Success Quote by David Neeleman

Neeleman’s line reads like a founder’s pep talk translated into self-help: don’t “manage” ADD, rebrand it. Coming from an airline entrepreneur who has spoken openly about having ADHD, the intent is pragmatic and reputational at once. It’s a private coping strategy made public, the kind of reframing that keeps a volatile trait from becoming a career-ending label. In a business culture that worships “disruption,” he’s offering a narrative that turns a clinical diagnosis into entrepreneurial fuel.

The subtext is where it gets interesting. “Just keep thinking” is a command to control the story even when you can’t fully control attention. It’s less about denying difficulty than about directing attention toward a usable identity: creative, original, stimulated. Those are founder-friendly adjectives, the vocabulary of pitch decks and origin myths. By spotlighting the upside, he implicitly asks others - investors, employees, the public - to interpret neurodivergence not as risk but as an asset, even a competitive edge.

Context matters because this kind of optimism lands differently depending on who’s hearing it. For a high-status businessman, ADD can be framed as quirky genius; for someone without resources, it’s more likely to be framed as irresponsibility. Neeleman’s quote works rhetorically because it’s both reassuring and aspirational, but it also performs a subtle negotiation with stigma: if he can make the “good side” legible in corporate terms, he can make himself legible, too. The line isn’t neutral encouragement; it’s brand strategy for the self and, by extension, for a workplace culture that wants innovation without mess.