The Neurodivergent Professor

From the dictionary: 1: able to be used without being completely used up or destroyed sustainable energy resources; a sustainable water supply 2: involving methods that do not completely use up or destroy natural resources sustainable agriculture/farming/techniques 3: able to last or continue for a long time sustainable development/growth Have you ever noticed the hustlers around you? You know, th...

Have you heard this phrase yet? In the past few weeks tons of articles have come out that explain the 'Great Resignation' or the 'Big Quit'. According to Wikipedia (yes, it has it's own wiki page) a fella called Anthony Klotz at Texas A&M predicted last May (2021) that people were going to leave the workplace as a result of Covid. And to summarize, very briefly, '...

At the risk of sounding pessimistic or negative I am sharing my thoughts about a topic near and dear to me. More often than no, I believe people suck at their jobs. I don't think this suckage is always intentional and I do not believe people WANT to suck at their jobs. I am not here to blame individuals for their suckage nor to suggest this is necessarily related to the individuals. My point...

Does this bother you? You interact with someone at their job, maybe getting a coffee or something. The server is rude, obnoxious, entitled, and unhelpful. Maybe they're even condescending toward you. You may or may not say anything, but, hey, you want your coffee. Maybe you think about it later, but at some point it occurs to you that they were not good at their job in that moment. Maybe it w...

Definition of authentic (Taken from Merriam-Webster) 1 a: worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact paints an authentic picture of our society b: conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features an authentic reproduction of a colonial farmhouse c: made or done the same way as an original authentic Mexican fare 2: not false or imitation : REAL , ACTUAL an authe...

Remember that time when everything seemed perfectly clear?  Yeah, me neither. But once in awhile things DO seem clear. And it feels good. There's no doubt ( Episode 28 ) and things just make sense. Though these moments are fleeting, I think we can learn to maximize the amount of clarity we see in our lives. And by clarity I mean more the ABSENCE of stuff rather than the PRESENCE of something....

To some, this is a ridiculous question steeped in pointless naval gazing. To others, it's a comedic take on people who ask the 'big questions'. To others this is a reasonable assessment of what we want to understand. To me, it's all three at the same time. And maybe that's the point. And like most rhetorical questions, I don't really want to KNOW if I really know what...

I'm using the Forest for the Trees metaphor to suggest that humans have become exceptionally myopic . The only reason I know what myopic means is because after defending my Master's Thesis a professor proclaimed that I was very myopic - meaning I had a terribly narrow view of the question I had asked and answered. I thought I was being pretty broad and was a bit hurt by his statement, bu...

I recorded this episode after replying to a YouTube comment about good and bad types of change (Episode 61: Change is Hard, but Resisting Change is Wrong). The commenter made a good point that sometimes we change in a bad direction instead of making a positive change. I agreed but in doing so realized I had a bigger point buried under that. Perhaps another assumption I had failed to realize or exp...

Apparently I didn't say quite enough about change in last weeks' Episode 62: Change is Hard, but Resisting Change is WRONG! because when I say down to record this weeks' Episode I just kept talking about CHANGE. Change. It's the one thing we can count on. Since the Big Bang, the universe has been changing. Changing forms. Changing states. Changing composition. All around us, ch...

In the next few videos I focus on CHANGE. I have covered changing old beliefs, changing the way you think, changing your habits. But it wasn't until Episode 47: Changing Behavior Changes Beliefs that I actually started to realize how critical CHANGE is.  Change is the key. The main element. The obvious, yet hidden mechanism of life. One of my chief assumptions is that we we are vehicles for,...

When I was a teenager I realized I would be working for the rest of my life. This hit me like a ton of bricks. This realization LITERALLY left me feeling like I had fallen out of a tree and couldn't catch my breath. Though I'd experienced physical pain by this point in my life, fully coming to understand that I was going to have to spend a significant part of my life doing things I didn&...

Depending on how you define 'uncomfortable', 100-200 million people worldwide can't meet their basic needs. Folks are born into societies and cultures where they are doomed to fail. Millions of people on this planet will live their entire lives worried about dying, finding food, or having a safe place to sleep. These are enormously huge problems that I truly don't understand. N...

In this episode I cover two main points: Millions of people have no interest in the Are vs Should Problem because they can't meet their basic human needs for things like food, clean water, and safe shelter. These problems can only be fixed if we live more in the Are and less in the Should . There are no two ways about it, I believe that we need to be more Are, and less Should. I am even start...

Inside each of us are several characters. These parts are all 'us', but they are distinct from one another. What distinguishes these parts is the roles they play in managing our lives. We are, at the same time, the nice guy, the responsible gal, the tactful them. We play many roles in different aspects of our lives. At work we are cordial and diligent. In bed we are adventurous and raw....

Don Miguel Ruiz, author of many books including ' The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book) ' uses the term "Domestication" to describe the process by which humans are taught how to live. I have been fascinated by this process, whatever you wish to call it, for as long as I can remember. In fact, I still wonder, often out loud, why no one...

In this second part of the Bully vs your DNA miniseries I describe the DNA part. I will make the argument here, which is a fundamental element of my future work on the Are vs Should Problem, that it is our birthright to express our DNA as fully as possible. I hope you enjoy. For many years I have heard things like, 'Follow your passion!' or, 'if you do what you love you'll neve...

Last week I introduced a few examples of the Are vs. Should problem. One of the most obvious examples comes up when we think about our careers. When we're young people ask us what we want to be when we grow up. As adults, many of us wonder what became of those childhood dreams when we find ourselves doing jobs we don't like. And I'll argue it's because we listen more to our Sho...

As we move forward trying to discern the gist of the Are vs. Should Problem , I want to describe both the general dilemma and share a few specific examples. Generally speaking, you know you are in the Are vs. Should Problem when you experience discomfort, cognitive dissonance, anxiety, fear, anger, and other uncomfortable emotions. Of course, there could be many causes for these states of mind and...

As we pursue the "Are vs. Should Problem" and examine our personal inventory, I want to describe two main ways we can understand ourselves and the realities we live in. First, there is the measurable world. The 'Hard' world where science reigns supreme. Things are measurable, quantifiable, and therefore fit into the well oiled scientific machinery. Problems stemming from econom...

On our journey to define the ARE vs SHOULD problem ( Episode 50 ), we must first define the 'existing conditions'. Like many scientific endeavors (and I'm NOT saying this is a scientific endeavor, rather, that I will take a scientific APPROACH), the Are vs Should investigation needs to know where it's coming from to understand where it's going. And, really, the personal in...

This episode is a milestone for several reasons. One, it's the 50th episode and, for a weekly podcast that means it has been about a year, which is also a not insignificant milestone. For a one-man-band hobby podcaster, that's a pretty good run. When I started KEW I wasn't sure where I was going or what I was trying to accomplish over the long term. And, really, I began asking mysel...

This is the final episode in the Knowledge + Experience = Wisdom Curiosity series. I really didn't know what I was getting myself into, whether I'd be a good interviewer, or whether people I did, or didn't know, would have anything interesting to say about Curiosity. Well, I learned a TON about myself and about curiosity, and I hope that these interviews stimulate Curiosity in other...

I mean, really, who are you?  No, I mean, really, who are you?  Who Am I?  Do we know?  Do we care? I, for one, think it is important, even CRITICAL to know who I am, and presumably, for you to know who you are. I'm sure there are people out there who disagree with me, but I really can't get my head into that space nor do I think those folks are coming here to read my blog. But I am very...

Marcas Hemmila has lived a pretty full life. He was a leader in the military. He trained for the Mr. Universe competition series. He is/was a computer programmer in the fast paced IT world. And now, he aims to help us discover and ignite our lives. The thing that struck me about Marcas was his authenticity. It's like I tell him in the video, he has a cool combination of vulnerability and &apo...