Extra Focus: The Quick Start Guide to Adult ADHD

by Jesse J. Anderson

She suggested I might want to look into it, but I insisted I couldn’t have ADHD. “I have no problem focusing on things I’m interested in,” I said. Because I believed I already knew what ADHD was, I assumed people with ADHD couldn’t focus at all.

Pretty quickly, I discovered that people with ADHD have no problem focusing on things they’re interested in. In fact, hyperfocus is a common symptom of ADHD. It’s when you focus so intently on something interesting that you lose track of everything else.

the way I struggled with motivation the way I constantly started new hobbies, only to abandon them soon after

the way new and interesting things constantly distracted me the way I often forgot small but important details the way I was extremely sensitive to rejection the way boredom felt absolutely excruciating the way my emotions often felt intense and beyond my control the way I procrastinated on anything that wasn’t immediately gratifying or fun

was the reason every teacher said I was “gifted” but wasn’t reaching my potential, or I was “a joy to have in class” but kept getting in my own way.

But more often than not, I would get stuck on a single problem for hours or even days. I would avoid simple tasks, all the while screaming at my brain to “Just do the thing!” Like clockwork, at the end of each day I’d wonder where the time had gone and why so many tasks were still unfinished.

This knowledge allowed me to forgive myself for the areas where I fell short of other people’s standards—and my own. It gave me a new perspective on how my brain worked, pushing me toward a better way to live.

Those of us with ADHD don’t actually have a deficit of attention. It’s the opposite—we have an abundance of it! We’re often paying attention to everything all at once; so much so that we can lose track of what’s important.

Rather than characterizing those with ADHD as having an attention deficit, it would be far more accurate to say they have a dysregulation of attention. When everything is shouting for your attention, it’s difficult to regulate that attention and pick a specific voice out of the noise. Hyperactivity While some people with ADHD are noticeably hyperactive, many are not. This is particularly true for women, who are less likely to present symptoms of being hyperactive, at least outwardly.1 Many people think they can’t possibly have ADHD because they assume external hyperactivity is a required symptom. Who can blame them—it’s right there in the name! But hyperactivity is only one way ADHD can present itself. Some people with ADHD say they experience hyperactivity more on the inside of their brain, even when they seem perfectly calm from the outside.

For example, they might refer to ADHD as a brain difference rather than disorder.

People with ADHD can flourish and get amazing work done when they have a job that encourages creativity or urgency, particularly in industries like entertainment, emergency services, marketing, entrepreneurship, software development, writing, etc.

In urgent crisis situations, I am at my best! If you want to brainstorm some creative new ideas—I’m your guy.

There are three different presentations of ADHD: predominantly inattentive, predominantly hyperactive-impulsive, and combined presentation.

PREDOMINANTLY INATTENTIVE PRESENTATION

Fails to pay close attention to details or makes careless mistakes Has trouble holding attention Does not seem to listen when spoken to directly Has trouble following through on instructions Has trouble organizing tasks and activities Avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to do tasks requiring sustained mental effort

Easily distracted Forgetful in dai...

According to the DSM-5-TR, the criterion for an adult diagnosis of ADHD is to have five or more symptoms of either inattentive or hyperactive-impulsive presentation or five or more of both (combined presentation).

For example, someone with a predominantly hyperactive-impulsive presentation as a child may “mellow out” over time, leading to a combined or inattentive presentation as an adult. Their diagnosis didn’t change—it’s still just ADHD. But the way it presents itself has changed.

They don’t explore issues like motivation, hyperfocus, emotional dysregulation, rejection sensitivity, time management, and memory deficits.

But when you have ADHD, your attention assistant rarely knows which data is important and which to ignore.

It’s almost like your brain has become overwhelmed with all the constant data, so when it finds something interesting, it ignores everything else entirely. Your focus narrows to that single thing, which may or may not be important.

wasn’t just focused. I was hyperfocused. So focused that other signals couldn’t reach me.

flow state occurs when someone becomes fully engaged and immersed in an activity. It often happens when there is a perfect alignment of challenge and skill level. Many people refer to it as “being in the zone,” that moment when you’re performing at your best and getting things done with ease. In a flow state, you may find yourself thinking (and believing), “I can’t be stopped!” Crucially, though, you can redirect your focus to whatever task needs to be done.

In hyperfocus, on the other hand, you feel more like you’re stuck. There’s one direct line of focus between you and whatever you’re hyperfocused on.

With hyperfocus, there’s often a feeling of compulsion and completionism. Worried you’ll never have this motivation again or may forget the task if you hit pause, you feel you must keep going until you’ve accomplished whatever it is you think you need to do.

But once you finally do stop, you often realize the thing you were hyperfocused on wasn’t that important after all.

On the flip side, when hyperfocus is at its best, you can be super productive. You might have been avoiding an important project or school paper for the last four weeks, but suddenly the urgency of tomorrow’s deadline sends you to hyperfocus. You work at 10x speed and finish the entire thing in one (sleepless) night.

But even this “productive” version of hyperfocus can cause you trouble.

You won’t always be moving at 10x speed, so your normal workload may make you feel you are falling short of your potential. (That cursed word again—potential.) When you’ve experienced productive hyperfocus, you may think that level of productivity is your norm and anything less is a failure.

This knowledge lets you lean into your strength so you can, in the words of Jessica McCabe, “work with your brain, not against it.”1

Most people (often called neurotypical people) are motivated primarily by three key factors: importance, rewards, and consequences.

ADHD Motivation Myths 1. If something is important to you, you will do it. 2. Increasing a reward will increase your motivation. 3. Harsher consequences will give you more willpower.

Rewards and consequences that are immediate can sometimes motivate, but delayed rewards don’t really motivate us at all.

our brain. Specifically, one of the greatest challenges we face is task initiation—actually getting started on a task. Moving thought into action.

He theorizes that while most people have an importance-based nervous system, people with ADHD have an interest-based nervous system. They primarily find motivation through interest, novelty, challenge, and urgency.

I’ve spent many late nights working on something that I had weeks (or even months) to work on, waiting until the due date is the next day to finally find the motivation to get started. (And that’s often when I do my best work.)

Captivate (interest) Create (novelty) Compete (challenge) Complete (urgency)

4 Cs Template The 4 Cs are a handy template to help you put your motivation into gear. Before you start something, ask yourself the following questions: Captivate: how can I make it interesting? Create: how can I make it creative or novel? Compete: how can I make it competitive or challenging? Complete: how can I make its completion feel urgent? Here’s the formula: To get started on [important task/project], I can use [captivate, create, compete, complete] to ignite my motivation and build momentum.

The engine pulls a single car, and then another car, and another. As the engine continues moving forward and building speed, the coupler between each car tightens one by one, until eventually 12,000 tons of cargo are being pulled by the engine and the entire train is moving at top speed. So when we try to move the entire train at once, it’s no wonder we so often get stuck in place.

might sound logical that if you tackle the hardest problem first, the rest of the day will be easier. But the reality never seems to line up. The difficult task is often too much to confront before building up any momentum, so we end up staring at it all day and get nothing done at all.

So don’t try to eat the frog first: eat the ice cream first! Rather than starting with that big, ugly task you don’t want to do, find small (and fun!) tasks that naturally align with the Captivate, Create, Compete, Complete approach and start your day with those. Don’t save the fun tasks for last. Use them to get yourself moving down the track. Make that incremental progress. Build momentum.

One great paradox of having ADHD is your relationship with structure. It’s essential to help us manage our lives, yet we have a strong tendency to resist it.

To that end, we can avoid the constricting feeling of structure by building around positive habits.

That’s what you want to do with your routines. They should feel second-nature, so you don’t even know you’re engaged in a routine. You’re just doing something you usually do, without thinking about it. What gets rewarded gets repeated. If we want to create a routine that will stick, we want to make sure we are getting as much positive feedback as possible and very little negative feedback.

People with ADHD have a complicated relationship with time. We don’t seem to perceive it the same way as most neurotypical people.

We have a clockless mind. We only seem to understand two states: the present (“now”), and some vague version of all future time (“not now”).

A 2023 review on ADHD and time perception shows that people with ADHD have significant difficulties with time estimation.1

Since people with ADHD struggle with estimating time, they don’t hear the internal warnings neurotypical people do when they procrastinate and put things off. There’s no alarm shouting, “There’s not enough time for this later!”

Burnout is often the result when your overcommitting catches up to you and becomes overwhelming.

René Brooks says you should “guard your yes with your life.”2 Stay strong and intentionally start with “no” as your default answer. Refuse to agree to every single new opportunity that comes your way.