The squirrel and the magnet
People with ADHD often have a really tough time switching from one task to another.
In my experience, this takes two forms:
- The squirrel
- The magnet
In Squirrel Mode™, your brain is like a squirrel running across the road.
It zigs and zags from one topic to another, and has many things bouncing around. Focusing on anything long enough to make significant progress is extremely hard.
When you go to shift from one task to another—because you’ve finished what you were doing, or because you get interrupted—you revert back into squirrel behavior. Your concentration breaks easily, and getting back into it is really hard, too!
Magnet Mode™ happens when you’re in hyperfocus.
Your brain is like a powerful electromagnet, locked in on a piece of metal. Pulling it away from the thing you’re focused on is extremely difficult and requires a tremendous amount of mental force.
It’s also quite tenuous. The magnet could snap back at any moment.
These two modes are completely different, but they both present big challenges for task switching. And the way you manage each of them is quite different, too.
We’ll talk about that on Monday!