262: Faith, Science, Truth, and Vulnerability with Evan Light
262: Faith, Science, Truth, and Vulnerability with Evan LightDescription
00:59 - Evans’s Superpower: Talking about topics that aren’t interesting to whomever he’s talking to at the time
- ADHD
- Diagnosing as an Adult
- Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale
- QbCheck: ADHD Self-Check Test
- Why seek a medical diagnosis?
- Almost everything that you know about “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” is probably wrong
- Vulnerability
12:45 - Debugging Oneself, Neuroscience, Meditation
- Debugging Your Brain by Casey Watts
- CBT - Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
- MBCBT - Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
- Search Inside Yourself Program
- Neuroplasticity
21:57 - The Limitations of Science
24:54 - The Spiritual Side, Mindfulness, and Meditation
32:03 - Psychological Safety
- Groupthink & Human Dynamics and Teams
- Welcomed Disagreement
- Vulnerability & Accountability
- Unconscious Bias
- Resmaa Menakem: My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
49:28 - Faith and Science
- Exploring Areas of Disagreement
- Truth
- Disagreement and Conflict
01:04:08 - Words!
- Think, Know, and Believe; Hope, Want, and Intend: Are these words unique?
- Replacement Words For “Normal”, “Guys”
Reflections:
Damien: The value of being vulnerable.
Evan: Disagreement leading to deeper discussion. Cultivating more empathy.
Casey: We can’t usually know what is true, but we can know when something’s false.
Mae: Think about the ways you are biased and have healing to do. Talking about ways we are not awesome to each other will help us actually be awesome to each other.
Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute
Greater Than Code Episode 248: Developing Team Culture with Andrew Dunkman
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Transcript:
DAMIEN: Welcome to Episode 262 of Greater Than Code. I’m Damien Burke and I'm joined by Mae Beale.
MAE: And I'm here with Casey Watts.
CASEY: Hi, I'm Casey. We're all here with our guest this week, Evan Light.
EVAN: Hi, I'm Evan Light.
CASEY: Welcome, Evan.
Evan has been in the tech field for over 25 years, and has the grey hairs to show for it. Evan was searching for the term “psychological safety” long before it became mainstream — just wishes he had it sooner! Evan prizes growing teams and people by creating empowering environments where people feel free to share their ideas and disagree constructively. He lives in the crunchiest part of the DC area, Tacoma Park, Maryland.
So glad to have you here, Evan.
EVAN: Thank you. Glad to be here.
CASEY: All right, we're going to ask our question we always ask, what is your superpower, Evan and how did you acquire it?
EVAN: Well, the first thing that came to mind is talking ad nauseam about topics that aren't all that interesting to whoever I'm talking to at the time. And the way I acquired it was being born probably a little bit different with ADHD and I say probably because I still need to prove it concretely that I have ADHD, but I'm working on it.
DAMIEN: Well, that sounds like a very useful superpower for a podcast guest.
[laughter]
EVAN: Well, if you want that guest to take up the whole show, then sure. [laughs]
MAE: Yes, please. We want – [overtalk]
DAMIEN: Yeah, that's why you're here.
EVAN: Well, I do like conversation, that's the funny part. I like give and takes. Just sometimes I lose track of how long I've been talking.
MAE: I do that, too, Evan.
CASEY: Fair.
EVAN: Yeah. I wonder how many of you have ADHD, too. [laughs]
MAE: I do – there is a statistically significant portion of programmers, for sure.
EVAN: I don't know that there've been scientific studies of it, but the currently reported number of, I think 4 and a half percent of the population is well-acknowledged to be significantly under reported. At least among adults. And that's because one people say ADHD goes away with age it, in fact, doesn't. We just look – and I kind of hate that word 4-letter word.
People with ADHD often tend to find ways to compensate for it, those of us who don't get diagnoses later in life, if we don't have it already. And two, how many people do you know who seek out mental health evaluations and counseling? So I'm sure it's massively under reported.
DAMIEN: Which brings up my question. How does one diagnose an adult with ADHD?
EVAN: Yeah, that's a fun one.
So I know of – well, I guess three ways now. One, you are talking to a doctor who themselves has ADHD and has some idea, or a person who has ADHD, not necessarily a doctor, who has a pretty good idea of what to look for usually because they have it. You tell them about some problems you're having and they say, “Huh. Well, I know this problem can sometimes be caused by comorbidity, which is medical term that's often thrown about, this other problem, ADHD.”
That's how I found out about it and frankly, I was trying to figure out how to—after having dealt with so many other problems in my life—lose the excess weight, talking to a weight loss medical specialist in D.C., and also has ADHD. He said, “Huh, this all sounds like ADHD. Fill out this really simple test,” that I'll be glad to share with you all. It's just a PDF and you can share it with listeners and you can pretty quickly see for yourself how likely you are based on how you respond. That's one way.
Another way is sit down and talk with a psychologist, or a psychiatrist who has some special background in ADHD, who they can just sort of evaluate you.
And the third way is coupled sometimes with the second one, which is what I did this early this morning. There is a test called QbCheck letter—Q letter, b, check. It's an online test that uses your camera and eye tracking, so I guess that uses computer vision as part of it—which I thou
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