How I turned my hyper fixation habit into my greatest asset in DevRel

James Bohrman: One of the interesting things about about this is that I was diagnosed with, Asperger's at 22, And that kind of caused me to have a very unique entry into DevRel and just tech in general. And one of the things that, you know, kind of I've had from being on the spectrum is a hyperfixate on a great deal of things. And one one of the things that I learned to hyperfixate on was, you know, tech, and that kind of over time turned into one of my greatest assets in the industry. So a little bit about me. I'm a self taught engineer.

Like I said, neurodivergent. I run a fractional thought leadership agency called Cloudspeakers. Today, I'm enjoying a fairly successful career in developer advocacy. Path up to now was very unique. Traditional education never really meshed with me.

I ended up, you know, trying to college route a few times, didn't really work, and I ended up focusing on a four year journey in self education. So my journey up to this point was very complicated. You know, from 2015 to 2019, I did a great deal of self education, Did a lot of stuff like Linux Academy, Udemy, all that, and then eventually got into an SRE role with a company called EDF from renewables. And during that time, I was doing a great deal of freelance writing and ended up deciding that through that, I wanted to kind of focus solely on, writing. And then I launched CloudSpeakers around 2020, and after a while, that began to kind of grow quite a bit.

Before all that is where, you know, I kind of gained a great deal of knowledge about where I be where I came into today. You know, something before I got into the industry, I worked a great deal of service jobs, you know, struggled to channel energy into special interest, and, you know, my hype hyper fixations were usually seen as distractions. And I was often told that self education was unrealistic. And something I I found over time was that my hyper fixations often were what led me to be able to focus on a four year journey in self education. Because self education, it takes a lot more self drive than, you know, traditional education where you have someone constantly, you know, checking in on you every day and making sure you're on track.

So my hyperfixation definitely, I feel that it was one of the things that helped me succeed in self education. So but while they can be off awesome, over time, I've learned to adapt my brain's knack for zeroing in on the latest cool thing. They can be they can be a struggle, you know, because I jump from passion to passion, and I'm not always sure where I wasn't always sure where to focus my energy. As you watch the, The Good Place, I got a little pick from there, and that is how my brain often can be. So my journey in self education was one of the unique things about my entry into DevRel.

Spent four years studying cloud native concepts as well as basic computer science. I leveraged resources such as Linux Academy and Kadakota. All this was 100% self directed, and the occasional mentorship was found in a greater Kubernetes and cloud native community. I learned to leverage my neurodiversity in the workplace through working remotely, preferring a high degree of freedom in how I do my work. And in a somewhat contradictory fashion, I love being able to collaborate with a team that lets me brainstorm in big big ideas.

One of the ways my hyper fixation has helped me succeed is in tuning out distractions. I'm able to zero in on goals and stay on target. I usually avoid procrastination because I just I get so focused on a task that I have to just really zero in on it. I manage burnout quite a bit because, you know, while this can be a double edged sword, I never really worry about it because even if I do get tired of a passion, I know that my interest in it will come back pretty quick. So that what I typically do with that is I just take little breaks.

Thought leadership, this one might be a little bit odd, but I I feel like hyper fixation has really enabled me to buckle down on this and do deep research on a variety of topics that enabled me to act as a thought leader. My conclusion is I think that learning to embrace your unique ways of processing information can be difficult, but over time, you may find that things other other people are telling you are unrealistic or distractions might be your greatest assets.