William Curb: Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Kerb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I did a look into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Hey team, today I'm talking with Sharon Pope, a certified habit coach and CEO of Shelfful. Sharon has an extensive background in the tech world, having served as a CMO for multiple companies and as an advisor for the startup accelerator Y Combinator. After her own ADHD diagnosis, she pivoted her career to focus on building tools that help neurodivergent brains get more done. Sharon also runs the ADHD Founders Podcast with Jesse J. Anderson and Marie Ung, where they talk about the unique challenges of having ADHD and building a business.
And I actually had Sharon on the show a number of years ago and thought it'd be fun to have her on again after running into her at the 2025 ADHD conference. And one of the big changes that happened at her company Shelfful since we last talked is the shift to using AI. So we spent a good portion of the episode discussing how to use AI as a second brain, rather is just another static to do list. Sharon explains how they've integrated personality and novelty into their systems to break through our natural notification immunity.
We also talk about some of her favorite features like magic sort that helps you pick tasks based on your current energy level rather than just due dates, which is something I'm all about. Because we all know looking at one of those massive unsorted lists is just a one way ticket to task paralysis. We're also talking about accountability, automation, and how to gamify our habits. I had a lot of fun with this one. If you'd like to follow along with the show notes page, you can find that at hackingyouradhd.com/271. All right, keep on listening to find out how to embrace your list, even when it looks like a nightmare.
All right, well, it's so exciting to have you back on the podcast. It's been a number of years now. I think it's about four now. Could that be true? Man, time just keeps going, and it surprises me each time. Oh my gosh.
Sharon Pope: Wow. That's very nice of you back. Thank you for having me, William.
William Curb: With Shelfful, a lot of things have changed there in the last, imagine, few years or just recently. So how about you tell me a little bit about that?
Sharon Pope: Yeah, so Shelfful is my company. Shelfful meaning super helpful. And this was a company that was born out of my own mess of life kind of feeling where I felt like I didn't take care of myself. I have two kids, took care of them.
I think I'd be considered an all-star at work, getting everything done for everyone else. And I was genuinely not drinking water, not getting any fresh air, putting exercise clothes on and not working out. And it really just kind of felt like I was kind of desperately in search of, and the way I was putting it to myself was like, I just wish I could have someone sitting on my shoulder just reminding me to take care of myself, like just asking, have you had a sip of water?
Have you? And because that was just like how I envisioned what would help me. And this is while I was very lucky and that I have amazing friends, a really great family. I wasn't alone. There weren't people who didn't care about me. I just, that like there's this kind of micro care layer that like, doesn't make sense for somebody to be asking you about if you're not five years old.
They'll make these basic care needs. And so I launched this first version of my company that I, you know, decided at midnight to call Shelfful. And we launched it immediately to a waitlist where we basically the offer was signed up and you text with a real human to keep you on track and, you know, throughout the day. And it was really cool to see that people needed that.
And a lot of them signed up, by the way. And I'm like, I need this because I have ADHD. So which gave me this wonderful insight of the multiple doctors that told me I didn't have ADHD because I was too successful, got good grades, even though my brother had had it. And it was interesting this starting this company was like also a journey of self discovery. And we've evolved the product a lot.
We got investment and have evolved the product a lot over the years since we talked. And we now have most of our users are on our iPhone app that is an AI accountability system, basically. It's an AI task manager. And you chat with it throughout the day, things as little as like, I need to prep for my call with William, you know, checking with me at 10 to make sure I'm dressed, you know, things like that, or just kind of listing all the things in your head. And it grabs them puts them in a list that you can go look at and manage. But most importantly, I kind of like to not even go in the list, because I just let it know when I got stuff done. And it's kind of this chat where I it's very low stakes, very bare minimum, and it helps me just get through the little just all the little parts of the day.
William Curb: Yeah, it seems like it's a lot more than just reminders.
Sharon Pope: Reminders are baked in, you know, like you people may have experiences in chat, GPT, to troubleshoot, like, what should I work on first? I have all these things, right? AI can be good at like distilling information and, and just coming up with a hard opinion. And it can definitely do that. But the biggest thing it does is yeah, it reaches through the screen, and like, nudges you to do the thing, but it's not like a reminder text, it's like a question, like, Hey, do you still have time for this?
Or Hey, could you even just show up for a little part of this? I feel like my eyes are immune to reminders oftentimes. And, you know, you notification sounds for people with ADHD is very easy to ignore them. First of all, we kind of trained it to have some fun personality, but you can also add your own personality elements to it of like, Hey, talk to me like, you know, a drill sergeant or pretend to be like Chandler Bing for friends. And so you can kind of get some novelty and that like a little dopamine boost of like the way it's reaching out to you. I tell it to swear at me because I think it's fun. Like when I get like a, Hey, have you washed your bleep and face yet Sharon?
It makes me smile, it makes me laugh and might make me go over to the sink to consider washing my face. So I think that there's that the novelty helps it feel like less of a reminder system. And also that it just it's in a, you know, a conversation, like it doesn't feel like you can like kind of scroll back, see what you did, look at the reminders, ask it again, like, Well, what should I work on next? That's, I often just go into the chat and like, I don't feel like doing anything. What's like a five minute task that is on my list that I could try to start with, right? It's just so kind of reaches a little bit further than your typical list might.
William Curb: Yeah, because I do remember when I first talked to you, I signed up for the human shelters. And I just have like, you know, a daily like check in about my calendar. And you know, it was good. But you know, it was also like once I was like, Oh, I feel like I've established this as a habit of like, Hey, I'm doing my daily thing. I don't really need to continue doing this. But it was also, you know, there's with ADHD, we are always evolving with what we need help with.
Sharon Pope: And I, and it was expensive too. I mean, it's we recruited some amazing human, we called them shoppers. But you as a, as a customer, we're paying, I don't know, I might have given you a discount, but maybe close to $100 a month. So it's a lot of, you know, that's a lot to it's a big investment. And so in some ways that maybe helps you stick with it a little bit for your ADHD, right?
That like the feeling losing money is not great. But the, you know, that we're able to deliver a pretty similar experience and like very instantaneous, right? You're human didn't respond instantly because they're human.
And so that instant feeling I think is helpful. And also just the price, we have a pay what you can live right now. So you had a free two weeks to try it out. And then you can pay what you can as low as $4.99. And people remarkably don't only choose $4.99, they off, they will choose higher sometimes too, just kind of, we're just, you know, little startup where four people just trying to build something that helps us and hopefully helps other people. So it's been nice when people come out and support us too.
William Curb: I love that model. I do the same thing with my Patreon where it's just, which I don't offer a ton of stuff on right now, but it is still like the idea. I'm like, I don't want people to have to be unduly burdened by trying to do this.
Sharon Pope: I'm sure you think about this a lot. I'm just so hyper. I wish I could give it for free. I mean, I think just to say that we have costs, you know, we have to pay for the AI, we all, you know, the technology.
So we can't get it free and also stay alive as a company. But I'm just so hyper aware of the financial burden of having ADHD and just, you know, obviously, it's called ADHD tax in our community, but there's just so many things, so many gotchas for someone with ADHD in terms of subscriptions and stuff that like, if, if there's any way I can help lighten the load by making it more affordable. And then also we have it baked in that when you sign up, we automatically add a reminder to your list. So your AI task manager is reminding you like, hey, you're, you're sheltful for news in three days.
So like just a little bit helpful, maybe, you know, in the same area where you're getting help on other things that you can make the decision of if it's not serving you, please cancel. Like that's not a habit. I don't want to be doing that to anyone.
William Curb: Yeah, I know. Everyone listening has had so many things that they've been paying for for too many months because they've just forgotten they exist.
Sharon Pope: Months or I mean, I have some, I have some examples that was like a couple of years, you know, like just, which feels such a gut punch. And it's so hard to admit, you just feel like such a dummy. I would never think of someone else as a dummy, but I certainly called myself that.
William Curb: Yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the problems with like dealing with this too is that you have such like bad self-talk around accountability. And so without having someone or in the case of something, you know, something there to help with that reminder, it feels like, oh yeah, the negative self-talk never really helps.
Sharon Pope: So well put, and I think I haven't even thought about that aspect of it for a long time is that the negative self-talk just really wins the day a lot of times with us. And it's, and it's such a loop. And we've been so trained not only saying to ourselves, but because we probably growing up got a lot of negative feedback for not listening, for not cleaning our room, for all the things that we weren't doing that we were supposed to be doing. So you kind of pick that up and run with it in terms of your own inner monologue. And I think that, yeah, being able to kind of be totally fully transparent, honest about like, yeah, I just genuinely don't feel like paying my taxes today.
I just don't want to. I like having it be a safe space to do that. And then having a response come back of like, what do you think about opening the browser?
Like just go to the URL, looking at it, flipping it off and walking away. Like genuinely my AI says that to me because I've kind of added those instructions for it to be like sassy. And I'm like, well, I could maybe do that. Like that kind of sound. It just kind of trying to, trying to like get at me on a place where I can actually enter a task and that task initiation friction, it can be helpful that, and I wouldn't even say a voice of positivity.
I actually worked really hard in the AI side of things to make sure we weren't like, toxically positive. It really is meeting you where you're at and just kind of be like, could you just try this? Like, it's not gonna be fun. We're not gonna like it, but like, could you just do a little?
William Curb: Yeah, I always hate when I'm like doing something. And it's like, I'm like, I just need like to, you know, like refine this. And it's like, great addition to this conversation. And I'm like, no, it wasn't.
Sharon Pope: It's like very a self assured in its answers and can be, it just doesn't strike your chord with me when it's like that. I'm like, don't be so sure of yourself. This isn't an easy thing. It's not an easy yes. Let's just keep the keep the tone a little bit more balanced. Yeah, that's how I am too.
William Curb: Yeah, I guess that's a thing that I'm sure people are aware of, but in our questioning about this kind of thing too is like chat. gpt is known to be wrong about things. I'm imagining with something that's more of a closed system. It's not like just making up answers as much. Right.
Sharon Pope: So we use open AI. So we use their API. So your conversation with our product isn't used to kind of train chat gpt. It's closed off. Hallucination is what it's called, right? Where AI seems really short of an answer and it's not at all true. That can totally happen as well. But it's the types of conversation you're having is, I think makes it less likely.
So you can ask like, hey, how do you spell this word or whatever, you know, some kind of general AI question. What should I make? I have these ingredients in my fridge. I'm taking a picture.
What should I make? Right. Like because you're in the chat anyway, you can ask those things and it could hallucinate on those things too. But it just I think happens less because you're not going mentally.
That's not where you're going for like answers as much as support and logistics and productivity. But you know, there can be mistakes, right? Like so we we have structured data surrounding an AI conversation. So what what happens is you say, I need to do this, this and that. I need to go post office.
I need to sign up for this thing. And it takes all that stuff. It reads your intent. Like this person is trying to add stuff to their list. And then it fires into the, you know, the structured data, which is I need to go create these individual items on a list. And so it could get stuff wrong.
It does a pretty good job. But you know, there's there's a chance it misunderstands your intent. Like you were saying, I need to start this thing. And it and you you're you're referring to something that's already on your list. But it doesn't it doesn't totally align that that's what you're talking about. So it might like add a duplicate to your list every now and then. But yeah, AI can make those mistakes.
And usually they're pretty, it's not it doesn't happen tons. And it's, you know, fairly innocuous, like it's not going to delete your whole list. It's just maybe going to add a duplicate.
And it's a little bit annoying later to check it off twice. But AI is still getting better and better at that type of thing of qualifying your intent in a conversational setting.
William Curb: Yeah, I remember I've used AI often to like parse my transcripts and stuff like to look through and help me like find like, okay, what were we discussing and all these things? And I remember having one where I'm like, you just paid that up.
We didn't talk about that. I had that experience too. It's just but it was it's trying to be overly helpful. It's like, well, you were talking about these other sleep things. So it should this make sense that you would also talk about this. I'm like, we didn't though.
Sharon Pope: I know those are such frustrating moments. And someone who's AI a lot like you and me, we kind of just take it take it with a grain of salt and know that it's going to happen. But you I have observed people who are less familiar with AI and don't use as much being like feeling pretty wronged by that because you're kind of, you know, we're used to like doing a Google search and having it be pretty truthful. And that, you know, the best result is at the top.
And that's just and then you can decide for yourself if it's true or not. But in, you know, in a chat, he's setting it, it takes that source, it puts the source a little bit more in the background. And so you're in that I have the exact same experience as like, pull some great quotes out of this transcript.
And it's just like fully made of quotes in chat, he's tea. And I was like, I really don't think anyone said that. And then of course, I'm in the loop. Yeah, where I'm looking for the quote. And I yeah, there's progress to be made. But it is pretty remarkable the stuff that we can do.
William Curb: Yeah, when I do transcripts, I'm like uploading a document. And I'm like, only grab information from the document attached. And then having like that and like, like, oh, yeah, yeah, being very specific about what I want is often the trick.
Sharon Pope: And also being in the I mean, now, because the more sophisticated models have the ability to do real time research, right? So you can, I will always if I want to make sure I get a real answer, I'll be like, before you answer, search and find sources that support your answer specifically. And I'll get I'll get pretty strict in my prompt as well, just because we know this thing will happen. And I try to take all that hallucination potential out. If I can.
William Curb: Yeah, you have often had people ask me like, so how do you know if it's given you the right answer? And I'm like, you check. You look at the sources. Yeah, you look at the sources, you like, oh, like, okay, this is this information. Can I find a duplicate? Great. This is like the same way I would check if I was reading something on Wikipedia or just any other website I check,
Sharon Pope: I always like to compare using chat to PTT to having like an intern who's like really green and new. Like just like you would check my intern pulled a bunch of research for you'd probably like, click in and check some of it, right? Like, you're not just going to assume that everything they did is perfect. And I think that's that's still a good way to look at some of what AI produces.
And because it'll it can hallucinate sources too. Like I've had I've had chat to PTT just like fully makeup websites that didn't exist. Or like, you know, things like that. So you have to Yeah, just it's it's cool. It's vast but check it. Yeah, totally.
William Curb: Yeah, I remember getting something back and I'm like this came from a conspiracy theory website. This is not a good source. Not a good source.
Sharon Pope: Here's some feedback. Yeah.
William Curb: So it sounds like people are responding fairly well to using this as accountability. My initial response to like trying to use, I haven't used a system like this, but like just using like a straight chat PGPT for accountability, it always felt like I could just walk away from it.
Sharon Pope: And I'm I'm very honest in this respect too that I don't think that you can in this current day and age and it's hard to actually even see the the line where this will happen. I don't you don't feel true human style accountability to an AI like I just don't think that's possible. I'm not going to promise that someone will feel that because there I mean that feeling of letting someone like if I just didn't show up to this call, or like I was 10 minutes late, I'd feel like crap. If I don't if I'm late checking in with my AI to tell it I took my medicine, which I actually didn't. I was all the way over here.
I don't feel that bad for it, right is a machine. And so I you know, that's that's part of kind of my journey as a founder of trying to find ways to to bring that into the product. And you know, so we we've had human stuff in the past where we have, you're chatting with a human, we've tested groups, we're in a group. And so I still think that's on the forefront in terms of what we can offer to to users, I think for. But I do think that there's a flavor of accountability that comes through that's more than a to do list, that's more than a reminder app that comes with Shelfful because it has it, it can break it can give you a little spike of dopamine because it's maybe speaking on your level, or it's it's positioning something differently that you aren't having to trick yourself into.
I think people with 80 she spent a lot of time like trying to hack their own brain and like saying, right, well, if I if I just put this thing further, if I give myself a treat afterward, or you know, we do a lot of that trying to just like seek rewards and seek. And I think that it plays within that similar system, but without you having to engineer it on a daily basis. And so I think that like, it's interesting for me using it because I built it. And so I think I'm probably the person who is at least likely to benefit from it because I know everything that went in behind it and why it's answering the way it is and all that. But I think that there is an accountability flavor that can be achieved with AI. And I think we have more room to grow.
William Curb: Awesome. Yeah, I think that's a great answer too, because it's just there is something different about working with a machine than working with a human. And but it doesn't mean there isn't a benefit there still there.
Sharon Pope: I mean, like it makes me smile every now and then like the way it puts it makes me, you know, chuckle or will catch me off guard. And those are the moments where I'm like, okay, it broke through my notification blocker barrier that I have in my eyes and in my ears and kind of as a as a default. And I think those are the kind of magic moments for me is where we can at least just break through to you and maybe get you to consider doing the thing that you've said you wanted to do.
I hear from customers all the time. And it's very heartwarming of, you know, even we have this, like when you first sign up, you just jump right into a chat. We don't have you do like a complicated form or anything. You just start chatting and it's like, hey, what's been falling off your list that you wish you were doing? And people write in and say, like, I feel like I've been listened to in a way that I've never been listened to, like, because someone is asking these like basic needs questions of like, what aren't you doing for yourself? And then okay, and then also challenging them. Oh, like someone's like, I wish I was going for an hour long walk every day, and it will immediately challenge like, that's a great goal.
What do you think about just walking to the end of the block every day? Like see if we can do that. And then we can grow from there. And so you have this, it's just a little bit of that inner monologue that you've been craving that kind of can help push you through. And I think that that's been really valid and to have people just feel like just heard.
And again, it's AI. So you kind of like you're, it's not a real person, but having a question asked of you that's that no one has ever really bothered to ask is can feel really good.
William Curb: Yeah, I mean, it's the same way that you can read a book and have something just to quote being like, oh, that resonates with me even though that wasn't necessarily directly for me. But it is making me think about some of the mental health issues that have been coming up with AI. It's already concerned with people being a little bit just having a little bit of an unhealthy relationship with their new AI helper.
Sharon Pope: I think that it's something to be aware of for anyone building an AI. And we're certainly never billing this as therapy or as a replacement for therapy or as a replacement for social interaction. I think people really do come and shelf hold their troubleshooting. We haven't really seen people letting us know or, you know, on all the active accounts, you know, we can see metrics of like things being added to lists and things, you know, people are people aren't getting things done or adding to their lists and using it in their productivity way. So I mean, I think that there are probably AI tools that are more in that realm of like, which is like pure chat and companionship. And I do think that Shelf Hold can give you a sense of support, like, you know, we're really selling a sense of support. But it's more a sense of support, like, I have a second brain, not that I just have someone to finally converse with.
I think that that's, I mean, you can sit in there and chat all day if you felt like it, I guess. But that's, I think, just maybe the not the the state that people come in looking for. But I think that any founder working on AI should be thinking about that and aware of it. And it's troubling.
Yeah, you definitely don't want to see it. And I think that we've seen that in different chapters of the internet, right? Where if somebody is in a not great mental health space, being kind of alone with their thoughts and alone with the internet is not a great spot to be in. And so I think that I just hope that we continue to to take care of folks and look out for this and innovate. And I know the AI companies, well, I believe they're all working on that. And that we can kind of come through this in a positive way.
William Curb: I do think it's very important to consider because, yeah, we've seen some bad cases out there with AI. But yeah, seeing as this is not a companion companion, as some other things are advertised, I think, yeah, that's not exactly what people are trying to approach it as.
Sharon Pope: That's not something I've seen in our product. But I'm definitely not like gonna just assume it will never happen and not think about it. Yeah.
William Curb: Just this idea of using having this, what are some like best practices we're seeing, you're seeing that people do to get the most out of using this kind of technology?
Sharon Pope: The big thing we try to do when someone first comes in is having reasonable small goals. You know, Shellful is not, it's not like a goal setting platform where you're going to come and put it your like 10 year goals. That's just, that's not, I mean, maybe we'll have something like that in the future, but that's not what we are today. I like to kind of say that we're like the last mile. Like I want to, I have something I want to do and I want to just get it over the finish line.
I want to get it done. And a lot of people use us for some of the examples I've given, like hygiene, cleaning, it's less of a, I want to be a marathoner and more, I want to get some fresh air. And so we try to, in the product push people to choose smaller goals, but like we don't prevent them from putting big things in. And so I think that the people that I have heard from that feel that kind of the validation and feeling success from the product are the ones who are allowing themselves to think small. And then they're able to have more successes.
And it's, it's fun to have a success like this in, in a chat environment because you're like, okay, I took three steps outside, which was your whole goal for that day. And you get this big like, yes. And then in my case, it's like, swear word, swear word, yes. And I just like it. I think it's, you know, it feels good. It feels good coming back through the screen that I did something that like I would maybe be embarrassed.
Oh, I'm increasingly, I'm decreasingly embarrassed to, to celebrate the fact that doing dishes is hard for me and washing one dish is a huge freaking accomplishment. I spent a lot of my life hiding that those simple facts, but to be able to kind of have a bare minimum goal and hit that goal with some frequency is, I think, an amazing feeling that people do get using shuffle very often.
William Curb: Yeah, the, it actually makes us all often have so many big ideas and then forget all the stuff that's in between that's so important.
Sharon Pope: Yes. And I think, you know, we are trying, you know, we work hard to make that better and better in our product where we're like, you know, that's hard to recognize because AI wants to be like, yes, you know, that's, that's the kind of the models are kind of trained to be like, agree, like agree and or yes, ship it, let's do this, you can do it. And so a lot of what we kind of, I mean, I worked a lot in the prompt engineering is like push it for smaller, just it's always push it for smaller. And I, you know, I did a habit coaching certification through Dr. BJ Fogg, the kind of main behavioral researcher, he works at a Stanford and his team. And like, it really, the research really won me over on that.
And it was very, it's very comforting for me to remind myself that smaller is better. Like it's not lazy, it's actually smarter. And if you can set a smaller goal, it's always a better idea, like literally always a better idea, with no exceptions in my opinion. And so I think that that comfort is, I think kind of built in and, you know, we want to be better and better at that.
William Curb: Yeah, I think often when people are thinking about setting those tiny goals and habits and stuff, they're like, but what if I want to do more? It's like, well, once you hit that, just what's the next step?
Sharon Pope: Well, and also you can all, you can do more every time if you want. Like I think that being able to achieve the small version, because I walked, you know, I took the three steps outside, that was my whole goal. Nothing stopping me from doing a two hour walk after that. But the fact that I showed up and celebrated that small win is chemically allowing my brain to feel good about it every time. So I don't shame myself in the future from doing anything.
And that's, that that's supported in the research, right? Those neuro pathways between the thing you want to do, that habit you want to do, and actually doing it, it's strengthened by showing up for the small version. So whenever you set this big, far out thing, and you don't reach it, your brain doesn't, those neuro pathways are weakened and your, your brain wants to feel good. Like that chocolate cake was good.
Let's have more of that. You know, this pen is fun to write with, I want to use this pen. It wants to feel good. So it's going to go back to the thing that feels good. And if you want to go back to that three steps outside, you need to be able to recognize the three steps as a success. And it takes work to do that. And I think that because we, we're hard on ourselves as a society, and I think as ADHDers, we're hard on ourselves. And so, you know, there's some kind of mental self coaching, but I think it helps to have a sounding board like shelf floor, like a good friend who can remind you like, it's enough. That's great. If you feel good, go work, work further. If you don't, don't. Yeah.
William Curb: It's great to have like friends where you can be like, I did this really small thing, and they're just like, way to go. And you know, send you all the things and you're like, oh, yeah, like, I wouldn't have done that for myself, but having it a little bit outside of myself helps. Yeah.
Sharon Pope: And being able to, I think even just say those, give, give life to those thoughts and give voice to those thoughts, I think has been a journey for me personally of like, yeah, that's actually a really impressive thing.
Like it's very hard for me to do administrative stuff. The fact that I did my car registration like deserves a parade. Like it's genuinely very, very big. And so I think that, you know, that mental approach is helpful. And it's hard. It's a hard one feeling, I think for us.
William Curb: One is so easy to be like, well, I just didn't do enough. And I was like, no, just cut, let's cut that out. Like if you are, we're not thinking about everything else that's going on in our life, we're just thinking about this one issue. And it's like, okay, well, is there a reason that you're not why getting to the rest of that is so hard?
Sharon Pope: It feels like so, so big and unattainable. And I think that because it's just hard. Things that are easy for others are hard for us. And I feel like accepting that has been huge for me. And then being able to celebrate any progress on those has been huge as well.
William Curb: And then, yeah, the, I think the celebration piece too is really interesting to discuss because it's so hard to often celebrate those small wins. But then we're, and then it's also realizing it that also does not have to be a big thing. It's because like, when you, oh, celebrate a small win, I need to have a party. It's like, no, we don't need to do that.
Sharon Pope: But, you know, telling somebody else, smiling, just smiling, saying I'm kind of a cynical snarky person by default. And so for me, like the celebrating part doesn't come very easily.
And so telling somebody else in some cases, shelfful and also just statements of fact help. Like, I, I didn't think I was going to do this, but I did it. That's a celebration, right? Like an acknowledgement that you did something that was hard.
This was hard, but I did it. Just saying that to yourself. I think it works as a celebration because again, you're sending that message to your brain. You did it. And it's not a parade. It's not a dance move, but it, it's something.
William Curb: Yeah, I've had a button on my desk that will play Air Horns. Or I've had a clicker for like counting people and you can just do that. Like, I answered an email. I answered another email. I answered an email.
Sharon Pope: I like that. Just getting like, I tell you, I'm literally doing a thing, anything. You get a little point.
William Curb: Yeah, I like that. And it's like, I got a point. I got a point. I get a point. And it's like, oh, it didn't, I'm like, I don't even care about these, but it feels good to click something or cross something off or push a button.
Yeah, I agree. And I imagine that works really well with the shellful service with the AI because you're like, oh, I did this thing. And you automatically get the thing and it's like, okay, let's get to the next thing.
Sharon Pope: Yeah, you can go cross it off on your list, but I like to tell the AI because I get the shout out. Like I want. And then we tried to build, I think we built a great list. You know, we have a whole tab that's a list and there's actually a button called magic sort on it. So this is my, my favorite part of being the list is you can pick a different way to view your list like by location.
So it's like separate it and use AI to separate it between home and office, or you can be like by vibe by energy level is probably my favorite one where it sorts it by like low energy tasks, medium and high. And I, I use that all the time if I'm going to look at my list and I'll just, I'll just kind of scramble it and look at it a different way because seeing it a different way can also introduce like, oh, that one actually could be a good fit for right now. But other than that, like I love to stay in the chat as much as I can because lists, I associate lists with kind of stress.
And I think that seeing a lot of things just written in my face feels stressful to me. So I'd much rather go to the chat and shuffle and be like, are there, give me three options is something I could work on right now. You know, and just having it go comb through my list for me and tell me that feels way more fun for me.
William Curb: Yeah, I mean, this is sounds great to me because there's just so often where like, yeah, the list feels overwhelming because there's so much on there. And just looking at it feels bad.
Sharon Pope: It feels bad and like makes me want to like run like, okay, never mind. I'm frozen. I'm going to do something that's not in my list at all. Because it's just, yeah, that's just, and that's, that's how our brains work with like this over was like getting an email that's really long with big paragraphs. I'm like, why did you do this to me? There's something that feels so unjust and unfair about making me look at a lot of texts all at once. And, and that's kind of how I feel when I hang out in a list. So I'm like, give me the F out of here.
And I'm just going to somebody just tell me what to do. And then honestly, the AI is not it's not perfect to suggesting what I should do because it doesn't know what doesn't have all the context of the day and what what's more urgent or what somebody's asking for. But there's this, the editor, I think, I have an editor mindset, but I think even like our like oppositional defiance, you know, can come into play here where my AI will say like, well, why don't you, why don't you do the product plan? And then in my head, I'm like, no, that's not what I should do. I should do this. And like, so even just like disagreeing with it can can be helpful in me getting clarity on what I should work on.
William Curb: Yeah, oppositional defiance is always hilarious when it's like, no, I'm not going to do that thing. I'm gonna do this other thing that's also important. But what is going on, brain?
Sharon Pope: But it's but that can be super motivating. So like, it sparks me. And then all of a sudden, I'm like, did it, did it, like doing like a big work block, because I'm like, I so heavily disagree with what it thinks I should be working on, which is fine.
William Curb: Yeah, it is always good when to yeah, we're just gonna go with the flow with our brain and get things done. Right. Yeah. So I was wondering if there were any final thoughts you wanted to leave the audience with?
Sharon Pope: Yeah, I mean, I think that it's been so fun to talk about Shellful and just in general, I would love for anyone to try our service and give feedback because we're a small team and we're truly building stuff that people want and need. And that's like our big focus right now. And then I also I was mentioning to you before we do I I personally am very interested in obsessed with automations, meaning like that context. No, yeah, but it's this is a whole a whole different it's a whole different topic, but related where we actually did the work to connect Shellful to Apple's shortcuts app, so that I can give speed some context into my AI. So like, I have automations set up that once I arrive home, it will ping my AI task manager saying like, Hey, I just got home, checking with me in 10 minutes to see if I have water at my desk, like things like that, because I'll go to my my office and not come out and I'll not have water and just just die of thirst. And so there's like these little context clues that are fun to feed in it like and so an Apple, these are built in because it's an app from Apple. So I can I have automations, it's like when I connect to car place, like when I'm in my car, when I connect to this specific Wi Fi network, do this.
And I have things that are unrelated to Shellful or that I stack with it, like when I arrive at my son's preschool, open up this app that I have to use to check him in, and then also send a message to Shellful saying, like, once you get home, or once like maybe like in 15 minutes, try to tell me to get out of my car and go into the house. Because I know takes me about 15 minutes to get home from the preschool. And I often will sit in front of my house for a good 15 to 30 minutes, because I it's so hard for me to just go and get in and get get started.
So I'll just like edit videos, or I'll just hang out in my car for way too long. And so I'm able to kind of give those context clues that that aren't, you know, he's at preschool, so his school doesn't start at his, he can he can arrive in a range of time. So if I had it coming at a specific time from Shellful, it'd be less helpful than if it comes at, you know, 10 minutes from me being at a specific location that's part of my routine. So I love that type of thing. And it's not so it's not built directly into Shellful's app, but we connect with this other app, the Shortcuts app to do that. So for iPhone users, we've had a lot of people having fun with that among our customers. And it's like one of my favorite things too.
William Curb: Yeah, I mean, that sounds so good. Because I remember when I was initially was like, Oh, location based reminders are great. And then I'd be like, but I need to get them 10 minutes after I arrive, not when I am arriving. Yes.
Sharon Pope: And that's that that is totally right. Because you can, you could just use the Apple's Reminders app if you wanted just a reminder at like right when you get somewhere. But that kind of delayed is great because you just use free text with Shellful remind me in 10 minutes, remind me in tomorrow, you know, like whatever, just free text. And then it translates that into a real structured reminder. So it works really well with that. But I also use it to big start this playlist.
You know, remind me to take my jacket, remind me to move my washer to my dryer and this amount of time. So I use and I use NFC tags, these little, these are really cheap stickers that you can put around your house for that stuff too. So I love attaching little automations to to the AI stuff to just feels like it greases the wheels a little bit, or adds friction where I want to add friction. And it they're very simple to set up once you understand it. And so it does feel like one of those things that, you know, as 80 years, we could spend hours setting up systems because we think it'll help us save a couple minutes in the long run. But this is like, you know, you might just spend three minutes setting it up. And it'll save you maybe 30 seconds a day, which will add up over time, or 30 seconds. But also, I mean, it's not even about time, it's about like mental load, I think sometimes too, like, I think that's key.
William Curb: Like, because when you were saying like, either gives resistance or takes it away, like I'm like, that's so key and managing ADHD,
Sharon Pope: managing and then also kind of stopping a little bit that shame cycle, like, oh, I spent so much time in my car outside my house, like, why can't I just come in? What's wrong with me?
Why can't I just be normal? Like all those things that we beat ourselves up for. And it's like, if I can just kind of try to give myself a little, a little boost, just a little push at the right time, at the right time is key. I think that's something we is going to be ever forever, something that we're, I'm trying to be better at a shell. So it's like, the right reminder at the right time. And that's, that's hard.
William Curb: Yeah. And it's so key because I mean, I know for, like having to like, take meds, I just have like, or currently I have a reminder on my phone through this like alarm DAP where it's just like reminds me and it's, it has a nag me feature. So we'll go off once, and then I can just have like every five minutes, we'll keep going off until I like, click it. And I'm like, I'm like, that's, that's how I, that's my current method for making sure I get it at the right time is just being like, pester it. Yeah. Yeah. Just pester me until I'm done. But you know, that's not always the best method. Right.
Sharon Pope: We actually just were, I mean, it might be out by the time this episode comes out, we're working on a similar feature with Shelfful. I call it mega remind, but it's just like always what has been called in my head of like for specific things to be like, okay, literally exactly what you said, because you don't want that for everything. Like you wouldn't want to be reminded of five minutes for everything or else like, get me the heck out of this app by, but for certain things that yeah, you, you need to take the medicine. And if you don't take, if you don't, if you take it too late, it's too late. And so there's things like that that we really need as my move as an ADHD or two is, well, for this call even, I, you know, set a timer so that I had to cut, like would be here, just as like a backup plan.
Obviously my calendar and everything else. But again, my brain doesn't work like the typical one. And I leave it vibrating on my, I have kind of a rule that I'm pretty good about that I just don't turn that off until I actually do the thing. So my wrist is, and sometimes it's all spaced out to something different. I'm like, what's this feeling? Oh, my wrist is still vibrating.
I'm supposed to be doing something else. So I think that we have these, these little hacks that we build in. And yeah, I, I, I'm so, I feel like I'm in a good spot in my life that I've discovered some of these things. I struggled a lot more before I accepted that I needed that. Yeah.
William Curb: And it's such a huge like that. Yeah, I need to accept that this is just how it is. It's not how I want it to be. It's just how it is.
Sharon Pope: And there's plenty of things I could do that other people can't do. And they have to different that, you know, like we're all just different.
William Curb: We all right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate you taking the time. And I think there'll be a lot of people interested in this because I know I'm like, oh, I should definitely check this out again.
Sharon Pope: Awesome. What would love to have you. And so happy to be here again. William, thank you.
William Curb: Thanks again to Sharon for coming on the show. And thank you for sticking with us all the way to the end. Before you go though, let's do a quick rundown of today's top tips. One, try sorting your to do list by energy level. Instead of looking at a stressful long list, you can sort your tasks by vibe or energy low, medium, high, to find a task that matches your current capacity. Two, when we're setting goals, we want to intentionally lower the bar to ensure a win and strengthen neural pathways. Often our inclination is to overdo whatever it is we're trying to do in an effort to catch up. But by lowering the bar instead, we can often create a more sustainable habit.
Three, a fun way that you can get into automation can be to try out cheap NFC stickers around your house to trigger specific automations like reminders to move the laundry or start a playlist with a single tap of your phone. All right, that's it. Thanks for listening. I'd love to hear what you thought of this episode. Feel free to connect with me over at hackingyouradhd.com/contact.
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And now for your moment of dad. I invented a thought-controlled air freshener, but my friend told me he thought it was kind of a