ADHD is not what you think.

ADHD isn’t what I thought it was — and I have it. Most people think it's about being unable to focus. And sure, that’s part of it.

But here’s what really threw me: hyperfixation — when your brain zeroes in so hard on something that hours pass in what feels like minutes.

It can be a superpower. Four hours of deep dive, and suddenly you’ve finished a week’s worth of work.

But it’s unpredictable. And you can’t force it.

It depends on being really interested in what you're doing. As an ADHD person, you can't hyperfixate on something you really don't like.

You can’t summon it on command. You can’t flip it on like a switch.

Here's what I've been thinking on: how do I channel this superpower?

Follow the directive ‘know thyself’ — if I know I tend to hyperfixate on what I love, how can I align that with work that creates real value in the world? Are there ways of framing my work to spark that deep enthusiasm — the kind that unlocks this herculean focus?

I’ve seen this hyperfocus in action — and not always in the most productive ways.

At a coding bootcamp, I had a running joke with my friend Peter — flipping each other off at unexpected moments. What started with simple teasing escalated into a full-blown prank: I wrote a script using the Slack API to impersonate everyone in class, scheduling a bot to have each person flip him off at once.

A friend in our cohort came to me and said "man, if you put half the attention on your coding work as you did for this prank, you'd be a rockstar."

And that's the rub. The hyperfixation takes hold when it takes hold — when it came to making a joke to make others laugh, I had an abundance of motivation. But when it came to coding features I didn’t care about, I felt totally drained.

It's a tricky thing when it comes to the workplace. While ADHD is very real, telling your boss you can't motivate yourself to do the required work doesn't exactly signal that you're great to work with.

If you have experience with ADHD, you can probably relate. And while I don't have a solution, perhaps we can explore this idea together.

Can we find work — or aspects of our current work — that draw out our superpower to hyperfixate?

Can we channel that focus into something valuable for others?

Can we energize ourselves toward meaningful goals?

Here's the core question: how do you make your brain work for you, not against you?

The challenge is not to mask our behaviors or conform ourselves into a mold that doesn't fit. It's about knowing ourselves — awareness of the pitfalls and harnessing the gifts.

Hyperfixation isn’t a flaw. It’s power — if you learn to harness it.

If this resonates, I’d love to hear how you’ve navigated this — or how you’ve learned to aim your own “superpowers.”