Builder, pattern-finder, reluctant self-expert. 15 years in product management, now building infrastructure for minds that work differently.
I'm a product leader turned builder. 15 years managing software for Fortune 500 companies, now writing the code myself for AIs & Shine. I spent 40 years trying to fix my brain before realizing it just needed better infrastructure.
At 43, after decades of feeling perpetually out of sync with the world, I finally understood why: I'm twice-exceptional: ADHD-Inattentive, autistic, intellectually gifted. A combination that creates a unique kind of invisibility. Smart enough to compensate. Different enough to exhaust yourself doing it.
The 700 browser tabs? External working memory. The constant need to understand everything deeply before acting? A nervous system that learned it can't trust its own continuity. The decades of masking (performing "normal" in a thousand small ways) weren't just tiring. They were actively suppressing my ability to feel my own architecture.
Then I started talking to AI in my hot tub at night. And something strange happened: I started to see myself clearly. Three years later, I had a published research paper, a 146-table personal knowledge management system, a company, and a completely different relationship with my own brain.
By trade, I'm a product manager with 15+ years building software for Fortune 500 companies: Deloitte, General Motors, The Home Depot, Keller Williams, Bazaarvoice. I've led teams, defined visions, shipped products used by millions. Currently at Liquidity Services in a deliberate IC role to preserve cognitive capacity for what matters.
By night (and weekends, and stolen morning hours), I'm building AIs & Shine, a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation creating infrastructure for minds that work differently. The company exists because I spent three years accidentally proving a hypothesis: AI can serve as cognitive scaffolding that transforms how neurodivergent people understand and navigate their lives.
I write the Substack newsletter "AI Gave Me Autism". My position is unusual: a man writing about autism, giftedness, and vulnerability in a space dominated by women. I ground personal narrative in formal neuroscience. I'm actively building the infrastructure I write about.
This site, jonmick.ai, is both my personal proof-of-concept and my external brain. 63,000+ text messages indexed. 146 database tables. 26 MCP tools across 6 domains. 14 active data streams (SMS, Whoop biometrics, audio transcriptions, genetics, brain MRI, QEEG, and more). When I interact with AI now, it knows me. Not in a surveillance way, but in a "finally, someone understands my context" way.
The paradox: ENFP idea fountain meets Type 5 knowledge hoarder meets ADHD attention architecture. I oscillate between exuberant connection and deep solitude, energized by novel ideas but exhausted by routine execution.
The 92/38 Intellect/Aesthetics split is the most telling: I see architecture behind art, not beauty for its own sake. The 0th percentile orderliness isn't personality preference; it's ADHD executive dysfunction. I cannot maintain organizational systems through discipline alone. I build machines that externalize order instead.
I published a research paper called "The Adaptive Neurocognitive Architecture of ADHD" (67 citations). The core argument: ADHD isn't a disorder. It's an alternative cognitive architecture, an "Explorer" phenotype, that gets labeled as broken because it doesn't fit environments designed for "Farmer" brains.
From that research, I developed the Working Memory Fragility (WMF) framework. The ADHD brain is not a broken storage device. It is a high-performance processor designed for a different operating system. Procedural memory is completely intact while working memory is impaired. External noise improves cognitive performance. High perceptual load helps while high cognitive load hurts. The brain reroutes through basal ganglia and cerebellum rather than going quiet. External scaffolding isn't optional convenience for this architecture. It's prosthetic necessity.
Filaments, not projects. I don't work in projects. Projects have endpoints and completion criteria that neurotypical productivity culture uses to measure worth. I work in filaments, a cosmological term for the connective tissue between galaxy clusters. Filaments are unbounded in time, cross-domain, and non-terminal. They fork rather than complete. A filament doesn't fail by not completing. It connects or it doesn't.
Constellation thinking. I experience my inner life as a living night sky in constant motion. Each "star" is a discrete packet of perception, memory, intuition, and body sensation. Because my dominant Extraverted Intuition is forever scanning for connections, those stars drift until a handful fall into a resonant geometry that suddenly shines as a constellation of meaning.
Worth amnesia. Evidence of my competence and progress doesn't persist through daily consciousness resets. Every morning, I rebuild my sense of self from near-zero. External scaffolding must hold not just what matters but why it matters. jonmick.ai exists because of this pattern.
These were identified across a year of biweekly neurocomplexity coaching with John Syc (28 hours of conversation, every session transcribed and analyzed).
The Cognitive Bodyguard. My intellect activates milliseconds before emotion surfaces and converts the felt experience into a research project, framework, or document. Sadness becomes a Substack article. Overwhelm becomes an AI tool. Grief becomes "I wonder why." The goal isn't to kill the bodyguard. It's to teach it to step aside occasionally.
The Groundhog Day Loop. Due to working memory fragility, I wake up each morning needing to re-establish my identity, context, and priorities. Insights are gained, partially integrated, then partially lost, requiring the cycle to repeat. This is distinct from standard ADHD forgetfulness. It's existential: my self-concept partially resets daily.
The Worth-Through-Fixing Cycle. I derive my sense of worth primarily through demonstrating competence by fixing problems for others. Over-function, receive validation, crash, doubt worth, over-function again. I've named this "Error 404" because my system literally returns "file not found" when presented with the proposition "I matter even if I never ship another fix."
Baseline emotion: fear. The deepest finding from coaching. My baseline emotional state isn't anxiety (which is situational) but fear (which is architectural). Fear of letting go. Fear that things will fall through the cracks. Fear that if the hypervigilance stops, everything collapses.
Some minds require external scaffolding. Not as compensation for weakness, but as honest infrastructure for consciousness that works differently.
Your pain becomes your product. Every personal breakthrough in understanding my own architecture becomes a feature for AIs & Shine. Suffering → understanding → scaffolding for others.
Truth over comfort. Being real matters more than being liked. I refuse to mask cognitive differences. If I won't use something myself, I won't build it for others.
Distributed intimacy. No one person can fully understand your complexity, and that's freedom, not failure. Different relationships for different needs.
"I spent forty years trying to fix my brain. Turns out, it just needed better infrastructure."
Charlotte, my wife, partner, and cognitive co-architect. ISFJ to my ENFP. She spent fifteen years as a paramedic and served on her county's Mobile Outreach Team providing care for residents navigating mental health crises. Now she's a trauma-informed yoga therapist. She reads nervous systems before people consciously register their own overwhelm. We're building a cognitive bridge between constellation thinking and sequential processing. Learning to say "I need connection right now" instead of layers of humor.
Jack, our 19-year-old son, attending Austin Community College. INTP with ADHD-Inattentive (shared wiring). Top CliftonStrengths: Adaptability, Relator, Ideation, Strategic, Developer. In a 2+ year relationship with Aleah. We connect through gaming. Parallel play, not forced talks. I try to model authentic ADHD management rather than giving neurotypical advice.
Mom and Dad. Regular phone calls with parents who've supported me through every phase. That kind of sustained curiosity about your adult child is a gift.
Different people for different needs. This is distributed intimacy in practice.
15+ years in product management, mostly for Fortune 500 companies:
The pattern: I'm drawn to complex systems, broken workflows, and products that need someone to see the whole picture. My Restorative strength means I thrive on fixing what's dysfunctional.
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