Learn and Work Smarter
Whether you're a student or a working professional, the Learn and Work Smarter Podcast delivers the clarity, strategies, and encouragement you need to stay focused, organized, and on top of your tasks. Hosted by Katie Azevedo, M.Ed.—a private executive function coach with 20 years of teaching experience and a deep background in ADHD and cognitive science—this show is your practical guide to building the real-life skills that school and work demand but rarely teach. Episodes cover a range of topics, including time management, productivity, studying smarter, focus strategies, task initiation, and executive function habits. Each topic is approached through a lens of neuroscience, behavioral psychology, and deep compassion. You’ll learn systems that are teachable, sustainable, and immediately actionable. No fluff. No hype. Just real strategies for getting things done, reducing stress, and showing up as the most capable version of yourself.
Episodes
Don’t get me wrong – goals are awesome to have. They can inspire hope and dreams and cool visions we have for our futures.
But focusing on the outcome we want (aka our goal) never gets us the outcome we want. I know, the irony.
In this week’s episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I reveal why outcome-based goals are designed to make us fail, and the mistake I see students and professiona...
Come peek behind the curtain of SchoolHabits University! Every month inside my signature study skills program, I offer live coaching on Zoom so student never get stuck navigating the program, school, their courses, or anything else on their minds.
In this special episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I’m sharing a Q&A call from a few months back when the calls weren’t live. (Since then, t...
In this Q&A episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I answer two questions submitted by listeners of the show.
Question One: A student asks for study break ideas that will increase his focus when he returns to the work.
Question Two: A professional asks for strategies for completing projects that don’t have deadlines, but that are still important to finish.
What You Learn:
- Practical study break ...
Most people focus on due dates -- as in, this final deadline. But the due date of a project has nothing to do with you actually getting it done.
Enter the DO date.
In this episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I make the case that focusing on DO dates is far more effective than wasting our energy stressing about DUE dates. In fact, DO dates make DUE dates just ... happen.
What You Learn:
- Why focusing on...
It’s one thing to know what to do, but it’s a whole other thing to actually DO it.
This is a struggle that so many of my private clients – students and professionals – deal with. They have the information, they’ve been instructed on what to do … and yet, they still aren’t taking action.
For people with ADHD, this phenomenon is even worse.
There’s a reason why this is...
College can make students feel all kinds of ways: thrilled at the freedom, excited at the possibilities, and overwhelmed with the independence that's suddenly expected of them.
In my conversation with board-certified psychologist Dr. Susan VanScoyoc, we talk about how to ask for help when college gets hard — and why most students (and their parents) are getting this wrong.
Dr. VanScoyoc is the founder of Cam...
In this Q&A episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I answer two questions submitted by listeners of the show.
Question One: A high school student asks for tips for actually doing the work he has tracked in his homework management system.
Question Two: A young woman asks for advice about moving into adulthood when she was under-resourced as a child.
What You'll Learn:
- Why tracking your tasks and manag...
People with ADHD know this situation all too well: they start a project with enthusiasm, then lose motivation and stop halfway through, and then struggle to ever restart because of the shame and embarrassment they feel about abandoning their work.
Stopping projects halfway through is hard enough. But then not knowing how to get back on track and drowning in shame is a whole other experience.
That’s wha...
You know that feeling when you’re super busy, you have a million things to do … but you still feel behind and like you got nothing done at the end of the day?
It’s not your imagination.
In this episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I reveal the 5 secret (and oh so sneaky!) invisible forces that destroy productivity and keep you running on a to-do-list treadmill to nowhere.
What You...
“Adulting” has nothing to do with age. Instead, it has to do with the ability to operate independently and function in a way that supports your goals.
In this episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I reveal the top 5 secret skills of adulting that, when they’re mastered, make everything else about school and work (and life) so much easier and less dramatic.
This episode is for all a...
In this monthly Q&A episode, I answer two questions submitted by listeners of the show.
Question 1: How can I make my commute to and from work more productive?
Question 2: How can I be an effective leader when I’m burned out and unmotivated?
What You'll Learn:
- A unique commute strategy that can clear your head, increase your clarity, and improve your productivity
- A counterintuitive way to use your drive...
Deadlines don't care how overwhelmed you feel. Tight deadlines? Those require a completely different approach — more urgency, more intensity, and a clear plan for execution.
In this episode of the Learn and Work Smarter Podcast, I break down six strategies for meeting tight deadlines without losing your mind. Part one covers three pre-work strategies that take maybe 10 minutes total. Part two covers three e...
⭐Get the Scholarship Summer Camp + Note-Taking Power System Bundle right here: https://www.scholarshipgps.com/katie (you get my whole note-taking course for free!)
It’s a common misunderstanding that scholarships are only for graduating students headed right to college. In fact, students of all ages can and should apply for scholarship money as soon as possible.
In this episode of the Learn and Work Smarter ...
⭐FREE Parent Training: How to Help Your Teen Handle School Like a Pro
Most struggling students are in the situation they’re in because no one ever taught them how to actually DO school. We expect them to learn, but nobody ever teaches them HOW.
Therefore, the "just study more" might be the most well-meaning, unhelpful advice we keep giving them.
In this episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I break d...
Frustration tolerance is one's ability to sustain attention, endurance and emotional composure during frustrating tasks.
While we all get frustrated from time to time, having a low frustration tolerance can have a serious impact on our work, school and personal lives.
In this episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I dive deep into frustration tolerance, its connection to ADHD, and how to improve your own f...
In this Q&A episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I answer three questions submitted by listeners of the show.
Question 1: How to take notes during phone calls.
Question 2: How to support a struggling college student
Question 3: How to ask for ADHD accommodations (in graduate school and work)
What You Learn:
- Why capturing notes is only half the job, and what the more important second step actually is
- ...
The work we do is more important than the tools we use. But that said, having the right tools can make a difference in how productive and organized we are.
In this episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I’m sharing with you my 10 favorite tools that I use nearly every single day to manage a busy business, family and life.
No affiliate links or promotions here … just an honest peek behind...
Sweaty palms. Racing breath. A pit in your stomach. And the worst one of all, a blank mind.
Test anxiety does not feel good, and it most certainly doesn’t help your grades. But in this episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I make the (controversial?) case that test anxiety is the result of something you have complete control over.
What You Learn:
- The most common misunderstandings about test anxie...
The way I teach it, a personal operating system is a set of systems and routines we use to manage the information that comes at us all day long.
Whether we're students or professionals, we're constantly bombarded with information we can ignore, information about tasks we need to act on, and information we might need in the future.
And if we don't have a way to capture, track, and manage these bits of info during t...
You're putting in the work. You're doing the readings. You're showing up. So why does it still feel like you're missing the mark?
In this month's Q&A episode, I'm answering two listener questions that are completely different on the surface, but have the same root issue.
Question One is from a grad student who's annotating and highlighting every reading but still feels lost in class discussions
Question Two is ...
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