Though I’ve never been formally tested, I am quite certain I have a hyperactive brain and body. This is no secret. It shows in my work and I’ve written about it before.
Like most with ADHD, I absolutely suffered at school. Most of us bomb out, unable to do all the assignments, meet deadlines, or find motivation for any of that useless work. I guess I was in the lucky quadrant that actually realized this early on and managed to finish all my degrees without delay and with good grades.
But it was still a prison. I was basically locked out of life, locked out of understanding myself or living in any way, until I was 23 years old.
The past few years I’ve finally been able to get something going. It has taught me a bit about how my brain / body works and how to make the best of it. This article is about what I’ve think I’ve learned so far.
The brain on ADHD: understimulated
Below is one of the best oneliners I’ve found.
“People with ADHD are programmed to function best in high-stress, complex situations—and as a consequence, barely function in any other situation.”
By now, many people know about the link between ADHD and dopamine. Us hyperactive people just do not create as much dopamine in everyday life as others. That’s why antidepressants work for many of us.
But many miss the fact that stimulants often work just as well or perhaps even better. A hyperactive brain can finally focus and think clearly when it’s sufficiently stimulated.
It might sound counterintuitive. I know I was skeptical at first. But the past few years have proven, time and time again, how true this is.
The following behavior is a surefire way to pick out people with ADHD: they have designed their life to put them into stressful, stimulating, complicated situations all the time. They love that. They can only function that way.
I have done this all my life without realizing it.
- I create to-do lists that I know are way too full.
- I love it when I am sick for a few days, as I’m more productive and feel better about the work I did.
- I’ve always struggled with going to bed at the right time. (I love sleep! Why will I not go to sleep? Because I function better on little sleep. I am more productive when I’m tired.)
- When picking a new project, I always pick the ideas that are most challenging and complicated. (Picking an idea that is simple and familiar to me—of which I know I can make it and it will “just work”—always seemed absurd to me.)
- My ideal day starts out with an hour of tough exercise. It’s obviously good for your physical health and the unrest in your body, but it also means I am now a bit tired for the rest of the day. Which makes me more productive.
When I’m sick, I can wake up at 6 AM, work non-stop until 10 PM, then go to bed satisfied. Despite headache, fever, dizziness, etcetera.
When I’ve slept well and feel completely healthy, I struggle to motivate myself to work more than an hour a day.
The hyperactive brain functions best in stimulating, high-stress, taxing situations. It barely functions when those stimuli aren’t present.
We’re like the UNO reverse card on how the regular brain works. It’s a superpower and a curse all at once.
This is why many kids with ADHD are bored out of their mind at school. It’s just not interesting, not stimulating, not enough to get their brain started.
At the same time, the rigorous structure of school can often help those with ADHD. Without a deadline, grades, punishment, social pressure, etcetera … how will we ever get off our ass and do the work?
My experience was a mix of both. I knew school was boring and pointless, and I hated every second of it. At the same time, I fell into a pretty deep black hole for 6 months once I was finally free from it. My whole life was structured around school assignments and homework—and now I suddenly had to make my own decisions and do work without people yelling at me to do it? Impossible!
So let’s talk about that.
A curse or a gift?
It is important to see hyperactivity as a gift. It is a gift.
The hunter-gatherers of long ago would’ve killed to have a bunch of hyperactive people in their tribe. They can handle five times as many problems and do five times as much work in a day. In fact, if they don’t do it, they feel bad and restless.
The reason we see it more as a curse, is because our current society strongly punishes it. I’ve already mentioned school—a core part of everyone’s life, shaping their personality as they mature for 20 years. It rewards obedience, structure, doing what’s expected of you, printing boring and useless material into your brain. The biggest enemies of hyperactive kids.
But most major systems are the same.
Hyperactive people want to jump between ideas and actions all the time. They don’t get enough stimulation from working on the same project for a long time. But that doesn’t sell! A writer with fifty unfinished stories won’t make money. A shop filled with random purchases will not consistently sell well.
Businesses don’t like it, because you are prone to disobey or not do the work at all, unless your mind agrees with the work given to you.
(There’s an even darker side-effect here. You can ask your boss for more work and more stimulation, but that turns you into a powerhouse that is sure to draw ire from coworkers who can’t keep up. Suddenly, employees aren’t on even footing anymore, perhaps expressed in salary or admiration from that same boss.)
We have a world filled with stuff that stimulates and gives dopamine, without actually requiring effort or accomplishing something.
Nowadays, you can get loads of calories for basically nothing. This spikes your dopamine, this gives you energy to be productive, but it also makes you fat and unhealthy. I’ve struggled with this a lot—and still do.
I know that, if I just eat a lot, I can write four more chapters tonight. If I don’t, I will be deprived of that stimulus and will be sad and unproductive the rest of the evening.
Others might have the same issue with social media, or smartphone usage, or drugs, or whatever. Hyperactive people will search for that high-stress, stimulating experience all day every day.
In earlier times, this required effort. If I want to eat a lot of calories, I need to go hunt down some big mammoth. If I want to receive bits of news and gossip, I need to actually walk around town and go collect it.
But nowadays, this takes no effort, which makes it oh so easy to drown in the abundance of stimuli and never get out.
How to make the most of it
The solution? It’s not to ignore it. Or pretend you can train your brain to not want those stimuli.
Obviously, the solution also isn’t to give in and waste away in one of those dopamine cycles. Checking social media all day. Eating way too much food. Growing unhealthier and unhealthier as actual meaningful work piles up.
The solution is to find ways to stimulate yourself that are good and productive. To find some habits or a system that keeps your specific brain happy.
My earlier list has a mix of good and bad. It’s probably what most hyperactive people gravitate towards, as they struggle with it during their youth.
Below is what I’d recommend and aim for.
- Start your day with exercise and away from a screen. Let thoughts come and go. Force nothing. Be physically active.
- (Your brain is most capable and clear, but also most satisfied and focused, in the hours after you wake up. This moment always reveals the best ideas and the “obvious” solutions to problems I was having yesterday.)
- Give yourself loads of deadlines. This works for non-hyperactive people too, but especially for us.
- (My motivation and productivity went through the roof once I planned the moment a project would be released, right when I started it. I already planned marketing posts and announcements, locking in the date, making it even harder to backtrack.)
- Keep picking those projects that are challenging and stimulating. The really tough ideas. Just make sure you know what you’re doing. Know when to drop it if it’s too hard, or to scale back complexity if you feel overwhelmed.
- (I will probably never be satisfied with creating a safe, familiar project. Just like I won’t be motivated to write a story if I already know how it will end, or have a strict outline to follow.)
- (This is true for everyone, by the way. You might not have a creative job or one with “projects”. For whatever reason, you might be doing a pretty standard full-time office job. If so, make up projects or challenges for yourself, in your free time. Actively challenge and stimulate yourself. You can only stay healthy and productive if you keep that cycle going and never let yourself be “understimulated”.)
- Similarly, keep making to-do lists that are too full and too hard. Just accept you won’t do all of it. Don’t be discouraged or talk yourself down if you don’t do all of it. But the attempt is what motivates you to get up early and start being productive.
- (It’s a running joke that I always plan my next week in advance, and end up ditching the planning on Monday morning. I feel more like writing? Well let’s do my Wednesday writing tasks instead. More into the mood for games? Let’s pull game development Saturday to Monday. Then, on Sunday night, I basically copy half the to-do list to the next week anyway. It works wonders for me.)
- Recognize the unproductive, wasteful habits that provide dopamine—and get rid of them. Anything that provides “quick dopamine” is bad. Social media, news sites, quick food, alcohol, drugs, porn, you name it. Purposely make it hard for yourself, in whatever contrived way you like.
- (For example, I’ve always taken a longer route than necessary when cycling to and from school / university, or other places. Extra exercise! When I go somewhere, I really go there and make the most of it.)
- (For example, I used to grab a plate when having breakfast, then keep it on my desk as I worked throughout the day. This makes it ridiculously easy to constantly think “hey, let’s have another bite to eat”. Grab the plate, visit the kitchen, back with food 20 seconds later. By simply immediately washing my plates when done eating, and not leaving them on my desk, I’ve started eating much less.)
The real trick here is a careful balance between structure and go with the flow.
Too much structure, and it’s obviously not stimulating enough. There isn’t enough surprise or uncertainty. There isn’t enough wiggle room to try something else or challenge yourself in a new way.
Too little structure, and you’re completely overwhelmed. Your brain turns to mush at all the possibilities, all the ideas, all the seemingly unrelated thoughts racing around.
Many people talk about having a “second brain”. This is usually a notebook, or a folder with notes and ideas on your computer, or perhaps another system that suits you. As long as it allows you to easily store and retrieve all your thoughts.
I think this is the best way to achieve that balance.
- In daily life, you are “go with the flow”. Pick the task you want to do now. Pick the task the challenges or interests you this moment, even if you actually planned it for next week. When doing work, allow yourself to experiment, to try, to make mistakes and screw around.
- But keep a highly structured second brain. When unsure, your second brain clearly tells you what to work on. When a new idea enters your head, you can instantly file it away somewhere, so you can forget about it for now. When you need some motivation, have a way to easily check that (arbitrary, but important) deadline for this project.
I taught myself this “second brain” stuff by default when I was still in high school. It probably helped tremendously with getting through that hell. I could actually focus on stuff, because all the other thoughts and ideas that ran through my head were filed away immediately and then forgotten. I never forgot deadlines, or arrived too late, because I had clear structure to back shit up.
But most of the time, I went with the flow, fooled around, and chased whatever challenge I set myself this time.
Of course, some variation and freedom should be allowed. Once in a while, I notice I have loads of inspiration and energy, so I’ll keep working until 4 AM. Or I might be so restless I decided to exercises twice that day. Or I really need to hit a deadline, so I allow myself to eat some unhealthy food and grind through it.
The point is to not make it a habit. Eating a bag of crisps once in a while is fine. Eating one every evening without fail is bad.
The one obstacle
What’s standing in the way of this system? Why is this still very hard to pull off? Well, money.
You need money to survive. You need money to eat, put a roof over your head, provide stability that attracts spouses and allows raising families, etcetera.
Sure, we’re all told the conflicting message that money doesn’t make you happy, but also that you should work hard and suppress everything else the first years of your life … to get as much money as you can.
Both statements are true and false at the same time.
- More money generally doesn’t make you happy, especially not if you were already unhappy (for other reasons).
- Unless you’re living in poverty and the money is required for survival essentials.
- Yes, getting good grades and degrees will lead to a more secure and comfortable rest of your life.
- But it’s not worth the mental and physical pain our systems cause, and it’s not even a certainty these days (with many highly educated, bright individuals unable to find any proper job).
I come from a relatively poor background. (In absolute terms, we weren’t poor. But when you have to spread the income over 10 people, you spread it thin.)
All my life, I’ve heard that I should keep my projects and creative stuff to the background. Get a proper job. Finish your bachelor degree. Earn your money with a full-time job, do writing, game development, etcetera on the side.
And oh so many times, I’ve come close to actually doing it. Throw away all the ideas and projects, throw away all the skill and progress. I need to eat. I want a home with functioning heating. I want a laptop that works. I want to be able to financially support a family.
But I just can’t. For me, school was 23 years of hell. Just 23 years of black page after black page, locked in a prison and unable to express my body and my mind. It was terrible, soul-crushing, and I will not go back. Not even for a job that suits my skillset, such as working for a publisher or in a small game development studio. Not even for a really high-paying job, which I can easily get using my degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science. Money does not matter to me, not if you take away the external pressure.
Hopefully my portfolio so far proves this. I can only approach a semblance of happiness if I create 30+ books and games a year. I work standing up on a balance board, or cycling on a deskbike for hours. I am that restless and hyperactive, I need that amount of stimuli. So I’ve chosen to accept a complete lack of money and certainty—at least for now—to find a life that suits my brain and body.
I can live a life of comfort and certainty. Or I can live a life creating 30 crazy projects a year, going with the flow, inventing stuff and leaving something behind. Only the second one will make my brain happy—and I’m pretty certain that is true for most hyperactive people.
For hyperactive people, it’s not a choice between “do what you want” or “do what makes money”. It’s “do something” or “do nothing at all”.
I deeply respect those that make the opposite decision. To participate in this system, despite their hyperactive brain rebelling. I don’t know what else to tell you. It’s brave. Hang on. Stay physically active and keep challenging yourself.
Hopefully this article explains a little bit about how hyperactivity actually manifests and what you can do to make the best of it.
I think I’ll stop now. These articles always grow way longer than intended!
As sung in Hamilton, “why do you write like you’re running out of time?”
Well, now you know why I do that.