it's not an attention problem

hey, it's tiff.

you can lock in for six straight hours on something that doesn't matter, and you cannot start the ten-minute thing that does. and somewhere along the way you decided that means you're lazy, or broken, or bad at being an adult.

so let me translate what's actually happening.

adhd is not an attention problem. it's an interest regulation problem. most brains run on importance: this matters, so i'll do it. ours run on interest, urgency, and novelty. if a task has none of those, it doesn't matter how important it is. the door just doesn't open.

that's not a character flaw. that's the wiring. you've been measuring yourself with a ruler built for a different brain, and then feeling shame every time you come up short. the shame was never data. it was just a bad ruler.

i'm not going to give you five hacks for this. you've read the hacks. i'll give you one question instead, for the next time you can't start: not "what's wrong with me," but "what would make this interesting." sometimes there's an answer. sometimes there isn't, and you get to stop interrogating yourself either way.

🖤 tiff