Questions after a late diagnosis

Is hyperfocus a blessing or a curse?

By Jenny Lucas. From my essay Hyperfocus: The Curse I Wouldn’t Give Back, first published 24 July 2026.

On Sunday morning I woke up and my body hurt. Not ill hurt. Not overdone-it-at-Pilates hurt. The specific, familiar ache of having spent three days hunched over a laptop, barely moving, barely drinking, barely existing as a physical person at all. My concentration was shot. I had no executive function left for anything. Whatever was in the tank had been poured, every last drop, into one thing.

Let me tell you how I got there.

Friday night

A couple of weeks ago I started building an app to support neurodivergent people in burnout. I know the need is there because I’ve lived it, and because the people in my community live it. I did a rough first draft and shared it with my members. Fine. Contained. Sensible.

Then I had a vision for what it could be as a proper commercial app, and on Friday night that vision took me over.

I don’t have better language for it than possession. It’s like being chosen to birth an idea into the world, and the privilege and the sacrifice arrive as a package deal. You don’t get one without the other. From Friday night onwards I spent every available waking moment at that laptop. Hours and hours staring at a screen, neglecting my sensory needs, my food, my water, my body, and knowing exactly what it was costing me while being completely unable to disengage. Because I knew, from forty one years of experience, that if I lost the flow, I’d lose the thread. The momentum dies and it is bloody hard to get that cold engine running again. And this idea was too good to let that happen.

Here’s the number that makes people’s eyes widen. I did what would normally be about three months of work for a team of three people in roughly 72 hours.

That’s a phenomenal thing. Stay with the seduction of that for a second, because I need you to understand why this is so hard to walk away from before I tell you what it cost.

The bill

I pre-warned my husband. I actually said the words: I’m in the grips of hyperfocus, I’m not going to be able to make good choices for myself, and I’m not going to be very available. He was understanding, because he’s lived with me long enough to know what’s coming.

But I was aware, the whole time, of what I was doing. Every time I was in a room with another human being, I was on a screen. Every time someone tried to interrupt me, I felt a flash of irritation I had to swallow. Dinner was an obstacle between me and getting back to the laptop. I pushed past my bedtime by an hour and a half, two hours, night after night, because there was always another test to run, another idea to write down before it evaporated.

On Saturday morning my husband’s sonic boom alarm clock went off at 5.20am for no reason any of us can establish. He swears blind he didn’t set it. So that was me awake, and I was at the laptop within minutes, and I got a good three hours in before the house properly stirred.

I did then force myself out the door to Pilates, and I want to be clear that this was a deliberate decision rather than a virtuous one. I knew that if I didn’t put myself somewhere else, out of the house, away from a screen, for an hour, the thing would consume the entire day and I’d be an even bigger wreck by the end of it. That’s what passes for self care mid-hyperfocus: damage limitation, calculated in advance. I also tried to remember to drink water. I don’t drink much at the best of times, and when I’m hyperfocused it drops to basically nothing. When “remember to drink water” is an achievement, you know where you are.

And then there was Saturday afternoon, which was my daughter’s birthday party at a trampoline park.

A trampoline park is not my favourite environment at the best of times. But I knew I’d be fine, because I had my little Wi-Fi dongle, my laptop and my noise cancelling earbuds. Pete was the adult in charge, running the whole thing properly. I was present in the sense that my body was in the building. So while my daughter and her friends bounced around having the time of their lives, I sat at the side of it with a screen open.

I took the hyperfocus on tour. It came to the party with me. And when we got everyone home and fed, it carried on until I physically could not keep my eyes open.

I want to be careful here, because I’m not writing this to flagellate myself and I’d say the same to any of you. I was there. Her dad was there and on it. She had a brilliant day. But I’d be lying if I told you I was fully in the room, and the honest version of this article requires me to tell you that I brought work to my child’s birthday party and genuinely could not have done otherwise.

By Sunday, the bill arrived. Body aching, focus in tatters, and the grimly funny realisation that the only thing I had any capacity left for was the very thing that had emptied me.

Not all hyperfocus wears the same face

If you’re neurodivergent, you’ll already know that hyperfocus isn’t one thing. Over my life I’ve met at least three versions of it.

There’s the possession, which is what I’ve just described. The idea that must be birthed, that consumes everything, that feels entirely outside your control. Relentless. I’ve got to get this done, and that bit, and oh, that idea, write it down, don’t lose it. All-consuming and not remotely optional.

There’s the deadline beast. At university I was middle-of-the-night girl. How close to the deadline can we take it? All-nighters, essays written in a flat-out sprint because the ADHD brain often can’t start without the flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants sensation. And the beast needed feeding. I’d smoke my way through it, chain down packets of biscuits and crisps, because I needed constant stimulation to sustain the stimulation. The work got done. It always got done. At great personal cost, every time.

And then there’s the recovery fixation, which almost nobody talks about. When I was in significant burnout and couldn’t do very much at all, I got deep into Stardew Valley on the Switch. It kept my brain busy in a really undemanding way. It gave me a sense of being productive when I couldn’t produce anything. For a while, that game gave me purpose. If you’ve never experienced neurodivergent burnout or any kind of breakdown, that will sound like a strange thing to say about a farming game. If you know, you know.

Same brain. Same mechanism. Three completely different faces.

The question everyone asks

Would I give it up if I could?

No.

I’ve just spent an entire article telling you it’s a curse, and my honest answer is still no, because I cannot imagine what life would be like the other way. I can’t imagine moving through life at an average pace. I can’t imagine having an average amount of focus to point in one direction at a time, smoothly transitioning between tasks like some kind of well-regulated adult. I have never lived like that. I’ve lived forty one years in cycles of boom and bust, and while I’m genuinely better these days at building in breaks, pauses and actual self care, I need you to hear this clearly.

You cannot out-regulate an AuDHD brain.

Nervous system regulation matters. It helps. I do it. But it is not a protective shield against overwhelm, overstimulation, hyperfocus, meltdowns or shutdowns, and anyone selling you the idea that it is, is selling you bullshit. The blessing and the curse are the same thing. That’s the whole point of the phrase. They cannot be separated, and no amount of breathwork buys you out of the deal.

The irony, in case you missed it

I burnt myself out building an app for neurodivergent people in burnout.

I’m aware. Believe me, I’m aware.

It’s called Burnout Buddy, and it’s live now. Built by someone who understands the territory rather better than she’d like to.

What recovery actually looks like

In an ideal world, recovery would look like slow dog walks, easy food, lots of horizontal time, a good TV series, a few days where nobody needs me and my executive function can refill. Stardew Valley levels of engaged-but-not-too-engaged.

In the real world, it’s the summer holidays. My kids are home. I work from home. My husband mostly doesn’t. I have a day job, a dog, laundry, a life. There is no time off. So what recovery actually looks like is this: being at zero with myself, knowing the hyperfocus has passed, and grabbing moments of rest in amongst the realities of living a life I love. Because I do love it, and I’m grateful to have a life to live at all.

That’s not a neat ending. There isn’t one. The next hyperfocus will come, I won’t be able to stop it, and part of me will welcome it in.

Curse and blessing. Same thing. Always was.

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