The Hidden Productivity Revolution
Why 'Accommodations' for Neurodivergent Entrepreneurs Are Simply Better Business Practices
Bogdan Nesvit used to sprint through 16-hour days, fuelled by caffeine and last-minute fixes, until the strain of chaos and an ADHD diagnosis forced a pause. Now his mornings begin with cold-water dips and a brisk run, his afternoons revolve around deep-focus design sprints, and the spreadsheets he once dreaded sit safely in a delegate's inbox. The shift looks almost leisurely, yet Holywater, his entertainment-tech studio, has increased its revenue 3.5-fold in a single year and racked up 10 million episode views on its short-form series app, My Drama.
The secret is a workflow built to match a neurodivergent mind, not some kind of superhuman grit. Nesvit strips out energy-sapping chores, batches creative work when hyper-focus strikes, and treats meditation, therapy sessions and strict sleep targets as business infrastructure rather than self-care extras.
His story flips the script on "pushing through" and offers a blueprint for founders who suspect that less hustle and more brain-savvy structure could actually drive smarter growth.
This isn't a story about inclusion. It's a story about evolution.
The Accommodation Myth: When 'Special Needs' Are Just Smart Needs
The language we use reveals our bias. We speak of "accommodating" neurodivergent entrepreneurs as if we're making special allowances for something inherently deficient. It's the equivalent of treating left-handedness as a disability requiring accommodation, when the real issue is that we've designed a right-handed world.
Consider what we euphemistically call "accommodations":
Flexible working hours (because peak cognitive performance varies by individual)
Written communication over verbal when possible (because documentation reduces errors and miscommunication)
Quiet workspaces (because open offices have been proven to decrease productivity by up to 66%)
Focused work blocks without interruption (because deep work requires uninterrupted time)
These aren't special allowances. They're simply recognition that human brains operate optimally under specific conditions; conditions that traditional office culture systematically undermines.
Yet we persist in framing these obvious productivity improvements as concessions rather than optimisations. The very term "accommodation" suggests we're bending the rules for outliers, when in reality we're correcting fundamental design flaws in how we structure work. A thousand years ago, being left-handed might have carried stigma. Today, the idea seems absurd. We're witnessing the same evolution in attitudes towards neurodivergence, but we're not there yet.
The Industrial Hangover: Why Our Professional Structures Are Decades Behind Our Understanding
The modern workplace is having an identity crisis, and it's been building for decades. We've evolved far beyond the industrial structures that shaped professional norms, yet we continue to operate as if physical presence equals productivity and structured schedules equal results.
The 9-to-5 workday made sense when work was tied to machines and assembly lines. It served a purpose when collaboration required physical proximity and information moved at the speed of paper. But knowledge-based work follows different rules, operates on different rhythms, and produces value through different mechanisms.
These outdated structures weren't designed for productivity, they were designed for control. The ability to see employees at their desks provided management with the illusion of oversight, even when that oversight bore no relationship to actual output or quality of work.
Forward-thinking companies have begun to recognise this disconnect. Professionals working on a hybrid basis have the highest engagement rates at 35%, followed by fully remote employees at 33% and in-office employees at 27%. Almost 80% of managers say their team is more productive when working hybrid or remote, whilst 66% of executives believe their in-office policies did not have a positive effect on the team's productivity. Microsoft Japan reported a 40% productivity increase after introducing a four-day work week. Similarly, GitLab, a fully remote company with over 1,300 employees, boosted collaboration by embracing async communication, favouring written documentation over real-time chats. This led to more thoughtful contributions, stronger interactions, and 91% of staff feeling well-connected with their colleagues.
The evidence is overwhelming: the structures we've inherited aren't just suboptimal for neurodivergent individuals, they're suboptimal for everyone. We've simply trained most people to function despite them rather than because of them.
The Canary Principle: How Neurodivergent Entrepreneurs Signal Systemic Dysfunction
Neurodivergent entrepreneurs serve as early warning systems for business dysfunction. Like canaries in coal mines, they're the first to signal when workplace environments become toxic, not because they're more fragile, but because they can't mask their way through harmful conditions as effectively as their neurotypical counterparts.
This inability to "push through" dysfunctional systems isn't a weakness, it's diagnostic clarity. When traditional masking strategies fail, neurodivergent entrepreneurs are forced to engineer better solutions or face immediate burnout. This constraint breeds innovation.
Consider the "masking tax"; the cognitive and emotional energy required to appear neurotypical in professional settings. For neurodivergent individuals, this tax can represent the majority of their available mental resources, leaving insufficient bandwidth for actual productive work. But here's what conventional wisdom misses: neurotypical individuals pay this tax too, just at lower rates and with less awareness.
Everyone performs some version of professional theatre. Everyone suppresses natural work rhythms to fit arbitrary schedules. Everyone endures productivity-killing meetings and interruptions because they're considered "normal." The difference is that neurotypical individuals can sustain this performance longer before experiencing noticeable degradation.
When neurodivergent entrepreneurs design systems that eliminate the masking tax for themselves and their teams, everyone benefits. Productivity increases, creativity flourishes, and burnout decreases. What starts as accommodation becomes optimisation.
The Optimisation Opportunity: What Happens When Systems Serve Human Nature
The most successful businesses of the next decade won't be those that accommodate different ways of working, they'll be those that recognise different ways of working as competitive advantages waiting to be activated.
When organisations shift from accommodating diversity to leveraging it, remarkable things happen. Teams become more creative because different cognitive styles approach problems from different angles. Communication improves because systems are designed for clarity rather than assumption. Productivity increases because work is structured around human capacity rather than arbitrary convention.
But what about the inevitable concern: won't flexible systems be exploited by people who simply want to work less?
This question reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of human motivation. The assumption that structure prevents laziness ignores a basic truth: genuinely lazy people will find ways to be unproductive regardless of structure, while motivated people will be more productive when systems support their natural work patterns.
The real issue is misalignment, not laziness. When someone appears to be "taking advantage" of flexible policies, the question isn't how to add more restrictions; it's whether that person is in the right role, has clear objectives, or understands how their work contributes to larger goals.
High-performing organisations solve this through clarity of expectations and measurement of outcomes rather than monitoring of inputs. They recognise that someone who produces exceptional results in 25 hours shouldn't be penalised for not working 40, just as someone who works 60 hours but produces mediocre results shouldn't be celebrated for their dedication.
The Implementation Reality: From Theory to Practice
The transition from traditional to optimised business practices isn't theoretical, it's happening now, driven by companies that have learned to see accommodation as innovation.
The most successful implementations share common characteristics: they measure outcomes rather than activities, they trust employees to manage their own productivity, and they design systems around human variance rather than human averages.
This doesn't mean abandoning all structure, it means creating better structure. Structure that serves the work rather than constraining it. Structure that recognises that peak performance looks different for different people and varies even within individuals across time.
The Competitive Edge Hidden in Plain Sight
We stand at an inflection point. Organisations can continue optimising for control and conformity, watching their best talent migrate to competitors who've figured out that results matter more than process. Or they can recognise that what we've been calling "accommodations" are actually invitations to build better businesses.
The companies that will dominate the next decade aren't those that grudgingly accommodate different ways of working, they're those that actively seek out and systematically implement practices that unlock human potential rather than constraining it. With 75% of millennials and 77% of Gen Z workers stating they would rather look for a new job if asked to return to the office full-time, the talent war is already being fought on these terms.
The revolution isn't coming. It's here. The only question is whether your organisation will lead it or be left behind by it.
