it to feel calmer and more, you know, connected to what they want to do. And that's what we do. We have

sessions, coaching sessions, one-on-one. People have lots of opportunities to ask me questions and we go through that program. Wonderful. And just to clarify, as I mentioned before, organization is spelled with an S, not a Z. Yes, with an S. Spell that correctly. I wrote that on, you know, we came up with the name before I realized I was mostly going to be working in the U.S.,

All right. Excellent. So I'm always looking for a book recommendation. Is there a book that you've read recently or that you've read in the past that you would recommend?

Yeah, yeah. I want to plug Software as a Science. It's a relatively new book written by, I think, Dan Martell and Matt Verlack and some other people who are super cool mentors of mine and love the book. It's for SaaS founders, but what I like about it is I love a model and it just breaks down the model and you can read it. If you have the kind of brain I have, it kind of just like broke everything down for me in a very cool way. So I recommend if you have any kind of business, you read that book.

Excellent. I'll have a link for it in the show notes page, as well as where to go to get the focus filter. You can find that on the show notes page for this episode at thehowabusiness.com. I will wrap it up here. Skye, what's one thing you want to stick away from this conversation you've had, that we've had rather, about dealing with HDHD or HDHD-like challenges, the unconventional thinking, as you put it so eloquently from a business owner perspective? What's one key takeaway? Yeah. Yeah.

I think the biggest takeaway I'd say is like, it's probably time to stop white knuckling it. It's probably time to stop just trying to throw yourself with that brick wall because I've done it. I burned out a ton doing it before I learned these strategies and it's exhausting. And, you know, if we start to work with our brain, the thing that I often hear from people is I am enjoying this. Like this is fun. This doesn't suck. And so many times, the only time you've done anything like organizational stuff is it sucked. It was,

slightly traumatizing for being honest. And so, you know, knowing that that is not going to be what we do, we're making it work for your brain. And, you know, if you have an unconventional brain, this is what we do. Love it. Love it. Tell us again where to go online to get the focus filter and to learn more about your services.

Yes, you can go to unconventional organization. Actually on the website, you can go with an S or a Z. They'll both get you there. And just click on focus filter, download it, and you can get started on getting focused and organized. Fantastic. And that's where to start. You know, I always like to ask, where do I get started? That's where you start to apply this tool to help you with that focus. Excellent. Thanks for all of these insights and takeaways and for taking the time to be with me and to share your knowledge.

No worries. That was fun. Absolutely. Thank you. This is Henry Lopez. Thanks to all of you for tuning into this episode. My guest again today, Skye Watterson. Thank you. I release new episodes every Monday morning and you can find the show anywhere you find podcasts, including at my YouTube channel, the Howell Business YouTube channel and my website, thehowellbusiness.com. Thanks again for listening.

Thank you for listening to The How of Business. For more information about our coaching programs, online courses, show notes pages, links, and other resources, please visit thehowofbusiness.com.