Your Brain Isn't Broken, the System Is

This week Kiana and Tara sit down with Ryan Sailstad — experiential educator, ADHD advocate, and creator of the Leadership Integrity Test — for one of the most personal conversations they've had on the show. Ryan was diagnosed with dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, and ADHD back in 1989, and spent most of his childhood thinking he was just "stupid" until he found a college major built around experiential learning and realized the problem was never his brain, it was the system he was trying to cram it into. From there the conversation goes deep on the hunter vs. farmer framework for understanding ADHD at work, why so many women get diagnosed decades late and burn out instead, whether to disclose ADHD on a job application, and how neurodivergent thinkers might actually have the edge in an AI-flooded future. If you've ever felt like you were working ten times harder just to keep up, this episode is for you.

Key Takeaways:

🧠 Ryan's "I'm not stupid" moment — discovering experiential education in a high school library and realizing his brain just needed a different system, not more effort

🌾 The hunter vs. farmer framework — why neurotypical minds thrive on steady routine while ADHD minds are built for short, intense bursts of hyperfocus

💥 Burnout isn't burnout, it's trauma — why so many women mask ADHD for years, especially through school and early career, until it all falls apart at once

🚧 The playground metaphor — why neurodivergent people don't need micromanaging, they need clear boundaries and freedom to move inside them

📋 Should you disclose ADHD on a job application? Ryan's brown M&M's story (yes, the one about the 80s rock bands) makes the case for radical honesty upfront

🦆 Masking vs. owning it — the difference between hiding your ADHD and openly working through it, and why one leads straight to burnout

🤝 How Ryan built teams by pairing "ideators" with "executors" instead of hiring for one type of brain

🤖 Why neurodivergent, nonlinear thinkers might be the ones who stand out as AI makes everyone's work sound the same

🥣 The Froot Loops vs. Lucky Charms moment that had everyone losing it (you'll know it when you hear it)

Ryan: The neurotypical versus the neurodivergent mind. Or maybe ADHD in particular. If you think about a farmer, you have a routine, you have seasons, and they change and you do different things, but for the most part, you're going to wake up at the same time, you're going to do this thing, you're going to check these crops, you're going to, you're going to plant them, you're going to wait, you're going to be patient. You've got to do every step slowly. That's very kind of a neurotypical mindset. What a lot of ADHD minds are kind of like hunters. And if you think about what a hunter would be, it, would be someone who is able to sit very still, quietly in the woods and then do all of the work all at once. You're getting all of your protein, all of your calories in one short burst. INTRO: Kiana: Not everyone is lucky enough to have a mentor or someone older and wiser guiding them through the unspoken rules of the workplace. Most of us just have to learn the hard way. But I'm on a mission to change that, and this podcast is that mission. Welcome to season two of how to survive your Boss, where each episode brings real stories and practical advice from incredible professionals who've lived it. I'm Kiana, your host. Let's get into it. Kiana: Today we have probably the coolest episode we've recorded to date, because it's a special topic to all of us here, but especially me and Tara. Right, so quick, little Drummel. Here today we have Ryan Salestad, who is one, a brilliant creator that I found on the Internet. And he speaks so well about just the topic of adhd, but also career workplace leadership. And that stems from his background as an experiential educator. So building his career in Parks and Rec, not the TV show, but some of his stories could have made it. And he's been navigating the mental health space since he was 5, so probably not when he wanted to start there, but it definitely shaped the rest of his life. And he's still actively in the space doing emdr, therapy right now, so story's still being written. He's also the creator of the Leadership Integrity Test, which is a brilliant segue into a book he's writing around care leadership. And I won't share too much on that because that's a separate episode in the future once it's ready to. I'm, going to pass it over to you. Ryan, thank you so much for joining us and being Here. Ryan: Thank you for having me. It's great to get on the podcast. Kiana: So, as we've alluded to today, we're going to talk about a topic near and dear to my heart, adhd. I think most of us grow up believing that if we're struggling, the answer is try harder. Or maybe it's focus more. Or in our Asian household, be more disciplined and obedient. And my favorite slash, least favorite in practice, be more organized. Can't do that. Not good at it. And trying to learn how. So the real topic here is, but what if the problem really isn't your effort? What if it's just the way the systems around you were designed and maybe they weren't designed with you in mind. And so today's guest is really going to talk to us about his experience through education, his experience through advocacy, and how he helped me realize something, which is these systems that raised us and educated us and in our case, career wise, they hired us. They were built for a really specific kind of person and that person is not speaking to everyone. And there's people who don't thrive and they don't fit in. And sometimes those are the ones that thrive the most because they don't fit in. But they can't reach that level of success until they accept that difference and start building a life that works for, for them. So, Ryan, I'm going to pass it over to Tara because we've got a crazy good question for you to kick this off. Tara: When you look back at your life, when was the first time you realized your brain was worked differently than everybody else around you? Ryan: So I was diagnosed with dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, and what was then ADD. But we now just lump everything into ADHD. So I was diagnosed with that in, in 1989. And when I was in kindergarten, there was always a, as long as I can remember, there was always that being told that your brain works differently. And it was, I was late to be reading. I was, I had, my mom just told me that I couldn't, I couldn't write on the cross my body to write for a long time. So I had to go to physical therapy, do all these things. I didn't know that, but there was all these things that, that I had to. So it was always there that my, my brain was different. And I always just was like interpreted that as, oh, you're stupid, you're just stupid. You don't get it. You can't. Everybody else is doing well in school. I ended up Repeating first grade. So I see. And that's got its own set of, issues when you grow, up going, oh, I'm. There's something broken in me. And I see and I hear a lot of people who get that diagnosis later and they have the very different experience with. With ADHD or any sort of neurodivergency is that they do wonder, why is this harder for me? Why is this always harder for me? For me, a long time I just sort of like, you're just stupid. You're not good at this. There's certain things that are just places that you're not going to be able to do. And so I think there's always been. There's always been that, that thought process. But I think for other people, for people who don't. And this is very typical for women. And more women are getting diagnosed and girls are getting diagnosed, but a lot of boys get diagnosed with ADHD early on, but girls and women, not so much. And I think that's where that kind of not understanding what's going on. So. Yeah. Kiana: Yeah, you said something. Everything you just said stuck out to me. One getting held back. Does that sound familiar? A little t. Yeah. Also got held back, but we didn't know. Tara: We had no idea. Kiana: She didn't have a diagnosis. Tara: Yeah, right. Ryan: Yeah. Tara: I also just thought I was stupid because they would put me in the early mornings. I'd have tutoring every really early morning. And it was me and three other kids. And we became best friends because we all just thought we were dumb and stupid together throughout our whole elementary, middle school situation. We were like best friends. We were like, guys, we can do this together. Let's just put our brains together and just really try and think. And we just help each other out in that scenario because we all felt like we were stupid. It doesn't make any sense. We're sitting in this tutoring class. There's only three of us. It was so embarrassing, but we would have never known. Kiana: But now we do. Ryan: When we talk about the neurodivergent experience in education. That was. It was really through. There was so much time where I went through school, but through high school and was like, I am not. Like, this path is closed. This. I can't do this. I'm bad at math. I'm, I don't like. I didn't like. I liked reading, but I didn't like reading for reading for other people. I loved history. I loved all the things I would go to if I went to a historic site or A science museum I worked at a science museum I worked at. I did all these things in a classroom setting where you're like, okay, if you want to work for NASA, you need to know math really well. You need to be able to be able to do. Know your multiplication tables off the top of your head and do all these things. And if you have dyscalcula, you're just. That's how. That's all M. You're. That's. Those are the doors that are closed. And it wasn't until I got. So it was a true story. I walk. This is back in the day before you. In. In our library at school, high school, they had a big bookshelf, and it had all of the college handbooks or things. You wouldn't go searching online. You just go, pull the things. And I walked to the first one, and it was B, and it was Bovard. And I pulled it off, I looked at it and it said. And I saw Wilderness Leadership and Experiential Education and pictures of people, like, carrying a, litter with, doing search and rescue stuff in the backcountry. And I was like, sounds cool. If I have to spend four years doing something, that's what I want to do, don't I? Man, if my kids did that, I'd. It's so expensive. So I go to this college, and it's a small school in the mountains of North Carolina here. And I get a degree, and I start getting this degree in Wilderness leadership and experiential education. Didn't know anything about experiential education. Thought the wilderness leadership thing sounded cool. They had a theater program. I was like, okay, I'm good. I remember the first time getting into a class about talking about what experiential education is. And, all of those. All of that degree was, we're doing everything experiential. Everything is experience. And I was like, oh, I'm not stupid. The system that was trying. That I was trying to fit into is not how my brain works. And honestly, it's not how most people, like, even neurot, neurotypical, neurodivergent, whatever. It's not, how most people's brains actually learn information. People want to feel the experience. They want to know, have an experience with the information. They want to play with it. And it was that. And it was that sort of, okay, you're going to have to take these concepts and create experiences for them, even if it's just for yourself. And that's where I really got into, it just Blew my mind. It was just like an eye opening thing. Kiana: So yeah, that I'm not stupid, I just hate reading. I did that. No, I actually. So my experience was a little bit more unique because I went to school. So I've gone to school in a couple different states but during I believe like elementary when you start to get into the good math and the hard books and there's now like pre APS or the Gifted Talented program starts to show up in New Jersey. They make you take an IQ test before they place you in anything. And so I took an IQ test very young and I scored very high to a degree where they called my mom in and said hey, she's going to be a pain in the ass to raise. Good luck. Her IQ is very high. But once you'd put me in the classroom I was good at math, that was easy. But reading and history, oh my God. I was in remedial reading for half a year so I can't even remember. But our mom, important fact, she's a fighter. She's a Karen in some ways. And she pounded down at the school doors and was like get her out of these classes. She's bored and her IQ is high and you guys just aren't challenging her and that's why she's not paying attention. And so I always m wonder if every state adopted this IQ kind of beginning way of assessing intelligence or some degree if it could change some of those outcomes. Ryan: That's interesting. There are some the IQ test is not the perfect especially for kids or really for. It's not a perfect standard for the. Where a kid's at because it's definitely depending on your background and your, what you've been exposed to and that sort of thing. Kiana: Yeah. Ryan: Ah but and I was reading something about the. How the gifted programs have often used these, these IQ tests to get people in. And what they found was that the gifted programs, a lot of gifted programs like elementary, high school, middle school, they have it's the same curriculum that a regular, the regular class would have except the teacher will go through it faster and have more time to do extracurricular activities about that where you might learn in a history thing about you might just have to write an essay in the regular class about like this. They might have to write an essay and that they would be expected to get it done faster, which they do. And then they would get to do some sort of like hands on activity with it. And when you think about a lot of people are trying to get their kids into These gifted programs and things like that, they're really just trying to get their kids into programs that are more interactive, more hands on, more, allowing more than just I need you to memorize this information. And it's almost like taking that approach for all education as opposed to just we're going to do the bare minimum for one group and then we're going to elevate it for another. And that's where like I remember even being in high school taking my first like advanced placement class or it was like, I don't know what it was called at the time, but honors or whatever. And I went in, I went into the class and I was like, this is way easier because the teacher was like, would teach us the stuff and then we'd go do something, we talk about it or we'd explore the idea and then have a conversation as opposed to them just like talking to us and making us go through the book. So really interesting. Tara: Exactly that. Ryan: Yeah, that's. Tara: Yeah. Kiana: I did not know that. Tara: Yeah, I had a bunch of friends. Kiana: I did not know that. I honestly didn't know my friends in Tara: ap, we, they would do the exact same stuff. We would be learning the exact same thing, but they would get to do so much more. And it was just like for us it was just like, oh, you just need to do the bare minimum. Yeah. Like you need to read this and answer questions versus them. yeah, the exact, like the exact same material. Exactly the same. Nothing is different. Nothing is too much harder or whatever. But yeah, it's just like they get to do more with little time. Which I think is why I was always scared to be in AP classes because I was like, I can't do that. No. Kiana: Oh my gosh. I didn't know that. I mean I knew there was very similar material. I didn't realize the difference of just having more hands on because I was always in the gifted talent from the minute they existed to the minute I got out of school. I was always in the pre. Aps, the aps, the testing out of classes. How is your teacher's pet? Except the way I would pay attention in class is by trying to figure out how to correct the teacher. So I was not the favorite teacher's pet. Okay, this is interesting. So this brings me into the next point because something you shared with me, I think the first time we started talking, Ryan, in that first one hour conversation was a framework on just thinking of adhd. And you were saying that neurotypical workplaces and I think just in general systems are built for farmers, while many ADHD people are wired more like hunters. Can you kind of check that? Ryan: Yeah, yeah. If you think about, if you think about, and I read this somewhere, it's not mine, I can't remember who, where it came from, but there's this sort of way of putting it about the neurotypical versus the neurodivergent mind, or maybe ADHD in particular. If you think about a farmer, you have a routine, you have seasons and they change and you do different things, but for the most part, you're going to wake up at the same time, you're going to do this thing, you're going to check these crops, you're going to, you're going to plant them, you're going to wait, you're going to be patient, you've got to do every step slowly and that sort of thing. And that's a, that's very kind of a neurotypical mindset, a 9 to 5 job. A lot of times it's very much like you're a farmer. You go, you answer your emails, you do the thing, you do what a lot of ADHD minds are like hunters. And if you think about what a hunter would be, it would be someone who is able to sit very still, quietly in the woods and then do all of the work all at once. You're getting all of your protein, all of your calories in one short burst. Tara: And, right. Ryan: So you're just sitting there and you're waiting to do it. Just like we were talking about at the end of the conversation. All of the work gets done. Right. So it's that hunter mind of like, oh, okay, there's a, there's an animal over there. There's a woolly mammoth. I'm gonna go, we gotta go take it down. Let's go get it. And, and that's the, And then you spend all your energy and all your effort for that short period of time. You're getting the same results, you're getting those calories that you need, but it's just the workflow is different. And when you start to think of it as that, it doesn't mean that you can't exist in a 9 to 5 job. But what it does mean is that you need to think about, are you, is it designed in a way that works for that, like, burst of energy really quickly? And I think the mistake that a lot of people with ADHD make is they go into a 9 to 5 job and they expect that burst of energy like they're hunting a woolly mammoth to be their default all the time. And none of the hunters are working as hard as they're taking down a woolly mammoth. They're just consistent in their effort over time. Doesn't mean. So you have to know that your work with your brain, work with that hunter mindset of okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna spend 15 minutes answering all my emails taking down that woolly mammoth and it might be a week's worth of Kiana: emails and that I procrastinated that you procrastinate on. Ryan: But no, but build the systems in and know that's how like I think that's where a lot of people with ADHD find themselves in trouble in work and in life in general is because they try to be, they try to be farmers. They try to force themselves to show up consistently and it's just a recipe for disaster. You can take medicine, you can do, you can have. We talked about the everyday. Just get organized, just do this, just do that. It's just not a reality. It's not how your brain works. And you can definitely develop techniques where you. But you gotta, you kind of gotta know that you're gonna be, you gotta figure it out. Some days you're gonna have that burst of energy, some days you're not. Some days, yeah, something is going to catch your attention and you're going to spend all day working on that. And that's okay. But that's also important to know. a lot of what I talk about is like just like really thinking about how you know yourself and how you interact and how you, what you need and really being thoughtful and curious about yourself and looking at where the environment you're in, whether it's work or a relationship or whatever is where are the friction points and where is that, where can you compromise on it and where is just it, not okay to compromise? Because I know that in my background, my experience, my. And I've seen this happen over and over again. People who are that kind of hunter mindset getting in to forking the farm, and then they're bad farmers. Tara: Yeah, right. Ryan: You're a bad farmer. You're. That's okay. There's a lot of, there's a lot of jobs, there's a lot of places and there's a lot of places that can accept both. But there, there you may get to a place where. And I think that's one of the things that I hear a lot of people who are late in life diagnosed and that sort of thing and they're just like, I don't. I've got to quit my career. I've got to move on. I've got to do different things. There is a certain amount of, like, you have to know yourself and know that this is not just because everybody says, this is what you're supposed to do. This is what work is supposed to look like. This is. That doesn't have to be your reality. Yeah. Kiana: So I have a friend, Tara. You met him, Rich. But he's, like, such a cool guy. The way we met was so funny. We were walking around the park because I've started to try to take any meeting I can take in person moving. If I can avoid a zoom, I'm like, let's do it. Not that I dislike zoom, but my brain works better if my body is moving. It just does. And so we were walking around the park. And I'm extremely open about having adhd because I think it's an important thing to know about me. One, I talk. I go like this when I talk. So it's really important to know I do this. The other thing, I'm incredibly disorganized. I've also started to finally accept that I am type BC area. I have tried my whole life to be type A and make plans and make lists, and I'm fucking awful at it. And so I'm, like, walking around the park with his friend, and he's, you know, I think he's in his 40s or late 30s and has kids and recently was just conveniently brought up with his doctor ADHD and had never really come up before. And he was really hesitant for this diagnosis because it was like, it's socialized to be bad, and there's all these things. And I'm sitting here talking about it, and I'm like, dude, it's the best thing ever. It's just like, you got to figure, out that you haven't. And once you figure out you haven't, then you start to realize, oh, shit, it's not me, it's y'. All. And that's the problem. I am not the problem. I'm just in a weird space. And the example I like to use instead of the farmer and hunter thing is a, manual car versus an automatic car. Although I hate driving all cars, I have been told that a manual car for those who enjoy driving cars is much funner. However, it's a much harder because you can't just and drive on autopilot, not think about it. You have to shift gears. And if I want to let's say send an email. And before I send the email, I'm doing something more delightful, like eating lunch. Big gear shift. That's a big gear shift. And I gotta prep myself. And the one thing you talked about, tricks. I want to get into this. Cause I know you have some. But I'll kick off with my favorite trick, which is that burst of interest, that novelty chasing. I figured that out pretty early. Not early, young, but in college area I really started to figure out because assignments pop up at similar times in college. And it's really freaking hard because everything happens at once. And when you're a procrastinator, it's, holy shit, how do you do everything in the last five minutes when you have seven things to do in those five minutes? And so what I learned was if I start it as soon as possible, but not finish it, just start it. Like when I have the burst of novelty, I create the document. I write the first couple of sentences, maybe write whatever nonsense. And then I'll get bored, because I get bored quick. And then I move on. And then I'll go to class. And for some reason, it's like that being in this space, it sparks the. It's like I'm a hunter, and then I see the cheetah run, and all of a sudden I'm in it and I'm like, whoa, okay. So then I can open it up again and make more progress. And so even though it seems like procrastinating in the sense of I'm not just working through the whole thing at once and getting it done and taking a similar process, I break it into, okay, when I give a shit, I give a shit. But then when I don't, I let myself go be entertained with other things and wait until that spark energy comes back. Ryan: I think that sometimes we. A lot of times with we. I think people. People see ADHD people, and they see them put it off till the last minute, wait. And I think a lot of times what is missed is a lot of times we know what needs to get done, and it is mental. It is a mental. When we have that assignment that we know that essay is due at the end of the semester, and we know we should be working on it, it's sitting in the back of our brain causing us, problems. And I think what you described is where you take a little piece of it that allows you to kind of settle that mind a little bit. Because what you. And you're working with the brain and kind of go and kind of going, okay, at least I've got. Because I've. There's projects that I've got, like, so many over here that are all on my wall and stuff that I'm working on. And I'm just going, okay, when I have a moment, what's necessary, what's good, what needs to be do. What's. What needs to get done. But when I have a moment and I'm just wondering what I need to do, I look at that whole list and I go, okay, I'm going to do a little bit of this, I'm going to do a little bit of that. And then accept the fact that's one of the things that a lot of people with adhd, we beat ourselves up about not being neurotypical, about not being able to. I've got, what, seven different projects that I'm working on. A very neurotypical thing would be to. Maybe I work on one every day of the week, or maybe I do seven different things each day and divide it up. The reality is I'm going to come in and go, okay, I need to get this done by this point. So I'm going to kind of plan. But I may. I may start writing. I may write an entire chapter of the book one day, and then I may put that. Put the book aside. I know it's there, and I may come back to it two weeks later. And it's building that. It's building that system of, okay, I want the book to be ready for a, fall release. So I do need to do some to it, but I don't need to expect myself. I need to change my expectations of what I have on myself so that they're realistic and they work with that novelty. There. There are days I wake, I'll hear something, I'll read something, and I'll be like, I want to pursue this. So it's a constant checking in with yourself and figuring out, like, where am I going to spend my energy today or what am I going to do? And I think building in systems helps. I think that you also just have to be. You have to understand that you're going to crave that flexibility and that. That novelty. And you have to allow yourself to chase those at some point, or else you're just going to be. Your soul's going to be crushed. Kiana: I have a real question, Tara and Ryan. Does anybody know a neurotypical? I know it sounds crazy. I just. I feel like Kyle. I've met so many people, but I don't think. How's neurotypical Dar? He is A farmer. But I also feel like in today's world, a farmer is the epitome of what we should be doing because they're physically using their body, they're out in nature, they're doing something with their hands. There's so much more to it. As much as there is a mundane consistency in it. The consistency of going to a farm every day versus the consistency of opening an email and getting on zoom. I just. Those are different buckets. And I wonder if the NER M. I don't know. I'm like, wait, are they really. I'm in a neurotypical person. Ryan: I'm married to a neurotypical person. So. Kiana: Okay. Ryan: And that is actually like, neuro. Neurodivergent. Neurotypical. Neurotypical is not a. Like a real definition or clinical. There's no such thing. And I like to think of it as. When you're talking about the scale of. Or what is. We talk about spectrums. We talk about that sort of thing. It's almost like. And I try to, like, in the content I make. I try not to, like. I try not to generalize about, like, my experience as the ADHD experience or the whatever experience. What I try to do is like. It's like your brain. I'm, gonna use metaphors. And that's just. Sorry if you're not. Than that. If you're listening and you're not into that. The, ADHD people, we tend to like that. Kiana: Yes. Ryan: But it's like you go to a salad bar and you have 100 people go check through. Go through a salad bar, and you look at all their different plates, all the ingredients, all the different things are available and offered to them. But just because someone has onions on their salad or mushrooms or whatever is. It doesn't mean they're necessarily the diagnosis. They're getting that diagnosis. What it might mean is they have a little piece of that. Because that's. And that's where I think a lot of times the communication around the neurotypical, neurodivergent thing gets confusing is because people will go, well, I forget my keys all the time. I don't know why you can't remember where you left your keys. And the reality is, yeah, you might have those mushrooms on your, salad too. Doesn't mean that you're living the same exact experience. You can have a salad that has. That has everything. What does a Caesar salad have in it? It has romaine, lettuce, parmesan. Kiana: It has croutons. Ryan: Croutons. You could get Pretty close. But at a certain point it tilts over to a. That is a Caesar salad. But you can still have some of those elements in your salad and not. And it not be a Caesar salad. Just because you have croutons doesn't mean it's a Caesar salad. So it's that combination of things. And so I think that, and I think that a lot of times when we're looking at content is. And a lot of people are getting. And I think there's a. The online space is really great for helping people go, oh, I need to get a diagnosis. But I think that a lot of self diagnosis online is. A lot of content creators are going, this is my experience. This is everybody's experience. And, and the reality is our brains are. Everybody's different. Everybody's different. And everybody has their own flavor of adhd. Everybody has their own flavor of whatever this mixture of things. So it's so that when you're going back to that, is there neurotypic or is there neurodivergent? Is there. It's more. How much of a Caesar salad do you have on your plate? How much of a, you know, how Kiana: many croutons did you get in life? And how many are you lactose intolerant and can't have Parmesan? Ryan: Right. So it's not. We tend to like things to be very simple and laid out and go, and you look at diagnostic manuals and that sort of thing. It says if you have these things and that sort of thing, you might be adhd. But the reality is our brains are everybody's brains different? And you're gonna have your own, even if you're, even if you're neurotypical and I'm using air quotes, you're gonna have, you're gonna have your own things that you need to know yourself. Well, this as well. Kiana: Have you ever seen Dr. Amen on TikTok? He's, I think he's like a neural neuroscientist, slash brain expert slash ADHD expert. And I saw him giving one talk on a podcast and he was talking about ADHD and how the physical way ADHD shows up in our bodies is more sensitive nerves. And so something I've been playing around with a lot because I think of this spectrum you're talking about, right? And I think there's a spectrum of how sensitive your nerves are, but then the trend in how you calm your nervous system or exert your nervous system and express the feelings behind that. But the biggest thing is more people are getting ADHD than ever, right. It is not going away and it's not something. Because you took Tylenol when you were a kid. This is a, universal. Everybody's got a little bit of it to bit, right. And something I think about when we just talk about the systems and what I've been really working on now is what if we are evolving as a society to have more sensitive nerves because our systems were built to minimize feeling in our lives, right? And so we are like revolting slowly to the point where it's becoming truly painful for people to sit in front of a computer all day and they have to take tranquilizer strength, Adderall to conjure up the patience to sit me, I'm one of them. I think about what you're talking about. It's so much. It is a spectrum. Is it possible the spectrum is maybe how sensitive your nerves are and then how much coping mechanism and understanding you have to go with that? Ryan: I'm not going to speak to the neuroscience. I know in, in. In my experience, I think, and what I hear a lot of is I think we, we have these work systems, we have these things where I think a lot of people. I don't think there's more people with adhd. I think we're getting diagnosed more. I think that we're getting better at recognizing it. I think that's good. And I think that there may be some things with. About how we're designing work and how we're designing school that are really pushing m those diagnosis forward. But I think the other thing is a lot of times, like when I was diagnosed with. When I was getting my diagnosis when I was in kindergarten, they wanted to. One of the things they wanted to give me was a, diagnosis of oppositional defiance disorder, which is a nice way of saying just. It's a classification that would have put me on a completely different path. And I think that. What I think we're starting to recognize is those people who were considered this and this are actually, were actually neurodivergent and needed extra support as opposed to they're just not a good kid or they're difficult or they're. So I think that a lot of when you look back at what was treated and what was. And there's so many. And you see this with more recent history with a lot of women, especially in the workforce, who are burning, who are not realizing they have ADHD and holding it together and doing everything. They have been able to find the systems that make it seem like they've got Everything together they're going through. They're in the advanced classes, they do well in school, they do all the things, but they're burning the can. They're burning it at both ends right there. And it is. And they get to perimenopause when the hormones change and. Or midlife when they start having kids, and the systems that were working for so long fall apart completely. And because they didn't have that early diagnosis, they're figuring it's where a lot of women later in life are figuring out that they are. They do have adhd. And this is the. This is what I. The theme that keeps coming to me, people keep talking to me about online, is that this burnout and the difference. And it's not just burnout, it's trauma at that point, because they've tried to fit in a system and they've worked 10 times harder than everybody else around them and not realized it. They just thought that there was something broken with them. And I think that we talk about the. How we need to get those diagnosis, how the education piece about it is so important because I've seen so many, like, incredibly brilliant people, women, men, get so far into their careers and then just what they. What we burn out, they call burnout. But really, it is a. At that point, it is a trauma response. It is a. They're done with work. They can't do it because they've been hanging on for so long. Tara: Yeah, no, I burnt out twice. Kiana: And I knew I had a PhD, so I'm like, even knowing I still spun the wheel so much. And I feel like the workplace kind of transitioning into a little more on just leadership and at work. Something I noticed is, corporate specifically, is a very daunting, obedient, related task. And you say oppositional defiance disorder, which all I hear as is, you're not obedient and you're a pain in the ass. That, that in translation of intelligent words to broken layman's terms, it's like you're a pain in the ass because you don't just do what you're told. And my whole life, someone can probably diagnose me. Now, you can ask my mom, she'll tell you. But I really think that you have to have a certain obedience in the workplace. Right. And I'm curious, do you see ways or tendencies of leaders where they create these environments that kind of push ADHD people to fail? Ryan: I think that the way that ADHD people and neurodivergent people as well, and I would put the People who are autistic and things like that in this category as well is you're going to show up different at work and if you're being your authentic self. And I think that there has to be a certain amount of for in leadership there has to be a certain amount of understanding and value that when I have someone who shows up a little differently. ADHD people tend to over explain themselves. They talk too much. They can, some people don't. But they'll say the same thing five times. And it annoys the shit out of some people because they think that the reason this person is telling me this five times is because they think your boss might, you might tell your boss something five different ways. And they think they must think I'm stupid because they're telling me this five different ways. And it's actually the opposite. That person feels like they have had a hard time explaining what is inside of their brain and so they are so used to spitting it out multiple different ways that it comes out that way. And I think that there has to be, there has to be a understanding in the workplace that people are going to show up in a different way. People are going to, people are going to have a different. And there's value in that. You want all those different, you want those different minds together. And it takes a certain amount in leadership, it takes a certain amount of patience and curiosity to kind of go, okay, it's annoying me that they're explaining this 20 different times. But what's actually going on here, okay. And there's so many other things we ah could go into all sorts of things that. But there's a lot of. I think it really, really comes down to it is in when you're looking at leadership and being the right person to lead these neurodivergent workforce or just diverse workforces in general is really coming down to that curiosity instead of assumptions. And the most damage I see and I hear about is just it's not necessarily someone bullying or and there's problems with that too but it's really just people going I don't get it. So I don't like it. I don't get this person. I don't like them. And not seeing the value in a different mind. Tara: That's Kiana. You just end up Kiana like m process it crazily. She man, she could explain things in a thousand different ways to me every day of her entire life from the wake up to the nightfall man. And I have to sit there and Ryan: I love her to death. Kiana: Don't get me wrong, I love to hear her explain the same things a Tara: thousand times to me. Kiana: Sometimes I'm like, yana, we got it. We got the message. I know what you're trying to relay. Pretty much shut up. Tara: Yeah. Kiana: But like, basically just shut up. Ryan: And that's probably why I found myself in loving experiential education, is because I am someone who, when I think about an idea or I think about something, I process it. I go at it from multiple angles and I go in. Tara: And that's. Ryan: And that's pretty typical for neurodivergent minds. And I think that was where. That's where I was like, oh, okay, I can process that. And that's the videos. I love doing those because I can think about, how would I explain this? And I think about a thousand different ways of explaining and then figuring out the way to do it. If you were to look at my videos and you were. Look at. You look at the. The raw. What I'm inputting and just like brainstorming, you would be like, shut the hell up. What, are you doing? And then it's almost like there has to be some self editing. But that's not the reality of if you're having a conversation with me. Just going to, you know, it's just going to do it. We're just going to do it. I talk, I speak in metaphors all the time. Drives my wife crazy. Kiana: There's nothing in life. Ryan: There's no cap cut in life. Tara: None of that. No cut out. Kiana: Okay, so, Tara, I was telling you I've been trying to do exactly what Ryan does, and I think so well, and that it relieves me so much to hear that there's so much work to synthesizing the way you do. Because I was thinking you just read an article and you're like, yeah, let me just talk about it. And I'm like, oh, my God, you have the most brilliant mind in the entire world. How are you doing this? Because when you talk, it's like, boom. And I'm like, damn, yeah, that. How'd you get that in 60 seconds? As I've been trying to do it. And so we talk about the repeating over and over again. And something I learned, I avoided sales, and then I got in sales. And then I realized at a certain point, the more I let my ADHD hang loose, the better I am at sales, the more often I say the random thing or just let those thoughts, let those thoughts be, the better it gets. But I also build my pitches through repeating it 5,000 times. And through each repetition of it, I pay attention to the responses of the other person and the little nods and little bits and bobs. And I'm like, okay, that shit didn't make sense. Or that mortar for didn't make it. Or this thing is dumb. cut it. Nobody lined with that. And eventually I refine, but it takes Ryan: me to repeat it 5,000 times before there is this. The wonderful thing that I found with having this ADHD brain is that you have a million ideas and there's a million connect. At least for me, there's a million ideas. There's a million connections. It's also the worst thing about having ADHD is because you can get paralyzed by the fact that I'm thinking of, okay, I've got this. I could talk about. I could talk about this book and I could. And I have a million ideas of how I could explain it. Kiana: And Ryan: it's the skill of going, okay, I need to edit what my idea, knowing that there's. Not. Knowing that there's. Capture the idea, put it away and start play. Play with it. But then being able to go, okay, this is the direction I'm going to go. And choose a direction and go. And sometimes it's that acceptance of you're not going to get the per. You may not get the perfect route to it. knowing that doesn't really exist. And I think that you look at this, this is where a lot of people get paralyzed is because they're. They've got. It's not because they don't have ideas. It's not because they don't have the drive or the passion. It's because they have a million ideas about it and they want. And, they can all be great. It's the being able to just go, okay, what am I going for? What is my primary objective here? And then I'm just gonna go and support it by doing this one thing. So I think that the Stephen King talked about, when he talks about writing, he talks about going in and doing that really editing really calls it killing your darlings. And I think that's one of those things where you have to get to the point where you're like, yeah, I've got a bunch of great ideas. I've got a bunch of thoughts that are really interesting, but if I keep them all, nothing's gonna get done. And I think that for me, that's where I write a lot. Ah, I write stuff down, I track stuff, and I keep it. I may never use it. I may never do anything with it, Tara: we come back to it. Ryan: I may talk to someone five years from now and they go, hey, I was thinking about this thing. And I go, oh, I had that idea five years ago. Here, take it, go do something with it. But I think that we do find ourselves getting in this situation where we go, I don't know what. And that just takes. I think that for the most. I don't. There's no five step process that will make you do it. I think it just takes practice of accepting the fact that ideas are free. Your idea. And if you have tons of ideas, you have tons of thoughts, those are free. Your time is not. And you have to look at those that as the resource and your time and energy. And. And I think that's where a lot of us get. And especially in the workforce, we get. We. We fall apart because we're going, I have too much. I have. There's so much there. And. And then we spin out and don't do anything. Kiana: So yeah, that's the spin out, don't do anything's real one. I. Everything you're saying, I'm like, dang, Tara, this is you trying to pick an apartment. This is literally Tara's living situation. Ryan: Are you a researcher? Are you like a heavy duty researcher, like trying to find someone? Kiana: It depends. Tara: But most of the time, yeah, no, no, it's. Kiana: Is it like research? If she searches for it a couple times, does that count as it's like, it's. Ryan: Yeah, yeah. Because it's important decision that you need to make. Kiana: In my eyes, there's not. Tara: There's not very many options, not where I'm gonna stay at. Kiana: So it's like, how much research could one actually do? Tara: So. But yeah, no fair. Kiana: Tara is the kind of researcher where she's got a big sister. So she usually goes in for that initial search to get enough, then call me and then we get on the call and then I say, hey, Tara, ask chat and then come back with a little bit more research. Tara: Right. Ryan: And. And one of the, One of the thought things that I do and I did this, we'd always do this with my staff and I always do it with the groups that I work with. Is really thinking about the overall objective, the overall things that are actually important. And I think that's where. And that's with anything is what do I need? And then working like stripping, taking everything. You're looking for a place to live, you're looking for this. What do I need? And really stripping it down. Because a lot of people just Go, okay, I need to find a place to live. And they go, okay, let me go into the classifieds and go find, ah, whatever, and find it. And I think that we oftentimes forget that we need to actually investigate what are we trying to achieve, what are we trying to get? Because it's those broad, big, broad categories are, where a lot of neurodivergent minds get lost in the weeds. And I think that when you go ahead and we're really good when we have those boundaries put on us. And I don't mean like someone imposing strict micromanaging boundaries. What I'm talking about, like an accountability. Yeah. Like, you think about it. I'm going to use another metaphor. Sorry, We. You should do like a little tally of how many metaphors I do. You have a bunch of kids and you go, okay, it's recess and you let them loose on a playground and there's no fence around it. And the, kids are going to get bored and go wandered off in the woods or across the street or doing all these things. But if you build a playground and you put a fence around it, they can go and they can play on the swings, they can go down the slide, they can do all these things. They can crawl back the slide, and the neurodivergent per. Kid's gonna be crawling up the slide backwards and standing on the swing and doing that's fine. They're in the boundaries. But what we tend to get, what we tend to get in trouble for is when we're in the. And this goes back to the work environments too. When we're given a. We're given a, here's the playground. You need to be playing on it. But we don't. They don't define what the boundaries of that are. Because we're gonna. We might go, I found a turtle in the woods. I'm gonna go play with that. I'm gonna go squirrel. Kiana: Today on our FaceTime. Prepping for this. Let's check our audios. Shit you not. She's in bed and she goes, squirrel. I was like, is this real? How is this. It was right there. Tara: What do you mean it was right there? Ryan: So going back to that, that if you're leading people who are neurodivergent, if you're leading anybody. And I don't think this is just neurodivergent, really. Anybody. Define the boundaries. Define what? The space that they can play in. And then don't give them a hard time for going up the slide backwards or standing on the swings or Doing whatever. Just give them. Because that's they're going to find out a new fun way to do it and something that will benefit everybody. But it's not fair. It's not fair to give them just free range and kind of go and then get mad at them for running off into the woods and doing whatever. And I think that we, when, we're trying to do things and we're trying to work, looking at where we want to go is a really good way. And what we want to achieve is a really good way of, okay, so I need to put a little fence around this so that I can make sure that I'm actually achieving and then I can play in that space if that makes sense. Kiana: It'll make so much sense. I'm like realizing how. What's the right word to your point? If you look at a blank piece of paper, it's so hard to write. But if you tell chat and then chat puts up some stuff and then you gotta edit something, all of a sudden you're in this world of refinement and it gets a lot easier. And I also think there's that one saying of, give the hardest task to the laziest person and they'll find the quickest way to get to the end. Like having those brackets of how to show up. But, speaking of leadership, in order to set the boundary or in order to set the expectation, right, let's say I'm the employee in space. What do you think about saying it? Do you tell the manager, sir, I have adhd if my brain goes this way? Do you, on the job application click the button that says I have a mental health thing or I have a disability, because I don't. When I click that, like when I see that button, for some reason, the stigma of it being in this bucket, saying I have a disability or any of the. I don't think it's a disability at all. I also don't click it though, and for sure have said disability. Ryan: So this is where I stand on kind of that. If you're having to hide how you work and how your brain works at, your place of employment, it's the wrong place of employment. And I would rather be rejected from a job than the reality is. Kiana: That's a good point. Ryan: About 1% of the typical population develops post traumatic stress. People with ADHD are about 1%. They've done studies where about 10% of people with ADHD will develop, are likely to develop trauma or post traumatic stress. And if you're thinking about what environments you're putting yourself into. I think that you have to be selective and you have to be. You have to be clear about. I don't want to find myself in a place where I'm having to disclose that I have adhd. And to be fair, like, I spent. And it's. It may not go well. It may not go like, I spent 16 years at a place and then disclosed that I had ADHD and things fell apart. And, and. But it was when I decided that I was like, I'm not gonna mask anymore. I'm gonna be like, this is who I am. And I'm struggling and the boundaries are not clearly defined at that point and that sort of thing. And I think that, and I think that you want to be. You want to give people the option to show themselves before you even get the interview. If they, if you click that box and they have a problem and they have a problem with a. Your. Who you are, then fuck them. Like, seriously, you don't want to deal with that? And I, think that. And I get, like, the economy is hard, people getting a job and that sort of thing. But you either go, you go into it with the understanding that like, if this is hard for me, I'm going to check myself and leave, or you just go and let them self select. Kiana: You just changed my mind. Ryan: It was Motley Crue, Def Leppard or one of those hair bands in the 80s. You might have heard the story. They had this tour writer and on the writer the document. When they're going to these clubs, they were going. This is in the 80s. They're going to all these small little clubs and they had huge like technical setups. And so inside the rider they had. In our dressing room, we will have. You will put a bowl of. And I think it was something like nothing but brown M M's. And a lot of the story about that got told as it's this diva band. But the thing is, they would put it in around all of the electrical requirements, all of the safety requirements for their stage setup. And it was a, cue to them when they walked into that venue and they saw that there was a brown thing of Brown M&Ms, they knew that that tour rider had been red and the technical and safety stuff was there. If they walked into the dressing room and there were no brown M and Ms, they knew that they didn't read the tour rider carefully enough. And they were. So it's one of those things where a lot of times it got. The story got told that they were being divas and they were being, oh, opulence and that sort of thing. But really they were protecting their safety. They didn't want to get on a stage without knowing that people had taken their safety into account. It's the same thing when you're talking about, when you're talking about, do you disclose? Do you say, yeah, throw it out there, put it out there, be open. And if they're not willing, if they're not willing to accommodate your safety at that point, don't go there, don't. Yeah, you're not playing on that stage. That's not where you want to be. Tara: So that's so smart. Kiana: No, you changed my mind. I mean, Grace, I will say this. I haven't applied for a job in a hot minute. Any job I've ever, interviews, I've ever gotten has been like, through connections and things like that. So I haven't clicked the button a while. But when I got fired, I spent a little time going through and looking at these things. And when I get to that question, I'm like, I hate that it's listed here as a disability because I see it as a superpower. I don't see it as a disability. And also I've never seen a workplace that actually does anything for someone with adhd, like explicitly. I've just not seen that. So I'm like, if I click it, what's the outcome? But to your point, that was a very narrow minded way of thinking about it. Tara's over here, like when she was Ryan: applying and it's understandable, it's understandable you want to give and we're told to fit a box. We're told to be a certain way and if you're not that certain way, then you, won't be accepted. And I reject that because I think that if you're, if they're not accepting you for who you are, then that's that's on them. That's not on you. And it's hard. It's hard when you need money. It's hard when you got to get that job. And I'm not going to say that everybody has the luxury of sometimes we have to be clear eyed about the situation. Yeah. And I think that's where you have to go. Okay, I'm going to take this job because I need the money for this amount of time. But I'm not going to define myself by it. I'm not going to tie myself to it. I'm not going to end any friction that that may, that I may be experiencing. It might be the. A wrong fit for the job or it might be that I just need to find something else. And I think that the people who are. The people who are neurodivergent and the people who are in anybody who finds the right fit, they'll know it. But I think that you, I think you sell your best version of yourself in all these things. And I think that you can lean into the things that are great about your ADHD and what makes you unique and special. And I think that the right environment will find you eventually. Tara: That's what Canada is. Kiana: And you can find your flavor. Right? Well, I just think. Yeah, yeah. I was just gonna say, I think to Tara's point, there are, I don't know, flavors of how you shop. And Ryan, you mentioned this. You find the right place. But the one example I just think of is dressing professionally because very few people's personality is to dress professionally. That's something I loved doing since I was a kid. I like to wear suits and I really. That's fun for me and I enjoy that look. But that is not most people's preferred style. And your style is such an expression of who you are. And so I think talking into what you're talking about, but with a really tactical example, you can't go to work in a tube top and all your clothes, you know, being cut up or it's an unprofessional scene. However, you also don't have to be in a five piece suit with heels and the full shebang. Tara: Right? Ryan: Yeah. And I think that there's a certain amount of rejection of that show as well. I think people should show up, however they show up, whether what's. How they dress or how they're performing in a way that is comfortable for them. Does that mean that every work environment fits that? No, it means that you may hit a. If you don't want to wear a hair net every day, then don't work at a place that requires you to wear a hair net every day. And that's just the reality. But I think it's just finding the right fit and finding the right place. There are places that, that are going to allow you to be. Have that Hunter mindset, have that. But if they're asking you to be a farmer all day and you're not, then if they're choices and roles. Yeah. Tara: All right. Ryan: Yeah. Kiana: Ask Tara specifically, because she's so. Tara likes to be mysterious. That's something we've had to work on with because she applies to jobs. And when she was applying for jobs, she's, should I tell them my gender? And I'm like, listen to our. It's not like it's something you're really hiding. So I don't know if it's worth being mysterious on that question. But she also really enjoys the mystery. And I'm curious, Lolta, how do you feel about your ADHD and the mystery of, sharing this in any professional setting? Tara: I don't have any issue with it at all. That doesn't bother me. You're going to see it regardless. It's going to come out whether I'm medicated, unmedicated. It is so very clearly something else is going on in my brain. So it's like, why sit here and try and lie to you? And you're like, why can't you listen to me? Why are you darting from this topic to this topic? You're doing this and this. And it's. Kiana: Yeah, I'm unmedicated. I have ADD guys get with program. It's just so. But that's like a very common thing. Tara: Like, in my day and age, I Ryan: think that everybody has it, so it's Tara: normalized and it's okay to, do and say those things. So it's. Yeah. I tell my boss, like, I work in retail for a little bit, and she. I forgot what we were doing, but of course I didn't take my medication because it's a retail job. It's nothing too hard, too crazy. But she told me to do something, and I completely just forgot. Just flat out forgot. Because I. In my mind, I had to go do something else before I did that. And she was like, tara, I told you to do this, like, an hour ago. Kiana: And I said, I'm sorry. Tara: Don't forget. Kiana: Like, I have add. Tara: Like, I can't. Kiana: It's too much. A lot going on here. Tara: And she was like, yeah, okay, that's fine. And then we just move on and we redo it in the beginning. Ryan: And I think that being able to have. There's a certain value in being. Having a working relationship with. This is called how to survive your boss. Having a boss that understands, I'm working on this. I'm trying to be. I'm trying to be the employee you need me to be. I need feedback as to what's not working and not being vague about things because we want to do the right thing. You every. For the most. Some people may not. I don't know, but I think for the most part, people want to do the right thing at their job. They want to. Kiana: It's like people want to do the right thing as long as the right thing also benefits them. Yeah. Ryan: And I think that there's a, If you're matching your values, if you're doing the things that are important to you, then I think the feedback, if it's constructive and it's helpful and it's supportive, can be great. And I think if you can find yourself in a work situation like that, it's really great. And I think that's one of the things that I would say that would be a red flag. If you start somewhere and you ask for support and you ask for help and you're met with suspicion or frustration or just crickets, that's. Those are red flags. I think if you're met, If you're met with someone who goes, okay, yeah, let's figure out how we can help you, and you get a certain amount of grace for working through. I think that's understandable. I think the dangerous thing that we find people who are with ADHD or just neurodivergent is when you're spending all your time masking and trying to hide the fact that you have ADHD or trying to. Even if they know you have adhd, you're just trying to cover up the things that are adhd. It doesn't mean not masking and not addressing it are two different things. So, yeah, masking would be. I'm just trying to hide it. And I'm that duck underwater who's paddling as fast as they can under the water. And you can't see it. the difference would be owning it and going, I'm working really hard right now to try to figure out how to make this project happen with my. The way I work. And you have a boss who goes, yeah, okay, I'm not seeing it because you're covering it, or you don't want to. You don't want to get to the point where you're 10 years into a career and you've been working so hard without anybody realizing how hard you're working, and then you just burn out or have trauma or these sort of things. And so that's where I see the. This intersection of leadership, neurodivergence, and this. And work environments come to a head when you have these people who are appearing normal and great on the surface. So I think you want to find that fine balance of not just being like, I'm adhd. You want to be like, I'm adhd. I have this thing. Kiana: It's our problem. I want to. Ryan: It's to our benefit. It's to our benefit as well. Because a lot of times organizations are very happy taking that creative mind. They're happy when you come up with the ideas. They're happy when they can take it and run with it. Create that new initiative that you just came up with off the top of your head, because you're able to do that and you have that energy that can hyperfocus on this one project, and it comes out amazing. They're very happy with the benefits, but they gotta own the whole person. They gotta. You gotta be able to show up as the whole person. Sometimes I'm gonna. Kiana: I'm gonna spell things wrong in my email for sure. Tara: And catch. Kiana: Like, I miss sentences sometimes because I thought I typed them and they're not there. And then people are like, what did you say? And I'm like, shit. I'm curious. Because, okay, so going to your leadership days, I know you're still a leader, but, like, just when you were actively with a full team. Something I noticed was I typically would hire people, not intentionally because I didn't have the checkbox of like, they have ADHD or any of that information, but just literally through the interview process. Personality, like, preferences. The majority of people I would hire were not neurodivergent and some of them didn't know it. And so I've actually helped a lot of employees of mine get diagnosed through our work together. And it wasn't a. Like, oh, I think you have this thing. It was more like a, hey, so we're going to do feedback and I just want to share about rejection sensitivity, because I have rejection sensitivity. And I don't think. I think everyone hates rejection, but if you are very comfortable with rejection, you don't have as much sensitivity. And like, through those soft kind of moments of. I have this Dean. Ryan: Yeah, I found that I hired a, wide. I ended up hiring it just like I hired. I've hired so many people over the years. it was always a wide, very diverse group. I don't know if. I don't know if I think a lot of the people I worked with were. The thing that I think that I found that I hired a lot for was people who were intellectually curious and thoughtful. And I don't know if that was a. I think that's. Those are just things that I value, and I think that those were what I ended up hiring for. I think that working with people who are Being the boss of people who are neurodivergent. I think that. I think the benefit of being someone who's also neurodivergent was I was able to help translate sometimes because I had a very. I had people who were. Would be considered. Would consider themselves neurotypical or be neurotypical. And then I had people who were like, very neurodivergent. Very. And I think that the benefit was that I was able to kind of go, this person has a mind that would be really good at helping this neurotypical person. This neurotypical person would be very good at helping this neurodivergent person and creating an environment where I had. Maybe someone was really good at the coming up with the ideas and the sort of big dreaming and that sort of thing, but pairing them with someone who is also going to be really good at the administrative task and the executive functioning stuff. And not so that person was carrying every single load, but so that we were going and diversifying the team as much as possible so that it was going in developing ways that we were able to process ideas. That, that. And that's one of the things I talk about is this. Yes. And brainstorming and that sort of thing. We're looking at where everybody has a say and everybody has a place in it, but building it so that all of these different minds and all these different viewpoints could work together. And I think more than anything, I think that was where I went. Like, I hired. I would go to a game night at a bar every Monday, and I met this person there who was. Who is. She's just incredibly cheap. We got talking and she's showing me all of her drawings and all of her sketches and all of the cosplay stuff she was doing. And she would do it with, literally with cardboard and glue and stuff and just come up with these amazing things. And I was like, I, she. I was like, do you have a background in recreation or outdoors or anything like that? Tara: Yeah, she's. Ryan: Whoop, there goes my light. And she goes. And she goes. And she's. No, not at all. And I'm like, yeah, but I need you to help me with this because, you have shown, like, I, I can see that you are able to, like, you're. You're creating things on a budget, you're doing all these, you're really creative. And I have these other people who I'm working with who would just. You could take the. Their ideas, you could take your ideas, you could listen to them and create amazing things. That was how we did this creepy clown trail and just clowns hanging out in the woods being creepy. And she was able to take this, hey, this is the idea, and just run with it. And we were loading up like pallets of cardboard bringing into our office. And she would just sit there and be like, I need fishing line, I need black spray paint, I need glue, I need this. And then just creating stuff. And I'm like, yeah, so sometimes, what a cool job. You just need to think about. I think it's really looking at and understanding that that person might not be the best at executive, functioning or might not be the best at, ah, other things. I'm not saying she was, but I'm saying like they're looking at actually. And, it goes back to that whole thing of what are you trying to achieve? It's the same thing. Like, I need someone who's good at these things. Kiana: But I do think it's funny, you talk about leadership and this kind of. I never thought of it that way. The ideators and this kind of like this energy creator, and then the person who follows through and executes. Because I made myself become both. And I hated it. I hated it. But I had to do it. Like, when you start businesses, when you build systems, when you do all these, you have to do it, you have to execute, you have to create the idea. Because it is not only hard to create an idea, but it is very hard to translate an idea to a degree where someone else can take it and then execute for a distance. And I've loved AI for that purpose because AI has helped me at least create like a, proof of concept that I can then be like, here's the closer visual makes more sense to you. Ryan: And I think that's when I've noticed there's a huge shift in how people feel about AI online. I'm always like, scared to talk about AI, but I think when we talk about. I could, this is a whole nother thing of like, you could talk about the technology. And every time. So like, you know, 1989, I'm, in kindergarten. There's no real spell check. There's not, we're not, we're not really using computer. Everything's handwritten, everything's handwritten, everything like that. I've, through my life, I've seen this. Every time technology advances, more doors open for people like me, for people who are able to think. I think that there is, there is limits to what AI can do. But I definitely see that as something that is such a powerful tool and needs to be thoughtfully explored with how we use it. Because I think that when you look at. And I think there's a certain power of neurodivergent mind when you're talking about everything getting streamlined through AI and getting flattened out, it makes everything look the same. When you have a neurodivergent mind inputting into that there's a certain level of like creativity and humanness that can come out of that. And I think that, and I think that m. I really do feel that those neurodivergent minds, those ADHD minds are going to be like right now all these tech companies are chasing the best models, the best sort of thing. But I think that there is going to be a shift and where they're going to realize that everybody is using the same basic AI and the real value in AI is going to be the people who are working with it and whether they're able to. Because that creativity and that non linear thinking when you're talking about a very linear system of AI and you put a nonlinear thinker in charge of creates something that is unique and different. And I think that it's going to be a couple years from now, people, everybody's going to have all this AI is going to be in their emails, it's all going to be in their sort of thing. And all of our emails are going to sound the same, all of our content. Kiana: So there's no more emails. Ryan: There's. Yeah, all of our content is going to sound the same and yet the people who are going to stand out are the ones who are going to still use those systems. But it's going to sound a little different. It's going to sound a little bit more interesting. I think that would be like a message of hope in this world that is built around algorithms and built around these language models. If you're someone who thinks differently, this is. It might not feel like it's your moment, but it's. Your moment is coming. I think that is where you're. Because everybody else is going to be putting in the same thing and it's gonna, it's gonna be bland and boring and those. Here's next one more metaphor. Everybody's gonna be churning out those just plain old Cheerios and you're gonna be like, nope, I can make it make. You know. There you go. Kiana: Ryan. We are here. My man. Oh my God. I knew we were gonna be best friends when we met. My good. Tara: That's hilarious. Yeah. Kiana: Loops. Before you said lucky I did, I Ryan: was thinking fruit Loops. Kiana: And then I went. Ryan: And then I went. No, Lucky Charms is even better. Kiana: Yes. Oh, my God. I literally, in my head, you said cheerios. And I was like, okay, yeah, Fruit Loops. But then I was like, no, there's something better. And Lucky Charms, literally, word for word, this is absolutely iconic. Oh, my God. Okay, we're now at the last five minutes, so, yeah, glad you stuck around because this is where it's real good, I think. Okay, a lot to summarize here, but the biggest takeaways I have, number one, the systems weren't built for the people of today. But also, they weren't just built with everyone in mind. They. I used to say a lot of times it's the best for most, but you're not always the most. Right. And so big takeaway is just look at yourself, understand what your priorities are, understand how your mind thinks and ride the wave of interest disinterest and use it to your advantage. I think another thing, when we talk about being a farmer versus a hunter and really having some of those good analogies and metaphors to piece together who you are when you show up to a place of work or to school or to any environment, even your home environment, and just understanding, like, how much of yourself can you be in that, space and how much of yourself do you have to hide? And when you have to hide a lot, or when you have to overcompensate a lot, you need to start looking for new spaces because that space isn't built for you and that system wasn't built with you in mind. And when it comes to leadership and management piece, if they don't want you the way you are, use that. Fill out the paperwork, tell them up front. And if that's something that eliminates you, that is a great thing that you have now dodged a bullet. You know, you have to make money. So, you know, it is a difficult time. But at the same point, I had someone tell me the other day, oh, it's an easy 30k that I make at this job, like per month. Tara: And. Kiana: But then before that, she's telling me how she's crying and getting scaries before work and burning out after work, and I'm like, the skill set may be easy. The system is not. Ryan: It's not worth it, it's not worth Kiana: it, it's not worth it. And as a leader, you can look for those ideators, you can look for, for those executors, and you can just understand not only which side you are on as a person, but what side Your team is on. And then be like Ryan and piece them together. Hire people at the bar on Monday. That was a big swag. And, overall, I just think the best part was the most positive part at the end, which is technology is helping the thinkers be better thinkers. AI is our future, and there is still hope. Anything else, Ryan? Ryan: It is going to consistently evolve. And I grew up thinking that I was stupid. We started with that. Tara: That thing. Ryan: I still struggle with that. I still deal with that. But NASA has me as an educator. I'm doing all sorts of. I get to teach astrophysics. I was. I teach astrophysics to, you know, people. All sorts of people. Kiana: It's not. Ryan: It's a little. It's a little validation. And it's one of those things where you're. Just. Because you've written your story about who you are at any given point in your life, you can always rewrite it. You can always take time, and things are going to change. The world is going to keep moving and keep changing. And I think that it's one of those things where if you're curious about yourself, you're curious about thinking about what you value, what you're capable of, what you like, what doesn't work for you, and you constantly keep reevaluating. There is nothing wrong with looking around and going, I'm gonna go over here and do this thing and try something different, because that is how you're gonna make yourself better, and that's how you're gonna be ultimately. Just be happier. Kiana: Yeah, absolutely. Ryan. This was the best episode. Those last five minutes killed it. I'm never gonna forget this Froot Loop Lucky Charms moment for sure. Can people find you? Ryan: So I am on most of the social media sites, but you can find me if you want to. Just find my landing page. It is really easy. It's Ryan R Y A N sail. Like S A I L. Like a sailboat dot com. And that has all my. That has all my links and stuff. So, yeah, not like a. Not like I'm selling you something, because I won't try to sell you something, but a. But like my last name. So like a sailboat. So just go there, see what I'm up to, and hopefully. Yeah. And, feel free to reach out Kiana: to him if you want to cancel all of your new subscriptions because Ryan pulls the best articles and gives you the most synthesized. Ryan: We should clarify. That's what I'm doing right now. Because my novelty mate, I may get bored with that, and I probably will. I'll allow myself to go do other things. Tara: Right. Kiana: Fair point. Fair point. Clarification. Get in quick. Save seven bucks. Now you can look at the. Tara: Yeah, yeah. Kiana: All right, Taurus. Tara: If this episode hit home, send it to a friend who spent their entire life wondering why everything feels harder for them than everyone else. They might not be broken. They just might be hunting in a world built for farmers. And always peace and love. Kiana: Paper trails. Peace and love. Paper trails.