Escaping the Doer Trap with Katy McFee
Hey Team!
Most of us with ADHD have fallen into the trap of thinking that if we just work a little harder or do a few more things, we’ll finally feel like we have our lives under control. But it turns out that "doing" and "leading" are two very different skill sets, and being a world-class "doer" can actually keep you stuck in place. Today, I’m talking with Katy McFee, an executive coach and the founder of Insights to Action. Katy reached the highest levels of corporate leadership before realizing that her success was built on a "doer" mentality that was no longer serving her, especially after her later in life ADHD diagnosis.
In our conversation today, we’re looking at why that "doer identity" can be such a common pitfall for ADHD brains and how it can lead to burnout instead of progress. We talk about Katy’s journey with a late-in-life diagnosis and how that shift in perspective allowed her to stop masking and start building systems that actually worked for her Combined-Type ADHD. Whether you’re running a household, a small business, or a massive department, the way Katy frames the transition from tactical "doing" to strategic "being" is something we can all use.
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/273
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
William Curb: Tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got here.
Katy Mcfee: I'm Katie. So, right now, what I do is I help women become VPs. That's my big mission in the world. I'm very passionate about closing the gender gap, but I had an 18-year corporate career, so I was a former exec myself. I was the director of VP and EVP, and I would say my journey to the top was not a straight line. It was definitely not like a rocket ship to the top. There's a lot of struggles. I got stuck as a manager.
I got stuck as a director. I had undiagnosed ADHD at this time. I wasn't diagnosed until I was 43. So after I left my corporate career. And so I want to help other people and other women to make that transition hopefully more seamlessly than I did, because I really do believe that once you learn certain rules and frameworks, it does become a lot easier.
William Curb: And I do think that's such an important point for people to know is that it's not about because everyone to get to that level needs to learn certain skills, but with neurodivergence, you just need different skills. Yes.
Katy Mcfee: And that's the thing. I think that part of it was that because I had undiagnosed ADHD, I just assumed I didn't have my shit together. I just looked at executives who seemed like they were always on time.
They seemed so organized, and I was already kind of struggling in middle management. And so I was like, I just don't think I'm just not these people. Like they're just so different from me. And I thought that meant that maybe I didn't belong or I didn't deserve to be there.
Right? Because like all the shame and all that stuff. But interestingly, what I found out was that when I did finally land a VP role, things actually got easier for me because I had resources. Like I was no longer managing a bunch of junior people.
Like I had administrative support. And so a lot of the things I really struggled with actually got taken off my plate. And so that was like a really great surprise.
Like I did not know that was going to happen. And so I actually found that life got a little easier when I got to the VP and EVP level because a lot of the administrative things that I had to do as a middle manager, I no longer had to do.
William Curb: Yeah, that's such a fantastic point with that. Yeah, it's a lot of ADHD struggles just kind of disappear when you have the support that you need. It's not you don't see people with ADHD like just thriving doing the things they're bad at.
Katy Mcfee: I actually love that you said that because one of the things I always say to people is don't focus on trying to improve your weaknesses. Right? Like I feel like I tried to do this for years. I don't know about you, but like there's this whole thing like do you focus on your strengths or do you try to improve your weaknesses? And I think for a lot of years I thought I'm weak in these areas. Like I've got to get better at them. And my advice for people now is like figure out how to just not do those things.
If you possibly can. Like sometimes we have to do things that we're not good at. But if you can possibly just not do that work in your personal life, in your professional life, and either outsource it or automate it or like get a tool or whatever, life becomes a lot better.
William Curb: Yeah, because it's not about turning the weakness into a strength. It's just making it bearable.
Katy Mcfee: Yeah, I have my own business. I think the reason I love it so much is I just don't do the stuff I suck at anymore. I could just have people to do that. And I get to spend time doing things I'm actually good at, which is more fun and more effective.
William Curb: Yeah, and it makes you feel a lot better about yourself when you can admit like, yeah, I'm just not good at this and that's okay. But there are people that are good at this.
Katy Mcfee: Yeah, they're good at it and they like it. I always give this example that one of the things I used to hate doing when I was in my corporate job was expense reports. I had a sales career and so I would travel a lot and I had to do a lot of expense reports and which meant like taking all of these receipts, like adding them all up and categorizing them and like sometimes changing the currency. This was like painful for me. Like I would put it off and I never wanted to do it. And finally one day I had this woman on my team who was like an administrative person and I was able to hand this off to her and I felt so bad because I was like, this is such a crappy task. Like I felt guilty handing it off to her. And then one day we were talking, she was like, oh, I love Thursday afternoons because I do your expense reports. And like I thought she was joking. I thought she was like sarcastic and I was like, oh, I'm so sorry. She's like, no, no, like literally I love it. Like I put on my headphones, I spread everything out on the desk and I like, I do it and like to me that it seems crazy because this would be like pure torture for me. But she actually loved doing it.
She's a very organized person, probably neurotypical. And so something that I hate it was something that she loved. And so that kind of actually really changed my perspective around like what's a crappy task to me might actually be something you love to do. Yeah.
William Curb: And I think that is something that is one of the reasons it's so hard for neurodivergent people to give away tasks because they like, they dread them so much. And so the idea of giving that to someone else is like, this feels bad. Yeah.
Katy Mcfee: Right. You feel like kind of like, you feel like a jerk handing off this work. And then you find out that, yeah, this is just really hard and crappy for me. But other people don't mind doing it at all.
So I think it's the beauty of, at least in like life, right? Like I think about like even at home, my partner and I, there's some things I hate doing. He does not really mind doing them. There are certain things that he doesn't want to do that I don't mind doing. So it's like, if you just get honest about that, life can be better. Yeah.
William Curb: Well, and it makes it also interesting when you have the ideas that you're like, oh, yeah, we're going to try and like, you know, have this like equal workload. But it's like, it really depends on how much you like your tasks, what makes it equal.
And then you'd be like, oh, you know, because I have a tendency to be like, oh, I want to, you know, be extra sensitive to the fact that, you know, that I should be taking on my amount of work. So I'm going to take on the worst tasks. But sometimes that's not, I'm not thinking about what's the worst task for the other person. I'm thinking about what's the worst task for me.
Katy Mcfee: So my husband is neurotypical. And so that's also something that's just like interesting, that there's certain things that he's just going to be better at doing, right? Like when it comes to when we go on trips, like he's the guy that organizes all the stuff. He's the reason if I make it the door on time, like often he has played a role in that.
Right. He's I come down and I'm like, shoot, I'm going to make a coffee before I go. And he's like, here you go.
He's like already made it. This happens just like, thank you. That's his role. Whereas like I do other things that, you know, make our life more fun or, you know, add to it in other ways. And yeah, it just works out.
William Curb: Yeah, that's it's the partnership there. It's the same thing with, you know, the business side. Yeah, you go, each part does what's best for them.
Katy Mcfee: I do even wonder, and, you know, it's a good point that I do think there is an element of it that is like a neurodivergent thing. Even thinking about after I was diagnosed, I got more serious about having a really structured morning routine. Because I find that really just helps me to show up as the person I want to be. And before that, I always felt too guilty asking for it. Like I knew I should work out in the morning, but I always felt guilty saying like, oh, do you mind if I go work?
You know, we had a younger kid at the time. When I thought about it, you know, my partner would be like, hey, I'm going to go work out. Like you just do it if you want to do it. He didn't even think like, oh, is she okay? Like he was just like, yo, I'm going to go do this thing.
And so finally, like it was only after getting diagnosed, but I felt that I could ask for that. And I actually wonder how much of that does come with like just all the baggage if you want to call it that.
William Curb: Yeah, I mean, yeah, there's so much baggage that we have from ADHD where we're being like, we don't know what we don't know. And so we're like, oh, we're making all these assumptions about what other people want and how we're supposed to do how society is supposed to work and what we're supposed to ask for and what we're not supposed to ask for. And then what holding on to all the times that we've been told that what we're doing is wrong. And so we're like, oh, we're just going to be going to tamp that down and try and make it easy for everyone else.
Katy Mcfee: Yeah, it's so true. And I think when we carry this into like, I work with a lot of women who are climbing the corporate ladder and trying to get to that next level, I think we often bring that into our work as well, right, where we were like kind of on an island.
William Curb: And I can imagine that makes it so much harder in a leadership position where you're not sure if like, oh, should I be asking this person to do this thing makes it hard?
Katy Mcfee: Yeah, well, it's interesting. Like one of the big topics that I like to talk about is delegation and like, first of all, giving yourself permission to not hold on to it all and allow it to be done imperfectly even sometimes. Like I think some of us who grow up with ADHD, I think whether it's diagnosed or not, we do adopt some of these like perfectionist tendencies, right, where we want to please everyone and we want, you know, everything to be good. We've received so much negative feedback in the past. You know, I do think that that can be such a disadvantage because we're like, I'm just gonna do it myself. They're not gonna do as well as I can or I can get this done faster. One thing you're kind of holding yourself back because you can't spend your time on the right things for doing everything. But two is just like a recipe for burnout.
William Curb: I mean, I was talking to someone yesterday and they're talking about they have a further like social media, they're like, yeah, we have an intern doing this. I can't be the person that checks what they're doing.
I have to have someone else check, you know, like just do the quick once over because if I look at it, I'm gonna go, oh, here's all the things we need to fix. And it's not worth my time. These are like shorts we're putting up. It's not something we should be doing, but or I should be doing, but so my role has to be to not look at it.
Katy Mcfee: Yeah, it's so true. I mean, I've noticed this too, just just growing a team in my business, especially because it's my voice, like quote, my voice, my content going up the world. And it is, yeah, you got to really think about like, okay, one of the things that I'm going to let go, it's might it's going to be 80%. It's not going to be 100. But like, is that okay?
Right. And I think that it's it's it's it's like, it's such a good exercise because I mean, I part of the reason I left corporate was I did burnout. Because I think I was like, I was hanging on to everything. I was like, you know, trying to do everything perfectly, trying to do everything for everybody. And I mean, at that time, too, I would say I was not, you know, aware of why I was struggling in the way that I was when it came to like ADHD and like how it was impacting my life. And so I was like, kind of self medicating with coffee in the morning and wine at night and, you know, just like, hang it on by a thread, not a recipe for like a happy balanced life. We'll say that.
William Curb: Yeah, but I do know the sense of like, yeah, if I'm make it so that I'm always busy, it gives me that motivation to always be doing stuff. And so I'm feeling productive. Because if I don't have that constant deadline, it's easy for me to like slip into like, oh, I'm not doing enough. And that is straight burnout.
Katy Mcfee: I think that was one of the things that took me the longest to learn in my life was the value in slowing down. Like, personal life, professional life, but just like taking maybe even just taking him to think. And like, I'm definitely so I'm, I'm it combination, right? So I and I certainly have some hyperactive tendencies. I find it hard to sit still.
And yeah, it is tough. Like, I will sometimes mention to like my my partner, be like, okay, I'm going to sit down and like, watch a TV show with you, not going to get up. I just kind of like, chill for once. Because like, that is a thing he'll be like, are you ever going to just like, just chill, you're allowed to just chill for a minute. And it's tough.
William Curb: Oh, yeah, that was sick last week. And I realized I was like, oh, I'm sicker than I thought I haven't gotten up in six hours. Oh, just that in this chair for six hours.
The reason I got up with my dog really wanted to go outside. Yeah. She's like, it's time. I'm like, okay. And then I'm like, oh, it's hard to move now. Like, I must be way more sick than I thought.
Katy Mcfee: It's like when we're when we don't slow down to our body tells us, right? It forces us to if we don't if we don't rest enough.
William Curb: I have the Apple watch for a while. And it has like the like, mentions like every time you stand up and like gives you like stand up 12, once for at least like a couple minutes every hour. And I'm like, that's never been a problem for me.
Katy Mcfee: It's so true, right? Yeah. And definitely somebody who I'm always doing stuff. And that's what I'll often say to people when we're talking about, I don't know, people, a lot of people will struggle with doing things, just like getting things done.
I'm always like bias for action is not my problem. Like, I just know I brought like, I will do the fit and I might do it. I might do it hastily. I might not think things through.
But like, taking action has just never been a thing that I struggle with. I think because I have so much of that energy that I like to be busy. I like to feel productive. And so for me, it's like literally the opposite where I have to say, okay, today, I'm just going to not do anything important, or I'm going to take two hours and think about things instead of actioning something immediately. And yeah, it's been a it's been like a hard lesson, but so good, like so beneficial to life.
William Curb: Yeah, finding the ways to be like, okay, I'm going to be, I'm going to rest, but I still need to have enough stimulation during rest that it doesn't feel stressful to be what I'm to not be doing something. Yeah.
Katy Mcfee: And ideally not grabbing my phone. Because I mean, obviously, like we love that infind dopamine, but I would feel like really crappy after like when I go to put it down, like I don't feel good about myself or the world.
William Curb: Yeah, especially nowadays, I'm like, there's nothing I'm going to go online and see that's going to be make me happy that I went online to see it.
Katy Mcfee: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I do truly try to curate my social media, like it's mostly dogs and recipes that I see. But then the algorithm sneaks other things in there. And I'm like, I did not want to see that.
William Curb: Yeah, I've become incredibly prolific with using my block button on just like, that person posts stuff, I don't want to see for me to slip into, oh, I'm going to get the dopamine, the things that are negative that I'm reading because I can get like being upset gets my that's a stimulation.
Katy Mcfee: Yes, it is. It's the same feeling. I used to think that because at one point I was in like a more toxic relationship with an ex-boyfriend and that feeling that like that emotional surge of like even arguing is like a form of like a dopamine hit, right? I think that like, yeah, all of that stuff.
I'm curious for you because I know for me, part of my ADHD comes with like the rejection sensitivity dysphoria. And I also am a online creator, right? And it's an interesting mix of things to be like, I'm going to go put all this stuff out in the world. Hopefully no one says anything bad. I was curious how other people deal with that.
William Curb: I use a lot of my ADHD strengths there where I forget to check the comments. But I mean, there is stuff where like, I will occasionally come across something and that is it's hard. But I always try to take it with the lens of, regardless of how they're saying this, they cared enough to post so that I can use that information to try and get better.
Katy Mcfee: Oh, let's get perspective.
William Curb: Doesn't always work, but it is a healthy way for me to be like, okay, if they're saying something, it's because they cared enough to post because I've seen so much stuff online because it's also like if you post something and get nothing, that's also like the huge rejection sensitivity. It's like, wow, I hope this was just lost in, you know, the algorithm and not just because I am that uninteresting.
Katy Mcfee: It's so true. Well, and on, so I mostly post on LinkedIn and there have been algorithm changes, but one of the things that has been always true about LinkedIn is they say, you should be engaging for around an hour, you know, around the time you post a little bit before, a while after. But depending on how things are going, absolutely for me, I will avoid. Like, I'll be like, if it's not going well, if I'm not seeing like good results, or like not even negative, I'm pretty lucky. I don't get a lot of negative.
Sometimes I do. And I, again, I'm just like, what do I do with this? But even if it's just not getting a lot of traction, I know I should be engaging, but I'm like, no, I'm gonna go do something else. I just don't want to, I am definitely someone who will just like not look at social media very much or look at my social media very right, then they'll end up in a rabbit hole. But I try not to pay a lot of attention to that as well.
William Curb: It is a rabbit hole that you can go down forever. And yeah, you don't feel good afterwards. I know.
Katy Mcfee: One of my goals maybe will be to put limits on that. I like to make challenges for myself like every year. So one year it was like, I'm not going to shop, I'm not going to buy anything new. It's like, second hand was okay, but I wasn't going to buy anything new for a year. I got till the end of November or end of October.
And then I broke out like a lot of squires or something. And this year it's no Uber Eats. But I'm like, maybe next year I'll really focus on phone or maybe I'll add it to this year, but we don't want to get too crazy.
William Curb: A couple years ago, I did more than a couple years now. I did no signing up for online classes because I knew I wasn't going to actually follow through. I'm like, who do mean? I'm going to sign up for this. This looks like a really cool thing. I'll take the first two lessons and then forget about ever doing it again.
Katy Mcfee: I literally just signed up, just signed up for something yesterday. And I was just thinking this morning about how I'm not going to go to it. It's true, especially for me. So I don't know about you, but for me, if it's live, I am more likely to go.
I signed up for online courses and things. And if it is not live, if it's just like watch the recording and then you can come to like a call to talk about it or whatever, I don't do it.
William Curb: Yeah, there's no deadline or anything attached to it. There's like, I could do this anytime. Exactly. Something always comes up and is like, okay, this is what's most important now. And without that guide, it's really hard to stick to those things.
Katy Mcfee: Yeah. This happened last year too, where I signed up for like a parenting group because, you know, I have, he's now five, but we've been, he was four. We were struggling with just some lots of tantrums and things like that. And I was like, I think I need to help.
I have two older kids. These seem fine, but for some reason, those guys like really tough. And so I signed up for this group and I just don't, the guy realized the sheer amount of like homework and reading and videos I was going to have to do on my own. And like, I swear, I got, we hung on for like the first couple of weeks. And then I was through with my husband and we were both just like, you want to skip? Like you want to just not, we just, yeah. And so I was just like, I just donated this money to this person because, you know, I wasn't able to get myself to do it. And then you're falling behind as soon as you're falling behind too, they're just like, okay, like, now it's too late. Now I can never go back. Yeah.
William Curb: It's one of the like people like, oh, you should make a video course. And I'm like, I don't think I want to do that because I'm just taking money from people for no reason.
Katy Mcfee: So I run a program and, but it's live for that reason, because an every coach friend of mine has said like, like, you're crazy. Like, this is not a good business model. You should just record it. And then you can sell so many of them and, like, whatever.
And I'm like, I know that's like, it's probably technically better for me. But one, I've been trying to record, like, a video version of my program for literally six months. But I hate doing it, so I can't do it. And I just want to offer to the people in my community who have already been through the program, so they just have an easy access, right?
So I'm not replacing it. I just want to create that resource for them. But I can't. I just, like, it's like honestly taking me forever. But yeah, essentially what I say to people that tell me that, I'm just like, I know myself if it was live. Like, when I went through my coaching certification, it was all live, but two hours a week or whatever it was. And I always went, I don't think I missed one.
Because, like, there's accountability. And I got energy from the group. And so, like, I enjoyed it. But I just, I know myself with anything that's like watching your recordings. And I'm like, I assume the women that are coming to work with me.
I do get more neurodivergent women, I think, than probably on average, because, like, like attracts like. And they're there, partly, for that. And I also want them to actually get the material. So it's just like, you know, I would feel actually kind of bad if a bunch of people were buying those and not actually doing it. So I think for me, it'll be like, when I don't want to do it live anymore, I'll probably just shut it down. Because I just think it's so much better for my clients, it's better for me, too.
William Curb: It is funny, too, because it's like the difference here for me. I'm like, this is something I've put on my calendar. And theoretically, I could do the same thing with a recorded class. But then in my head, I know, well, I could move that, though.
Katy Mcfee: I do put it in my calendar. And I still don't watch it. I move it or I look something over it. I'm in a group now, it's like a business mastermind. And I really try to get to every call because they record them all. You can totally watch them after.
But I know myself and I never will. The other thing is they have a whole resource library that you can go through of all these amazing resources. I've never gone through it. This is my third year in it. I've never gone through it. I never will. And again, I know myself where it's too overwhelming. There's so many things that my brain is just like, can't do it.
William Curb: Yeah, it's a very interesting thing with ADHD where it's just like, yeah, without having that time pressure, it makes it so hard to actually get the dopamine from it. Because it's like, oh, I'm having this idea that I'm gonna, you know, it's a little bit of FOMO there, but it's in a good sense.
Katy Mcfee: Yeah, it's so true. And it is like on the flip side, give us a high pressure situation with a deadline and we're like crushing it. So I think my career was in sale. I think that's part of a reason. Like I just loved the dopamine hit of, I guess, bringing on a new customer or selling something. I mean, on the flip side, you get a lot of downs too, right? So it was like very, very much like a roller coaster. But I was, I think I was in it, the dopamine hits.
William Curb: So is there things you do now to like, when you don't have deadlines that you're like, kind of focus on to make sure you're still working? Cause that stuff comes up. It's all the important, but not urgent. Yeah.
Katy Mcfee: So one of the big things, so I am a fan of time blocking. I do create blocks of time and I am a big fan of systems. Like I do not rely on motivation or like any of that.
I do not rely on my brain. Like I create systems and then I like follow the rules, I guess that I've created for myself. That's a really big part of it.
The other thing is I'm like, again, I'm really lucky because I've built a small team, but I don't do the stuff I hate. So usually like I'm recording a podcast. I'm like, awesome. Like I like doing that. I'm not tempted to put that off because it's something I enjoy.
But a lot of the stuff I really dislike, I just, I don't do anymore. I don't do any of the administrative stuff. Like the operations in my business are largely handled by other people. So I am super lucky that I get to show up and do like, you know, I really like like business strategy, problem solving, that kind of thing.
I like the creative aspects of, you know, doing things like, even like writing my newsletter, like I actually enjoy sitting down and doing that. And so I create the blocks, but because my, it's a busy business, usually that deadline always feels very real to me anyways. I'm like, I got this one block. If I don't do it in this block, there's no other, this is the only block that I can do this.
So like I kind of like schedule myself in that way and it actually creates like almost like fake time pressure. Right. Like it's not real. You know, I could probably move it, but because of the way I've scheduled my week, I was like, no, this is the only time I can do this.
It was like, everything else is full of other stuff. And I owe it to this person on my team so that they can go, you know, do the next step. So I create that fake sort of time pressure and accountability for myself. But then also I have been really lucky to design a job where I like a lot of the stuff I do. And then I guess the third thing I think about a lot is, you know, this, I don't know if you've ever heard of this advice that eat the frog first advice.
That does not work for my ADHD brain. Yes. Yeah. There's no way in hell I'm eating the frog. I don't take the shittiest thing I have to do. Like I'm going to do that first thing.
It's like that is not happening. So so I do the opposite. I'm like, what can I do that's going to be really like dopamine stimulating? Like what can I do? And so I'll typically do that stuff first.
I'll do something that's I'm going to find very energizing and then I'll do the thing that maybe is like, you know, I don't enjoy doing as much like eating the frog. Right.
William Curb: So yeah. Yeah. I need to like, you know, grease the groove, get into the mode of doing things. I mean, even for like things I enjoy doing it, I'll be like, I don't want to start writing right now. But then, you know, I'll do a couple of things around it and get myself to do it. And I'm like, oh, I do enjoy this. I forgot. Yeah.
Katy Mcfee: Well, the other thing I do, so actually one thing I still kind of do, I sometimes have to do that I that I do not like to do is creating slides. So the thing I do with and I even have a designer, but like I need to still create like, I need to figure out what content goes on. Like she can't pull that out of my brain for me. And so I'll just tell myself, OK, all you have to do is write one word on the slide so she knows roughly what kind of design. Like you don't have to figure it all out. You don't have to whatever, but just like kind of go through and just write like like about me slide. Next, like intro the top or even like that really high level. And so that usually I'm like, I can do that.
You know, like that's that's a low enough bar. I think it's that again, it's the overwhelm of the idea of like taking it from nothing to like perfected slide deck. But if I just say, no, no, we don't have to finish it today. You just to spend like just even 10 minutes, you know, 30 minutes to like just start. And then I tend to get in the groove and actually get a lot of it done once I just like get a little hump.
William Curb: I have a template I use and it has a typo in it. I've resisted fixing it because it is something that is surprisingly good. I'm like when I'm like really stuck, I gotta fix that. And then OK. And I'm like, oh, just that little step of like, I did the smallest thing and that got me going. Totally.
Katy Mcfee: And that's what I mean. Like we need the little dopamine hit to then like, you know, get us going on the rest of it. I have to say also, AI has been helpful for that because I'm also, I don't know if you're familiar with the concept of working genius. Like Patrick Lecceoni, he's the five disfunctions of a team author. He wrote this book working. He's written lots of books. They wrote a book called Working Genius.
They think it's a little bit more recent. And the idea is that we have like six types of working genius. And like you're going to have two that are like your sort of zones of genius, two that are your zones of competency, two that are your zones of weakness and understanding what they are. And so what they are is there's wonder, invent, discernment, galvanizing, enablement and tenacity.
Okay, those are the six and minor discernment and tenacity. Those are my zones of genius, which is why I didn't like bang out a lot of shit. If I like it, I can actually get a lot done. But invent is not one of them and wonder is not one of those. So when I have to come up with something new, that tends to be where I struggle. And so I've been able to like be like, how can I use AI to help me in my weak areas so that, you know, I can just make it a little easier on myself.
And so I'll just I will voice dictate into AI. I'll say, I want to create this workshop. These are all the things I know because I already have a lot of knowledge usually in these areas, but I'm just not necessarily good at like taking it from all of the stuff floating around in my brain to like working framework that I can share with the world. And so I'll be like, these are all the things I know about it. This is the things that I teach. These are the types of exercises I want to do. Create a like just create a flow for me, right?
Of like a workshop or what if I were to put together, you know, ten slides, what should be on each one? And it gets it does that initial hump of like, oh, OK, like. Figuring out and because I'm going to discern and I can say is this good or is it bad or how do I change it? Yeah.
William Curb: And often you like look at and you're like, this is bad, but I can see where I can make it good. Exactly.
Katy Mcfee: Like it's enough of an idea. And I'm like, oh, I I'm definitely not doing this because I will come up with some stuff. You know that it's so dramatic, too. Like I read any time my team uses AI to write copy and I look at it and I'm like, come on, I would never say this. I would never be like, well, that's all exhale together or something like some great like I'm like, who does who does chat with you think I am?
William Curb: It's sincere in the worst possible ways. Yes.
Katy Mcfee: Yes. One of the words actually that whenever I see posts and things that use the word like such and such is quietly, you know, doing this to you or whatever. I'm always like, did you write that because whenever it tries to write something for me, it always says like, this is quietly undermining your promotion. But this is quietly whatever. I'm like, do people talk like that? I don't know. But.
William Curb: More and more often, I'm seeing those like little clues that like, oh, this was not written by a person. Yeah.
Katy Mcfee: But I do find that it does. Again, it helps me get over the hump if I'm really stuck, you know, it'll at least get something started so that I have enough of a, you know, enough momentum that I can do a little bit of work on it. Yeah.
William Curb: And I think that's a great like call back to like, you know, what are we good at? What are we bad at? You know, and being like, oh, yeah, we can use tools to help the things that we're bad at. And I think there are a lot of there's a lot of potential with AI to be like, oh, yeah, these are things that it's not doing things for me. It's just getting me to where I can do things. Yes.
Katy Mcfee: I think that's also I know there's a lot of who are afraid of like AI taking jobs and that type of thing. But if you look at the. AI is discernment. It's not good. Like if I say, hey, make me, you know, talk about this or create this, like it's usually like pretty bad. And so I would never use it for that. But I do think it's good for helping, like either going back and forth to help to ideate or giving other, you know, suggestions here. Or I know people who even use it, you know, people I know that maybe struggle to maybe on the side of being like maybe too direct. And sometimes that can come across as overly harsh.
They'll write an email, they'll pop it in chat to BT and they'll be like, can you make this a little nicer before I send it to my colleague? Like it's tough like that. So I might not be kind of a funny. I haven't done that myself. But I think it's there's some fun uses we can we can find.
William Curb: Yeah, I've seen once do is like, like Goblin tools has some great things for like helping you like create better to do list, like, hey, break down these tasks to what I need to do. That's what like a like judgment like if I send this text, what does what's the implied message behind it?
Katy Mcfee: Yeah, I love that. Yeah. Yeah.
William Curb: Now, I also love like I get like a wall of text email and I'm like, what is this person asking? I can't it's too dense for me.
Katy Mcfee: Yes, it is so good for stuff like that. Even like you can take a transcript of a call. Be like, what were the key? What were the key points that I should know about this? Or like, let's say you were supposed to go to a call and it's a recording, you know, you're not going to watch it. You can get the transcript and pop it in and you can pull up the key point. So yeah, it's really good. I think it's really good for synthesizing data.
William Curb: Yeah, you don't want it to making anything new really. But you know, what you've got can be put together in interesting ways that can be very helpful. I'm going to try and pull this away from AI because I know I could talk about it for quite a while since I've got I did a presentation on it last year. And I'm like, oh, there's other things, but don't want to go too far in that direction. So yeah, I guess some of the other things that we could jump into is just yeah, I mean, you've talked a lot about how you also really want to support women going into these roles in leadership and because it was, you know, something that was a struggle for you because, you know, you didn't know with undiagnosed ADHD, that makes everything a struggle. But it does seem like this is something a lot of people kind of see as like, oh, I shouldn't go in this direction because of ADHD or because of these struggles.
Katy Mcfee: Yeah, well, it's interesting because, you know, I definitely think we can we there's an element of being a woman. There's an element of having ADHD. There's an element when you put them together, right? Where, you know, I think that one, when we think about our executive functioning and some of the challenges we have with that, especially we don't know where it's coming from, we can start telling ourselves a story about what that means about us and our capabilities and, you know, whether we like belong in certain rooms. And there's often also that, again, if you're a woman, there's oftentimes like an additional, a little barrier, but there's additional challenges that come with that in terms of sometimes there's workplace bias or sometimes you're also juggling being a single mom or whatever, right?
And, you know, I often think that that middle management place is actually probably the hardest for all of that because you're just managing more of it. And oftentimes, early in our careers, we get promoted because we're really good at executing, right? So if you're one of those people that you love to cross off your to-do list and you'll have to get lots done and you have lots of energy, chances are you will get promoted to that next level, right?
You will move it into like a manager role or a senior manager role. And that's where sometimes like things get really tough and people get stuck. I see most people get stuck kind of at a manager or a director level. And a big part of that is if you want to move into like a director or a VH level, you often do have to slow down. And instead of just like doing all the things and like going a mile a minute and like meeting, meeting, meeting, call, call, whatever, stopping to think, what are the most important things we should be working on? Like, what are the biggest problems in this department?
How can we solve them? Like, what's the one thing I could do that's going to move the needle? And and honestly, this was the case for me. It took me years to figure out to do this because it was just so not natural for me where I got my dopamine hits from getting things done and being busy and being on calls.
And I had not really learned the value in this idea of slowing down. And, you know, the other sort of layer on that, too, is that in middle management, you are doing a lot of just administrative stuff, right? Like, you're managing people below you. They're usually kind of junior, which means they take a lot of oversight. And you're also managing up the chain and having to report up into that. And it's just a busy, hard role. And so we can also tell ourselves, like, if this is hard, like, there's no way that I should be trying to get that next level role.
William Curb: One of the things that just popped into my head, too, is get that middle manager role to often reflects the same thing that people have at home, where they're like their own house manager or something where they're like, oh, yeah, I've got three kids and I've got to plan all the things that we're doing and the meals. And it's not friendly for someone that has trouble with executive function.
Katy Mcfee: Totally, totally. And when I was in a VP and an EV hero, like, I loved it because for one thing, most of the people that reported to me were generally like directors. They were managing all the people stuff. Like, they were keeping track of like, oh, this person hit their metrics.
So did they do 10 calls today? I'm like, all the stuff that like, I was not good at that detail. I never, I was like the worst at like tracking my team's vacations. Like, all of that stuff. I was like, you know, I remember actually because my, so my background is science. And when in university, I did a science degree and it was good because I really enjoyed it.
I mean, I switched programs three times because I have anything. But but I really enjoyed science. And so I did well in many of my classes, especially as I moved up and into more like really these like areas of interest of mine, I could really hone in and want to learn about them. But when we had to do lab work, which you have to do when you're in science, you have to keep a lab book and it has to be like meticulous.
I just sucked it at like I worked at a lab. And I remember my my supervives are being like, we're all your notes and whatever. And I'm like, well, I have like the results here.
He was just like, I was like, what the hell are you doing? But it just was so not natural to me. And so in a think of it, like, yes, some of these these jobs or you have to do a lot of this stuff, it's just it's really hard for us. And if you're if you're not doing it, which often that ends up being the case, then you can be really beating yourself up and telling yourself a story about what that means. Yeah.
William Curb: And it often what it really means is often that you need different strategies to be working with and not if you're trying to like shove a neurotypical strategy through is often that's what the biggest problem is.
Katy Mcfee: Well, totally. Yeah. There's certain jobs like I should just never do. Like I am glad that I realized pretty quickly, like don't work in a lab. I didn't mind doing the experiments, but like keeping the notes like there's no way. You know, I've thought about writing a book before.
I'm like, oh, well, that research. I mean, even outsource that maybe. So that would be the only way it would happen is like, I just can't imagine ever doing it like a certain things like that just are not are not things I can get myself to do. And and so you either need to figure out a strategy for for how to do the thing or how to not do it or, you know, a tool that you can use, you know, if it is part of your job and you have no choice. Yeah.
William Curb: Because there's always things you can do that will make it easier. And but to your point earlier, too, we don't always need to be just focusing on getting the trying to strengthen our weaknesses. Because often that's never going to be as successful as trying to strengthen our strengths. Yeah.
Katy Mcfee: And I think the thing I learned through that, too, is like, it shouldn't feel that hard. Right. Like when I was in, you know, the one role I always I talk about this a lot, like when I was a director and I got kind of stuck as a driver, I was trying to get promoted for five years. I couldn't get the VP role. But like because of also the stage of company that it was and what was required to be successful in that role, it just was not in my wheelhouse.
And that wasn't obvious to me because I just didn't know what I didn't know. But like it was an early stage company. So we were still trying to figure out the market.
So I was supposed to be kind of like researching the market and understanding how to like create product market fit and like all of these things and writing these like sales strategy documents. I was not good at that. Like so I was probably not showing up as the best version of myself because just not in my wheelhouse. Whereas the next role I went into was more of a scaling stage company where I had to like look at we had lots of data and I was able to like look at the data and be like, oh, I think this is where we need to focus in.
We need to like do more of this, less of this. I had resources on my team to help with the implementation. And then I did really, really well there.
And it was interesting because I was like, OK, I'm at a bigger company with way bigger targets, like scary, bigger targets. But yet I'm doing better and it also feels way easier. It feels more fun. And so I do think it's actually a good kind of like check in with yourself that if it really feels hard, like if day after day, it's like you're really kind of like grinding away and it feels really hard. It may not be the perfect fit for you in terms of either the company or the job or whatever, because it shouldn't feel that hard.
William Curb: Yeah, often I think people with ADHD get stuck at the mentality that it should be hard because otherwise, because there's things that are easy. Like I'll do something like, oh, I was in productive today. Everything I did was easy. And then I was like, well, I did a ton of stuff. But just because it's easy doesn't mean it's not worthwhile.
Katy Mcfee: Also, just because it's easy for you, it doesn't mean it's easy for everyone. Right? Like we tend to look at what we're naturally strong at and discount it. But like what you maybe spent a day doing that was like, quote, easy. Other people might find that would be like climbing a mountain for them. Yeah.
William Curb: Or, you know, and then same goes for the other side of like, yeah, just because something as hard doesn't mean it's the most important thing. Yeah.
Katy Mcfee: Yeah. It's so true. You know, and I think that for me, I mean, the company that I was at where it felt really hard, I was there for eight and a half years. Like I was just like torturing myself. It's like I have to figure it out here. You know, I almost felt like I didn't deserve to move on until I figured it out.
And then finally, of course, I did move on and I was like, oh, wow. This is really nice. Like work feels fun and I'm pretty good at it. And it was a welcome change because, yeah, it had been eight and a half years of feeling. I mean, I can't say I felt like terrible the whole time, obviously. It was good and bad. But I had been feeling frustrated and it had been feeling hard for a little while. Yeah.
William Curb: And in your head, you're like, oh, if I just do blah, blah, it'll get easy. I'll get there. And eventually you really have to just go, that's not going to be the solution. I need to something needs to change. Yeah.
Katy Mcfee: Again, sometimes, yeah, just giving ourselves permission to, you know, I think for me, it was maybe some perfectionist stuff or maybe some like, I don't even really know how I had to label it. But it was like this feeling that like I had to be successful here before I could leave. Like I had to earn it or something. Yeah, I never I never earned it.
William Curb: Yeah, I can definitely see that. Like, yeah, if for whatever reason, the self talk is that this is the line. And if I can't make it here, that means I won't make it anywhere else. All right. I was wondering if you had any final thoughts that you wanted to leave the audience with.
Katy Mcfee: I guess the big the big message I always love to share is that if you have ADHD and you want to have a career where you become an executive of VP or an ADP or a C-suite executive, you can absolutely do that. Like it is so possible. And I'll even say, I think that ADHD brings do really well in the executive suite because of our ability to make connections and, you know, connect the dots and that kind of thing. And so, yeah, I just want to I want that message out in the world because I think oftentimes we we discount how great we can really be because it's hard right now.
William Curb: Well, it's a great message. And thank you so much for coming on the show.
Katy McFee: Thank you so much for having me.
This Episode's Top Tips
Recognize when you are trying to "outwork" your ADHD by doing more tasks. We don’t always have to be the person doing everything; instead, we can focus on thinking strategically about what needs to be done and focus on doing those most important things.
Give yourself explicit permission to stop pretending you work like a neurotypical person. You can reduce your cognitive load from "faking it" and free up energy for actually doing things the way they work for your brain.
Instead of just using a calendar, use systems that visualize the passage of time and the weight of your commitments. Often time blindness can hit us not only in the moment, but also while were in the planning phase, when we don’t realize how much we’re really taking on.