It all started with me wanting to know what this actually “means.”

What National Debt Actually Is

It’s basically government bonds. When the government spends more than it takes in through taxes, it borrows money by selling Treasury bonds (IOUs). People, companies, other countries, and even the U.S. government itself buy these bonds. The $38 trillion is the total of all those IOUs the government has promised to pay back.

The Current Situation (The “Oh Crap” Metrics)

From the chart pack and recent data:

• Debt-to-GDP ratio: 122% - This means our total debt is bigger than our entire economy’s annual output. That’s higher than the post-WWII peak.

• Interest payments are exploding - The government now spends more on interest than on children’s programs, and interest spending will exceed defense spending by 2027 Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

• We’re spending about $881 billion per year just on interest - that’s money that does NOTHING except pay the cost of past borrowing.

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Why High Debt Is Dangerous (The Real Risks)

Think of it in layers, from “definitely happening” to “potential catastrophe”:

Layer 1: The Slow Squeeze (Already Happening)

High government borrowing puts upward pressure on interest rates throughout the economy, and every dollar the government borrows reduces private investment by about 33 cents (Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.) This is called “crowding out.”

Here’s what that means practically:

• Entrepreneurs pay more to borrow money for new businesses

• Companies invest less in innovation and equipment

• Over time, this results in lower GDP (1.1% smaller by 2035, 5.6% smaller by 2075), millions fewer jobs, and wages that are 5.3% lower than they would be otherwise (Peterson Foundation)

Your mental model: Imagine the economy as a pie. The government is taking bigger and bigger slices to pay interest on old debt, leaving less pie for everyone else to invest in productive things that actually grow the economy.

Layer 2: Loss of Fiscal Flexibility (The “Rainy Day Fund” Problem)

As one analysis put it: “We are guilty of spending our rainy-day fund in sunny weather” (Fortune.) When the next crisis hits (pandemic, war, financial collapse), we won’t have the borrowing capacity to respond effectively. The more debt accumulates, the less “fiscal space” we have to borrow when we actually need it. (Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget)

Layer 3: National Security & Global Position

The chart pack shows that a huge chunk of discretionary spending goes to defense, veterans, international affairs. But as one former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said, “The most significant threat to our national security is our debt” (Peter G. Peterson Foundation) - because money spent on interest is money NOT available for defense, cybersecurity, or other security needs.

Plus, about 30% of U.S. debt is owned by foreign investors. The more dependent we are on foreign creditors, the less leverage we have internationally.

Layer 4: The Crisis Scenarios (Low Probability, Catastrophic Impact)

This is where it gets scary. A fiscal crisis would involve a sudden, large, sustained drop in demand for Treasury securities that triggers a sharp spike in interest rates, probably accompanied by a steep fall in the dollar and equity markets, potentially causing a global financial crisis Brookings.

What could trigger this?

• Investors lose confidence in the government’s ability to pay, demanding much higher interest rates to hold U.S. debt Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget

• Political dysfunction (like debt ceiling fights) makes investors think the U.S. might actually default

• The “boiling frog” effect - where the crisis moves in slow motion until suddenly the system breaks Fortune

If this happens, you’d see:

• Massive spike in interest rates on everything (mortgages, car loans, business loans)

• Inflation potentially spiraling

• Dollar losing value

• Forced austerity - harsh spending cuts and tax increases all at once

• Potential global financial meltdown (since Treasuries are the bedrock of the world financial system)

Why Can’t We Just Keep Borrowing?

The U.S. has unique advantages - the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, Treasury bonds are seen as the safest asset on earth. But economists warn that solutions from the past aren’t available today: we don’t have the favorable conditions of the post-WWII era (very low interest rates plus fast growth), nor the “peace dividend” of the 1990s that allowed defense cuts Fortune.

The most likely outcome isn’t a sudden crisis, but rather a slow and steady erosion of capital and national wealth that impairs living standards for future generations Brookings. We’re essentially borrowing from our kids to fund current consumption.

The Bottom Line

The danger isn’t necessarily that the government will “run out of money” tomorrow (it won’t - it can always print more or keep borrowing). The danger is:

1. Guaranteed slow decline: Less investment, slower growth, lower wages, reduced quality of life

2. Lost flexibility: Can’t respond to the next major crisis

3. Generational theft: Current generations benefiting at the expense of future ones

4. Risk of sudden crisis: Low probability, but if it happens, it would be catastrophic

The math is pretty brutal: we have a structural mismatch between what we’ve promised to spend (especially on Social Security, Medicare, and interest) and what we collect in taxes. And that gap is only growing.

Where Does the Money Actually Go?

The federal budget breaks down into three buckets:

1. MANDATORY SPENDING (~63% of the budget)

This is spending that happens automatically by law unless Congress changes the law. It’s called “mandatory” because it doesn’t require annual votes.

The Big Three:

• Social Security: ~$1.5 trillion - Retirement and disability checks to elderly and disabled Americans

• Medicare: ~$1 trillion - Healthcare for people 65+

• Medicaid: ~$600 billion - Healthcare for low-income Americans

• Other safety net: ~$500 billion (food stamps, unemployment, child tax credits, etc.)

These programs grow automatically because:

1. More people are retiring (Baby Boomers)

2. Healthcare costs keep rising

3. Benefits are indexed to inflation

This is the structural problem everyone’s worried about. Politicians don’t have to vote on these every year—they just keep growing. And both parties are terrified to touch them because cutting Social Security or Medicare is political suicide.

2. DISCRETIONARY SPENDING (~27% of the budget)

This is what Congress actually votes on every year in appropriations bills. It’s split into:

Defense (~$900 billion):

• Military operations, equipment, personnel

• Veterans benefits (~$134 billion)

• Nuclear weapons programs

• Military construction

Non-Defense (~$959 billion): From that chart pack, it breaks down to:

• Transportation: $130B (roads, airports, trains)

• Veterans Services: $134B

• Education: $121B

• Health Research/CDC/NIH: $100B

• International Affairs: $78B

• Natural Resources/Energy/Environment: $78B

• Science/NASA/Tech: $41B

• Everything else: Justice system, community development, agriculture, etc.

3. INTEREST ON THE DEBT (~10% and GROWING FAST)

• $881 billion in 2024, and climbing rapidly

• This is the part that does absolutely nothing except pay for past borrowing

• Growing faster than anything else because both debt and interest rates are up

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The “Just Print Money” Problem

I suggested that Trump ran his businesses by leveraging and borrowing against wealth, but has a history of defaulting on loans… whats his bankrupty count at now? 6? Anyway… he’s spending money he doesn’t have because he knows he doesn’t face consequences about anything.

Here’s where your Trump comparison gets interesting—but also where the analogy breaks down:

What Trump did with his businesses:

• Borrowed heavily

• When things went bad, declared bankruptcy 6 times

• Walked away, creditors ate the losses

• He personally never really faced consequences

What happens with a country: The U.S. can print money (we control our own currency), but there are consequences:

• Inflation: If you just print to pay debts, the dollar loses value. Everyone’s savings become worth less.

• Loss of trust: If investors think we’ll just inflate away the debt, they demand higher interest rates to compensate

• Currency collapse: In extreme cases (think Zimbabwe, Weimar Germany), the currency becomes worthless

The U.S. has gotten away with high debt for a long time because:

1. The dollar is the world’s reserve currency

2. Treasury bonds are seen as the safest investment on earth

3. We’ve always paid our debts

But that’s based on trust and reputation. If that trust breaks, everything breaks.

The Current Political Reality

Recent negotiations revealed plans for a $2.5 trillion spending cut in exchange for a $1.5 trillion debt ceiling increase Wikipedia. But here’s the catch:

What CAN’T realistically be cut much:

• Social Security (political third rail)

• Medicare (another third rail)

• Interest payments (legally required)

• Defense (both parties love it for different reasons)

Those four things are roughly 80% of the budget. So when politicians talk about “cutting $2.5 trillion,” they’re either:

1. Not being serious

2. Planning to gut everything else to the bone

3. Planning to cut mandatory programs (political suicide)

What COULD be cut: That $959B in non-defense discretionary—but even cutting ALL of it wouldn’t close the deficit, and you’d be eliminating: veterans services, education, transportation, science research, environmental protection, justice system, etc.

The Bottom Line

Your instinct is right: there’s a bankruptcy playbook mentality at work—borrow big, don’t worry about paying it back. The difference is:

• Trump’s companies: He could walk away. Creditors lose, he moves on.

• The U.S. government: We can’t walk away. If we default or inflate away the debt, everyone suffers—including the people making the decisions and their families.

The real problem isn’t any one president (Biden added $8.5T, Trump added plenty in his first term, Obama added a bunch, etc.). The real problem is the structural mismatch: we’ve promised more in benefits than we’re willing to pay in taxes, and neither party wants to be the one to fix it because:

• Raising taxes loses elections

• Cutting benefits loses elections

• So everyone kicks the can down the road

Despite talk of cost-cutting, spending actually rose $142 billion in the first half of 2025, largely due to automatic growth in Social Security and Medicare. (Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget)

The math is pretty brutal: you can’t cut your way out of this without touching the big programs, and you can’t tax your way out without massive tax increases. The only real solutions involve both—and political pain that nobody wants to inflict.

I learned a lot diving into this alongside Claude, so wanted to share it for anyone that didn’t want to go down that path.

Just because OpenAI stole all the art doesn’t mean LLMs are intrinsically bad, this is a great example of doing research when you don’t know where to look or even know what you don’t know.

I tend to say this ‘most productive in the morning’ reality to having ideas being crammed into the folds of my brain the longer I’m awake, so by midday I’m tired, midafternoon I’m foggy, and early evening I’m exhausted.

That isn’t completely wrong, scientists have confirmed that sleeping is when the Glymphatic System flushes metabolic waste buildup from your brain… so we’ll just refer to the distracting thoughts in my brain as ‘metabolic waste buildup’ and take the W.

So, when I opened my computer, and it flashed into light… I got to see what it looked like when I turned it off yesterday.

I’ve spoken often, and loudly, about the need for some automation in managing open tabs, but also about the buildup of too many things in our environment.

Decluttering has helped me in the past. Removing the non-essential helps me focus on the essential. It’s why I often…

• Listen to non-speaking, or foreign language music when on a walk or workout.

• Declare bankruptcy and hold down the ‘Close Tab’ key to just accept that I don’t need those tabs.

• Put on noise canceling headphones while working.

• Avoid podcasts or books about something I’m currently researching

Fresh words spark new ideas - spark buildup of ‘metabolic waste’ - create overwhelm.

I’ll try to go into the different types of overwhelm, but in this case, I’m talking about the overwhelm where there’s too much going on and I don’t know which thing to think about.

So… that mess of a screenshot… it’s fun to look at and try to find easter eggs of where my brain was at when I put the computer to bed. Now imagine that it’s interactive…

Here’s another version of the desktop, using the expand mode:

Imagine that you’ve got all of that in your face when you try to “Start Working.”

For my ADHD brain, it’s a world of Hemingway Bridges, a collection of “where shall I start” questions. It’s a world of possibility.

It’s also a world of guilt, looking at everything I started but didn’t finish. A snapshot of my inability to complete a simple task.

All the clutter in my digital workspace exists as a symptom of an inability to prioritize, and a default mode to start more before closing the loop on the previous thing.

This isn’t an indictment of being ADHD. I accept (and LOVE) that every thought coming in creates 3 going out. I love that my brain defaults to a world of curious possibility. But I hate that I can’t always turn it off (or on) when I feel like it.

I’ve gotten really good at being able to always default back to the core beneath the overwhelms, so often forget that it looks different at different times. But lets look at them now.

Overwhelm #1 - Too Much Information

This overwhelm is a knee-jerk reaction, it’s being overstimulated… where the stimulation is information, not senses.

The too much information is what happens when the info-dump happens involuntarily. It can be words, but it can be images, or sounds.

There are several things in play with this most basic version:

1. Curiosity - Wanting to chase everything.

2. Confusion - Not knowing where to start.

3. Emotional Dysregulation - Frustration at not knowing where to start.

4. Overwhelm.

This type of overwhelm will typically lead to me opening a fresh tab, or a device, and picking a dopamine generating distraction… as I start to feel bad about the thing in front of me, my default mode will be to find something to make me feel good.

Overwhelm #2 - Too Many Choices

While this is similar to step two from above, the this one can sometimes be called “Too Much ‘Not Enough Information’.”

This type of overwhelm is when you’ve picked the thing you want to, or need to work on, and then struggle with the first step.

My ADHD brain has some time management issues, where I will think of 5 things that should all happen at the start, and then 3 things that result from starting actions. I build the mental model of the cart, and fail to leave a way to connect the horse.

This one looks like:

1. Intent - Decide on a thing to work on.

2. Overplan - Consider all the options that might be worth starting.

3. Over-research - Look for why you might need to do any one of the things.

4. Emotional Dysregulation - Frustration at all the options with no clear understanding which order is “best.”

5. Overwhelm.

This one happens more for me when I’m working on something for another person, so then I get frustrated that the person in question didn’t give me more information, or isn’t available for questions.

While the first overwhelm comes with entering a situation with too much information, this one is about starting a process that I can’t “visualize” from start to finish, or I can’t conceptualize the process.

I often refer to this type of overwhelm as a “Need to know ‘Why’ before I can engage.”

Overwhelm #3 - Not Immediately Easy Enough

While this looks like #2, it’s slightly different in that often something is fun to do while it’s easy, and you can intuit the steps to take to make progress, until one thing requires a little more mental lift to continue.

I started learning guitar, and it was clear how to finger a note or a chord, and I got to the point that I could play them, and then “strumming” entered the picture.

I started designing an application, got through the design document, created an information architecture, maybe even created a prototype or mock of what it’ll look like, and then writing code became necessary.

This overwhelm is what happens when you try to do it all yourself, or when you expect everything to always be easy. This is a place where “Grit” is the answer to the neurotypical… for an ADHD brain, it’s SO easy to find a different, easier thing to start.

The overwhelm loop gets longer here, and more frustrating.

1. Flow - It’s interesting, I dive in.

2. Progress - I can see results, it feels like something is moving, that I’m accomplishing something.

3. Frustration - Something I’m doing feels confusing or hard, so I pivot within the project.

4. Flow - I can do this next thing, I’m great!

5. Frustration - I’ve done all the things I can think of, easily, the next part is hard enough to break flow.

6. Overwhelm. - But this one is often a non-volatile version, its a “quiet quit” type.

I feel like burnout is a real danger with this type. You feel like you’re doing all the work you’re supposed to, but that you’re never making progress.

You’re doing the right things, but ‘nothing is happening.’

Overwhelm #4 - Too Many Things to Do

I figured out the thing, I started it, it got less 'easy’ so I started another thing… and that cycle repeats.

This is the one where I start different projects because I need to have multiple sources of stimulation. It looks like I’m a great multitasker, or it displays the excess of great ideas… it’s “Peak ADHD Behavior.”

While I can get overwhelmed at having too much all at once, or from having so much to do with no clear starting point, those have easier solutions.

With “Too Many Things”, I’ll have started multiple different big ideas over time, and fleshed them out to the point that they’re all somewhat concrete.

In truth, this overwhelm is the result of hitting the previous overwhelm quietly and moving on.

1. Empowerment - Feel like I’m getting stuff done, then the ‘hard’ wall hits.

2. Curiosity - Start another project.

3. Empowerment - … til ‘hard’ wall

4. Curiosity - … you see where this is going.

5. Frustration - I’ve got “too much to do” where there are too many projects, all with too many steps.

6. Overwhelm. - Burnout.

The damage from this one is that you feel like you can’t ever finish anything, that you’re too distracted. This overwhelm is when you lean into all of the negative ADHD traits as a reason to hate yourself.

It’s hard to get past this big overwhelm. But they’re all tied to the same core problem.

The “Cure” is Prioritization

Much like ‘try harder’ and ‘grit’, this word is used enough to feel weaponized.

“You just need to prioritize.”

Nobody hates to hear those words from another person more than me. (Though I’m happy to only hate it as much as you, I’m not special.)

Prioritization feels like too easy of an answer to address my huge problems, and it is… when you’re well into a life that’s filled with Overwhelm type #4. When you’re in burnout mode, the ONLY prioritization left is self regulation. Once your system is fried, you’ve got to power down, let it cool off… maybe you need to reinstall the OS.

This cure will look different for different people, for different situations, and for the different types of overwhelm.

Much like ‘try harder’, the solution of prioritization isn’t a simple decision you make.

Just like ‘grit’, the devil is in the details, it’s a system that works for you, at that time, with your unique needs.

The power of prioritization comes with a system, a set of rules, a rubric to test your ‘next steps’ against or just a shift in understanding what is enough.

In software, the phrase is “Minimum Viable Product” … ironically known as MVP. And in some ways, it can also mean “Most Valuable Player” if you recognize that in a world of getting things done… the value comes in being able to whittle things away for absolute clarity.

The ability to prioritize means the ability to say ‘no.’

The system that lets you do the most important thing first, recognizes 2 things:

• “Most Important” is relative

• “Most Important” is malleable

Contrary to advice given by Guru’s and Thought Leaders, their path isn’t the only path.

There are a handful of parts to creating your own prioritization framework, and lets be clear… it has to be YOU creating it, if you want it to work.

Establishing Your Priorities

I’ve lived the experience that hates all of the productivity phrases. I recognize that I don’t want to eke out peak performance from everything I do. I have zero interest in being a cog in the system… so bear with me as I start using Productivity words.

I’ll go slow, I’ll keep it simple… it’s what I need, and what we all need.

Prioritization is one of the most fundamental of ADHD executive dysfunctions. It’s such a strong dysfunction that it being able to make it function can have a dramatic effect in being overwhelmed, pursuing distractions, and managing time blindness.

I’ll go out on a limb and say, the ‘cure’ to ADHD lies in the ability to prioritize. Well, more accurately, it’s how you can manage your ADHD when done right.

Being able to prioritize means being able to “pick the next thing that matters.”

But prioritization isn’t about productivity, it’s what defines your mindset, your attitude, your default response. It’s how you pick what you’ll learn, how you’ll spend your time, who you’ll stay in touch with and how you’ll engage with the world.

It’s both “simple” and “impossible” to learn… at the same time.

I won’t pretend you’ll have it figured out with a framework… but being able to create one might be what lets you connect it to the different aspects of your life.

So lets dive in, to properly prioritize means you’re able to…

1. Understand what matters - Having a context ‘why’ is what will keep you coming back. It’s what allows you to seek he next step, and the next.

2. Understand the ‘end state’ - If you can recognize the ‘why’ of the entire endeavor, you can build the mental model in your mind of how to get there.

3. Understand where you’re at - Do you need skills, information, time, people, energy?

4. Accept Uncertainty - There will be hurdles, there will be unknowns, there will be easy and hard parts.

5. Relinquish Control - “Shit happens” means that you won’t be the one in charge at every step, either in yourself, or in the thing you’re working on.

6. Press ‘Publish’ at 80% - Perfection is a pursuit, not a result. Embrace your ability to pivot, to see connections and to chase the unknown, its in your wiring.

These rules apply at EVERY layer of prioritization.

With these 6 rules, you can change your mindset, lead a project, contribute to a project, manage relationships, learn something, teach someone, share or present something or build something larger than yourself.

These rules apply to people that have ADHD, and people that don’t. These are the principles of life… and likely something I’ll obsess over for weeks now that I’ve written them out.

But, I feel like I didn’t actually tell you HOW to build prioritization framework… so I’ll type a little bit more.

To be clear, this still needs you to have the privilege of time, tools and some autonomy, and might take some extra work of those aren’t available.

Building a Prioritization Framework

In life, EVERYTHING that happens is a by-product of your priorities. Sometimes we don’t want to admit it, because it hurts to admit, but it’s a fundamental truth.

With ADHD, one of our cognitive struggles is memory, another is time blindness. These can be useful when you’re trying to get things done, but they can completely hamstring your ability to stick to the priority.

A personal bit of self loathing in me is my inability to consistently reach out to my 84 year old mother, living alone, 1000 miles away from me. I WANT to check in on her, but I forget. I defer til when I presume she’s less busy, or when I’m able to commit time to chat, or when I have something important to say.

But the truth that I hate to admit is, I haven’t found a way to hard code that priority into my brain, or my life, so it must not be a real priority. (Which isn’t true.)

Check In on Mom - The Framework

Quick rubric check of the 6 rules above:

• Why This Matters - Mom is old, lonely, I want her to be happy.

• Desired Result - I contact her once a week, or as conversations dictate.

• Struggle - I forget. I’m allergic to calendars. (Get distracted, Lose track of time)

• Wild Cards - Schedules shift, technology intrudes, things come up.

• Outsource Option - If I forget, but also struggle to keep a schedule. Have a reminder that’s a checkbox that stays persistent until checked. Must be visible. (I HATE red notification dots.)

• 80% Effort - She gets a default “Hey Mom, hope all is well, nothing exciting to report but wanted to check in.”

This a simple thing, and doesn’t need need some huge plan, so I have to pick some rules that are easy and that I’ll commit to them.

1. I’ll always respond within an hour if she messages me (and I’m able.)

2. I’ll always have the short check-in queued up in chat, all I’ve gotta do is hit send.

3. I’ll set a “To Do” in Google Calendar that’s a recurring event every Sunday. I’ll put a reminder on my calendar with EVERY notification enabled on Wednesday.

4. I’ll commit to the Wednesday day thing as the MVP, if the To Do that started on Sunday isn’t being executed.

This is a simple thing I fail to do, but that actually matters, so I set up the priority. After it’s become entrenched, it starts to be automatic without the notifications.

The framework is really just going through the 6 questions, building a plan from them, and then committing to the plan.

To be certain, it can be simple or complex, it can be used for:

• A task (call mom)

• A project

• A goal

• A mindset

If you can define the priority and you can get through the 6 questions, you can make it part of your life.

As the opening screenshot illustrates, I don’t have it all figured out… or maybe more specifically, just because I get it working right now doesn’t mean I don’t slip and slide.

The ability to be malleable, to recognize that there isn’t a silver bullet, is a part of having grace with your ADHD, or your life. It’s why guru advice is so hard to stick to. It’s why knowing how to build the system is more important than to have a system.

So, be patient, only focus on one priority at a time, and allow yourself to shift as things become more clear.

One Last Thing: ADHD brains aren’t machines. We can’t turn emotions off and on, we can’t just choose to not get overwhelmed, or overstimulated. We can’t make ourselves have more energy and we can’t do everything just because of a system or framework.

Please don’t think that this will fix all your problems, get help when you need it, walk away when you need it, take a nap when you need it. Respect your needs.

Prioritize your needs over productivity, or having the answers.

Have grace, allow time, allow iteration, and keep coming back.

I don’t write weekly. I don’t charge for what I write about. I’m not always focused on neurodivergence, or politics, or economics, or pets, or hobbies, or lifehacks, or technology, or AI. Any of those will come up, but always as they connect to humans and trying to be a good one.

‘mindfullish’ is my recognition that I think about a lot of things, but sometimes forget to think about right now. That my interests can vary widely, but always have a human connection. I think humans matter than institutions, more than profits and more than ideologies, so I’ll always be targeting the human part first.

My name is Jody, ou can subscribe to ‘mindfullish’ via the link, or find me on LinkedIn or join my community (Chaos Cooperative) or reach out to me for “Neurodivergent Chats” … the links are all over the place.

Subscribe now

Have you considered going on an elimination diet?

Not for your body—for your brain.

I've been trying a little experiment lately, and it's revealing something profound about how our minds process the chaos around us.

An occasional part of my “SPIRAL preparation” before I start working is setting a 15-minute timer and proceeding to declutter. What was originally about tidying up turned out to be a window into understanding why I feel overwhelmed in the first place.

*SPIRAL is a checklist for getting my head and body in the right space to “get things done.”

As the experiment turned into habit, I realized that part of my feelings of overwhelm don't come from having too much to think about. It's that I can't help but acknowledge everything. My brain is like a hypervigilant security guard, constantly cataloging every single thing that's "wrong" or "incomplete" in my environment.

The Inventory of Overwhelm

Messy desk? I fidget with things, push papers around, get distracted by the thought that I need to completely clean it up… not just move one thing, but achieve perfect organization.

Messy room? I get overwhelmed with the need to clean up, not necessarily to put every single item in its "appropriate place"… rather it’s what I call “should shame”.

Messy digital workspace? The glut of open tabs in my browser becomes a constant reminder of intentions unfulfilled. Each tab represents something I meant to read, meant to work on, meant to remember. They're digital sticky notes of guilt.

There's a level of guilt, shame, intention, or overwhelm that comes with any one thing. But when I let it become a pile of things—physical or mental—it becomes hopeless. I stop pretending I'll ever deal with those items because my head thinks I need to deal with ALL the things, simultaneously, perfectly.

The All-or-Nothing Trap

This is where the elimination diet metaphor becomes powerful. When people do food elimination diets, they remove potential triggers to see what's actually causing problems. They don't try to fix everything at once, they isolate variables.

What if we applied the same principle to our mental environment?

Instead of trying to "fix" every source of distraction or overwhelm at once, what if we systematically eliminated them? What if we treated our attention like the finite, valuable resource it actually is?

My 15-Minute Elimination Experiment

Here's what I've learned from my pre-work decluttering ritual:

1. The relief is immediate. Clearing just one surface—my desk, my desktop, my browser tabs—creates a disproportionate sense of calm. It's not about perfection; it's about reducing the number of things competing for my brain's acknowledgment.

2. Single items can explode into entire projects. Sometimes a single piece of clutter turns into an entire side quest. The first time I tried the experiment, I was decluttering and took something to "its home," only to realize I had thoughts about that project. Obviously, I spun out and worked on that project for 10 minutes before getting back on target. The clutter doesn't just hold my attention because it exists; it holds my attention because each item is a portal to other thoughts, other projects, other rabbit holes my brain wants to dive down.

3. Small wins compound. When I eliminate just a few sources of visual/mental noise, my capacity to focus on what actually matters expands dramatically.

4. The mess isn't the problem—it's my relationship with the mess. Each cluttered space or open tab creates two competing pulls on my attention. First, there's the guilt demand: "Deal with me. Remember me. Feel bad about ignoring me." But second, there's the inspiration invitation: "Look at me! I could spark something interesting! Let me pull you in a new direction!" Sometimes that second pull is wonderful—it leads to creative breakthroughs and unexpected connections. But it needs to be more intentional. When I'm trying to focus on a specific task, I need to choose whether I'm open to being pulled in new directions, rather than letting every visible object make that choice for me.

What Are You Feeding Your Overwhelm?

The question I'm asking myself now—and the one I want to pose to you—is this: What are you unconsciously feeding your sense of overwhelm?

• Is it the 47 browser tabs you keep open "just in case"?

• Is it the pile of papers that grows daily on your kitchen counter?

• Is it the notifications from apps you don't even remember downloading?

• Is it the mental list of projects you "should" be working on?

Try the Elimination Approach

Instead of trying to fix everything at once, pick one category of mental clutter and eliminate it for a week. I'm a fan of options, so here are several approaches to consider, (including 2 options for each!):

• Browser tabs: Close all but 3 tabs OR make a habit of closing 1 tab for every new tab you open

• Physical surfaces: Clear one surface completely each morning OR hide things under a box or blanket while you're working

• Digital distractions: Turn off all non-essential notifications OR close down non-essential applications entirely—if you work from browser tabs, look for standalone app versions to work from instead

• Mental "should do" lists: Write down your "should do" list and then put it in a drawer (this works on its own, though I've taken to typing my list of things to do into an AI so I can return to and explore the conversation later)

See what happens to your mental state when you stop feeding that particular source of overwhelm.

You might discover, as I'm discovering, that the feeling of being "too much" isn't about having too much to do—it's about having too much to acknowledge, remember, and feel responsible for.

Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is eliminate rather than add.

Sometimes the best way to think clearly is to give your brain fewer things to think about.

What would you eliminate first?

It’s hard to see the danger of excess when you’re standing in a place of lack.

Someone who just wants to put food on their table, or buy their kid new socks, will struggle to agree with the statement “Money can’t buy you happiness.” Not because they want to be a billionaire, but because they exist deeply in a world of “Lack of money removes my ability to be happy.”

When you're choosing between rent and groceries, hearing someone say 'money isn't everything' feels like a slap in the face.

But here's what's dangerous about this blind spot: the very people who've escaped that struggle often can't see when they've gone too far in the other direction. And that excess is quietly destroying everything we've built.

There’s a reason that “new money” tend to put their new found wealth into things like excessively large houses, or unnecessarily luxurious vehicles. They want to experience the opposite of their former lack, or they want to present themselves as having beaten the struggle to get that necessity.

Let’s explore what that looks like in the two biggest areas of our lives where most of us wish we were “rich”: money and time.

Money - Removing struggle Isn’t the same as being happy

There are three main stages of financial wealth:

Lack - Your finances are so poor that it’s something you think about often. If you fantasize, it’s often about having more money. If you worry, it’s often about not having enough money. Your lack of money has a direct effect on your health… eating poorly, too busy to exercise, can’t afford medically necessary treatments. Everything would be better if you just had a bit more money. Culturally, this is the “Lower Class” and often looked down upon by the others.

Comfort - Your finances meet your needs, you might think about money, but generally it’s about maintaining what you have. If you fantasize about money, it’s just a desire to have a bit more freedom in your life. Your worries are more likely to be about your health, or your family and are more long term. You’re able to spend money to improve your health, or relationships or increase your comfort. Culturally, this is the “Middle Class.”

Abundance - Your finances are irrelevant. You can spend money on anything without having to make sacrifices. At this stage, money is likely building more wealth, so even when you’re spending, its still increasing through a money generating system. This might be owning your own business, family money or through investments. Your worries will only revolve around things that money can’t address, which may seem like there is nothing to worry about. Culturally, this is the upper class, maybe the 1%.

When you’re unable to pay a bill, or have to skip meals to ensure there’s enough to eat, it’s easy to see that having more money would make you happier. It’s easy to think that money is all that matters.

When you’re comfortably able to live, eat, and entertain yourself, you might think less about money until something arises that could use more. In this place of privilege, it’s easy to think you deserve this or that you earned it, and you may or may not think that more money would improve your life.

When your finances are such that you don’t have to think about money at all, you start to think that anyone who doesn’t have this wealth is just not trying hard enough, or that those who struggle are lazy. The newer your wealth, the more likely you think people should work harder. The older (generational) wealth might not even recognize that the others are struggling.

*There are exceptions inside any of these groups, there are plenty with little financial wealth who are happy for it, there are those who are comfortable but who still want more and there are those with excess who think they can help the less fortunate.

Time - The most valuable resource available

We all have the same 24 hours in a day, but we don’t all have the same resources for how those are used. It’s easy to connect Time to Money, as the latter can effectively give you more of the former.

Lacking money, you end up trading time to survive. Maybe it’s having multiple jobs, maybe it’s spending your time cleaning your house, preparing your meals, raising your children or building/repairing your resources.

A healthy, relaxed human, might be able to get by on 6 hours of restful sleep, but a struggling, impoverished person may be waking in stress, sleeping poorly and have no time to address that.

It’s impossible to break down a cultural difference for Time, or to separate it from money. The higher your social class, the more easily you can spend money to increase or improve the time available to you. Eating better, having time to exercise, having time to disconnect from stressful things and recharge, all of them let you be more present throughout your day.

Being able to hire someone to clean and maintain your home and environment gives you more time. Being able to hire someone to prepare your meals, or being able to pay for dining out, will again save you time for other priorities.

There’s no need to belabor the point. Having little money often means you have little time. Having more money often means you’re able to free up time and use the time you do have more effectively.

In the modern world, especially in the United States of America, having more money is very clearly a path to having more time. The fact that there are few (and diminishing) social safety solutions means that having more money also affects your health.

In a word, having more money means having more time. Therefore, money can buy happiness.

Excess - “Too much” isn’t always a good thing

It’s easy to see that “lack” a difficult place to exist and ‘abundance’ is the ideal. With lack, our world is typically shrunken to a very small circle, maybe down to only ourselves.

“Comfort” could honestly go either way, though it’s easy for comfort to turn into an excess of time, which is dangerous.

“Abundance” can also fall into the trap of an excess of time, though it is also a level where it’s easier to turn into something more charitable.

“Excess” is well past comfort, it also past abundance. “Excess” creates a distortion field where you lose touch with the thing you have too much of.

So, what does that look like? How can excess possibly be bad?

“Too much time” is basically saying that you don’t have any responsibility that you need to prioritize. Maybe you don’t have to go to work, maybe you don’t have to do anything, so you lie around, consume resources and generally disregard your needs.

“Too much money” is a disconnect from what money does, how it helps, or generally understanding that it’s a system that can be used for oppression.

But excess starts to have bigger societal issues that are what I’m really trying to explore. Because there is a state of lack for some, it’s easy to not see where the pursuit of more might lead. It’s also easy to over value people who arrived at a state of excess.

When “too much” starts to hurt others

In the modern world, there are a few paths of excess that are destructive. The pursuit of excess is typically at the cost of others, and interestingly, has changed very little over thousands of years. Specifically, the Seven Deadly Sins defined in Christianity are every bit as deadly now, regardless of your religion (or lack of.)

• Pride - Excessive view of one’s self.

• Greed - Excessive pursuit of wealth and power.

• Lust - Excessive emphasis on sexual desires

• Envy - Excessive focus on, and desire of, other’s belongings.

• Gluttony - Excessive consumption of food and drink.

• Wrath - Excessive hatred or anger at another person.

• Sloth - Excessive laziness.

The fact that we’ve been talking about the danger of too much since ancient times should mean something.

Too much time, too much power, too much visibility, too much money are all working together to destroy (literally destroy) modern society, and the entire ecosystem of our planet.

Sadly, resources have shifted enough, that a small few in pursuit of “too much” has the power to obliterate the progress of millennia.

The abuse of power to manipulate and adjust entire social classes of people is where it starts, and nobody in a position of power is willing to give up the excesses they enjoy, to stop it.

What you can do today is take a moment to reflect on, or become aware of, how we’re pushed to seek excess rather than comfort. That those we’re taking advice from, or listening to when trying to make sense of the world, are almost all in a position of excess, with something to gain from shifting your perspective.

Be critical when you listen to advice, particularly so if the advice is on a platform with a billionaire who has something to gain by your reaction to that message.

If you’re in a place of comfort, or of abundance, try to connect with those who lack, and try to build one another.

Ironically, the excessive number of people who are being destroyed by the “orphan-crushing-machine” is the only excess that would work in our favor.

About Me: I’m just a guy that things a lot, writes a little, and is watching with growing alarm as job markets shrink, wealth imbalance grows, marginalized groups get targeted, and other humans prioritize hating one another over taking back their power.

You might subscribe, if you like, paying for the subscription doesn’t get anything extra.

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You might support me, “Patron” style, so I can spend my time thinking about things, educating and simplifying concepts and generally helping ‘shareholders’ remember their agency. I’ve created a Patreon account that supports me beyond writing here:

Patreon

More specifically, the "ism" systems are rarely at fault for what ultimately boils down to bad actors within the system.

"Shareholder Value" is the mantra chanted in the C-Suite at almost every publicly traded company… a cry for who they're prioritizing.

The Shareholder is lauded as the most important resource, as a call-back to the original shareholders that invested money to help a company get off the ground.

Unfortunately, once a company is profitable, the shareholder is still there pulling strings and placing emphasis incorrectly on profit and growth.

There's a laundry list of reasons why shareholder prioritization is problematic… so let's explore some, and how they're the canary in the coal mine of larger scale problems.

This story starts in the United States of America, but the concepts and ultimate fate are global… stick with me.

Free Market - A well-intentioned start

The ideological foundation of the United States was one where anyone could be "successful"—with success defined as being wealthy and free from governmental restrictions. While capitalism wasn't a word at the time, it was baked into those original dreams. Operating under the concept of "Free Trade," its intentions were pure.

The 'founding fathers' and those in early America were intent on letting you create a thing, own it, and grow it into your own operation without the belief that birthright—especially divine birthright—had any control over what you were working on.

In the beginning, it wasn't capitalism, it was just good ol' fashioned "freedom."

In the early days you could literally bootstrap your way into financial success… at the time, it had its own set of ethical problems, but you could point at an individual and make it clear they were a bad person doing bad things.

Outside the United States, there was plenty of "generational wealth" and family money in play… but it wasn't business entities, it was monarchy or royalty. It was established, entrenched wealth, which made it impossible for the common man to get started.

Industrialization - An evolution of privately owned businesses

As we moved through American history, you saw those "bold" enough to take land and resources for themselves starting to create their own new empires. You went from divine right kings to barons who controlled their pocket of the world through wealth.

In the U.S., the ability to do what you want with little restriction or repercussion allowed much more rapid acquisition of wealth and power. With this growth came a new narrative: you could accomplish anything if you put in the effort. The hours, the blood, sweat and tears.

"The American Dream" wasn't quite baked yet—that still looked like "haves and have nots." It was also before widespread news coverage became a thing, so most were just doing what they could to get by and carve out their own small holdings.

The government itself wasn't funding much, but the country was growing rapidly… so another industry started to grow, another place to build wealth specifically to expand commerce. The railroads became a goal to distribute resources, or more easily move them into industrial centers.

Railroads made a titan of Rockefeller, but they also showed there was opportunity in pooling wealth for bigger projects.

Capitalism finally rears its head

Glossing over a ton of 'progress,' we went from "get the land, grow the things, sell the things" to "build places to refine the things, build new things, sell the things to a larger market" pretty quickly. "The American Dream" didn't exist yet, but the pieces were on the board.

cap·i·tal·ism - Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit.

Wealth grew, the population grew, the reach grew… but people were simple—they would buy the thing they needed, and be done with it. The first signs of how hungry capitalism would become were beginning to emerge.

People were starting to settle into having everything they needed to live and thrive… but now there were industrial and commercial centers in major cities. Once everyone's needs were met, why would anyone need to buy more of that thing?

Around this time is when "marketing" hitched its wagon to psychology and advertising started to create the illusion of needing more.

Also around this time, Russia and America started to compete with ideologies. Communism was starting to suggest that you could "have it all" by allowing the masses to own the means of production.

Now that America was able to produce en masse, and had a concept of selling a vision… finally the "American Dream" was born. It was there to help boost morale after World War II, it was there to create a nationalistic—patriotic identity. Finally, we arrive at a platform for modern capitalism.

Whew… it took longer to get here than I expected…

Shareholder Capitalism - Owning a piece of the dream?

Around the mid-20th century, those who were starting to amass some wealth were hoping to expand that wealth. Similarly, those who had created something big needed money to "take it to the next level."

The hope of being wealthy like a Rockefeller was baked into the American Dream. If you could dream it, you could achieve it.

We lived in a world where newspapers, magazines and television were showing you another life. These were hyping the American Dream to create strong national pride, sticking it to the commies by buying more things, by having your own house with a white picket fence.

The NYSE had been around for a little while, it had plunged and started the depression, and came out stronger on the other side. If you had a little money, you could see the advice that over the long term, stocks win. Not only that, the idea of owning stocks was proving that little guys could be something bigger.

It's an over-simplification, but those who were making it to the top in business were starting to invest that money, not just spend it.

With the growing base of stock-owning shareholders, the phrase that was the beginning of the end of this story finally arose:

"Maximizing Shareholder Value"

Somewhere in the 1970s, government regulations arose in the FDIC and SEC, both designed to make it easy for the public to trade stocks.

With this confidence, the market grew further. You could "buy a piece" of companies that make the thing you love. For the shrewd, you could start to put money into companies you thought would grow long term, and the idea of playing the market became more widespread.

The distinction between white collar and blue collar became more noticeable, and so did the biases.

There was still plenty to protect investors, and it seemed like a new golden age was arriving as we could become successful by helping our countrymen grow and add value to the world.

And then the 1980s hit…

You've seen the numbers—a CEO of a company in 1950 was making a certain amount of money… it was a modest percentage more than their employees, not too disparate. You also saw how much a millionaire was paying in taxes vs the common man.

In the 1980s, those in power made the case that the more wealth they had, the more it would "trickle down" to the common man.

It was the beginning of what we might now call "Late Stage Capitalism." It was also setting the grounds for the emerging oligarchical "Ruling Class"… at least in the United States.

Finally, the United States was playing on the same field as its forefathers, separating its population with clear class divisions.

The trick, the secret sauce of this new class division? The narrative of the American Dream never went away.

The belief that we could all still make it big remained, and it was fuel for the lower classes to support the upper class. The idea of being a "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" arose early in the 20th century, but the evidence became obvious by the late 80s.

All of this is just to understand how we have arrived at where we are now, to make it clear that capitalism is easy to vilify, but it was also used to create something with the potential to be amazing.

But how does this make shareholders bad?

"There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so"

The greatest power comes in a group's willingness to band together for a common cause.

It takes a village to raise a child.

It takes an army to win a war.

It takes investors to grow a company.

There is plenty of evidence to support the belief that joining together to do something can accomplish amazing results, but there always needs to be a leader at the front.

A great leader is typically "one of us"—often they're reluctant to lead and they have a clear vision of their end result.

The best leader is tied to their cause with conviction.

And here's where things go off the rails inside of the various "-isms."

com·mu·nism - a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.

so·cial·ism - a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

na·tion·al·ism - identification with one's own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations.

When you have a monkey in the middle, any of the ideologies have the potential to fail. Here's the pattern:

Idealism → Coordination → Leadership Bottleneck → Power Hoarding → System Serves the Few

All of this is to say, once we put our faith in a leader, or once we remove our own agency from a system, it starts to fail…

Shareholders are the collective group of interests

So, capitalism is not inherently evil—same for the other ideologies. The "evil" that fails us with any system is when we adopt a "not my problem" attitude and the way it allows bad actors to amass power.

A shareholder of a corporation is only one of many, until you own a majority of shares… at which point you're not simply a shareholder, you're also a co-owner.

A shareholder of a community is one of many. If the community is big enough, you become a 'citizen' but your role is the same.

A "shareholder" is someone who invested money into a business or enterprise, or invested their time into a project, or their belief into a religion or ideology.

The problem with shareholders is the willingness to allow—or the misbelief that—your voice is too small to matter.

It also anonymizes that person or group of people to be spoken about in a neutral tone.

A shareholder, from the individual side, is an excuse to not try harder.

A shareholder, from the organization side, is a non-human entity.

But all shareholders are not created equal…

Why Late Stage Capitalism is Dangerous

The problem with being able to buy shares is that it allows one person to have the power of many. If you have 100 employees in a company, and each gets 1 share in the company's profits or ability to make decisions—that's one thing.

But if you have 100 employees and each gets 1/2 a share, and then someone else gets 50 shares… those 100 employees only matter if they ALL work together.

Where we are now is that we've let the idea of shares in a company become corrupt. There are wealthy individuals, or groups that hold large stakes, making those with just a handful of shares feel like they're getting something, but ultimately having no agency.

With this uneven distribution, and with those that have a larger portion also being the type to try and impose their will, a modern corporation becomes responsible to a select few.

I mentioned the 1980s before… in that decade, a corporation had many of its limitations removed, allowing a corporation to behave like an individual in many cases. Without those restrictions, they are able to use their wealth and power to shape politics, land ownership and even economies.

As the rich got richer, they came to own MORE of these corporations, and were allowed to combine them and become even MORE powerful.

So yes… late stage capitalism IS bad. Shareholders being able to shape company policy means that companies now make bad decisions for the economy, and for the employees, at the request or demand of the large stake shareholders.

And all of this happens with the illusion that the c-suite's hands are tied, that they have to grow the company, increase revenue or increase savings, all to increase "shareholder value."

Is there a solution today? Not a pretty one.

The starting point is awareness of the problem, evolving into the understanding that we're all still shareholders in the system itself… and have power that comes with group action, but only if we're working together.

As long as you hate your neighbor, the shareholders who are buying out corporations and countries will continue to do exactly that.

It's going to take a village.

About Me: I’m just a guy that things a lot, writes a little, and is watching with growing alarm as job markets shrink, wealth imbalance grows, marginalized groups get targeted, and other humans prioritize hating one another over taking back their power.

You might subscribe, if you like. I don’t charge for a subscription.

Subscribe now

You might support me, “Patron” style, so I can spend my time thinking about things, educating and simplifying conceptsn and generally helping 'shareholders’ remember their agency. I’ve created a Patreon account that supports me beyond writing here:

Patreon

The Newsletter is Dead.

(Man, I love hyperbole… but hear me out.)

I’ve always been great at spotting the pattern in advance, though usually I just acknowledge it and move on.

Whether you’re new to writing newsletters, or if you’ve been around a while, you have likely seen that there are more people getting into it.

But most are going about it all wrong…

Everyone is starting a newsletter

Most of us think, ooh, I’ll do this, maybe it’ll make enough money to quit my job, but if I make enough to pay for coffee every month, that’s fine.

Why did YOU start the newsletter, what is the REAL reason you’re still doing it?

The hard pill to swallow is, the ‘information’ you’re sharing and trying to monetize, is already available, for free, somewhere else.

Yes, your voice is unique, yes, some people need to hear it your way, but it doesn’t make the information less available… especially to AI.

Yes… AI is coming for your newsletter… though that isn’t why the newsletter is dead.

The reason the newsletter is dead is that we are all drowning in a sea of information.

If I DO need to hear your voice, there is still a cognitive burden between me and you.

The reason the newsletter is dying is that we’re all busy trying to stay ahead of the existential malaise that has us questioning our rights, our income, our health, our brains and our futures.

The newsletter is going to struggle, because the newsletter is trying to provide answers, not make connections. We aren’t looking for answers, we’re looking for relationships that help us manage the struggle.

Think of your newsletter like a social resume

The newsletter is, at best, a place to document your value to the world, and maybe make it easier to connect once we actually arrive at what is coming… a return to the town square.

Rather than teach us how to do social media marketing, or write the perfect note, or tune the perfect title… show us what your process is like when you write.

Write to me like we’re already friends, focus on how we can connect, how we’re similar and why you and I might want to hang out sometime.

Yeah, this is storytelling, maybe it’s just a public diary, but that’s where we, the teeming masses, are at.

To put it bluntly, the social structures are all teetering. After years of social media eroding our self-worth. With the growing abundance of billionaires and corporations are focused on accumulating wealth at the expense of humanity. The thing that most people need now is connection.

So, the newsletter, at least the one that is paying for ads on Instagram and Facebook. The newsletter that’s promising to change my life, is dying.

This ‘business focus newsletter’ will soon be walking around like a zombie, looking to eat your brain, without really doing anything beyond it.

The future of your personal communication platform is finding your people, and connecting with them.

If you’ve read my newsletters before, you know that a huge part of my world is ‘authenticity’ and ‘connection.’ You’ve seen that I’m growing a community for neurodivergents and you have heard my rebellion against the corporate world and ‘shareholder value.’

I’m not always gloomy, but I am always trying to shift perspectives. As a friend once suggested to me…

I’d rather help you light a candle than have you curse the darkness.

That’s the case for me, to you.

I’d love for you to “subscribe to my newsletter” but I’d actually love to chat, with real human voices, even more.

Subscribe now

If you’re neurodivergent, self diagnosed, or not… or recognize your brain fires differently than most but hate the label, I’d love for us to connect and talk about our brains, and the world.

This is an invitation, grab a block of time on my calendar and bring whatever topic matters to you.

Lets Chat

15 years ago, I got an official diagnosis for my ADHD.

At the time, I was mostly only interested for the ‘performance enhancing drugs’ thinking they’d solve my all my problems.

(They did NOT solve all my problems, they created new ones… but that’s another story.)

It’s funny to consider how little we seemed to know about so many of that label at the time. We seemed to know, but it was still a clinical thing with very little ‘lived experience’ to help people actually understand it.

I don’t think anyone was saying “neurodivergent” or “neurotypical” and they were definitely not saying “neurospicy.” I also feel like Autism and ADHD were just two different diagnoses

Fast-forward ten years and it all started to come together.

Now, 15 years into it, I’m struggling with the labels again, but in a different direction.

What’s a neurotype anyway?

Clinically, a “neurotype” is the acronym we all use: ASD and ADHD being the two I connect with, and can knowledgeably discuss and advise about. It includes a laundry list of other things as well, but I’ll stick to these 2 right now.

Another way to think of a neurotype is “the way we think, perceive, learn and communicate.”

Some extra words to better understand:

Neurodivergent - Someone whose brain function is divergent from what is ‘typical.’

Neurotypical - Someone whose brain function is typical.

Neurodiverse/Neurodiversity - The collection of every neurotype, including ‘neurotypical.’

Those are the broad labels that often get used when we’re trying to pigeonhole a concept or behavior to a single neurotype.

If you’re seeing what I’m seeing, you’ll notice that the only thing that makes someone who is ‘neurodivergent’ disabled is the fact that they “aren’t like everybody else.”

In fact, the diagnosis for the different neurotypes is an evaluation of how well you’re able to do ‘typical’ things without struggling.

Here’s the problem… just because I don’t think the same way as you, it doesn’t mean you’re “good” and I’m “bad.”

The entire system that defines & assigns neurotypes is created by, researched by and administered by ‘neurotypicals’ using their version of normal to say you’re not.

This feels wrong.

ADHD isn’t a superpower… at least not for everyone, or not for every situation.

If you’re trying to exist inside the ‘neurotypical’ framework of social norms, societal expectations or workplace guidelines, but you’re divergent, you may see ADHD as the exact opposite.

So that’s the problem… the labels.

The labels are the problem, but so is the expectation that we should be making the “neurodivergents” behave like “neurotypicals.”

The problem is that we’re trying to make every peg shape fit into a round hole.

Are you following me?

Let’s take back the neurotypes

I’m one guy. I’m not writing the rulebooks for society. So I recognize that we won’t be changing these labels any time soon, but… some of us have already started to do it, in our own way.

Fifteen years ago, you couldn’t be ADHD and Autistic, it was an either/or situation.

Seven-ish years ago, it was realized that they could co-exist.

These days, in the past few years, folks have either become officially or unofficially diagnosed with both Autism and ADHD, and taken the label AuDHD.

I’ve only got the official ADHD diagnosis, but I can tell you definitively, I don’t fit the definition of a “pure ADHD neurotype.”

I also don’t fit the pure Autism neurotype.

I’m a bit of both, and a bit of neither. I’ve got different struggles.

Here’s the thing though… I’ve got a close friend who has neither label, he struggles with many of the things I do, but the closest neurotype he relates to is “Cyclothymia” (I literally have to look up the spelling every time I write it.)

So, here’s my suggestion, here’s the hill I’m trying to stand on…

The neurotypes being assigned to people because they don’t fit into the ‘typical’ mold is ready to die, or to at least be placed in text books and the DSM. Instead, we start defining these neurotypes in a more understandable manner.

Maybe it looks like a Myers-Briggs assessment.

Perhaps its a boring “ENTP” looking neurotype… but that is basically ADHD again. (BTW, ADHD is a shit label… there isn’t an attention deficit, more than half of the people with ADHD are NOT hyper-active and… it is NOT a disorder. I mean, maybe technically… based on what it takes to get in the DSM, but its not.)

I think it’s time we start to create labels that are empowering for the people that are burdened with an anti-social ‘disorder’ as modern psychiatry has deemed it.

While there are those ASD brains who are struggling to communicate, they still deserve to be recognized as having value beyond the things they struggle with.

So… now I want to get playful…

What’s YOUR neurotype?

I mentioned in the definition up above, that a neurotype is defined by a handful of definitive factors, how we: Perceive, Think, Learn and Communicate.

Perception - This dramatically affects people with things like dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyspraxia and dyscalculia. (Currently color blindness is not considered neurodivergent, probably because it’s so ‘typical’ in the population.)

Think - We all have different modalities for how we think, spatially? visually? But also if we’re divergent thinkers, or convergent. We arrive at answers in different ways.

Learn - This overlaps with how we think and perceive. “Auditory Processing Disorder" is common in the neurodivergent (ND) types, and that results in struggles for some people to follow directions if its all just spoken.

Communicate - Some of us are more comfortably with written word, or better with spoken. Some are artists who prefer to communicate through imagery or music.

I spell this out, because I think these are the criteria that matter more when it comes to interacting with the world.

If I knew I was better at ‘spatial reasoning’ when I was in high school, I may have pursued a path that favored that thinking trait. If you recognized that your dyscalculia is why you did poorly at math, you might not think you were ‘dumb.’

In the spirit of playing with these… I’ve got a handful of labels that feel much more valuable to how we might address the world.

Momentum Seeker

Driven by urgency, thrives in high-stakes sprints, activates when the finish line is visible.
Not lazy or disorganized — just allergic to low-stakes inertia.

Context Weaver

Thinks in themes, not timelines. Sees patterns between disconnected dots. Needs meaning to stay engaged.
Not flaky or unfocused — just allergic to meaningless minutiae.

Deep Diver

Hyperfocuses by default, immerses fully, needs uninterrupted flow.
Not obsessive or rigid — just incompatible with forced multitasking.

Pattern Mapper

Systems-oriented, future-aware, sees structure in the chaos.
Not controlling or overcomplicating — just intolerant of inefficiency-by-default.

Sensory Symphonist

Feels everything. Processes through aesthetics, emotion, and sensation.
Not dramatic or oversensitive — just finely tuned to the world’s volume.

Obviously this is the tip of the iceberg, but I feel much more comfortable describing myself as a Context Weaver than just saying “I’ve got ADHD.”

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It takes a village…

This is my rallying cry for the ‘neurodivergent’ to move from the negativity associated with a label, and into an empowering label that conveys their different brain functions more clearly.

How would you re-frame your brain function so that you don’t have to explain “but I’m not the hyperactive version” when trying to convey that you think differently?

Are you a Pattern Mapper?

Do you have suggestions for other criteria I might have missed?

What other brain behaviors do you feel need to be considered when defining a neurotype?

Thirty years ago, I wrote a lot like I do today… literally.

I recently found a stack of my journals from 25+ years ago, it’s a small stack of Composition Journal style books, all handwritten.

There are some interesting takeaways:

• My handwriting hasn’t evolved at all.

• My areas of curiosity have matured, and I can see that I stand on beliefs and realizations that were challenged then.

• I didn’t know what ADHD was, I didn’t take medications, but I still did things.

“I’ve changed a lot”, and “I’ve barely changed at all” ricochet around my head as I read them.

What’s particularly interesting is the journal, from 20 years ago, that laid out goals. Here are some favorites (with timelines):

• Have control of my life - 1 year (Uhhh)

• To not be afraid - 1 year (Well…)

• Have a loving wife/companion - 5 years (success!)

• To use 100% of my potential! - 15 years (???)

• To know/understand everything - 30 years (We haven’t hit it yet, there’s still time!)

But this one, it inspires posts on the newsletter…

• To have the will/discipline to change right now. - 1 year

Ignore the fact that I gave myself a year to gain something that says “right now” in the goal.

To be clear, I was a 30-year-old man, filled with passion, excitement, optimism and a belief that there was more to life.

Did I hit that last goal?

Change doesn’t happen overnight

Not only does change take time, it happens in unexpected ways, driven by unexpected circumstances.

I talk to people a lot these days, and a huge part of my personality is to help. I like to figure things out, I like to explore ideas, and I like to see people succeed.

Almost everyone I know, has some level of “change” in their goals. You could argue that goals, New Year’s Resolutions, plans, ambitions… everything is just a rephrasing of changing our lives.

What most people fail to realize, they ARE changing by writing the goal.

Some goals are very clear, and some appear to happen overnight.

“I’m giving up drinking” looks like an overnight success, one day you’re drinking too much, the next day you’re not.

But that change was already forming the first time you thought, “I drink too much”. That goal was perpetuated each day when you said, “I’m not going to drink today.”

All change works like that.

1. You recognize the situation.

2. You judge the situation.

3. You struggle now that you recognize the ‘bad’ situation.

4. You decide to change the situation.

5. You struggle with how to change it.

6. You state that you’re changing.

7. You remain hyper aware of your new situation.

8. The new situation becomes what feels normal.

Sometimes change takes years.

Change often happens subconsciously.

What we rarely notice, is that change isn’t that you’re fixing a problem as much as you’re becoming a new version of yourself.

That new version talks about recovery, or about their dreams.

Change only happens over time, and through effort.

Industries are built around the illusion of instant change

Overnight success is great marketing.

Systems that promise instant results are the ones that sell.

We humans are desperate for change, but also terrified of the ‘effort’ part of the process. Or when we are willing to do the work, we don’t know where to begin.

I mentioned my journals above, I wrote this at the bottom of the list.

The most important goal for me, I believe, is to give myself the discipline to cause instantaneous change.

With this single achievement, I can easily bring any others to fruition! With this discipline I will be able to give myself goals and to bring them to be by their deadline.

I don’t know if I’m proud of that Jody, or sad for him.

I know that he had a fervor that I miss today. I love that he had such optimism, but I’m sad that it was clear he was struggling with something as well.

If I were a wealthy person at that time, I would have paid large sums to make it happen.

If I were poor at that time, I would have sacrificed other priorities to make it happen.

But what I was at that time was confused. I was under the impression that I could make it happen instantly, alone.

I’m sure I was reading plenty of Tony Robbins and other “self-help gurus” and I know I was spending money on all of their books… many of them still line my bookshelf.

But here we are, 18 years later, and some part of that change myth still remains.

The people selling you change, are selling you THEIR change. They’re promising results based on THEIR experience. Most importantly, they’re selling a promise with the illusion that it’s easy, that it’s formulaic, and that one size fits all.

The people selling you a promise of “simple change through consistent behavior” are disingenuous if they’re not also recognizing that we’re all different and that there’s more work than their plan suggests.

Change is individual. Transformation is personal. Timelines are relative.

It all starts with awareness

Before you can fix the problem, you have to know the problem.

Before you can start changing, you have to understand what you need to change.

Once you understand what you need to change, you have to want that change.

If you know something isn’t working, the first step to take is to break down what that thing is into its parts.

When you can see the components of the thing that you wish to change, you can see how you interact with them, how they affect your thoughts and feelings, or the reverse of that.

We often ‘stay the same’ because our current version of normal is easy, or it’s become comforting. We have accepted the discomfort that is part of our normal life. We’ve become blind to the things that cause the discomfort. Most alarmingly, we have built it into our belief system.

You have to be willing to make yourself hurt, emotionally.

You need to be open to the idea that you have to give something up.

A willingness to make deliberate effort to get that result is harder than it sounds.

So, start with journaling. Spend time describing what you WANT versus what you HAVE.

Learn to challenge your acceptance of your current life versus the desire of your changed life.

Then use that knowledge to open yourself up to change.

When the pupil is ready, the teacher will arrive

The first hard fact, nobody is going to do the work for you.

There isn’t a literal teacher (most likely) who will come in and do it all step by step.

Once you’ve reached a breaking point, your old life starts to fall apart, and the option to “become your true self” emerges.

You might not have a literal teacher show up, you might just notice the wisdom in the world around you.

The teacher who helps you change will actually be you.

• You’re the one who will see the next step.

• You’re the one who will struggle with loss.

• You’re the one who will celebrate gains.

• You’re the one with the most skin in the game.

Ideally, you’ll have a supporting cast that helps you at each of those stages.

Many people, myself included, fail to see the next step, or recognize we’re struggling, or realize there’s cause for celebration.

We’re blinded by our lives because we’ve been living the narrative that supported our old self. It’s why having friends and a community is so vital.

In the past year, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had someone in my life point out the change that I didn’t notice. Usually when I’m struggling, these people are able to point out the reason to celebrate.

Regardless of the change we’re looking for, outside help is going to be vital.

The more transformational the change, the more likely we’ll need someone there cheering us on, reminding us of our path, supporting us through our struggles and reminding us that it won’t happen overnight.

We all end up with a “Frankenteacher” that’s made up of the different parts of support we each need.

My commentary on the “overnight change” goal continues…

I will have the strength to wait and allow goals that take time to move at their own pace. I won’t be trying to change, or just give up, when I have to wait.

When I’m allowing my state to be changed by outside forces I’ll be able to stop and get into the best state for the situation.

Even in my desire for overnight change, I could still see that not everything happens all at once. I recognized that I would be prone to let circumstances derail me, so hoped for the goal to nip that in the bud.

Much of my ‘overnight change’ goal was naive, but I don’t think I was any different from anyone else.

The world has gotten larger, faster and louder in the past 20 years.

In the past 20 years, tools have come online to enable others to “change our state” and bad actors have appeared who want to keep us from becoming the best version of ourselves.

With increased volume, it’s harder than ever to stay true to ourselves.

With increased pace, we’ve become more addicted to the idea that change can happen overnight.

Sadly, with the changing economic factors, it feels hard to take the time for the change to happen.

On a positive note, with the larger world, it’s easier to find the teacher that works for us.

With the increased volume, it’s possible for leaders and teachers to step up and share their message.

We’re living in an unprecedented time when we can build their own platform to speak, or find a community of our people to learn with.

There is more information, a broader perspective and a wealth of empowerment tools that make it possible to find our true self and bring them into being.

We just have be ready to guide our own change.

I’m writing regularly on mindfullish with my thoughts about the world, how we can change within it and how we can active shape it.

I write through the lens of a man who is AuDHD that thinks about everything (too much) and tries to be mindful in how we exist.

• I’m building a community for neurodivergent people at Chaos Cooperative.

• I’m using AI to write about using AI to help people with ADHD at ADHD Success with AI.

• I’m building a business of coaching and mentoring at jodygates.com

I’m eager to meet and talk to people, especially those working through their neurodivergent brains. I’d love to talk to you!

If you’d like to get these posts when I share them, please…

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I got laid off about 15 months ago from a job I held for just less than 20 years…

… you learn a lot in 20 years, and you forget a lot as well.

I can remember some of the early days experiences at that company if I focus on it, but I can’t quite put myself in those beginners shoes.

At the start of a new job, or a new hobby, so much of the learning is in the unknown.

My daughter wants to get her license in the next 2 months, so we went parking lot driving yesterday afternoon.

There were little things she didn’t really get yet, even though we’ve had driving sessions in the past. And I realized one of the worst things we do when teaching - suggesting to them that there’s a gut feeling somewhere in the learning process.

Yes, we all eventually just intuit how to accelerate effectively, or brake, but that’s shit advice for someone at the start.

She didn’t know to plant her heel and pivot from brake to gas, and back.

As I said, “you need to start braking faster than that”, she says, “I can’t move my foot fast enough.”

Dude. Bruh. She had no reason to know about the heel pivot, I had no reason to remember ever not knowing it.

Mastery & Expertise are blinders for teaching

I have so many hours of driving experience, so many miles behind the wheel. I have learned, forgotten and re-learned things from my past job so many times.

“Shoshin” is a Japanese concept of the Beginner’s Mind. Stated eloquently like this:

I love to disparage the works of “Gurus”, frustrated with the absolutism that typically comes with their advice, which is typically one size fits all. A guru has to sell their expertise to sell their books and courses.

Mastery and expertise exist because of marketing, and ego.

I can teach my daughter to drive, but it’s not with vague ‘Yoda-like’ advice suggesting she should just “Use the Force.”

Some people might have an intuitive sense at the start of a thing, but not everyone.

I have many things that came naturally throughout my life, or it seems that way in hindsight. But I have even more things where I need LITERAL EXAMPLES to even start.

In my job of 20 years, I would be told to write about a new feature of our software and while I could easily spit out the right tone, or describe the functionality… I would end up stumped with a “why” for the feature.

(I was 3D modeling software largely used by architects. I’m not a trained architect. I can’t tell you how many times I re-learned what a soffit or mullion was.)

There is context in learning. There are variables that you learn, internalize, and forget.

An expert will reach a point where something is that way because that’s the way it is… and that type of teaching is basically “because I said so” mentality.

No, experts are great for doing a thing, they’re not great for a beginner.

There’s a method to the madness of progression

I think a good way to consider experts is, they’re a couple of stages of learning ahead of you. They’ve progressed through the ‘learning loop’ multiple times, and through several variations.

As we try to get better, we go through the ‘learning loop’ and it looks something like this:

1. Confusion - You don’t know what you don’t know, so the best you get is what you’re told.

2. Rules Mastery - You’re given a set of responsibilities, or “the basics” for how to do the thing.

3. Familiarity - As you go from knowing exactly how to do things, you reach a point where you’re “bored.”

4. Experimentation - This is the cusp of a tier of mastery. Once you know the rules clearly, and once you’re bored, your curiosity rises, and you try to improve on what you’ve learned.

5. Internalization - Each time you experiment, it’s a tiny learning loop of improvement. Each new way of doing a thing, and the more you do a thing, it starts to be automatic.

Depending on how much you want to know, this can be an iterative process where you explore other facets of what you’re learning, or you can hang out and become an expert in the space.

Learning isn’t about books, it isn’t about rules, it isn’t about recipes.

More specifically, books, rules, recipes are all attempts to formalize something an expert went through.

The learning loop can help everyone learn, but there’s a limit, and a danger to this singular method.

It takes a village

Returning to that job I had for 20 years… I started out doing technical support, but it quickly included helping out in the community forums. Then it became facilitating those forums for our experts, who were ever present.

When I started being part of that community, I spent some time learning from others, I spent some time creating resources to train or educate others, and I spent time around others who knew more than me.

It wasn’t ever formally stated, and I didn’t really think about it until much later, when my kids were school aged.

It was much like a Montessori style school, or even like a kindergarten.

While it wasn’t a community of people with ADHD, it was the perfect place for that interest based learning system to thrive.

Being part of a community that was part educational, part training, part support and part camaraderie proved be far greater than the sum of it’s parts.

A community where I could teach, be corrected, correct others, learn and generally feel accepted in spite of my shortcomings was perfect for growth.

There might have been experts in the mix, but nobody was presenting as an expert. The intent was to co-think or to explore ideas, everyone standing on the shoulders of those around them.

The best way to learn is to recognize the learning loop, be able to see your position in it, and then to share that loop with others.

Don’t look for an expert to teach you from the top down. Look for an adjacent learner, then allow yourself to both have a beginner’s mindset, while also having a leader’s outlook.

Use a network of peers to help you ALL improve together.

There’s still a problem

Driving is a solitary experience.

My daughter still has to learn the heel pivot. She still has to experience the anxiety of driving down a narrow road with another car driving towards her. There will still be that ‘first time on the highway’ moment.

Some part of learning will always be alone, or unique to the learner.

You can only read for so long. You can only theorize about so much.

The community will be great to help build up your confidence, or to share their experience for those first moments. But eventually you have to “Just do it” and build the muscle memory that allows you to later try to teach someone (poorly) by saying “you just get a feeling for it.”

“mindfullish” is me figuring out what the heck I’m writing about. It’s lesson’s i’m learning, that I’m sharing. This is a place where I can explore ideas, or encourage others. It’s where I talk about the things I’m building, which right now include:

• A community for people with ADHD professionals to learn, to build each other up, to find co-thinkers or co-workers for ideas. (https://chaoscooperative.com)

• A coach consulting business as an ‘Executive Strategist’ who help folks with Executive Dysfunction (typically ADHD havers) craft solutions to help them Start, Maintain, or Finish the things they want to accomplish. (https://jodygates.com)

• An experimentation platform of using AI to help manage or improve life with ADHD. (https://adhdsuccesswithai.com)

I invite you to subscribe, heck, I even invite you to pay… right now that payment gets you some peace of mind that you’re helping me pretend to be employed. I’m working on a book about managing executive function with ADHD, so that’ll be here as chapters while I work on it, that’ll be on the inside of payment.

Or you can just read, like you just did, with no expectations or pressure. If that’s the case then a heart, or a re-stack, or a share with someone that would learn from it… those would all be great.

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"Unemployed" is a brutal word. It's embarrassing. It's demoralizing.

... but we're all there at some point in our life.

At the start of our career, we can brush it off as "I haven't started working yet" or "I haven't found my calling" and roll with it.

The older you get, the more it's an indication that you're "less than" and that you're not providing value.

The “powers that be” have spoken

Last week, RFK Jr. made some horrible, inaccurate statements about Autistic people, but curiously he led with "never hold a job, never pay taxes." At least to HIM, that's the greatest offense.

That whole message from him was horrific, but it emphasizes something that is culturally true... we're not people if we're not holding a job or paying taxes.

While I’ve got some theories about why he’s trying to ‘unperson’ whole swaths of people, and they’re alarming, that’s another post. Right now, he, as a government official, is making it clear “who matters” in our society.

This is also reflected in the mass deportations of a widely recognized workforce that is handling physical labor, and jobs that most deem beneath them.

If you’re not paying into “the system” they want you out of it.

Involuntary unemployment is a traumatic experience

If you've ever been let go, fired, laid off or been involuntarily dismissed, you know there is an ego blow that regularly circles back to kick you while you're down.

I can only speak for myself, but I know that I quickly felt the need to move from ever using "the U word" to saying things like:

• I'm figuring things out.

• I'm self-employed.

• I'm "skilling up."

• I’m freelancing.

• I’m doing some gig work.

To say “I’m unemployed” is to admit defeat, it’s indicating that you’re lazy or incapable. While I don’t think those are true statements, they’re an employment ableism going on that says, anyone that wants a job can have one.

It’s just not that simple.

My point is, we're a world that needs to be collecting a paycheck to be valuable. To be an artist is to be derided.

What's the answer?

There isn't one. There are too many players in the game to say, "We should take it back."

Go to the bastion of employment networking, LinkedIn, and mum’s the word. You can’t go there and say, “employment is a swear word.” Your options are to pick the ‘empowerment label’ of your choosing, and stay optimistic.

Don’t worry, there are plenty of people on LinkedIn who can tell you exactly how to turn your experience into a newsletter, or consulting business and be clearing 5 or 6 figures a month in no time… just by following their system.

You can find reports that will say it, but most people are ignoring the fact that we're on the cusp of record-breaking levels of unemployment.

Most people are slow to notice, because:

• Companies are still posting job listings, even when they're not actually hiring, all so that they look healthy (Go read about "Ghost Jobs.")

• The Government is only really aware of your job status while you're collecting unemployment, so after 6 months, you're effectively "employed" again.

• Some people are working multiple jobs to make ends meet, so 1 person looks like 2+ jobs that are filled.

• Small business loans, historically an indicator of a strong economy, are increasing because people are starting their own business simply because they can't find work.

• Quarterly Jobs Reports are deliberately misleading to maintain consumer or investor optimism.

It's coming, though. Whether it's robots, AI, recession/depression, general employee apathy, or corporations prioritizing ‘shareholder value’, jobs are going to continue to evaporate.

Nobody “at the top” is coming to save you

All of that is to say, it's your responsibility to find the word that works for you, that empowers you, to push through.

If you're wearing the "Scarlet U" and feel like a pariah when showing up to events with friends, remember that you're not as unique in your employment status as you think.

Most importantly, use the time in this state to change your relationship with money, with consumption, with corporate or employment culture.

"Doing more with less" isn't just the mantra for managers wanting to increase shareholder value, it's the reality of the depressed job market.

“mindfullish” is where I can explore and share the things that have been on my mind recently, it has sections where I may wonder into my business “Channeling Chaos” or my community “Chaos Cooperative”, I might talk about coaching, I might talk about Substack.

Sometimes it’s raw, sometimes it’s funny. I like to think it’s insightful, but most importantly, it’s always authentically me. If you like my style, by all means subscribe.

If you want me to tell you how to turn off the sections you don’t like, just ask.

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On March 31st, I decided to post every day on my newsletter ADHD Success with AI.

What does that mean?

• I created 5-ish weeks of posts, one per day. A total of 33 posts.

• I scheduled them to submit every day at 7 AM.

How much content did I have queued up?

None

How many post ideas did I have lined up?

A handful, I didn’t touch them.

Why would I even think this was a good idea?

Because it seemed like a fun experiment.

It all started by questioning the value of newsletters

I’ve had conversations with several friends recently about how much they read, or fail to read. Or about how many newsletter subscriptions they have. Or why they subscribe to so many.

I don’t know anyone with more than 3 newsletters who are reading all of them.

Substack is trying to be all things to all people, so if you’re here, you likely feel compelled to subscribe to a newsletter, or all of them if they say something clever in notes.

But once you’re here, you see ‘reels’ or videos or live streams. You see Notes and you see podcasts. You can do just about anything here, and its hard to say which thing is right for you.

More importantly, once you’re here for a while, you start to see patterns and posts and topics repeating themselves. You also end up in a niche by accidentally following or subscribing to certain posts.

It all came to a head when I came across a newsletter that was new to me, that had over 1k subscribers, but no “name” as an author. Then I opened up a newsletter and saw that it was very clearly written by AI, maybe with some minor editing.

I’ll say it again…

I found a 1k+ subscriber newsletter that was clearly written with ChatGPT.

Long story short, there are lessons and thoughts…

I started this at the start of April, it’s now the 15th. I learned a LOT at the start, and have some mid-month insights as well.

• Being “authentic” is NOT going to happen with an email written by a robot. Sharing information, that can still be useful, as long as it’s still accurate and/or helpful.

• Something created by a robot hits different for readers, but also hits different for a “writer.”

• ChatGPT doesn’t complain, it doesn’t roll its eyes, and it doesn’t sigh when you ask it to improve something.

• It seems easy, but it’s actually front-loaded work. I spent around 10 hours creating 33 posts, setting up automatic posting, and adding images.

• Just posting without “marketing” isn’t enough. Substack isn’t advertising your posts, and it isn’t pushing them on anyone. If you’re starting from 0, don’t expect rapid gains.

• You CAN make an automatically generated newsletter based on YOUR content, and in a voice that is very close to your own.

I’ll be detailing what I did closer to the end of the month. I think this isn’t as sketchy as it sounds, and have my own ‘ethical take’ on the process.

Everybody is on their way… “Winter is Coming”

The economy, globally, is headed in a dangerous direction. Not just because of the “tariffic king of america”, but also because AI is teaching itself to be better.

By some estimates, we’re 2–3 years away from a thinking AI (AGI.) By this time, almost all “code” written will be done by AI.

At this point, an AI could do just about any white collar work that we’ll give it (eat the c-suite!)

In around 6 we’ll have AI smarter than the cumulative intelligence of all humans.

We will become, if we’re lucky, stewards of that intelligence. Using OUR creativity, assisted by AI to pursue every idea under the sun.

I say all that to say, jobs will be disappearing, people will be trying to get rich, or just survive, by leveraging AI for help.

I won’t have more attention to read more newsletters, I’ll be getting very picky in what I read. If newsletters can start to be a by-product of interesting thoughts, even for non-writers, I’m here for it.

So, I’m doing this to be better at AI, and to teach people to be better at AI.

Follow along here and I’ll report back later.

Go read that newsletter and see how “AI” it feels. Complain about it, marvel at it, but mostly think about what it means for the future of newsletters and writing and general help.

The most powerful thing you can do is lift someone else up.

The greatest capital is a group of people who stand up for each other.

"Help people" is one of those under utilized suggestions, or maybe rather... it gets over-complicated in our heads and from the 'gurus.'

When you step up and offer advice, from the heart, you're not only expanding someone else's world, but you're getting your own endorphin boost.

If you keep that simple 2-word statement at the core of everything you do, you start to see it echo out into everything you do. You could classify it as the most simply stated "Mindset" available.

Having a 'help people' mindset pushes you to pause when you see someone is struggling. You become the person that pulls over on the side of the road to help fix a flat.

It also pushes you to step up and support marginalized groups. With the mindset of helping, you move from "they don't deserve special treatment" mindset to the "we ALL deserve special treatment."

The move from "help people" to "what's in it for me" is the core change that happened globally, encouraging people to prioritize wealth and power over humanity. It's at the root of the "evil" that's taken over the US top positions, and what makes capitalism a swear word.

Your willingness to take a moment of your time to help someone else succeed will pay dividends in how you feel doing it, how they feel, the connection you have with that person, and the ability to see a larger world focused on help.

If you take one thing away from your time on Substack today, it should be... "who can I help?" and "how can I help?"

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I'm sick of doing things "the right way"...

I'm weary of following the conventional path to success...

Hear me out... what if everyone else is doing it wrong?

One of my favorite individual success stories of the past decade is of this fellow Grant Howith, he’s a game designer… notably for his Patreon where he’s “creating one-page RPGs and tabletop games.” Successfully, I might add.

Grant’s business is what I would call “play” (and I mean that in the best sense of the word) as he creates games, nothing overly polished, just a simple game with rules that fit on a single 8 1/2” x 11” piece of paper. It’s kind of like candy.

But who does stuff like that? He was doing this before AI made it ridiculously easy.

This isn’t a “follow your passion” laden, guru bullshit posts though. In fact, those guys are part of the problem…

We all want to be told what to do…

Maybe we can map it to the education system, that we’re taught from an early age to seek approval of our teachers. We’re encouraged to get things “right” and punished for things that are “wrong.”

It could be the social dynamics we deal with as teenagers, make sure you don’t stand out, or only stand out if you’re “winning.”

But it’s definitely reinforced when we enter the working world. It’s still ‘get things right” and “get the approval of your manager” but it’s also “don’t be weird.”

We spend so much time seeking approval from the very beginning that none of us can be faulted for ending up stuck with this mindset as adults.

To be “successful” means to have a high paying job, with a family, property and the ability to look down on those with less material wealth.

Obviously, we all hate it. It’s clear that we’re trying to get away from it. The path to “freedom” is excessive wealth. You want to have “fuck you, money” that means you answer to know one.

But then…

Once you hit a certain point, once you have no one to impress, you literally go crazy. Look at the billionaires, surrounded by their sycophants. Even when they’re abusing their fans, they’re still adored.

The “ruling class” goes crazy once they have no one to tell them how to behave… and it all goes back to how they started.

The crazy billionaire asshole is a by-product of chasing material wealth to well beyond what we need to survive.

Their success could be MY success…

I’ve signed up for online courses, for Masterminds and for entrepreneurial “clubs” with the hope that a) I can learn to do what they do and b) so I can have access to them in hopes that their success will wear off.

Here’s what I learned…

• the crowd inside a Mastermind is 300% better than the mind at the top.

• the leader ends up believing his own bullshit.

• things get repetitive really quick

We think that following the advice of others is what will make us successful. We think we can follow their path to be like them… before we even know who they are. And yes, we’re still seeking their approval on some level.

If you’re good at seeing patterns, and if you’re inclined to distrust the status quo, you will eventually see through the smoke. If you’re smart, you’ll drop out of that group, which was technically designed to make the guy at the top rich… but it leaves you alone in a lonely world again.

If you’re just reading self-help or productivity books, eventually you see it’s the same thing that’s been said elsewhere (that’s fine) in a new way (that’s fine) with more information than you actually need (that sucks.)

The problem most of us fail to ever recognize is that success is as unique to each individual as their fingerprint.

The pursuit of success is unique to each of us, and chasing other’s patterns is just forcing us to work to pick the good from the bad while defining our own version.

You’re only as effective as the systems you’ve created for yourself…

When you listen to Tony Robbins, he’ll give you a framework he’s developed and that has worked for thousands, or hundreds of thousands. At least according to him. But if you hire him to be your coach, he’s going to craft something bespoke to meet your needs. It’ll be grounded in his lessons, and valuable… and he’ll charge accordingly.

This goes from top to bottom… the ‘guru’ has a system, it’s designed to work for as many people as possible. Because the marketing all says it works, you think you should do it too, and you can be like him.

Whether you’re listening to Tony Robbins, or James Clear, Mark Manson or Ali Abdaal, you’re going to get a homogenized version of a success formula that works for most and mind work for you… and even then, the “work for you” means it will get you results that look like theirs.

Unfortunately, we all need to eat, and have a place to sleep. A pox on Abraham Maslow for creating a hierarchy of needs. I’m sure life was simpler before we needed things.

So, with needs, you must earn some money. You probably want to have enough extra that once you can’t work any longer, you’re not immediately thrown out on the street.

Now, if your life was just about getting as much money as possible, then you’re left completely dependent on that. But if you’ve created systems that let you leverage money, or systems that have you connected to people or systems, or you’ve got a system for investing the money so that it’s slowly growing… if you’ve done something with the money, then it should last longer.

But along the way, if you had to work 60-hour weeks, if your system was just “work harder” then you’ll reach a day when you can’t work, and you’ll have no identity.

No, the one thing Maslow failed to truly emphasize was the need to have systems that simplify, preserve and support you at every level of your hierarchy.

The two things we will always need (beyond the pyramid)

We need a community of like-minded peers where we can network to help each other, support each other or just be heard, felt and seen.

Join Chaos Cooperative for that. - There are free and paid levels.

We need systems that empower us to overcome our struggles (this is extra true for the ADHD brains that change their struggles regularly.)

You can hire ME to help you create a system, or framework, or crack a whip while you do it by setting up a Discovery Call to explore your options.

We spend much of our lives playing the cards we're dealt, guided—sometimes gently, sometimes forcefully—down paths that others have laid out for us. Our education system, family expectations, societal norms, all subtly (or overtly) push us toward conformity.

Eventually, we internalize a quiet, invisible message: "This is just the way things are." That's the voice of learned helplessness.

You might not consciously label it a 'victim mindset,' yet that's precisely what it becomes. Acceptance turns into complacency. Complacency turns into resignation. Before you realize it, you're drifting on a path designed by others, feeling trapped but unsure why.

Maybe for you, it was the conventional milestones—pursuing college, careers, promotions, buying homes, chasing possessions, or filling life with distractions because that's what 'success' is supposed to look like.

Or perhaps it was a quiet realization that your unique, divergent brain—ADHD, autism, or both—didn't align with that prescribed path. For me, it was receiving an ADHD diagnosis at age 40. Back then, awareness was limited. ADHD meant medication, not a new understanding of my life's trajectory. Thankfully, the past decade has shifted conversations profoundly.

The reality is this: What you've been handed may shape your brain, but it doesn't have to dictate your path.

• Awareness is the first step.

• Unlearning is intentional and difficult—but achievable.

• Choosing a new path begins when you notice you've been on autopilot, and it's no longer sustainable.

I'm curious—when did you first recognize that the life you were living wasn't truly your own design? How did you take back the power to choose your path?

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Join the Conversation:
This week's Brainstorm Blitz prompt is "Learned Helplessness." Whether you're defining it, sharing strategies to break free, or exploring related tangents, your perspective matters.

Click here to RSVP or join us live tomorrow (March 13th, 11 AM Mountain Time)—let's explore together. Or comment below to suggest your own angle—we might pivot the discussion around your insights!

A decade ago, I was walking the streets of Sorrento (Italy) and marveling at the distinct lack of ‘big box’ stores.

On the same trip, I was taking a high speed train back to Rome, to fly home, and saw no billboards. Zero. Zip. Zilch.

Being in another country that manages to have a happy community of people who live their days without needing to talk about boycotting big business for one day, I recognized that the US ‘way of life’ is broken.

Each day, I see another reminder of an upcoming ‘consumer rebellion day’ or a list of places to boycott. I do my part, I participate (I’m currently skipping Amazon for the next week.) Every time I do it, I think… “I wish I could do more.”

It takes a (global) village…

When it comes to switching from a single day of boycotting to changing your relationship with consumption, it's a mindset shift.

By making Amazon/Walmart/Target non-optional, you remove the option.

If your first thought isn't "Let me hop on Amazon" it's a lot easier to look at other options.

And that's really what this all comes down to, "easier."

People want to shop at these online or megastores because they can buy a new headlight for their car at the same time they're buying toothpaste and some pasta. And you can have it all here in 3 days.

Do you really need it in 3 days? Not if you're paying attention.

Do you need to buy all three things at the same place? Again, attention based.

While I won't blame the internet for making us stop paying attention, it has definitely turned every decision into one of convenience.

Years ago, in the age of CDs, (in response to everyone downloading MP3s 'illegally'), I saw some suggestion that people will do the right thing if you make it easier. That rang true to me then, so it's stuck around.

I think the problem right now is that everyone is waiting for someone else to make it easy.

We’re chanting our support of Luigi, and waiting for the next person to step up and take the risk that we can’t, because “I’ve got a family to support” or “I’m already underwater working 2 jobs.”

I’m not saying people need to 3D print their own guns and go vigilante… I’m saying people need to consider removing some convenience from their life if it means taking some power away from “the 1%.”

“Easy” vs “Easier”

Life is hard, we’re all busy, money is tight. There are so many reasons that we want the easiest solution, and I can’t pretend I’m not guilty of any or all of them. However, having everything cheap, easy and convenient removes our agency.

Target has taken away your freedom to choose who you support.

Amazon has made it easy to send your money out of your community, away from the local markets. They’re literally killing the entry level work for people just starting their careers.

Home Depot lets me get all of my nails and boards at the same time I’m buying shingles and siding. I can even buy cleaning products for the inside. I can get, soup to nuts, everything it takes to build a structure on my property from one store.

Meanwhile, the local hardware store struggles to get your attention and focuses on niche products, in hopes of having some similar allure.

Billionaire run, mega-corporations own everything, and they have the budget to convince you to spend money on them.

Buying new tools? Chances are a) many of the ‘competing’ brands are the same parent and b) they’re probably being manufactured in China. This article from ProTool Reviews has a great chart.

And that’s just talking about tools! Have you seen how much Procter and Gamble own? Nestle?

It’s easy, it’s VERY EASY, to end up putting money into corporations you’re opposed to, simply because they own almost everything.

At least the regime change is making a lot of our easy purchases more difficult, or at least more expensive. This, in turn, makes other options seem easier to consider.

The more inconvenient one option becomes, the easier it is to consider another. It’s the reverse of Amazon’s path to success. They made it easier to buy books, and as they made more money, they just expanded their offering.

Amazon successfully boiled the frog, (we’re the frog, if that’s unclear.)

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Everyone wants to revolt, nobody wants to lead…

You don’t have to be a genius to see the patterns, to recognize that the United States is collapsing rapidly. We could debate that it’s been happening since the 80s, but that’s missing the point… it’s happening quickly, and it’s clear that nobody is “coming to save us.”

Talking to people, reading the news, or social media, or watching the videos. The majority of American citizens are not happy. Yes, majority. Trump’s victory was a victory of apathy and misinformation, and the base of people who support him is small. There is enough dissent that we could make a difference… if we just knew how.

Revolution against the government? - Who is leading, what can I do with 'minimal effort'

Revolution against corporations/monopolies? - Where do I go, how can I have a simple solution for everything, how do I know where my money is going?

Those questions just need a solution that is convenient and simple.

People can be bold if they feel like they’re not alone, or not at risk.

Rebellion is an act of intention, and needs to be nurtured and supported.

Unfortunately, I don't have answers. I’m not writing this to announce my candidacy for running the revolution.

For now, the only visible and strong option is to dissent in the easiest way possible, attack their wallets.

Stop putting money into the hands of those who use it to abuse you.

Care enough about humanity to do more than shrug and buy your Tesla.

While “one person can’t make a difference”, a group of 1 million can, and that’s just one million “one persons.”

Ok, so what do I do?

Act locally. In any way you can, go to a local store for your purchases. Whenever possible, go to a locally owned store instead of a chain.

Make your own lunch.

Visit the local farmer’s market.

Join a local co-op for purchases.

Print out a list of stores, products and companies to boycott and make it non-optional.

Look up the protests happening… online, locally and regionally. Show up by spending the money you have with the people you agree with, and by making your voice heard.

A solution waiting to happen

When it comes to purchases, I think the change can happen.

The thing to focus on is making it easy, or by considering the alternative to be more difficult.

What we need is a website that feels as convent as Amazon, but makes it easier for the local mom & pop to add their inventory, and for me to see who has something locally.

Being able to easily confirm that a locally owned, ethically run company has what we need it, or can order from a warehouse, the only difficult part is choosing to pay extra to support them.

Unfortunately, I (like most of you) are stuck on "gee, it'd be nice if someone else did this" right now.

The solution is likely a grassroots solution, people with varied skills coming together, contributing their time to create a non-profit solution focused on empowering communities.

What would YOU be willing to sacrifice to make a change?

Throughout my life, I’ve bumped into a recurring theme. Maybe it’s just me, but it feels pretty universal.

Three (3) is broadly accepted as a number with some sort of magic, whether it’s in religion, in science, in mathematics or in sociology, people find comfort and power in the trilogy.

I respect 3, but when seen in patterns it’s more of a superset of 3s. I like 90 for durations, as it is generally long enough to see something but short enough to not be intimidating.

Measuring time in increments of 90 has a beauty to it, allowing you to break it down into 3 groups of 30, a number small enough to make anything possible.

If you consider it as 3 acts, or 3 sides of a triangle, you can see start to be strategic with that time.

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90 Seconds - A time to breathe

Pausing your life and focusing on breathing for a simple 90 seconds is an intentional act. Any time when you look at your breathing and pause for the moment is intentional and lets you re-center on yourself.

90 seconds is the smallest increment, therefore the easiest to do, but with the potential to have the farthest reach.

Pausing for 90 seconds by itself is a start, but can you pause intentionally 3 times each day?

90 Minutes - A time to focus

Bringing your attention to a task and letting your mind sink into that flow of activity can be enough to do an entire day’s work, or it could be the time to make progress on a goal or objective. 90 minutes is short enough that you can commit yourself to work without interruption, but long enough that you can make appreciable progress. It’s enough to get into ‘flow state’ and bring purpose and satisfaction.

Set a timer, declare your intention, turn off distractions and start working. With practice, you can DIY a flow state at will.

It’s also notable that the proposed ‘Basic Rest-Activity Cycle’ (BRAC) operates on the approximate 90-minute rhythms in humans, it’s why we often need a break after 90 minutes of focused activity, this also happens while we sleep, the Ultradian rhythm of non-REM/REM sleep.

Hint, try to sleep for a 6, 7.5, or 9 hour period. You’ll feel more rested if you wake naturally after a 90-minute sleep cycle, its in alignment with your Ultradian rhythm!

90 Days - A chance to succeed

Trying to plan out a whole year can be overwhelming, it can also be misleading. 365 days leaves room for a huge margin of error. Create an annual goal if you must, but leave it open to adjustment.

You can make significant progress on any of your goals in 90-day intervals. The beauty of this shorter “long interval” is that it’s long enough for you to test a hypothesis, or see results to confirm your plan.

Alternatively, it’s short enough that you can commit a period of your life to pursue something without it having a negative impact. You can learn to plan an instrument or speak another language, you could learn a skill that changes the course of your life, or you could lay the foundation for a lifelong pursuit as a business or charitable organization.

Inside a 90-day period, you can even create smaller ‘acts’ with a beginning, middle and end. You can set milestones, and you can measure progress as you go.

90 Years - A lifetime

In 90 years, you can tell a tremendous story. Looking at the ‘acts’, the first 30 are your foundation as you move from infancy to adulthood. In your first 30 years, you can hope to spend it learning and growing into yourself. The first act is about learning something.

The second 30, the ‘mid-life’ is when you take that early learning and start to build something. Maybe it’s a family, maybe it’s a community, maybe it’s a business or charity. This middle act is about building something.

Those last 30, if you’re lucky, is when you can take what you’ve learned, what you’ve built, and you can share it with others. Maybe you teach them what you know, maybe you use the time and space you’ve created in your life to help others, or maybe it’s a chance for you to double down on building something with more impact.

At 90 years, you can hope to have lived a full life, ready to move on to whatever is next. Within those 9 decades, you will have the chance to learn, to grow and to potentially create an impact on the world.

While 90 years is an impressive number, many never get the chance to see it, so it can be hard to use as a target or a focal point for living a value driven life.

Everything is optional, or at least malleable

The unfortunate truth is that we don’t all get to start at the same place, so sometimes it takes 40 years from birth before you can move into ‘build mode’, or for some you are literally born into something already built, and your timeline is all messed up.

There are plenty of reasons that it doesn’t work in the prototypical 3 acts, but you always have the ability to reframe.

Perhaps your 30 years of learn coincide with 30 years of building, so it takes 60 years, but then you’re ready to share.

Regardless of the outermost shell, we all have access to our 90-day, or 90-minute, or 90-second cycles, and that gives us the power to adjust the 90-year cycle as we go.

The next step is simply defining those cycles and how they affect your life right now.

Join the Chaos Cooperative!

March is upon us! Chaos Cooperative has opened its doors and is eager to bring new brains into the community.

March in Chaos Cooperative is focused on defining success as it applies to you, yes, you specifically. Nobody can tell you what matters to you, it’s all in your own hands.

Starting on Monday (March 3rd) we start with work sessions looking at what doesn’t work, what’s getting in our way (limiting beliefs? Learned helplessness?) and start a journey of self discovery.

I hope you can join us!

You can join for free today at https://chaoscooperative.com

10,000 years ago, we lived in a world that required reactions. Fight or Flight was an IMMEDIATE response that we developed to survive and evolve.

Without being able to make that gut response, we may have found ourselves chomped by a saber tooth tiger, or losing precious resources to other tribes. But most of us don’t live at that speed any longer.

As our brains grew more complex, so did our ability to react to our environment. While the ‘fight or flight’ response remained, we also started having the luxury of having a deliberate and calculated response to our environment.

The evolution of humanity and society came with our ability to be more deliberate, but it brought with it the ability to manipulate and be manipulated by others.

The world we live in is designed around the human trait of reaction, or often over-reaction.

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Marketing - Good or Evil

Without writing out a full treatise on the evolution of the human brain, we can jump forward to the early 20th century and the advent of the modern style of marketing.

Freud’s cousin, Edward Bernays, observed that fight or flight, and then fear vs desire, can be used to manipulate people into buying products that were in direct opposition to what they actually needed. He created advertising campaigns that got people to react to their base desires, moving towards things they found ‘attractive’ and away from things that scared them.

More nuanced than ‘fight or flight’, marketing based on fear or desire relied on our subconscious reaction to things. We began to be bombarded with imagery that made us “want”, and it made us flee things that reminded us of death, or poverty.

Marketing, on its own, can be somewhat innocuous, but the intent is always to present something in a manner that makes you want to have it.

Fear vs Desire, the new, modern version of ‘fight or flight’ was yet again taking advantage of the human nature to react.

Everybody has an agenda

Whether it’s trying to sell you something, to own your attention, or to garner your support for their actions or platform, the entire modern world is built around you and how others can get something from YOU!

You are special. You have something others want.

Unless you’re completely oblivious to the world around you, none of this is new information.

Most people are aware of advertisements and marketing efforts targeted at them. While we might not always recognize what happening, we do feel its effects.(Why are McDonald’s ads showing people playing sports, not showing me food? Why am I signing the McDonald’s jingle?)

We’re in a modern age where the Brand is the thing to build. Have your name associated with a lifestyle, or a movement… that’s how you have enduring success.

Once you associate yourself with a brand, once it becomes your identity, you don’t even have to think for yourself anymore.

• “I’m outdoorsy and adventurous, so I should buy a Jeep, I should wear Columbia gear, I should buy a rooftop tent”

• “I’m intelligent and studious, so I wear glasses and drive a Volvo. I’m safe and conscientious, so I recycle, I only purchase things with a 5-star rating from Consumer Reports.”

We don’t even see the brand, or the marketing anymore, we just have the “in group” and the “out group” and we follow that crowd.

Creating movements, brands and identities is … you guessed it… creating a world that relies on your tendency to react.

Responding is counter culture

I mentioned before that humans did grow to have more complicated brains over time, that’s how we ended up with modern societies and tools. That capacity to be deliberate still exists.

In fact, it’s someone being deliberate behind marketing we endure. There is still someone “pulling the strings” that are manipulating people into mindless behaviors. But those people don’t want you to know about them, more importantly, they don’t want you to know you have a choice.

The design of modern society is for people to react to everything in the world, or in some cases to become so overwhelmed with things that need a reaction, that you shut down, and you just accept your fate, like a cow led to the slaughter mill.

They don’t want you to realize, you still have free will.

Your ability to stop, take a breath, consider your surroundings, and respond with intentionality makes you powerful. It makes you an individual who can change the world.

The caveman had to react because he had a very small window for that decision to be made. Once he had tools that allowed him to consider the actions he took, he gained the ability to respond.

The ability to take your time and choose your response has an even greater power, when you can take a moment to choose your next action you can also start to be strategic.

Strategy is the ULTIMATE response trait

There will always be some things you have to do right now, to react to or to respond to with urgency. That’s part of the dynamism of life, and honestly, it’s what keeps life interesting. But you can create a strategy that makes it easier to react appropriately.

Need to find a job? — You could just apply for everything that piques your interest, or you could deliberately consider a job that leverages your skills, keeps your brain active and interested and that serves your own needs on an equal or greater level than the employer.

Want to lose weight? — Ozempic seems to be the way to get results without having to change your life, but it has side effects. Changing your relationship with food and exercise will result in a lifestyle shift that not only loses weight, it’ll also make you stronger and healthier.

Learning to define your life around your needs, having a strategy to become your ideal self, gives you purpose for each day and for your future.

Having a strategy that is specific to your strengths and weaknesses, whether it’s a busy life, not having a vehicle, dealing with ADHD or Autism executive dysfunctions, or whatever conditions you’re in, is like having a map to your destination

Strategy looks like this:

• Figure out who you are — What matters to you? What are your desires? Values?

• Figure out who you want to be — What will matter to you in 50 years? 5 years? Tomorrow?

• Define your roadmap — what needs to change to align with your values? to get to your 50 year or 5-year plan?

• Create your milestones — what will success look like as you’re heading down that road? How can you stay aligned to who you want to be?

• Take the first step — what do you need to this week? Today? That aligns with that long term vision and those nearer term milestones?

If you have half an hour, you can take the first steps.

If you can spare half an hour a week, you can keep yourself on target.

Your future self will be created either by your reaction to the world, or your response to your dreams.

Chaos Cooperative is my effort to create a safe place for neurodivergent people who are better able to thrive around people struggling with the same struggles. It’s small right now, and ready for founders to help turn it into something for “us” not just “me.”

It officially opens at the start of March, where paid members will have access to resources including:

• a monthly challenge,

• weekly check-ins and sprints,

• monthly group sessions and workshops

• community chats and discussions

Until then, I’m doing weekly sessions to get a feel for what to expect. You can visit the community at the link above.

This week’s session is on Thursday, February 20th at 11 AM MST:

Thinking Outside the Box - Define YOUR Version of Success Workshop

RSVP to the event here

You’ll need to create an account and join a plan (there is a free Trial Mode plan) to RSVP, but then you’ll also have access to the calendar, and you can see the other free sessions each week and plan to attend any of those as well.