#89🎉 Making Space to Dream: Finding Your Vision Beyond the Daily Grind
Learning to listen to your heart when your mind won't shut up.
Welcome to Tech Atypically 👋, your weekly blog for navigating the challenges of ADHD and being in the tech industry.
I am an ADHD and product management coach helping you change one belief and take one action each week.
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Part 2 of the Finding Happiness Series
🦋The Takeaways
Belief: You're too busy surviving to think about your dreams.
Reality: Creating space to dream is essential for moving beyond survival mode.
Action: Learn to distinguish between your heart's vision and your ego's shoulds.
⭐️Introduction
I'm back from the holiday break and apologize for the lack of publications last month. Finding time to write has been challenging with the holidays and a 6-year-old who has decided that her parents don’t need to sleep. I'm back now and have friends joining me over the next few months.
This week, mindset and leadership coach Supriya Venkatesan discusses the importance of making space to dream—not the sleeping kind, but the visioning kind—imagining what you truly want your life to be.
I invited her to share her wisdom because of her unique coaching approach that incorporates several different disciplines and exercises.
As a tech worker with ADHD, you often get caught up in daily survival. Between managing symptoms, meeting deadlines, and trying to appear "normal," you have little energy left for dreaming. Without a vision, you risk burning out chasing goals that don't truly align with your desires.
Today, Supriya and I help you learn to be in touch with your heart and create a vision that you can thrive with.
😵💫The Belief - You can't afford to dream right now
In today's tech environment, with constant layoffs and rapidly changing requirements, it feels risky to think beyond immediate survival.
You might think you need to:
Focus only on keeping your current job
Take any opportunity that comes along
Put your dreams on hold until you're "stable"
Figure everything out mentally before taking action
According to Supriya. "You have reactions to different things in the environment. When you're in survival mode, you're stuck in your analytical brain, making it hard to access your heart's wisdom."
I think she's right. My ADHD brain, with its anxiety, layers of unconscious and conscious bias, and Asian upbringing, makes me think dreaming is wrong—a selfish act reserved only for wealthy people or retirement. I spent much of my life repressing my true desires for survival.
Now that I can dream, I don’t know where to start.
🤝The Reality - Your heart knows the way
According to Supriya, "Follow your heart. It will never lead you to the wrong place. Your brain might lead you to the wrong place, but your heart will never lead you wrong."
The challenge is learning to distinguish between your heart's wisdom and your ego's fears a.k.a your analytical brain. Your ego/brain operates from analysis and anxiety, while your heart speaks through alignment and calm knowing.
This is particularly important when you have ADHD. Your hyperactive or inattentive mind can make it difficult to hear your heart's quiet voice through your unique brain chemistry and the masking developed to survive in a neurotypical world.
You need specific practices and intentions to create that space.
As Supriya explains, "When you close your eyes, you automatically start to change your brain wave patterns. You're always in what's called beta state when thinking analytically. Just the act of closing your eyes helps you shift into a more receptive state."
In my ADHD world, I describe the heart as the emotional center that is underneath the emotional dysregulation you cope with each day. It’s who you are, as you are.
By being able to better access your heart, you’ll be able to better use your analytical brain to create goals and actions that you’re more motivated by. Tapping into the ADHDer’s favorite neurotransmitter, dopamine.
🛠️The Action - Creating space for your vision
Ready to create some dreams for 2025? Here are some tips from Supriya.
Start with lifestyle, not goals.
Ask yourself what kind of life you want to live, not just what you want to achieve. "Do you want to be working 8 hours a day, 6 hours a day, five days a week? Do you want to be in an office? Do you want to be in the city you're living in?"
Use physical cues to shift your state.
Lay down and close your eyes when visioning. Your body has "somatic anchors" that help signal your brain to shift from analytical thinking to receptive dreaming.
Try guided meditation.
Below is a guided meditation for accessing your vision by Supriya.
Break it down into manageable timeframes.
"Start with a one year target, twelve months, and then work backwards... especially today in the world of AI, you don't know what the world's gonna be like in two years from now."
Check for alignment.
"When it feels aligned, literally all parts of yourself are aligned. Your values, beliefs, emotions, all of it."
Allow your vision to evolve.
"Pivoting is very natural, especially if you're a high achiever and curious... As you get more information, it is natural that your choices might change."
Be conscious of when the “shoulds” drive or prevent change. It’s natural to change direction, just make sure it’s driven by your heart and not the shoulds.
For those moments when your ADHD mind makes it hard to remember your visions, Supriya suggests: "Tell your unconscious mind, 'I want this specific thing when I open my eyes.' You can even do this before you go to bed."
✨Conclusion
Making space to dream isn't selfish—it's necessary. I would likely be miserable or not alive had I not let go of my mother's dream of me becoming a doctor and dared to create my own.
Without a heart-aligned vision, you risk burning out chasing unfulfilling goals. No amount of RSUs or IPO stock options can fix that.
Tech has been good to me, but I've burned out hard. To prevent this from happening again, I'm making space to dream, and I invite you to do the same.
If you enjoyed Supriya’s content, reach out and say hi.
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⏭️Next Week
Our very first podcast episode. Will I be able to edit in time? Well, I’m writing it down here in hopes it’ll force me to…
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