If you've spent your career performing at a high level while privately wondering why everything feels harder than it should, I want to introduce you to a word: twice-exceptional.

It means your brain is both gifted and neurodivergent. And the reason you've probably never heard of it is because the two parts mask each other perfectly. The giftedness says "you can't really be struggling, look at your résumé." The ADHD or autism says "you can't really be gifted, look at what you can't do."

So you sit in the middle, belonging fully to neither camp, building compensation systems so sophisticated they become invisible. Including to you.

I spent 20 years in product management before I had language for this. Twenty years of "he's so smart, why can't he just..." followed by silence where an explanation should be.

The explanation isn't discipline. It's architecture.

If that lands, look up "twice-exceptional adults." And maybe stop white-knuckling through a brain that was never broken.