Hyper-focus Isn’t Focus

Although I was diagnosed with ADHD in my late 20s, I have long resented the label. The label of ADD or ADHD — Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder — is a poor name for the condition that it describes.

ADD = Attention Direction Difficulties

I prefer to describe ADHD as Attention Direction and Hyperawareness Difficulties. This more accurately describes one of the core issues related to ADHD and attention: filtering.

Rather than being a “deficit” of attention, the typical state for many people with ADHD is that our attention is pulled everywhere at the same time.

It’s often a state of hypervigilance, in which the nervous system is hyper aware of every sound, movement, and sensation. In this state, I can hear a whispered conversation from across a room, I notice the comings and goings of everyone around me, and I’m aware of every tiny sensation in my body — all at once.

The nervous system perceives everything as a potential threat.

In a camera, you adjust the focus setting depending on what you want to capture.

The brain works the same way. Focus acts as a filter to let in more or less. My experience with ADHD is that the focus is often faulty. It’s stuck in a permanently wide state, allowing everything in.

Hyper-focus: The Other Side of ADHD

On the other hand, I can get into a zone where I am fixated on one thing at the expense of almost everything else. This is called hyper-focus, and it’s the other side of ADHD.

When I was a child, I’d get lost in a book and not notice anything else going on around me. As an adult, it could be any number of things. Coding a website. Writing. Analyzing data. The rabbit holes of hyper-focus are unlimited.

Hyper-focus is a form of fixed attention for an extended period of time. It can show up in activities or in mind states like rumination or fixation on a particular idea or issue.

When you’re used to having a broken filter that allows everything into your energy field, hyper-focus can feel like what you imagine focus to feel like.

But fixation isn’t focus. Fixation is rigidity.

Hyper-focus is the mental equivalent of holding a muscle in a prolonged contraction — you’re contracting the brain.

If you’ve ever lifted weights, you know that there’s only so long you can hold a muscle in a contraction before it gives out. Hyperfocus has the same effect — even if we don’t always realize it in the moment.

What is Focus?

So what is focus, then? Focus is flexible and adaptable

In a camera, focus is the ability to adjust the lens: to zoom out and zoom in; to change the aperture; to let in more or narrow the view.

Focus is a form of fluency.

• Fluency in language enables us to choose our words and construct sentences.
• Fluency in movement allows us to move in different planes of motion and pivot to change directions.
• Fluency in a musical instrument allows us to play different types of songs and improv with others.

In the same way, fluency in attention is the ability to direct attention where you want it to go, to manipulate the focus, to change the aperature and the perspective, to shift the frame.

The fluency of focus is different from being scattered. When your attention is scattered, you can’t control where you focus it; it tries to go everywhere at the same time.

Fluency of focus is the act of adjusting the lens through which we direct our attention.