Ep191: Embracing Neurodiversity in the Workplace | with Simon Smith, ACE

Zack Arnold

My guest today is Simon Smith, who's an award winning editor whose most recent credits are the HBO series Chernobyl and the Disney Plus series Star Wars: Andor. While Simon has been on many podcasts already talking about his successful work as an editor, our conversation today instead centers around neuro diversity in the workplace. And why you might ask, because it was only recently that Simon was diagnosed as an adult with autism, not only does Simon embraces autism, he considers it to be one of his greatest assets when it comes to his successful career as an editor. And this is a mindset that he inspires all of us to adopt, whether it's mental, physical circumstantial, noticeable to others, or just to you, each and every one of us has some form of disability. And no matter the disability that may be holding you back in your life, this conversation will give you the tools and the inspiration that you need to reframe your obstacles and transform them into your superpowers. It is all about perspective. In this conversation, Simon shares with us that autism is nothing more than a difference in the way that the mind works. And we discussed the importance of embracing all forms of neuro diversity in the workplace, such that we can utilize everyone's value. He provides a refreshing take and how we can open our minds to the fact that we don't all think the same, nor should we. And as an added bonus, Simon and I geek out on the fallacy of striving for work life balance, and what we should be focusing on instead, so we can all live more fulfilling creative lives. All right, without further ado, my conversation with award winning editor Simon Smith. To access the show notes for this episode with all the bonus links and resources that we discussed today, as well as to subscribe, leave a review and more, simply visit optimizeyourself.me/episode 191. I am here today with Simon Smith, who is an editor whose recent credits include the award winning HBO series Chernobyl for which you won an Emmy, a BAFTA and an Emmy Award, and it may not be quite as sexy or cool as an EGOT. But technically, you got an an EBE, or an EEB, or a BEE compared to what the combination is. But the fact you got the Emmy, the BAFTA, and the Edie certainly says a lot about your work on Chernobyl, you've also worked on the Disney Plus series Star Wars: Andor, and you also mentioned in your bio, that you have three small children and you live by the coast in Brighton, England. So Simon, such a pleasure to finally have you on the microphone, it would take us half the episode to just talk about what it took to get you here. The point is, you're here and I'm super excited and very grateful. So thank you, thanks.

Simon Smith

It's really nice to be here. Really, really nice to be here.

Zack Arnold

One of the things I learned about people relatively quickly, and it's kind of one of my my ninja tactics that I have having done over 300 of these interviews, I learned a lot about a person by how they answer the question, how do you want to be introduced on the show, because they used to be, here's your, just provide with me provide for me your bio, and then people send one or two paragraphs, kind of the standard third person thing, but they want to ask them to write, I want you to say how you be introduced in the show, I can tell very quickly a lot about a person. What I can tell about you is that you're humble, almost to a fault. Would you say that that's relatively accurate?

Simon Smith

If I say that's very kind of you, probably,

Zack Arnold

You just confirmed my suspicion. The reason I say that is because you said and I actually embellished your introduction, just because I needed to. You said I worked on the show Chernobyl and Disney plus Star Wars: Andor I have three kids and I live in Brighton, England, I'm like, You're selling yourself a little bit short, my friend, because what you have accomplished in this industry is amazing for anyone. But the context for which I want to frame this is because of the reason you reached out to me what we're going to talk about, you are recently diagnosed with autism. So for somebody to say, well, it's amazing for anybody to do this, but for somebody with autism to do it. That's amazing, you know, that was so courageous of you to decide to do this, despite the fact that you suffer from this problem, you know, good for you. Obviously, that's not the way that I want to frame it. But I have a feeling that that's how some people frame this. Right.

Simon Smith

Yeah. And, you know, maybe I would have even thought of it in that way, you know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, but actually having, you know, thought a lot about it. And I do spend a lot of time thinking, I actually conclude that all of the success of the Chernobyl and Star Wars and everything that I am good at, is connected to my autism to my neurodiversity to my brain. So actually, I don't think I would be as successful at those things. If I was not autistic, or if, like I personally I wouldn't be that successful, all of the things that I like to I owe it to my autism really and That's something that makes me want to talk about it. Because I know that, you know, growing up, and maybe lots of other people who have brains that they know quite different to other people, makes you it can lead to periods of, you know, lack of self worth, not feeling valuable, not feeling unable to do things. Everything you just said about, you know how difficult it must be, I think you can, you can have those thoughts in your mind, but actually, my autism has allowed me to do my job. And I really think, not only is it enabled me and empower me to do my job, but it's so intertwined with postproduction specifically, you know, like, I think that, definitely, when I got my diagnosis, one of the things I thought is, well, if I'm autistic, and I'm learning this, I know a bunch of people who I work with who would be interested in this, and who should maybe go on this journey and maybe get their brain shut down, because there's a lot to learn from that process. And I see, I feel like I've got a neurodivergent radar now. And I can pick up all over the place. But ah, that person's brain is thinking like my brain thinks or isn't thinking about other people's brains. I listen to your podcast, and some of the people that speak to you on your podcast, I swear, I'm not that guy or that gal, they may be interested, they should get tested, they should, they should see where this where this journey takes them. You know, it's, it's part of what we do.

Zack Arnold

I love the idea that you said a neurodivergent radar, cuz I feel like that's something that I have as well. And just this is something I've talked about before full disclosure, you and I've talked about this a little bit offline, I was diagnosed with adult onset add when I was give or take about 25 years old. And that was, I hate to say it on recording 17 years ago, just because in my brain, I'm still 25 I feel 25 I've got the actually I feel much better than I did at 25. But to think that that was 17 years ago still kind of scares me. The point being things were a lot different in brain science back then. And you couldn't you know, not that you can now but it's not like you could take a simple blood test or split test and say yes, you are ADD it's based on a multitude of factors, behavioral factors, how does your brain think how do you process information, and they came to conclusion based on that, and some experimentation with different medications. Once something started working, they're like, this medication only works for people that are dealing with ADD, and for me, it just opened up the entire world I went from, I can't process information, I can't pay my bills, and do laundry, within three days to thinking this is how quote unquote, normal people feel. This is amazing. This is not how my brain usually works. So is that whole process. But the point being that what I want to get to a lot more throughout this episode is number one better understanding the stigmas that come with being neurodivergent. But number two, I think for a lot of people, when it comes to disabilities in general, and disabilities have been a huge point of interest for me and something I've talked about for years and years and did an entire documentary about it. The lesson that I learned more than any other of the 1000 life lessons I got from the documentary was that everybody has a disability, every single person has some form of disability in some context. However, if you learn to reframe your perspective, you can turn that disability into a superpower. And you are somebody that I think is the perfect example of not just well, I've suffered from autism, and I make my way through when you first emailed me, my response was exactly the opposite. Like you said, like maybe it even makes you better at your job or makes it easier. What I literally thought when you sent that, to me is like, Oh, I get it. Now. He's been cheating the whole time. Like he's totally cheated, because, like organizing all this footage and the bins and it's like, you're totally cheating. Because for you that's so easy, right? And for me for years, my kryptonite was the add like I could barely function. But I've learned how to harness it into a superpower. And that's what I want to talk about with you is understanding how you're able to take this neurodiversity, both politically but just also both as a craftsman and a technician to really harness that as your superpower. But I want to go back first before diving right into that. I want to learn a little bit more about what are the things that you may be recognized either at the time or in hindsight, when you were younger, or even just a few years ago that led you to believe there's something going on here? And how did that ultimately lead to your diagnosis?

Simon Smith

Oh, that's great. Um, so I think and you'll relate to this, like my brain can sometimes feel like it's doing a million things like it can feel like a computer that's got too many tabs open or

Zack Arnold

24/7. You just described my life 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you don't believe me, ask anybody on my team. It never stops. So yes, I can relate.

Simon Smith

Yeah. Yeah. So there's that there's that said and a lot of the time there's when you're having conversations with people Go. And you just feel like they're not thinking what? What you're thinking, right? And, and you're like, why is your brain not doing what my brain is? Why is your brain not going there where my brain is going. And you know, that's that can be incredibly difficult. And it's only since diagnosis and learning more about how my brain is wired differently, that I feel now, armed with that knowledge that I go into those same situations, with a much more open mind to translate into I take more time and translate in what I'm thinking. And I take more time in listening to other people actually saying, I do this thing, which I've become aware of when I'm listening to people, especially in a in an edit suite like this one, where I like lean in, physically leaning closer to taking what they're saying, oh, when they're talking mid sentence, I'll just stop them. And I'll be like, What do you mean? Like, what is it that you mean, I need to translate this, I need to real time translate this, but haven't learned that my brain is different, and that their brain is different, and that all of our brains are different. And I actually feel that, out of that I can have more emphatic creative relationships with people. And that's all we're all trying to do in in filmmaking, if anything is, is collaborate as is to try and interpret what each other are thinking and get the most out of that. In terms of like, growing up, like, it's so funny, because if anything, like I look back on it now, and it was so obvious, you know, like, I remember being a kid and never really claimed the other children. I remember spending most lunch times in the classroom on my own doing some thing that the teacher had given me to do. There was one teacher that she I'm sure that she thought she was helping. But she gave me other kids schoolwork to mark. And I would sit there and mark their math. And I enjoyed it as I enjoyed the in the market. And that was, that was a fun thing for an autistic kid lives great doing that. That wasn't great for building relationships with other children. That didn't really go down well. But certainly, as a kid, I had a lot of those things going on. About seven, eight years ago, I started to get quite overwhelmed and burnt out with work. And I had a small daughter, a new baby. And we started to notice that her brain was quite different that she was doing different things to her peers. And we didn't wonder, Oh, maybe there's something there. And this was before I got diagnosed. And I'd read a lot of books on it. And I thought at that point, if I'm really going to understand my kids, I should go and understand myself first, you know, I should go and work out what's going on with my brain if I'm to better understand their brains. And that's what led me to go to my GP in England, the NHS National Health Service, we have a local general practitioner that you can go to went to my GP explain to him how I would fit in how I was struggling, like there was some struggles at work with communicating with people and understanding people and being overwhelmed and stuff like that. And he was super good. He listened to all of it. And he referred me to some specialists. And then some long process, there's a lot of waiting time as well in between. And then there's a lot of assessments and tests that you go through, I went through dozens of written tests, hours and hours of interviews with practitioners, different practitioners, so they could compare notes. I did this one test, which you can do online. It's like a social intelligence test, where they flash up eyes of different people, just the eyes, and they give you four emotions. And you have to say which Emotion The eyes are having. And that was horrible. Like, it was so difficult. And it took me so much time to do that. I hated that test. Like it actually made me feel very uncomfortable doing that test. But they did all that and they interviewed my wife, who at the time still, you know, was like, I don't know what you're what you're talking about. And out of the end of it, you know, and then it's worth you touched on it. But what happens is you get all these different scores in all these different places. And then if that crosses a threshold, then they can determine a conclusion. So it's not as you say, a blood test. It's not, it's not even one gene that you turn it on or turn it off and you are autistic. Once you've crossed the threshold into this percentile, then you're then they make their conclusion. And for me that conclusion, I can read it out. It says the neurodevelopmental service multidisciplinary team, were able to conclude that you meet the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum condition. You for the level one severity level, you would previously have been described as having Asperger's Syndrome. So that's what I came away from it with and the doctors Bend is rather stupid, they say you want counseling? Or do you want any? Is there anything else that you want to explore this is a medication that you feel that you want to explore. But that was enough for me to be like, okay, that tells me something about my brain. And then, as time have gone on, I've had two more kids and one of our kids, and our boy, he's amazing. He now now he's grown up, he's very much present and much more obvious autism traits than I have, or, you know, to the point where he's very obviously autistic. And in that way, and it, and I'm so glad that I went through that process, because I feel how I feel about it, and how I feel about my son, how I feel about my son's future, has all been made more sensible to me, having gone down that and understood it about myself, I know that my autism is very different than his autism. Every person has autism is very different. There's a phrase, you've met one person with autism, you've met just one person with autism, you know, but I feel more equipped to, I guess, take the emotional rollercoaster of all that weird time.

Zack Arnold

You're so self conscious about the fact that you just ramble on and you have no idea how succinctly and organized your thoughts are, I'll let you know, if you go off the beaten path, don't worry about it, I have a tendency to do that, I think a lot more than you're going to. There's two things that I want to dig into a little bit further. And one of which I think, is a really, really big one. It's when you said, Well, my son, obviously has autism. And I that's probably a reaction, you've gotten more than once where like you said, it's a level one severity, which used to be called Asperger's, which is no longer called Asperger's more for political reasons than anything that we probably don't need to go into. Let's just say it has something to do with Nazis from my understanding, other than that, not going to go into a but for anybody that knows the world of neuro divergence and autism. And I didn't know this until recently, I thought that when you said somebody has Asperger's, that meant you have a mild form of autism and low severity, which it does. But it's it's there's a lot of political connotations, just like there are with Confederate generals that are on the names of schools. And once I learned that, and like, I had no idea. So now I don't use it. But it's just it's not as common knowledge as people might think. But what I wanted to point out was more of this idea that you said, it's obvious. And I think for somebody that were to see anything that you put out into the world, whether it's one of your award speeches, or you're talking about editing, it's not obvious, you wouldn't say that. Clearly, that guy's autistic. So let's talk a little bit more about people that don't really understand neuro divergence to understand how wide the spectrum is. Because immediately, at least for a lot of people that are my age, maybe not younger generations, but for my age, as soon as you say autism, the first thing you think is will rain man, right, the guy could barely function. He counts matchsticks, but he can't function in society. And there's so much more to it than that. So talk to me a little bit more about the just the sheer width and depth of the spectrum and the different levels of severity so people can better understand to like you said, when you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism.

Simon Smith

Yeah, well, let's say the spectrum thing is really fascinating, because people see it as this like lions like autistic, not autistic, where are you on that spectrum? Me being autistic. Actually, I find no problem in understanding 10 dimensional spectrums, like that the idea of things working in multi dimensions is not difficult for my brain to interpret. And that's kind of closer to what it is. And you can imagine that, and there's some good, I've got some bits written down here, you can imagine a level of the spectrum is is how verbal you are how you use language, another is how you can use iContact. And other is how you use your special interests. And other is how you react to sensory things. Another one is like literal mindedness or use of metaphor. So all of these different things can can have different meters on them, you know. So you can imagine spectrum in at least those two dimensions, you know, the various different ones, and then how up and down they can go. And interesting that like this is, this blew my mind. But when I got my diagnosis free, they can compare each of those to the the average, right, the average person, and even though my total pushed me over the limit, so over the threshold, there were categories within that, where I was less autistic than the average person, which was just like, wow, like to cross the threshold of autistic, but actually be less autistic than the average person in this one. But if you saw me with an average person, you think I was less autistic. It was like wow, that's that's a mad way that that all adds up and combined. But what I do know is there's a lot of things once I learned about it, but do make sense to me, right and that do chime with me. His his perfect. One actually, my love for film, my love for films couldn't be more of an autistic love for films. If you were to write it into into a film, before I knew I was, I was obsessive about seeing everything, like I would go to the cinema, I would have to see every film that came out of cinema. And like, like, I remember going to the cinema four times in one day. When I was at university, there is something about the cinema, which is this like sensory experience, you're in a dark room with a massive screen sound, and it's depriving you of all of those interactions. And you're just like taking in this picture. This makes sense. Now, I sit in the front row, I went to see Thor at the biomax. Like last week, the new Thor film, and I sat in the front row, and it was my favorite seat to be in. And it's funny because no one else wanted to sit there. It was like a special screen and live with these two seats. Perfect. Now I learned, oh, I have I have a neurodivergent brain I am autistic, or however you want to frame it now. Ah, that explains why I like doing that. And other people perhaps don't. So seeing the films haven't. There's a thing about special interests for autistic people where they can get obsessed, but they can also be very thorough about how they want to know everything about a certain topic. And I feel that I have that with film. I remember when I was a teenager, someone made a comment about how sad it would be for someone who goes to the cinema on their own. I remember like teenagers like saying, Oh, it must be so sad to go to cinema on your own. I love going to cinema. Go,

Zack Arnold

oh my god, it's the best. I would much prefer to go on my own and be perfectly honest.

Simon Smith

Yeah, I don't need anyone with me. I'm perfectly happy. And it was funny. Like when I started dating. By no way like that, I would just find what you're doing. I'm down to cinema on my own to watch a film. But that's and that I think that makes it feel obvious in hindsight, or that makes sense. But now I'm also like, oh, that's clearly part of that. How I relate to people how I feel best, like too many people, or whatever can be very difficult. So that now makes sense. In my job, this look at my job that there's there's lateral thinking, when it comes to editing, there's a librarian element to it, you know, how you file everything, how you log everything, how you store everything, how you categorize everything. There's the memory elements to it. Like, I feel like I have a, I felt like I had a normal memory. But now I'm like, Ah, you've got a different kind of memory to other people, the way you remember rushes, what you've watched is is actually fundamentally different to what someone else will see when they watch these rashes. I remember practically everything. I mean, I think that I can find very quickly. Well, here's, here's a great example. I got a phone call yesterday from a director that I worked with. And we worked on something together in 2012. And it was a particular shot of a sky like some clouds. And he's like, do you still have that shot of that sky? And I had it within 10 minutes, or within two minutes. Like I was just like, Yeah, I know where that is. And I went to my computer, and I went into my harddrive. And I found exactly which road it was important and sent it off to him. And that was something that we worked on in two cabinets. Like I'm an autodidact, right I like to learn, I like to teach myself, I'm obsessed with it. Like I always want to learn a new piece of software or, or learn about a topic or learn, you know, read a book on a subject of more often than not the nonfiction books, hyper focus, like I remember when I got the scripts for Chernobyl, 300 pages of scripts, and I read them in one set. And you know, I just sat down and breeze through them and once it and then did it again in a second setting, but just got through them. That's the scripts were fantastic. That's not because the scripts are fantastic, is because my brain is directly wired up to that kind of thing. And I'm just extremely lucky that I found filmmaking and post production and I've managed to get a job and make a living from it. Because all of those things that I do lend themselves so perfectly to the job that I do.

Zack Arnold

Let me let me I'm gonna stop you for a second. And you use the word lucky in what I'm not going to do is go on my soapbox about luck versus creating your own luck and creating opportunities. That's not the context that I want to talk about luck specifically. But I want to see if you can relate to this phrase the way that I can relate to this phrase. You said that I was lucky to have found film and post production. Would you say that it's more accurate, even if it's harder to understand that maybe editing and post production found you?

Simon Smith

Oh, yeah, yeah, maybe. I mean, I certainly started out I dabbled in the art department, I dabbled with the ideas I wrote when the producers production department. And then I remember going into the edit suite. And very quickly, I was like, Oh, this is my favorite place to be, this is the best place to be. I go to set, you know, I spent some time on on, you know, one of the best sets going right now on Star Wars and doorset. You know, I went and visited the set there. And as much as like, I love doing the job and stuff like that. I was like, I want to get back to my quiet room and sit on my own and do this thing on my own. So, yes, I did. I think I definitely did gravitate towards it. But I was lucky to get into the film side of things. I'm not from a from a film family. I'm not from like, I had no idea I got very, it was almost like a raffle ticket. When I was at school. The Careers teacher allocated every one, a two week work placement, and she allocated me TV production company. Before I wanted to become a filmmaker, I actually wanted to become an architect. And I think an architect might have been even also very suited to the autistic mind. I want to I want to go in a little bit on that, though. So my brother works at JP Morgan, like a big as big bank. And he told me, he's like, aren't you know, JPMorgan, we actually have a whole HR department that specializes in employee and autistic people, because for some jobs, they're better. They're better. And I've got this brilliant quote, this is from Anthony, Stelios a global head of JP Morgan's autism at Work Program. And he said, We have found that autistic people have an incredible approach to problem solving. They're very granular and see things in completely different ways to neurotypical employees in rows with easily measurable outcomes. JP Morgan has found that people on the spectrum can considerably outperform neurotypical people in one technology row, and the bank found that employees in the program could complete tasks in a queue between 90% and 100 140%, more productively than their neurotypical colleagues. And with zero errors, which is almost unheard of. That's fascinating to me, the fact that not only can we have these traits to be good at a job, but we can be valued specifically for that. And anyone who therefore, and we all know this, I think in post production, but I think we definitely know that, like, you can have a colleague and assistant editor and they do not have to be the neurotypical, most popular kid at school time, they need to be someone who is really, really, really good at Media Management, you know, and that's what we strive for. There's, um, I found a VFX company that I've been working with in Los Angeles called Exceptional Minds. And they're an academy, that then become a studio. And the academy is for, you know, young people with autism, who can go and learn VFX. And then they graduate and they become members of the studio, and they and they provide VFX shots and VFX fender, I think that they are very well suited to certain tasks, you find some people, you know, if they had the idea of a roto, or something like that, they'd be like, I don't want to sit in Photoshop for two hours. And then there's other people who might love to Photoshop for two hours. And I think that that's something that we should film, start to realize that we can, you know, we can leverage these people we can we can value these people.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, I clearly would agree with all of that. And as soon as you talked about JP Morgan, having this entire division of HR that was not only advocating for people with what the outside world calls a disability, and they saw a super ability, they want to they see the value in what they bring in. They want to bring more of them in because there are specific things that suit their needs. My first reaction, just being totally honest, was, wouldn't it be nice if Hollywood gave it? Its Hollywood doesn't have HR departments and at least unless you work for the studio at the executive level. We're just cogs that they hire project from project to project and anybody that works on the crew side, we don't have HR there is no such thing. I can't go to an HR department and say we should build this advocacy department to hire more autistic people to be assistant editors and media manage because they're like, Well, you know, we just hire show by show by show and they don't have a post production department cutting TV and films for Sony or Warner Brothers or Disney or whatever. So it's infinitely more complex but I just I will wish that more people had this mindset of not just saying, Well, you know, according to at least here in the States, the ADA, the American Disabilities Act, we're going to have to accommodate. It's like, if we're talking about disability, you when you talk about disability anytime with people, they always think person in a wheelchair. If you're disabled, you're in a wheelchair, you get the good parking, right? That's kind of where your mind goes. And that's what the word disability means to a lot of people. It's changing with the younger generations in a good way. But at least people that are maybe slightly younger than me and older disability meant you're in a wheelchair, which is just the dumbest thing ever. But if we can learn to not only advocate for or accommodate, but actually see the value and say, No, we really want to encourage this. That's the mentality that I think we need to bring into the entertainment industry because it brings a tremendous amount of value. And there's a person I want to call it very, very quickly because you said, we need to start thinking about how to do this, there's actually somebody that it never even registered to me until just now to bring this up in this call. But everybody knows John Travolta. What most people don't know is that his brother Joey Travolta has been maybe the number one advocate in the world in the entertainment industry for helping people that have neuro diversity issues, physical disabilities, mental disabilities, specifically train to enter the entertainment industry has a program that's called Inclusion Films. I've been friends for years, because when I screened my documentary, it won. Like all the major awards at what was the Bakersfield Film Festival, and people are like, What the hell is the Bakersfield Film Festival? It's not a top tier one. But all of the films had something to do with either disabilities, or the people working on them had some form of disability. And he and I met years ago, we became friends. And he has this program. And this conversation just reminded me of that, which now tells me got to get him on the list. So we can do these interviews back to back. But the kind of the point being is I think it goes beyond how do we accommodate? How do we deal with his people. So you know, we put in a ramp so somebody has a wheelchair can get to our second floor office, right? That's much different than theirs specific value, this person can bring even more so than somebody that's quote, unquote, normal. And that's what I want to help anybody listening, identify, I can already think of a multitude of people that I know personally, that really struggle with their neuro divergence. And we're always working to figure out, listen, you have this like, we can't just say, let's figure out a way to not have it, this is who you are, it's part of your identity. How do we harness the good things about it and find the right places? The right jobs, the right teams, so that all of a sudden, you become the superpower and you become their secret weapon? Versus this is a liability? I don't have the answer to this question. But maybe you can help me workshop it for how we can better help people that see this as a disability realize, maybe it's only disability in the context that I'm with the wrong people. I have the wrong job role. It's the wrong type of project. How do we do this?

Simon Smith

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you feel this way. With Disability, we should also make sure that we've got these ramps into these kinds of rooms, make sure that we're accommodating people in wheelchairs. I,

Zack Arnold

by the way, that should have just been I shouldn't have even been something I've had to say. So I'm very glad. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I want to go far beyond that.

Simon Smith

Yeah, no, completely. And I know that I'm felt that I think that what's important here in a way, I think, is for I don't think I think we're a long, long way. And I think there's other things almost that do need to be dealt with first, like wheelchair ramps and so on needs to be in place before we start to install accommodations for people that I don't really have, what I would consider a disability that needs to be accommodated. And I feel that there are people who do and we should be accommodating them. So I hope that this almost does is it speaks more to the person. So rather than speaking to the institution about what they need to do, I want to speak to the person who is neurodivergent and encourage them to come and work with us, because we will value you, but we will find things that you can do that will really help us and you could end up really good at it. And I would also say you'll probably really enjoy it because I really enjoy it. And there are you know, I do have like hopes for the future that just as on my call sheet now. There is an anti sexual discrimination phone line that was anti bullying phone line, there is an anti racism phone line. And I hope that there will be a neuro diversity memo where people can learn more about neurodiversity. I made a short film. In the last year, we had a neurodiverse we had an autistic actress. And one of the things that we sent out with that call sheet was this neurodiversity memo that kind of clued over One end on what her autism meant for the production and how we could all get the most out of it and what things you might not have thought of that you could learn. And I felt that that would be great if we could just have those things in place a little bit of basic training, especially to higher up people like, just as JP Morgan, or it's not just JP Morgan, Google, Microsoft. There are lots of companies that have realized the value here, and that they train people to better understand neurodiversity. I think that could be happening at the top. I think the interview process is a particular minefield for autistic people. And I think that neurodivergent people, how do they navigate an interview, Zoom is doing all sorts of crazy things with eye contact, and how we communicate one another. And I would love it, if we could have more of our, our jobs, especially that can be more qualification based. It would be great if there was more of a and I know that, you know, average certified training and stuff like that exists, it would be great. If there was more put on that I would almost rather have someone who is autistic, who wouldn't be able to have a conversation in an interview, present me with a certificate that says they know how to script Thank, you know if they can present me with that. We don't need to have the interview. That's fantastic. I'd love to have you, I'd love to work with you and have you as part of getting

an emphasis on qualifications for people that don't present well in interviews could could help. I think just, you know, a general understanding of it, I'm still learning about it. But the more I learn about it, I genuinely feel as I said earlier, the more the more I feel I can connect with people that are not neurodiverse people that are neurotypical that, I would encourage everyone and I know like you encourage everyone, and you encourage me listen to you to get the most out of your brain to learn the most about your brain learn what it is that you'd like to learn what it is that you don't like. I took Can I talk a bit about some of the things that I do, like on Chernobyl, I found transcendental meditation, and transcendent and I did it all three to No, I don't do it too much now, but I did it all through that. And I would do it in the morning, I would do it in the evening, it fitted into my routine. And it was so perfectly wired to work from my brain. I tried other types of meditation, I tried mindfulness and stuff like that didn't work for me. As soon as I got Transcendental Meditation down and did a course in that, wow, it was like, This is amazing. And I would encourage, it might not work for you. But I really encourage everyone to go out and find what does work for you. You know, your, your loved this one this year. So on that job, it was Transcendental Meditation. On the job that I'm on at the moment Netflix job, I ran a marathon this year, I trained and I ran a ran a marathon every three times a week I'd get up and I don't run it and running for me is a is a great way to get my brain to chill out and calm down. I know the same people I know exercises such a big part of your life. And finding those things that work well for your brain is so valuable. So that's something that you know, I think should be encouraged.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, I can I've got at least 17 Different follow ups and questions because like you said, I do like to go deep on very granular, specific areas. To go way back in the conversation. The first thing I will acknowledge is there are so many things that you mentioned that you experienced that I swear to God that you and I are twin brothers, and anybody that's looking at the video version of this podcast is questioning twins separated at birth possible, right, obviously the hairlines are very, very similar. But one of those that I can very much relate to actually, I mean, pretty much all of them. But when you say that they can be very obsessed about certain subjects. I'm very much obsessed about certain subjects and very much an autodidact have spent exorbitant amounts of money learning all types of different skills, whether it's specific to building this business building this coaching program, just learning other things that I want to learn. American Ninja Warrior, always a joke that I make when people say what do you do outside of work? What are your hobbies? I say what's a hobby, I have obsessions? I don't have hobbies. Ninja Warrior is one of those that again, factors into providing my brain with the oxygen and the neuro chemicals that it needs to stay balanced. But one of the things that I want to go into as it somewhat relates to this idea of advocating for versus accommodating, etc. You had said that I don't really think we need to accommodate so much. I'm not going to disagree, but I'm going to add a layer to that when it comes to helping people that are not neurodivergent better understand how to get the most out of people. And I'm gonna give you a very specific example. And I'm not going to name a name but I guarantee when this person listens to this podcast, and they will listen they're going to be like, Oh my God, he's talking about me. So I've worked with somebody where one of their greatest stuff adults with ADHD is executive functioning, which is a very common struggle for somebody with ADHD. And for anybody that doesn't know executive functioning is essentially a fancy word to say my ability to make decisions and prioritize. So if somebody says, I need you to do these 10 different things and walks away, their brain shuts down, I can't do any of this because I have no idea how to put it in the right order, or how to prioritize. And a version of, I don't want to call it accommodating, but it's in the same conversation of learning how to both accommodate, but also collaborate and get the most out of somebody that's in the situation. If I were their supervisor, let's say that they're an assistant editor, and I'm an editor. That's something I want to learn about them. And rather than saying, here are all these tasks, do whatever you want, I want to take it upon myself to be able to collaborate with them and accommodate and say, Listen, I know this is a lot to do. I know you're really overwhelmed. So let me help you. I want you to just work on this thing right now. And I want you to let me know when you're done, knowing that they're really good at that one task. And I'm going to leave them to do it and not knock on their door every five minutes and say, Hey, I know you asked him to do that thing, right? Now he needs you to do that. Here's three other tasks, just figure it out. Right? That's just like kryptonite to me, including I mean, that's why I built an entire program to help people learn how to better focus, prioritize, because I have that problem. So I've developed an immense support system to solve it. But that's an example for me of learning how to accommodate slash collaborate, and better understand people's neuro divergence

Simon Smith

that's fascinating executive functioning, and specifically for ADD or ADHD type.

Zack Arnold

It's very, very common. It's why people say, well, ADHD is all over the place. Because if you give them a multitude of options, their brain stops, I can't choose. It's something called analysis paralysis. It's the bane of my existence. I'll give you a give you a 32nd version of this. A lot of my students already know the story. But I don't know if I've ever talked about it on the show. A couple of years, my microwave broke. And my wife said, hey, the microwave doesn't work anymore. Okay, no problem I'll look into and I'll get another one. Weeks went by weeks. And my wife was getting increasingly frustrated. Well, I haven't done enough of the research. And I need to figure out the best model. And you know, I need to look into this and that and got a subscription to Consumer Reports to get the best model possible. It's like, okay, no worries. An hour later, guess what, she came home with a microwave. I just wanted to, I just wanted to be able to warm up our food. And my first reaction was, oh, okay, that makes sense. But I wouldn't have bought this one. And it doesn't have enough cubic footage, and the wattage is a little bit low. So here's the thing. We were both right. We had a microwave that warmed our food, but it sucked. And it took forever to warm up our food. And a year later it broke. So at that point, I said, All right, let's do this a second time, we need a microwave. I'm giving myself 60 minutes to find one. From this point, in 60 minutes later, I will have either ordered one or I will have bought one. So I gave myself 60 minutes of focused concentration to figure out which is the best microwave and I bought it and now we have one and it lasts and it's great. But the point being that unencumbered analysis, paralysis and making decisions and prioritizing is very, very difficult for me and other people that deal with ADD and ADHD.

Simon Smith

Do you need a deadline?

Zack Arnold

Oh, very much. So that's why I teach time blocking time blocking because I need deadlines. And I don't mean, I need a deadline in two weeks. I need a deadline every 60 minutes. So if my entire calendar and people that have seen my calendar, they've literally I'm like you need to be sitting down to look at how I manage my life. Because to most people that are neurotypical, it's like this is way too overwhelming. But if I don't have it, then I'm overwhelmed. If I look at a white calendar, I do nothing. If I have a calendar that seven different colors, that has a time block every hour that tells me this is exactly what to do. And this is how much time you have to do it. I am in heaven, and I am super productive. So I've taken what was a Kryptonite and turned it into a superpower with a digital support system.

Simon Smith

I love that. I love. The idea of needing a deadline is so far into me. Like I would blow my university lecturers mind because my work was always in on the first day that we could handle it.

Zack Arnold

The first day that we are the whole area we are polar opposites. Totally opposites.

Simon Smith

Yeah, I was like the oh, oh, this is perfect example. My taxes. You know, you know the tax filing day that you have to handle your taxes in England. I think it's like April, the fifth everyone has to handle or they have to do a certain thing by January the 31st or something like that. And it's so it blows my mind on Facebook when everyone's like, Oh, do my taxes or do my taxes. I'm like, oh, and then there's the people that get annoyed or being fined for being late or their taxes. Oh, was late, so they find me. And I'm like, but you had eight months to hand it in. Why? You know that you could have done it any time in that eight months. And actually, like, it's mental, but it makes so much sense. Mine is I'm that douchebag I'm not, you can hate me now. I'm that guy who has it in on the first day, like, and I'm so glad that this is this is done. Tick this off.

Zack Arnold

Let me ask you this, before we go anywhere else, I want to better understand this because this is fascinating. Because everything you've said, up until now I'm like, That's me. That's me. That's me. And right now, I'm like, could not be more different than me. So my version of this story is that I amend or extend my taxes every single year. Because I never got on by the 15th. And now my accountant sends me one message in early March, confirming you're doing an extension again. Yep, talk to you in July. And it's July. And I'm just starting to gather my paperwork. Because I know that the ultimate deadline is in like September, and what most people don't know, at least in the States, it doesn't cost you money to extend your taxes, you just fill out a form, send it you by yourself for extra months, which again, the absurdity of why do I need four months to do four hours of work? That's just the way that my brain functions. But here's what I want to better understand. When you aren't given a deadline, and somebody says your taxes are due or you have a couch or you have to write a paper, whatever it is, what's the thought that compels you to do it right away?

Simon Smith

That's a good question. It's funny that I don't think I'm not I don't think you would be I think we'd be the same word. I'm never bored. I I cannot understand boredom, I cannot understand doing nothing.

Zack Arnold

We are very much the same. Yes.

Simon Smith

That's the same. I've always got something to do. Like, so. But what is it? What? So your question is, if I don't have a deadline, what compels me to do it?

Zack Arnold

Yeah, so let me give you I mean, you're obviously busy, you're working on high profile television shows, you've got a family, you've got multiple children. In my mind, the thought is always I have other things that are more important to me than my taxes. At some point. It's a necessary evil that I have to do it. But I want to focus on the things that I believe are more important and more of a priority as long as humanly possible. Until I know that if I don't do it, I'm literally going to face a fine, what forces you to say, I'm just going to do it now.

Simon Smith

Okay, I think there might be something more in it that is worth mentioning. I and this is something that people could take away from your podcasts, you know, this is the kind of stuff that people listen to your podcasts for. I purposefully try and schedule empty time, like just empty time, like when I finished on Chernobyl. And bear in mind, the success of Chernobyl, I could have done a lot of things, I took four months off, I just took four months off, I was like, Oh, I'm gonna have four months, I'm fortunate but just the photo, I'd had four months off, right. And I think I'm planning after this job, I've got a particularly big round of silliness of overlap some jobs, but after this job, there's an intended break period. And I would encourage all of your your followers and try and schedule in those gaps. There has never been in my career. a detriment to that. Right, people were like, ah, if you don't work at this period, like you follow up, quite the opposite. Because of the nature of film productions, often lost in on the jobs it six months to a year, if you took six months to a year off, that's just like you, you went and did a different job, one other job, you know, so you can easily get back in sync with people. So I would encourage people to take time off. And I think that it's that that then does free up my time to allow me to not be overwhelmed so that I can do my taxes. But it's still

Zack Arnold

This is fascinating. I want to keep digging into this. Go ahead.

Simon Smith

And it's just I think it's just the way, the way we're wired, though. I think it's the way that we're wired. I don't like your question what we can't I don't feel that we can answer each other's questions it. Why do I do it? Because I'm autistic. Why do you do it because of your ADHD?

Zack Arnold

I'm gonna add to that though, I can extrapolate a little bit deeper and further why I do it that way. Yeah, because the other question I asked of essentially everything I've made it a habit to ascribe this question to anything I do. Is this the easiest this can be? I want everything to be as easy as possible. Now my life is very complex. And the work that I do is very difficult. But everything I'm doing the location of the time block on the calendar, the period of the year. This is the easiest I've been able to make it so in my mind if I'm Unlike, for example, when taxes were due this year, I was just on the tail end of finishing up season five of Cobra Kai, completely and totally exhausted. And I knew I needed time in between to do absolutely nothing. And I thought to myself, this is going to be a really crappy place to have to deal with my taxes. Because this is one of the least favorite things that I do on the planet, I have to gather all the things and scan them and put together a spray. It's just a pain. But it's much easier to do that same four hours of work in July when I finished up everything else that I need to do, and I'm more relaxed. So that to me is the easier version, which is why I meant

Simon Smith

I suppose something in that though. I love that bit of of the spreadsheets and the scanning and the receipts.

Zack Arnold

Okay, so now I get it. You see you get enjoyment out of it to me. It's joy. Yeah. Now again, you're like, why would I defer something that I enjoy so much?

Simon Smith

Yes. You said the pain. You said the pain? And I'm like, oh, no, I enjoy it. I actually like it actually suits me. It's a form of, ah, I can do this. Right? For me, right. But hang on to this, we've got something there. Because then that would suggest that my brain might in another life, I might have gone into accountancy in another end. In my brother's life. He's gone into banking at JPMorgan. Right. So I think that that is that. So maybe that's maybe that's part of it. And I've heard you say this on your podcast, before, finding something you love, you know, is is is really important to general mental health and work motivation. And I think because I like that thing. That's probably how I how I do that easily.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, that makes a lot more sense to me now, why you would gravitate to doing it right away. Because to you, it's like, if somebody said, here's a free pint of ice cream, oh, I'm gonna wait as long as possible before anything. I'm gonna read it now. Right. So I better understand that meant that mentality for sure. It's so painful for me. In fact, this is something I've even talked about a little bit of my program is that I have something that I call my week of pain. There's a week that I just scheduled every year where I do all the things I hate the most. Taxes are always in my week of pain. Because it's like this is all inevitable, it must be done. So rather than sprinkle all these awful things that I don't like doing all the things I love, I'm just going to wake up Monday morning, and I'm going to know that the next five days in my life are going to suck. Taxes are the top of that list. I hate doing that stuff. But what I love, and it's funny, it's we're really getting into something granular, but hey, that's what we do. One of the things that I found, and this is a really interesting strategy that my accountant pushes back on all the time, what I've done is I've given myself a reward for doing the stuff that I hate, and the reward is, I pay more in taxes than I should be. So I never owe taxes. So I know the faster that I get through my paperwork, the faster I get money back, even myself that dangling carrot, otherwise, I wouldn't have my taxes done for the last seven years. But there's, it's we're not talking like, Oh, I've got $27 coming back, I make sure that I have 1000s of dollars returned to me, that's what it takes for me to finish my paperwork. And even knowing that I have a healthy refund coming my way, I still extend to the last possible minute. It's like somebody, if somebody said to me, I'm going to pay you $5,000 for four hours of work. And all you have to do is scan W tos and dig through some power bills and gas bills and collect all of them onto a spreadsheet. That's it, four hours work, I'm going to pay you $5,000 And my responses, talk to me in four months, because I don't want it like that's the way that my brain works. So it's it's fascinating how, even though there's some very, very clear similarities, there are a lot of really interesting differences. And what I want to dig into a little bit further, which may not be quite directly in the neuro diversity or neuro divergence conversation. But I want to dig deeper into this idea of taking these long breaks. Because I know that it's not just a matter of this is more my pattern. And the reason I had this coaching program is because they often say you coach what you need to hear the most default pattern with no boundaries. No safeguards, is I'm in a project, it consumes my entire life. It's the only thing I'm doing crazy hyperfocus I finish the project and I recover. That's default setting all the things that I teach them that I'm learning and everything else. Those are the safeguards to make sure that I don't go to default. But for you, I know that from a very early age, you even have mentors that have said like that's counterproductive and even within the project, there needs to be balanced. And I know that balance may not be the right word. But let's talk a little bit more about how you structure your time, both in between projects, but within a big project.

Simon Smith

Yeah, I see I see this all the time, especially pays people working late into the night. It was struggling with work life balance. I had this enlightening epiphany experience very early on, when I worked through an incredible mentor, and friend who just never did, it just never did, it just was always six o'clock, wrapping up going direct to that we worked with a lot as well, wrapping up going in at six o'clock. That was it every day. And they remember winning back does everyone always, you know, they were making the best TV, like some of the TV that I watch. And I'm like, this is incredible. So there is no direct connection between stay in later. And better work, there is no direct connection. As soon as I woke that up, I was like six o'clock, I'm gone. Like I'm gone. I, I so heavily believe in that. But that I just, I just finished up my day and I say to my colleagues go home. And I remember that that editor that I worked for, he would come in and he would say go home, like you're worth more to me, if you go home, now, I want you to go home, because then you will do better work, you know, your work will be better if you go home. So once you learn that, you know, it's the same as you know, once you learn something about your diet, or once you learn something about meditation or whatever, it's incredibly easy to live by once you fully believe it. And I do fully believe in it, it's when you don't believe in it or when you do. It becomes a doesn't work. I soulfully believe in better, a better result a bit like, that's something that I talk a lot about with my friends and my family and my colleagues is is is the the final net result, right? Like, if I do this, this this says, Does it actually benefit me? Here's the situation you're some notes to do. Right? And you argue you can argue over something you can disagree with something? Is the argument, actually, you're going to get a better result at the end of it. My autistic brain is very good at cleaning very quickly. Is this argument worthwhile? Right? Is this discussion worthwhile? Is this is this worth my time, and I can quite easily just walk away from something, you know very quickly and move on to something else. If there is not a net net positive, to be gained from it. And it's silly. I suppose I make this mistake. This is probably if anything, I've made this mistake. My kids do a lot. They do something, they asked me for something, can I have this? And I respond to net benefit? And I'm like, Oh yeah, I'll just give it I give into them far too easily. And maybe my net benefit is too short sighted, maybe I'm not looking far enough into into the future, even a week ahead to learn how that's going to affect their behavior.

Zack Arnold

Maybe you just want to get some sleep.

Simon Smith

Well, yeah, but I, I am very net result orientated, I think, yeah,

Zack Arnold

I'm very much the same way I can, again, relate to everything you're saying about the there's this, there's a very deep level of analysis that to for anybody that doesn't get it, specifically people in my family, ie my wife, like it's just can we just do the same like that? I could draw entire charts, I could draw the paths and the lines, and here's why we should make the decision and not just one, it's like, can we just do the thing, like, really. So it's I can understand, like really weighing net benefits. And this is, it's interesting, because what I've learned over the last few years, and I want to get back to this idea of the value of your time and walking away and like the net result of it. But one thing that I want to mention that I've learned and I'm basically just, you know, exploiting the fact that I have you on this call, and you can help me analyze this, because I think you would understand this well, but I think you're actually going to get this deeper than most people would. I had a really hard time making the transition. And I'm still making it. But early on making the transition from the identity of I'm a film and television editor. It's all that I've ever done in my life. It's the only skill that I possess that's ever earned me money. People say I'll give you money to do this thing. Everything else I've ever done that was an interest in me was just a hobby or just an obsession and a passion. Right? So when I decided I don't want to do that anymore, and I want to work in this area instead, huge identity crisis. But the biggest part was, how do I how do I reconcile the fact that I've wasted over 20 years of my life doing this thing that no longer applies? And then two or three years ago, it really hit me. What I'm doing now, as a podcaster, as a writer, and most specifically as a coach, is I'm still an editor, but now I edit people's lives and their conversations and their challenges and their problems. Those are all of my dailies. And what I found that I'm really really good at and it's it's hard for me to articulate and understand it, which is why I want to get your perspective. And I've had a multitude of students where they have they'll just watch this in amazement. I'm like, I don't Get it? How does everybody not see this? But somebody will tell their story. Here's my challenge. They'll ramble for like 15 minutes. And everybody else is like, would you get to the point? And what I can do in 30 seconds is I can say, Alright, so what you said is this, this and this, I totally understand all that. And it sounds like your challenge right now is here. And I think the next most important thing for you to focus on is doing this one thing that you can do with 30 minutes. And everybody's like, it's like a magic trick. And like, doesn't everybody see it? It seems so obvious. But I realized that that's what made me a really good editor. And it's now what makes coaching something that I enjoy so much. But it's almost so effortless for me that I feel like I'm cheating.

Simon Smith

Yeah, right. Well, here's, here's something that you'll relate to definitely. I, one of the things that I've learned, mostly post diagnosis, is how important it is to take people with me, I will often when I'm edit and see five steps ahead, and we can move this scene here, delete this scene with the change this line here, we could do this, do this, do this, it'd be better, right? If I present that to the execs, be like, because it's like like this, like, Can you Can we go back, you know, and it won't work. And it will, if anything, it will, it will, it will get their hackles up, and it will be counterproductive, the net goal will be worse, if I go there that quickly. It's really, really, really important to take those steps together to go on that journey together so that you can make those understandings together. So I really, I have all of these ideas in my head and where I want to go. But I made sure that I take people with me. And more importantly, somebody else I've learned is when I do that, we end up in an even better place. Because that person that I'm working with, has ideas as well, which could make the idea that I've got even better. So by going on that journey together by by by by a very in that boat together, you find a better place, you know, than if I was just like, I know where I want to go with this. And so I really do try and slow that part of my brain down or that part of my process down to make sure that I go with the people that I'm collaborating with. And also, that's not just for their benefit. The ankle is is way better for everyone I feel.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, and I would say that that is good advice for anybody. It doesn't matter if you are dealing with neurodiversity or otherwise, doesn't matter if you're an editor, composer, writer, director, I think a lot of creative people in general, just have that tendency to like just blurt out the whole vision. But most people aren't seeing the vision and they can't play eight separate moves of chess to get where you are in your head. And I think that a lot of times creates a lot of miscommunication during the collaborative process. So that's one thing that I've had to learn how to do as well is just slow down and say, All right, I'm pretty sure I see the next eight moves on the chessboard, I'm going to present the first two, I'm gonna get a sense of do they agree with these moves? Great. Let's try the move further down the road, pretty confident. Five, six, and seven are coming. Oh, their idea for six is different than move six was for me. That's interesting. Let me try that. Oh, okay. So we're essentially going the same direction, I thought, but point eight, in this eight point strategy that I had, it's actually better now because I interjected somebody into the conversation, which is why I've learned to listen, a lot more than I speak both as a coach and an editor and a podcaster. Because one of the first pieces of feedback, I got very early on to the podcast, and it's still a challenge to this day. It's a challenge at this moment, is that I interview people and I talked the whole time. Yeah, I would get that feedback. They'd say, this would have been a really fascinating interview, had you actually let the person talk? I was like, Oh, you're right. I still struggle with that. I've gotten better at it. But I've had to learn how to just slow things down and interject other people into the conversation. And as an editor, or any creative professional, this is absolutely vital to being great at what you do when you collaborate.

Simon Smith

Yeah, yeah, this Yeah, listening, but you're very honest about that. That's part of the problem. People relish and relish in listening to you and choose to listen to you. I mentioned before we started, I'm very aware of how much I can ramble on and talk. And I know that you'll probably want to wrap up soon. I do have another quote that I read very recently, and it's not add centered, and it's not autism centered. This is dyslexia. And even more interesting, like I'm fascinated that there's this whole world of neuro diversity, but this is this is quite lovely. This has come out of Cambridge University only in the last couple of weeks, from Dr. Helen Taylor, who is doing a lot of work and you can find her on Twitter and stuff like that. This is a lovely, lovely thing that she wrote. A deficit centered view of dyslexia isn't telling the whole story. We believe that the areas of difficulty experienced by people with dyslexia result from a cognitive trade off between exploration of new information and exploitation of existing knowledge, with the upside being an exploitive bias that could explain enhanced abilities observed in certain realms of discovery, invention and creativity. That blew my mind. And that is saying that dyslexic people have this untapped goldmine of discovery, invention, and creativity, that is hardwired into their brains because of this trade off, that they've gone through. And I think, you know, if there's anything that I am trying to take my own journey with it, and especially in relation to my, to my little boy, and his future, is just to try and embrace everything about it, you know, and not to dismiss any of the difficulties are actual disabilities that people do have. But to try and embrace the, the brilliance in the end, if, if you're helping you optimize yourself and stuff like that goes anywhere surely like it is to do with us all? Understanding ourselves and understanding?

Zack Arnold

Absolutely, I mean, embracing our True Potential is the core of what we do. And I don't care if you have a disability or multiple disabilities, and spoiler alert you do because everybody does. Every single person has a disability. And I help people recontextualize and stop focusing on what they can't do and focus on what they can do. And what did the first thing that came to mind, there's two things that came to mind you read the quote, the first of which is a little bit of background that you may not even know it's not a secret. It's just something I talked much about. But my father is a specialist in working with children that have the severest forms of dyslexia. So most people at the dinner table are talking about what happened to work or this or that I was hearing about the way that children's brains are wired, like those were dinner table conversations was understanding what dyslexia is. And again, this just reinforces the idea that when you look at somebody that has dyslexia, oh, they're disabled, they can't read. Oh, no, no, no, no, the vast majority of people with dyslexia are far superior and intelligence, they process information in a different way in a different order. And it's not, they swapped their B's and their DS and words are backwards, it's far more complex. But the point being is, like you said, their brain is hardwired, to see things differently, and not the way that we're all used to processing them. But there is an immense amount of potential that most people don't tap into, because they focus on what they can't do. But your quote specifically about this idea of you know, the, there's only so much room for you know, the things that don't work, because so much energy is put into the things that do it reminded me of a quote that I haven't thought of for years from my documentary. And it was just this little girl that was six or seven years old, that had met the subject of my documentary, his name was Christopher rush. And he was quadriplegic had no use of his arms or his legs because of muscular dystrophy, but extremely bright. And she said, and it's just like the seven year old encapsulation of the same code that you wrote, Well, God put so much time into Chris's brains, he didn't have any time or energy left over for his legs, which I think is the perfect encapsulation of your quote, it just has a lot of lot less science and big words involved. It's lovely, but I think that's something we can all embrace. Because everybody's got that disability, and they need to stop focusing on the things that we can't do that are in our way. All right, what are the things that we can do, and most likely, there's some lack of balance between because I can't do this thing, I bet I'm really good at something else because of it. There's no maybe way to quantify it mathematically, or pour liquids in a jar and say it. But I truly believe that because of some deficit or disability, there's probably some super ability, you may or may not be aware of it. But I really believe in that that level of balance, which actually segues us to the final thing that I wanted to talk about, which has been an ongoing debate and discussion that I've talked about for years, which is the term work life balance. And everybody thinks we're working towards work life balance, and I'm trying to change that conversation. And I know that you have a very similar feeling about this than I do. So if I were to say to you, what are your feelings about work life balance, and why we all need more of it? What would your response be?

Simon Smith

So so it's an autistic being semantics and how people use words and what words people use. It is processed in a very particular way in my brain, but how things are framed, and how things are said are incredibly important. You know, what was, you know, that idea of, it's very courageous to come talk about autism or you know, for to talk about certain things in certain ways. And I don't like to frame things like that. I don't like to think of things like that. I don't like to think of the words work lifestyle. Then suppose that that term is broken, we should, we should eliminate that term from our vocabulary completely because the idea of work and life being balancing suggests that they are opposed to one another that that you can't have both that one is working against the other. And when one has, if you if you focus on one, the other is going to fail. That's not how it works. If you do them, right, they can both be elevated. I think that you should be championing this, it shouldn't be workload optimization, it shouldn't be work life balance, work, life optimization, is getting the best out of work and life. I've been very lucky with my job, I've had a super run of career and in and worked with some amazing people. And I've, and that's because it's, luckily, especially on those things, it's been entwined with a very supportive home life, a very happy home, like I I live by the sea, you said at the beginning, I live in Brighton I choose to live, where I can walk down to the sea and just listen to the to the CDL. You know, we can do both, we can do both, they do not have to be on a balanced, they do not have to be against each other both can succeed. It as soon as you unlock that idea in your head, then I think you stop making the two things compete with each other stop. Yeah, stop making them compete with each other. Maybe take the foot off the pedal with the work one, because you're not going to get there any faster. Or that's what that's a great well, actually, when when you cycle to work, and you see people like jumping there, the red lights on the bicycles, you all end up getting to the same place at the same time, you know, what does that actually save them. I'm that guy that happily stops at every red light and chills out every red light on their bicycle, get to work just as quickly as everyone else. And I get my work done just as quickly as everyone else. And by living that way, everything gets a bit easier. So So I would like you to champion work life optimization with the case,

Zack Arnold

I love it, then I want to dig into this deeper if you have a few extra minutes, because I think that's absolutely vital. And it's so funny because nobody cycles in Los Angeles. So I would never use that example. But I feel exactly the same way. And this is a huge pet peeve of mine on boarding airplanes. People are pushing and rushing and nudging and I just want to scream, you realize the plane is leaving with all of us in it right? And it doesn't matter when you get on the damn plane. It doesn't matter if you're first arrives, we're all leaving at the same time. Right? I just don't say anything. But it's like the absurdity of rushing to get on a plane. Like why. But anyway, that's besides the point. I completely and totally agree that work life balance is a broken term. And you describe it in very similar fashion. The way that I've always talked about it is imagine that you have a scale with two sides, where you have the weights on them, right. And with that image, you're thinking, well, if I work 40 hours, that means I've got to be with family 40 hours, and it's it just becomes a game of numbers. And like you said they're opposed to each other. In order for one to improve, the other one has to decline. And I love this idea of work life optimization. However, let's play the semantics game for a second, because very few would appreciate the complexity and the depth of having conversations about single words, but I think you'll get it. So I'm exploiting the fact that I had you on my call. So you can become a free copywriter for the next 10 minutes. Here's the challenge I have with work life optimization. And clearly I'm working against my own goals because my entire program is optimized yourself. Right? Yeah, I don't believe work life optimization is a result. If you're successful, you can say work life balance. As a result, I have work life balance, which again is broken, but it's something you can have work life optimization is the process, the result that I tell people to work for. And I want you to tell me, if you feel this is better or worse, or we can come up with something different completely. I feel the goal is that we want to go through the process of work life optimization to establish the result of more work life presents, meaning I may work incredibly hard at my job and enjoy it and spend less time with my family. But when I'm at work, I'm present. When I'm with my family, I'm present and they're all working together seamlessly. But the semantics is optimization isn't a result. you're optimizing to get to the result of work life presents. What are your thoughts?

Simon Smith

Yeah, I think that's much nicer than work life balance. I think balance it's it. It's so it's such a bad term it because it it puts the two things against each other work life presents is lovely. I think you're right optimization is the process by which you're going through. Yeah, that's this. I would I would love it. If like your podcast is the talking point that you have to talk about with a lot of yoga So of course, but I would love it if we got past. We got to an enlightened, you know, future time and work life balance is not a thing. I think I agree. Yeah, that's,

Zack Arnold

I think what everybody wants, I think is the right thing. I just think the terminology makes it so confusing to understand how to construct it,

Simon Smith

you can't fix it, if that's what the terminology is, because, because it suggests it suggests the wrong, it suggests the wrong answers. It suggests I have to do less of this one or more of this one, whatever, that's not how it works. Here's a great one, your use this and think thinks smarter, not harder, or whatever, you know, like, like, everything I do, whether it's a macro on a keyboard, so I only have to press it once, and it does all the things or whether it's like, just in my in my room where I work everyone's schedule and have them I seem bored, like right there. So I can just turn and look at it. And, and I work at home a lot. I'm in London today, but I work at home online, everything is perfectly set up to work, you know, within a finger reach, I can find a file from a director that I worked with 10 years ago, just like that, that makes it very easy to finish it at six o'clock, very efficient six o'clock. And this knowledge like fundamental knowledge that it will not do better if I carry on. But I it will be better if I stop now.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, and this is a huge rabbit hole that we don't have time to go down with the 62nd version, the the mini sell box like the we'll call it a bar of soap and not a soap box, because we don't have time for soap box. But this is what I think the fundamental fallacy is in the world of productivity, productivity is an entire mega industry. And the fallacy is that by being more productive, you're gonna have all this time in your life to do all the things you couldn't do before. That was the promise when we got electricity. That was the promise when we got refrigerators. When we when we got washers and dryers think of all the time we spent beating our clothes against a rock that we don't have to spend time doing anymore, are we more relaxed and more balanced now than we were before washers and dryers? No same problem with Trello. And with email and with all the productivity tools, they just put us in a position where we're forcing ourselves to do more, which is why boundaries and working towards something that everybody calls balance. But again, I think should be called Work Life optimization towards more work life presents, I want to get through the work faster, but have it be better in that shorter amount of time. So that I can still say at six or seven or whatever that cutoff time is, I've done more awesome work than anybody possibly could in this amount of time. But I'm still stopping. Because I want to be present elsewhere with another priority in my life. And it sounds like you're very much ascribing to that idea. Because with how easily you access a file or you've got your seen boards or anything else, you could still work 20 hours a day, they're not saving you that time from working less you that's a choice that you're making, and making sure I'm as effective with the time I'm using, you could very easily be as effective with that time and do it 20 hours a day.

Simon Smith

And I have made that mistake many times. I mean, the worst is when you overlap jobs when one job is finishing and the other one started. So you ended up just doing both doing like I finished at six o'clock. And then I started my other job.

Zack Arnold

I have been there more than once I can relate to that. And you think you learn your lesson after once, but it's hard. So you definitely need to stop, stop. I feel like we've just started, I feel like I've covered about about 10% of what I have in front of me as far as prep work and conversations I want to have. But I also want to be respectful of your time. And I have a feeling that at some point, this could end up becoming a part two, it could become a panel conversation, like there's so many areas where I believe you can be tremendously beneficial to our global community. So I have a feeling this is the first of many conversations and not the end of one. But on that note, I do at least want to wrap it up for today. And for anybody that is listening that is inspired by this that wants to connect with you reach out or otherwise, what is the best way for people to learn more about you and or connect with you directly?

Simon Smith

Thank you for everything you just said, by the way. And I you know, I just want to reciprocate, though, with how important what you do is and how I value what you do is, you know, I've listened to your podcast, and definitely come away. Being able to think more about what I do and who I am and how I think so do know that what you do is like incredibly valued by a lot of people. It sounds to me like I use Twitter I like Twitter, Mr. Simon Smith on Twitter, and you know, I use Facebook and stuff like that. And I would you know, it was very kind of easy to say, you know, respect my time I respect your listeners time and Now, I don't want to waffle on too. So

Zack Arnold

I don't respect my listeners time at all. With a digital world, they can choose to listen to as much or as little as they want. So I don't worry about that too much anymore. You see how long the episode is, is your choice to hit the play button, you can always scroll if you want to. So I don't worry about that so much no offense listeners, but I'm more concerned about your time than theirs.

Simon Smith

I certainly respect and I appreciate anyone who is this, this and I hope that you know, that people can come away from it feeling interested in how our brains are different. And ultimately, I think more compassionate and empathic to other ways of thinking that that is, you know, always one of my goals to to try my best to connect with people. You know, make push those those relationships and those bonds and those shared, shared creative experiences as much as autism is an autonomous a personal thing. There is something about being in the cinema with with 500 people watching the film together, no. All gasp and at the same moment. That is pretty wonderful.

Zack Arnold

I love it. can't thank you enough for both reaching out and letting me know about all this and being willing to share your story. It wasn't courageous whatsoever want to make it very clear, no courage involved. But still a lot of appreciation from this end that you did reach out to you. Listen, that you interact. And we're here now. And like I said, I'm pretty confident this is the beginning of a much longer conversation as opposed to the end of one. So I can't thank you enough. Really appreciate it.

Simon Smith

I'm gonna go and read about Jerry.

Zack Arnold

And I have a feeling by the time somebody listens to this, that interview might just be paired with yours because I think they're really cared. It's an untapped resource that I just hadn't even really thought about until now.

Simon Smith

So I want to listen to that one. Yeah,

Zack Arnold

I'm definitely going to have that on my to do list. So on that note, take care of yourself, and I appreciate it. Thanks so much.

Simon Smith

You're the best. Thanks

so much.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai