what neurodivergents see (and why it helps everyone)
Neurodivergent folks — ADHD, autism, and the rest of our beautifully odd wiring — often notice costs other people don’t. That doesn’t make us better; it just means our dashboards light up in places yours might not. And sometimes that signal is useful to everyone.
Coming to Terms with ADHD
I was diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood. Coming to terms with it has been a long journey: noticing my own patterns around distraction, losing things, scatterbrained energy, a million ideas firing at once. The sense of my brain exploding with paint drops every moment.
And, weirdly, the ability to focus so intensely that for years I thought: I can’t possibly have ADHD. That deep hyperfixation felt like the opposite of “attention deficit.” Only later did I learn it was part of the picture.
Ads as an Assault
I also get bothered by things most people don’t. A big one for me is advertisements.
When I see a billboard, a YouTube pre-roll, or a pop-up online, it doesn’t just annoy me — it feels like a low-grade assault.
It’s like: Who asked you?
If I wanted your product, I’d go looking for it. If I wanted discovery, I’d go to a place built for it.
But this? You’re shouting at me in my own home.
It wasn’t always like this. In the past, markets were external. You went to the bazaar, and you expected noise — sellers yelling about fish, cabbage, rugs, whatever. It was chaotic, but you’d opted in.
Now, the bazaar lives in your pocket. On your screen. In your living room. You can’t escape it.
Sure, most people dislike ads. But I really hate them. They yank me out of the moment. They hijack my brain’s rhythm. They manipulate vulnerabilities I already struggle to manage.
The Preciousness of Focus
For ADHD folks, focus is precious. When I finally lock in, I want to stay there. But everything around us is designed to rip us out.
Even “helpful” tools become traps.
Take spell check or autocorrect. When I’m in generative mode — pouring out raw, unfiltered thoughts — the last thing I need is my screen grabbing me by the eyeballs to yell:
“HEY, YOU MISSPELLED THIS!”
Or worse: silently replacing my word with one I didn’t mean. (Autocorrect is so often wrong it’s baffling.)
What happens in those moments is a kind of violent context switch. One second I’m creating, the next I’ve been dragged into editing mode. It’s like being physically pulled from one room and thrown into another.
The Pixar Lesson: Separate the Rooms
I often think about how Disney and Pixar structured their creative process. They didn’t just throw everything into one meeting. They had separate rooms.
One for blue-sky brainstorming: no judgment, no editing, no rules. Every idea — even the dumb ones — was welcome. That room was sacred.
Then, in a physically different space, the editing room. There, the team would prune, refine, and critique.
That separation mattered. Creativity and editing are different energies. Mixing them kills both.
Visualize your brain like two rooms connected by a long hallway. Every time you let an interruption drag you from one room to the other, you lose energy. You run back and forth all day — idea to edit, focus to fix — until you’re too tired to do either well.
That’s context switching. Whether you notice it or not, you’re paying the tax. I just happen to feel it more intensely.
And that’s the point:
neurodivergent sensitivity doesn’t invent the cost; it reveals it.
Even if you shrug off the distraction, the cost is still there. It’s just easier to ignore when you don’t feel it so acutely.
Temple Grandin’s Gift of Vision
Here’s a story that illustrates this powerfully: Temple Grandin.
Grandin, who is autistic, transformed the livestock industry by designing more humane systems for handling animals. Before her work, cattle were hoisted by their legs, dangled upside down, and shoved through loud, chaotic systems on their way to slaughter. They panicked, thrashed, and suffered — not just ethically awful, but practically inefficient.
From her own experience of sensory overwhelm, Grandin understood something others missed. As a child, she found calm in deep pressure — hugs or squeeze machines that helped her nervous system regulate. She wondered: would animals feel the same?
She designed curved chutes and gentle squeeze systems that helped cattle move calmly. Instead of being hoisted in terror, they were guided with reduced stress — not just more effectuve, but more humane.
She saw what neurotypicals didn’t. Her sensitivity revealed a hidden cost in the system — and her insight changed an entire industry.
Yuval Noah Harari, in Sapiens, suggests that morality can be measured by whether we increase or reduce suffering. By that measure, Grandin was a moral innovator. Her neurodivergence gave her the x-ray vision to see suffering where others saw “just the way it’s done.”
The Broader Lesson
This is the gift of neurodivergence.
Not as a trendy label. Not as a checkbox for “diversity of thought.” But as a different way of noticing.
Like different flowers in a garden, our shapes and colors serve different purposes.
ADHD might make me feel every ad like a slap — but maybe that slap reminds you the cost is real.
Autism might make Grandin feel the world too intensely — but that intensity reduced animal suffering at scale.
Neurodivergent sensitivities aren’t demands — they’re signals. They show you what’s already there.
Because the cost is still there.
Even if you don’t feel it.
