I can work on something for hours without noticing time.
I can be fully in it. Interested. Productive. Making connections fast enough that stopping feels annoying.
Then I close the file.
The next day, reopening it can feel absurdly hard.
The interest didn’t disappear. Getting back into it did
This confused me for a long time. I thought avoiding the project meant I must not care about it anymore.
Except I did care. I might still be thinking about it constantly. I just didn’t want to do the annoying part: reconstruct where I left off, remember the half-finished idea, decide what came next, and get my brain back into the same mode.
The project had gone from “I’m inside this” to “please load the whole context again.”
Hyperfocus and shifting attention can coexist
Hyperfocus isn’t a formal ADHD diagnostic criterion, but research has found associations between ADHD symptoms, executive-function difficulties, and more frequent hyperfocus. A 2023 study found executive-function difficulties partly mediated that relationship in a university sample.
Separate research on adults with ADHD has also found difficulties with aspects of set shifting and task switching. This study is one example.
That doesn’t prove my specific “can’t reopen the file” pattern is caused by ADHD. It does explain why “you focused for six hours yesterday, so clearly focus isn’t the problem” isn’t a very useful analysis.
Stopping well matters more than I thought
I used to stop when I was exhausted or interrupted. Which meant Future Me inherited a project with no map.
I do better if I leave myself one ugly sentence before I close it:
- What I just finished
- What I was about to do
- The first thing to open or change next
Not a project-management system. A breadcrumb.
Before I stop, I leave myself a note about what I was doing.
“Work on the project” is huge when the whole mental context has gone cold.
“Open the file and read the note I left myself” is much less dramatic.
This is basically the same lesson I keep relearning with starting tasks: I do better when the first action is specific enough that I don’t have to rebuild the whole problem before I can move. I wrote more about that here.