WTF is the neurodivergent motivation cycle?
Those on the neurodivergent spectrum — which includes conditions such as autism, ADHD and dyslexia, can experience motivation differently than neurotypical people.
In the workplace they may be labeled as procrastinators, easily distracted or lazy. But that’s because they often struggle adhering to linear task management. Instead they find themselves working in highly-productive bursts followed by sharp drops in energy and output. Neurodiverse and neurotypical workers alike can experience this cycle at different intensities, though those with ADHD are particularly prone, according to psychiatrists and those with the condition.
A growing cohort of the workforce is identifying with being neurodivergent themselves, and employers who fail to recognize this and expect staff to work traditional eight-hour workdays are putting themselves at risk of increasing drops in productivity and innovation, workplace experts say.
How does it work?
At the heart of the neurodivergent motivation cycle is the concept of executive functioning: coming up with a plan and putting it into action.
“Executive function refers to that idea of how do we organize, plan, structure and execute daily tasks,” said Dr. Andy Kahn, associate director of behavior change and expertise at Understood, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting people with learning and thinking differences, like ADHD and dyslexia.
For those on the neurodivergent spectrum, “what we see at times is it’s really difficult to put those activities in order and to generate the starting place or the motivation to get engaged in something that seems like it has a lot of steps,” Kahn said.
“That cycle is something that can be really confusing at times for supervisors and people within the workplace. They’re trying to understand: what’s going on with my employee, why is it that they can’t or aren’t doing the things I need them to do? And then on other days they’re my best, they’re the one who is really putting out the most?” he said.
Why does it matter?
Because social media helped give rise to widespread recognition of neurodiversity and how conditions can range in severity and symptoms in the past few years, prompting a growing number of working adults to seek their own diagnoses.
From 2011 to 2022, diagnoses for autism spectrum disorder leapt 315% for adult women and 215% for adult men, according to research published last month in JAMA Network Open analyzing over 9 million health insurance claims. From 2020 to 2022, the percentage of women aged 23 to 49 newly diagnosed with ADHD nearly doubled, according to data from electronic health record vendor Epic.
And over half of Gen Z identify as neurodiverse — 22% said they definitely do, and 31% said they somewhat do, according to a survey from ZenBusiness conducted last year among over 1,000 U.S. adults aged 18 to 25 years old.
Gen Z workers aren’t afraid to dream big or take risks or do something different, which is exactly why high growth-oriented companies today are hiring them, said Gloria Folaron, CEO of Leantime.io. Folaron was diagnosed with ADHD three years ago as an adult, prompting her to create Leantime.io, a project management tool similar to Jira, Asana, or Monday.com.
“If a tool isn’t pretty or I don’t like to look at it, it gets hard to use,” Folaron said. “So we started very foundationally by looking at what cognitive accessibility looks like in terms of user experience and user interface.”
The platform is specifically geared toward workers with ADHD, dyslexia, and autism. It has features framed around the neurodivergent motivation cycle and allows users to label their sentiments toward tasks to help them better prioritize and make workloads feel less overwhelming and more long-term goal-oriented.
“We know that if you have ADHD and you work on something that you don’t enjoy, you’re not going to work on it or it’s going to be the very last thing you actually complete,” Folaron said.
Folaron typically works in bursts, with about two hours of peak active time followed by a dip, then another two hours of peak active time followed by a dip, and so forth. “Our eight-hour straight work days don’t work like that,” she said.
What can employers do?
To start, flexibility with scheduling, and more opportunities to work from home, are non-negotiables. Returning to offices and traditional 9-to-5 life can be particularly challenging for neurodiverse staff who are also returning to more rigid scheduling and distracting, sensory-filled environments.
“That work-from-home flexibility, where folks were able to shift their mornings a little bit, work a little later, or even get a schedule where they take their meetings at a certain point of day, really opened up the ability to work when you were productive and not necessarily take the time that you were in a dip period and try to push through like we’ve been doing for so many years,” Folaron said.
The neurodivergent motivation cycle ultimately touches on a key topic for employers and HR professionals today: productivity, and how in-person work can help enhance it. “From a productivity focus, we need to be concerned,” Khan said.
“How can we better support folks, and how can organizations leverage the neurodiversity that continues to give us creative, unique employees to do work that maybe isn’t being done or couldn’t be done by people who are neurotypical?” he said.
“So many of the workplace accommodations that might be offered require very little funding to do. They’re more about providing access to structures, schedule and timing that can help folks navigate this cycle of productivity.”