Neurodiversity and working in open source IT
A talk that intends to broaden your understanding of Neurodiversity, encourage self-discovery and explores impact on daily work, focus, and communication with colleagues and customers.
In autumn 2022, when Covid appeared to get under control, I took a 2-month pause to 'cool down' and take a complete break from work. I did more thorough reading on personality traits I suspected I had, likely HSP, based on conversations, feedback from others and reading articles.
After digesting books, a lot of personal reflection and trying to find coaching, I realised that my understanding had been very, very limited: of how our brains can work entirely different under the hood, but still provide the same 'output' and appearance.
The 'Neuro' part of diversity is promoted to managers as a productivity and quality booster for teams in organisations. This talk focuses on the individual level instead. I'll discuss and give an overview of some traits like HSP, giftedness, autism and ADHD. Recent findings and 're-definitions' of these traits might spike your interest and promote self discovery, especially when I link them to (my personal) daily working in Open-Source IT.
The motivation for this talk is that I realised a few years ago that my 'basic' understanding of 'differences in character' with friends and colleagues are part based on neurodiversity and that a lot of recent research and advancements of understanding these traits had completely passed me.
Especially when you get to a certain age, you've learned to cope with your own character strengths and flaws, it is very enlightening and encouraging to realise that it are mostly traits and not per se character flaws. And for most people also not a mental illness, but a spectrum or a combination.
