Hyperfocusing with ADHD

For those of you with ADHD, you may be familiar with the concept of hyperfocus, where you become so engrossed in a topic or activity that you shut the world out. This can be both a blessing and a curse, as it can lead to periods of intense productivity and creativity, but can also lead to wasting time and losing track of time.

Personally, I have had a love-hate relationship with hyperfocus throughout my life. I've had hyperfocuses on topics that were not particularly useful, such as getting lost in Wikipedia and YouTube videos about Alanis Morissette, but I've also had hyperfocuses that have been incredibly beneficial, such as my passion for video editing.

About 10 years ago, I started a blog and began filming myself exercising and participating in races. I found it easy to pick up the technology and began spending hours watching tutorials on YouTube and using iMovie to edit my videos. This eventually led to creating content that was widely shared and even monetized.

However, the downside is that the hyperfocus can't be controlled or turned on on demand. It's a random occurrence that can make it hard to focus on work or school projects. But, if you're lucky, your hyperfocus may align with your passion or career.

Hyperfocus can be a superpower, but it's important to be mindful of how much time you're spending on a particular topic or activity and make sure it's not negatively affecting other areas of your life.


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Transcript

Come to my ADHD superpower is a podcast about reframing ADHD by focusing on what we acceler open our professional and personal lives my name is Sean and I was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 45 yes I labeled myself as lazy or useless at certain things like paying bills or attending and remembering appointments I finally had an explanation of those ADHD isn't always a superpower but bye Google boy have we got a topic for you this week it's this weekend so for those of you with ADHD you're probably kind of nodding and recognition than you and you know exactly what I'm talking about but for those who don't have ADHD or maybe parents of children means that you're so focused that you kind of shut the world out so these can be kind of interest that you you know have for a long time or they might just be a topic that you're looking up for whatever reason you know something something I have a couple of kind of things I have periodic kind of hyperfocuses where I think of one that I am happened to me probably a few months ago now I was listening to the radio and I heard Alanis Morissette come on and I was never really a massive fan of her but you know when I was growing up in the nineties a rabbit hole of looking on Wikipedia and then going on to YouTube and before I knew it I think I think I started looking into this at 9:00 in the morning and then I don't think I even ate anything or drunk anything and it was kind of 2:00 p.m. and I thought wow I really lost a whole day here you know looking up looking up yeah there's a variety of usefulness of this kind of hyperfocusing but yeah I would say I do have some others that are more kind of productive and maybe help more helpful in my career and something that I'm really passionate about is video editing I got into video editing about or I want to say 10 years ago because I had I had a Blog at the time so I would film races and I would I would film myself exercising and you know make a short kind of 3 minute video then I would post on YouTube not a huge amount and I and I kind of really got into that and I I found it quite easy because I guess because of because of this sort of hyper Focus kind of obsessive kind of mentality that I think a lot of people with ADHD and autism have and I was able to really pick up kind of using the technology really quickly and and you know I'm spending hours watching things on YouTube how to how to use iMovie that I was using the time I've kind of moved on since and now using kind of more advanced kind of video editing programs but that's kind of how I started and yeah this this Are the parts of the world so we need to be able to kind of do training and share content and kind of update people so so yeah I've ended up and kind of creating some video content that has been shared widely some sometimes the video content is just some fun you know like Christmas video and sometimes it's been kind of you know more and more work focused and kind of yeah more around some training that we're doing for example so yeah I think this is how it can be a superpower if you're lucky and you're hyper Focus or the thing you're really passionate about and kind of can be productive at work or it can be monetized somehow yeah I don't really encourage kind of monetizing your passions because yeah I think that's very kind of capitalist and you don't need to be amazing everything you do you just need to you just need to enjoy it but I do things so yeah that's my hyper Focus beat I think the issue that a lot of people who have ADHD or Autism have is is kind of this hyper Focus you can't kind of turn it on on demand like you know oh I have some homework to do or I have a work project to do you know it doesn't work like that unfortunately not very helpful a bit random kind of kind of thing so yeah that's that's the only downside I would say and you can kind of lose time and you know before you know it at the weekends gone and you've been sitting in your pajamas kind of going down a rabbit hole of Wikipedia and you don't even know how you got there and you don't even know what time it is sort of thing so yeah it is not always terribly productive but a lot of the time that they'll be something that will kind of translate into your work life or be helpful in your personal life as well because you know with my with my video editing as well I've made family videos and things like that that we can kind of keep and treasure so I think I think it really depends what your passions are and you know yeah so so I do think it's a superpower and you know and I'm great in a quiz because I know so many random things yeah so so that that's kind of hyper focusing and I'd love to hear also some examples of your of your topics that you and passions and things that you kind of hyper focus on and kind of way you've lost time as well and random things that you you've been looking into as well would be great to hear and that's the end of this week