Morra Aarons-Mele | The Anxious Achiever

View Original

What If You Worked 10 Hours A Week?

Dan Mangena hadn’t slept well for months. His insomnia was so intense that even a strong sleep medicine didn’t help. His agony eventually led him to psychotherapist Helen McEwen, and what she told him changed his life forever. McEwen suggested that Dan had autism. Mangena calls his autism diagnosis “one of the most beautiful things that happened to me - because it gave me a context.”

Mangena had made his first million when he was 19, partly by creating frameworks for trade finance that other people just couldn't see. And he wasn't prepared for it; that first million experience didn’t end well (learn about that in our podcast interview). Growing up, Dan never felt like he had friends. And as he became an entrepreneur at a very young age, Dan says he knows people “used” him to earn money, and he used others as well. He had one friend, a best friend that he had had since school. But social interactions were mystifying to him even as business deals were amazingly clear.

Before Dan was diagnosed in his late 20’s, he suffered horrific insomnia for years. Nothing worked. He explains, “my nervous system was completely deregulated because it was trying to function in a neurotypical world as a neurodivergent with no support and to kind of force myself as a square into a round hole. And I was battered and bruised from that. And even now, when I start to feel my nervous system going off, I can tell, “I'm just deregulated. Am I overstimulated right now?” Understanding the roots of his anxiety helped Mangena lessen the grip anxiety held over him. He says, “I think sometimes people try to fight anxiety or make it the devil. And that didn't work for me personally. What worked for me was creating space to dialogue with it and to settle down my nervous system so that it doesn't go off on a tangent.”

See this content in the original post

Dan says psychotherapy “Helped me understand what my gifts were. My gift is really the organization of ideas into something bigger than what it looks like. And the ability to see through the mess and find solutions. Not perfectly by any means, but definitely to a greater degree than they sit. It just so happened that by virtue of the fact that I did learn entrepreneurship from such a young age, that I've managed to kind of take rudimentary entrepreneurship and a quite good problem solving ability and put them together. My thing isn't making the money, it's creating the gaps where the money can be made. That's where my gift is.”

Dan says psychotherapy “Helped me understand what my gifts were. My gift is really the organization of ideas into something bigger than what it looks like. And the ability to see through the mess and find solutions. Not perfectly by any means, but definitely to a greater degree than they sit. It just so happened that by virtue of the fact that I did learn entrepreneurship from such a young age, that I've managed to kind of take rudimentary entrepreneurship and a quite good problem solving ability and put them together. My thing isn't making the money, it's creating the gaps where the money can be made. That's where my gift is.”

Mangena learned techniques of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) with McEwen. “Dr. Helen helped me to understand that the anxiety that I was feeling is because I can't deal with things that are too bitsy. I need things really clean because that's what my brain needs in order to function. When people say things to me I feed them back to them in a really refined way. That's because that's the only way that my brain can actually process it. And so I've taken that need for refined processed ideas and applied that to things that the world can use.”

When Dan had a diagnosis that gave him context, and skills from therapy that helped him manage his anxiety, moods, and energy, he began to create an infrastructure that helped him work to his strengths. This is the a-ha moment, y’all!! 

Those of us with different brains need infrastructure that helps us do our best work, and minimize stressors that lead us to underperform. Here is how Dan works today, many years after his diagnosis. Don’t be intimidated by his methods (I wish I could afford to only work 10 hours a week, too) but rather, see if you can find inspiration for building better infrastructure in your own life!

  1. Get Support. “I don't try to do it by myself. I allow myself to be supported. I focus my energy on knowing myself and being the best version of myself, knowing where I need support and then doing the best I can to be supported in those areas.”

  2. Don’t Try to Do It All. “I stay in my lane quite simply. That means my energy goes into areas that are gonna be expansive and anything that might pull on that, I find a way to outsource it or to navigate around it completely.” 

  3. Do Less So You Can Do What You Do Really Well. “I'm really ruthless in curating my environment and the people, places and things in it. My no’s are very strong. Anything that's not a fit at all and isn't something that we can mutually pour into and be poured into by it, it's gonna be a no from me. I don't have any asymmetry in that way. Sometimes I can pour into somebody and the pouring that I'm gonna pour into them is actually gonna pour out back into me so much that I want to do it.” 

  4. Be Ruthless About Your Time. “I don't look at my calendar at all. My assistant does and sends me an email on Sunday with exactly what time I need to be, where each day of that week. I only work three days, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I like to keep my work week under 10 hours. So I've got plenty of space for myself, and I do my best not to enter into agreements where I'm going to need to be in a fixed place at the same time every week for any prolonged period of time.”

  5. Plan Alone Time. I asked Dan why personal freedom or independence is important for his health. Before he could maybe afford the resources and structure you have now, what was the hardest part of the day? He told me, “Needing to talk to people all of the time.” I can relate. Dan makes sure he has flexibility in his schedule to recover from people and interaction heavy days.

If you’re not working for yourself, what should your manager know about infrastructure? Dan says, “I think the first thing that really comes to heart for me is to not even make it about singling out your neurodivergent people and trying to understand them, but instead just seeking to empower your people to be the best that they can so that they can give the best that they can to you in the organization. And for someone that is neurodivergent in any way, there is going to be a superpower there that you can tap. What about if you empowered them to dive into that superpower and then supported them in that you would get so much more out of your people and, and they would be better served as well. Make it about pouring into your people so that they can give you the best of who they are and then you'll get the best as an organization.”

Morra

PS: To get what you want, you first need to know what you want. If these big questions are on your mind, take this time to reset and game out your work life from all angles. Try breaking it up into four quadrants:

  1. Interaction and stimulation: How much human interaction is ideal for me? How much is too much (you can measure this in Zooms!). If I’m spending the day around too much noise, loud music, and buzz I need to plan some decompression time.

  2. Workday logistics. This really matters! Ask: What do I want my day to look like? Do I want to sit in front of a computer all day? Do I want to be constantly on conference calls and video conferences, or do I prefer more heads down alone time? How do I feel about managing other people? Am I craving an office environment-- or do I never want to go to an office again? Do I miss business travel, or am I happier close to home? Listen to your body, and your mood. Check in throughout the day. Does my neck hurt at 10 AM noon or 3 PM? How is my mood throughout the day?

  3. Meetings… we all have too many :) 

  4. Work-Life integration.  How does my workday interact with my life day? Am I experiencing work life conflict, or does this job give me space to honor my personal and family needs?