Hyperfocus to Genius (or anything positive)

[madadder]

Have you been able to direct your hyperfocus towards something positive?

How were you personally able to do this? What's your story?

What is your hyperfocus on? What's your passion? How long have you been passionate about it?

Where do you see yourself going with this passion? What are your goals for it?

Hyperfocus can be positive, but is negative in most cases. I'd like to hear from those who have done something positive with it, to provide motivation for those who haven't been able to yet.

-Madadder.

[madadder]

Nobody? I'm surprised

[ana futura]

Cycling, that's about it. And writing papers when they're due the next day. I can kick butt under extreme pressure. The only problem is it doesn't work in grad school, you can't write a 20 page paper in one day

I hyperfocused on drawing when I was younger, I would make incredibly detailed drawings all day.

[CheekyMonkey]

If I could control the hyperfocus, that would be fantastic. However, it comes and goes as it pleases without any regard for my plans.

[Assumption]

(the poster formerly known as Sylvie's husband) I'm not sure if I mostly hyperfocus or perseverate.

When you all talk about ADHD hyperfocus, how MUCH do you hyperfocus about things?

I tend to get really interested in something. Like, for instance, dungeons and dragons. I've got a few such interests (D&D, warhammer, video games) and I tend to flit back and forth between them, spending a few months on each one at a time.

When I'm obsessing over one of them, I think about it ALL the time. I spend time researching it on the internet. I daydream about all the details inherent in the obsession. I divert conversation topics to the thing I'm obsessing over, if at all possible. People get annoyed at me constantly talking about it. The people I PLAY D&D with get annoyed at how much time I waste derailing into the details of the rules (and how pedantic I am about them). It becomes the main thing that distracts me from my work (though I do get distracted by many other things too). E.g. I spent a whole day at work making a probability tree that allowed me to calculate the expected probability of rolling a given number on a d20 with a particular number of rerolls (roll again, take the new roll even if lower) and a particular number of extra rolls (roll twice, take the highest). I wasn't satisfied with this so I spent the next several evenings making an excel spreadsheet to do it.

So it's not just that I spend 8 hours straight doing the thing. I do that. I do it every night for several months. The thing becomes my LIFE for several months.

Does this even remotely fall under the heading of perseveration? I mean, I do the perseveration thing too (the whole time I was making the probability tree I knew I could do it better differently but had to finish the process!). But I am sort-of starting to wonder if this is a "special interest" thing...

[fracturedstory]

Wow, the artist formerly known as Slyvie's husband, you sound like you have Asperger's. Maybe an ADHD/AS co-morbid thing going on there.

Hyperfocus is anything I focus on for a long time without medication and without a plan. My writing is planned down to the tiniest detail. I can't just jump in and do it.

It usually only works with physical things. Cleaning and organising things into boxes etc.

[Assumption]

I've definitely been wondering that. That said, I can look at the 9 criteria for ADHD and go "yep yep yep yep yep yep yep eyp yep" (Actually I say yep to the eighth one too.) For the ASD stuff, it's a bit more mixed. I've done a few of the screening tests and for some of them it puts me over the diagnostic threshold. But then, I score pretty well on the face and voice reading tasks. Fortune said that my description of the weird triangle family (seen that video?) seemed a bit impoverished, but wasn't that bad either.

The test that really seems to work for me is the Broad Autism Phenotype one. I get around 100 on all 3 aspects and it says I either have Autism or have some BAPness. But then, the questions are keyed in to a subclinical part of the AS, so maybe that's why that one works so well for me.

The Aspie quiz says above average (6.8) on Aspie talent, I got the minimum possible score for NT talent (0.5/10!), minimum possible for NT compulsion, and below average on NT social.

On the other hand, I got below average Aspie hunting, and above average on NT perception, and everything else was average.

I actually find I can't answer some of the questions in these questionnaires though, as I don't know the answer to them. Do I have trouble recognizing faces? Well, I've never mistook my wife for a hat, but do I have a more subtle impairment along those lines? I'd assume not, but I might be wrong.

[Unmanagable]

I think I have some sort of a whacked version of flittering hyper/hypofocus, if that makes any sense.

I have way too many things I want/need to focus on, and similar to what Cheeks was saying, I have no control over where I land, or for how long.

Moments I can reel it all in and proceed with an actual plan are precious and too few and far between.

[sarahsweets]

If I could control my hyperfocus I would already be president of the US

[sarahsweets]

Regarding hyperfocus or anything adhd related...adhd is defined by impairments. This does not include "making your hyperfocus work you you". If we could just turn it on and off then we wouldnt have adhd we would just be comsidered drivien individuals.

[Plognark]

I've had the good luck of being able to hyperfocus on art, engineering, and other creative projects for most of my life. I'm one of those people who gets a bit neurotic about finding out how things work. I took apart all of my toys as a kid.

The one drawback: It's only for things I'm personally interested in.

Which turned all of my attempts at being a freelance artist into unmitigated disasters.

I think going so long without treatment or medication gave me some good compensating mental skills to sort of fake being focused. So now that i'm properly medicated I'm able to research and understand new concepts faster than most people.

Can't control it per se, but I have a good idea of what topics will interest me and how to go about getting into them, and I've figured some techniques to revive interests that suddenly fall off of my hyperfocus list.

[ana futura]

Oh, yeah, I forgot about the cleaning and organizing bit. I'm not sure if it's a good thing to obsessively clean every nook and cranny of my toaster though.

[Drewbacca]

Originally Posted by ana futura

You can't write a 20 page paper in one day

You can, if you have all of your notes in order and don't need to do additional research. Still, I don't recommend it.

[ana futura]

My max is 5. My editing and grammar obsessions gets in the way. As hard as it might be to believe from reading my posts here, I have a grammar obsession, that I can conveniently keep in check in teh interwebs.

[Danteloogi]

Only things I am interested and decent at.
I tried painting on multiple occasions and wasn't the best at it. Randomly picked up some water colors and found that I wasn't too bad with those. Suddenly I was able to hyper focus on it.

Uhh, I do some 3d animation and create maps for computer games. Those are some other things I can hyper focus on pretty well. Also hyper focus under extreme pressure.

Sometimes I'll get so focused on something that I can't even sleep that night because its all I can think about. Like if I watch a ton of tutorials on youtube I'll see myself doing that over and over in my head. It doesn't happen often but it is somewhat regular.