Why Neurodivergent Entrepreneurs Build Better Businesses
First, Let Me Show You Why That Seems Like a Lie
Photo by Amr Taha™ on Unsplash
It’s 4 AM, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and the wind is howling— or maybe it’s coming from somewhere deep inside me.
My family is asleep. The house is quiet, but my mind is not. My Sunday deadline is pressing in on me, and I have nothing. Nothing polished. Nothing to show. Nothing resembling “my best work.”
Just me, a cold cup of Earl Grey, and the awareness that time is up.
Yesterday, also at 4 AM, I slid into my desk with this hopeful feeling—Black Friday, half-off MasterClass, a little surge of dopamine because learning is my guilty pleasure. Not shopping. Not splurging. Learning.
I wanted a hit of Margaret Atwood teaching craft. A few notes from Martha Stewart about building a business. A clean dopamine rush of “I’m improving.”
But the moment I sat down, I realized: I can’t learn anything unless I take notes. And I can’t take notes because I’m in the middle of rebuilding how I take notes. The index-card system. The notecards. The Evernote migration. All of it.
So I sat with my headphones on, ready for the online course to begin, and minutes turned into hours, and suddenly my entire desk was covered in half-finished index cards— not even the real notes I wanted to take, just notes about the system for taking notes.
This is neurodivergent entrepreneurship in one photograph: the brilliant idea inside the stunningly chaotic process.
The sun set. The day folded in on itself. Another unfinished project sprawled across my desk like a crime scene.
And here I am again. Saying, “Next week I’ll get on schedule. Next week, the structure will create freedom. Next week, the system will work.”
But today? At deadline minus 28 hours? I can’t see the advantage anywhere.
When the “Superpowers” Go Dark
I know exactly why I’m off the rails: No walking.
Temperatures on the Colorado plains are dropping below freezing, and I was supposed to renew my gym membership so I could walk the indoor track. But the thought of fluorescent lights, bouncing basketballs, and the forced socializing of well-intentioned older walkers makes my skin crawl. I wish the earbuds were enough. They’re not. My brain overhears everything.
People chirp “Good morning!” as we pass. Someone tells me their name. Then another. Now I’m repeating names in my head over and over so I don’t forget, and a new anxiety fills me, embalms my body and mind. I don’t hear my audiobook. I don’t see my footsteps. I am in complete awareness and complete overwhelm.
So I don’t go. And every year, December comes early—bringing overwhelm with her suitcase.
The “superpowers” go dark:
Time-blocking becomes obsessive meandering.
Writing for thinking becomes therapy-by-exorcism.
Emotional clarity takes PTO.
Creativity and focus sit in the back row with popcorn, kicking up their feet, saying: “This is going to take a while. Might as well enjoy the show.”
And then my mentors start chiming in:
David Sedaris, whining, “Jesus fucking Christ, get writing already!”
Martha Beck whispers gently, “It’s all right. It’s all right. It’s all right.”
The space heater is too hot or too cold, because of course it is.
And the deadlines? They’re knocking like cops on a drug raid.
I whisper, “It’s a holiday weekend, for God’s sake,” but I know the deal I made. Flexibility isn’t free. All those off-days come to collect. Time’s up.
The Pilot Who Won’t Show Up
This is entrepreneurship with a neurodivergent brain:
You’re on the plane, buckled in, ready. You bought the damn ticket. You’re on the tarmac. You’re supposed to be flying. But the pilot? MIA.
And there you sit, roasting in your seat, thinking: I’m going to be late. Again.
I glance around my desk—my beautiful, maddening desk. Index cards everywhere. Multi-colored pens. Highlighters. Books in piles. A wooden sign reminding me: You Got This! (A lie, but a sweet one.)
There’s nothing to do but wait it out. Reheat the tea. Hope clarity eventually wanders in like a stray cat.
But here’s the secret: even in the chaos, something is working.
Even in the unraveling, something is forming.
My fingers start flying. Freewriting turns into a rope thrown into the dark.
Somewhere deep inside the mess, Logic pulls up a chair and says, “Maybe you should add a framework…”
“Shut up,” I whisper. “Not yet. I need this first.”
And I do.
I need to empty the attic. Clear out all the dust and cobwebs. Make room for something productive to breathe.
My fingers keep moving. The words keep coming. This is the hand drawing the hand. This is M.C. Escher in real time.
I’m not writing an essay yet. I’m writing my way toward the essay. I’m writing my way toward clarity. I’m writing my way toward the pilot seat.
“It doesn’t matter whether you call yourself a ‘writer.’ It doesn’t matter if you’re a singer or a traffic engineer. Write more. Write about your audience, your craft, your challenges. Write about the trade-offs, the industry, and your genre. Write about what’s funny and what’s not. Write to clarify. Write to challenge yourself.”
— Seth Godin, The Practice
The Turn: What If This Isn’t the Flaw, But the Blueprint?
Somewhere between the howling wind and the deadline breathing down my neck, the question rose out of the chaos like a flare:
How is any of this an advantage?
All this starting-and-stopping. All this emotional weather. All this rewiring, reorganizing, overthinking, underfunctioning, overwhelming mess.
How does this build anything? How does this make me a better entrepreneur? A better creator? A better human?
And then, like a whisper—or maybe like a punch—the truth hit:
This isn’t the flaw. This is the blueprint.
The chaos isn’t evidence that the neurodivergent mind is broken. It’s evidence that it’s working—just not in the linear, factory-model way the world keeps insisting is “right.”
I don’t think in tidy bullet points. I think in constellations.
I don’t move in straight lines. I move in spirals: circling, deepening, widening, connecting threads no one else sees until suddenly—boom—the pattern reveals itself.
I don’t step over the mess. I sift through it until the truth rises to the surface like gold flakes in a mining pan.
And finally, after decades of thinking something was wrong with me, I can say it plainly:
Neurodivergent entrepreneurs aren’t succeeding despite their differences. They’re succeeding because of them.
The world just hasn’t been taught to recognize the genius that doesn’t look like efficiency. The brilliance that doesn’t look like consistency. The creativity that doesn’t look like productivity.
The world prefers tidy. We prefer true.
The Five Advantages (The Real Ones—The Ones You Actually Live)
Here’s the truth I’ve been circling toward through all the mess, all the freewriting, all the self-interrogation:
Neurodivergent brains are built for entrepreneurship.
Not despite the chaos. Because of it.
Let me show you what I mean—not through platitudes, but through the actual lived experience of this weekend.
1. Pattern Recognition = The Index Card Revelation
Black Friday. I sat down to learn. Instead, I spent twelve hours building a note-taking system.
On the surface? Total derailment. Classic ADHD procrastination.
But here’s what was really happening: My brain recognized a pattern—my old system was broken and couldn’t handle the volume of what I was trying to learn. Instead of just pushing through with crappy notes like a neurotypical brain might, mine said: “Stop. Fix the infrastructure first. Then move forward.”
This looks like procrastination. It’s actually precision.
Neurodivergent brains don’t tolerate broken systems. We see the cracks. We see the inefficiencies. We see where the process is bleeding time and energy, and we cannot move forward until we fix it.
This is pattern recognition. This is why we redesign workflows that everyone else just accepts. This is why we see opportunities others miss.
We’re not distracted by the note-taking system. We’re diagnosing the meta-problem.
2. Deep Focus = The Freewriting Flight
Right now—this very moment—as I write this, I am in hyperfocus.
My fingers are flying. The world has disappeared. I’m not aware of my cold tea, the wind, or the deadline. I am inside the work.
This state isn’t available on command. I can’t schedule it. I can’t force it.
But when it shows up? It’s rocket fuel.
Three hours pass like fifteen minutes. Five thousand words appear like I’m channeling them from somewhere else. The hand draws the hand draws the hand.
Neurotypical entrepreneurs work in steady increments. Neurodivergent entrepreneurs work in bursts of complete immersion.
We don’t clock in and clock out. We disappear into the work and emerge on the other side holding something we didn’t know we were capable of creating.
This is not a bug. This is the feature.
3. Intuitive Problem-Solving = The Freewriting Method Itself
Here’s what I didn’t know when I started writing at 4 AM: I wasn’t writing an essay. I was clearing the attic.
All the dust. All the cobwebs. All the tangled thoughts that were clogging the machinery.
I didn’t outline. I didn’t plan. I just wrote.
And somewhere in the mess of words—somewhere between the howling wind and the deadline—the structure began to reveal itself.
The essay was always there. I just had to write my way toward it.
This is how neurodivergent brains solve problems: We don’t start with the answer and work backward. We start with the chaos and work forward until the pattern emerges.
We trust the process even when we can’t see the destination.
We write the mess. We live the mess. We sift through the mess until the gold separates from the dirt.
And when we finally see it? We see it all at once. Complete. Clear. True.
But here’s the thing most people don’t understand about freewriting:
It’s not just for writers.
I use this same technique when I’m doing my CFO work. When I’m organizing my week. When I need to know my priorities. When I’m stuck on a business decision. When the overwhelm is winning.
It all starts with writing.
Journal writing. Brain dumping. Freewriting.
All of it is the precursor for everything else that comes next—not just more writing, but clarity. Direction. Action.
The freewriting isn’t the end product. It’s the diagnostic tool. It’s the attic-clearing. It’s how I find out what I actually think underneath all the noise.
And once I know what I think? Everything else becomes possible.
4. Hypersensitivity as Diagnostic Precision = The Gym Scene
The reason I can’t go to the gym isn’t weakness. It’s not social anxiety in the traditional sense. It’s not even introversion.
It’s this: My nervous system processes more information than everyone else’s.
I hear everything. The basketballs. The squeaking shoes. The distant conversations echo off the walls.
I feel everything. The fluorescent lights. The texture of the air. The energy of every person who passes me on that track.
I notice everything. The older man who always wears the red jacket. The woman with the yoga mat. The names people tell me that I now have to remember or risk being rude.
Most people filter 90% of this out. I don’t.
This is exhausting. This is overwhelming. This is also why I write with such specificity. Why I notice the details that others miss. Why my metaphors land.
Hypersensitivity isn’t a malfunction. It’s a diagnostic tool running at maximum capacity.
I pick up patterns, shifts, and undercurrents that others don’t even register. I see what’s not being said. I feel what’s underneath the surface.
This makes everyday life harder. But it makes creative work richer. It makes business instincts sharper. It makes storytelling visceral.
The same sensitivity that makes the gym unbearable makes my work unforgettable.
5. Iteration as Evolution = The Decade of “Next Week”
Every Sunday for the past decade, I’ve said, “Next week I’ll get on schedule.”
On the surface, this looks like failure. Like, I can’t follow through. Like I’m stuck in an endless loop of good intentions and broken promises.
But here’s what’s really happening: I’m testing.
Every week, I gather data on what works and what doesn’t. Every restart is a refinement. Every “failure” is feedback.
Neurotypical entrepreneurs follow the plan. Neurodivergent entrepreneurs evolve the plan.
We don’t see the system as fixed. We see it as living, breathing, adaptable.
And yes, this means we restart a lot. Yes, this means we pivot constantly. Yes, this means the path is never straight.
But it also means that when we finally land on something that works? It works for us. Not for the template. Not for the guru’s framework. Not for the productivity hack du jour.
For us. For our actual brain. For our actual life.
This isn’t indecision. This is iteration. This is how innovation actually happens.
This is the Outlier Advantage in motion: we don’t repeat the week— we evolve the week.
The Real Truth About Flexibility
So yes, I’m working this weekend. And yes, the deadline is breathing down my neck. And yes, I spent Black Friday building a note-taking system instead of taking notes.
But here’s what else is true:
I love what I’m doing.
I’m not punching a clock. I’m not answering to a boss who doesn’t understand how my brain works. I’m not forcing myself into a 9-to-5 structure that would slowly suffocate me.
The flexibility isn’t just a nice perk. It’s the whole point.
It’s the air I breathe. It’s the reason this works at all.
Because neurodivergent brains don’t thrive in rigid structures, we thrive in responsive structures. Structures that bend. Structures that adapt. Structures that allow for the 4 AM freewriting session that saves the whole damn week.
The chaos you think disqualifies you? That’s your reconnaissance mission.
The overwhelm you think is weakness? That’s your sensitivity picking up more data than average minds can perceive.
The constant restarting you think is a failure? That’s iteration, evolution, refinement.
The spirals you think are distractions? That’s how you get to the truth.
The Pilot Was Always You
The pilot didn’t show up because I am the pilot. I’ve always been the pilot. I just kept waiting for someone else to tell me I was qualified to fly.
The freewriting isn’t the backup plan. It’s the plan.
The mess isn’t the problem. It’s the workshop.
And the deadline? I’m going to make it.
Not because I figured out how to think like everyone else. But because I finally stopped trying to.
The hand draws the hand. The words write the words. The neurodivergent brain builds the business that only it could build.
Different. True. Better.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to reheat my tea one more time and hit publish.