What neurodivergent experiences can teach us about better work design

Most workplaces are making the same assumption: that neurodiversity is a people issue. A matter of supporting a subset of employees who experience the world a little differently and need some adjustments to manage.

The assumption is worth examining. Because what neurodivergent people's experience is really doing, is giving us diagnostic information about what modern workplaces are doing to all of us.

Modern workplaces are asking too much of all human brains. 

We are navigating, often simultaneously:

• constant notifications

• context switching

• fragmented attention

• competing priorities

• high communication volume

• multiple platforms

• increased ambiguity

• fewer (or no) recovery gaps between tasks

• endless systems and processes

Our world and workplaces fragment our attention, and humans are overloaded, whether or not they identify as neurodivergent. 

It is affecting our well-being, capacity, reliability, and performance. 

That’s why this conversation matters so much.

Neurodiversity is more common than workplaces realise

Neurodiversity refers to natural differences in how people think, learn, focus, communicate, process information, and experience the world. This includes:

• ADHD

• autism

• dyslexia

• dyspraxia

• dyscalculia

• dysgraphia

• tourette's syndrome

• sensory processing differences

Current estimates suggest about 15–20% of the population may be neurodivergent in some way. (Diversity Council Australia)

Importantly, many adults remain unidentified, such as:

• women

• older generations

• high-masking professionals

• high-performing employees whose coping strategies hid the strain for years

The Australian Public Service recently found that 8.8% of employees identified as neurodivergent, and 9.3% thought they might be. (Australian Public Service Commission)

This means organisations already employ neurodivergent people, whether they formally recognise it or not. 

The brain was never designed for this much load

Our brain has a set of abilities collectively called executive function. These govern things like how we direct attention, switch between tasks, regulate, and make decisions. 

These are active, effortful systems that run beneath everything we do in the workplace. 

One of the strongest findings across neuroscience and cognitive psychology is that executive functions have limits, and performance suffers when the load on these systems becomes too high. 

Central to this is working memory. Think of this as your workbench rather than your filing cabinet. It holds everything you’re actively working on, the thread of a conversation, the decision you’re weighing, the task you were midway through before someone interrupted. 

But it’s limited. So, when the space becomes too crowded, things fall off. Errors increase. Thinking quality degrades. 

Performance declines.

This is true for everybody. It’s just science. 

On top of this, neurodivergent profiles such as autistic people and people with ADHD, experience significant differences in executive functioning (Springer). They tend to feel the impact of cognitive load earlier and more intensely because the systems under pressure are already working differently and, in many cases, under greater load. 

Because of this, they can be among the first in the system to detect whether an environment is working against how human cognitive systems actually function. 

What have their experiences been trying to tell us about these environments all along?

Modern workplaces were never particularly well-designed for any of us.

Many workplaces underestimate how much energy humans burn trying to remember, organise, prioritise, and juggle information all day. Across neurotypes, modern workplaces are creating conditions that place constant pressure on executive functioning. 

The result of this is:

• struggling to focus, and re-focus after interruptions

• struggling to prioritise or losing track of priorities mid-task

• reading the same email over and over (or missing it altogether)

• feeling ‘stuck’ when trying to start tasks

• forgetting instructions or tasks

• difficulty following conversations or meetings

• difficulty keeping on top of admin

• making more mistakes

• feeling exhausted despite sitting still all day

This is where cognitive science becomes practical. The principles that allow brains to perform well under load are not new. What has been missing is the willingness to apply them to how work is actually structured.

What this reveals about workplace design

Most workplace structures evolved around availability, visibility, and output volume. The measures of a productive employee have long been responsiveness, presence, and the appearance of ‘busy’. 

They increasingly reward:

• retrieval speed

• context switching

• fast responses

• rapid processing

They do not reward deep, uninterrupted cognition. 

The result is a working environment that arrived at something genuinely hostile to sustained cognitive performance, largely by default.  

So, what is being asked here is something fundamental: A different way of thinking about performance. 

Cognitive psychology has understood for decades what conditions allow the brain to perform well under demand. The problem is that most workplaces have never applied the science. 

The answer is to design an environment that works with human cognitive architecture. 

Neurodivergent people, particularly those with ADHD and autism, have had to apply these principles consciously, simply to navigate working life. 

The principles are not complicated. 

• Reduce unnecessary load on working memory by externalising information rather than expecting people to hold everything mentally. 

• Protect periods of genuine focus rather than treating availability as the baseline. 

• Build transition times between tasks. 

• Make communication literal, specific, and retrievable rather than relying on implication, assumption, and memory. 

• Create structures that make expectations visible rather than leaving people to navigate hidden rules.

These are not accommodations. They are performance conditions. 

High performers in genuinely high-stakes fields have long known this. 

Pilots use checklists Surgeons use procedural systems Elite athletes build structured routines. 

All to free up space for what actually requires judgment, especially under pressure. 

These systems do not exist because those people are incapable. They exist because reducing cognitive friction improves consistency, accuracy, reliability, and performance under pressure.

It is what intelligent performance design looks like.

Your attention needs to stop being fragmented

You open an email and start typing, a notification pops up, someone approaches with a “quick question”, a meeting starts. By the time you look at the draft again, the thread of it is gone altogether. 

This carries a real cognitive cost. Organisational psychologist Sophie Leroy's points to an important phenomenon being present here, “attention residue”. She reports that when we move from one task to another, especially before it is completed, part of our attention remains cognitively anchored to whatever we just left. It results in depleted working memory and executive function, drastically reducing overall productivity.

In a modern workday built around constant communication, notifications, availability, and responsiveness, this has become the default condition.

We must reduce the load of unnecessary task switching:

• protect uninterrupted focus windows

• batch emails and messages instead of constantly monitoring them

• consolidate communication platforms and workflows

• minimise meetings during concentration blocks

• change notifications during focused work

• have priorities and instructions upfront

• create clearer communication structures (avoid the “quick question” problem)

• allow transition time between cognitively demanding tasks

• 
  

Don't waste energy trying to remember things

One of the most effective strategies to support our brains is to externalise information rather than rely on our minds to hold on to everything. This includes:

• visual workflows 

• visual calendars

• checklists

• chunk tasks and write down the steps

• written follow-ups

• colour coding

• visual timers

• time blocking

• visible priorities

• note-taking during conversations and when instructions are given

• shared systems instead of memory reliance

The question is not whether this works. The evidence is clear that they do. 

Clear communication reduces load for everyone

Ambiguity places a genuine and measurable load on cognitive systems and creates many unnecessary roadblocks.

While I see communication challenges across many clients, ADHD and autistic people (among other neurodivergent people) often report particular difficulties with:

• vague instructions

• Implied or shifting expectations

• indirect communication and missed subtext

• inconsistent communication styles

• unclear priorities

• shifting rules and processes

• unspoken hierarchy or authority expectations

• uncertainty around when or how to initiate communication or give feedback

• being expected to respond immediately

Most people function more effectively when communication is:

• clear and specific

• concrete 

• structured

• consistent 

Simple things can help enormously:

• make expectations explicit 

• use concise, accessible language 

• set specific meeting outcomes

• define priorities in order

• communicate more literally and avoid vague terms

• written next steps

• direct communication with fewer “hidden rules”

• allow pauses and processing time

• explain the unspoken hierarchy or authority expectations

• one clear source of truth for important information

These are not fluffy inclusion gestures. They are operational performance tools that, interestingly, reduce friction across entire teams.

Pause is not passive

The brain needs to stop.

Not permanently. Not for long. But genuinely, deliberately, and regularly. 

Recovery is not a reward for productivity. It is a condition of it. 

Without adequate pause, cognitive residue accumulates, performance erodes, and the exhaustion that builds is not fixed by a weekend, because the structure that produced it resumes on Monday.

Pause is not a passive concept. It is attentional regulation. 

The nervous system needs to reset, process, and reorient between demands. This is as true between meetings as it is between tasks, as true across a day as it is across a week.

Neurodivergent people often feel the absence of this earliest. But the need itself is universal.

The workplaces that perform best are not the ones asking the most of their people. They are the ones who understand what humans require to keep performing well. 

This is a conversation about designing work around how brains actually function, so that the people doing it can bring their best thinking consistently, rather than just heroically, until they cannot anymore.

Neurodivergent experiences did not create this conversation. It clarifies it. The question now is whether we are willing to follow where it points.