The workplace needs your quirks—not your apologies.

It’s time to kiss your inner critic goodbye.

Last week I had one of those awkward meeting moments where someone pushed back hard on something I said. Maybe you can predict my reaction:

Oh no, Alex—you’ve put your foot in it again.

Ugh, maybe I shouldn’t have said that!?!

Why do I say these things?

That kind of self-critical mental swirl followed me for most of my working life.

But not this time. Instead, here’s what I heard:

Huh. The way I express myself isn’t a great match for this person’s listening style.

It’s no surprise I’ve run into trouble on a call with this many people, because it’s hard for me to process multiple voices at once.

I’m glad I work with people who are really good at parsing social cues, because that’s a place I struggle.

Neurovariety reframes our quirks as natural differences.

What changed my inner voice?

All the research I’ve been doing on neurovariety—the enormous range of functional differences in how workers think, perceive, and communicate. That’s the subject of my next book, which shows how understanding neurovariety helps conquer overwhelm and overload in the new workplace.

It’s already working for me. I’ve stopped worrying about all the signs that I might be neurodivergent: not just the meeting missteps, but my tendency to speak in Star Trek analogies, my chronic fidgeting and my obsession with spreadsheets.

Even more important, I’ve stopped romanticizing the idea of someday becoming “normal”. That’s a dream I’ve had since the days when I believed in the tooth fairy, but held onto a whole lot longer. If I haven’t become normal yet, it’s probably not in the cards.

Instead, I’m embracing the identity and experience of being neurocurious: holding the dual possibility that I might fit a half-dozen different diagnoses, and also, that there are many ways in which I may be absolutely average.