Research Recap with Skye: Hyperfocus in University Students
Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD Brain. Today I'm joined by Skye Waterson for our research recap series. In this series, we take a look at a single research paper and dive into what the paper says, how it's conducted, and try and find any practical takeaways.
In this episode we're gonna be discussing a paper called The Role of Executive Function in mediating the relationship between Adult ADHD symptoms and hyperfocus in university students. Now I think this is a really interesting subject and how about we just jump right into this. Can you tell me a little bit about this paper?
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at https://HackingYourADHD.com/259
https://tinyurl.com/56rvt9fr - Unconventional Organisation Affiliate link
https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk - YouTube
https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD - Patreon
William Curb: How about we just jump right into this. Can you tell me a little bit about this paper?
Skye Waterson: Yeah, for sure. So this is an interesting paper. They wanted to go a little bit deeper on the idea of hyper focus. So for anybody who needs a little refresher, hyperfocus is a state of intense and narrow attention on a stimulus object or task, along with diminishing awareness of the surroundings and some relationship to potentially increasing cognitive performance, otherwise known as when you are focusing and the world disappears and time disappears and suddenly you're in the zone. It could be on something fun, which we'll talk about in a minute. It could be on something work related, but that is what they were looking at and they really wanted to investigate in a survey of 380 university students, whether there was a relationship between ADHD executive functioning and hyper focus, which seems obvious, but I think that's one of the things that research is about. It's about taking the stuff that we think we know, and really diving into whether we truly, whether it's truly the case that these things are connected.
William Curb: Yeah. And I think that hyperfocus is a really interesting subject in itself because it's something that a lot of people go, "Hey, this is my ADHD superpower." But looking at this in terms of, "Hey, this is also part of how we're having difficulties with executive function," it's like this is an interesting subject. And also I think it's really interesting with the hyperfocus too, 'cause people are like, "This is I can get a paper done in two hours. That would take someone else two weeks," and I'm like, "Yeah, that's great. I can also get hyperfocused on sorting my spices or trying to find the best pair of socks online," and that's less useful.
Skye Waterson: Yeah. Yeah. It's like one of those, you know, sitcoms where you have an ability and everyone's like, "That's amazing," and you're like, "You know, it gets you into all kinds of wild shenanigans. It's not actually always the best."
William Curb: Yeah, so well, what did they really find about Hyperfocus on here?
Skye Waterson: Yeah, so if we jump into it, the first thing I'd say is, um they did self-reporting. So self reports of ADHD, so important to note that what they weren't looking for, like diagnosed ADHD necessarily. And they did a bunch of surveys, so they were surveying people who, you know, were struggling with. Um, so 60% female. They measured the Barkley executive functioning scale. So did you have daily executive functioning struggles, that kind of thing.
And what they found is that hyper focus first of all, they found that there was, they had tests of hyper focus and it seemed to be measuring different bits of focus, which I thought was really interesting. That was maybe my favorite part of the whole paper was the realization that actually these, these surveys that people have been doing to measure hyper focus, this idea isn't measuring the same thing.
William Curb: Yeah, because one of the things that I always come into trouble with thinking about is what really is hyperfocus? Versus just being very focused. And in other stuff I've talked about stuff about hyper focus versus flow, which are very similar concepts, but I think ultimately slightly different. Because you don't get into hyper or you don't get into flow about stuff you're not interested in. And so that's kinda like the, big difference for me. I'm like that's kinda where they, diverge there. And um, yeah, it is really something that we wanna be like, "Hey, what is, are we actually measuring here?"
Skye Waterson: Yeah. Yeah. And what they found was that there was a difference between hyperfocus, which is the idea of attention on stimulus and reward related hyperfocus, which is doing something that you enjoyed. So hyper-focusing on a game that you're playing or hyper-focusing on food that you're eating or something that you enjoy which is, obviously very, a very different experience. And it's that experience of like, well, you know, it's all very well to say he hyper focuses, but he only does it on X, Y, Z. You know those stories that people say all the time.
William Curb: Yeah, and they they did find that definitely the severity of your ADHD symptoms was correlated with both your hyperfocus and your executive function difficulties. And that that, but that the, with in regards to that reward related, related thing, it did not really correlate with reward related hyperfocus. That was more of, "Hey, yeah, we," and so that might be one of the differences that we see of "Hey, are we measuring hyperfocus or are we measuring flow?"
Skye Waterson: Yeah, exactly. Because flow is more of the reward, potentially re reward related hyperfocus, and yeah, they found, so executive functioning, ADHD, like you said, associated with hyperfocus. They seemed to be, which is what they were trying to find, the idea that ADHD symptoms was connected to hyperfocus mediated through executive functioning difficulties. So the more executive functioning difficulties you had, the more hyperfocus you had which was really interesting and I just found the fact that more ADHD symptoms is more hyperfocused. Really interesting because it made me wonder a little bit about this idea of, some people say that they struggle with hyperfocus a lot. Some people say that they don't, and it made me wonder if there is a correlation between, yeah, the severity of your ADHD. Not everybody has and experiences ADHD in the same way. Some people are taking medication for ADHD, so maybe they're not experiencing at the same level all the time. And the fact that could be affecting how you are, how much you're hyper focusing, and what you're hyper focusing on.
William Curb: Yeah, absolutely. Because well, and then it's makes you go, what I was getting when I was like stepping back and thinking about it was, is this. So it's this hyperfocus kind of a precursor symptoms to what else is going on. It's is losing being bad at tracking my time because I'm too focused on something else and I can't control where my focus is going? And like that's like an easy gimme there. But the but the same could be go for, "Hey, I'm disorganized because I'm not, I'm hyper focused on one thing. I'm not focused enough on where I'm putting things down and putting things away," so it's never going into the short term memory. And that's, that can be played for a lot of, "Hey, if I'm focused on one thing, my memory encoding is not as good everywhere else."
Skye Waterson: Yeah. 100%. It's interesting, the connection, especially for people who feel like it's a high, it's a strength. This idea because it, is, if it's a strength, it's a strength related to weakness according to this research at least outside of reward related hyper focus, which for the purposes of this we're gonna call flow. We remember what it is, but it reminded me as well of sometimes when people take medication, I know people who would not be on medication for some reason. They'll say, "Okay, I don't wanna take medication over the weekend," or "I don't wanna," obviously doctor's permission and all that kind of stuff. And they'll do something called like catching the butterfly or chasing the butterfly and they'll just flip from one thing to another. And so they might half organize parts of their house. And do a project and that video of somebody being like going from project to project and project, and then the person comes home and they're like, "This is the day of my HD spouse." It's almost there's a, hyper focus that is, involves like shifting attention and you're not even realizing that could happen as well.
William Curb: Yeah, it's. One of the thing and I don't want to completely dismiss the idea that people, for people that are like, "Hey, this is my strength." And it's yeah, this absolutely can be a strength if you can manage these other parts that come with it and it leverage it correctly. And that's often a of weaknesses are just leveraging, or strengths are leveraging weaknesses in a way that they can be used that way. But it's something that. You need to be aware of this other side of things. 'Cause if you're just completely ignoring it, then it that they do become much more of a problem and Yeah. harder to leverage as a strength.
Skye Waterson: Yeah, 100%. And just as a note for some people, if you are listening to this and you're going, "I'd really like to be able to focus. I have no idea how," you can DM me on Instagram at unconventional organization. You can just message me "Hyperfocus" and I will send you a focus flow framework that you can use because there, there are ways to slightly more intentionally support your focus with support for dopamine, working memory, things like that. And a lot of times what we see is people will feel trapped because they can only get things done when they're leveraging their hyperfocus. And that can be a really dangerous place because you're waiting till the last minute, or you're waiting for lightning to strike, which can be so frustrating.
William Curb: Especially when you're waiting for it and you're waiting for it and it's, not happening because for whatever reason you're like this happened every other time before, but I just not, I'm not feeling it today and. It's I've, had that where when I used to write all of my episodes and it would be, "Oh I, need to get something to happen, but I, my brain can't get it going." And,
Skye Waterson: Yeah, and sometimes it's that really weird. I'm gonna explain this idea of sometimes what will happen is we will be stressed about doing something. 'Cause a lot of the hyper focus will tend to come for people right around the deadline. 'Cause it's a dopamine thing. And so we'll be like, "Okay, last time I did this the day before and I was really stressed out about it, but it worked out really well." So this time I'm gonna know that's coming, but. Your a HD brain knows that you did it well last time, so now maybe you won't get the dopamine boost until the evening before the deadline, so we can be very frustrating like that.
William Curb: Yeah, and it's. One. Yeah. Relying so much on that minute before can be stressful if, especially if you're trying to break that habit where you're like, "Oh, I know I'm not going to be able to do it this time because you know something else is happening," and you're like, "Now I have to bail on these other plans I had because I couldn't get myself to do it beforehand, and I was relying so much on this last second motivation," and it's still not coming because. It's just not there. It's uh, different this time.
Skye Waterson: Yeah. Yeah. And it can really ruin your, you know, I work with a lot of clients on this particular topic because it's a big way, you know, figuring out how to focus without having to wait for hyper focus is a lot of how we get time back. 'Cause we can spend a lot of time hanging around waiting for this like hyper, hyper-focused moment. And we can put off plans, like you said, I've worked with people who say like, "I wanna go out, I wanna go to dinner, but I'm stuck." Kind of like working on this. Thing, but really I'm not working on it. I'm just kind of waiting to get into the zone to be able to do it. And that can be very debilitating in many ways. It can be very frustrating.
William Curb: Yeah it's also making me think a bit about Brenda Han's wall of Awful methodology where you have these things and so we're using this idea of hyperfocus to get us through that last hurdle. But one of it's things is that. Getting over that wall is often you can be, this is making me think of cleaning at the last minute where you're like, "Oh, I need to have the house clean because we're having part," and then you're doing it like through this crazy last minute. Anxiety, anger, and you're yelling at your spouse Yeah. yelling at yourself. And it's d damaging to yourself in the long term.
Skye Waterson: Yeah. Yeah, 100%. what can people take away from this paper?
William Curb: I think it is one of the big things is being like, "Hey, we can look at our executive function through this lens of hyperfocus and how hyperfocus is giving us these." we may be able to find some strengths in it, we should also be considering all these other aspects of the how it can be affecting us, even if we're not, not like the direct Effect.
Skye Waterson: Yeah. Yeah. And I think also understanding I always talk about this idea of strong strengths, strong weaknesses. It's yeah, maybe you can hyperfocus and you've done some amazing things. Gosh, the things that I've pulled off in my twenties, it's especially thanks to hyper. They, could be studied but at the same time, it is maybe almost in proportion to how much ADHD struggles you have. So it's that strong strength, strong weaknesses, and. I hyper focus can be so fun. It could just be fun when you're doing it and you're not worried and you're just pitter pattering around getting something organized, getting lost in time and space. But if you actually want to get things done, it's not a long-term grade strategy most, for most people, most of the time. And there are other ways to, do it. Like I said, you can just DM me and I'll show you what those are, but it's there are other ways to, focus without hyperfocus that are still ADHD friendly.
William Curb: Yeah. And one thing I also like to make people consider with Hyperfocus is that it's often we're bar borrowing executive function from ourself, from our future self.
Skye Waterson: my gosh, yes.
William Curb: like everyone knows this like crash after hyperfocus. And it's yeah, you are borrowing from your future self and the further you dig into those resources, this is how you hit burnout.