I gave a talk on neurodiversity at Decoupled Days 2026. This is the companion article that I wrote for it. If you’re just looking for the slides, click here.
For most of my life, I was just making choices.
I chose self-employment. I chose control over my schedule. I chose remote work, coffee shops, travel, conferences, partying, alcohol, and on and on.
I always had a logical explanation for all of it. In fact, I wrote a whole article about it.
Being my own boss meant I wasn’t constantly quitting jobs because I was bored. Control over my schedule meant I could work more and better. And all the rest was a way for me to balance enjoying my youth and not waiting until retirement to “live”.
Now, all these explanations were true. They just weren’t the whole truth. The reality was that I’d engineered my life around needs I wasn’t aware I had. I had the agency, but not the awareness yet.
It’s only in 2023 that I started to understand what those needs were and how I was subconsciously trying to meet them. What happened that year? Well, it finally clicked that I was autistic.
It was like a veil had been lifted from my eyes. I saw how I was masking, how I was accommodating, how I was compensating. But then I looked around and saw so many of my peers doing the same or struggling without knowing why.
I realized that, in an industry that rewards traits we associate with neurodivergence, we don’t talk much about the needs that come with those traits. We’re always sharing tips on how to be more productive with AI, but rarely on how to make work sustainable with ADHD, autism, etc. I get it. It’s more fun to talk about our shiny new tools than how to live with our brains. 😅
But I think it’s important.
So I want to invite you to look at your life today. Not the version you explain to other people. The real one you live each day.
On getting a formal diagnosis
Before going any further, I’d like to talk about having a formal diagnosis. My goal in talking about neurodivergence is to help you become more aware of the choices and patterns in your life. Through that awareness, I hope you can have more agency in your life.
That said, not everyone gets there the same way. Receiving a formal diagnosis can be one path to that awareness. It can be what finally helps you take action and understand yourself better. For others, it might not be necessary.
For me, a formal diagnosis wasn’t what helped me. What helped me was twofold.
First, it was working with a therapist who worked with neurodivergent clients. This helped me process things, recognize patterns and understand the neurotypical point of view better. Second, it was talking with other neurodivergent individuals so we could share stories, tips and so on. (That’s why I wanted to do this talk!)
On the other hand, I know people for whom the diagnosis was extremely important. It was the catalyst they needed to begin taking action in their life. Without it, they wouldn’t have sought the help they needed.
I’m not even covering things like access, cost, stigma, etc., which also affect whether someone might seek a formal diagnosis or not.
That’s why I think it’s more useful to view a formal diagnosis as part of some people’s journey, but not everyone’s. For some, it’s a necessary stop. For others, it isn’t on the path.
The precious life I engineered
As I became more aware of my neurodivergence, I started to realize I had engineered a life for myself. As an engineer, I love the idea that I did it consciously. But the truth is that there was no intentional design. This life was the result of a lot of small “happy accidents”.
I tried self-employment because I was easily bored and liked the autonomy. This led me to start working remotely and have more control over my schedule. I ended up enjoying that a lot. Once I worked remotely, I started travelling and going to conferences.
Individual choices which unknowingly built a foundation that my brain needed.
Initially, I thought I’d just designed a fun lifestyle. I loved to say, “I’m a digital nomad with a home base!” It was a fun twist on the popular phenomenon. 😅
That said, once I started understanding my neurodivergence, I also started understanding what that life was doing for me. It wasn’t just something fun. It was something precious.
The foundation freedom gave me
So what is this life doing for me that’s so precious? Well, it keeps me regulated. This might seem like a small thing, but it’s not.
My therapist often talks about how hard it can be to notice when we’re dysregulated. Things feel overwhelming, but we don’t quite understand why. All we can do is identify the specific issues like “I’m easily frustrated”, “I can’t concentrate today”, “I don’t have the energy to cook”.
When you’re regulated, it’s like having a strong foundation to stand on. You can handle more, deal with things better and, most importantly, take care of yourself. When you’re dysregulated, all that becomes harder or flat out impossible.
For me, regulation looks like this.
I can wake up without an alarm and start my day at my own pace. I have the time to go to the gym, which helps regulate my nervous system. (Something I only realized last year.) I get to select my work environment based on what my brain can handle. If I need the stimulation from having people around me, I can work in a coffee shop or somewhere busy. (I love working in airports!) If I’m feeling more overwhelmed, I can work at home in solitude.
Fundamentally, it lets me arrange my days/weeks/months around my capacity instead of pretending that it’s the same all the time. That said, it doesn’t make that capacity predictable. Instead, it’s more like learning to surf. It requires a lot of skill and intuition and, even then, it can still end in a wipeout.
The ecosystem in my brain
Surfing is about reacting to conditions that are always changing. You’re never dealing with just one wave. You’re dealing with forces that interact with each other in ways that require constant adaptation.
My brain works a bit like that too. My ADHD and autism don’t exist in isolation. They’re all part of the same ecosystem. And I’m constantly trying to manage these different forces so that they stay in some sort of balance.
Like everything else, I was doing this without realizing it. I was just making choices like whether I wanted to work from home or from a coffee shop. I was just thinking, “Well, I just want to play video games or watch TV. Let me go work somewhere else.” I wasn’t thinking, “My ADHD is under-stimulated. I need to work somewhere with enough external stimulation that I can focus.”
That said, sometimes things can come along that fundamentally alter your ecosystem. There’s no daily adjustment that can compensate for them. Instead, they require a complete recalibration.
The most striking example of this for me was when I got into a relationship with someone who also has ADHD.
Before that relationship, my life had a structure and stability that was great for my autistic side. But the ADHD side suffered because it needed novelty and excitement. So I travelled, went to conferences, partied, etc.
Now, the balance has changed. It’s my autistic side that I need to look after. I have to make sure it gets enough predictability and alone time. This means less working in coffee shops, less travel.
Travelling didn’t become less appealing. But what I wanted from travelling changed. Before, I used to backpack and bounce from city to city constantly. Now, I’m looking to stay at the same place and build a stable routine.
All that takes work.
What it takes to look normal
If this feels like a lot, you’d be right! It’s a lot of work. What makes it especially difficult is that this type of work is invisible.
What people see is a person making choices. They don’t see everything that goes on behind them. That’s where the real regulation work happens.
In my case, I have to assess what state I’m in, guess what I need, and evaluate what the impact will be. Impact here can be a lot of things. It could simply be what the impact will be on my energy levels. Or it could be the impact of my choices on others, and how much explaining I’ll have to do.
This is all art more than science. As you get better at it, you’ll get it more right than wrong. And the better you are at it, the more seamless it’ll look to others. That seamlessness is a lot of what masking does.
That’s why when I started telling people I was autistic, I’d often get pushback that I couldn’t be autistic. That’s what successful masking does. It allows you to blend in because you don’t act the way people expect an autistic person would.
The same goes for ADHD. I mask some of it too. For example, I tend to always have a drink in my hand (usually a diet soda!) to redirect my stimming. I’ve still got that crazy labrador energy that makes people know I have ADHD. But I learned early on in my life that it’s better to keep my hands busy because that can be distracting to others.
There’s more to this than just masking. I use alarms, calendars, reminders, lists, and so on extensively. This helps with some of the typical issues with ADHD. For my autism, I often become the “event organizer” so that I can limit surprises. This lets me keep my routine (like going to the gym), eat at places that work for me (usually all-you-can-eat places where I can get enough protein!), or do activities that aren’t as taxing to me.
That’s why, from the outside, I look largely “normal”. I still have some of my special “Carl-ness” that people love. But the important thing is that people can tell I’m someone competent, reliable, social and easy to work with.
It’s just that being that way isn’t free.
What it cost to look normal
Last year, someone who was like a baby brother to me died from alcoholism. His battle with alcoholism showed me more than anything could what the cost of my masking could be. That’s because we shared the same relationship with alcohol. It made us fun, social, memorable, popular, and so on.
That’s an intoxicating feeling when you’ve been a nerd or awkward most of your life.
Substance abuse and neurodivergence can go hand in hand. Alcohol helps you blend in because you can become another person. (That’s what it did for us.) Drunk people also tend not to be as judgemental of you and your “uniqueness”. It can feel like a safer environment to be yourself in.
Alcohol can also help you cope with environments that can be difficult for autistic people to deal with. For me, it lets me deal with loud, crowded environments like parties, clubs, etc. I noticed that, if I wasn’t drinking, my tolerance for those environments went down drastically. For example, I could go dancing and partying for 8+ hours, but being sober in a noisy restaurant would knock me out after 2 hours.
I know neurodivergent people who don’t drink or do drugs anymore. I know some who are still trying to find a balance. That’s where I am.
I’ve been lucky that I’ve never spiralled with alcohol. My relationship with weed is more complicated. Last year I talked about how I started using weed constantly and eventually stopped cold turkey. I’m back to smoking a bit socially, but I’m more careful because I know it’s easy for me to self-medicate with it.
Ever since I recognized the pattern my baby brother and I shared, I’ve tried to talk more openly about substance abuse. It’s one of the heaviest costs I’ve seen people pay to appear normal. But it’s not the only one.
In fact, most of the time, the cost of looking normal is kinda boring. It’s recovery time, explanations, planning, missed opportunities, and so on. It’s the constant effort that no one sees, but slowly taxes you.
When the system overheats
For years, I’d talk about burnout during my year in reviews. In fact, I love to say that me and burnout are well acquainted. 🤣 Regardless of how well I was acquainted with it, I hadn’t pieced together that not all burnouts were the same. I didn’t understand that coming back from a conference and holing myself up in my apartment was different from working so hard I couldn’t open my computer.
The first one I ended up learning was called “autistic burnout“. It was the cost I was paying for letting my ADHD off the leash at conferences. My ADHD has the BEST time at conferences. It runs around the conference floor, talks to people for hours, parties until the sun rises.
My autism is there just kinda “dealing with it”. But at some point the bill comes due. After conferences, if I was backpacking, I usually backpacked solo (or with one of my travel friends) which gave me recovery time. In more extreme cases, I’d get home and just not see anyone socially for a month.
Now, when a system overheats, it doesn’t always shut down right away. Sometimes, it’s a slower process where things start to break down. For me, I notice it when I have more trouble masking, start misreading people more often, get more overwhelmed by things, and struggle to maintain foundational habits like cooking meals. Those are the early signs that I’m heading for a burnout.
For work-related burnout, I haven’t experienced this kind of breakdown scenario. That said, there are still indicators that I’m probably heading toward one. Things like deteriorating sleep hygiene, enjoying working over leisure, not being able to disconnect from work.
In both cases, I’m trying to manage a dynamic system. I’m more aware of all the signs, but I can still misestimate something. I’ll think I can handle more and give myself too little buffer. When I crash, it’s never a complete surprise. I knew I was flying too close to the sun. I just thought I was further away. 😅
The paradox of awareness
The cool thing about awareness is that it’s like getting access to the dashboard for your mind. The problem is that it’s not one of those simple dashboards with one or two graphs. It’s one of those overwhelming ones with dozens of graphs and some alarms screaming at you at the same time. 🤣
As I became more aware of my neurodivergence, I was surprised by how much work that awareness created. There was a blissful simplicity to doing it all subconsciously. Now, I feel like I have more agency, but I also have this crazy dashboard to monitor. So I feel stronger and more fragile at the same time. 😅
When I explain it like this, it makes a lot of sense. But I really didn’t expect this to happen! I somehow thought that I’d be able to do more since I now had this dashboard to help me.
I knew when I was dysregulated or starting to get there. I understood what to monitor and how to respond when things were off. If I’m socially overloaded and low on masking capacity, I need alone time. If there’s too much chaos and uncertainty in my life, I need to focus on my routine habits that stabilize me, like going to the gym.
I thought this would give me the capacity to do more. But the reality is that the dashboard isn’t free. It costs you something to monitor all these things. So it’s frustrating that it was less like gaining a superpower and more like becoming a parent. A rich and rewarding experience, but one that leaves you with less capacity for everything else. 😅
A life worth protecting
A recurring conversation in therapy is my fear of losing this precious life I engineered. The more aware I became of what this life did for me, the stronger that fear got. That’s because I went from “This is a fun digital nomad lifestyle!” to “This is something that keeps me regulated, healthy, creative, and functional.”
Losing this became more existential. As that fear grew, so did the sacrifices I was willing to make. Those sacrifices didn’t always make sense from the outside because the thing I was protecting was mostly invisible.
This meant saying no to opportunities that are supposed to make sense if you’re on a more traditional life path. It meant accepting that I might make less money or have less prestige because of my choices. I had to be willing to live more frugally, downsize, travel less, and give up parts of the “fun travelling, partying, conference-going” version of myself. Not because those things didn’t matter, but because they were negotiable. The foundation wasn’t. I need autonomy over my schedule, control over my environment, and the space to take care of myself.
I realize how privileged I am to even have the opportunity to live this way. Most people in our industry don’t have this level of agency over their lives. So much is imposed on them by others without considering their needs.
The agency gap
The fact that this level of agency is a privilege is, to me, one of the great ironies of working in tech.
Tech is happy to benefit from neurodivergent output, especially from people who can go deep on hard problems, spot patterns others miss, and hold complex systems in their head. But it’s much less interested in the conditions that make that output sustainable. Instead, we often box those same people into fixed schedules, mandatory office time, meetings, and constant interruptions.
My focus on agency is intentional here. I’m not here to tell you that you should have what you want all the time. (Even I don’t get everything I want all the time!) Companies also need structure to function. That said, I think we should continue to push against the idea that there’s one default way to work that fits everyone.
There are already tech companies that are good at giving their employees agency. They let people block off focus time, have no-meeting days, and avoid creating a culture where everyone lives in Slack. But right now, the companies doing this are the exception instead of the norm.
Giving people more agency should be the norm. But agency, by itself, won’t make work sustainable. It only gives you the opportunity to make it so.
To truly make work sustainable, you need the self-awareness to understand how work affects you. Self-awareness is what lets you to use that agency to protect yourself. That matters more than ever because the nature of our work is changing.
The next way we work
So far, we’ve discussed things that I’ve spent years figuring out. This last section is about what I’m trying to figure out now. AI is changing the way I work, and I’m trying to understand what that does to my neurodivergent brain.
In my last year in review, I talked a lot about how I felt enabled by AI. I felt like Tony Stark working with Jarvis. It was so fun and intoxicating! So much so that I pushed myself into a burnout by April. 😅
Even prior to the burnout, I’d become more aware of how AI was interacting with my neurodivergence, especially my ADHD. I think the interaction between AI and ADHD is complex. There’s a lot going on here, and it deserves serious research to untangle it all.
That said, I’ve seen a lot of talk about AI being so powerful in the hands of those of us with ADHD, especially since we can context switch so easily. I have mixed feelings about that because I think it glosses over the cost of context switching. Just because something is easy doesn’t mean it’s free.
To me, the cost becomes more apparent when I consider something I feel like I’ve lost as my AI usage increased. It’s the “in the zone” hyperfocused flow state that developers love so much. I know that, for me, it’s become a rare occurrence now.
The reason I think it’s a cost is that, for me, this state is a form of rest. Not because my brain isn’t working, but because I’m able to work without having to monitor myself. When I’m in that state, my world narrows and distractions fade away. I’m not fighting my attention anymore. Instead, I’m in a restful trance.
With AI, I’m prompting and then waiting. The waiting is where my problems arise. I’m either context switching between multiple projects or agents, or I’m policing myself so I don’t go searching for stimulation elsewhere. Both are much more tiring than being in this focused state working on one problem. Right now, the energy required for that doesn’t feel sustainable.
The other reason I’m still figuring this out is that I’m not sure this is the end state of things. AI is changing work so fast. How we use AI today doesn’t even match how we used it six months ago. I have no idea where this will all end up.
This is why I feel everything I talked about here is so important. With everything changing so fast, we have to pay attention to how all of this affects us. We all need more self-awareness than ever in this changing landscape.
But awareness only gets us so far without the agency to change how we work when the cost becomes too high. Sustainable work isn’t just about doing more. It’s about understanding what doing more costs, and having enough control to do something about it.
I’d like to thank my therapist, Susan Meindl, for reviewing the draft of this article.