I can spend an hour deciding which blog post to write. Not writing — deciding. I’ll scroll through my list of draft topics, read through a few, start mentally outlining one, get bored before I actually start, jump to another, and eventually the window of motivation closes and I’ve produced nothing. It’s frustrating, specially because the motivation was there. The execution just couldn’t keep up with the indecision.
But every now and then, something clicks. I’ll get into this hyperfocus state where my brain is firing on all cylinders and I’m thinking faster than I can type. When that happens, the worst thing I can do is try to channel it into a single deep piece of work — because the moment the novelty wears off (which it will, in about ten minutes), the engine stalls.
Speed over depth
What I’ve learned to do instead is ride the wave sideways. When hyperfocus hits, I open up as many draft topics as I can and spend two to three minutes on each — just brain-dumping the key points, the structure, a few raw thoughts. I don’t try to write anything polished. I just capture what my brain is throwing at me, as fast as possible, and move to the next one.
This does a few things. First, it keeps the dopamine flowing because every two or three minutes I “finish” something and my brain registers a win. That little rush keeps me going. Second, the constant topic-switching keeps things novel, which is exactly what an ADHD brain needs to stay engaged. Third (and this is the real payoff), by the time I’m done I have ten or fifteen pre-drafted outlines that I can later sit down and flesh out one at a time, without the agonising “what should I write about” phase.
The meta-example
The fact that I wrote this topic is exactly what I’m talking about. I was in one of these hyperfocus sprints, pushing through a dozen drafts, and this one popped into my head mid-flow. I stopped what I was doing, dumped the outline in about three minutes, and moved on. That was months ago. Today I’m sitting down with a clear structure and just filling in the blanks. The hard part (deciding and structuring) was done in a manic burst. The easy part (writing) can happen whenever.
Paving the road
This exercise, done even once a month, paves the road for weeks of actual production. It kills the indecision problem entirely. Instead of staring at a blank page wondering where to start, I open a pre-drafted outline and just go. The barrier to start becomes almost nothing, which speaks directly to something I keep coming back to — that most of my productivity issues aren’t about capability or time, they’re about the friction of beginning.
It also does wonders for creativity. When I’m in rapid-fire mode, ideas breed ideas. I’ll start outlining one topic and immediately think of three others. That wouldn’t happen if I was grinding through a single article for two hours — the brain is too deep in one lane to see the others.
Not every sprint produces gold. Some outlines end up as dead ends, and that’s fine. The point isn’t to create masterpieces in three-minute bursts. It’s to capture the raw material while the brain is willing to produce it, and save the refinement for when the brain is in a different (calmer, more methodical) gear.