Interview with Dr. Taylor Allbright
chatting ADHD, productivity, self-care, and more
Welcome to my interview with Dr. Taylor Allbright, an ADHD coach and writer of the Substack letter ADHD Unpacked.
Today’s letter is a deep dive into Taylor’s journey in and out of academia to create her business as a coach and we also touch on productivity, self-care, and writing. You can listen to an audio recording of our conversation below. I hope you enjoy!
Taylor Allbright, PhD, is a coach specializing in sustainable productivity and well-being for people with ADHD, as well as anyone with executive functioning challenges. She is also the author of the newsletter ADHD Unpacked, where she breaks down cutting-edge research on ADHD and mental health. She is passionate about using non-judgmental, strengths-oriented, and evidence-based coaching approaches to help people thrive. Prior to becoming an ADHD coach, Dr. Allbright spent over a decade working in the field of education as a college professor, researcher, and K-12 teacher. She lives in southern California with her family and two cats. You can learn more about her coaching offerings at taylorallbright.com.
Kate: Hi Taylor! I’ve been looking forward to interviewing you for my Substack for a while and I’m excited to introduce my readers to your story and your work. You and I met in an unconventional way: through an information session for a coaching program training on Zoom. If I remember correctly, you mentioned that you were an academic and I got so excited that I sent you a private chat asking for your email so we could connect.
Readers here know about my path out of academia into self-employment as a coach. I chose to start my business instead of applying for the job market, whereas you worked as a professor for some time before you made the leap. Could you walk us through your decision to become a professor and your decision to shift out of academia?
Taylor: Yes! Okay, so first—yes, we met through a Zoom. We met through the backchannel Zoom chat at a coaching program info session and neither of us ended up going to that coaching program, but we made friends with each other. And I am so thrilled that that happened and we connected with each other.
So I started my career in K-12 as a high school English teacher. And I burned out hard. I knew the classroom wasn’t going to be sustainable for me long-term. And I had really enjoyed my experiences doing research when I got my master’s degree, and I liked the thought of being able to split my time between teaching—which I do really like—and research, and then also being able to take a step back from the urgency of the classroom in order to reflect on education at the systemic level was really appealing to me. So I decided to pursue a PhD in education policy.
And—alright, so of course, there were also some more complex and personal reasons why this career choice resonated with me. So, like a lot of people, I struggle with these core beliefs that, “If I am not extraordinarily productive, I’m not worthwhile as a person.” For me, these beliefs are rooted in early childhood trauma as well as a lot of ongoing cultural messaging. So, for me, the thought of pursuing a PhD and entering the academic world, which has publications and accolades, it really fit in with my already-established unhealthy patterns of overachieving.
So, I first started experiencing some nagging doubts about academia as a career long before I actually made the decision to leave. When I was in the dissertation phase in grad school, I remember attending one of those “how to navigate the job market” panels at a conference, and I’m just sitting in this panel, and I was just feeling a deep sense of dread about the job search. Panelists were talking about moving to remote locations, having to live apart from their partners, delaying or foregoing having children, and working endless hours, and all of these kinds of things. And there was this voice in my head just saying, “Hey, I don’t think I love academia enough to make these kinds of sacrifices.”
After that panel, I happened to stumble on what seemed to be a dream professor job for me. It was local, I wouldn’t have to move and uproot my whole life. It was at a teaching institution, with really low pressure to publish. And I was totally over the moon when I landed the job. I had the most incredible students and colleagues, and to this day, I am really proud of everything I accomplished while I was working as a professor there.
But, at the same time, the lingering feeling that academia wasn’t right—it just never went away. I found myself feeling a lot of resentment and irritation. So, I’d get an email about a new service task I had to do or some next step on a research manuscript, and I would feel this strong negative reaction in my body. Intellectually, I could convince myself that this career was a great fit, but on the somatic level my body just kept communicating that I wasn’t happy there. And at the time, I felt like I didn’t have any other options—like, I already had a PhD, I’m on my way to tenure, I’m too far gone, right? You can’t leave a tenure-track faculty job!
Then I had my first child, and I had some pretty serious complications in terms of physical and mental health with this birth. And that was such a major life transition and a really traumatic experience. And as I started to recover and heal from that experience, I had this very clear realization, which was: I didn’t want to be a professor anymore.
I started listening to this podcast, it’s called The Self-Compassionate Professor. It’s hosted by a career coach, Danielle de la Mare, who specializes in helping academics who are considering leaving. And she interviewed a lot of former academics, and I found myself listening to these interviews and longing to be one of these people who had left. And then I also sought her out and I did a couple of coaching sessions with Danielle, which were really helpful.
And I came to realize that, despite the way academia can make you feel sometimes, being a professor is a job. It’s just a job. And, like with any job, you can pursue other options if the job isn’t the right fit for you anymore. And that realization was really freeing.
Kate: Thank you for that! That’s excellent. So, a little switch here—I’ve really enjoyed reading your posts on your Substack, ADHD Unpacked. While I don’t have ADHD myself, it’s something I think about a lot as a Productivity Coach for knowledge workers and as someone whose spouse has ADHD. I’m curious to hear what drew you to focus your Substack and coaching services to support folks with ADHD?
Taylor: Yeah! So, I’ve been interested in mental health for a really, really long time. I was first diagnosed with clinical depression when I was 15. I’ve had depression and anxiety and PTSD, and I’ve been struggling with these issues pretty much my whole life. And so, for me, trying to go on my own mental health journey just led me to becoming fascinated with mental health as a topic in general. Not just for me, but for everyone—how do we heal? How do we cultivate well-being? How do we do those things in a world that isn’t set-up to support us, that is actively harming us? And how do we start to reinvision and build a different kind of world?
And so, parallel to this interest in mental health—and I think this is something you and I have a lot in common on—I’m really interested in executive functioning and productivity, and the relationship between those, and how those things intersect with mental health. When I was a high school teacher, and later as a college professor, I’ve also enjoyed teaching content, but what I’m most passionate about is supporting students with what is commonly called “executive functioning.” So, helping students set goals, and manage projects, and reflect on the progress they’re making, and deal with overwhelm and imposter syndrome and all of the sort of psychological and emotional aspects of trying to pursue the goals they have in that particular course.
And so, ADHD Coaching as a career just really lies at the intersection of these two areas of interest—this interest in mental health and this interest in productivity and executing functioning. Because ADHD Coaching is about supporting the mental health of people with ADHD through these intentional executive functioning strategies and support for goal setting and attainment.
Throughout my whole career as a teacher, as a researcher, as a professor, I’ve always loved helping people. I’ve loved working with people one on one, I love facilitating groups. And coaching has those pieces that I really loved, those things that I really liked about being a teacher and a professor, and it also brings in these areas of working with mental health and executive functioning that I am really passionate about.
Kate: Excellent! I admire your Substack a lot for the effort you put into researching sources to write substantive posts. This is something I endeavor to do in my productivity newsletters, so I know how much time and thought it takes! Do you see any overlaps in your current approach to research and writing for a newsletter with the way you researched or wrote when you were working at a university? Is there anything that you miss, or anything that you have access to now that you really appreciate?
Taylor: Yeah! One thing that I really enjoy about having an academic background but then now entering this more broader public space is that I have this capacity to understand research findings, and then share those research findings with a broader audience. And in trying to do that with the newsletter, something that has really shocked me is that there is this huge discrepancy between popular discourse about ADHD and what is actually being talked about in ADHD research.
There’s a lot of concepts of critical importance to the ADHD community that have pretty much zero research behind them, and I find this really troubling! Especially, I think it’s troubling that research priorities aren’t aligned with the interests and experiences of the neurodivergent community. And then I also think it is troubling when people think something has a scientific research basis, but it doesn’t. (Now, I want to be clear—I’m not saying something has to be research-based to be true. Things are true based on our experiences. I think where we start to get into trouble is when we say something is science that isn’t, right? I think there needs to be some clarity about: where are these insights coming from?)
I noticed this first when I wrote this post about rejection sensitive dysphoria (which people call RSD) – and it turns out there isn’t a research base on this topic. It’s a huge topic of interest for the neurodivergent community in general. It’s a topic that really resonates with a lot of people and captures their experience. But it isn’t a research-based topic. But you’ll hear people kind of throw around statistics of like, “Two-thirds of patients have RSD and duh-duh-duh.” And it’s like, that isn’t actually based in a study, right? Those are kind of made up. But what is true is that people read this definition of this concept and they’re like, “Oh! That’s me!” And a lot of people have that. And that’s where the truth is.
Then this issue also comes up when we talk about the role of hormones and ADHD for people with menstrual cycles or people in menopause. There’s only a tiny amount of research on this, but if you talk to people who menstruate in the ADHD community, this is huge—the relationship between their symptoms and their cycles. So this is another area where there’s this big gap.
And so I approach my newsletter posts in a way that’s kind of similar to how I did my lit reviews when I was an academic—and this is also how I taught doctoral students when I taught them to do their lit reviews for their dissertations. I would start off with a Google Scholar search, get a few good recent pieces from the last five years, and go through and pull out their citations, and build an initial list of sources that are interesting to me. I’d put them in my reference manager—I use Paperpile, but there’s a bunch of different ones—and then from that list, I skim a bunch of abstracts, and then I pick a couple that I’m going to do a deep dive into. And while I’m doing that, I’m taking lots of notes, I’m copying and pasting from the articles, and just starting to put together this collage of ideas and quotes and stuff. My notetaking technique is based on what Robert Boice suggests in his book, Professors as Writers, which—that was a book that was really helpful for establishing my academic writing practice.
But what’s really nice about writing a newsletter, as opposed to a lit review, is that I’m reading these articles to share relevant insights to a broader audience. So when I’m doing a lit review, back when I did those, I’m going in and I’m trying to build this argument about like, “Okay. What is the state of the research base? What is the gap that I’m filling? What is the foundation of the literature that I can use to inform the research design for this study?” I have this very strategic purpose that’s related to the particular study that I’m writing. With the newsletter, there’s a lot more freedom. I’m just like, “Hey, what is interesting here? What would be interesting to me, what is interesting to people who have ADHD, what is interesting to people who are married to or dating or loving people with ADHD?” It feels a lot more open and playful, the way I can explore research to find what I want to put in this newsletter.
And so, that shift really frees me up to explore research in these different ways. I can appreciate research for what it does for everyday people, instead of sizing it up to be like, “Oh! How does this support my next study?” And I have just a lot more freedom to explore whatever is interesting to me that particular week instead of feeling like, “Oh, I need to tie this into my long-term research agenda.”
Kate: Wonderful. Thank you for that! So, I know that you and I both are video gamers who clocked many hours in Baldur’s Gate 3. I fangirled out at your recent interview with Shelly Mazzanoble, author of Middle-Aged Lady Mom and Senior Brand Manager at Wizards of the Coast. In addition to video games, what else do you turn to for self-care, play, and nourishment?
Taylor: Like I wrote about in that post with Shelly, role-playing games (Dungeons and Dragons is an example of a tabletop role-playing game) have been an enormous part of my self-care lately, because it’s a space where I get to be creative, I get to make up characters and tell stories with other people. It’s a place where I get to just play pretend. And I have a weekly group that I adore, and they bring a lot of joy and play into my life.
Something else that has been nourishing me lately is live music. It’s been bringing a lot of joy and playfulness. My husband and I only recently started making an effort to get a sitter so that we can go see shows. Our daughter is turning 3 next month, so we’re just kind of now getting to the age [where we can be] like, “Okay, we’re going to go out late and have a sitter.” And that has been really, really fun for both of us. My husband and I met in 2020, and then we had a baby, and we both had some health scares over the last couple years. This is really the first time in our relationship that we’ve gone out-out and gotten to enjoy live music, and that’s been really special and joyful.
I already said I play Dungeons and Dragons, so you know I’m a nerd. I really like genre fiction, I really like a good sci-fi or fantasy story. Most recently I watched the Fallout series on Amazon Prime. It’s super violent, so if you don’t like violent media, this is not for you. But for me, I’m a big fan of post-apocalyptic dystopias. If you liked Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower or N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy, or McCarthy’s The Road—that kind of post apocalyptic dystopia—Fallout is kind of in that vein. Not as good as those novels, but it’s still a lot of fun. And I had a very, very, very good time watching it.
And then, a routine that I have been working on working on is going on a walk first thing in the morning. First thing when I get up, instead of pressing snooze or reading my phone in bed or something. I wrote a whole post about morning routines and how this is something to help me wake up in the morning, help with sunlight exposure, and getting my body moving. So on the days when I do go on the morning walk, it has given me a lot of energy and just a really peaceful, but also energizing way, to start the morning.
Kate: That’s lovely! We’ve never played Fallout, but we just started watching it and it is very good. I can totally see how it’s based on a video game. Excellent. So, whenever I’m on a podcast, the hosts tend to end the interview with a request for tangible tools that listeners can start applying that day. While I see value in focusing on actionable takeaways, I want to end our interview with a more open-ended question: what is currently inspiring you and making you feel excited about your alt-ac journey right now?
Taylor: Taking breaks! I realize that’s kind of, you know, “What’s inspiring you about your alt-ac journey? Taking breaks from my alt-ac journey!” But hear me out—so, something that has helped a lot lately is giving myself permission to take breaks in my workday. And I think for me, I’ve been socialized in K-12 education and higher education, which are spaces where—at least the messaging I always got was, “There’s never enough time, there’s always so much you have to do, you can’t let your students down, you can’t let your colleagues down, and you have to squeeze every single ounce of productivity out of every last second you have available.” And then right now, I’m a mom of a young child and I’m paying a lot for childcare, and so there’s this feeling like, “Oh, I need to get this return on investment. For every minute of daycare, I need to be making this count!”
But then the other hand is like—I chose to leave academia and when I chose to leave, I picked self-employment. And one of the main reasons I wanted that was wanting the freedom to move at a more relaxed pace and then also have a bit more room for things other than work and parenting. So I’ve been really trying to give myself permission to give myself breaks on weekdays. So that might include an after-lunch nap, or taking a break to do some creative writing, or go for a walk, lie down and read a novel. Just don’t be productive, despite the fact that it’s the middle of a Monday-Friday and my child is in daycare. Like, give myself a little bit of time. And I think that has helped me savor the freedom of having a career with a flexible schedule. And I actually don’t think—yes, I can do that because I’m self-employed, but I think for a lot of academics or people with a lot of knowledge worker jobs, often that flexibility is available, it just feels like it’s not culturally. Now, there are certain jobs like classroom teaching and plenty of jobs where you have to be “on” and we can’t take breaks like this. But for many of us, I think that there’s more capacity to take breaks than it feels like there is.
One other thing I will say is, connecting with you, Kate, is also such a source of inspiration and excitement for me in my career. Getting to talk to someone who is on a similar journey and has similar values is just so, so helpful. I think the bigger takeaway with this is—in a lot of industries, for me in education and academia, but I think this is true for a lot of fields—it is easy to end up in a cultural environment that celebrates overwork and focused on hyper-achieving. It is really restorative and affirming for me when I can find a counter-cultural community and these relationships that we are pushing back against that emphasis on overwork and instead we’re focusing on meaningful care, on well-being, and more sustainable approaches to accomplishing the goals that we care about.
Kate: Thank you so much! If you’re curious about Taylor’s work, I encourage you to subscribe for her newsletter here. You can learn more about her coaching offerings and reach her directly at taylorallbright.com.
Kate here! I’ll be back next week with a bonus post for paid subscribers and will return to everyone’s inboxes the first Wednesday in June with a productivity post.
Take care and talk soon,
Dr. Kate