Neurodivergence in action: my first year of AuDHD

It’s Christmas 2024.

I’d recently been diagnosed with AuDHD – autism with ADHD. Shortly after, my ex-fiancée kicked me out. Performance review season loomed and I knew my head hadn’t been in the game – it was going to be bumpy.

Eating a sad solo Christmas dinner comprising last night’s bolognaise and a Buck’s Fizz, I decided that there was only one thing to do:

Take action.

Owning it

AuDHD is spiky.

We are natural big picture thinkers, we go deep but see connections others miss, and we’re creatives and builders (or in Linkinese: architects of creative solutions).

We’re also weird. We’re intolerant of small talk and queues are our nemesis. We can spot a psychopath at 1,000 yards, but we miss social cues and can’t read a room. We have a hair trigger for bullshit and rarely hesitate in calling it out - but then spend the rest of our time wracked by anxieties, ranging from the interpersonal to the existential.

In his latest book, podcaster and author Alex Partridge points at research showing ADHDers receive 20,000 more micro-corrections in their youth than the average child. As a result, our brains quickly spin to the self-critical. Consequently, when reflecting on my new diagnosis, my mind went straight to the book of Old Wounds and other sources of Self-Flagellation.

The grief can be overwhelming. For me, it was coming to terms with 40 years of mistakes, misunderstandings, and missed opportunities. Part of this stems from my treatment at the hands of others, but it’d be a fallacy to not include the common factor: myself.

An uncomfortable truth for all mental health and neurodiverse people: our brains provide a rationale for our actions, but not an excuse. We had no say in being this way, but that doesn’t mean we can pass the buck of responsibility in how we respond.

So while the kneejerk reaction will be to point the finger at others, the way forward is acceptance and forgiveness – not just to those who have wronged you, but to yourself.

In both my personal and professional life, that meant disclosing my condition and its ramifications, what I intend to do about it, and then following through.

Of course, when you have ADHD, that last part is far easier said than done.

Getting shit done

One of the challenges AuDHDers face is that although we’re excellent strategic thinkers, we have trouble with the steps. I only heard the phrase ‘executive function’ for the first time in 2025 and originally thought it meant a black-tie knees up.

My first acquisition of 2025 was a whiteboard.

Onto it goes things like values, to-dos, current goals, stupid plot concepts and ideas which sounded great at the time. I’ve strategically placed the board where I’m always confronted by it: this is important when things outside your immediate vision don’t exist.

Developing these sorts of strategies is critical. AuDHDers easily stray off the linear path as ADHD is divergent by nature. This, of course, has its upsides – we don’t really need paths. That said, having a trail of sticky notes to follow can be incredibly useful when you’re just going from A to B.

The ambition here is to build habits. Glass of water first thing every morning for a week, mark it on the board. Great, now add some stretches. Meanwhile, the evening to-dos just got space for a bubble bath.

Becoming aware of the condition and understanding how it impacted me opens the door to planning for it. You can begin to mitigate your weaknesses and maximise your strengths.

Alongside awareness of these challenges, treatment goes a long way.

Essentially, the ADHD brain is dominated by its relationship with dopamine. High levels of dopamine, we’re superman. Low levels of dopamine is our kryptonite.

Stimulants counter this by giving us just enough consistent dopamine throughout the day. Practically, this means I have the ability to direct the hyperfocus I feel when I’m in the zone to stuff which typically wouldn’t hold my interest.

The thousand batshit voices I hear trying to distract me are still batshit, but at least they now form an orderly queue.

The impact of both was particularly noticeable in my work.

Procrastination was effectively banished overnight. I could retain focus in meetings that would normally have me crawling across the ceiling. Stuff I’d previously marked as ‘tedious and unimportant’ just got done.

As I settled on the dosage, I noticed a massive uptick in my cognitive ability. Curious, I took myself to Mensa.

They told me I’d had a cognitive Bugatti sitting in my mental car park.

Just it’d spent 40 years buried in silly string.

I instantly wanted to take it out for a spin. But where does one take an amphetamine-fuelled, cerebral supercar out for a ride?

Give me your boots, your clothes, and your motorcycle

So picture the scene.

You’re me.

Turns out the madman in your head is both real and a deranged hybrid of the Rain Man and Usain Bolt. Fortunately, this lunatic can be effectively sated with a constant supply of amphetamine.

Simultaneously, a platform technology is emerging.

By some baffling stroke of luck, it turns out this technology thrives in the hands of neurodivergent individuals with a penchant for wordplay and metacognition. It rewards both a generalist knowledge base and the ability to work on just one thing for 15 hours.

You’re also at a time in your life where you have no commitments, no-one lobbying for your time and energy, and few earthly possessions tying you down.

You’re given the baton and told to run with it.

I grabbed that baton and strapped on a jetpack.

I’ve written about my time leading AI adoption elsewhere, but a point I want to make here is how powerful the technology is for NDs.

The whiteboard has evolved into Kronos – a Claude-powered executive function agent I built myself. Kronos does everything my brain struggles with – surfacing half-baked ideas, making sure work gets a slot in the calendar, playing project manager so I don’t end up drowning as everything comes due at once.

This is an extreme version of what’s possible. My advice: start with AI as an ADHD coach. In the instructions in settings, tell AI you have ADHD or ASD. Then start a conversation like this:

“I have ASD/ADHD/AuDHD, and I’m looking to understand how AI can help me. Interview me about my experience living with the condition, one question at a time, then work with me back and forth on uncovering how AI can help mitigate my weaknesses and maximise my strengths as a neurodiverse coach.”

Same shit, different year

It’s Christmas 2025.

This year’s buck’s fizz washed down with a side of professional angst.

The job I loved was FTC, and expired shortly after Zeus stepped down from Mount C-lympus. In the ensuing clash of the rest of the pantheon, I caught a stray lightning bolt.

I lost.

Again.

Or had I?

I went back to my white board and wrote “2025 +/-”.

The loss was narratively dissatisfying. Most tellings of the hero’s journey end with a payoff, not a P45. It felt like winning all night at poker, only to get mugged on the way home.

It went on the minus side.

Half an hour later, it remained the sole entry.

In 2025, I had the professional run of my career – finding new passion for my work in whatever this weird AI-shaped role I found myself in. I bounced back from heartbreak to find new love. I got fit… ish.

The upside of the board was bursting with these and other highlights, united by the same theme:

Each was a challenge posed. Each was a challenge answered.

We rarely have a say in the hand we’re dealt but entirely control how we play it.

I wiped the slate clean and wrote at the top: 2026.

All gas, no brakes

Five months later, and it’d be something of an injustice to say I hadn’t answered that challenge – I just haven’t figured out the whole ‘money’ bit yet.

If anything, I’d say that makes me prime founder material.

This is the 22nd one of these I’ve done in three months (and welcome to the new subscribers – I’m Gregg, a 6’7 bespectacled Viking likely experiencing AI psychosis in real time, glad to have you with us). After an avalanche of applications was met with a volcano of rejections, I’ve ploughed basically every waking hour into getting my gig going instead.

If it wasn’t for the creeping sense of financial doom, I’d be having the time of my life.

As I’ve made my presence known, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many people working in AI, rowing in the same direction as me.

A key observation: all of them are ND. Despite the uncertainty, all of them are taking action.

So to anyone reading this who might be suffering with mental health or their neurodiverse journey, I’ll leave you with this:

It’s hard.

It’s unfair.

Take action anyway.

Go see your GP and get assessments moving. Call people up and fill your calendar, even if you don’t want to see anyone. Find time every day to start putting one foot in front of the other.

Motivation doesn’t create action – action compounds into motivation.

It doesn’t matter that you don’t know where you’re going just yet.

It only matters that you’re taking it one step at a time.

Resources

• Mental Health Awareness Week
• Why does everybody hate me? by Alex Partridge
• ADHD UK subreddit
• If I publish this, I’ll never work again (first piece about my ND journey)

Thanks for reading. Gregg is an AI strategist @ bayes.ltd and writes Bayesian Theory, covering AI enablement, risk, and life in this new era of AI. He writes his own stuff. You can support his work by leaving a like and a comment, sharing this piece with your contacts, and subscribing to Bayesian Theory.