[whoknowsidont]

>All quirky fun and games until you realize you can't do high-paying jobs that requires consistent focus.

This is not a good understanding of ADHD. People with ADHD have hyperfocus tendencies, and this in fact can apply to their job while they ignore everything else.

That is to say extremely successful people might be that way BECAUSE of their ADHD, not in spite of it. A programmer who devotes the majority of their life to learning their craft, or an artist who spends all their attention on their next (or first) hit album.

But it's an even worse understanding of what high-paying jobs actually require.

[TalEs]

The thing with ADHD(maybe I am a special case) is that my focus tends to shift quickly and freely. What I might enjoy for a few months will no longer be fun, and I will move onto another subject that catches my attention, preventing me from fully delving into learning a craft, to the fullest extent. I envy people who can dedicate a majority of their time and focus into one particular thing, like programming or art. I've done both, enjoyed them, but moved on again. I still do enjoy them, but I would leave them for months, and when I come back, I am back to square one.

[ChainOfFools]

I find a similar pattern at work for myself. Although I think I've finally accepted that I lose interest in whatever I'm hyper focused on right around the time additional progress can no longer be made merely by what I would describe as the advanced dabbling, DIY pattern recognition and puzzle solving reward cycles delivered by straight ADHD style hyperfocus, but instead only happens by applied and sustained structured learning techniques as well.

A mathematical example would be right around the point where one finds that the delightfully focused exploration/experimentation afforded by ADHD which carried you to self-discovery of, say, why SIN relates to COS through their derivatives, or through the Pythagorean theorem, doesn't actually get you very far in calculus unless you intend to re-invent, at great personal cost and to no practical advantage, a lot of very well-known wheels.

Instead you need that hard-won scaffolding of rote memorization, the almost muscle-memory capacity for sight-recognition of a couple dozen identities and theorems and familiar problem forms, to get much further.

Spontaneous yawning when you're wide awake and actively interested in what you're reading or learning is for me a telltale sign that I have reached the point where I'll I have to tack a frustrating zigzag course _against_ the ADHD winds instead of sailing with them.

[spiffytech]

OP's mention of "consistent" is the important part.

The big problem with hyperfocus: you don't control what you focus on, or when. You can't turn it on for the big project, or turn it off when you're hyperfocused on a dumb distraction. Even ordinary focus (non-hyper) comes and goes at inconvenient times.

(I'm not sure if this is what you're saying, but hyperfocus isn't a fixation on a field of study or area of work. That sounds more like an autistic special interest, although many people with ADHD also have autism. Hyperfocus is more like being "in the zone", on a scale of hours.)

Some ADHD people find great success in the workplace, because of or in spite of ADHD. But non-traditional career paths have a ton of ADHD people for a reason.

[ekanes]

I found ADHD to be a huge advantage as a founder - hyperfocus + constantly solving NEW problems was stressful but also fun and energizing, whereas to others it could be perhaps just stressful.