May 26, 2025 • 33 mins
Welcome back to the Law School Toolbox podcast! Today, we have sleep and productivity expert Lindsay Scola back on the podcast to talk about her new book, AI for ADHD. Lindsay recounts her experiences with undiagnosed ADHD and narcolepsy, and shares how AI tools like ChatGPT help her manage ADHD symptoms and boost productivity.
In this episode we discuss:
- An introduction to our guest and her book, AI for ADHD
- Understanding the ADHD brain
- AI as a tool for ADHD and in everyday life
- The importance of using AI as a co-pilot
Resources
- LindsayScola.com (https://www.lindsayscola.com/)
- AI for ADHD: A Practical Guide to Starting (and Actually Finishing) What Matters, by Lindsay Scola (https://www.amazon.com/AI-ADHD-Practical-Starting-Finishing-ebook/dp/B0F5T9QKMH/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22SS1M8UKFB28&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.qnT3TdCAoy5WPx6cs92DYe0HqZZPr69P-gk-YDZlSZeWDn5uACnmox11KOKN5C_tG_Nyvo7837IABUCx6EUIPJmGvDmmewQ5RHIlDLr6Rit_mKru8hoRZVMDuMWJKkV7fI90CkI5OY6eWiJhR4djMkdHYuQKmsO4xVI6vL8Ee_6LQN-qQ3N2likTNAUUqe4U8Nx48eZowSUVRpIFb3lz0pPkXdHnU5H4jTDmKBfbG-I.-yZXJzL5AZm4suaXpbgiXMOpYJJv0fn1nGTVoFOLfeU&dib_tag=se&keywords=ai+for+adhd&qid=1747731414&s=digital-text&sprefix=ai+for+adhd%2Cdigital-text%2C288&sr=1-1)
- Podcast Episode 476: Executive Functioning Skills for Law Students with ADHD (w/Emily Haan) (https://lawschooltoolbox.com/podcast-episode-476-executive-functioning-skills-for-law-students-with-adhd-w-emily-haan/)
- Podcast Episode 498: Tips for Better Rest with Sleep Expert Lindsay Scola (Part 1) (https://lawschooltoolbox.com/podcast-episode-498-tips-for-better-rest-with-sleep-expert-lindsay-scola-part-1/)
- Podcast Episode 499: Tips for Better Rest with Sleep Expert Lindsay Scola (Part 2) (https://lawschooltoolbox.com/podcast-episode-499-tips-for-better-rest-with-sleep-expert-lindsay-scola-part-2/)
Download the Transcript
(https://lawschooltoolbox.com/episode-505-breaking-adhd-barriers-with-the-help-of-ai-w-lindsay-scola/)
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Alison Monahan (00:01):
Welcome back to the Law School Toolbox podcast.
Today we're excited to havesleep and productivity expert
Lindsay Scola here with us to talkabout her new book, AI for ADHD.
Your Law School Toolbox hosttoday is Alison Monahan, and
typically, I'm with Lee Burgess.
We're here to demystify the law schooland early legal career experience,
so that you'll be the best lawstudent and lawyer you can be.
(00:23):
Together, we're the co-creators of the LawSchool Toolbox, the Bar Exam Toolbox, and
the career-related website CareerDicta.
I also run The Girl's Guide to Law School.
If you enjoy the show, pleaseleave a review or rating on
your favorite listening app.
And if you have any questions,don't hesitate to reach out to us.
You can always reach us via thecontact form on LawSchoolToolbox.com,
and we would love to hear from you.
(00:44):
And you can check out the Bar Exam Toolboxpodcast if the bar exam is on your radar.
And with that, let's get started.
Welcome back to the LawSchool Toolbox podcast.
Today we're excited to havesleep and productivity expert
(01:05):
Lindsay Scola here with us to talkabout her new book, AI for ADHD.
Welcome, Lindsay.
Lindsay Scola (01:12):
I am so happy to be back.
This is my third time.
Alison Monahan (01:15):
Well, third time's the charm.
That's what they say.
Yeah, your sleep episodes withLee were super interesting, so
I'm sure this will be as well.
Many of our listeners and manyof our students have ADHD, so I'm
super excited to talk about this.
Well, to start us off, can you giveour listeners some information about
your background and your work, justso they have some context here?
Lindsay Scola (01:38):
Yeah, absolutely.
I was one of those gifted and talentedkids, which I'm sure there are a
lot of us in this space right now.
And had a bit of an injustice sensitivity.
I scheduled my first... I organized myfirst walkout when I was in first grade,
over unfair treatment in the lunchroom.
It was the first, but not the lasttime my parents came to pick me up.
Alison Monahan (01:58):
Nice.
Lindsay Scola (01:58):
And I was one of those kids who, when I was really
engaged, I talked a lot, did a lot ofdaydreaming, did a lot of talking back.
So, there were a lotof ADHD symptoms there.
But that's not really what we lookedfor for women in the '80s and '90s.
And went on to a prettyhigh-powered career in politics.
I was an advance person forPresident and Mrs. Obama.
(02:19):
And then when I was in my thirties,I felt like I really hit this wall.
I'd struggled with a lot of thesethings throughout my career, but
I felt like I was always ableto really like muscle through.
And then this brick wall went upin front of me and I got diagnosed
with narcolepsy when I was 35, whichis a break in the sleep-wake cycle.
And I went on medication to help withthat, and a lot of it was relieved, but
(02:42):
there were still things that I thoughtthat the narcolepsy medication should
take care of, like getting started ontasks, feeling overwhelmed when I had
more than one subject in front of me.
And then as time progressed and whenI hit my late thirties, I started to
see this endless web of possibilities.
And that would happen whether I was tryingto write an email for work or I was trying
(03:03):
to figure out what to make for breakfast.
And then eventually paralysis just setin, and no matter what I was trying
to do, I was stuck on the couch.
Now, I might've looked sedentary fromthe outside, but from the inside it
was like 150 browser tabs were open.
I didn't know which one was playingmusic, and there was that frozen
wheel of death over everything.
And it was just absolutely debilitating.
(03:24):
And finally got some answers at 41 thatthis was ADHD, which gets a lot worse
for some of us when we hit perimenopause.
And so, I've really sort of focusedmy whole life around trying to
make life easier for people bylooking at sleep and productivity.
And so, even if you don't have ADHD,a lot of the tools that work for those
of us with ADHD can help you sort offocus and bring you back to center.
Alison Monahan (03:48):
That's awesome.
And if people want to learn moreabout you or learn more about, slash,
get the book, how can they do that?
Lindsay Scola (03:56):
LindsayScola.com.
It is all right there.
Alison Monahan (03:59):
Awesome.
Yeah, so it's very recently come out.
I have read a copy and it's a great book.
I will say, every time I get more deeplyinvolved in the ADHD world, I think,
"Huh, you know what? Some of this doesnot sound that disfamiliar to me."
So, I know you were diagnosed fairlylate in life, and fairly recently.
(04:21):
I mean, how did you endup with this diagnosis?
What prompted you to sort ofsay, "You know what? Maybe there
is something going on here."?
Lindsay Scola (04:28):
I, It was this real place of paralysis that I had hit.
And I had been on Ritalin for narcolepsy,because there's no novel for narcolepsy,
so we end up taking a lot of ADHDstimulants as a way to stay awake, because
they have a wakefulness component to them.
And I had gone sort of up and up onthe Ritalin to get that wakefulness
component and I got on a dose thatwas a bit too high, and I started
(04:49):
having these really bad panic attacks.
So I went off of the Ritalin, andwent onto a non-ADHD stimulant.
So I had some of these symptomsthat had potentially been a little
bit at bay that I was unaware of,starting to pop back up in my life.
And then a pilot script that I had beenworking on for a few years, we started
working with a producer that suggestedadding a neurodivergent character, and
(05:10):
we gave a woman in her thirties ADHD.
And I thought I was very familiar withADHD - it's that thing that boys get
where they're like bouncing off the walls.
And then I started researching thisin a woman in her thirties, and all
of a sudden I was like, "Holy crap,I'm writing myself." She became the
easiest character in the script towrite, because I was just writing me.
And that was an "aha" moment...
Alison Monahan (05:31):
Eye-opening, I would imagine.
... Lindsay Scola (05:34):
that something else was going on.
My GP agreed that this seemed likea likely thing, took forever to
find a psychologist that took myinsurance that would test me for it.
The first psychologist I talkedto told me she didn't think I had
it, and I was just going througha cognitive decline in my forties.
And that she'd test me if I wanted to, butI should really start keeping a calendar.
And I was like, "Lady, I have beenkeeping a calendar since I was a
(05:57):
teenager." I kept calendars for cabinetofficials, I was doing advance for
the president of the United States.
I can watch a calendar.
I'm coming to you because I can'tfigure out what to make for breakfast
in the morning, and then I sit onmy couch in the fetal position.
We're not talking aboutthe same thing here.
So I finally found a psychologistabout nine months after I
(06:18):
started looking, who tested me.
And not only did I have ADHD, was inthe 99th percentile, because I really
believe in putting my all into things.
Alison Monahan (06:27):
Right.
You're a big overachiever, I can tell.
I know I'm
Lindsay Scola (06:29):
a big overachiever, it doesn't matter on what.
Not so much in school.
But now that I understand the ADHDand the narcolepsy thing, I probably
could have done a bit better.
But getting that insight gaveme a ton of "aha" moments about
what was going on in my head.
Unfortunately, that did not laydown the tracks to get moving again.
Starting was still thehardest thing for me.
(06:51):
And so, I was getting a lot of toolsto figure out why my brain worked the
way that it did, deal with emotionaldysregulation, but I wasn't moving.
And AI became this bridge for me in thehow to get back into making things happen
and how to start having action, whichis what spurred the book AI for ADHD.
Alison Monahan (07:11):
Awesome.
Well, before we jump into theAI component, tell me a little
bit about the ADHD brain.
What are some commoncharacteristics that we see?
Lindsay Scola (07:21):
So, it's really a break in executive function.
And so, if you imagine your brainlike an air traffic controller at the
airport, where there're planes in line,and it tells the next one to go and
then the next one to go and the nextone to go - ADHD brains are a little
bit like the Newark airport these days.
Alison Monahan (07:38):
I was going to say, does that even happen these days?
I mean, in theory we'redirecting the planes, but...
In theory,
Lindsay Scola (07:42):
there are air traffic controllers who are telling which plane
to go, and then they're looking at thenext one, and there is an order for this.
Now, with ADHD brains, it's a littlebit all over the place and we've
really beat ourselves up for mostof our lives about procrastination.
But the procrastination isn't a choice inan ADHD brain; it's actually a miswiring.
And so, most of these things likeinitiating tasks, planning and
(08:04):
organizing, working memory, impulsecontrol and emotional regulation
happen in our prefrontal cortex.
Now, for ADHD brains, most anything isgoing to send that prefrontal cortex up
and like you're stuck in your amygdala,which is our "fight or flight" area.
And anything that really involvesthat prefrontal cortex, we have to
do a lot of work to bring it back.
(08:26):
Now, with something like emotionalregulation - that's tapping into our vagus
nerve, which is the thing that runs fromour brain down through the back of our
neck, it touches our tongue and then intoour organs, which, you can put an ice pack
on the back of your neck and that's goingto bring back that prefrontal cortex.
And so for me, it really feels likethere's a lot of noise happening,
like an old TV static builds up.
(08:48):
I have a lot of analogies that Iuse with this, which I realize are
all for people who were born in the'90s or before, so I'm going to have
to come up with some other ones.
In the book, over and over again, I'mlike, "If you were born after 1995,
please stick with me." But on anold-school TV, you used to get static
when a channel didn't show up, and that'swhat it feels like inside my brain.
And so, once we can bring thatprefrontal cortex back, we can start
(09:11):
working on the different executivefunction pieces that need to happen.
Another thing that's going on is dopamine.
So, in neurotypical brains I say,"I need to do this thing, and when
I finish this thing, I will feelgood." That is enough dopamine to
make a neurotypical brain work.
In an ADHD brain, something that'shappening in the future is a little
(09:33):
tiny bit of dopamine and you'rehearing a much louder, "This is boring.
I want to do anything else." That's whypeople with ADHD might not be able to
start something, but the minute you havea deadline looming or some other attack
thing happening, where "Yes, I've got it.
I can write a dissertation on thisin four hours overnight, but only
if that deadline is right aroundthe corner." And it's another reason
(09:56):
why people with ADHD, we can managemassive things and be totally calm.
I used to plan events for 250,000people and be cool as a cucumber,
but the minute I'm trying to likeuntangle a cord for an iPhone, I'm
ready to pull out my own eyelashes.
There is nothing worse for me than tryingto put on a sports bra while slightly
damp - that will spin me out of control.
(10:19):
Meanwhile you're like, "Go handlethis thing where other people are
panicking" and I'm like, "Got you.
I'm good." That's the same thingwith the dopamine regulation.
Alison Monahan (10:27):
That was interesting to me for two reasons.
What you just said is interestingto me, because I get very calm
in a crisis situation in a waythat actually freaks people out.
But also, I recall writing my entireundergraduate honors thesis, which was
supposed to be a year-long project and Ididn't pick the topic until spring break.
And I did it like nonstop forthree weeks and got highest honors.
(10:49):
And it's things like thisthat made me think, "Huh, is
that normal? I don't know."
Lindsay Scola (10:54):
Definitely an ADHD thing.
I'm not here to diagnose you, Imissed that day at med school.
Alison Monahan (10:58):
Yeah, exactly.
But I was kind of like, "Huh?That's curious, isn't it?" It's
a little abnormal, I think.
Yeah, for
Lindsay Scola (11:05):
a lot of us, getting started is very hard, but we're
able to do it once there is the fearthat this thing is due, because we
also don't want to let anyone down.
So, you're constantly balancing this, "I'mgoing to let everyone in my life down" and
roam the streets as this toothless ogre.
But I can't actually get startedon this thing that's not due till
Alison Monahan (11:22):
next week.
I mean, for me, itliterally became the case.
I was not going to graduate,because I decided to graduate early.
And if I did not finish thisproject, I was not going to graduate.
So, I graduated with two extraunits, I think, in the end,
because I finished the project.
But yeah, it was definitely apretty high stakes situation by
the time I got started on it.
Lindsay Scola (11:40):
I feel like that was pretty much every class I took in college, where
it was like, "I'm going to wait until theabsolute last minute to figure out how to
get this thing done." And then if therewas an early morning class, I wouldn't
go, and then would find the hot ItalianTA in the Statistics lab that could coach
me through not failing my final exam.
So, maybe that was a win-win for everyone.
Alison Monahan (12:01):
Yeah.
All of my college apps werewritten the night before and never
proofread, and sent in and whatever.
I mean, I was good at writing them, butjust, I couldn't come up with anything
to say until the very last minute.
Lindsay Scola (12:13):
Oh my God, same.
Still cannot think of anything to say.
I write a weekly newsletter, which Iwill have nothing to share until the
very last minute, where I have toomuch to share, and then it becomes a
task of like, how do I not write threehours worth of information every week?
Alison Monahan (12:27):
Yeah.
Lee and I were doing posts forAbout.com for a while, and we had to
do them monthly, and literally everysingle month it was like, "Okay,
we have one day to get these done.
What are we going to do?" We'rejust like, "Why are we doing this to
ourselves over and over and over again?"
Lindsay Scola (12:40):
Oh yeah.
No, I mean, it goes out Tuesday morningand there is nothing in my brain to
say till about 4:00 PM on Monday.
We are recording this on aMonday and my newsletter is
loaded up for tomorrow morning.
So, I'm really quite proud of myself.
We're going to celebrate that.
Alison Monahan (12:54):
Congratulations!
That's great.
Alright, so what else?
We've mentioned executivefunctioning, dopamine.
What else is going on here?
Lindsay Scola (13:01):
I mean, those are our big things.
With ADHD brains, it reallycomes back to this executive
function and dopamine problem.
And so, pretty much anything that'shappening in this area, whether it's our
working memory or it's our creativity, isreally functioning back into this spot.
And one of those things is really beinghypercritical with ourselves, which for me
became a serious problem with my writing.
(13:23):
I have very bad visual processing, so Idon't see spelling errors, I don't see
words that are missing in sentences.
So, I can read something overand over again and not see
that there's an adverb missing.
And then again, I spelllike a second grader.
I just cannot spell; it hasalways been a problem for me.
(13:44):
And so, after decades of public typos, Igot very, very precious about my writing.
And I would actually find myself sortof dumbing sentences down, because
I was afraid that I was going touse the wrong version of a word.
So, words that I know that there'retwo versions of it, but I'm always
concerned I'm going to wrong one becauseI don't see it - I'd stopped doing that.
(14:05):
And over time that became likea real gap in me trying to
share what I had for the world.
And I am a writer; thatis definitely who I am.
And so I would find myself weavingthese really beautiful phrases in
my head, but by the time I got to mykeyboard, I get so stuck on the like,
"Do I start this sentence with 'and'or 'the'? Do I start this sentence
with 'once'?" And then, a lot of timeswith this working memory with ADHD, we
(14:29):
have a very hard time finding words.
So, it's like that old analogy forpeople born before the century, but we
used to have the stacks in the librarywhere we'd have to go find the card
catalog for the book that you neededand scroll through that is what my
brain is all the time, and I'm justlike scrolling and looking for the word.
And so, I would be writing and I'dget stuck on the word I couldn't
find, and then I would stop.
(14:51):
It would take me hours to maybecome back up with that word.
But by that time I had noidea what I was trying to say.
So I was just kind of caughtin this vicious cycle.
That is a working memory problem that'sreally very common with people ADHD.
Alison Monahan (15:03):
Interesting.
Well, tell me a little bit about how youhave found ChatGPT or maybe some other
AI helpful in helping you kind of managesome of these things and get stuff done.
Lindsay Scola (15:16):
So, like I was saying that I was just stuck, and this
combo of being very scared aboutmaking typos and just feeling like I
couldn't get things started, it was aplace where I just didn't know how to
put one foot in front of the other.
And so, things like follow-upafter meetings weren't happening.
My brain was loadedwith creative projects.
(15:36):
The thing I always say about ADHDis that it's like trying to catch
glitter, but by the time you havethis brilliant idea in the shower,
the number of ideas that die betweenthe shower and the towel is endless.
And so, there were all these ideas thatwere happening all the time, but the
idea that I would actually grab oneof them, come up with enough to-dos
to actually get thing started and thenget it done was not happening at all.
(16:00):
And so, I started using ChatGPT asreally like a very high-end spell check.
And then I was very sort of skepticalabout using it for anything else,
because I think so many of us haveseen that LinkedIn post that sounds
like it was written by a robot in2087, where someone did zero training
of it, walked in fresh and was like,"Write me a post about leadership."
Alison Monahan (16:21):
Right.
Lindsay Scola (16:21):
And if you use these tools in that way, that's
what it's going to sound like.
Alison Monahan (16:25):
Totally.
Lindsay Scola (16:26):
There's none of you in that.
I don't want to read that;nobody else wants to read that.
And so it was this very bigmental gap for me about why to
even start using these tools.
But what I started finding was, itdid more than just check my spelling.
When I got to that place where I couldn'tfind the word, I could write a sentence
and just literally write a blank lineand then keep writing and have ChatGPT
(16:46):
give me suggestions for that word.
And then, all of this sort of panic thatused to happen with my writing that was
causing me to freeze, knowing that Ihad this sort of digital safety net for
myself, allowed me to just sit down andallow these freeflowing thoughts to just
hit the paper, because I knew that I hadsomething that I could work with that was
going to catch the typos and that couldhelp me make sense when things were messy.
(17:09):
And so, I think about it like acrobats- they're not going to go up there and do
the death-defying stunts without knowingthat there is a net behind, below right.
So, that's really what ChatGPT becamefor me, was really this place where I
felt like I had freedom with my writingagain, and I could get these things out
of my head without worrying about whatthey sounded like on the other side.
(17:30):
And it's very much my writing everytime I use ChatGPT to help me.
It's helping me fix a sentencethat doesn't make total sense, or
helping me find that word that Iwas missing, catching those typos.
I'm never sitting down from scratch,without training this thing to say, "Write
me a post on leadership." But once Igot really comfortable with this writing
(17:51):
piece of it, I realized that there was somuch more that I could be using it for.
And one of those things was, withADHD, we have a lot of emotional
overwhelm when there's more thanone thing going on in our head.
We don't task-switch very well, but allof us have to do this, involve more than
one thing, even if it's beyond work stuff.
There's the calling the dentist,which you don't want to do.
And then there's the paying thebills that you don't want to do.
(18:13):
And then there's the figuringout what you're going to make for
food, which you don't want to do.
And once you have more than onething that's building up there
and the anxiety around it, theto-do list goes out the door.
You order off of your Uber Eats again,or you just don't eat at all because
that becomes easier than trying tofigure out what to make for dinner.
And I realized that I could startusing this to just dump out everything
(18:36):
that was going on for me, have ithelp me put together a to-do list
that felt manageable, task thingsout on the level of importance.
Because sometimes with ADHD brains,we'll have this moment where, your
to-do list is like "Write a book",which we all know doesn't happen
in one sitting and one to-do list.
So, you can actually startbreaking those things apart.
But then you also have this momentwhere you have "Schedule the dentist
(18:59):
appointment, write the email forwork, and learn Japanese", and they
all have the same importance andthey all need to happen right now.
And so, I have this tool that I can workwith that's like, "You should schedule
the dentist today. That bill's not duefor two more weeks, so we can sit on that
for a minute. And maybe start looking atJapanese next week or the week after."
Alison Monahan (19:17):
Right, or maybe download Duolingo, check the box for Japanese
and commit to five minutes a day.
Lindsay Scola (19:23):
Exactly, exactly.
And that's the reason that so many of us,it's like we have a new hobby every week,
but we don't actually action on the hobby.
It's because there's dopaminein downloading Duolingo, but I'm
never actually going to open it.
I really want someone to start a hobbyservice for people with ADHD, where you
can trade in the expensive equipmentthat you purchased in that moment
(19:44):
that you were really going to do thething that you never actually used.
Because I know my husband and I definitelyhave a closet full of those things.
And so, it became this tool where I couldactually see that I was dumping things
out of my mind, actually making to-dolists and actually sticking with them.
And so that's where thiswhole idea came together.
(20:05):
ChatGPT or any of the AI services,they all work very similar.
ChatGPT is my service of choice.
But it's this tool that youcan start and actually finish
the things that matter to you.
And the idea for me that I wouldwrite a book based on an Instagram
post that I did last year wastotally crazy to me a year ago.
And this has been a real game-changerin the way I process and get stuff done.
(20:28):
And so, I'm so excited to be ableto share this with other people.
Alison Monahan (20:31):
Yeah, I think the book is really fantastic.
One of the things I like about it is ithas very specific examples of prompts
and how to think about them, but alsothe nitty-gritty of like, "You could just
go type this in and see what happens."I introduced Lee a while ago to AI,
and Claude is our new best friend, butshe was just like, "No, I don't want to
touch this, this stuff is kind of ickyand gross and it's very tech-pro." And
(20:54):
we're like, "No, you don't understand,this is going to be so life-changing
for us." And that was a while ago.
I mean, they've gotten so much better.
Lindsay Scola (21:03):
It got so much better in the four months that I was writing
the book, I had to rewrite sectionsover and over and over again, and
then finally find ways to say,"This is how this works in theory."
Because I kept using very specificsand by the time I would edit that
section, it had totally updated again.
Alison Monahan (21:19):
Yeah, I mean, I can just say, "Oh, I've got these five ingredients
and I want to make some stuff." Itused to be really bad at recipes.
That was like a running jokein the beginning, but I feel
like it's gotten way better.
Lindsay Scola (21:29):
No, it's gotten really good.
It's actually been this thing whereit gave me this creativity in writing,
it's given me this creativity incooking that I'm really enjoying.
I am someone who likes to play andtweak, but when I look at all these
steps and all these ingredients,I tune out and it's become too
complicated and then I can't do it.
And so, I've enjoyed finding recipesthat look good to me but maybe are too
(21:51):
many steps, and asking ChatGPT to makea less complicated version of that.
And then giving me some room to tweak.
So then I started looking at ingredientsin my kitchen and being like, "Oh,
what could I do with this? I have anidea to make this type of recipe."
I've gotten really into these pizzabites with mozzarella and tapioca.
I'm allergic to gluten.
So it's literally like thatBrazilian cheesy bread.
(22:11):
And I have all these ideas of differentversions I could make with this that
I go into ChatGPT and be like, "Okay,I've got these things. This feels like
a thing that I could do. What part amI missing?" And that's been really fun
to work with, and it's gotten much,much, much better, just in the last
couple of months alone on that stuff.
But it's actually allowing me to use allthe food in the house, like, "Alright,
I've got four eggs left, I've also gotrice noodles, and I've got a couple of
(22:35):
carrots left that I wat to use beforethey go bad." And helping me come up
with a recipe, where before, if I don'thave a specific recipe that I purchase
these for or a plan for them, I'm goingto end up throwing it out next week.
Alison Monahan (22:46):
That's so funny.
I'm like, "Oh my gosh,I've got to get eggs.
Don't forget to get eggs." And I'mlike, "Oh, it's already on my calendar.
I already put that on there.
Thanks."
Lindsay Scola (22:55):
Yes.
I'm in the grocery store and Ihave soy sauce on my list and I
don't know where to find soy sauce.
Where in the grocery storedoes soy sauce normally live?
Alison Monahan (23:03):
I mean, do not ask that question about Safeway, because I swear
they put stuff... I mean, literallypeople who work there cannot find basic
ingredients, and every time I have to gointo Safeway, particularly in California,
I'm just like, "This store is insane. Whodesigned the layout of this place?" It's
the craziest store I've ever been to.
No, I feel like they do it just soyou end up walking around the store
(23:23):
like eight times looking for the soysauce, because you're like, "Well, I
think it would be with Asian, but maybeit's with condiments. I don't know."
Lindsay Scola (23:30):
Absolutely.
And it's been in bothplaces, at different stores.
Anytime you think you know whereit is, it definitely is not.
It's like one of thosethings like molasses.
Alison Monahan (23:37):
Oh God.
Yeah, I've tried to find molassesbefore in a grocery store.
I don't think I.
I keep buying
Lindsay Scola (23:42):
molasses and then I realize I really hate baking.
Alison Monahan (23:45):
I mean, I have multiple sets of molasses in my cabinet.
I like baking, but you don'tuse that much molasses.
I mean, how often do youreally make like ginger snaps?
Lindsay Scola (23:55):
The once a year where I'm watching the Great British Bake
Off and make an entire gingerbreadcity that no one's going to eat.
Alison Monahan (24:01):
Yeah, exactly.
They're like, "Oh, I need moreblackstrap molasses." And you're
like, "Nobody likes these things.
They're kind of gross actually."
Lindsay Scola (24:06):
Then it just goes on that shelf where you're like, "I don't want to
get rid of it, because I might need it.
Alison Monahan (24:10):
Right.
I don't want to buy it again.
I already bought it.
Lindsay Scola (24:14):
And see, this is where ChatGPT can come in, where you can
actually take a picture of what ison your shelf and be like, "Do I have
the ingredients to make this thing?"
Alison Monahan (24:22):
Yeah.
It's
Lindsay Scola (24:23):
gotten so good.
Alison Monahan (24:24):
No, I believe that.
Well, in the pandemic I did a hugekitchen take everything out and
actually label it and put it in places.
So now I could tell you exactlywhere the blackstrap molasses are.
I just can't tell you if there's morethan one, which there probably is.
Lindsay Scola (24:38):
Yes, I've started using the label maker.
I put a big label of the expirationdate on top of everything.
Alison Monahan (24:45):
That's a good idea.
Yeah, I love myself a label maker.
Lindsay Scola (24:48):
Label makers are amazing.
It's
Alison Monahan (24:50):
really been life changing.
Well, let's talk a little bitbefore we wrap up, where do you
think people can go wrong here,and particularly maybe students?
I know a lot of people havea lot of anxiety around
what's okay, what's not okay?
How should we be thinkingabout how to use these tools?
Lindsay Scola (25:07):
I want to think about it as my co-pilot.
I think we have to be reallycareful about overreliance.
I think a lot about my childhood,and before cell phones I knew my
friends' phone numbers, I knewmy parents' work phone numbers,
I knew the school phone number.
I knew the phone number for thelocal movie theater, because that
was how we checked the times.
Alison Monahan (25:26):
Yeah, and the weather.
Life was really exciting
Lindsay Scola (25:27):
before the Internet.
Oh yeah, the weather phone number too.
And now I'm hard pressed toremember my husband's phone number,
and that's just because I use itto get the discount at Ralphs.
My brain doesn't store thatinformation because it doesn't need to.
And so, it's really exciting, especiallywith an ADHD brain when you have these
tools that bring this kind of reliefand that are changing and growing
(25:49):
and we can do so many things with,to want to use it for everything.
And you have to remember that as soonas you start turning over your executive
function to a tool like this, itbecomes harder to access that stuff.
I use it to write with me, Iuse it to come up with ideas.
I don't ask it to write for me.
And there's a big difference there.
(26:09):
And you to think about it before yougo in to be really thoughtful about it.
This is not your brain; thisis a tool for your brain.
Can you access this informationin another way, or is this going
to be the best tool to use to helpyou figure out what to do next?
Sometimes with writing, it's not that Igo in there and say, "Write this thing
for me", but when I need to come upwith an idea for an article or for my
(26:35):
newsletter, I ask it to interview me likea podcast host, and ask me one question
at a time and let me come back withanswers and then ask me another question.
And that is a way for me to use my brainto still come up with a topic to do for
my newsletter or for the article that I'mpitching, in a way where I'm still tapping
into all the information that's there,without asking ChatGPT to give it to me.
(26:59):
And I think that's really important,that we still see these things as a
co-pilot and not something that's going
Alison Monahan (27:04):
to
Lindsay Scola (27:04):
totally take over for us, because if you were driving and you
were only looking at the GPS and you'renever looking up at the windshield,
you're going to drive into a lake.
There is going to be a road thatis not there, or a road that has
moved, or a road that has changedand hasn't been updated in some way.
And so, we still have to use ourbrains, we still have to look for
the stoplights, we still have to bean active participant in this thing.
(27:25):
And then doing it that way, you're goingto make sure that you're not asking
it to completely do your writing foryou, because there's an absolute big
difference, especially for students of,"Help me find this word" or, "Help me
restructure this sentence in a way thatcan make more sense" versus, "Write
this thing for me." Because that'swhen we get into a really questionable
situation about, who generated the work?
(27:48):
And you don't want to putyourself in that situation.
But it's absolutely okay to be usingit as a tool to get yourself to the
place where you're writing your words.
No one looks down on someone usinga calculator to do a math problem.
And I really see these tools in thesame way, especially when you're
struggling with executive function.
Alison Monahan (28:04):
Yeah, I used to say when I learned calculus,
I basically forgot arithmetic.
So, without a calculator forbig numbers now I'd be like,
"Wow, that's really hard."
Yeah,
Lindsay Scola (28:13):
if I'm not like trying to calculate the discount on a sale, that
mental math will still kick in there.
I do love shopping.
The rest of the math skills, which I usedto have quite a few, are totally gone.
But the calculator is okay.
When trying to pay our bills, when we'regoing through a spreadsheet and trying
to figure out how much we're actuallyaccumulating on something, no one is going
to fault you for putting in a function inyour spreadsheet to use the arithmetic.
(28:37):
I'm terrible at followup.
I love meetings, I love talking topeople, I love having new ideas.
I am so bad at writing the emailafterwards, "This is what we talked
Here're action this is the to-dolist", which all that's super critical.
But now I use an AI notetakercalled Fathom, and I will take the
follow-up items, I'll make sure thatthey're accurate, I'll throw them
into ChatGPT, I'll ask it to writefollow-up email that sounds like me,
(29:00):
and I will send that out right away.
Nobody cares if I spent hourscrafting that email or not.
They care that they got that information.
And so, it's a very big difference betweenan original thought that is mine versus,
"Get that email out. Use the service."
Alison Monahan (29:16):
Yeah.
Lee and I are basically definitelybig fans now of the, "Please
summarize this meeting for us andgive us action items. Thanks."
Lindsay Scola (29:23):
Totally.
And that's what thesethings are great for.
And especially if there are thingsthat you get really stuck on, whether
that's finding the missing word, whetherthat's like, "Help me with this to-do
list." I have a friend who lives ina studio apartment in San Francisco
that needed to get a window replaced,and she needed a plan to move stuff,
so that she could have it ready to goand not interrupt the rest of her life.
(29:45):
And took one of the prompts fromthe book and got the thing done,
still had her Sunday evening andthere were no tears involved.
And one of the biggest things thatI want to convey to people with this
book is that there is this big gap forus between, "Don't touch that thing.
It's going to write you something thatsounds like a robot", and then the
prompts that we see on Instagram thatare like, "Act like you are a lawyer
(30:05):
with 27 years of experience, and alsoa public relations expert with 15 years
of experience, and a professional chefwho's been working for at least seven
years, and write me this prompt." Andyou don't actually need that stuff.
You can keep playing with promptsand you can add more information to
it, but really start very simple.
Try one thing at a time.
Keep building on something.
If you're stuck on how toactually prompt ChatGPT, it's
(30:28):
very good at answering for you.
Just write to it like you were askingsomebody something like, "Can you
help me write this prompt that Iwant to do X?", versus trying to
get ahead of it in a fancy way.
It'll give you theinformation that it needs.
And then the last thing that's superhelpful is the screenshot method.
I am a very tech savvy person.
(30:50):
We're having this conversationbecause I was an early adopter of AI.
Tech is not a hard thing for me.
But sometimes if I'm on a newprogram that I don't know how to
master right away, it's like I havenever seen a computer screen before.
And so, I love being able to screenshotwhat I don't understand, put it in
ChatGPT, and ask it to give me veryeasy instructions for what to do next.
(31:14):
The service I used to formatmy book did a really great job,
but it was not intuitive at all.
And I feel like every step was likea new screenshot to ChatGPT and be
like, "Okay, why is this formattingthis way? Tell me what to do next."
And it's very good at that stuff.
And that is not outsourcing anythingthat I need to use to figure out later.
Alison Monahan (31:31):
No, that's so interesting.
Alright, Lindsay, we'reabout out of time here.
Any final thoughts you'd like to share?
Lindsay Scola (31:37):
I want to encourage people to play.
Don't be scared of it, this issomething that you can dip a
little bit of a toe in at a time.
Try one thing and seehow it works for you.
Make some notes, try it a littlebit different the next day.
ADHD brains specificallywant to boil the ocean.
And we all know that once we try that,it's very easy to feel like we failed
and walk away from the thing forever.
(31:57):
So, I have found AI toolsincredibly helpful for me in my
own professional development, andI hope that they will be for you.
But don't feel like you have tobite off everything right now.
A little bit at a timegoes a very long way.
Alison Monahan (32:10):
I think that is very good advice, having seen some of my
friends with ADHD go down the rabbithole into some AI stuff sometimes.
Um.
Hyper focus is
Lindsay Scola (32:18):
real.
Alison Monahan (32:19):
Yeah.
Al right.
Well, remind us again how people canfind out more about you and get the book.
Lindsay Scola (32:25):
LindsayScola.com, there is a link to get the book there.
Or you can find it at Amazon, AI for ADHD.
And just about a week or two from now, theaudio book will be out on Audible as well.
Alison Monahan (32:37):
Awesome.
Are you reading that personally?
Lindsay Scola (32:39):
I am.
Alison Monahan (32:40):
Oh, so cool.
Alright, well, Lindsay, thankyou so much for joining us.
Lindsay Scola (32:44):
Thank you for having me.
This was really fun.
Alison Monahan (32:46):
Oh, my pleasure.
And I'm really excited for people toget the book and like you said, kind
of play with some of these things.
If you enjoyed this episode of theLaw School Toolbox podcast, please
take a second to leave a review andrating on your favorite listening app.
We'd really appreciate it.
And be sure to subscribeso you don't miss anything.
If you have any questions or comments,please don't hesitate to reach out to
(33:06):
Lee or Alison at lee@lawschooltoolbox.comor alison@lawschooltoolbox.com.
Or you can always contactus via our website contact
form at LawSchoolToolbox.com.
Thanks for listening, and we'll talk soon!
Welcome back to the Law School Toolbox podcast.
Today we're excited to havesleep and productivity expert
Lindsay Scola here with us to talkabout her new book, AI for ADHD.
Your Law School Toolbox hosttoday is Alison Monahan, and
typically, I'm with Lee Burgess.
We're here to demystify the law schooland early legal career experience,
so that you'll be the best lawstudent and lawyer you can be.
(00:23):
Together, we're the co-creators of the LawSchool Toolbox, the Bar Exam Toolbox, and
the career-related website CareerDicta.
I also run The Girl's Guide to Law School.
If you enjoy the show, pleaseleave a review or rating on
your favorite listening app.
And if you have any questions,don't hesitate to reach out to us.
You can always reach us via thecontact form on LawSchoolToolbox.com,
and we would love to hear from you.
(00:44):
And you can check out the Bar Exam Toolboxpodcast if the bar exam is on your radar.
And with that, let's get started.
Welcome back to the LawSchool Toolbox podcast.
Today we're excited to havesleep and productivity expert
(01:05):
Lindsay Scola here with us to talkabout her new book, AI for ADHD.
Welcome, Lindsay.
Lindsay Scola (01:12):
I am so happy to be back.
This is my third time.
Alison Monahan (01:15):
Well, third time's the charm.
That's what they say.
Yeah, your sleep episodes withLee were super interesting, so
I'm sure this will be as well.
Many of our listeners and manyof our students have ADHD, so I'm
super excited to talk about this.
Well, to start us off, can you giveour listeners some information about
your background and your work, justso they have some context here?
Lindsay Scola (01:38):
Yeah, absolutely.
I was one of those gifted and talentedkids, which I'm sure there are a
lot of us in this space right now.
And had a bit of an injustice sensitivity.
I scheduled my first... I organized myfirst walkout when I was in first grade,
over unfair treatment in the lunchroom.
It was the first, but not the lasttime my parents came to pick me up.
Alison Monahan (01:58):
Nice.
Lindsay Scola (01:58):
And I was one of those kids who, when I was really
engaged, I talked a lot, did a lot ofdaydreaming, did a lot of talking back.
So, there were a lotof ADHD symptoms there.
But that's not really what we lookedfor for women in the '80s and '90s.
And went on to a prettyhigh-powered career in politics.
I was an advance person forPresident and Mrs. Obama.
(02:19):
And then when I was in my thirties,I felt like I really hit this wall.
I'd struggled with a lot of thesethings throughout my career, but
I felt like I was always ableto really like muscle through.
And then this brick wall went upin front of me and I got diagnosed
with narcolepsy when I was 35, whichis a break in the sleep-wake cycle.
And I went on medication to help withthat, and a lot of it was relieved, but
(02:42):
there were still things that I thoughtthat the narcolepsy medication should
take care of, like getting started ontasks, feeling overwhelmed when I had
more than one subject in front of me.
And then as time progressed and whenI hit my late thirties, I started to
see this endless web of possibilities.
And that would happen whether I was tryingto write an email for work or I was trying
(03:03):
to figure out what to make for breakfast.
And then eventually paralysis just setin, and no matter what I was trying
to do, I was stuck on the couch.
Now, I might've looked sedentary fromthe outside, but from the inside it
was like 150 browser tabs were open.
I didn't know which one was playingmusic, and there was that frozen
wheel of death over everything.
And it was just absolutely debilitating.
(03:24):
And finally got some answers at 41 thatthis was ADHD, which gets a lot worse
for some of us when we hit perimenopause.
And so, I've really sort of focusedmy whole life around trying to
make life easier for people bylooking at sleep and productivity.
And so, even if you don't have ADHD,a lot of the tools that work for those
of us with ADHD can help you sort offocus and bring you back to center.
Alison Monahan (03:48):
That's awesome.
And if people want to learn moreabout you or learn more about, slash,
get the book, how can they do that?
Lindsay Scola (03:56):
LindsayScola.com.
It is all right there.
Alison Monahan (03:59):
Awesome.
Yeah, so it's very recently come out.
I have read a copy and it's a great book.
I will say, every time I get more deeplyinvolved in the ADHD world, I think,
"Huh, you know what? Some of this doesnot sound that disfamiliar to me."
So, I know you were diagnosed fairlylate in life, and fairly recently.
(04:21):
I mean, how did you endup with this diagnosis?
What prompted you to sort ofsay, "You know what? Maybe there
is something going on here."?
Lindsay Scola (04:28):
I, It was this real place of paralysis that I had hit.
And I had been on Ritalin for narcolepsy,because there's no novel for narcolepsy,
so we end up taking a lot of ADHDstimulants as a way to stay awake, because
they have a wakefulness component to them.
And I had gone sort of up and up onthe Ritalin to get that wakefulness
component and I got on a dose thatwas a bit too high, and I started
(04:49):
having these really bad panic attacks.
So I went off of the Ritalin, andwent onto a non-ADHD stimulant.
So I had some of these symptomsthat had potentially been a little
bit at bay that I was unaware of,starting to pop back up in my life.
And then a pilot script that I had beenworking on for a few years, we started
working with a producer that suggestedadding a neurodivergent character, and
(05:10):
we gave a woman in her thirties ADHD.
And I thought I was very familiar withADHD - it's that thing that boys get
where they're like bouncing off the walls.
And then I started researching thisin a woman in her thirties, and all
of a sudden I was like, "Holy crap,I'm writing myself." She became the
easiest character in the script towrite, because I was just writing me.
And that was an "aha" moment...
Alison Monahan (05:31):
Eye-opening, I would imagine.
... Lindsay Scola (05:34):
that something else was going on.
My GP agreed that this seemed likea likely thing, took forever to
find a psychologist that took myinsurance that would test me for it.
The first psychologist I talkedto told me she didn't think I had
it, and I was just going througha cognitive decline in my forties.
And that she'd test me if I wanted to, butI should really start keeping a calendar.
And I was like, "Lady, I have beenkeeping a calendar since I was a
(05:57):
teenager." I kept calendars for cabinetofficials, I was doing advance for
the president of the United States.
I can watch a calendar.
I'm coming to you because I can'tfigure out what to make for breakfast
in the morning, and then I sit onmy couch in the fetal position.
We're not talking aboutthe same thing here.
So I finally found a psychologistabout nine months after I
(06:18):
started looking, who tested me.
And not only did I have ADHD, was inthe 99th percentile, because I really
believe in putting my all into things.
Alison Monahan (06:27):
Right.
You're a big overachiever, I can tell.
I know I'm
Lindsay Scola (06:29):
a big overachiever, it doesn't matter on what.
Not so much in school.
But now that I understand the ADHDand the narcolepsy thing, I probably
could have done a bit better.
But getting that insight gaveme a ton of "aha" moments about
what was going on in my head.
Unfortunately, that did not laydown the tracks to get moving again.
Starting was still thehardest thing for me.
(06:51):
And so, I was getting a lot of toolsto figure out why my brain worked the
way that it did, deal with emotionaldysregulation, but I wasn't moving.
And AI became this bridge for me in thehow to get back into making things happen
and how to start having action, whichis what spurred the book AI for ADHD.
Alison Monahan (07:11):
Awesome.
Well, before we jump into theAI component, tell me a little
bit about the ADHD brain.
What are some commoncharacteristics that we see?
Lindsay Scola (07:21):
So, it's really a break in executive function.
And so, if you imagine your brainlike an air traffic controller at the
airport, where there're planes in line,and it tells the next one to go and
then the next one to go and the nextone to go - ADHD brains are a little
bit like the Newark airport these days.
Alison Monahan (07:38):
I was going to say, does that even happen these days?
I mean, in theory we'redirecting the planes, but...
In theory,
Lindsay Scola (07:42):
there are air traffic controllers who are telling which plane
to go, and then they're looking at thenext one, and there is an order for this.
Now, with ADHD brains, it's a littlebit all over the place and we've
really beat ourselves up for mostof our lives about procrastination.
But the procrastination isn't a choice inan ADHD brain; it's actually a miswiring.
And so, most of these things likeinitiating tasks, planning and
(08:04):
organizing, working memory, impulsecontrol and emotional regulation
happen in our prefrontal cortex.
Now, for ADHD brains, most anything isgoing to send that prefrontal cortex up
and like you're stuck in your amygdala,which is our "fight or flight" area.
And anything that really involvesthat prefrontal cortex, we have to
do a lot of work to bring it back.
(08:26):
Now, with something like emotionalregulation - that's tapping into our vagus
nerve, which is the thing that runs fromour brain down through the back of our
neck, it touches our tongue and then intoour organs, which, you can put an ice pack
on the back of your neck and that's goingto bring back that prefrontal cortex.
And so for me, it really feels likethere's a lot of noise happening,
like an old TV static builds up.
(08:48):
I have a lot of analogies that Iuse with this, which I realize are
all for people who were born in the'90s or before, so I'm going to have
to come up with some other ones.
In the book, over and over again, I'mlike, "If you were born after 1995,
please stick with me." But on anold-school TV, you used to get static
when a channel didn't show up, and that'swhat it feels like inside my brain.
And so, once we can bring thatprefrontal cortex back, we can start
(09:11):
working on the different executivefunction pieces that need to happen.
Another thing that's going on is dopamine.
So, in neurotypical brains I say,"I need to do this thing, and when
I finish this thing, I will feelgood." That is enough dopamine to
make a neurotypical brain work.
In an ADHD brain, something that'shappening in the future is a little
(09:33):
tiny bit of dopamine and you'rehearing a much louder, "This is boring.
I want to do anything else." That's whypeople with ADHD might not be able to
start something, but the minute you havea deadline looming or some other attack
thing happening, where "Yes, I've got it.
I can write a dissertation on thisin four hours overnight, but only
if that deadline is right aroundthe corner." And it's another reason
(09:56):
why people with ADHD, we can managemassive things and be totally calm.
I used to plan events for 250,000people and be cool as a cucumber,
but the minute I'm trying to likeuntangle a cord for an iPhone, I'm
ready to pull out my own eyelashes.
There is nothing worse for me than tryingto put on a sports bra while slightly
damp - that will spin me out of control.
(10:19):
Meanwhile you're like, "Go handlethis thing where other people are
panicking" and I'm like, "Got you.
I'm good." That's the same thingwith the dopamine regulation.
Alison Monahan (10:27):
That was interesting to me for two reasons.
What you just said is interestingto me, because I get very calm
in a crisis situation in a waythat actually freaks people out.
But also, I recall writing my entireundergraduate honors thesis, which was
supposed to be a year-long project and Ididn't pick the topic until spring break.
And I did it like nonstop forthree weeks and got highest honors.
(10:49):
And it's things like thisthat made me think, "Huh, is
that normal? I don't know."
Lindsay Scola (10:54):
Definitely an ADHD thing.
I'm not here to diagnose you, Imissed that day at med school.
Alison Monahan (10:58):
Yeah, exactly.
But I was kind of like, "Huh?That's curious, isn't it?" It's
a little abnormal, I think.
Yeah, for
Lindsay Scola (11:05):
a lot of us, getting started is very hard, but we're
able to do it once there is the fearthat this thing is due, because we
also don't want to let anyone down.
So, you're constantly balancing this, "I'mgoing to let everyone in my life down" and
roam the streets as this toothless ogre.
But I can't actually get startedon this thing that's not due till
Alison Monahan (11:22):
next week.
I mean, for me, itliterally became the case.
I was not going to graduate,because I decided to graduate early.
And if I did not finish thisproject, I was not going to graduate.
So, I graduated with two extraunits, I think, in the end,
because I finished the project.
But yeah, it was definitely apretty high stakes situation by
the time I got started on it.
Lindsay Scola (11:40):
I feel like that was pretty much every class I took in college, where
it was like, "I'm going to wait until theabsolute last minute to figure out how to
get this thing done." And then if therewas an early morning class, I wouldn't
go, and then would find the hot ItalianTA in the Statistics lab that could coach
me through not failing my final exam.
So, maybe that was a win-win for everyone.
Alison Monahan (12:01):
Yeah.
All of my college apps werewritten the night before and never
proofread, and sent in and whatever.
I mean, I was good at writing them, butjust, I couldn't come up with anything
to say until the very last minute.
Lindsay Scola (12:13):
Oh my God, same.
Still cannot think of anything to say.
I write a weekly newsletter, which Iwill have nothing to share until the
very last minute, where I have toomuch to share, and then it becomes a
task of like, how do I not write threehours worth of information every week?
Alison Monahan (12:27):
Yeah.
Lee and I were doing posts forAbout.com for a while, and we had to
do them monthly, and literally everysingle month it was like, "Okay,
we have one day to get these done.
What are we going to do?" We'rejust like, "Why are we doing this to
ourselves over and over and over again?"
Lindsay Scola (12:40):
Oh yeah.
No, I mean, it goes out Tuesday morningand there is nothing in my brain to
say till about 4:00 PM on Monday.
We are recording this on aMonday and my newsletter is
loaded up for tomorrow morning.
So, I'm really quite proud of myself.
We're going to celebrate that.
Alison Monahan (12:54):
Congratulations!
That's great.
Alright, so what else?
We've mentioned executivefunctioning, dopamine.
What else is going on here?
Lindsay Scola (13:01):
I mean, those are our big things.
With ADHD brains, it reallycomes back to this executive
function and dopamine problem.
And so, pretty much anything that'shappening in this area, whether it's our
working memory or it's our creativity, isreally functioning back into this spot.
And one of those things is really beinghypercritical with ourselves, which for me
became a serious problem with my writing.
(13:23):
I have very bad visual processing, so Idon't see spelling errors, I don't see
words that are missing in sentences.
So, I can read something overand over again and not see
that there's an adverb missing.
And then again, I spelllike a second grader.
I just cannot spell; it hasalways been a problem for me.
(13:44):
And so, after decades of public typos, Igot very, very precious about my writing.
And I would actually find myself sortof dumbing sentences down, because
I was afraid that I was going touse the wrong version of a word.
So, words that I know that there'retwo versions of it, but I'm always
concerned I'm going to wrong one becauseI don't see it - I'd stopped doing that.
(14:05):
And over time that became likea real gap in me trying to
share what I had for the world.
And I am a writer; thatis definitely who I am.
And so I would find myself weavingthese really beautiful phrases in
my head, but by the time I got to mykeyboard, I get so stuck on the like,
"Do I start this sentence with 'and'or 'the'? Do I start this sentence
with 'once'?" And then, a lot of timeswith this working memory with ADHD, we
(14:29):
have a very hard time finding words.
So, it's like that old analogy forpeople born before the century, but we
used to have the stacks in the librarywhere we'd have to go find the card
catalog for the book that you neededand scroll through that is what my
brain is all the time, and I'm justlike scrolling and looking for the word.
And so, I would be writing and I'dget stuck on the word I couldn't
find, and then I would stop.
(14:51):
It would take me hours to maybecome back up with that word.
But by that time I had noidea what I was trying to say.
So I was just kind of caughtin this vicious cycle.
That is a working memory problem that'sreally very common with people ADHD.
Alison Monahan (15:03):
Interesting.
Well, tell me a little bit about how youhave found ChatGPT or maybe some other
AI helpful in helping you kind of managesome of these things and get stuff done.
Lindsay Scola (15:16):
So, like I was saying that I was just stuck, and this
combo of being very scared aboutmaking typos and just feeling like I
couldn't get things started, it was aplace where I just didn't know how to
put one foot in front of the other.
And so, things like follow-upafter meetings weren't happening.
My brain was loadedwith creative projects.
(15:36):
The thing I always say about ADHDis that it's like trying to catch
glitter, but by the time you havethis brilliant idea in the shower,
the number of ideas that die betweenthe shower and the towel is endless.
And so, there were all these ideas thatwere happening all the time, but the
idea that I would actually grab oneof them, come up with enough to-dos
to actually get thing started and thenget it done was not happening at all.
(16:00):
And so, I started using ChatGPT asreally like a very high-end spell check.
And then I was very sort of skepticalabout using it for anything else,
because I think so many of us haveseen that LinkedIn post that sounds
like it was written by a robot in2087, where someone did zero training
of it, walked in fresh and was like,"Write me a post about leadership."
Alison Monahan (16:21):
Right.
Lindsay Scola (16:21):
And if you use these tools in that way, that's
what it's going to sound like.
Alison Monahan (16:25):
Totally.
Lindsay Scola (16:26):
There's none of you in that.
I don't want to read that;nobody else wants to read that.
And so it was this very bigmental gap for me about why to
even start using these tools.
But what I started finding was, itdid more than just check my spelling.
When I got to that place where I couldn'tfind the word, I could write a sentence
and just literally write a blank lineand then keep writing and have ChatGPT
(16:46):
give me suggestions for that word.
And then, all of this sort of panic thatused to happen with my writing that was
causing me to freeze, knowing that Ihad this sort of digital safety net for
myself, allowed me to just sit down andallow these freeflowing thoughts to just
hit the paper, because I knew that I hadsomething that I could work with that was
going to catch the typos and that couldhelp me make sense when things were messy.
(17:09):
And so, I think about it like acrobats- they're not going to go up there and do
the death-defying stunts without knowingthat there is a net behind, below right.
So, that's really what ChatGPT becamefor me, was really this place where I
felt like I had freedom with my writingagain, and I could get these things out
of my head without worrying about whatthey sounded like on the other side.
(17:30):
And it's very much my writing everytime I use ChatGPT to help me.
It's helping me fix a sentencethat doesn't make total sense, or
helping me find that word that Iwas missing, catching those typos.
I'm never sitting down from scratch,without training this thing to say, "Write
me a post on leadership." But once Igot really comfortable with this writing
(17:51):
piece of it, I realized that there was somuch more that I could be using it for.
And one of those things was, withADHD, we have a lot of emotional
overwhelm when there's more thanone thing going on in our head.
We don't task-switch very well, but allof us have to do this, involve more than
one thing, even if it's beyond work stuff.
There's the calling the dentist,which you don't want to do.
And then there's the paying thebills that you don't want to do.
(18:13):
And then there's the figuringout what you're going to make for
food, which you don't want to do.
And once you have more than onething that's building up there
and the anxiety around it, theto-do list goes out the door.
You order off of your Uber Eats again,or you just don't eat at all because
that becomes easier than trying tofigure out what to make for dinner.
And I realized that I could startusing this to just dump out everything
(18:36):
that was going on for me, have ithelp me put together a to-do list
that felt manageable, task thingsout on the level of importance.
Because sometimes with ADHD brains,we'll have this moment where, your
to-do list is like "Write a book",which we all know doesn't happen
in one sitting and one to-do list.
So, you can actually startbreaking those things apart.
But then you also have this momentwhere you have "Schedule the dentist
(18:59):
appointment, write the email forwork, and learn Japanese", and they
all have the same importance andthey all need to happen right now.
And so, I have this tool that I can workwith that's like, "You should schedule
the dentist today. That bill's not duefor two more weeks, so we can sit on that
for a minute. And maybe start looking atJapanese next week or the week after."
Alison Monahan (19:17):
Right, or maybe download Duolingo, check the box for Japanese
and commit to five minutes a day.
Lindsay Scola (19:23):
Exactly, exactly.
And that's the reason that so many of us,it's like we have a new hobby every week,
but we don't actually action on the hobby.
It's because there's dopaminein downloading Duolingo, but I'm
never actually going to open it.
I really want someone to start a hobbyservice for people with ADHD, where you
can trade in the expensive equipmentthat you purchased in that moment
(19:44):
that you were really going to do thething that you never actually used.
Because I know my husband and I definitelyhave a closet full of those things.
And so, it became this tool where I couldactually see that I was dumping things
out of my mind, actually making to-dolists and actually sticking with them.
And so that's where thiswhole idea came together.
(20:05):
ChatGPT or any of the AI services,they all work very similar.
ChatGPT is my service of choice.
But it's this tool that youcan start and actually finish
the things that matter to you.
And the idea for me that I wouldwrite a book based on an Instagram
post that I did last year wastotally crazy to me a year ago.
And this has been a real game-changerin the way I process and get stuff done.
(20:28):
And so, I'm so excited to be ableto share this with other people.
Alison Monahan (20:31):
Yeah, I think the book is really fantastic.
One of the things I like about it is ithas very specific examples of prompts
and how to think about them, but alsothe nitty-gritty of like, "You could just
go type this in and see what happens."I introduced Lee a while ago to AI,
and Claude is our new best friend, butshe was just like, "No, I don't want to
touch this, this stuff is kind of ickyand gross and it's very tech-pro." And
(20:54):
we're like, "No, you don't understand,this is going to be so life-changing
for us." And that was a while ago.
I mean, they've gotten so much better.
Lindsay Scola (21:03):
It got so much better in the four months that I was writing
the book, I had to rewrite sectionsover and over and over again, and
then finally find ways to say,"This is how this works in theory."
Because I kept using very specificsand by the time I would edit that
section, it had totally updated again.
Alison Monahan (21:19):
Yeah, I mean, I can just say, "Oh, I've got these five ingredients
and I want to make some stuff." Itused to be really bad at recipes.
That was like a running jokein the beginning, but I feel
like it's gotten way better.
Lindsay Scola (21:29):
No, it's gotten really good.
It's actually been this thing whereit gave me this creativity in writing,
it's given me this creativity incooking that I'm really enjoying.
I am someone who likes to play andtweak, but when I look at all these
steps and all these ingredients,I tune out and it's become too
complicated and then I can't do it.
And so, I've enjoyed finding recipesthat look good to me but maybe are too
(21:51):
many steps, and asking ChatGPT to makea less complicated version of that.
And then giving me some room to tweak.
So then I started looking at ingredientsin my kitchen and being like, "Oh,
what could I do with this? I have anidea to make this type of recipe."
I've gotten really into these pizzabites with mozzarella and tapioca.
I'm allergic to gluten.
So it's literally like thatBrazilian cheesy bread.
(22:11):
And I have all these ideas of differentversions I could make with this that
I go into ChatGPT and be like, "Okay,I've got these things. This feels like
a thing that I could do. What part amI missing?" And that's been really fun
to work with, and it's gotten much,much, much better, just in the last
couple of months alone on that stuff.
But it's actually allowing me to use allthe food in the house, like, "Alright,
I've got four eggs left, I've also gotrice noodles, and I've got a couple of
(22:35):
carrots left that I wat to use beforethey go bad." And helping me come up
with a recipe, where before, if I don'thave a specific recipe that I purchase
these for or a plan for them, I'm goingto end up throwing it out next week.
Alison Monahan (22:46):
That's so funny.
I'm like, "Oh my gosh,I've got to get eggs.
Don't forget to get eggs." And I'mlike, "Oh, it's already on my calendar.
I already put that on there.
Thanks."
Lindsay Scola (22:55):
Yes.
I'm in the grocery store and Ihave soy sauce on my list and I
don't know where to find soy sauce.
Where in the grocery storedoes soy sauce normally live?
Alison Monahan (23:03):
I mean, do not ask that question about Safeway, because I swear
they put stuff... I mean, literallypeople who work there cannot find basic
ingredients, and every time I have to gointo Safeway, particularly in California,
I'm just like, "This store is insane. Whodesigned the layout of this place?" It's
the craziest store I've ever been to.
No, I feel like they do it just soyou end up walking around the store
(23:23):
like eight times looking for the soysauce, because you're like, "Well, I
think it would be with Asian, but maybeit's with condiments. I don't know."
Lindsay Scola (23:30):
Absolutely.
And it's been in bothplaces, at different stores.
Anytime you think you know whereit is, it definitely is not.
It's like one of thosethings like molasses.
Alison Monahan (23:37):
Oh God.
Yeah, I've tried to find molassesbefore in a grocery store.
I don't think I.
I keep buying
Lindsay Scola (23:42):
molasses and then I realize I really hate baking.
Alison Monahan (23:45):
I mean, I have multiple sets of molasses in my cabinet.
I like baking, but you don'tuse that much molasses.
I mean, how often do youreally make like ginger snaps?
Lindsay Scola (23:55):
The once a year where I'm watching the Great British Bake
Off and make an entire gingerbreadcity that no one's going to eat.
Alison Monahan (24:01):
Yeah, exactly.
They're like, "Oh, I need moreblackstrap molasses." And you're
like, "Nobody likes these things.
They're kind of gross actually."
Lindsay Scola (24:06):
Then it just goes on that shelf where you're like, "I don't want to
get rid of it, because I might need it.
Alison Monahan (24:10):
Right.
I don't want to buy it again.
I already bought it.
Lindsay Scola (24:14):
And see, this is where ChatGPT can come in, where you can
actually take a picture of what ison your shelf and be like, "Do I have
the ingredients to make this thing?"
Alison Monahan (24:22):
Yeah.
It's
Lindsay Scola (24:23):
gotten so good.
Alison Monahan (24:24):
No, I believe that.
Well, in the pandemic I did a hugekitchen take everything out and
actually label it and put it in places.
So now I could tell you exactlywhere the blackstrap molasses are.
I just can't tell you if there's morethan one, which there probably is.
Lindsay Scola (24:38):
Yes, I've started using the label maker.
I put a big label of the expirationdate on top of everything.
Alison Monahan (24:45):
That's a good idea.
Yeah, I love myself a label maker.
Lindsay Scola (24:48):
Label makers are amazing.
It's
Alison Monahan (24:50):
really been life changing.
Well, let's talk a little bitbefore we wrap up, where do you
think people can go wrong here,and particularly maybe students?
I know a lot of people havea lot of anxiety around
what's okay, what's not okay?
How should we be thinkingabout how to use these tools?
Lindsay Scola (25:07):
I want to think about it as my co-pilot.
I think we have to be reallycareful about overreliance.
I think a lot about my childhood,and before cell phones I knew my
friends' phone numbers, I knewmy parents' work phone numbers,
I knew the school phone number.
I knew the phone number for thelocal movie theater, because that
was how we checked the times.
Alison Monahan (25:26):
Yeah, and the weather.
Life was really exciting
Lindsay Scola (25:27):
before the Internet.
Oh yeah, the weather phone number too.
And now I'm hard pressed toremember my husband's phone number,
and that's just because I use itto get the discount at Ralphs.
My brain doesn't store thatinformation because it doesn't need to.
And so, it's really exciting, especiallywith an ADHD brain when you have these
tools that bring this kind of reliefand that are changing and growing
(25:49):
and we can do so many things with,to want to use it for everything.
And you have to remember that as soonas you start turning over your executive
function to a tool like this, itbecomes harder to access that stuff.
I use it to write with me, Iuse it to come up with ideas.
I don't ask it to write for me.
And there's a big difference there.
(26:09):
And you to think about it before yougo in to be really thoughtful about it.
This is not your brain; thisis a tool for your brain.
Can you access this informationin another way, or is this going
to be the best tool to use to helpyou figure out what to do next?
Sometimes with writing, it's not that Igo in there and say, "Write this thing
for me", but when I need to come upwith an idea for an article or for my
(26:35):
newsletter, I ask it to interview me likea podcast host, and ask me one question
at a time and let me come back withanswers and then ask me another question.
And that is a way for me to use my brainto still come up with a topic to do for
my newsletter or for the article that I'mpitching, in a way where I'm still tapping
into all the information that's there,without asking ChatGPT to give it to me.
(26:59):
And I think that's really important,that we still see these things as a
co-pilot and not something that's going
Alison Monahan (27:04):
to
Lindsay Scola (27:04):
totally take over for us, because if you were driving and you
were only looking at the GPS and you'renever looking up at the windshield,
you're going to drive into a lake.
There is going to be a road thatis not there, or a road that has
moved, or a road that has changedand hasn't been updated in some way.
And so, we still have to use ourbrains, we still have to look for
the stoplights, we still have to bean active participant in this thing.
(27:25):
And then doing it that way, you're goingto make sure that you're not asking
it to completely do your writing foryou, because there's an absolute big
difference, especially for students of,"Help me find this word" or, "Help me
restructure this sentence in a way thatcan make more sense" versus, "Write
this thing for me." Because that'swhen we get into a really questionable
situation about, who generated the work?
(27:48):
And you don't want to putyourself in that situation.
But it's absolutely okay to be usingit as a tool to get yourself to the
place where you're writing your words.
No one looks down on someone usinga calculator to do a math problem.
And I really see these tools in thesame way, especially when you're
struggling with executive function.
Alison Monahan (28:04):
Yeah, I used to say when I learned calculus,
I basically forgot arithmetic.
So, without a calculator forbig numbers now I'd be like,
"Wow, that's really hard."
Yeah,
Lindsay Scola (28:13):
if I'm not like trying to calculate the discount on a sale, that
mental math will still kick in there.
I do love shopping.
The rest of the math skills, which I usedto have quite a few, are totally gone.
But the calculator is okay.
When trying to pay our bills, when we'regoing through a spreadsheet and trying
to figure out how much we're actuallyaccumulating on something, no one is going
to fault you for putting in a function inyour spreadsheet to use the arithmetic.
(28:37):
I'm terrible at followup.
I love meetings, I love talking topeople, I love having new ideas.
I am so bad at writing the emailafterwards, "This is what we talked
Here're action this is the to-dolist", which all that's super critical.
But now I use an AI notetakercalled Fathom, and I will take the
follow-up items, I'll make sure thatthey're accurate, I'll throw them
into ChatGPT, I'll ask it to writefollow-up email that sounds like me,
(29:00):
and I will send that out right away.
Nobody cares if I spent hourscrafting that email or not.
They care that they got that information.
And so, it's a very big difference betweenan original thought that is mine versus,
"Get that email out. Use the service."
Alison Monahan (29:16):
Yeah.
Lee and I are basically definitelybig fans now of the, "Please
summarize this meeting for us andgive us action items. Thanks."
Lindsay Scola (29:23):
Totally.
And that's what thesethings are great for.
And especially if there are thingsthat you get really stuck on, whether
that's finding the missing word, whetherthat's like, "Help me with this to-do
list." I have a friend who lives ina studio apartment in San Francisco
that needed to get a window replaced,and she needed a plan to move stuff,
so that she could have it ready to goand not interrupt the rest of her life.
(29:45):
And took one of the prompts fromthe book and got the thing done,
still had her Sunday evening andthere were no tears involved.
And one of the biggest things thatI want to convey to people with this
book is that there is this big gap forus between, "Don't touch that thing.
It's going to write you something thatsounds like a robot", and then the
prompts that we see on Instagram thatare like, "Act like you are a lawyer
(30:05):
with 27 years of experience, and alsoa public relations expert with 15 years
of experience, and a professional chefwho's been working for at least seven
years, and write me this prompt." Andyou don't actually need that stuff.
You can keep playing with promptsand you can add more information to
it, but really start very simple.
Try one thing at a time.
Keep building on something.
If you're stuck on how toactually prompt ChatGPT, it's
(30:28):
very good at answering for you.
Just write to it like you were askingsomebody something like, "Can you
help me write this prompt that Iwant to do X?", versus trying to
get ahead of it in a fancy way.
It'll give you theinformation that it needs.
And then the last thing that's superhelpful is the screenshot method.
I am a very tech savvy person.
(30:50):
We're having this conversationbecause I was an early adopter of AI.
Tech is not a hard thing for me.
But sometimes if I'm on a newprogram that I don't know how to
master right away, it's like I havenever seen a computer screen before.
And so, I love being able to screenshotwhat I don't understand, put it in
ChatGPT, and ask it to give me veryeasy instructions for what to do next.
(31:14):
The service I used to formatmy book did a really great job,
but it was not intuitive at all.
And I feel like every step was likea new screenshot to ChatGPT and be
like, "Okay, why is this formattingthis way? Tell me what to do next."
And it's very good at that stuff.
And that is not outsourcing anythingthat I need to use to figure out later.
Alison Monahan (31:31):
No, that's so interesting.
Alright, Lindsay, we'reabout out of time here.
Any final thoughts you'd like to share?
Lindsay Scola (31:37):
I want to encourage people to play.
Don't be scared of it, this issomething that you can dip a
little bit of a toe in at a time.
Try one thing and seehow it works for you.
Make some notes, try it a littlebit different the next day.
ADHD brains specificallywant to boil the ocean.
And we all know that once we try that,it's very easy to feel like we failed
and walk away from the thing forever.
(31:57):
So, I have found AI toolsincredibly helpful for me in my
own professional development, andI hope that they will be for you.
But don't feel like you have tobite off everything right now.
A little bit at a timegoes a very long way.
Alison Monahan (32:10):
I think that is very good advice, having seen some of my
friends with ADHD go down the rabbithole into some AI stuff sometimes.
Um.
Hyper focus is
Lindsay Scola (32:18):
real.
Alison Monahan (32:19):
Yeah.
Al right.
Well, remind us again how people canfind out more about you and get the book.
Lindsay Scola (32:25):
LindsayScola.com, there is a link to get the book there.
Or you can find it at Amazon, AI for ADHD.
And just about a week or two from now, theaudio book will be out on Audible as well.
Alison Monahan (32:37):
Awesome.
Are you reading that personally?
Lindsay Scola (32:39):
I am.
Alison Monahan (32:40):
Oh, so cool.
Alright, well, Lindsay, thankyou so much for joining us.
Lindsay Scola (32:44):
Thank you for having me.
This was really fun.
Alison Monahan (32:46):
Oh, my pleasure.
And I'm really excited for people toget the book and like you said, kind
of play with some of these things.
If you enjoyed this episode of theLaw School Toolbox podcast, please
take a second to leave a review andrating on your favorite listening app.
We'd really appreciate it.
And be sure to subscribeso you don't miss anything.
If you have any questions or comments,please don't hesitate to reach out to
(33:06):
Lee or Alison at lee@lawschooltoolbox.comor alison@lawschooltoolbox.com.
Or you can always contactus via our website contact
form at LawSchoolToolbox.com.
Thanks for listening, and we'll talk soon!
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.