Writing and Productivity

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I talked in my last post about mitigating the negative effects of hyperfocus, whether you're ADHD or just blessed/cursed with unpredictable laser-beam attention.

When you and your focus are working against each other, it can be a miserable and unproductive time. But when hyperfocus works with you, and you with it, amazing things can happen.

Under the influence of hyperfocus I've built whole websites overnight, spent 14 hours a day hammering through a Quality Management system nearing deadline, taken whole projects from a lightning-strike 3am brainwave to a complete set of notes and plans.

Unfortunately, many of us are taught as children (and reinforced as adults) that this kind of obsessive behaviour is unhealthy or abnormal. We may subconsciously feel that we should behave like a "normal" person and spent moderate amounts of time and energy on our various tasks, not go hell-for-leather at an objective (sometimes until we collapse from exhaustion).

Many of us spend much of our lives fighting this drive, in the process making ourselves thoroughly miserable by denying our nature, and losing out on the enormous wealth of potential hyperfocus brings.

We need to realise that normal is a spectrum, and in any normal population there will be outliers with extreme ways of doing things. Often it's those extreme individuals who achieve the most amazing things.

My advice: If you find hyperfocus pulling at you, and the subject is interesting, beneficial or just has potential, run with it. Set yourself some limits to ensure that the essential things are taken care of, then let yourself fall into the task at hand, and see where it takes you.

You can even engage your hyperfocus intentionally. Faced with a big, daunting task, lock out all distractions, move or cancel other commitments to allow a solid block of time, blast some music or put on an audiobook, line up some caffeine or alcohol or healthy juice (you'll know what keeps you going best), and say to yourself "Come on, we're going to do this thing!"

The first half-hour might be slow, distracted, you're thinking of other things, but when that tunnel vision starts to take over and you realise two hours have gone by and you never noticed, your hyperfocus is working for you. I listed about 300 vinyl records on eBay this way at the start of 2007.

Stop worrying about acting normally, or how your friends and family will see you. Let the dog off the leash, ride the wave. You have been given a wonderful, powerful gift, a firehose of creative energy to use. Let your hyperfocus run free, miss meals, miss sleep, miss dates, see what happens. You may create something extraordinary.

Labels: achievement, attention, creativity, distraction, hyperfocus, productivity