Work and Neurodivergence
At this month’s ND BrainSpace, we’ve been talking about work. Not just about finding a job, but about staying in one, feeling understood, and figuring out how to build a working life that actually fits.
We started with a simple question:
What do you find challenging about work and careers?
What people find hard
A lot of the challenges people described came down to mismatch.
Not a lack of ability.
Not a lack of motivation.
Instead, it often felt like a mismatch between how neurodivergent people work best and how many workplaces are designed.
Work structures
Several people talked about how traditional working patterns don’t always fit their natural rhythms or energy levels.
Examples included:
Circadian rhythms that don’t match typical 9–5 working hours
Full-time expectations that quickly lead to overwhelm
Choosing “safe” or less interesting jobs in order to avoid anticipated burnout
Difficulty finding accessible jobs nearby
For some people, the wider system can also feel confusing or unreliable — especially when navigating things like job centres, benefits, or employment support services.
Communication differences
Communication came up again and again during the discussion.
People shared experiences such as:
Asking for clarification and being seen as challenging authority
Being direct and being misunderstood
Speaking up in meetings and feeling out of place
Miscommunication with colleagues
One person mentioned face blindness and the worry that they might appear rude when they simply don’t recognise someone.
Another talked about over-explaining or oversharing in an effort to be clear.
These moments are not about poor communication skills. More often, they reflect different communication styles colliding with unspoken workplace expectations.
Executive functioning and energy
Many of the challenges people described were connected to the invisible workload of managing attention, memory, and prioritisation.
People talked about things like:
Time blindness
Difficulty prioritising tasks
Forgetting things unless they are written down
Struggling to start less interesting tasks
Perfectionism leading to work never feeling “finished”
For many neurodivergent people, work can involve a constant balancing act between focus and overwhelm.
Masking and belonging
Another big theme was the pressure to fit in.
People raised questions such as:
Should I disclose that I’m neurodivergent?
Will people understand?
Will it change how I’m seen at work?
Masking — whether conscious or unconscious — can take a huge amount of energy.
Sometimes authenticity is misread as rudeness or oddness, which can lead to a quiet sense of not quite belonging.
What actually helps
The second question we asked was just as important:
What helps you work well?
Clear communication
People shared that it really helps when workplaces provide:
Clear expectations
Written instructions
Honest feedback
Guidance on where to ask for help
Clarity reduces a huge amount of stress and removes the need for people to guess what is expected of them.
Sensory awareness
Small environmental adjustments can make a big difference.
Examples included:
Less harsh lighting
Fewer strong smells in the workspace
A quieter environment
Having a consistent desk rather than hot-desking
Sometimes it’s not the work itself that is exhausting — it’s the environment around it.
Practical tools
Many people have developed their own strategies to make work more manageable.
For example:
Writing physical to-do lists rather than relying on memory
Offloading ideas and tasks into spreadsheets
Using focus techniques like the Pomodoro method
Listening to music or podcasts to maintain concentration
External tools can reduce cognitive load and make it easier to stay organised.
Flexibility and autonomy
Flexibility came up repeatedly during the discussion.
Helpful adjustments included:
Flexible working hours
Reduced hours
Working from home some of the time
Taking regular breaks
Having space to decompress alone
These adjustments are not about lowering expectations. They are about creating the conditions that allow people to do their best work.
The bigger picture
One thing stood out clearly from the conversation.
Most of the challenges people described were not about neurodivergent people being “bad at work”.
They were about fit.
Fit between energy levels and expectations.
Fit between communication styles.
Fit between sensory needs and environments.
When workplaces become more flexible, explicit, and understanding, something interesting happens.
People stop spending all their energy trying to cope.
And start spending that energy on doing good work.
If you recognise yourself in any of this, you are not alone.
And you are not doing work wrong.
You are navigating work with the brain you have.
Get Involved
If this conversation resonates with you, ND BrainSpace is a relaxed peer-support space for neurodivergent adults to share experiences, swap strategies, and talk honestly about life, work, and everything in between.
You can find out more about upcoming groups here:
https://www.chooseyourway.co.uk/nd-brainspace