Hyperfocus: A Blessing and a Curse – ADDitude

Attention deficit disorder is all about distraction until its not! One of the most surprising aspects of ADHD is hyperfocus a persons ability to hone in on a specific task, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else.

Someone with an interest in computer programming may happily hunt for a bug in thousands of lines of code, regardless of the fact that he usually cant sit still. A musician may write a symphony in only a few weeks.

Unfortunately, hyperfocus cant be reliably sustained or controlled. When parents tell me how their daughter breezed through a challenging science fair project only to settle into a spotty classroom performance, I know that she was hyperfocusing. Adults can find that kind of focus in a new job working intensely for a year, say, to fix major problems in their department. When things finally run smoothly, they lose interest and move on.

At its best, hyperfocus is what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls flow a state of mind in which you are so immersed in a task that you become (not to sound too far out) one with it. PET scans have shown that the hyperfocusing brain literally lights up with activity and pleasure.

At its worst, hyperfocus becomes a trance-like state in which you do the same pointless act over and over again. A teen who creates vocabulary cards for an upcoming test, for instance, may spend hours decorating them instead of studying. With hyperfocus, you can easily lose all sense of time and perspective.

If you hyperfocus regularly, congratulations! I do, when I am writing. But remember that it may cause you to forget about everything else a Friday-night dinner with friends, a wedding anniversary, paying the bills. To ensure that family or coworkers arent left in the lurch, do the following:

Hyperfocus is more likely to occur when you are engaged in a task that is challenging, that matters to you, and in which you make progress. These tips will help:

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Hyperfocus: A Blessing and a Curse - ADDitude