Re: Hyperfocus vs. Perseverance?

[Tiddler]

Re Bill’s post on hyperfocus and how it happens, I’ll try to be precise about what I experience.

If, for example, I want to clean up because we’re having guests, I fret about it for a couple of days then in the morning of the day they’re visiting I wake up feeling energized and determined to ‘get stuff sorted’. I make a start – maybe by dusting in one room. Once this job is all or partly done, I usually spot something else I want/feel I need to do and I forget about the dusting, leaving the duster wherever I happen to drop it. Eventually I’ll remember I was supposed to be cleaning and I’ll get back to it, only to be distracted or give up again shortly after. This goes on all day.

Eventually get a sort of jolt – of mini panic I think – as I realise I only have X minutes to ‘get it done’. I feel like there’s a rush of energy and enthusiasm that comes from somewhere in my body and I begin to whirl round making it happen. Sometimes I get quite frantic and start making unreasonable demands of my husband – take out the bins, put the laundry in the machine, what do you mean you haven’t done it yet?!

When this happens, I truly feel like I’m watching the rest of the world as it happens in slow motion. That’s the only way I can describe it. Everyone else looks like they’re in a different time dimension and I’m whirring faster and faster, unable to slow down even if I wanted to – but in that moment I usually don’t want to. It’s almost painful to see how slowly everything else is going while I’m like this. My husband says he doesn’t think I’m actually moving any faster than him, but he does think my anxiety levels go up.

I feel good though, and ‘purposeful’ and I get a real kick out of it, whether it’s housework or an essay or a work deadline. It has to be fast approaching – far too fast approaching or this just doesn’t happen.

This video explains it better than I can – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF1YRE8ff1g

REPORT ABUSE