September 20, 2024 • 48 mins
"Everything you Wanted to Know about: hyperfocus." Russ joins Regina on the show again to go into greater depth on a topic of particular interest to spicy brained people: hyperfocus. We discuss in greater detail how hyperfocus is different from being goal oriented, how it feels to be in a hyperfocused state, and what it's like to have it suddenly end. (Hint: that last one is NOT GOOD.)
Check out the Pomo-Doro timer that Russ' coworker built. The Pomodoro method is a great way of helping manage your time and keep yourself on track!
This is a series Regina will be hosting with Russ. Let us know if you have any neurospicy topics you'd like us to discuss!
About Regina McMenomy Ph.D.
Host of the Divergent Paths Podcast | ADHD & Neurodiversity Advocate | Founder, Divergent Paths Consulting
Welcome to Divergent Paths, a podcast dedicated to exploring life, work, and creativity through the lens of neurodiversity. Hosted by Regina, founder of Divergent Paths Consulting, the show delves into the experiences of individuals navigating ADHD and other invisible disabilities. As someone who received a late ADHD diagnosis, Regina brings personal insights and professional expertise to each episode, helping listeners find new ways to thrive in a neurotypical world.
With over 20 years of experience in instructional design, project management, and coaching, Regina is passionate about creating inclusive spaces where neurodiverse individuals can succeed. Through this podcast, Regina shares conversations with experts, professionals, and everyday people, offering tips, strategies, and stories of empowerment.
Tune in to learn how to embrace neurodivergence, redefine success, and chart your own path forward.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Building breaks in any kind of flow state for me is almost impossible.
(00:06):
So if I am in the hyper focus and I am writing, I want to stay there.
I want to stay there as long as I can to do as much as I possibly can in that.
I don't always recognize the hyper focus when I'm in it.
I don't recognize the cost it's going to pull from me to expend so much energy in a compressed
(00:27):
amount of time.
Hello and welcome to Divergent Paths.
I'm your host, Dr. Regina McMenemy.
I am a doctor, but not that kind of doctor.
(00:48):
And this is a podcast, not medical advice.
Have you always felt a little different, but didn't know why?
Have you struggled with tasks that some people seem to handle with ease?
Are you mystified by social norms and interactions?
Divergent Paths is a podcast for late diagnosed neurodivergent people to discuss their journeys,
discovering the joys and frustrations of having a spicy brain.
(01:10):
Each episode, I will interview someone who discovered they have ADHD,
autism, or a combination of the two later in life.
What defines a later in life diagnosis?
Anytime the realization happens outside of the quote unquote norm of childhood and adolescence.
Everything you wanted to know about is a series of episodes Russ and I are starting,
(01:31):
where we will go into greater depth about some of the unique aspects of neuro spicy brains.
For this episode, we discuss all things hyper focus, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
So stay tuned and thanks for listening to Divergent Paths.
We did that first episode and there were so many topics that we gently covered,
(01:54):
but I feel like getting a little deeper into those would be very good for people that are listening,
especially the topic of hyper focus.
So in that first episode, we talked about it and we mentioned it and then we walked away from it.
So we did.
We should probably have a little definition of that.
Okay. So I took a little time and looked up some official definitions because I have like,
(02:18):
you know, ideas myself about what hyper focus is.
And so the National Library of Medicine defines hyper focus as
phenomenon that reflects one's complete absorption in a task to a point where the person appears to
completely ignore or tune out everything else.
It is generally reported to occur when a person has engaged in an activity that is particularly fun or interesting.
(02:45):
And looking up the definition, I was surprised to find it's not an official signifier of ADHD.
It's not something that like in the diagnostic criteria, they want to know that you hyper focus.
Like that's not something to be an indication that you have ADHD.
And that it is also associated with autism and much to my surprise, schizophrenia, which I did not know.
(03:08):
Really?
Yeah. Yeah. So that was new.
I didn't know that.
I mean, I knew it was likely associated as well with autism because I think autism and ADHD are very
closely related to each other, but I didn't know that it was also associated with schizophrenia.
Yeah.
So, okay.
That's the, you know, the, the read from a book definition.
(03:31):
Yes.
But really like the, that's not what people are feeling.
No.
That's, that's where we, we want to go.
What does hyper focus feel like?
It feels like nothing else exists other than what you're focused on.
Like there, there is nothing else in the world and it is, it can be intoxicating.
(03:59):
And one of the reasons for that is what's happening in your brain is when you're hyper focused on
something, you are receiving a lot of dopamine.
So you're receiving a lot of what ADHD brains struggle, not necessarily to produce dopamine,
but to process it.
So to get to that point where you're like, oh, I'm going to get to that point.
So to get to that point, like dopamine is what helps you get things done.
(04:24):
So like, um, for neuro typical people who are not, you know, neurodiverse,
when they finish a task, they get a shot of dopamine.
They get like, oh, I feel good because I finished my laundry or, or whatever else.
That's not always the case for people with neurodivergence.
You don't always have that, that influx of dopamine from just completing something.
(04:52):
In fact, a lot of people who have ADHD will feel nothing completing a task, even big things.
Like they'll finish like their college degree and you're supposed to be like, yeah, I did this
or whatever.
Or I finished some big project and you're supposed to get this like, oh yay, look at
what I did.
And a lot of people with ADHD will report not feeling that way, finishing something.
Um, and I find I like hyper-focus can very much be like a flow state where I just kind
(05:20):
of get into it.
And the first episode I talked about, like, I cleaned my house one day and I didn't set
out or plan to clean my house that day.
It just became the hyper-focus for the day was okay, I'm doing this.
And after recording that episode, one of the things that I wanted to make sure I talked
about in terms of hyper-focus is like, it is great when the hyper-focus is cleaning my
(05:44):
house and that's what I need to do.
It's great.
I just go from task to task.
I get a bunch of things done.
I feel really good.
Um, you know, because hyper-focus in the moment can feel really good, like while you're in
it, it's great.
Um, but it is not as great when my hyper-focus is on like a TV show.
(06:06):
Like, let's say I start something and I get really engaged in that show and I want to
keep watching.
I just binged, um, uh, there's a new show on Netflix with Jeff Goldblum called, um,
chaos.
Have you seen?
No, I haven't.
Anyway, it's only, uh, only it's eight episodes.
I think it's eight episodes, but they're long episodes.
(06:28):
They're close to, you know, they're at least over 45 minutes.
They're probably all close to like 50 minutes an episode.
Um, and the cast is amazing and the story was really, you know, it's kind of crazy and
kind of off kilter, but it was, I watched it the whole thing in a day because once I
(06:49):
got in it, I was like, I, you know, I had other things I wanted to do.
It was a Saturday, you know, and I didn't have like plans that I needed to like stop
and like interrupt myself for, but so I just, I just watched the whole thing just straight
through.
And, um, and that is, that is less, less ideal.
I think of a hyper-focus because like that day I wanted to go out for a walk.
(07:11):
It was a nice day.
It was sunny.
It wasn't too hot.
I wanted to go for a walk.
I want to do some other good things for myself.
And I didn't do any of them because the hyper focus took over.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, I mean, as, as he was, he's Zeus, like, oh, he's king of the gods.
And he's completely unhinged, which was like, yeah.
(07:35):
Anyway.
Um, I, I can't help but wonder.
So are I, I just, you know, I'm, I'm thinking about this because, you know, I've got the
whole DIY for business show.
I deal a lot with like the whole, you know, on the, on the business consulting side, that's
been a lot of like what I've done.
(07:55):
I just sort of wonder, like, it seems like you're doing a lot of work on the business
side.
It seems like businesses are just catering to this, right?
Like the whole, let's bump out a hundred episodes and, you know, cause people are going to watch
them.
Let's put these really short videos on, you know, tick tock and YouTube.
So people just scroll and scroll.
(08:17):
The dopamine from tick tock.
Oh my God.
Right.
Right.
So it just like, it feels like it's, it's so much like, yeah, it is.
Our whole society has sort of moved to that sense of instant gratification, right?
Like quick and easy.
I mean, even with online shopping and, you know, I've noticed in the last year or so
(08:42):
that shopping from Amazon now it's like, oh, you can get this today, you know, that, that
and part of the problem with, with some of that, especially for people who struggle with
dopamine uptake and struggle with neurodivergence is those, those forms of dopamine that you
(09:04):
get like, like there are different, lots and lots of different ways for you to generate
dopamine.
When you're talking about scrolling tick tock and your, or YouTube shorts or whatever,
you're getting what is kind of like shallow or cheap dopamine.
Like it's quick, it's fast, and it feels really good in that moment.
(09:26):
We get the same thing from just from far phones in general, every time like a notification
hits on your phone, you get that, that, oh, oh, I have a thing.
Right.
And all of that is cheap dopamine too.
And so where it's great and I am not going to say that I don't do this because I have
(09:48):
a regular habit of probably scrolling tick tock for, you know, 20 minutes or so every day
before, before bed, which is a really bad habit.
Don't do it.
Yeah.
Don't be like me.
It just wakes you up, right?
It like wakes up your brain and you just continue forth.
Like I did that with jumping back to your Netflix thing.
(10:09):
I did that with American Horror Story.
Right. Where it was like, it's nine o'clock.
The kids are a bed, you know, I'm going to watch this.
And you watch three hours at night.
Exactly. All of a sudden, it's like two in the morning.
I mean, I don't know if that was hyper focus or just hyper fright.
I mean, I was so afraid.
(10:29):
I'm like, I'm going to watch the next one just to see if this guy lives.
Right.
And they're going to be like, right now?
Yeah.
Oh, man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I wonder on the flip side, though, are there tools that you use to help control the hyper focus?
Are there is there tools and technology that you try?
Like there are there are definitely ways.
(10:50):
And I will say, we talked about this a little bit in the first episode.
So I do take ADHD medication now and I take what is an extended release medication.
And that provides us like I have an even level while the medication is active in my system.
(11:10):
I have like a standard accessible amount of dopamine.
So where I was in constant like need to seek it and to control and like like figure out how to access or manage it.
I don't I don't have as much need to do that now because I have this like steady stream of dopamine that the stimulant helps provide.
(11:39):
And it's I'm on a really low dose.
I have always been very sensitive to stimulants.
So I knew when I went to my doctor to talk to her about this, like I didn't want to she wanted to start me on a slightly higher dose than I ended up starting on.
I started on the lowest dose I could.
And then I went one step up from there. So I still am on a very, very low dose of of this.
(12:00):
But it has provided a consistency for me that like that get up and go.
I don't have to talk myself into doing things.
That was a lot of what my time was spent on, like building myself up to.
OK, you're going to get up and you're going to clean the kitchen or you're going to get up and do this.
Like I just get up and do things now, you know, for me.
A good portion of the day and it peters out.
(12:23):
And by the end of the day, it's definitely not at the point where it is like we're recording this at 10 o'clock in the morning.
And this is like this is prime.
Like I took my medication at seven o'clock this morning.
Like by nine o'clock, I am like it's up, it's ready and I can just kind of sail through most of my day because of it.
When I didn't have that, I would I would have to go to the doctor.
(12:46):
When I didn't have that, I would I would have rituals that would get me into a similar space.
For whatever reason, this like this time of day has always been a high, highly productive time for me.
Like I'm not I used to joke that I'm like I'm not a morning person.
I'm not an I'm not an evening person.
(13:07):
I'm definitely tend a little bit more toward evening these days.
But I'm kind of like a midday bird or whatever.
I don't know, like not an early bird, not a late bird, but like middle of the morning is my time.
So I used to structure my days so that I would put, you know, 10 to two as the window for me to do as much work as I could.
(13:32):
And when I was writing my dissertation, that was always my writing time.
When I was interviewing people for my dissertation, I could do that at any time of the day because interviewing and talking to people provides me dopamine.
So like getting those activities and like recording this podcast, these are things that are already like ramping up for me.
But things that are more that require more executive function and more decision making, like writing and a different type of focus, I need to do those in like whatever that window is.
(14:02):
So, yeah.
How do you how do you feel on the on the other side of it?
Like once it's done, like it's you've hyper focused on something and, you know, like let's go back again to the to the Netflix thing, because that was more of like, OK, you said the cleaning thing.
Well, that was a good thing.
Right.
Watching Netflix all day and not doing these other things that you could have or should have been doing.
(14:26):
How do you feel at the end of that?
In an earlier time of my life, I would have felt bad.
I would have felt like I had wasted a day like I had not done like I had not done what I set out to do.
I would I would be really bad about beating myself up about it.
And I am I am more forgiving of myself now of days like that, because I have a very dynamic life.
(14:52):
I have a lot of a lot of things happening all the time.
And a lot of it is out of my control and I have to manage.
And I'm not talking about like my my family necessarily like my immediate family, but I have like responsibilities to many things outside of just my immediate daily life.
(15:15):
And it is a lot to carry a lot of the time.
And I tend toward perfectionism and wanting to be quote unquote good or right or whatever.
And so when I used to have days when I didn't my productivity was low and I felt like, oh, I didn't do as much.
I used to beat myself up enough, beat myself up a lot about it because I didn't get enough done.
(15:40):
And now I can step back and say, you know, I can't always control the hyper focus and OK, I can't always control the hyper focus.
And OK, I spent a day when I, you know, the stakes were low.
I wasn't I didn't stand anybody up.
I didn't cancel plans.
I didn't, you know, drop out of doing things to drop out of doing things.
I had a day where it just went a direction that I wasn't expecting it to go.
(16:03):
And now I'm more forgiving of that.
There are times when I drop out of hyper focus, especially if I am in a project and it doesn't get finished where I feel I don't feel good.
Like I feel like and then I can't like a hyper focus will deplete you.
Let's let's put it that way.
Hyper focus depletes my decision making ability.
(16:27):
And so when I'm done and it's gone and I'm not finished with the project in a way that I feel satisfied about it, which is one of the things like I talked about.
I'll go back to the cleaning day.
Like I could feel good because even if I didn't get everything done that day, I still had more done than I started out the day with.
Right.
But like I've been working on a huge project of reorganizing my garage and sorting through a lot of stuff that I have.
(16:54):
And I have I've had a lot of loss in the last seven or eight years.
I've had three immediate family members die in the last three years.
And I have been in a very deep survival mode from a lot of that.
And I have a lot of stuff like a lot of stuff that came from sorting through the ends of people's lives.
And this just got kind of depressing and dark.
(17:17):
But like this is part of it.
And I spent a good portion of the last few months on this project.
And my hyper focus is not there anymore.
And it's not finished.
And I go out in my garage now and I'm like, so you hyper focus to a point of where now it's like, I don't I just don't want to handle.
(17:39):
I don't.
Yeah.
And I have both.
Like, I don't like I can't bring myself to get back into the space to finish it right now.
And it's it's not bad, but it's not done.
And it is functional and it's more functional than it was when I started significantly more functional than it was when I started.
And it's in decent shape, but it's not done.
(17:59):
And it isn't I can't pull myself back to do it again.
I was going to do it a couple of weekends ago.
I set aside.
Actually, I think that was one of the things I was supposed to do on the Jeff Goldblum day.
What you need is a TV in your garage.
I have been considering that very thing, actually.
(18:22):
I just set my I have a walking pad and I just set it up in front of my TV so I can walk because it's kind of we're coming into colder seasons and walking outside isn't going to be really good.
Speaking of which, if you want like good resources for dopamine production, walking and physical exercise and especially walking and being out in nature, like as cliche as it is, like hiking is really good for your brain.
(18:47):
OK, so so walking is good.
Even with something good like that, can you get hyper focused on that?
And then you're just doing it too much.
All of a sudden, instead of walking, you know, five miles, you're walking 50.
Does that even is that a concern that people could should have?
I mean, you can take anything too far, right?
(19:08):
Like, you know, in in my time researching video games, often people will ask me about like video game addiction and things like that.
And my answer is always that, you know, too much of anything can be bad for you.
And and that's kind of the thing is like with with your brain, you want and with like with your brain, if you're neurodivergent, even if you're neurotypical.
(19:35):
Kind of like you want your diet, your physical diet to not be the same thing every day.
Right. Like you need to eat a variety of things to kind of like get a variety of nutrients.
Right. Your brain needs the same thing.
Your brain, you can have tick tock dopamine like it's not, you know, bad.
(19:56):
But if you're only getting your dopamine from tick tock, then that's bad.
Right. Right.
And it's the same thing with if you do push it to, you know, oh, I feel so good walking two miles.
I'll walk three. I'll walk five. I'll walk, you know, whatever.
And if you don't train and you're not you're not doing, you know, weights a couple of days a week and you're not doing stretching a couple of days a week.
(20:19):
Like you are going to take and you're going to hurt your body in the ways that doing too much of one activity is going to hurt your body.
So, yes, there are definitely downsides to like falling into that kind of long term hyper focus.
OK, so now I'm going to ask you this.
(20:40):
OK, you get into this hyper focus routine and I've seen this.
People get into this hyper focus thing and they're just they want to get this thing done.
It's like I need to get this thing done.
And then somebody comes along and asks you a question.
Oh, God.
Asking you to take away from that hyper focus.
(21:04):
How do you handle that?
Sometimes not well.
I ask that question as nicely as possible.
You did ask my question as nicely as I first thought about.
I should just interrupt you right in the middle of your answer and ask.
I think drive you crazy, but I'm being nice.
(21:26):
Yeah, thank you for not doing that.
Yeah, I mean, you you can get angry like there are you can get angry, frustrated.
One of the things for me about hyper focus is I don't always realize I'm in it when I'm in it.
Like it because it is so consuming, like I'm not I'm not thinking about it.
(21:50):
But when I'm interrupted, like I know it's gone.
And sometimes depending on the interruption, depending on what it is that I'm focused on,
sometimes the interruption won't be a big deal and I'll just sail right back into it.
But sometimes it ends it and it's gone.
And and that's the whole thing about like it being fleeting and the frustrating
(22:12):
feeling of not being able to it's not like we talked about in the first episode.
It's not a switch. I don't get to just turn it on when I want it on.
Like I have to follow it when it comes.
And that's one of the reasons why like I need a flexible schedule because like even with the
medication, I'll still hyper focus sometimes at like eight o'clock at night and, you know,
(22:34):
need to do something and get in the get in the state and I'm working on something and want to
follow it. So. And how does it like thinking about like relationships or family?
How does it impact those relationships? I mean, it was hard as a mom.
Like it was hard when I became a mom because like I couldn't I couldn't follow it like I used to.
(23:00):
Right. Because the demands on your schedule anymore.
No, like like my my time is owed to, you know, to this person who I brought into the world and who
I am inherently responsible for. And I had, you know, had the luxury of having a child
later in life and, you know, the ability to do that.
(23:22):
And so I had had a good portion of my life without, you know, I could just always run on whatever
whatever it was. And then that becomes not a thing when when you have a child. But I'd also say
that once my daughter was born, it was really hard for me to hyper focus on anything else.
Like she was my hyper focus until I felt like she was able to like function.
(23:45):
Right. More completely.
And I think the fact that I became a parent not where I had family, like I don't have my
my, you know, blood family doesn't live near me. So like my I didn't have my mom or my her dad's mom,
you know, here to be like grandparents to help kind of alleviate some of that.
(24:07):
So it was pretty much just he and I, you know, going through those first couple of years through
toddlerhood until we got like some caregivers. And once we had a caregiver and we had somebody
who could come in and like be she essentially became the extension of that. And then because
I was still working through all this, then I had to be able to try to rein in my hyper focus more
(24:30):
so that I could work in the three or four hours a day that I had her caregiver so that I could
like sit down and, you know, at the time I was teaching sit down and grade as many papers as I
could in that time. One thing I I always find it awkward when I when I meet somebody that's about
(24:51):
to have a kid, I always want to say you're going to be exhausted and you're going to potentially
just burn out. I would love to be able to say that, but I know it's not appropriate to say
that to somebody. So if I recently if I sent you this episode, this is why
(25:12):
that I mean, the exhaustion is real. Right. And so I would think you're hyper focused on
that for a long like, you know, that send in particular. I'm going to instead, though,
make this about like your dissertation. OK, right. Like that is a long process.
Yep. There is an end date to that. Like, you know, like you got to have it done by the time
(25:34):
it's got to be ready. So let's talk about that one instead on this. But the.
Exhaustion is it like, is it happening throughout? Is that like a pitfall that's happening
throughout the entire process? Like you're just dealing with cycles of, man, I worked
(25:56):
12 hours on this. The next day, you're just exhausted. And then the next day, you know,
I got to get back into this and kind of finish it. So you work another 12 hours.
So is that happening? Is that cycle happening the entire time?
Yeah, that's happening the entire time. And in reflection, I would have to go back and think a
little bit more. But like the day that I binge the show, I might have actually been in burnout and
not been thinking about the fact that I was in burnout. You know, that's what I was thinking.
(26:20):
Yeah. Yeah. And that I had and that I needed it. And so that's that's also the reason why I'm a
little kinder for myself to myself about these than I like when those days happen, because
because I don't always I don't always recognize the hyper focus when I'm in it. I don't
recognize the cost it's going to pull from me to, you know, to expend so much energy
(26:45):
in a compressed amount of time and to to allow myself like
building breaks in any kind of flow state for me is almost impossible. So if I am in the hyper
focus and I am writing and like, you know, in that I want to I want to stay there, like I want to
(27:07):
stay there as long as I can to do as much as I possibly can in that. And and I will not. I told
we said this in the first episode, like it's it's a hyper goal oriented or you hyper focus. And it's
like those are not the same things like I shut down. I don't recognize that I'm hungry. I don't
(27:28):
recognize that I haven't gotten up from my desk, you know, and and some of the things I have done
to compensate that is like, it's it's silly. But like my Apple watch that tells me you haven't
stood up in an hour stand up like I get mad sometimes because if I'm in a hyper focus and
I want to stay in it, I don't want to stand up and I just do the thing you ever see people do
(27:53):
with their watches where they like wave their arms so that they get their stand thing. So it
goes away. Right. Like I still do that. But I will also kind of log. OK, you you don't have much more
time left here. Like you need to take care of your body, too. And, you know, oh, it's 1150 and it's
doing this. You haven't eaten since eight o'clock in the morning. You need to like check in with
(28:15):
your body and, you know, do that interoception where you're like, OK, I'm going to be hangry
pretty soon. So I should probably eat, you know, at certain times in my life, on certain important
days, I have assigned people the task of making sure I eat. So like on my graduation day,
it was Iris's dad's responsibility when I graduated my Ph.D. to make sure I ate something
(28:41):
before we went to the venue for the graduation, like to make sure I was fed because it was a
long graduation. It was going to be hours. I was going to be sitting there or whatever,
like make sure I eat something because I will forget and I will go through it and then I'll be
like falling apart at the end because I'll be so hungry. So, OK, you mentioned the hyper goals
(29:04):
and, you know, like doing what you did right to get to that point. Like you needed to be
focused. I wouldn't say hyper focused. You need to be focused. You needed to like set goals.
You needed to make stuff happen. You needed to. And, you know, I think of let's say, you know,
the athletes, right, like athletes. You know, you you look at some of these people that were
(29:25):
like at the Olympics and it's like, how do they have that body? And I've got this one like what
is happening here? At least that's what I do. But it's because of the constant training and
it's getting up at, you know, five a.m. and, you know, going to the gym and doing, you know,
whatever practice that they need to do to get better. And then it's living their life for a
(29:47):
few hours and then going to the gym again and doing some other workout thing and then living
their life for a few more hours and then doing it again and then just repeating the next day.
Right. So there's that thing of like, you know, just the drive to be like just
focused on something. And some will call that like it's hyper focused on one thing.
(30:08):
Right. Like they're a specialist at something. We could use the same thing for, you know,
business. Right. There are people that are just specific to taxes. Like they love doing tax.
Exactly. I hate it. I don't get it, but I hire people for that. Right. My finance guy,
the guy who does like my financial advisor, a 100 percent ADHD, but but loves loves this is his
(30:34):
special interest. Like this is the thing that he loves and that has persisted for him that he's
always like, I love it. He's like, I can sit and I'm like, I am so glad because like you do good
things with my money and thank you. You know, I don't have a lot of money. So like the fact that
you can help me make it more than it was is just amazing. Thank you. And I'm so glad.
(30:57):
For him, that is like that. That still is his ADHD. It's just ADHD and math. And I would actually
pose to you that I think a high number of people that you're talking with and you're working with
in your business are entrepreneurs, right? Are people who started their own business. Yep.
That the like percentage of people who are neurodiverse, who are entrepreneurs is really
(31:22):
high. Yeah, because it allows for it accommodates entrepreneurship, accommodates neurodivergence.
Right. It allows you on your own schedule. You're yeah, you you can you work on your own schedule.
You set your own goals. You're your own boss. You're not dealing with, you know, somebody telling
(31:45):
you what to do and your brain just because like some I used to think that like my brother's
rebellion against everything anybody ever told them to do was them just being jerks. And I won't say
that they're not jerks because they, you know, they're jerks sometimes. We're all jerks and
we're not listening. So definitely not listening. There's no chance. But like that that that rebel,
(32:12):
that rebellion, like I didn't recognize that I was the same way until one of my brothers like said to
me, you know, I when I was in the hyper focus over my daughter and my mom died when my daughter was
a year and a half old. And so like, that was a really hard time because like then that's part
of where like I talked about those other responsibilities I had a lot of that started,
(32:35):
you know, while she was very young and it was grieving at the same time. So like it was a very
messy thing. But I said, I would tell people that my daughter has been a child of her own mind
since, you know, since she was born and and she was stubborn in some very interesting ways.
She would not be spoon fed. I could not spoon feed her. She would not she would not eat from a spoon.
(32:58):
She wanted to feed herself. And so I had to learn what baby lead weaning was because like I had to
figure out a way to feed her that she would eat. Right. Right. And she wanted nothing more than to
get up and walk around like she wanted to walk. She wanted to sit. She wanted to walk. She was
very physical from the very beginning. And like I am not like like I can I can dance and I've got
(33:25):
like, you know, you know, some things I'm really good at physically, but I'm not a particularly
athletic person. So to have a child that was like, I need to move was, you know,
a certain type of fascination to sell. OK, so you put me down this entrepreneurship.
(33:47):
Yeah. Path. So I've got to go there. Yeah. You OK. So you it was it was baby led, as you said.
Yes. So for an entrepreneur that's hiring people, that's bringing people in and dealing with a team,
are you is this like how do you work with that? Like what's your advice on that?
(34:10):
Well, I guess my biggest piece of advice would be to to recognize like people's strengths and to
recognize. It's not going to be one size fits all, right? Like the strategies that work for
some people with ADHD and autism and neurodivergence don't always work. And in addition to that, like
(34:33):
some of the things that have worked for me as strategies to manage my ADHD and accommodations
I made for myself have not persisted in my life. And I'll swing back to the dissertation.
So I use something writing my dissertation that's called the Pomodoro method. Have you ever heard of
this? Yep. OK, I've used that as well. Yes. So my entire dissertation was written using the
(34:58):
Pomodoro method where I would write and I would take a break and I would write and I would take a
break. And in my head, like because it's Pomodoro is tomato, right? Because the person who invented
it used a tomato timer when they invented it. Right. And so my metaphor for my dissertation
was I was making salsa because I was crushing tomatoes, you know, and, you know, Chris would
(35:21):
come home from work and he'd be like, how many tomatoes did you crush today? And this would be
like our conversation. And it would be like on a day when I crushed six, it would be like, oh,
that's fantastic. You did so much. That's so good. On a day when it was more like two, he's like,
OK, so what was going on? And I'm like, well, I had this happening in this and I got interrupted
with this and that. And like. We could kind of break through it more so. Right. We actually
(35:47):
at the company I work for, we one of our developers built out their own Pomodoro timer.
It's available. I'll we should even include that as a link in here because it's really cool because
it doesn't have most Pomodoro have that like bell at the end or like disturbing noise at the end.
Yeah, this one doesn't. And he built out the whole thing because he just wanted something
(36:07):
subtle in the background happening so that he doesn't have to. Yeah, I hated the bell.
The big interruption. Yeah. At the time I was working on my dissertation, I had an extension
for my browser that would not let me go to like Facebook or whatever when I was in a Pomodoro,
when I was in a round of, you know, a Pomodoro. There was a word for it. I don't know what that's
(36:34):
called. But yeah, session. Yeah. When I was in it, when I turned it on and I was, you know, whatever
the it was 25 and five minutes, I have never been able to use a Pomodoro method since.
I have never used it since my dissertation. I have I have not used it since that time. It was
the thing I used then and I have not gotten back to using it. I know it would still work. Like I
(36:57):
don't think it would be ineffective, but I've just never been able to get back to using it the same
way that I did for the dissertation. And that's the other thing I would say is like recognize that
accommodations aren't don't don't always persist. Right. They don't always carry through for you.
So like you might have an accommodation that works for a while and you might change. An example for
(37:23):
me of that is I redo my closet, my clothes closet, like probably once a year, I will reorganize
how how my clothes are organized because like something will work for a while and then
I will get annoyed with with it for whatever reason. Like I don't always know why. But like
(37:44):
for a long time, I had these black bins that I had like my t shirts and stuff in. And then I realized
that I was only wearing like the top t shirts, right? The top three or four because they were
the ones that were on the top of the dark bin. And I didn't know at this time that I had ADHD.
Now I understand ADHD. I recently got rid of my dresser entirely. I no longer have a dresser with
(38:08):
clothes drawers with clothes in it. Because I would forget that those clothes existed.
Like they just didn't exist anymore. They were in, you know, they were out of sight or whatever. So
my current closet setup, I can walk into my very, very small walk in closet. It's so tiny.
And I can stand in one place and I can see every type of clothing I can wear. Everything is
(38:34):
visible. And all my shoes are right there. All like everything is like I can walk in and I can see it.
And I still need to pull it out every now and then and like rotate the shirts through because I will
do that same thing where I'll just wear the top few that I keep washing. So I do have to like pull
it out and like kind of like re kind of jigger them. But I can stand in one place in my closet, see
(38:57):
everything. There's a chair in there for me to sit down and put my shoes on. So like everything is just
perfectly visible. And when I had my dresser, it sat outside my closet and I had like,
you know, t-shirts and leggings in like a couple of the drawers. And I would forget and I would open
the drawer and I'd be like, oh, that's right. You bought these new leggings for working out,
(39:19):
but you haven't worn them because I couldn't see them and they didn't they didn't exist for me.
And then on top of that, the top of the dresser became this place where I just collected stuff.
It never functioned in any way for me other than I would put stuff there and I would forget that it
existed even though I could see it. Right. Yeah. That it existed and it just became this big pile
(39:42):
of like a collection of stuff of what I call like the unmade what they call clutter unmade decisions.
Right. So it would become a collection of unmade decisions. And I realized that the dresser wasn't
functioning for me in that I would forget the clothes were in there. And on top of it became
this doom pile of just stuff I didn't organize or put away where it was supposed to be put away.
(40:05):
And my visual editing goes as such. I cannot, I will not see something like my desk is still
a mess right now. Like if you look down from where we are on camera, we're not this is not a video
podcast, but Russ and I can see each other as we talk. If you saw this, my desk is kind of a mess.
I don't see it until it's all I can see. And then the hyper focus will often turn on to
(40:28):
I have to clean this up and I have to clean this up today because I can't handle it looking this
way anymore. And so I have tried to cut those places out of my life where I don't have like
just these random places to put things that they collect.
So I'm sort of the like, I don't know. I'm like a minimalist. Anything around me just bugs me. I
(40:55):
just want to get rid of it. Like I wear how many times have you seen me in a black t-shirt? Like
that's all I wear. Like I just want to make life 30 years. I don't care about those decisions. I
just want to, you know, I don't know. I think mine is about E. I don't know what that is.
(41:15):
Yeah. I mean, I did some of that too, where like I, the biggest thing about laundry that frustrates
me are socks. Like every time I see like a picture of someone who has a family with a lot of children,
the first thought I have is, oh my God, there's so many socks. Like awful, but it's true. Like
(41:39):
that is so many socks. How do you deal with so many socks? And so what I did for myself in the,
like I did a similar thing. I always wear black shoes. Like I like black. This is like a
persistent thing. You probably remember when I was not really emo, but a little emo in high school.
(42:01):
And I had like a black leather jacket I wore all the time and black backpack and you know,
black shoes have just been my thing. So a few years ago, again, this was pre-diagnosis.
An accommodation I made for myself was I just went and I bought the same black socks and I just
have a bin, an open bin of black socks and they're all the same. So like it doesn't matter. I just
(42:29):
reach in and grab two socks and that's the end of it. I was in a job interview and they had sent us
the questions ahead of time, which was great, but they had one question that they saved for the end
that they wanted to get kind of like a real reaction for. And the question was how do you
organize your sock drawer? And I said, I don't have a sock drawer and the looks on their faces.
(42:54):
I said, I have a sock bin and I described this exact thing where like I know the function that
socks need to have. Why am I making it hard for myself that I have all of these socks?
And there's a whole, a whole nother episode that we can do about, about clutter and stuff,
about socks. Sure. It can be, we can be the sock episode about like the way some neurodivergent
(43:21):
brains want to hold onto things. Cause at that time when I was going through the socks I had,
I had kept a pair of socks for years that I never wore because they were uncomfortable,
but I had literally kept them because they were like cashmere. So they were like these nice socks
and I had kept them and I, and they never wore them, but I kept them because somewhere in my
(43:42):
mind, because they were cashmere and they were nice socks. I needed to keep them.
Even though they didn't serve any purpose, you just had to have them. I just felt like I
couldn't get rid of them because they were nice socks. Right. Like, let's think about that for a
second. And you know how much, how much I had moved in a good portion of my life. I moved back and
(44:06):
forth across the country a couple of times. I lived many places in different places. Like I moved a
lot and I carried these stocks around for years until I was like, what am I doing? Why do I have
these stocks? If I don't wear them and I'm not going to. Right. Right. You may have just titled
(44:30):
this episode. I don't know. Possibly. Okay. So we're, we're heading up towards the end of this
episode. You talked about a lot of different things. We went through this whole hyper focus.
I tried to not hyper focus on just one question. Right. We talked about a lot of different things.
(44:52):
This is a very, there was a very nice feel of ADHD here where it stayed reasonably controlled,
but we still wandered. Maybe that's what you should do at the end of each one of your episodes is just
kind of figure out like, what was the HD ADHD score of this episode? Right. Right. How do we rank this?
(45:16):
But okay. So, you know, jumping back to earlier, like with, with society, like kind of almost
accommodating this with like the scrolly stuff and the binge watching and all of these different
things that are out there now, I would say capitalizing on it. Exactly. They've, they've
capitalized on it on the cheap dopamine. How do we, you know, how do we like not think like,
(45:40):
Oh, you know what, we have to adapt to this. We have like, this is bad. Me doing this is bad. This
is wrong. This is not the way, you know, things go. I shouldn't be been watching. I shouldn't be
doing this thing. Like how do you like make yourself feel good about this and okay with
this and just accept this? I think, I think a healthy dose dose of self forgiveness is really
(46:05):
important in this and to recognize that you can't always control it. And that, you know, I keep
coming back to that, but like, and maybe it's just my own garbage in this, my own baggage
of feeling like I should be able to have that switch and I should be able to point my laser
(46:28):
focus and my hyper focus at whatever it is I want to point it at that day. But I think just being
able to step back and recognize that it's okay to rest. And sometimes like, what if it's arresting
hyper-focus? What if that's what, you know, watching chaos, which have global and like,
they should be sponsoring me. You know, what if, what if it was a hyper-focus of rest?
(46:53):
Like, and what if you needed, like it, let's say you hope hyper-focus on reading a book,
like what if you needed to just sit and like, let that be what it was instead of feeling this
need to constantly be productive, to constantly do something, to use your time wisely, like all
of this stuff that we carry in all of this garbage and all of these beliefs that like,
(47:17):
we have to run ragged and you know, do and produce and be and all of that. What if we can just step
back from it and say, it's okay, but this was my hyper-focus today and that's all right. You know,
tomorrow's another day, you know, there's always a possibility for it to be something else then.
All right. Well, we've got, we've got more topics. Hopefully you'll let me come back
(47:40):
and we can chat more. I will. This is going to be a regular segment where Russ and I sort of dive
into some of these things about neurodivergence and some of these big topics that I really am
hoping that the interviews, I want to make sure stories are heard, but I would like them to be
listened to by people who don't have neurodivergence or maybe love somebody who does.
(48:03):
So that maybe they'll have a little empathy and understanding as well.
Thank you so much for listening. Do you experience hyper-focus? Do you relate to some of the stories
we shared in this episode? Does someone in your life experience hyper-focus and some of the things
(48:24):
we experienced in this episode? Let us know on Instagram at Divergent Paths Consulting,
what hyper-focus is like for you or the people in your life. Make sure to subscribe to this podcast,
wherever you listen, like, and leave a review and share with your spicy brain friends.
And until next time, stay spicy.
Building breaks in any kind of flow state for me is almost impossible.
(00:06):
So if I am in the hyper focus and I am writing, I want to stay there.
I want to stay there as long as I can to do as much as I possibly can in that.
I don't always recognize the hyper focus when I'm in it.
I don't recognize the cost it's going to pull from me to expend so much energy in a compressed
(00:27):
amount of time.
Hello and welcome to Divergent Paths.
I'm your host, Dr. Regina McMenemy.
I am a doctor, but not that kind of doctor.
(00:48):
And this is a podcast, not medical advice.
Have you always felt a little different, but didn't know why?
Have you struggled with tasks that some people seem to handle with ease?
Are you mystified by social norms and interactions?
Divergent Paths is a podcast for late diagnosed neurodivergent people to discuss their journeys,
discovering the joys and frustrations of having a spicy brain.
(01:10):
Each episode, I will interview someone who discovered they have ADHD,
autism, or a combination of the two later in life.
What defines a later in life diagnosis?
Anytime the realization happens outside of the quote unquote norm of childhood and adolescence.
Everything you wanted to know about is a series of episodes Russ and I are starting,
(01:31):
where we will go into greater depth about some of the unique aspects of neuro spicy brains.
For this episode, we discuss all things hyper focus, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
So stay tuned and thanks for listening to Divergent Paths.
We did that first episode and there were so many topics that we gently covered,
(01:54):
but I feel like getting a little deeper into those would be very good for people that are listening,
especially the topic of hyper focus.
So in that first episode, we talked about it and we mentioned it and then we walked away from it.
So we did.
We should probably have a little definition of that.
Okay. So I took a little time and looked up some official definitions because I have like,
(02:18):
you know, ideas myself about what hyper focus is.
And so the National Library of Medicine defines hyper focus as
phenomenon that reflects one's complete absorption in a task to a point where the person appears to
completely ignore or tune out everything else.
It is generally reported to occur when a person has engaged in an activity that is particularly fun or interesting.
(02:45):
And looking up the definition, I was surprised to find it's not an official signifier of ADHD.
It's not something that like in the diagnostic criteria, they want to know that you hyper focus.
Like that's not something to be an indication that you have ADHD.
And that it is also associated with autism and much to my surprise, schizophrenia, which I did not know.
(03:08):
Really?
Yeah. Yeah. So that was new.
I didn't know that.
I mean, I knew it was likely associated as well with autism because I think autism and ADHD are very
closely related to each other, but I didn't know that it was also associated with schizophrenia.
Yeah.
So, okay.
That's the, you know, the, the read from a book definition.
(03:31):
Yes.
But really like the, that's not what people are feeling.
No.
That's, that's where we, we want to go.
What does hyper focus feel like?
It feels like nothing else exists other than what you're focused on.
Like there, there is nothing else in the world and it is, it can be intoxicating.
(03:59):
And one of the reasons for that is what's happening in your brain is when you're hyper focused on
something, you are receiving a lot of dopamine.
So you're receiving a lot of what ADHD brains struggle, not necessarily to produce dopamine,
but to process it.
So to get to that point where you're like, oh, I'm going to get to that point.
So to get to that point, like dopamine is what helps you get things done.
(04:24):
So like, um, for neuro typical people who are not, you know, neurodiverse,
when they finish a task, they get a shot of dopamine.
They get like, oh, I feel good because I finished my laundry or, or whatever else.
That's not always the case for people with neurodivergence.
You don't always have that, that influx of dopamine from just completing something.
(04:52):
In fact, a lot of people who have ADHD will feel nothing completing a task, even big things.
Like they'll finish like their college degree and you're supposed to be like, yeah, I did this
or whatever.
Or I finished some big project and you're supposed to get this like, oh yay, look at
what I did.
And a lot of people with ADHD will report not feeling that way, finishing something.
Um, and I find I like hyper-focus can very much be like a flow state where I just kind
(05:20):
of get into it.
And the first episode I talked about, like, I cleaned my house one day and I didn't set
out or plan to clean my house that day.
It just became the hyper-focus for the day was okay, I'm doing this.
And after recording that episode, one of the things that I wanted to make sure I talked
about in terms of hyper-focus is like, it is great when the hyper-focus is cleaning my
(05:44):
house and that's what I need to do.
It's great.
I just go from task to task.
I get a bunch of things done.
I feel really good.
Um, you know, because hyper-focus in the moment can feel really good, like while you're in
it, it's great.
Um, but it is not as great when my hyper-focus is on like a TV show.
(06:06):
Like, let's say I start something and I get really engaged in that show and I want to
keep watching.
I just binged, um, uh, there's a new show on Netflix with Jeff Goldblum called, um,
chaos.
Have you seen?
No, I haven't.
Anyway, it's only, uh, only it's eight episodes.
I think it's eight episodes, but they're long episodes.
(06:28):
They're close to, you know, they're at least over 45 minutes.
They're probably all close to like 50 minutes an episode.
Um, and the cast is amazing and the story was really, you know, it's kind of crazy and
kind of off kilter, but it was, I watched it the whole thing in a day because once I
(06:49):
got in it, I was like, I, you know, I had other things I wanted to do.
It was a Saturday, you know, and I didn't have like plans that I needed to like stop
and like interrupt myself for, but so I just, I just watched the whole thing just straight
through.
And, um, and that is, that is less, less ideal.
I think of a hyper-focus because like that day I wanted to go out for a walk.
(07:11):
It was a nice day.
It was sunny.
It wasn't too hot.
I wanted to go for a walk.
I want to do some other good things for myself.
And I didn't do any of them because the hyper focus took over.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, I mean, as, as he was, he's Zeus, like, oh, he's king of the gods.
And he's completely unhinged, which was like, yeah.
(07:35):
Anyway.
Um, I, I can't help but wonder.
So are I, I just, you know, I'm, I'm thinking about this because, you know, I've got the
whole DIY for business show.
I deal a lot with like the whole, you know, on the, on the business consulting side, that's
been a lot of like what I've done.
(07:55):
I just sort of wonder, like, it seems like you're doing a lot of work on the business
side.
It seems like businesses are just catering to this, right?
Like the whole, let's bump out a hundred episodes and, you know, cause people are going to watch
them.
Let's put these really short videos on, you know, tick tock and YouTube.
So people just scroll and scroll.
(08:17):
The dopamine from tick tock.
Oh my God.
Right.
Right.
So it just like, it feels like it's, it's so much like, yeah, it is.
Our whole society has sort of moved to that sense of instant gratification, right?
Like quick and easy.
I mean, even with online shopping and, you know, I've noticed in the last year or so
(08:42):
that shopping from Amazon now it's like, oh, you can get this today, you know, that, that
and part of the problem with, with some of that, especially for people who struggle with
dopamine uptake and struggle with neurodivergence is those, those forms of dopamine that you
(09:04):
get like, like there are different, lots and lots of different ways for you to generate
dopamine.
When you're talking about scrolling tick tock and your, or YouTube shorts or whatever,
you're getting what is kind of like shallow or cheap dopamine.
Like it's quick, it's fast, and it feels really good in that moment.
(09:26):
We get the same thing from just from far phones in general, every time like a notification
hits on your phone, you get that, that, oh, oh, I have a thing.
Right.
And all of that is cheap dopamine too.
And so where it's great and I am not going to say that I don't do this because I have
(09:48):
a regular habit of probably scrolling tick tock for, you know, 20 minutes or so every day
before, before bed, which is a really bad habit.
Don't do it.
Yeah.
Don't be like me.
It just wakes you up, right?
It like wakes up your brain and you just continue forth.
Like I did that with jumping back to your Netflix thing.
(10:09):
I did that with American Horror Story.
Right. Where it was like, it's nine o'clock.
The kids are a bed, you know, I'm going to watch this.
And you watch three hours at night.
Exactly. All of a sudden, it's like two in the morning.
I mean, I don't know if that was hyper focus or just hyper fright.
I mean, I was so afraid.
(10:29):
I'm like, I'm going to watch the next one just to see if this guy lives.
Right.
And they're going to be like, right now?
Yeah.
Oh, man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I wonder on the flip side, though, are there tools that you use to help control the hyper focus?
Are there is there tools and technology that you try?
Like there are there are definitely ways.
(10:50):
And I will say, we talked about this a little bit in the first episode.
So I do take ADHD medication now and I take what is an extended release medication.
And that provides us like I have an even level while the medication is active in my system.
(11:10):
I have like a standard accessible amount of dopamine.
So where I was in constant like need to seek it and to control and like like figure out how to access or manage it.
I don't I don't have as much need to do that now because I have this like steady stream of dopamine that the stimulant helps provide.
(11:39):
And it's I'm on a really low dose.
I have always been very sensitive to stimulants.
So I knew when I went to my doctor to talk to her about this, like I didn't want to she wanted to start me on a slightly higher dose than I ended up starting on.
I started on the lowest dose I could.
And then I went one step up from there. So I still am on a very, very low dose of of this.
(12:00):
But it has provided a consistency for me that like that get up and go.
I don't have to talk myself into doing things.
That was a lot of what my time was spent on, like building myself up to.
OK, you're going to get up and you're going to clean the kitchen or you're going to get up and do this.
Like I just get up and do things now, you know, for me.
A good portion of the day and it peters out.
(12:23):
And by the end of the day, it's definitely not at the point where it is like we're recording this at 10 o'clock in the morning.
And this is like this is prime.
Like I took my medication at seven o'clock this morning.
Like by nine o'clock, I am like it's up, it's ready and I can just kind of sail through most of my day because of it.
When I didn't have that, I would I would have to go to the doctor.
(12:46):
When I didn't have that, I would I would have rituals that would get me into a similar space.
For whatever reason, this like this time of day has always been a high, highly productive time for me.
Like I'm not I used to joke that I'm like I'm not a morning person.
I'm not an I'm not an evening person.
(13:07):
I'm definitely tend a little bit more toward evening these days.
But I'm kind of like a midday bird or whatever.
I don't know, like not an early bird, not a late bird, but like middle of the morning is my time.
So I used to structure my days so that I would put, you know, 10 to two as the window for me to do as much work as I could.
(13:32):
And when I was writing my dissertation, that was always my writing time.
When I was interviewing people for my dissertation, I could do that at any time of the day because interviewing and talking to people provides me dopamine.
So like getting those activities and like recording this podcast, these are things that are already like ramping up for me.
But things that are more that require more executive function and more decision making, like writing and a different type of focus, I need to do those in like whatever that window is.
(14:02):
So, yeah.
How do you how do you feel on the on the other side of it?
Like once it's done, like it's you've hyper focused on something and, you know, like let's go back again to the to the Netflix thing, because that was more of like, OK, you said the cleaning thing.
Well, that was a good thing.
Right.
Watching Netflix all day and not doing these other things that you could have or should have been doing.
(14:26):
How do you feel at the end of that?
In an earlier time of my life, I would have felt bad.
I would have felt like I had wasted a day like I had not done like I had not done what I set out to do.
I would I would be really bad about beating myself up about it.
And I am I am more forgiving of myself now of days like that, because I have a very dynamic life.
(14:52):
I have a lot of a lot of things happening all the time.
And a lot of it is out of my control and I have to manage.
And I'm not talking about like my my family necessarily like my immediate family, but I have like responsibilities to many things outside of just my immediate daily life.
(15:15):
And it is a lot to carry a lot of the time.
And I tend toward perfectionism and wanting to be quote unquote good or right or whatever.
And so when I used to have days when I didn't my productivity was low and I felt like, oh, I didn't do as much.
I used to beat myself up enough, beat myself up a lot about it because I didn't get enough done.
(15:40):
And now I can step back and say, you know, I can't always control the hyper focus and OK, I can't always control the hyper focus.
And OK, I spent a day when I, you know, the stakes were low.
I wasn't I didn't stand anybody up.
I didn't cancel plans.
I didn't, you know, drop out of doing things to drop out of doing things.
I had a day where it just went a direction that I wasn't expecting it to go.
(16:03):
And now I'm more forgiving of that.
There are times when I drop out of hyper focus, especially if I am in a project and it doesn't get finished where I feel I don't feel good.
Like I feel like and then I can't like a hyper focus will deplete you.
Let's let's put it that way.
Hyper focus depletes my decision making ability.
(16:27):
And so when I'm done and it's gone and I'm not finished with the project in a way that I feel satisfied about it, which is one of the things like I talked about.
I'll go back to the cleaning day.
Like I could feel good because even if I didn't get everything done that day, I still had more done than I started out the day with.
Right.
But like I've been working on a huge project of reorganizing my garage and sorting through a lot of stuff that I have.
(16:54):
And I have I've had a lot of loss in the last seven or eight years.
I've had three immediate family members die in the last three years.
And I have been in a very deep survival mode from a lot of that.
And I have a lot of stuff like a lot of stuff that came from sorting through the ends of people's lives.
And this just got kind of depressing and dark.
(17:17):
But like this is part of it.
And I spent a good portion of the last few months on this project.
And my hyper focus is not there anymore.
And it's not finished.
And I go out in my garage now and I'm like, so you hyper focus to a point of where now it's like, I don't I just don't want to handle.
(17:39):
I don't.
Yeah.
And I have both.
Like, I don't like I can't bring myself to get back into the space to finish it right now.
And it's it's not bad, but it's not done.
And it is functional and it's more functional than it was when I started significantly more functional than it was when I started.
And it's in decent shape, but it's not done.
(17:59):
And it isn't I can't pull myself back to do it again.
I was going to do it a couple of weekends ago.
I set aside.
Actually, I think that was one of the things I was supposed to do on the Jeff Goldblum day.
What you need is a TV in your garage.
I have been considering that very thing, actually.
(18:22):
I just set my I have a walking pad and I just set it up in front of my TV so I can walk because it's kind of we're coming into colder seasons and walking outside isn't going to be really good.
Speaking of which, if you want like good resources for dopamine production, walking and physical exercise and especially walking and being out in nature, like as cliche as it is, like hiking is really good for your brain.
(18:47):
OK, so so walking is good.
Even with something good like that, can you get hyper focused on that?
And then you're just doing it too much.
All of a sudden, instead of walking, you know, five miles, you're walking 50.
Does that even is that a concern that people could should have?
I mean, you can take anything too far, right?
(19:08):
Like, you know, in in my time researching video games, often people will ask me about like video game addiction and things like that.
And my answer is always that, you know, too much of anything can be bad for you.
And and that's kind of the thing is like with with your brain, you want and with like with your brain, if you're neurodivergent, even if you're neurotypical.
(19:35):
Kind of like you want your diet, your physical diet to not be the same thing every day.
Right. Like you need to eat a variety of things to kind of like get a variety of nutrients.
Right. Your brain needs the same thing.
Your brain, you can have tick tock dopamine like it's not, you know, bad.
(19:56):
But if you're only getting your dopamine from tick tock, then that's bad.
Right. Right.
And it's the same thing with if you do push it to, you know, oh, I feel so good walking two miles.
I'll walk three. I'll walk five. I'll walk, you know, whatever.
And if you don't train and you're not you're not doing, you know, weights a couple of days a week and you're not doing stretching a couple of days a week.
(20:19):
Like you are going to take and you're going to hurt your body in the ways that doing too much of one activity is going to hurt your body.
So, yes, there are definitely downsides to like falling into that kind of long term hyper focus.
OK, so now I'm going to ask you this.
(20:40):
OK, you get into this hyper focus routine and I've seen this.
People get into this hyper focus thing and they're just they want to get this thing done.
It's like I need to get this thing done.
And then somebody comes along and asks you a question.
Oh, God.
Asking you to take away from that hyper focus.
(21:04):
How do you handle that?
Sometimes not well.
I ask that question as nicely as possible.
You did ask my question as nicely as I first thought about.
I should just interrupt you right in the middle of your answer and ask.
I think drive you crazy, but I'm being nice.
(21:26):
Yeah, thank you for not doing that.
Yeah, I mean, you you can get angry like there are you can get angry, frustrated.
One of the things for me about hyper focus is I don't always realize I'm in it when I'm in it.
Like it because it is so consuming, like I'm not I'm not thinking about it.
(21:50):
But when I'm interrupted, like I know it's gone.
And sometimes depending on the interruption, depending on what it is that I'm focused on,
sometimes the interruption won't be a big deal and I'll just sail right back into it.
But sometimes it ends it and it's gone.
And and that's the whole thing about like it being fleeting and the frustrating
(22:12):
feeling of not being able to it's not like we talked about in the first episode.
It's not a switch. I don't get to just turn it on when I want it on.
Like I have to follow it when it comes.
And that's one of the reasons why like I need a flexible schedule because like even with the
medication, I'll still hyper focus sometimes at like eight o'clock at night and, you know,
(22:34):
need to do something and get in the get in the state and I'm working on something and want to
follow it. So. And how does it like thinking about like relationships or family?
How does it impact those relationships? I mean, it was hard as a mom.
Like it was hard when I became a mom because like I couldn't I couldn't follow it like I used to.
(23:00):
Right. Because the demands on your schedule anymore.
No, like like my my time is owed to, you know, to this person who I brought into the world and who
I am inherently responsible for. And I had, you know, had the luxury of having a child
later in life and, you know, the ability to do that.
(23:22):
And so I had had a good portion of my life without, you know, I could just always run on whatever
whatever it was. And then that becomes not a thing when when you have a child. But I'd also say
that once my daughter was born, it was really hard for me to hyper focus on anything else.
Like she was my hyper focus until I felt like she was able to like function.
(23:45):
Right. More completely.
And I think the fact that I became a parent not where I had family, like I don't have my
my, you know, blood family doesn't live near me. So like my I didn't have my mom or my her dad's mom,
you know, here to be like grandparents to help kind of alleviate some of that.
(24:07):
So it was pretty much just he and I, you know, going through those first couple of years through
toddlerhood until we got like some caregivers. And once we had a caregiver and we had somebody
who could come in and like be she essentially became the extension of that. And then because
I was still working through all this, then I had to be able to try to rein in my hyper focus more
(24:30):
so that I could work in the three or four hours a day that I had her caregiver so that I could
like sit down and, you know, at the time I was teaching sit down and grade as many papers as I
could in that time. One thing I I always find it awkward when I when I meet somebody that's about
(24:51):
to have a kid, I always want to say you're going to be exhausted and you're going to potentially
just burn out. I would love to be able to say that, but I know it's not appropriate to say
that to somebody. So if I recently if I sent you this episode, this is why
(25:12):
that I mean, the exhaustion is real. Right. And so I would think you're hyper focused on
that for a long like, you know, that send in particular. I'm going to instead, though,
make this about like your dissertation. OK, right. Like that is a long process.
Yep. There is an end date to that. Like, you know, like you got to have it done by the time
(25:34):
it's got to be ready. So let's talk about that one instead on this. But the.
Exhaustion is it like, is it happening throughout? Is that like a pitfall that's happening
throughout the entire process? Like you're just dealing with cycles of, man, I worked
(25:56):
12 hours on this. The next day, you're just exhausted. And then the next day, you know,
I got to get back into this and kind of finish it. So you work another 12 hours.
So is that happening? Is that cycle happening the entire time?
Yeah, that's happening the entire time. And in reflection, I would have to go back and think a
little bit more. But like the day that I binge the show, I might have actually been in burnout and
not been thinking about the fact that I was in burnout. You know, that's what I was thinking.
(26:20):
Yeah. Yeah. And that I had and that I needed it. And so that's that's also the reason why I'm a
little kinder for myself to myself about these than I like when those days happen, because
because I don't always I don't always recognize the hyper focus when I'm in it. I don't
recognize the cost it's going to pull from me to, you know, to expend so much energy
(26:45):
in a compressed amount of time and to to allow myself like
building breaks in any kind of flow state for me is almost impossible. So if I am in the hyper
focus and I am writing and like, you know, in that I want to I want to stay there, like I want to
(27:07):
stay there as long as I can to do as much as I possibly can in that. And and I will not. I told
we said this in the first episode, like it's it's a hyper goal oriented or you hyper focus. And it's
like those are not the same things like I shut down. I don't recognize that I'm hungry. I don't
(27:28):
recognize that I haven't gotten up from my desk, you know, and and some of the things I have done
to compensate that is like, it's it's silly. But like my Apple watch that tells me you haven't
stood up in an hour stand up like I get mad sometimes because if I'm in a hyper focus and
I want to stay in it, I don't want to stand up and I just do the thing you ever see people do
(27:53):
with their watches where they like wave their arms so that they get their stand thing. So it
goes away. Right. Like I still do that. But I will also kind of log. OK, you you don't have much more
time left here. Like you need to take care of your body, too. And, you know, oh, it's 1150 and it's
doing this. You haven't eaten since eight o'clock in the morning. You need to like check in with
(28:15):
your body and, you know, do that interoception where you're like, OK, I'm going to be hangry
pretty soon. So I should probably eat, you know, at certain times in my life, on certain important
days, I have assigned people the task of making sure I eat. So like on my graduation day,
it was Iris's dad's responsibility when I graduated my Ph.D. to make sure I ate something
(28:41):
before we went to the venue for the graduation, like to make sure I was fed because it was a
long graduation. It was going to be hours. I was going to be sitting there or whatever,
like make sure I eat something because I will forget and I will go through it and then I'll be
like falling apart at the end because I'll be so hungry. So, OK, you mentioned the hyper goals
(29:04):
and, you know, like doing what you did right to get to that point. Like you needed to be
focused. I wouldn't say hyper focused. You need to be focused. You needed to like set goals.
You needed to make stuff happen. You needed to. And, you know, I think of let's say, you know,
the athletes, right, like athletes. You know, you you look at some of these people that were
(29:25):
like at the Olympics and it's like, how do they have that body? And I've got this one like what
is happening here? At least that's what I do. But it's because of the constant training and
it's getting up at, you know, five a.m. and, you know, going to the gym and doing, you know,
whatever practice that they need to do to get better. And then it's living their life for a
(29:47):
few hours and then going to the gym again and doing some other workout thing and then living
their life for a few more hours and then doing it again and then just repeating the next day.
Right. So there's that thing of like, you know, just the drive to be like just
focused on something. And some will call that like it's hyper focused on one thing.
(30:08):
Right. Like they're a specialist at something. We could use the same thing for, you know,
business. Right. There are people that are just specific to taxes. Like they love doing tax.
Exactly. I hate it. I don't get it, but I hire people for that. Right. My finance guy,
the guy who does like my financial advisor, a 100 percent ADHD, but but loves loves this is his
(30:34):
special interest. Like this is the thing that he loves and that has persisted for him that he's
always like, I love it. He's like, I can sit and I'm like, I am so glad because like you do good
things with my money and thank you. You know, I don't have a lot of money. So like the fact that
you can help me make it more than it was is just amazing. Thank you. And I'm so glad.
(30:57):
For him, that is like that. That still is his ADHD. It's just ADHD and math. And I would actually
pose to you that I think a high number of people that you're talking with and you're working with
in your business are entrepreneurs, right? Are people who started their own business. Yep.
That the like percentage of people who are neurodiverse, who are entrepreneurs is really
(31:22):
high. Yeah, because it allows for it accommodates entrepreneurship, accommodates neurodivergence.
Right. It allows you on your own schedule. You're yeah, you you can you work on your own schedule.
You set your own goals. You're your own boss. You're not dealing with, you know, somebody telling
(31:45):
you what to do and your brain just because like some I used to think that like my brother's
rebellion against everything anybody ever told them to do was them just being jerks. And I won't say
that they're not jerks because they, you know, they're jerks sometimes. We're all jerks and
we're not listening. So definitely not listening. There's no chance. But like that that that rebel,
(32:12):
that rebellion, like I didn't recognize that I was the same way until one of my brothers like said to
me, you know, I when I was in the hyper focus over my daughter and my mom died when my daughter was
a year and a half old. And so like, that was a really hard time because like then that's part
of where like I talked about those other responsibilities I had a lot of that started,
(32:35):
you know, while she was very young and it was grieving at the same time. So like it was a very
messy thing. But I said, I would tell people that my daughter has been a child of her own mind
since, you know, since she was born and and she was stubborn in some very interesting ways.
She would not be spoon fed. I could not spoon feed her. She would not she would not eat from a spoon.
(32:58):
She wanted to feed herself. And so I had to learn what baby lead weaning was because like I had to
figure out a way to feed her that she would eat. Right. Right. And she wanted nothing more than to
get up and walk around like she wanted to walk. She wanted to sit. She wanted to walk. She was
very physical from the very beginning. And like I am not like like I can I can dance and I've got
(33:25):
like, you know, you know, some things I'm really good at physically, but I'm not a particularly
athletic person. So to have a child that was like, I need to move was, you know,
a certain type of fascination to sell. OK, so you put me down this entrepreneurship.
(33:47):
Yeah. Path. So I've got to go there. Yeah. You OK. So you it was it was baby led, as you said.
Yes. So for an entrepreneur that's hiring people, that's bringing people in and dealing with a team,
are you is this like how do you work with that? Like what's your advice on that?
(34:10):
Well, I guess my biggest piece of advice would be to to recognize like people's strengths and to
recognize. It's not going to be one size fits all, right? Like the strategies that work for
some people with ADHD and autism and neurodivergence don't always work. And in addition to that, like
(34:33):
some of the things that have worked for me as strategies to manage my ADHD and accommodations
I made for myself have not persisted in my life. And I'll swing back to the dissertation.
So I use something writing my dissertation that's called the Pomodoro method. Have you ever heard of
this? Yep. OK, I've used that as well. Yes. So my entire dissertation was written using the
(34:58):
Pomodoro method where I would write and I would take a break and I would write and I would take a
break. And in my head, like because it's Pomodoro is tomato, right? Because the person who invented
it used a tomato timer when they invented it. Right. And so my metaphor for my dissertation
was I was making salsa because I was crushing tomatoes, you know, and, you know, Chris would
(35:21):
come home from work and he'd be like, how many tomatoes did you crush today? And this would be
like our conversation. And it would be like on a day when I crushed six, it would be like, oh,
that's fantastic. You did so much. That's so good. On a day when it was more like two, he's like,
OK, so what was going on? And I'm like, well, I had this happening in this and I got interrupted
with this and that. And like. We could kind of break through it more so. Right. We actually
(35:47):
at the company I work for, we one of our developers built out their own Pomodoro timer.
It's available. I'll we should even include that as a link in here because it's really cool because
it doesn't have most Pomodoro have that like bell at the end or like disturbing noise at the end.
Yeah, this one doesn't. And he built out the whole thing because he just wanted something
(36:07):
subtle in the background happening so that he doesn't have to. Yeah, I hated the bell.
The big interruption. Yeah. At the time I was working on my dissertation, I had an extension
for my browser that would not let me go to like Facebook or whatever when I was in a Pomodoro,
when I was in a round of, you know, a Pomodoro. There was a word for it. I don't know what that's
(36:34):
called. But yeah, session. Yeah. When I was in it, when I turned it on and I was, you know, whatever
the it was 25 and five minutes, I have never been able to use a Pomodoro method since.
I have never used it since my dissertation. I have I have not used it since that time. It was
the thing I used then and I have not gotten back to using it. I know it would still work. Like I
(36:57):
don't think it would be ineffective, but I've just never been able to get back to using it the same
way that I did for the dissertation. And that's the other thing I would say is like recognize that
accommodations aren't don't don't always persist. Right. They don't always carry through for you.
So like you might have an accommodation that works for a while and you might change. An example for
(37:23):
me of that is I redo my closet, my clothes closet, like probably once a year, I will reorganize
how how my clothes are organized because like something will work for a while and then
I will get annoyed with with it for whatever reason. Like I don't always know why. But like
(37:44):
for a long time, I had these black bins that I had like my t shirts and stuff in. And then I realized
that I was only wearing like the top t shirts, right? The top three or four because they were
the ones that were on the top of the dark bin. And I didn't know at this time that I had ADHD.
Now I understand ADHD. I recently got rid of my dresser entirely. I no longer have a dresser with
(38:08):
clothes drawers with clothes in it. Because I would forget that those clothes existed.
Like they just didn't exist anymore. They were in, you know, they were out of sight or whatever. So
my current closet setup, I can walk into my very, very small walk in closet. It's so tiny.
And I can stand in one place and I can see every type of clothing I can wear. Everything is
(38:34):
visible. And all my shoes are right there. All like everything is like I can walk in and I can see it.
And I still need to pull it out every now and then and like rotate the shirts through because I will
do that same thing where I'll just wear the top few that I keep washing. So I do have to like pull
it out and like kind of like re kind of jigger them. But I can stand in one place in my closet, see
(38:57):
everything. There's a chair in there for me to sit down and put my shoes on. So like everything is just
perfectly visible. And when I had my dresser, it sat outside my closet and I had like,
you know, t-shirts and leggings in like a couple of the drawers. And I would forget and I would open
the drawer and I'd be like, oh, that's right. You bought these new leggings for working out,
(39:19):
but you haven't worn them because I couldn't see them and they didn't they didn't exist for me.
And then on top of that, the top of the dresser became this place where I just collected stuff.
It never functioned in any way for me other than I would put stuff there and I would forget that it
existed even though I could see it. Right. Yeah. That it existed and it just became this big pile
(39:42):
of like a collection of stuff of what I call like the unmade what they call clutter unmade decisions.
Right. So it would become a collection of unmade decisions. And I realized that the dresser wasn't
functioning for me in that I would forget the clothes were in there. And on top of it became
this doom pile of just stuff I didn't organize or put away where it was supposed to be put away.
(40:05):
And my visual editing goes as such. I cannot, I will not see something like my desk is still
a mess right now. Like if you look down from where we are on camera, we're not this is not a video
podcast, but Russ and I can see each other as we talk. If you saw this, my desk is kind of a mess.
I don't see it until it's all I can see. And then the hyper focus will often turn on to
(40:28):
I have to clean this up and I have to clean this up today because I can't handle it looking this
way anymore. And so I have tried to cut those places out of my life where I don't have like
just these random places to put things that they collect.
So I'm sort of the like, I don't know. I'm like a minimalist. Anything around me just bugs me. I
(40:55):
just want to get rid of it. Like I wear how many times have you seen me in a black t-shirt? Like
that's all I wear. Like I just want to make life 30 years. I don't care about those decisions. I
just want to, you know, I don't know. I think mine is about E. I don't know what that is.
(41:15):
Yeah. I mean, I did some of that too, where like I, the biggest thing about laundry that frustrates
me are socks. Like every time I see like a picture of someone who has a family with a lot of children,
the first thought I have is, oh my God, there's so many socks. Like awful, but it's true. Like
(41:39):
that is so many socks. How do you deal with so many socks? And so what I did for myself in the,
like I did a similar thing. I always wear black shoes. Like I like black. This is like a
persistent thing. You probably remember when I was not really emo, but a little emo in high school.
(42:01):
And I had like a black leather jacket I wore all the time and black backpack and you know,
black shoes have just been my thing. So a few years ago, again, this was pre-diagnosis.
An accommodation I made for myself was I just went and I bought the same black socks and I just
have a bin, an open bin of black socks and they're all the same. So like it doesn't matter. I just
(42:29):
reach in and grab two socks and that's the end of it. I was in a job interview and they had sent us
the questions ahead of time, which was great, but they had one question that they saved for the end
that they wanted to get kind of like a real reaction for. And the question was how do you
organize your sock drawer? And I said, I don't have a sock drawer and the looks on their faces.
(42:54):
I said, I have a sock bin and I described this exact thing where like I know the function that
socks need to have. Why am I making it hard for myself that I have all of these socks?
And there's a whole, a whole nother episode that we can do about, about clutter and stuff,
about socks. Sure. It can be, we can be the sock episode about like the way some neurodivergent
(43:21):
brains want to hold onto things. Cause at that time when I was going through the socks I had,
I had kept a pair of socks for years that I never wore because they were uncomfortable,
but I had literally kept them because they were like cashmere. So they were like these nice socks
and I had kept them and I, and they never wore them, but I kept them because somewhere in my
(43:42):
mind, because they were cashmere and they were nice socks. I needed to keep them.
Even though they didn't serve any purpose, you just had to have them. I just felt like I
couldn't get rid of them because they were nice socks. Right. Like, let's think about that for a
second. And you know how much, how much I had moved in a good portion of my life. I moved back and
(44:06):
forth across the country a couple of times. I lived many places in different places. Like I moved a
lot and I carried these stocks around for years until I was like, what am I doing? Why do I have
these stocks? If I don't wear them and I'm not going to. Right. Right. You may have just titled
(44:30):
this episode. I don't know. Possibly. Okay. So we're, we're heading up towards the end of this
episode. You talked about a lot of different things. We went through this whole hyper focus.
I tried to not hyper focus on just one question. Right. We talked about a lot of different things.
(44:52):
This is a very, there was a very nice feel of ADHD here where it stayed reasonably controlled,
but we still wandered. Maybe that's what you should do at the end of each one of your episodes is just
kind of figure out like, what was the HD ADHD score of this episode? Right. Right. How do we rank this?
(45:16):
But okay. So, you know, jumping back to earlier, like with, with society, like kind of almost
accommodating this with like the scrolly stuff and the binge watching and all of these different
things that are out there now, I would say capitalizing on it. Exactly. They've, they've
capitalized on it on the cheap dopamine. How do we, you know, how do we like not think like,
(45:40):
Oh, you know what, we have to adapt to this. We have like, this is bad. Me doing this is bad. This
is wrong. This is not the way, you know, things go. I shouldn't be been watching. I shouldn't be
doing this thing. Like how do you like make yourself feel good about this and okay with
this and just accept this? I think, I think a healthy dose dose of self forgiveness is really
(46:05):
important in this and to recognize that you can't always control it. And that, you know, I keep
coming back to that, but like, and maybe it's just my own garbage in this, my own baggage
of feeling like I should be able to have that switch and I should be able to point my laser
(46:28):
focus and my hyper focus at whatever it is I want to point it at that day. But I think just being
able to step back and recognize that it's okay to rest. And sometimes like, what if it's arresting
hyper-focus? What if that's what, you know, watching chaos, which have global and like,
they should be sponsoring me. You know, what if, what if it was a hyper-focus of rest?
(46:53):
Like, and what if you needed, like it, let's say you hope hyper-focus on reading a book,
like what if you needed to just sit and like, let that be what it was instead of feeling this
need to constantly be productive, to constantly do something, to use your time wisely, like all
of this stuff that we carry in all of this garbage and all of these beliefs that like,
(47:17):
we have to run ragged and you know, do and produce and be and all of that. What if we can just step
back from it and say, it's okay, but this was my hyper-focus today and that's all right. You know,
tomorrow's another day, you know, there's always a possibility for it to be something else then.
All right. Well, we've got, we've got more topics. Hopefully you'll let me come back
(47:40):
and we can chat more. I will. This is going to be a regular segment where Russ and I sort of dive
into some of these things about neurodivergence and some of these big topics that I really am
hoping that the interviews, I want to make sure stories are heard, but I would like them to be
listened to by people who don't have neurodivergence or maybe love somebody who does.
(48:03):
So that maybe they'll have a little empathy and understanding as well.
Thank you so much for listening. Do you experience hyper-focus? Do you relate to some of the stories
we shared in this episode? Does someone in your life experience hyper-focus and some of the things
(48:24):
we experienced in this episode? Let us know on Instagram at Divergent Paths Consulting,
what hyper-focus is like for you or the people in your life. Make sure to subscribe to this podcast,
wherever you listen, like, and leave a review and share with your spicy brain friends.
And until next time, stay spicy.
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