People with AD(H)D are not distracted all the time — they simply have a different style of working.

Here’s what just a few minutes of my workday look like:

  1. Open email

  2. Open a task

  3. Open YouTube

  4. Do half the task

  5. Think about what a number is on a fundamental level

  6. Open the task again with new insights, do one thing halfway

  7. Reflect on what work actually is

  8. Get coffee

  9. Return to the task

  10. Think about kickboxing tonight, notice my body posture

  11. Think about thinking

  12. Think about thinking about thinking

  13. Realize that thinking about thinking is consciousness

  14. Continue the task for a colleague

  15. Wonder how my colleague is doing

  16. Notice it’s going to rain

  17. Try to feel the inside of my knee

  18. Will my brain ever be less chaotic and less distracted?

  19. Will I ever feel inner peace?

From the outside, it looks like I’m distracted all the time. But it’s actually just a different style of working. Someone with AD(H)D gathers information very quickly from as many different places as possible, finds a pattern in it, and executes tasks that way. And even that description doesn’t do it justice.

To an outsider, it might seem like I deliberately avoid working, but that’s not true. Some people enjoy staying with the same thing for a long time. I don’t: when I see a task, I already have a rough sense of where it’s going. Then I move on to something else.

If you see reality as something with depth, most people work longer at a deeper level on the same task. Someone with AD(H)D, on the other hand, touches as many tasks, thoughts, and feelings as possible on the surface. That’s a perfectly valid strategy, because this way you quickly know how everything is going. You’re less likely to overlook the bigger picture, because throughout the day you’ve seen everything, thought about everything, and tasted a bit of everything.

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Over a longer period of time, things fall into place. Everything comes together, and you learn to combine the knowledge you’ve gathered from different directions into one whole.

Others call this hyperfocus. They don’t see that you’ve been collecting knowledge and skills for years, slowly piecing them together into something complete. They don’t understand that this is a skill that isn’t always switched on. Sometimes it comes out for just a few minutes, and then it’s gone again. That’s how it works.