This is a Global Player original podcast. We spoke about inattention when we saw you last and we talked about how the other side of that same coin is hyperfocus and that's what we're going to talk about today. If I hyperfocus for me, it's like when my brain has kicked into gear. I'm not necessarily in charge of it.
I don't necessarily decide it. It's like there's a door has opened up and the skill I've got to suddenly do things really quickly and efficiently suddenly kicks in. What's going on? There's a few things going on here, Sam.
One of the great things about hyperfocus is, you know, we talked about ADHD being this kaleidoscope brain and also a brain that has difficulty filtering out information from our environment because we're bombarded with information 24-7 or at least when we're awake and sometimes it's difficult to filter out the stuff that's not relevant or not important to us. Hyperfocus is a great way of self-soothing and self-calming because you can quieten your mind and filter out everything else by really focusing on one thing in particular. But it's an interest-driven neurology. You're going to find it difficult to hyperfocus on something that bores you senseless.
It's got to be something that you're interested in or where there's a really powerful motivator for you because dopamine, which is a key neurotransmitter involved in focus and concentration and memory, dopamine is one of two feel-good hormones that you have in your brain. One is serotonin and one is dopamine. And actually, most serotonin is actually produced in your gut. But we all know that serotonin is a feel-good hormone.
It makes you feel appreciative. It's sort of almost a very pleasurable sense of, oh, I really enjoy that. I feel a bit happier. I'm a bit content, you know, even when you get lots of dads, new dads get lots of dopamine when they become a father.
It instills a sense of contentment. It's a very instinctive thing about making them stick around to look after their children. And dopamine is also a feel-good hormone. But the difference between dopamine and serotonin is dopamine is excitatory.
It's anticipatory. It plays a role in motivation. It's kind of, you get a rush of dopamine obviously when you move about, when you eat food, when you exercise, when you experience human intimacy. But the dopamine is almost the stimulus feel-good hormone, whereas the serotonin is the reward-based feel-good hormone.
So when we're hyper-focusing, we are quieting our mind from all the other stimulus that's going on. But actually, we're also getting a lot of hormonal reward because this is something that we're interested in. It's important to us. It's important to our self-actualization or survival or whatever it might be.
It's really important to us, whether it might be some creative project that you're involved in. You're excited to see it done, to see it completed. So if you reflect how you feel when you've completed that really important task, it's a slightly different kind of feel-good to the feel-good you get when you're really excited about doing it. Does that make sense?
Definitely. I mean, I completely recognize that. And you've talked about dopamine, so I can see where this is going. But I think, for the record, why is this such an issue for ADHD then?
Why is hyper-focus? Why does it go hand-in-hand with ADHD? Well, within a medical model, we talk about ADHD as having a deficit of dopamine. I've never been entirely comfortable with that.
I think there is a reason why, in the human species, you have people who are very linear thinkers. And an example of that linear thinking is that's autistic kind of information processing. And then you have this very lateral kind of information processing that we often associate with ADHD. So with ADHD, you have less dopamine or less utility of dopamine.
And dopamine plays a key role in motivation, memory, learning, and it is a feel-good hormone. So in order to be able to hyper-focus, you do need a lot of dopamine. Now, if you don't have as much dopamine as somebody else, it's got to be something that you're really interested in. So if you don't have ADHD and you have to do a task that you find really boring, it's going to be easier for you to do than it is for somebody who's got ADHD.
And of course, then the implication is, well, you're just not trying. You're lazy. You know, you're not doing as you're told. But in fact, it is that thing about, well, if I could move about, if I could use these kinds of strategies to help me, I'll be able to do it.
So I'm not saying that having ADHD is an excuse for not paying attention to things that you absolutely must pay attention to sometimes. But it is about understanding, right, okay, well, this is, you know, so let's say, for example, doing your accounts every year, a job we all love and leave to the last minute, and it's like, right, what have I got to do? And the way I have to psych myself up to do that is I need absolute solitude, no distractions, the phone switched off, everything else, in a space on my own, where nobody is going to disturb me, and everything has to be laid out, and I really have to psych myself up to it. So when I was a student, I could never understand sort of my fellow students who would just get up from watching the television or play games and start working and be thinking, how will I actually do that?
I had this ritual where it took me about 40 minutes where I had to get a shower, get changed, go for a walk, I'd go to the shop and buy a bar of chocolate, I'd come back and I'd already laid everything else on the desk. It was almost like it took me half an hour to get myself into a state of mind that was necessary for the particular task I had to do. And the opposite of that is when you see something that you absolutely laugh and suddenly your mind just locks onto it. Absolutely, and that's what I mean by an interest-driven neurology.
And you can, in moments like that, or I mean, let's be honest, days, I've had a whole day. I've told Sal this story before, but back in the days when we would sometimes work weekends, I'd have Monday and Tuesday off, and my husband went off to work, it's half past eight, nine o'clock in the morning, possibly even earlier, dare I say it. I sat down at the computer to play Sims, I don't know if you know what Sims is, it's like it. I next looked up to find him coming back through the front door from work.
I don't think I'd been to the loo, I don't think I'd had lunch. I focused. And I honestly, I don't remember any of that day, because I was there fixing everyone else's life in Sims, because it's so much easier to do it on the computer than it was to do in my book. But it was also calming.
It's a way of self-soothing and self-calming. And this is where the term time blindness comes in to ADHD. You know, people with ADHD, I'm often late for things. It's not because I'm rude.
It's actually because I try to do too much, and over-promise, and over-commit, and then wait very long days. But sometimes when I am hyper-focused, Sam, it's, I don't look at my watch. And then I've been so absorbed in it, and finish task, look up, and think, oh my god, is that the time? I thought I'd just been there for 20 minutes.
And it was to do with a particular part of London, and some history to do with London. And all of a sudden, I spent about the next six hours online, researching this. I'm getting texts from Sam. I've seen this thing, I've seen this part of London, completely neglected everything I was supposed to be doing.
And I had no concept of the world around it. Yeah, apart from the ghost. Part of the issue for me with hyper-focused has been that sometimes, a DIY project is a really good example, where I might say, I'm going to paint the whole stairs and landing, I'll do a bit today. My wife comes home, it's 10 o'clock at night.
I've been painting for 12 hours. I've not eaten. I've not done anything else at all. I can't remember where I am.
There's an upside to that. You spent a whole day doing DIY. That is really cool. And that would be the question, is that, yes, that's an upside.
The danger then comes with me with a crash off. Yeah, of course. Yes. But then there's also that thing, isn't it, about complete or finish?
If I don't finish this today, will I be motivated to finish it tomorrow? So there is that determination and tenacity, which I think is, again, is a quality that you see in a lot of people with ADHD, because it is that thing about, there's no serotonin until it's done, you know? But also there is that sense of, well, if I don't finish it today, if I leave it half done, am I going to finish it tomorrow? Well, I even remember that I have to do it, because I want to finish the task.
And again, it is that thing, isn't it, about, of course, we're going to focus or stay drawn to those things that are particularly important to us in that particular moment. Whatever the motivation might be, even if the motivation sign is, well, I know my partner is going to have a real go at me when they get in, if I have not done my shooters, please I don't know what I've done. But yeah, it is. And, you know, yes, of course, there is that thing, isn't there, about you're exhausted afterwards.
But then, you know, there's a flip side to everything, isn't there? I think, you know, anything, I say this to my staff all the time, when we're looking at ways of doing things, we have an opportunity, or we have a challenge, or we're looking for a solution to something. And I always start with, let's remember that usually the best way to do this is probably going to be the most difficult. And remember that the easiest option isn't always the best one.
But then I make sure that in my team around that decision-making table, I have people who are also dyslexic, autistic, dyslexic, dyscalculics, and that we get so many different perspectives on things that actually then what you're left with is something that kind of works for everybody. I can write a document, and I know exactly what I mean, but it might not necessarily read that way to somebody else. So then it's about saying, okay, why do you want to look at this, and I want you to detail me if you like, or to make sure that it becomes something that's accessible to everybody else and not just my particular cognitive profile. Yeah, I mean, I definitely recognise that.
When I talk about working with others, I get in my head what I want to do and how I'm going to do it, and I can't necessarily explain that to anyone else, but I can focus on it, and I can make it happen, but sometimes you need to just take a step back and work collaboratively. But one of the things I wanted to ask you about was what you said earlier about how I can see what you mean about how hyperfocus is soothing, and it gives you a chance to quiet the mind. But at the same time, for me, it's very, very intense. I mean, if I'm flying, my eyes are wide, my nostrils are flaring, my heart's racing, my muscles are tense, it feels like quite an intense experience, and when I get to the end of it, it's like I've been running a marathon.
It is, because I suspect that probably what's also happening there, Sam, is the sense of urgency, or the need to meet a certain deadline, is going to create a stressor for you, isn't And when we have a stressor, what happens in our nervous systems is we produce stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol that are specially designed to turbocharge us in high-pressure situations. Now, that could be physically, in terms of fight or flight, you've got to deal with a physically threatening situation or run away from it, but from the perspective of a cognitive task, or something that's combined cognitive task and physical task, whether it's sitting in a school exam or decorating... It could be something I'm really interested in. It could be a creative project that I'm really interested in, but it gives me that, and you're right, it's the adrenaline.
It gives me that excitement and that adrenaline that is actually quite exhausting. Yeah, but inevitably, when we have elevated levels of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, what you've got to remember is that they're only meant to be used in high-pressure situations. If you use them for a prolonged period, they're going to exhaust you, because it's like driving a car with one foot on the accelerator and one foot on the brake. You're using a lot of energy without necessarily getting very far.
So this is one of the things I can say to me, particularly about young people in school. If they happen to rely on stress hormones to focus and concentrate, and not have other strategies like movement and assistive technology and various other things that can help with your cognitive functioning, pervasive levels of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline every day will leave you with bouts of indolence and exhaustion, so you'll have this dysregulated mood. You can become irritable and tense, so you can say, well, I'm left exhausted, but then what happens is you stop your toe on the door and you become angry, because actually you've got really elevated levels of stress hormones that are not designed to be used the way that you're using them. Which was my life before, I knew I had ADHD.
And for some people, it can make them more vulnerable to anxiety and depression, because your brain becomes, your nervous system has almost been trained to be over-reliant on stress hormones rather than other neurotransmitters, tell everyone to take the task that you're in. And that's why anxiety and depression is a particular issue for a lot of people with unmanaged ADHD, because there are a lot of people who manage their ADHD very successfully. My point is, how can you learn how to do that if you don't know whether you have it or not? Yeah, and one of the ways in which I have almost learned to trigger my hyperfocus, to use it as a tool, is by using one of those ADHD clocks, you know, the ones where you turn the dial and show you the time visually as a motivator for things, for tasks I don't want to do.
And I will give myself a short five-minute period that I have to do the task for, and then I tell myself I'll then be allowed to do something else. And of course, as soon as I actually start doing the thing, I find that my hyperfocus tends to sort of kick in, and then I'm into it. And even the most boring, mind-blowing things can be quite, I'll suddenly find, all I want to do today is clean out the fridge. All I want to do is clean out the fridge, simply because I spent five minutes starting it, and then an hour later, the thing is, from top to bottom, I pulled all the drawers out, simply because I made my hyperfocus focus on that thing.
And the great thing about it is, it can help relieve stress and worry, because you are not thinking about everything else. It's actually the way that you filter out the five other televisions away, so that you can focus on the one programme that you want to watch, you know, rather than be distracted by the other five. So it is also a very rewarding, very productive ability that has the advantage of being a way that we can self-soothe and self-harm. I have an experience to me of, my daughter, she can't do her homework, but she can sit and play on computer, she can concentrate on computer games for hours, and she don't actually, because that activity there is producing lots of dopamine, whereas that activity isn't.
And what you've got to do is, when it comes to homework, which a lot of young people don't like, is you have to help them learn ways that generate dopamine to improve their motivation and their focus. And what are those ways? Well, for example, you know, the ritual I had was, you can't just get up from the television or the dinner table and go straight away and do homework. It's got to be about having a space, having everything laid out the way you need it.
You know, so for me, it was about, I had a whiteboard and a corkboard, I could put information up on the wall, so I had all these visual reminders. I'd been for a walk, I'd got a bit of exercise, I bought myself a bar of chocolate, came back, all of these other things that I know were going to help, I had fidget toys, all the things that I know were going to help me in the state of mind, a learning state of mind. And if you think about this as well, you know, whether you're a successful athlete, because we know that a lot of very successful professional sports, men and women who have ADHD, the whole concept of how they coach themselves into being in the right state of mind for that race, for that tennis match, for that football game, for that boat race, or whatever it might be, it's about finding a ritual that works for you, that gets you into the right state of mind. I think, I've said this before, being aware of my ADHD is the game changer in managing my ADHD.
I suppose that's the reason, you know, if you know what's going on, then you can treat it. And I used to, I used to find it quite upsetting that I, you know, I talked about this door opening up and this hyperfocus, this sort of skill I had, but I couldn't harness it. And I would get frustrated because I'd sit and want or need to do some work and not be able to open that door. And I would say, but I can't focus on this.
And I wish I could just hyperfocus that skill where I can do things quickly and my brain works really quickly. Why can't I apply this? And I've been able to work on that in a similar way to UK through the clock, by saying to myself, okay, rather than trying to rush ahead, rather than trying to say this needs to be done perfectly, whether it's a piece of work, whether it's a job that I need to do, say, try and do it for five minutes. Just start it.
See how it goes. And again, quite often what happens is that hyperfocus then kicks in. And it's a way of managing or utilizing the hyperfocus, I suppose. It can also be distractible though.
You know, so you can be, I used the example before about, you know, when I'm cleaning the apartment, I can be in the room and think, oh, there's a particular kind of cloth I need to go and get from the kitchen or to the sink. I'll go into the kitchen. And then I'm in the kitchen for the next hour because I've got sidetracked. I've put in the washing up way.
Yeah. So we have to be careful about hyperfocus in the sense that it's always going to draw us to what captures our attention at that particular time and place. And sometimes that's at the expense of other things that we should be doing or focusing on. And this is again, one of those examples where ADHD can make life stressful because you may have planned and organized your day and then been distracted and drawn away from that plan because you started to clean the dial in the fridge and lo and behold, an hour and a half later and, you know, suddenly find that you were supposed to be in a meeting half an hour ago.
This is where, this is where ADHD can really be debilitating sometimes. And having those constant reminders on your phone and things like that are a really important part of helping you kind of. manage the fact that yes hyperfocus can be a really good thing but it can be a rabbit hole that is actually a distraction from maybe something else that you should be doing that yeah that's really interesting you don't always necessarily hyperfocus on what you're supposed yeah yes and actually what you're saying is it can be a positive but it's learning to turn the tap on and turn the tap off and to be in charge of that yeah yeah and this is why i don't like the term disorder i don't like the term disability to be honest i think we're disabled by context you know we know that there are lots of very happy healthy successful people with adhd it's only a negative when we make it a negative and i think you know in our education system for example if we had a more enlightened 21st century neuroscience informed pedagogy then school wouldn't be a challenge or wouldn't be stressful or even distressing for children with adhd why can't we do that why do we insist that you've got to learn this way you've got to you've got to learn this you've got to you know we're going to measure it this way for example um and that it's not an excuse but how can you learn to thrive and be your best self if you don't understand yourself and if you know that you're adhd then you say right okay well i know that this will work for me that'll work for me i know that i might not be very good at that so this is what i'm going to do to make sure that i am in the same way that you know if you have diabetes you'd want to know what am i supposed to eat what can i not eat if you don't know you're going to become very sick and possibly even die um so information is really important but i think what we've got to do is move away from this idea that difference is bad you know and i look at young people's friendship groups now and it's very well it's very different from when i was young when i was young you want to come from the same state never mind you know whereas now you see groups of children and there's kids of every race faith sexual orientation autistic dyslexic young people are much much more embracing our diversity whereas i think my generation of we're more inclined well you've got to be like us you've got to think like us you've got to learn like us you know you've got the same values as us and if you're not like us you don't belong here if you're not like us you're less deserving and i think we've done that a lot i think within our education system it's like well you don't deserve an education because you're lazy or you're not trying or it's not because ours isn't as good school it's because there's something wrong with you you know and i think it's thankfully the younger generation i'm much much more embracing it yeah it's so true they're so up for difference they kind of almost don't see it but it's a universal design yeah it's it's cool that the world is in good hands once they're in charge yes and such a positive note to anything's on thank you again for your time thanks a lot great to talk to you again you can listen to your wrong about adhd for free on global player download it from the app store or go to globalplayer.com see you next time this is a global player original podcast