Einstein would probably be in an autism program today

1. Types of Thinkers

My kind of mind, the object visualizer, will be good at mechanical devices because you can see how they work, art, photography, and animals. And the thing that we cannot do is abstract math. I can do arithmetic. I understand things like pi times the radius squared for sizing hydraulic cylinders and I then I see the hydraulic cylinders when I say that.

Now your visual-spatial thinker who thinks in patterns, they're going to be your IT people, your computer programmer, chemists, physicists, they calculate how to do things.

And then of course you have your verbal thinkers that think in words where they're much more linear in their thinking. Verbal thinkers are going to gravitate towards things like sales, where you have to be very good at talking. They'll gravitate towards writing, legal, teaching.

2. Standard Interview Process vs Backdoors

We need all the different kinds of minds. And I've talked to a lot of business leaders. And the first thing I tell business leaders is you've got to understand that people think differently and that they can work together in very complementary ways.

If you want to successfully hire neurodivergent people with autism, dyslexia, or ADHD who are going to get the jobs done for you, we need to get rid of the conventional interview process. They need to have opportunities to come in and show off the work and show the work to somebody who would appreciate it rather than just interviewing based on how well they talk. Because you can have a super-good computer person that's not very talkative, but that person may be your best programmer.

3. Neurodivergence vs School System

I worked with skilled tradespeople that were definitely undiagnosed autism. They're retiring now because they're my age. And what concerns me is who's going to replace them. Because that kid that should be fixing elevators or inventing mechanical devices is playing video games in the basement instead of working for your company. There's some beneficial things you can learn from video games and that's true. But not playing them for ten hours a day.

When I was a young child, I'd spend hours tinkering with little parachutes and tinkering with little kites, getting them to work, trying lots of designs. I like to build things. Kids are not doing that. Kids today are not getting opportunities to learn from mistakes, and they're being so overprotected. They're not getting exposed to enough different things.

I've had educators say, what would I do to change the school system? I put all the hands-on classes back in. And that would give a lot of the kids like me more opportunities to find things that they would be good at. I got interested in the cattle industry because I was exposed to it as a teenager. If you are given enough opportunities to try a lot of things, then you'll tend to gravitate towards stuff that you're good at.