When I was brainstorming ideas for my upcoming book on neurodivergent leadership, my husband and I were joking that I should call it, this is the best idea ever.

And I don't know how many of you out there who have very busy

kind of novelty seeking brains can relate to that. Maybe you have ADHD, maybe you're on the

bipolar spectrum. Who knows? But you have lots of ideas. You have passion. You have energy.

You have creativity.

And quite often, something will hit you.

And you just want to drop everything and pursue it.

I'm Maura Erin's Mealy, and this is the anxious achiever,

the show that looks at the intersection of mental health and leadership and work, and asks, how can we do it all better?

Today, I talk to Dr. Michael Freeman. He's a psychiatrist who's been on the show more.

And I love Dr. Freeman's work. He both practices with and studies a population that is very relevant to

this show, whether or not you're an entrepreneur. He looks at entrepreneurs who are neurodivergent

or have mental illness. The population that he looks at, he says, are more inclined towards

impulsivity, have higher levels of creativity, are more

likely to be extroverted, and engage intensely in goals, particularly short to intermediate

goals. Something really interesting about this population is he says that people in this camp

are likely to sort of over-index both on good news or bad news.

Good news feels really, really good and bad news feels worse than it is.

We also tend to overvalue our own ideas.

And that's why when we ask the question, which I think about all the time and people ask me, is being

neurodivergent a superpower right off the bat or is it a vulnerability?

I think like a lot of things, it's absolutely both, right?

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