API Evangelist Conversation with Ian Mai, Executive ADHD & Impulse Control Coach

Hello, Kin Lane here, API Evangelist, for another one of my API Evangelist Conversations, where I talk to interesting folks that I know from across the API space about what’s going on in their lives, what they’re working on, and what they’re building. So let’s not waste any time and let’s see who we’re talking to today. Hello, who are you?

Hey Kin, thanks for having me. Ian Mai here, currently acting and operating as an ADHD and impulse control coach. But how you and I know each other is as a former customer success manager in enterprise tech, sales executives from Postman, and essentially former techie in the world of API development and software life, so all the buzzy buzzwords and the cloud architecture and development.

Yeah, we worked together for a while at Postman, got to know each other. I think you experienced what a lot of people see and do in the tech space, and you were moving on, and I wanted to understand more about what you’re moving on to do. And then I would like to get to the why, and the role of technology and all this. But let’s start with, like, what’s the story? Why are you moving on from Postman? It’s a pretty cool place to work, what are you going to be doing?

Yeah, so just kind of a historical background for me. I have spent the last 12 years solely focused on tech software, specifically in the software development lifecycle space, so we had a lot of overlap in all the buzzy buzzwords when it comes to tech, being able to help build innovative solutions, and getting into that startup ecosystem was really something I was motivated by at a very young age, right out of college, and essentially having built a career in that space. However, in the last couple of years, a good majority of my focus had actually been more of my own internal software, being able to understand how I’m wired, why I do the things that I do, and inevitably, how I ended up finding myself stuck in ritual habits of addiction, whether alcohol, whether that was pornography, whether that was even addiction to exercise and all sorts of things that just weren’t serving me. And it got to a point where now all of a sudden all the things that I had built, these outward external signals of success, were kind of crumbling down around me, that my addiction and addictive patterns were starting to make it to where I couldn’t focus well, wasn’t doing my job as well as I could have, started bastardizing my career. And so almost during this process of working at Postman and digging in with a lifecycle and building a brand for myself, I was still on the side kind of having that navigation, that internal journey, in understanding impulsive behavior, understanding addiction, and then discovering that I had adult ADHD, and that there was a lot of comorbidity in my depressive symptoms, my addiction habits, and all sorts of these other components. That now, in moving out of tech and moving away from it, my focus is being able to help other people who are like me, highly successful individuals who are now finding themselves not able to continue to have that external vector of success because of these internal issues, depression, anxiety, and then on top of all of that, obviously addiction components, that really are deleterious to any levels and trajectory of success that you might have.

So my impression of you, as we hung out at different, you, we did a lot of hanging out together at Postman, you were always a very vocal advocate of running, exercising, lifting. It was very clear that was your jam, and then you’re very good at your job when it comes to tech. But it sounds like the tech, the exercising, the health, is all kind of wound up in a whole ball of things that people who maybe are just getting into the space should think about. What sort of advice do you have for someone coming out of college, to help kind of wrestle with all this?

Yeah, so I mean, one, tech didn’t create any of these issues for me, and I think that’s one of the things that, like, I’m not blaming tech and giving the middle finger to the corporate world of tech on my way out the door, although the reasons could very well be there when it comes to industry. But the advice that I would give to that Gen Z person just out of college is being able to pay attention to what you’re obsessing about. And when I talk about ADHD, even I’m unsure of, ADHD is a misnomer, because the first component of that, attention deficit, that’s actually not the issue for most people with ADHD. It’s that they actually have hyper attention, they just don’t know how to take all of the attention from all the things and focus it on any one, or at least the things that most matter to them. And so for me what would end up happening is I would sort of be this professional at a thousand different things at once. So if you hear me talk about, like, my new hobby that I just picked up is Rubik’s cubes, and then it’s fitness, and then I’m going to take fitness all the way to the highest level and become a professional bodybuilder, while also still in tech and while also still an account executive. And yes, there’s definitely health benefits for the ADHD brain when it comes to fitness, which is true, it’s definitely useful. And being able to recognize that inevitably, as more of the addictive pattern started to arise, the obsessions were now lack of focus on the important things and obsessing about all of the addictive patterns of things.

Yeah, so you mentioned addictive patterns. I struggle with this, because I’ve struggled with my own addictions over the years with drugs and alcohol, and I would say I kind of go into a weird zone with coding and tech sometimes, I get kind of tuned out the world and I go there. We recently lost my wife’s son to addiction, and so I struggle with using that word, I feel like it gets overused and used in some of the wrong way-based. And you mentioned, you know, it’s not tech that’s doing this. What do you feel like is kind of the root of all of this that people should be thinking about? Is addiction the right word, I guess?

Yeah, so I don’t hesitate to use the word addiction. I think from a clinical psychologist standpoint, they care a lot about wording and phrasing. The bottom line is this, is that all impulsive behavior comes down to very high dysregulation of dopamine. So dopamine is this neurotransmitter, it reinforces behavior, it signals potential for pleasurable or safety-like experiences. And so when you talk about addictions, it’s essentially things that can cause significant spikes in dopamine. So what’s interesting now when it comes to us talking about the ADHD brain is that typically what happens for the ADHD brain is that parts of the brain are actually not getting enough dopamine. And so there’s like a dam between all of the emotional centers of the brain, where there’s plenty of dopamine happening, so that’s why a lot of the impulsive behavior is very emotionally driven, strong emotional responses. And so emotional behavior can also be emotional escape, which might drive you to the types of things you might use as emotional escape, alcohol, drugs, porn, whatever those things are. The other aspect of it is that when you have high dopamine response activities, usually what happens is that there’s a big rush of dopamine anytime you’re doing those particular behaviors, or again, drugs and alcohol and so on, that now all of a sudden there’s dopamine on the sides of the brain that have been starving for it. And so for a lot of people who do have ADHD, now all of a sudden my brain is finally functioning, because it’s getting the dopamine in that part of the brain that was starving for it, and so I can start to justify my behaviors for using that thing as sort of the self-medication mindset that we can all kind of come into patterns and habits around. But how addiction, our addictions actually form, is that the amount of that stimulus that I need to continue to have that amount of dopamine response to that frontal lobe of the brain continues to decrease over time, which requires more of that substance, more of that experience to generate. And all of that, if those things are directed towards unhealthy means and unhealthy gains, then yeah, it’s only going to lead to very, very deleterious responses.

You think, like, I mean, you say you’re leaving tech, but it sounds like you’re going to actually be helping, still helping folks think about tech and understand it from your perspective.

Yeah, I mean, the bottom line is I spent 12 years really learning how to make software, websites, mobile applications draw your attention in. So there’s some aspect of, I’m very well aware of the manner of how those things work, and then in the other aspect of it is now, like, knowing fully well how to kind of combat that, how to control my attention, how to do what I call kind of a dopamine audit, where I can understand where all my dopamine is coming from, and is it reinforcing the things that I care the most about and that are the highest value to me personally. So the social media, the mobile applications, those inherently aren’t the problem, it’s, am I using those things to escape the things that are really important to me, or am I using those to connect me with people around the world? Knowledge is amazing, right, I’m speaking to and working with people all around the world, some places in South Africa, and it’s amazing how we can create community in those large scapes. But if I’m doing that in lieu of connecting more deeply with my two children, my wife at home, my immediate world around me, then no, I’m actually reinforcing solitude or insolation, which is partially why, again, taboo subject, but why pornography is potentially so dangerous, is that you’re actually just reinforcing isolation-type activities rather than community connection, fireside chat conversations that elicit more deep connection and removing of that shame and isolation.

Do you think, I mean, you’re carrying a lot of this load for you in your world, and then you’re offering to kind of help other people deal with this as an individual. Do you think there’s any responsibility to be shared by people doing startups and building these applications, and should we do it at a more hyperlocal level? I don’t know, what are your thoughts there?

Yeah, I think scalability is always hard. Anytime you try to move from being highly digital, sort of removed, meet you where you are, is then, how do I then scale it in a way to increase the likelihood of meeting in person, community engages. This conversation would likely be different if you even could be in the same room as me, we’re sharing atoms, you’re sensing my posture and body language and excitement and energy in which I’m applying these things, like you’re probably going to feel a different response than even just you and I, but you and I aren’t even making eye contact right now, I’m looking at your eyes looking at my eyes on a screen, versus like, I’m, you perceive I’m making eye contact with you now, even though I’m staring, like totally different emotional response that you and I are going to have to these conversations, because of just that deep connection that we’re creating with each other socially, that is kind of lost in the current tech. And I do believe that there will be companies that will build tech in a way that makes engagement more sustainable, more healthy, and whether chemically healthy or not, I mean, there’s always going to be things that you have a high dopamine response to, any behavior that there’s room for abuse, and so we can’t constantly shame every single thing for the abuse it causes. Right, just because I have my phone in black and white to make it really boring and lame so I’m not constantly checking it every other moment, like, yeah, that’s a utility to me, that doesn’t mean that we all need to go to black and white screens to counteract the addictive patterns of behavior.

Yeah, it’s definitely about a balance. So one last question for you. What’s your daily workout routine look like? I had a lot of these conversations with you at sales kickoffs and whatnot, so what’s your regular routine look like right now?

Yeah, so I actually just finished a pretty intense, we’ll call it a fat-loss cycle, and they call it a mesocycle, which is silly, but a 12-week sprint. I actually lost 30 pounds the last 12 weeks, which is more aggressive than I would suggest and encourage anybody else to do. But I was actually doing it more for, like, the emotional journaling processing, like when you’re sitting with that level of hunger, there’s a lot of the emotional turmoil that will arise, and it fueled a good amount of my journaling and meditation, and even for that matter, like committing to quitting a job that is sustainable and paying a good salary, the drama of, the upside when it comes to monetary value. So my current routine, though, yeah, I still get up at 5 o’clock in the morning and still journal for about 30 minutes, I get to the gym anywhere between 5 and 5:30, and then right now it’s only about an hour in the gym, which an hour in the gym four days a week is really not that, I think anybody can sustain. But if you were to try to come do that with me without experience, yeah, you might find we, chemical muscular failure might not be your jam for how you want it.

Well, I always enjoy hearing what you’re up to, and glad you’re keeping it to healthy levels. I appreciate you coming by and sharing. I don’t think this is what everyone’s expecting when it comes to an API podcast, but it’s definitely, I think, where we need to be going in these times. So I appreciate you coming by.

Yeah, thank you Kin, thank you for the time, thank you.

All right, yeah, as I said, I don’t think that’s probably what a lot of you are expecting, as far as, you know, we didn’t dive into the API details, but I think these are all the realities of kind of the humans in the cracks of what’s going on with APIs, and as we’re building these applications that Ian talked about. So always enjoyed hearing why someone’s kind of leaving tech, moving jobs, and what they’re struggling with and working on, and it’s good to hear folks are willing to help other people kind of work through this as well. So it’s good to have you in. All right, well, until next time, thanks y’all.