Navigating the Neurodivergent Mind: Insights from an ADHD Coach, Chris Porter

On this week’s show, we’re going to speak with Chris Porter. He’s an ADHD coach. He’s the founder of an organization called Porter Learning and Chris is going to be sharing how he got his start and how coaching can help individuals unlock their true potential.

Today is July 2nd, my name is Tom Heath and you’re listening to “Life Along the Streetcar”.

Each and every Sunday our focus is on Social, Cultural and Economic impacts in Tucson’s Urban Core and we shed light on hidden gems everyone should know about. From A Mountain to the U of A and all stops in between. You get the inside track- right here on 99.1 FM, streaming on DowntownRadio.org- we’re also available on your iPhone or Android using our very own Downtown Radio app. Reach us by email [email protected] — interact with us on Facebook at LifeAlongTheStreetcar and follow us on Twitter @StreetcarLife

Transcript (Unedited)

Tom Heath

Good morning. It’s a beautiful sunny in the old Pueblo and you’re listening to KT Tucson. Thank you for spending a part of your brunch hour with us on your Downtown Tucson community sponsored all volunteer Power to Rock and Roll radio station.

Tom Heath

On this week’s show, we’re going to speak with Chris Porter. He’s an ADHD coach. He’s the founder of an organization called Porter Learning and Chris is going to be sharing how he got his start and how coaching can help individuals unlock their true potential.

Tom Heath

Today is July 2, 2023. My name is Tom Heath and you’re listening to life along the streetcar. Each and every Sunday, our focus is on social, cultural and economic impacts in Tucson’s urban core. And we shed light on hidden gems everyone should know about, from a mountain to the University of Arizona and all stops in between. You get the inside track right here on 99.1 FM, streaming on Downtownradio.org, also available on your iPhone or Android with our very own Downtown Radio Tucson

Tom Heath

app. And I also found out you can just tell your smart speaker to play Downtown Radio on tune in very cool for the show. If you want to interact with us, we’re on Facebook and Instagram under lifelongthreetcar information about our show, our book, all of our past episodes. You want to contact us, head over to our website, which is lifelongthstreetcar.org. And of course, you can listen to our podcast on all kinds of streaming platforms out there, like Spotify, itunes, I Heart Radio. And you can also ask your smart speaker to play the Life Along the.

Tom Heath

Streetcar podcast because we are almost as.

Tom Heath

Cool as Downtown Radio. Well, we are the urban core here and we say our shows from a mountain at the University of Arizona. And in a couple of days here on a mountain, there is going to be some fireworks. It is the Independence Day and they’ll be launched off there on Sentinel Peak, which we call a mountain here, affectionately in Tucson. You can watch those from the convention center. And the fireworks are due to set off around 09:00 p.m.. Of course, weather permitting, as all the verbiage will tell you on the website. Plenty of parking down in that area. And they’ve got the lots, they’ve got the garages now, and it’s going to be on the west side of the TCC for the for the best viewing. And if you haven’t been down to the convention center in a while, maybe get a few minutes early and walk around and see what’s been done with the plaza. The Alva Be Torres Plaza is just beautifully done and lots of water flowing kind of harkens us back to time decades ago when people would gather around

Tom Heath

in this convention center area there. So maybe take a walk about and check it out. And then I’m going to jump on with Paleo Dave who’s been preaching this for weeks. But be careful with those pets. And if you’re maybe try not to set off your own personal fireworks, we got so much going on and those pets do get a little scared and they get skittish and they’re jumping around and we could be nice to them too, right? Well, our guest today is Chris Porter. He has many different talents, but what we’re talking to him about today is his work that he does as a coach for individuals with ADHD and how he helps to help them really get their true potential out of their work. He’s housed out of the Barrio Viejo at least part of the time, and we sat had a chance to talk with him by phone just a couple of days ago.

Tom Heath

So we are joined today by Chris Porter, who comes to us highly recommended. It seems like every other guest I’ve had on the show said, hey, you got to talk to this guy Porter. He’s doing some amazing things in our community. And I said, okay, I’ll go talk to him. Chris, welcome to the show. I understand you work out of the loss of Prema down in the Barrio Viejo.

Chris Porter

Hey, Tom. Yeah, excited to be here. And yeah, I have a desk that I share at Alasa Prema. I love being so close to a mountain and downtown. It is awesome.

Tom Heath

Can you tell me a little bit about what your project is and what you’re working on?

Chris Porter

Yeah, absolutely. And part of the challenge there is maybe because part of my story is that I have ADHD, so I’ve done so many different things that it maybe is hard to keep track of. But what I’m doing these days is helping other people like myself through coaching one on one coaching and starting to do group coaching to help either remote workers or solopreneurs or just ADHD people in general to get more done and to find their focus and flow while they’re working.

Tom Heath

And is this something that when you’re finding your clients, are they aware that they might need your help? Or are you being referred to people by others saying, hey, this person has a lot of potential, they just can’t really seem to get their focus and energy in the right direction.

Chris Porter

Right now, it’s mainly people that are kind of self identified that I’m stuck and I really want to get unstuck. And so they’re either talking to people and I get referrals or they just happen to find me. But yeah, at one point I’d love to have organizations referring people to me as well.

Tom Heath

Okay.

Tom Heath

And then I just learned this term a few months ago, we had someone on the show who was working with non speaking individuals and helping them share their poetry and songs, and he kind of introduced me. This idea of a neurodivergent mind is that kind of on the lines of what you’re talking about people that have a tremendous strength in one area, but for what we would consider, quote unquote, a normal life. It creates some challenges.

Chris Porter

Absolutely.

Tom Heath

Yeah.

Chris Porter

So neurodivergent is a great way to say it. There are a lot of comorbidities or other traits that come along with ADHD. So there’s a lot of people that are autistic and have ADHD, or they’re on the spectrum, the autism spectrum, or bipolar or a lot of other mental health things, or just neurodivergence can come along with ADHD. So very often they’re paired together. Okay.

Tom Heath

So then can you kind of walk me through, obviously with whatever privacy concerns there are sort of what a session is with you. You meet with someone, I would imagine it takes some time for you to get a good idea of how to approach their particular needs.

Chris Porter

Yeah. So the first step is usually a discovery call to just understand, what are the challenges? Why are they wanting to talk to a coach to begin with? And in some of my other software consulting work and just other freelance and solopreneur work, I’ve done projects with CEOs and coos, and many of them had ADHD, and I was helping them organize stuff, or I was doing the things that they didn’t want to do. And through that process of working with those executives started to realize that their way of focusing in on what they’re good at and delegating the things that they weren’t good at was really powerful. And so then when I started down this path of becoming an ADHD coach, finding out that if you’re not good at doing these boring, rote tasks, or if you’re finding yourself stuck because with ADHD, you maybe have time blindness where you lose track of appointments or you are not able to focus for long periods of time. There’s a lot of techniques that you can do to maybe help that, but they

Chris Porter

all really revolve around, what do you want to accomplish? So it’s never me going, you need to do this XYZ. It’s really a collaborative approach of identifying what’s happening in your life that you want to address and then pulling out, like, okay, what are the strategies? What are the things that we can do? If it’s motivation? You’re lacking motivation and can’t seem to get your taxes done every year. Okay, well, let’s talk through that. Let’s find out what’s holding you back. And I have an approach. I call it setting your distractions on fire. And so each letter of fire stands for part of that process. So F is focus, I is impulse, r is routines, and then E is engage. So for any distraction, like, let’s say you’re having really hard time getting your taxes done, the focus would be on getting your taxes done. When you’re getting distracted from doing that, there’s an impulse coming up in you of saying, oh, what if I went and did this? Or what if I went and played video games? Or maybe I

Chris Porter

should just do busy work and check emails instead. So finding out what is the thing that you’re doing instead of what you’re supposed to be doing? And then what are the routines? What could we put in place to just maybe take bite size chunks out of doing the taxes? Maybe just take 20 minutes every day and just set a timer and do a little bit of that every day until you finish and then engage is just, okay, let’s put a plan in place to actually make that happen. What time are you going to start doing that? 20 minutes. Do you have a timer that you can set if you don’t have one? Okay, well, maybe you go buy one. And for me, having a physical timer has helped my time blindness because I have ADHD too. So that’s why I’m excited to help other people with things that I’ve been struggling with and have found ways of accomplishing it or of kind of solving my own needs.

Tom Heath

Interesting. And then in listening to you, I’m thinking, I hate doing my taxes every year. So that leads me to the spectrum, because ADHD, this is a blanket term that we use, but you could fall anywhere along that spectrum and have some challenges, or you could have your brain could be working at hyperspeed

Tom Heath

on a thought process that’s far exceeding what the.

Tom Heath

Normal person can handle.

Tom Heath

It’s very interesting to see this kind of spectrum versus just someone with ADHD. It’s specifically, what is your need? And you’re identifying that.

Chris Porter

Yeah, exactly. So the coaching process could really work for a lot of people. But as you say, the ADHD being on this spectrum, for me, some very simple things that maybe would only take five minutes because of just this distraction and this inability to focus. I just keep putting that thing off over and over again. And so finding ways, strategies, habits, tactics to overcome some of those simple things. And there is a term that I like better that’s called Vast. It stands for variable attention stimulus trait. And so that’s a term that somebody else came up for people with ADHD that I really prefer, that it’s just not as well known. And it describes the condition a little bit better that it’s not that I just don’t have the ability to ever focus. Sometimes I hyper focus and I lose track of time. Sometimes I am not able to focus, especially if I have to sit for longer than 40 minutes. So lately, I just get up every half an hour to 40 minutes and walk around briefly or go get a drink of water

Chris Porter

or whatnot. But vast feels like it’s accepting of the variable part of our attention instead of just labeling it as this totally negative thing. Because there are a lot of people that have ADHD that are really successful, and so it’s not that they’re deficient. It’s just that they’re different, divergence, I.

Tom Heath

Think, to bring it back.

Tom Heath

Hey, we’re in the middle of an interview with Chris Porter talking about his work and helping people reach potential, those that might be working through ADHD. After the break, I’m going to ask him if I have ADHD, because some of the things that he has talked about, I find myself doing. But first, I want to remind you that you’re listening to life along the Streetcar in downtown Radio. 99.1 FM and streaming on downtownradio.org.

Tom Heath

Hope you enjoy that new spot from Paleo Dave there about the Tucson Gallery. Big fan. Big fan. We’re going to jump back into the interview we have with Chris Porter talking about his coachings with individuals that have ADHD. And as he was talking a few minutes before the break, he was going through ways that people identify with ADHD. And it turns out that as I was listening to him, I’ve got some of those same tendencies. So I asked him a few questions, got a free little bit of advice from him.

Tom Heath

I’m one that I’ve not been diagnosed with ADHD. But as you’re talking through some of these things that you’re helping others with, there are challenges that I have in my day. I’ve got a lot of different projects that I’m juggling and sometimes getting focused to get something done. I get pulled into. I call it multitasking. But really what I’m doing is just sort of diluting my time and not getting anything done. I’m thinking, heck, I don’t have ADHD, but I do have these focus issues. So maybe I’m somewhere on that vast spectrum. Maybe I could use help from someone that’s helped guide me.

Chris Porter

Well, we all have variable attentions, right? So there are studies that we can really only pay attention for 30 to 40 minutes at a time. And then our brain starts wandering. And so one of the techniques that I really like is called the pomodoro technique. And it’s where you take a timer and you set it for 25 minutes. And then once the timer goes off, then you give yourself a five minute break if you stayed focused that whole time. If you didn’t, then you just have to reset it and go again. And that five minute break doesn’t necessarily mean you just stop working. It could mean switching and just checking emails. It might mean getting up and getting a glass of water. For me, it’s like, oh, I need to go to a bathroom. Oh, I still have seven minutes of my pomodoro timer. I’m going to wait until that five minute break and then I’ll go to the bathroom, and it’s a way of embracing just the way that our brain naturally works, that we need these breaks during the day, and then when you come back,

Chris Porter

you’re able to focus even better. So the Pomodoro technique works for anyone, even if you don’t have ADHD. But it’s really effective at kind of just putting those boundaries and limits in place and teaching your brain, okay, you’re going to have to do this thing you don’t want to do, but then once you finish it, you will get to do something else. So, yeah, it’s been really helpful for me.

Tom Heath

So then when you’re talking with your potential clients, you do the discovery call, and then are you bringing them to you and having sessions, or are you going to them to see them in their environment? Are there environmental issues that could help or hurt their focus?

Chris Porter

So right now, I do all of my sessions via Zoom because I’m offering the service, actually, to anyone in the country. But I did get to use loss of prema for some of the video interviews with one of my clients that he’ll be part of my marketing process. So he agreed to go on camera and agree to talk. So it was really nice to have just the beautiful lighting there and maybe a little bit of backdrop of the Tucson mountains.

Chris Porter

I’m meeting remotely with people. And there was another part of your question that I wanted to their environment.

Tom Heath

Yeah.

Chris Porter

Yeah. So their environment is a huge factor when I have been doing some virtual co working sessions, and the process is like, before we start working together, okay, clear off your desk, remove everything else, close down anything that you’re not going to be working on for the next hour. And so we’ll get together on Zoom. There may be five or ten of us all jump on a Zoom call, and we’re all just going to be working on our own stuff. But setting that intention for I’m going to focus for an hour on this thing that I really need to get done. And maybe closing down slack, turning your phone off or putting your phone in another room and clearing off your desk and making that environment really about that one thing that you’re going to accomplish. Can just do so much and can help you. I had some people that went through this, and they said, this is the most productive hour that I’ve had all week was this 1 hour time of just jumping on Zoom and working on this one thing that I needed to do.

Tom Heath

And I know when COVID came around and we were all starting to work from home, I was nervous because I couldn’t work from home. I was very distracted. I was never very productive working from home until I changed my environment. I made an office. I put a door on it. I went in there during work hours, I shut the door and I was at the office. I couldn’t work from the dining room table or sitting on the couch or have Netflix in the background. I had to be in my office setting. And I got very productive, even more so than being in an office because there’s no one to distract me. But I recognize that it took a while for me to I thought my business was doomed. And then I was like, you know what? Change that environment. So I totally hear what you’re saying on that.

Chris Porter

Yeah, well, the thought that occurs to me as we’re talking about this is that what works for you won’t necessarily work for somebody else. So it’s this idea that maybe if ADHD is like, having maybe your focus is wrong with your eyes and ADHD means that you need to wear glasses. I can’t just take my glasses off and hand them to you and say, hey, these work for me. Just put these on and it’ll all work for you. Right. All of us need a different prescription, and some of us are near sighted, some of us are far sided. Same thing with ADHD is that it really will take a unique recipe for that person. And so I’m kind of coming as this optometrist and saying, hey, try this. Hey, look through this lens. Hey, what about pomodoro? What about your environment? What about all these different things? So we have a whole range of options and then working together with that person, it’s about discovering what is working for them. And if not, okay, let’s adjust. Let’s try something else.

Tom Heath

So what you’re saying is my one.

Tom Heath

Stop fix all that?

Tom Heath

I can’t solve the world’s problems with my door. Okay, I get you. Chris, how do people find you? How do they get services from you? Because you do speaking engagements and writing.

Tom Heath

And things like that.

Tom Heath

How do people find you?

Chris Porter

So the best place is probably through my newsletter, which is Porterlearning.org. So that’s Porter and then learning. And I’m doing monthly workshops that I’m starting up again. And so if you subscribe to newsletter, you’ll hear about those. And then I’m on Twitter, which is at Porter Learning. You can also follow me on LinkedIn. Porter Learning is my username there as well.

Tom Heath

Okay.

Tom Heath

And then the other social media, like Instagram, Facebook, those are not places where you tend to be.

Chris Porter

I’m on Instagram. I find that I get distracted on there, so I tend to not post as often. They could follow me. I also had some scammers on there at one point got you. That were kind of stealing my identity and trying to get other people and talking to them about scams so they could follow me on Instagram. I just would be pretty boring.

Tom Heath

All right, well, Chris Porterporterlearning.org, I think reading your bio, this is a facet of what you do. But as you mentioned at the very beginning, you’ve got kind of a wide net which we don’t have time to get into, but you’ve worked with on topics like Bitcoin and AI. So this is a big facet of what you do, but it’s not the only thing. So people should kind of learn more about you as well. I think your ADHD is leading you into a lot of different directions and finding some really interesting topics to tackle.

Chris Porter

Awesome. Well, thanks for having me on, Tom. It’s great chatting with that was Chris.

Tom Heath

Porter and his website is Porter Learning. We’ll link to him as well from our website well, from our Facebook page, that is, which is Life Along the Streetcar. My name is Tom Heath. You are listening to Life Along the Streetcar in downtown Radio 99.1 FM and available for streaming on downtownradio.org.

Speaker 5

You’re listening to Ktdt, Tucson, Arizona, 99.1 FM, downtown radio. I’m Brother Mock, host of a show called Radio Club Crawl that airs every Tuesday at 03:00 P.m.. We try to focus on most of the bands that are coming through Tucson, and we give you a tasty taste of their music. You want to check out what’s happening around Tucson check out Radio Club Crawl, Tuesdays, 03:00 P.m. Right here on KT DT, tucson, Arizona. 99.1 FM, downtown radio.

Chris Porter

Thank you very much. Enjoy your evening.

Tom Heath

Bye bye. That is episode 254 is now in the books with Mr. Chris Porter. And I have to hearken back to last week. I got some ribbing for this because Brother Mock does the Radio Club Crawl, and I inadvertently attribute it to a different DJ we have on the station because Ted Prazalski follows me every week, so he was on my mind. But Brother Mock is the radio club crawl guy. So apologies to the venerable brother mock. No disrespect meant. Of course, you are Radio Club Crawl, and if you ever listen to a show, he will tell you that because when he comes back from a break, he’s like, of course you’re listening to Radio Club Crawl. That’s my best Brother Mock invitation, and it’s not very good. Hey, I want to thank Chris Porter for joining us today. He did come highly recommended from multiple guests on the show. It’s kind of interesting. They all sort of converged at the same time, like the universe was telling me to have him on. So I appreciate that. And if you ever have a topic.

Tom Heath

Or a guest you would like us.

Tom Heath

To chat with or about, give us a shout out on a Facebook or Instagram tag. Maybe hit us up on our website. There’s a contact button on there. The website is Lifelongthstreetcar.org and you can always check out past episodes and get a feel for what we’re doing. If you’re new listener, I kind of forget because knowing this from six years now, if you’re a new listener, head back to Lifelongthreestreetcar.org. Listen to some of those past episodes and you’ll get a feel, especially if you’re new to Tucson, you get a feel for how amazing our urban core is because this is episode 254. 254 shows 200 plus interviews. And it just absolutely amazes me each time that I do this, that I’m not even scratching the surface. We got some more stuff coming up. It’s fun. We’ve got people from a startup newspaper, Luminaria. We’ve got people from Borderlands and the Brewing talking about something very important to me, which is beer. So all that’s coming up here in the next few weeks, but again, if you have

Tom Heath

anything to cover, please don’t hesitate to tag us and reach out. Again, thank you to Chris Porter. Apologies to Brother Mock from last week and we’re going to leave you with some music today. This is going back to 2014. It’s a band called Ballyhoo and the album is what is the album name? The album is the cooldown. It’s Volume One. The song is called ADHD. I hope you have a great week and tune in next Sunday for more life along the streetcar.