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💥How to EASILY Frontload google cal for the entire school year, and have MORE freedom and fun

Get ready to hit PAUSE a lot! In this vid I go FAST to help students figure out how to use Google Cal to make life EASIER, even if they don’t like planners. This is how I help students frontload the calendar, so all of the important dates for the entire year are in their calendar from day 1. It’s easy and makes life a lot less stressful.

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Video Transcript: Click here to download the transcript PDF.

Hey, what is up students? I hope you’re having a great day. Students, parents, teachers, anybody who cares about kids, but you students, I’m going to teach you in this video how to make your life easier by front-loading your Google Calendar. If you use Google Calendar, you can also use other online calendars to front-load your calendar. I’m going to show you how I do this with students. Students who don’t like calendars, who don’t like planners, to make your life easier, so you have less stress, more freedom, more fun. Now, in this video, what I’m going to do is show you how to set up your calendar and front-loaded for the school year with long term things. So the first thing that I want you to do is get into your Google Calendar or your Google inbox. If you’re in your inbox, just go right here, right here. We’re going to do it from right here and we’re going to go to the calendar. Again, you can also do it from right here with this little button. And you can open it up right there to get into your calendar. But I’m going to do it from right here. We’re going to open up Google Calendar because this is how I usually do it. And you can see this is what the month looks like in Google Calendar right now. And the next thing that I want you to do is to look up your school district and the word ‘calendar’. So the local school district here is BVSD. So whatever your school districts called, in the word calendar, and look here, it says the 2019-2020 PDF. We don’t want that, we want 2020-2021. I don’t see that here. But I do notice that right here, it shows them calendars approved for the school year. So let’s see what we can pull up here. Now I happen to know that this school district does two versions, we’re just going to look at one version right now. And this version that we see here is the 2020-2021 calendar. That’s what I want to see. If you notice here, it has the code on the bottom, you know this key that shows you what the whole thing means. But let’s say that you’re in 10th grade, August 20th is your first day. So August 20th is the first day of school for this school year. So what we’re going to do is we are going to go back to the Google Calendar, and we’re going to go to August 20th. I have all these examples, forget about those. And let’s say we say ‘First day of school,’ and plop that in there. And boom, it’s red. And it’s bright, and it’s easy to see.

Now the next thing that I want you to do, I told you I want you to front-load your calendar. And the reason I do this is my students, my middle, high school, and college students who don’t like calendars or planners, they love to front-load the calendar because it allows them to see when they don’t have school and they’re always excited to not have school. So for example, on September 7th, it’s Labor Day. So what I’m going to do on September 7th, is I’m going to go here, where is September 7th, here, and I’m not gonna say ‘Labor Day,’ I’m gonna say ‘No School,’ because let’s say as a student, that is exciting for me. But I know that it’s actually a three day weekend. And that’s kind of exciting to me. So I’m gonna say that it starts on September 5th, and ends on September 7th here. Check this out. When you save it, it’s a nice block. Now that red, I don’t want the red for this. I like the red for an alert color, and this is not an alert. I’m off. So maybe I think green because green light means go when I’m free. I’m off. So now in front-loading the calendar, I can see that in September, I have those days off. Well, do I have any other days off in September? The 21st is green, so what does that mean? If I look here, it says it’s ‘Teacher prep and workday,’ no classes for students. So great. September, I have another three day weekend. So I’m going to go here to the 19th, click in there and I’m going to write again ‘No School, yo,’ and maybe I’m going to go hiking or camping with somebody, or you know, go out of town for a weekend or whatever we’re doing, hang out friends, hang out family, whatever is going on.

I’m showing you a different way to do the color. I’m going to go through here, change the color again. Let’s say that I want to blue this time. And boom, look at what we have here. Oh, I didn’t do it right. So let me go back in here. I’m going to edit it by clicking ‘Edit’. And I’m going to change the dates here. So from September 19th, it goes to the 21st. I’m going to save that there. Now when I look at September, it really shows me that I have two, three-day weekends. I like that. I work very hard during the week on my school stuff. I like to know that I have those three day weekends. Come back to the calendar here we see October 12th is green. We have no school. We have a three-day weekend here. October 16th is this light blue. This light blue just says the quarter ends. I don’t need to put that in my calendar. October 30th is a bright blue, that’s the end of the trimester. I don’t really need to know that. November 11th. What’s that? It’s red. The 11th here is Veterans Day. No school then. And look, Thanksgiving Break. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I’m going to put in just Thanksgiving Break right now and I’ll wrap up this video. So we go to November, and in November we have five days off. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. But it gets better Why?

Here’s why. This is the first day of Thanksgiving Break, I’m just gonna write ‘Break, no school’. And when I click on this and go to when it goes through, which is the 29th, and I save it, it’s not just five days off, it’s seven here, plus one + plus one, it’s nine days off, nine days of break. So that’s really nice to know. And we also know that on this day, the 11th, there’s no school because the Veterans Day, so we get to see that. Again, I want to change the color. If I right-click on this, maybe I changed that one to purple, I right-click on this, maybe I change this one to a gray, whatever color I want. But now I can see this.

Now, what front-loading means, students, is that what I want to encourage you to do is sit down with your school calendar and do this for the entire school year. From the first day to the last day. Get everything in your calendar right now that you possibly can. You do it once, it takes you a half-hour, and you’re done for the entire school year. Everything will pop up on your calendar, and it feels really good to know. Trust me, I’m telling you, my students like this. It takes a little bit to get it going. If you want a friend or a parent who is detail-oriented to help you sift through it, go ahead and do that. I also often have people print these calendars, put them on the fridge, put them on wherever you study, on the wall. But either way, this calendar is here for you.

I hope this was helpful to you. My name is Seth Perler. I’m an executive function coach in Colorado and I help students navigate this thing called education so that they can have a great life. But in particular, I work with students who are not into this stuff and help make life easier with more freedom, more fun, less stress, more success in school, and all of that sort of thing. If you liked this video, please give me a thumbs up, support it, leave a comment below, subscribe to my YouTube channel, share with someone and check out my website SethPerler.com for freebies. Parents and teachers, there’s a lot there for you. Have an amazing day! This is the only day you got right now, go enjoy it.

✍️How to make a student ESSAY TEMPLATE on google docs to make your life much easier

So look, you’re doing the same thing over and over and over, wasting time and energy you could use for other things. This video will show you a simple trick to make an essay template you can literally use for years and in many different classes. It’ll save you time and make it WAY easier to get started if you’re someone who tends to procrastinate.

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🎦 YouTube: Visit my official YouTube channel here. Please subscribe, like & comment to support my work.
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✏️ EF101: Here’s my jumpstart course for parents and teachers.
🙏 Thanks! — Seth

Video Transcript: Click here to download the transcript PDF.

What is up students? My name is Seth Perler, I’m an executive function coach in Colorado and I help struggling students navigate this thing called education. So you can have a great future. And my job is that make your life easier, more fun, less stressful, have more success, and make it easier. And what I’m gonna teach you today, in order to make your life easier students is this, I want you to go into your Google Calendar, go into your Google, I want you to set up a template for essays that you will be able to use. If you’re in middle school, you can use it through middle school, high school, and college. If you’re in college, you can use it over and over and over and over and over. It’ll save you a lot of time. Here’s the gist of how that works.

The first thing we are going to do is we’re going to hop right here, you’re going to go into your Google Drive. When you go into your Google Drive, you’re going to open up a new document right here, click on Google Docs. And now you have a brand new document. And what I want you to call this document is “Essay Template”. Get ready to hit pause a lot on this video because I want you to set yours up as well. Go away, please go away, get out. Okay, great, thank you. Now when I click up here, it’s automatically going to snag what I put there. I don’t know if you knew that little hack right there, I’m going to make this easier for you to see. I’m going to put this on size 200 so that it’s easier to see. I’m going to hit Command+A, I’m going to hit Command+A right here, and I’m going to enlarge this, et’s say to 14 for the purposes of this video. Now we have an essay template. I’m going to delete this and I’m going to the right name, or actually, all right, well, I’ll leave it name, date, teacher, class, title. And what I’m gonna do is I’m going to Command+A, I’m going to go right here. I’m going to make it 1.5 spacing, just because I like how 1.5 spacing looks on things like this. Trust me, you will use this for science, social studies, language arts, and sometimes other classes. Math not so much, maybe. But in any class, you have to do a written piece or an essay, we’re going to start with this. We always start with name, date, teacher, and title. And what you’re going to do is you’re going to put your name in here, Seth Perler is my name. So I’m going to put it that in there, I’ll never have to change it for any teacher. The date I will have to change, but I’m going to just put in 7/31/20. And I’m going to leave that there. And then I just have the template and I can just change it for each new paper. Let’s say it’s Mr. Smith, and let’s say the class is language arts. I’m just going to leave those there as placeholders, but those will change for every new paper I do. Title, I’m going to go ahead and take. I’m going to center the title because that’s very professional looking, I’m going to put it in bold, I’m going to do that and hit enter, I’m going to left justify this and I’m going to unbold it, and I’m going to click intro, body one, body two, actually, I’m not gonna write body three yet, I’m gonna write the conclusion. Oops. And then I’m going to write the bibliography and works cited. I’ll explain, don’t worry.

The purpose of this template is this, once we have this template, what you’re going to do is either cut and paste the template or duplicate the template every time you have a new paper, it is going to save you time. But also, if you are a student who struggles with getting things done, this is taking a bunch of steps off your plate, because they’ve already done, why reinvent the wheel? But not only that, one of the biggest problems my students have, I work with students who struggle with executive function, a lot of them have ADHD, a lot of them are very global, big picture, brilliant, creative minds. When you have a creative mind, what do you think happens when you start writing? Well, what happens when my students start writing, probably 95% of the students that I work with have the same struggle. They’re so creative, they have so many ideas, but they’re not what’s called ‘linear.’ So what happens when they start writing a paper is they vomit their ideas all over the paper. What that means is they type in what I call a mono-paragraph, one big, giant, long paragraph. So they might have a paragraph that’s two or three pages long, it makes no sense. It goes in a million different directions. And then they spend a lot of time trying to edit it, revise it, and make it make sense. Then they get frustrated, they don’t turn it in at all, or they turn it in late, or they turn it in on time, but they turn it in and they’re not really happy with it. It’s just too frustrating for them to edit it and revise it. This template that I’m showing you will help you have what I call buckets. In this case, we have five buckets, intro, body, body, body, conclusion. Those five buckets are how you’re going to build a paper. So even if you write a one-page essay, or even if you write a 10-page essay that has many, many, many paragraphs, it still generally has three main body sections and an intro and a conclusion. So even if you’re in college and you’re writing a 20-page paper, oftentimes this type of format is still at least the basics of what’s going to get you started. So let’s go ahead and look at this. We have name, date, teacher, class. And these you can put on the same line if you want in your template. And then you have a title, the title is centered. The title also can be called assignment. What is your intro do? It tells what I will teach, so it tells what you’re going to teach or talk about in this paper. So go ahead and write that in there.

What is body one about? Well, it is basically your introduction, okay? Listen very carefully to this part, because what I’m going to tell you, helps you in middle, high school, and college, it’s very simple. Writing is hard. But this structure is used in all, almost all of your writing. Listen very carefully. Your intro, basically, is going to say, “Yo, what up. I’m about to tell you about this topic. I’m going to tell you three things.” So I might say, “Yo, what’s up, I’m about to tell you about Paul Reed Smith guitars, my favorite electric guitar company,” or “I’m about to tell you about acoustic guitars.” Okay, let’s just say I’m going to talk about guitars, why you should play guitar. And then I’m gonna say topic number one, the benefits of electric guitars. Topic number two, the benefits of acoustic guitars. Topic number three, how to jam with other people. So I have a paper that says, “Hey, I’m gonna tell you when to pick an electric, when to pick an acoustic, and how to jam with other people. So that’s what I’m going to teach them. Body one is the subtopic, or the topic. This is details, and this is sort of proving your point. Sorry, I’m talking and typing in the same time, proving your points. This is where teachers will talk about supporting your idea. So supporting evidence, you might hear teachers say things like that. This is where you’re going to say, and in this case, in our body one, we’re going to talk about electric guitars. Body number two, we’re going to talk about “Let me do this,” and then I’m going to do this again. This is body two, this is body three. But these are the same, you’re just talking about that point. This one is all about electric, this one is all about acoustic, this one is all about jamming, and then your conclusion.

What does the conclusion do? The conclusion simply says, “Yo, what up? I just told you, boom, boom, boom.” So the intro says, “Yo, I’m about to tell you,” then you tell them, then the conclusion says, “Yo, I just told you,” and then you have your bibliography and work cited. Usually, I will center this, I will bold this. And oftentimes I will hit enter un-center that, I will unbold that, and I might put an example of a website or a book or a newspaper in here, just so that I have sort of a template for the work cited page. Now, we’re going to do is delete this, and then I’m going to show you how you would use this in a class. Let’s say you are in social studies, and you have to write a paper about my least favorite topic right now, politics. Eww. So you have to write a paper on this, you’re going to go ahead and click that. And you’re going to click ‘Make a Copy.’ And I’m going to call it instead of ‘Copy of Essay Template,’ I’m going to call it ‘Social Studies Essay,’ and I always like to put the due date on there. So let’s say it’s due 09/08/20. And I always put my name in the title, there’s a reason for that, and that is because your teachers get inundated with a lot of stuff.. Look what’s happening, oh my gosh, it’s automatically generating my brand new paper. Now I have the template, but I still have not lost my original template. So I can still use my original template for any other class. But I have my brand new template, I’m going to make this easier for you all to read. Now I can put the title it’s as a social studies thing on politics, I can put the new teacher, I can put the new date, I’m going to leave my name. Now I have, instead of vomiting everywhere, I can really start to think through how I’m going to do this. Then if your teacher doesn’t want to work cited, many don’t, you can just delete the work cited but it was already there just in case. You’re only going to be doing work cited on a small fraction of papers, but I’m telling you, you will do a lot of them the next few years. So just listen to me. Do it right the first time, have it there so that it’s all ready to rock and roll. And boom, there you go. I forgot to put on the conclusion. Here’s what I taught or told you, here’s what it was about. And that’s about it.

So, to recap, students, my job is to make your life easier, less stressful, have more time, more freedom, more fun in your life because you’re wasting less time and you’re being proactive rather than reactive. You’re doing things, a little hack that’s going to make your life easier, creating a template called ‘Essay Template,’ with a template for what you use for almost every paper, you’re going to do in middle, high school, and college that is ready to rock and roll. If you’re in college, obviously, you can make it more complicated, you know, maybe Times New Roman, most of your teachers in college are going to want Times New Roman, 12-point font, double spaced, it might be a certain format at your university, whatever. But to have the template ready to rock and roll and just click ‘Copy,’ like I did ‘File, Make a Copy’ and you have a brand new one. Or the other thing that you can do is you can hit Command+A to select all, and then start a new document and Command+V to paste it into your new document. I personally like this way of the make a copy better, but doesn’t matter. They’re both very similar.

My name is Seth Perler. I’m an executive function coach in Colorado. If you like this, give it a thumbs up. Subscribe on YouTube, subscribe on my website. If you’re a parent or teacher, I have a bunch of freebies for you. I have so much content on there, support what I do, sign up grabs freebies and share this with somebody. Leave a comment, tell me what you think of this. Is this helpful? What would you do? Did I forget anything? I don’t think so, I’ve been doing this a long time. But if I did, leave your tips below. Let us know what would make this even easier, what will make it even better for people. Have a fantastic day. Hope you have some peace in your heart today. I hope you have joy today and I hope you have a real connection with human beings in your life that you care about today. Take care.

Teachers, how to use Google Calendar to help Executive Function for EVERYONE

(Parents, you’ll like this one too) Teachers, in this video I show you some concrete ways to use Google calendar to make life easier for kids with Executive Function challenges, but also for parents and YOU. Now, you’ll have to make sure your privacy settings are set properly for your situation, but other than that, this video will show you a lot of cool tricks you can adapt for your classroom. Get ready to hit pause a lot to set yours up and to take notes!

💚 Give: Love my work and want to donate?
🎦 YouTube: Visit my official YouTube channel here. Subscribe, like & comment to support my work.
👉 Share: To support me, please *CLICK* at the bottom to share on FB or Pinterest.
✏️ EF101: Here’s my jumpstart course for parents and teachers.
🙏 Thanks! — Seth

Teachers, here’s what I would need to go back this fall

Teachers, first, THANK YOU for serving kids. Second, here’s a vid about what I would need to feel good about going back this fall with the pandemic and all. I hope this is helpful in some way.

Video Transcript: Click here to download the transcript PDF.

Hey teachers, what’s up? It’s me, Seth, with SethPerler.com. I’m an executive function coach based here in Colorado and help struggling students navigate this thing called education so they can have a great life, which is why you do what you do. You’re a teacher, or a para, or a school psychologist, or whatever you do, because you want your kids to have a great life, you want to help them plant seeds to build a great future. Now I specifically work with kids who struggle with executive function, and you all have your own role. But in this video, today, I’m going to talk a little bit about what’s going on with a pandemic, and school opening in this fall of 2020. So it is now July in 2020, and we are in a really challenging place. The first thing I want to say to you is, thank you. I know that you all are working tirelessly behind the scenes to figure out creative ways to serve the students you work with, and that is really challenging and really complicated. I know that a lot of people don’t know how hard you work, and how much heart, time, energy, and even your own money you put into your careers to serve kids. So I just want to say that.

Next, I want to talk about how I was a teacher for 12 years. I taught many different grades and many different subjects. But I am a coach now and have been since 2010. But what would I need now if I was back in the classroom? The reason I’m making this video for you is really to hopefully validate for you how you feel, and hopefully give you a context that’s useful. I know you’re talking with your friends and your family and people about this stuff. Hopefully, my thoughts will contribute and put it in a container that’s useful for you. That’s one of the things I like to do is distill things down to some important concepts. So first of all, if I was going back to the classroom this fall, what I would need is one main thing, I am a very big picture person. So let me break this one big thing down to you. The number one thing I would need is I would need to feel safe and secure in my career this fall. So whatever that takes to feel safe and secure is what I would need. Here’s some of the things that I’ve been thinking about. 50% of teachers quit teaching by year five, that means that they spent four years of their life in college, maybe even a Master’s after that, and they spent 2, 3, 4, or 5 years in the classroom and then quit. Why would anybody spend nine years of their life dedicated to serving kids and quit? It’s because they’re burnt out. Because they’re burnt out. Because it’s not fulfilling them, it’s not allowing them to live the life that they want to live, to be able to support their lifestyle, to make a decent living, the work-life balance, to be able to retain their mental health. Teachers work so hard. If teachers don’t feel supported, whatever the case is, for some reason, 50%, half of these people who are dedicated to our kids, what the heck is going on? Why do we have this situation? I have theories about that. I’m sure you do, too. I’m not going to go into that in this video. But the point of that statement is, is that this is a very demanding job. Don’t ever forget it. I just know for me, I was so used to being a teacher for 12 years, that in working six or seven, it took me years to start saying “I can’t work seven days a week, I need to make myself take a day off every weekend,” took me years as a teacher to do that. Teachers go to work early, they work through their lunch, they work through their breaks, they stay late, they take their work home with them at night, and they work on weekends. It’s so demanding and sometimes there’s just not enough support. Not enough emotional support from the admin or from other staff, not enough support with the curriculum. Like the demands, the weight that’s on your shoulders is so big. And obviously this year, it’s even bigger to figure out how to serve your kids. So again, thank you. But yes, this is a lot. So you have to take care of yourself if you’re going to take care of your kids. And again, you have to feel safe and secure in what you’re doing. So all right, what do we need to feel safe and secure?

Most teachers, as I said, burn out, 50%, and quit by year five, so that does not feel safe and secure to them. So first of all, what you need is support, to not be burnt out, support from your admins, support from your family, support from your staff, support from the people around you. You’re going to need support to feel safe and secure and not burn out. You’re also gonna need money, money. The average teacher in America makes about $40,000 a year before taxes, that’s not a lot of money. Hourly, if you break that down, and if you work a 40-hour workweek, which most teachers don’t most teachers work 50-60 hours a week. So look at how long you work, how much does that work out to hourly? And then how much time do you have for your own family, your own mental health, your own fun, your own physical health, your own chores, your own errands, you have to run? Like just life. Okay, so the money has to be worth it for you. So for me, if I was going to feel safe and secure, I would need to know that I was making good enough money. Now, obviously, with the pandemic, we need to feel safe and secure. And what would I need? What I need is physical distancing in the classroom. What I need everyone is to wear masks. What would I need? Look, this is a tough time, we may not be in the classroom. I am the type of person who believes in safety and health in life first. Okay, that comes first. As Betsy DeVos was saying, whatever percent of kids might die of this thing, as if that’s acceptable, it’s just like, really? What if that’s your classroom or my classroom? I can’t imagine it.

Anyhow, one of the things I’ve been thinking about as a teacher is that I need to feel safe and secure, as far as my health is concerned. So we need to feel safe in the classroom and in the school building. But also I would need to feel safe and secure that if I got sick, one, my lesson plans for a sub would be sufficient. Can you imagine? I was in a coma with ARDS in 2000. Okay. When you’re in a coma, you don’t know you’re in a coma. Nobody tells you “Hey, you’re about to be in a coma.” I just woke up nine days later, I had no idea what happened. I’m intubated. I can’t talk because I’m intubated. Like, if that happened, what would happen with the lesson plans with subs? Who would the subs be? Would I have enough time to plan for them? So that’s the safe and secure thing, would my staff and my admin support me to make sure that those things were taken care of, because if you get sick, if I got sick, there’s no way I’m going to have the energy to do that stuff. So that’s something to consider with the safety and security.

The other thing that I think about is looking at how, so I know a lot of my followers are in other countries, but here in the United States, because we pay for our own health care. I do as as a coach. But anyhow, the health care in America, I know for me, anytime I go to the doctor, and things are supposed to be covered, basically, one of the things that happens is I call my insurance company, I’m like, “Hey, I need this.” And my insurance company will be like “Oh yeah, we cover that 100%, after you pay a $7,000 deductible and $350 a month for your regular monthly fees.”” How much money are you making as a teacher? How supported do you feel by your insurance company, whatever one you’re in, whatever district you’re in. Then looking at the doctors and the nurses and how our country dealt with giving them the equipment they needed to protect themselves? It’s been a nightmare. Am I going to trust that if I get sick, the people that are risking their lives to save my life or help me in a medical situation that they even have what they need? Are they burnt out? Cn I trust, can I feel safe and secure that my government and my insurance company will take care of me. Then after everything is over when I came out of my coma, I had 10s of 1,000s of dollars of medical bills that, I was a young man at the time, took me years to pay off my medical bills. Years. So if that happens to you and you’re making 40K a year. I would need to feel secure that my school, my district, my government, and my insurance had my back. Woud I feel secure about those things?

So anyhow, that’s about it. I wanted to put what I think are some of the key core concepts that have been running through my mind over and over during this time as far as your teachers are concerned, what mine are. So anyhow, my name is Seth Perler I’m an executive function coach in Colorado. If you liked this, give it a thumbs up, leave a comment below. And what I’m interested in the comments here on Youtube is this. What would you need to feel safe and secure to go back into the classroom this fall? What are some of your thoughts? What inspiration, encouragement, creative ideas do you have? Do you agree with me? Are those things that you would need to feel safe and secure? And how close are you to getting that? Leave a comment, tell us where you’re at. Let’s have some dialogue about this. Anyhow, I hope that you and your family and your friends are safe and healthy. Have some peace of mind and some joy today, and have some real connection. Again, teachers, thank you, and principals, and school psychologists, and paras, and everybody watching. Thank you for what you do, bending over backward, taking the time, energy, and as I said before, and your own personal money to serve kids and try to do the most important jobs in the world to help raise kids to have great lives. Be well, I will see you soon. Take care.

How to build routines with Google Calendar

Students, if Executive Function is challenging, creating routines is absolutely critical if you want to achieve your goals in school and life. This is one great way to start making routines easier so you can have less stress and more success.

Organize Students with Google Keep

I work with a lot of students who want better, easier, faster ways of organizing school and personal life so they can be MORE successful and LESS stressed. Google Keep, connected with your Gmail account, is a VERY powerful, flexible and easy tool to help. In this video I teach students how to get started in 10 minutes with some great ideas they can implement today. Here I offer 9 categories they may want to create at least for now to get a jumpstart.

Should schools that teach Entrepreneurship also teach Executive Functioning?

I received an email asking about this, and this video is an in-depth response. Here’s the original email:

Ok, here is a question for you: How do you think executive functioning applies to being an entrepreneur? I have recently joined a group at my son’s school whose goal is to improve the entrepreneurial program, which is the foundation of the school. In a recent brainstorming session, we came up with a bunch of ideas geared towards improving the program. I suggested strengthening the TEACHING of executive functioning skills, because I feel this school does a GREAT job of providing the kids a chance to practice EF skills, but not a lot of teaching about WHAT they are. Which is frankly, the case in a lot of schools. I am a huge believer that having a language around issues helps communication, problem resolving and creative solutions happen more smoothly. The administrators at the school seem open to the idea, but there are other members of the committee who are really resistant to the idea. A couple of things I am coming up against, I believe, are:

1. A lack of understanding of what “EF skills” means,

2. A resistance to the idea of planning in connection with entrepreneurialism, and

3. A desire to focus only on the new/innovative and risk tolerance aspects of entrepreneurialism.

My thought is that creativity and risk tolerance have quite a bit to do with EF skills (updating, shifting, self-regulation, etc). And taking an idea from a vision to a profitable business has TONS of EF involvement. Thanks for your time! And also, a genuine, heartfelt thank you for helping this linear thinking mom understand her concurrently thinking children.

Teens, imposter syndrome, entrepreneurship & EF

Parents, this one is for teens who struggle with Executive Function, think outside the box, and who might make awesome entrepreneurs someday. It also discusses how Imposter Syndrome can hold them back. Check it out, share it with your child if you think they will like it.

Video Transcript: Click here to download the transcript PDF.

Hey, what’s up, students? It’s me, Seth with SethPerler.com. I am what’s called an executive function coach, based in Colorado, and I help struggling students navigate this thing called education so that you can have an awesome life. And in this video, I’m going to tell you about you becoming an entrepreneur. And I’m going to be talking about what’s called ‘executive function,’ and I’m going to talk about something called an “imposter syndrome.” So here’s the first thing. If you struggle with executive function, that means that you struggle with organization, motivation, you always have lates, incompletes, zeros, missing work, you argue with your parents about homework, you have a lot of good excuses. You like to argue with your parents about stuff, you don’t like to ask your teachers for help, particularly if you’re in middle or high school. So school. I struggled with that, a lot of people do. And if that’s you, be honest with yourself, and that’s cool. But the point is, how do we have a great life? Well, a lot of my students that I work with are what are called ‘neurodiverse,’ they have a diverse brain, they think differently, they don’t fit in the box. And this is good. You don’t want to fit in the box, you want to be you, you want to be the best you that you can be. You want to develop your strengths and the good things about yourself and work on your weaknesses. But we spend a lot of time working on weaknesses in schools, but it’s really more about the strengths as far as I’m concerned.

So, my students who don’t fit in the box, and who really struggle with this school stuff, and they’re not that into school, and they struggle with homework and all these things. They have a different brain and they know it. They’re creative, or they just think differently than most people think. These kids have enormous potential for becoming entrepreneurs. What that means is that you, literally you, can do anything, anything. You’ve got a short life, you got maybe a 100 years slip, what are you gonna do with it? How old are you now? How much more of your life do you have left? And what do you want to do with it? What matters to you? What is purposeful to you? What is interesting, what are you passionate about? I know some of you watching are like, “Yeah, I don’t, I’m not really passionate about anything. I’m not into anything.” That’s cool. Just at this point, explore everything in your life. Don’t be on screens all day long, and stuck in that stuff, and have a sedentary life. Go explore life and the world, you’ll figure out what you like, I promise you. You’ll figure out what matters to you. And you can, and when I say this, I mean this, you can do anything you want with your life. You can create any business, job, whatever matters to you, you can do that. If you’re able to execute, if you have decent (doesn’t have to be perfect), but decent executive function, then you can do anything, anything. So if you think when you get older, you might want to be an entrepreneur, you might not want to work behind a desk, or working in an office, or work a traditional job where you have a cool idea. I have one of my students who’s an amazing rock climber, everything outdoors, fishing, camping, rowing, whatever, he is into all of that, and he’s so good at it. He could develop a touring company that helps. He likes what’s called dirt bagging, which is people who like to live out of a van and rock climb all the time, or something like that. He could create a business where he could rent out, you know, the vans and the stuff and take people on tours. Anyhow, it’s endless what you can do. So you really can do crazy idea jobs, and do what you want to do if you can execute.

The thing is, is this, and this is a really important point. If you have an outside-the-box mind, and you like to think differently, you have different ways of coming up with things. You feel like sometimes people don’t understand you. But you know you have good ideas. And it’s outside-the-box, you’d like to think differently. And you think “Maybe someday I want to be an entrepreneur,” then inevitably, you will absolutely, positively, 100%, come up against this thing called ‘imposter syndrome.’ And I did this, I’ve done this many times in my business and every successful entrepreneur has done this. Your parents who’ve gone through this, we go through imposter syndrome. That means that we have situations in our life where we think “Who am I to start a business with rock climbing? Who am I, who says to start a business with executive function? Who am I to start this or that? Who am I to speak on this? Who am I to teach people about this? I don’t know enough. I’m not good enough for this.” With imposter syndrome, we’re saying, “Who am I to do this? I’m just a normal person. I can’t, you know, write a book or this or that.” No, every single thing that’s ever been done in the world has been done by people just like you, they’re not special. They’re not above it. They’re not magical. They weren’t given some magical spell that makes them more powerful or capable than anybody else. Okay. And they went through the imposter syndrome too. So that is normal to think “Who am I to do this?” That’s cool. The point is, is you want to do it anyway. So even though you’re asking yourself, “Oh I’m not really… I’m not…” So we have a lot of excuses. We have a lot of ‘buts’. “Yeah, I wish I could do that, but you can’t do it because of this. Oh yeah, but there’s a lot of people that already do that. Oh, yeah, but it’s too hard. Oh, yeah, but…” so we have a lot of excuses. That’s our mind telling us, “Yeah, it’s scary so I don’t want to do it.” And that that resistance holds us back in life. Okay. So everybody has imposter syndrome. The key to overcoming imposter syndrome is doing it anyway. Listen to the voices in your head, acknowledge them say, “Alright, Seth, thank you for telling me that I can’t do it. But I’m gonna try anyway”, and see what happens. And go for it.

Look, the world needs you. This is gonna sound cheesy, but you do have something special. You have special gifts, and talents, and interests, and passions, special things that nobody else has. Things that matter to you, things that you’re good at or interested in, that you can develop. Jimi Hendrix was nobody. Nobody knew him when he was a kid. The way Jimi Hendrix (I’m a guitarist, I love guitar) but the way Jimi Hendrix became Jimi Hendrix, is by playing for 1000s of hours. He didn’t magically become Jimi Hendrix overnight. And a lot of students that I work with get into this ridiculous, and I’ve done it too, this ridiculous perfectionism that says, “Oh, I tried guitar. I tried it for a year and I was horrible.” Yeah, try for 10 years and try playing 1000s of hours, then you’ll be awesome. This stuff doesn’t happen overnight, we have to really take our time. People, we live in a society, and culture, and a world that’s all about instant. Quick, fast. We want things just like that. That is not reality. If you want to build something awesome that you love, that brings you high quality of life and deep fulfillment, it is an investment. Putting a nickel in the piggy bank every day of whatever you want to develop towards. So you’re gonna feel imposter syndrome, you’re gonna have the resistance. “Oh, I can’t, but I can’t because I blah, blah, blah.” Listen to those voices and be like, “Thanks. Appreciate it. But I’m not listening to you.” I’m gonna not say, “Can I do it?” I’m gonna say “How can I do it?” That’s my last thing for you. Don’t say, “Can I do it? Yes or No.” That’s very binary. People get into perfectionism, they get stuck. They say “No, I can’t,” and they just stop.

Don’t say “Can I do it? Yes or no?” Say, “How can I make this happen?” How can you make something happen? The world needs you, your strengths, your interest, the world literally needs you to show up and develop your craziness, your quirkiness, your interestingness, the things that make you, you. They may make you a not successful student but will make you awesome, and incredible, and powerful, and amazing at doing something if you want to become an entrepreneur someday.

Anyhow, that’s all I have to say. Again, my name is Seth, SethPerler.com. I’m an executive function coach in Colorado. I hope you’re safe, healthy, happy, and connecting with others today. Go ahead, if you liked this and it helped you, please give it a thumbs up on YouTube. Leave a comment below, that helps me out. Subscribe on YouTube, that helps my stuff grow. And then check out my website and sign up there, I got some freebies and stuff. Have a great day. I will see you next Sunday

How to make what’s hard, easy! Stop PROCRASTINATING

Parents, this is for students. Learning how to make hard things easy is ESSENTIAL if you want to learn to get through procrastination and get into action so you can build towards a great future. This video explains how if you struggle with Executive Function, you can use this tip to help you do the things that need to get done for your own well-being.

Video Transcript: Click here to download the transcript PDF.

Hey students, what’s up? It’s me, Seth, and welcome to my backyard. Not literally my backyard, but this is the town that I live in and this is my happy place. And what I want to talk about in this video is one little trick that I do for myself to do things. So there is this thing that goes, “Make what’s easy, hard. Make what’s hard, easy.” And basically, what was hard for me today was to get up and go out for a hike. Now I knew that if I went for a hike, I’d be taking care of my health, investing in Seth, I would feel good in my body, I would feel awake, alert, strong, that I would enjoy it. And I love being out here. But when I was at home, before I came out here, I did not want to get up off the couch. And come here, I wanted to sit there and watch my Netflix movie and play around on the computer, make some food, whatever, call some people, whatever. And I knew that it was important to me to get out in nature today. And for me, for my mental health, I’ve got to move my body I’ve got to exercise somehow. I don’t like gyms, I like being in nature in some way, shape, or form. Whether it’s mountain biking, climbing, hiking, whatever, I like to be out in nature. And I like to experience this. This is just one of the things that is one of my favorite things in my whole entire life, it has always been getting outside.

Here’s the trick. The trick is for me to not think of myself as going on a two hour hike. The trick is to just tell myself to get to the trailhead. Just drive to the trailhead. I know many of you are not driving, but you get the point, and I do work out of the gym sometimes. But I don’t think “Oh, I’m gonna go do a big workout.” I think, “Seth just get to the door of the gym. If I want to go on a run, Seth, don’t go on a run, just get your running shoes on and stand outside.” And then I will run. For you, think “Okay, I got to do homework. And I don’t do homework because I’m not in school right now. But if I have to do work…” and trust me, I do a lot of work that I don’t like, just like you might not like some of your homework. If I got to do this work, then it’s not, “How do I do all this work? It’s how do I just start? How do I just make a plan? And then I can start the work? How do I just pull out the papers?” I open up the tabs I need or find the phone number of the person I need to call. So it’s how can we just take a baby step to do the thing that we need to do? Instead of imagining, “Oh, my gosh, I have all of these big things, all these big things to do. It’s overwhelming. Where do I even start?” The question is what do I have to do to get started? That’s all that I want to do. I want to make it seem small, not overwhelming, manageable, doable. And that’s what it has been one of my biggest keys to success, trust me students, and most of your middle, high school, or college. Look, I am legit ADD, or I have ADHD, or I have symptoms of ADHD that impact my life negatively. It holds me back in my life. I struggle with these things I always have, I always will. But I’m okay with that because I have learned workarounds. I’ve learned tools and tips and tricks and ways to work with this stuff so that I can take action that’s going to help me invest in my life, rather than staying and procrastinating or doing actions that hold me back, like gaming all day long or doing things that are distracting that get me nowhere in life. So that’s the tip for today.

But again, when I was at home, I didn’t feel like leaving today. And I often feel that resistance. And if you’ve been watching my stuff for a while, you know that the number one problem that I talk about for people who struggle with executive function is resistance. We are resistant, we have excuses. We don’t want to do things, we don’t want to take action. And we have so many mechanisms to keep us from doing the thing that would actually be good for us. In this case, it’s going on the hike or whatever, so here is the trick. What I do for to trick myself, so that I can take action on the things I really want to do is what I tend to do. And what many of us tend to do is what’s called ‘catastrophize.’ Catastrophize means we make mountains out of molehills, we make things seem bigger and worse than they are. So like I’m at home and I’m thinking “Oh hike, I gotta get over to the trail. I’m gonna be out there for two hours. What if I have other things I need to be doing,” blah, blah. So we tend to make it seem very big. And then we stay in procrastination, we stay unmotivated. It just seems too big. We do this with homework, we do this with our chores, we do this with our responsibilities. We do this in all sorts of ways. In our lives, we do this, and it holds us back in life. If you become an adult who never figures it out, you’re going to be an adult who is very stuck, and who cannot achieve their goals and dreams in life.

I hope you’re well, I hope you’re safe, I hope you’re happy. Have some peace in your heart today. And I hope that you can try to apply this. Don’t think about the big overwhelming thing, think about one little thing that’s going to get you to do that thing. Make what’s hard, easy. Make what’s easy, hard. What was hard today was to get to the trail. I made what’s hard, easy by not thinking, I’m going to do a two-hour hike. But by thinking “I just need to get to the trail and make what’s easy, hard.” So if sitting by the TV and watching something is easy, or gaming is easy, make it hard for yourself to find your passwords to the gaming or to find the links to the gaming or to whatever the thing is, whether it’s gaming or whatever, it is that you don’t want to be doing as much. Make it harder to get to those things. Be well take care. I will see you soon. Take care.

Why “just get over it” is bad advice

Parents, this is for students. People sometimes say “just get over it” but this sentiment is wildly misleading, and does not help students learn what they need to learn in order to EFFECTIVELY deal with problems. This video explores how to better look at difficulties so students can have more effective tools to process.

Video Transcript: Click here to download the transcript PDF.

You see that right there? That’s a big mountain. Can you imagine getting over that thing? Let me tell you, getting over that mountain, and there’s a point to this, getting over that mountain is way harder than it looks. And ii’s way harder than it has to be. Right now, I just hiked uphill for a while. Now making down for a little bit, so I’ll catch my breath in a second. But, what is up students? My name is Seth, SethPerler.com. I’m what’s called an executive function coach based in Colorado. I help struggling students navigate this thing called education so that you can have an awesome life.

What I want to talk about here is getting over it, versus getting through it. You know, in your life, you’re gonna hear a lot of people tell you, “Just get over it. Just get over it.” There is no such thing as just getting over it. It’s so wrong. People who say that, often are people who do not know how to deal with their problems or their feelings. They stuffed them. Our culture teaches us to stuff our feelings, to not feel our feelings. It teaches us that it’s not okay to feel our feelings. “Don’t cry about it, just let it go. Just forget about it. Just stop thinking about it. Just get over it.” Well, let me tell you something. Let me impart some wisdom on you that I have learned in my life the hard way, and I’m sure some of the people in your life have learned this the hard way, maybe you’ve learned it the hard way. There is no getting over it. Getting over it is way harder than it seems. That mountain. If you were to get over it, you would have to have serious rock climbing equipment, serious belayers, people who would keep you safe during that rock climb, and it’s extremely technical and extremely difficult. However, what I’m doing right now is I’m getting through it. I’m getting through it. I’m getting through the mountains here. Okay?

One of the differences between getting over it and getting through it is this. When you are getting over it, when we are getting over it, what we’re often doing is we are stuffing it. We’re stuffing our feelings, we’re pretending it’s not there, we’re acting tough. We’re trying to act like it doesn’t matter, trying to forget about it, trying to just let it go. Trying to distract ourselves with electronics, TV, even social life, even things that are not inherently bad. But when we are using them to distract ourselves from feeling the feelings we need to feel, that’s not good. So that’s getting over it. But getting through it, getting through it is the real courageous thing. Feeling your feelings is the real courageous thing, allowing yourself to move through emotions. So we have basically these two parts of us, we have sort of a rational and logical mind, and we have an emotional mind. When people are able to get through it, that means that they are feeling the difficult emotions, and it is very courageous. It’s very hard to feel our feelings. It takes a lot of time, patience, and persistence. But what we find is that we’re afraid, and we don’t like to think we’re afraid. We’d like to think “Oh, yeah, I’m not afraid. I don’t get afraid of things.” Well, fear really can rule us a lot of times, and being afraid to feel our feelings can really rule us. Even people that look like the strongest people you would ever think, a lot of them are afraid to feel. They’ll act like they don’t, because they’re so terrified to feel they want the whole world to think that they don’t feel. We are supposed to feel we are human. So getting through it. A lot of times what we find is that when we get through it, and we feel those feelings that are so scary, they can be so terrifying, when we allow ourselves to feel them and do what’s called process our feelings in healthy manner. Whether that’s seeing a therapist, journaling, just sitting quietly and allowing it to pass, thinking about it, bouncing it off of a friend, telling a parent, telling somebody about what you’re going through, someone you trust, having a good conversation, a good cry, a good sad moment, lonely moment, it’s okay to feel those things. And what we find is that when we feel them, first of all, they pass a lot quicker than when we try to act like we don’t feel anything. When we try to get over it, it turns out that they pass a lot quicker. It also turns out that they’re not as bad as we were afraid they were going to be. We tend to catastrophize. We tend to think our feelings are so scary, it’s going to kill us, like “How can I feel this? This is terrible. This is awful. I just wanted to stop I just want to go away.” But when we move through it and we allow ourselves to feel the anger, or the sadness, or the loneliness, or whatever the feeling is, we notice that like a cloud, what ends up happening is if you watch that cloud long enough, right now, as you’re watching it, it might seem like it’s sitting still. But if you watch it for a minute or two, you’ll notice that it passes. And that’s what happens when we are processing feelings in a healthy way. They can pass, they can do their work. They have a message for us too. Whenever we feel something, the reason we feel anger, sadness, loneliness, all these things, they’re trying to tell us something that we have a need. A need we need to express or we need to fulfill. If we’re angry, anger is what’s called a boundary emotion. So anger is telling us that a boundary is being hit. We need to work with whatever boundary is being taken advantage of. Now, that may not be true, we may be perceiving things differently. But it also we may not, we may really someone’s pushing our boundaries. And the anger is telling us this doesn’t feel right. I need to, in a healthy way, communicate and move through this, and yada yada.

Anyhow, I really just wanted to make that point. I want you to leave this video knowing when someone says, “Get over it.” That’s not where it’s at. Getting through it and having the courage to feel and process difficult emotions takes time. It’s a skill, it takes years to learn how to do, but that is what’s going to serve you. That’s what’s going to help you create the life of your dreams. That’s what’s gonna help you have a better career when you’re older. That’s what’s gonna help you have better relationships with your family, your friends, your community. That’s what’s gonna help you have peace in your heart. All right, that’s all I got.