Research Recap with Skye: Hyperfocus in University Students

Summary

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Episode Overview

Podcast: Hacking Your ADHD
Host: William Curb
Guest: Skye Waterson (Unconventional Organization)
Episode: Research Recap with Skye: Hyperfocus in University Students
Date: November 28, 2025

This episode dives into a recent research paper examining the relationship between ADHD symptoms, executive function challenges, and hyperfocus in university students. William and Skye break down the study's methodology, findings, and what they mean for individuals living with ADHD. The discussion explores how hyperfocus manifests, how it can be both a strength and a liability, and strategies for managing focus without always relying on last-minute surges of productivity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Understanding Hyperfocus in ADHD

[01:59] Skye describes hyperfocus as:

“...a state of intense and narrow attention on a stimulus object or task, along with diminishing awareness of the surroundings and some relationship to potentially increasing cognitive performance, otherwise known as when you're focusing and the world disappears and time disappears and suddenly you're in the zone.”

• Hyperfocus is not just deep concentration—it’s a unique experience often reported by those with ADHD, where extraneous awareness fades.
• Can be beneficial (e.g., racing to finish a paper) or less useful (e.g., getting lost researching socks online).

[03:06] William:

“It's something that a lot of people go, 'hey, this is my ADHD superpower.'... But looking at this in terms of, hey, this is also part of how we're having difficulties with executive function. It's like, this is a interesting subject.”

2. The Research Paper: Approach & Methodology

[04:05] Skye:

• The study surveyed 380 university students (60% female) using self-reported ADHD symptoms—not all were formally diagnosed.
• Executive functioning was measured with the Barkley Executive Functioning Scale (tracking daily struggles).
• Surveys also attempted to distinguish between different types of hyperfocus.

“That was maybe my favorite part of the whole paper was the realization that actually these...surveys that people have been doing to measure hyperfocus, this idea isn’t measuring the same thing.” — Skye [05:01]

3. Hyperfocus vs. Flow: Are They Different?

[05:01] William:

“What really is hyperfocus versus just being very focused? And...hyperfocus versus flow, which are very similar concepts but I think ultimately slightly different...You don’t get into flow about stuff you’re not interested in—so that’s kind of like the big difference for me.”

• The study found a distinction between "hyperfocus" (intense focus regardless of enjoyment) and "reward-related hyperfocus" (intense focus on enjoyable tasks—akin to “flow”).
• Reward-related hyperfocus (flow) is less tied to ADHD symptom severity.

4. Major Findings & Implications

[06:27] William:

“Severity of your ADHD symptoms was correlated with both your hyperfocus and your executive function difficulties...But...reward-related [flow] did not really correlate with [it]...Are we measuring hyperfocus or are we measuring flow?”

[07:04] Skye:

• The more severe the ADHD symptoms, the more hyperfocus episodes, mediated by executive function challenges.
• Degree of executive function issues directly links to hyperfocus occurrence, but not to “flow.”

[08:14] William:

“Is this hyperfocus kind of a precursor symptoms to what else is going on? Is losing...track[ing] my time because I'm too focused...the same could be go for, hey, I’m disorganized because I'm...hyperfocused on one thing, I'm not focused enough on where I’m putting things down...So it’s never going into the short term memory...”

[09:08] Skye (on strengths and weaknesses):

“If it's a strength, it's a strength related to a weakness. According to this research, at least outside of reward related hyper focus, which...we're going to call flow...”

5. Hyperfocus as a Double-Edged Sword

• Hyperfocus enables powerful bursts of productivity, but only when it strikes (often at the eleventh hour).
• Relying on hyperfocus can be risky, leading to cycles of avoidance, stress, and last-minute sprints.

[10:16] William:

“This absolutely can be a strength if you can manage these other parts that come with it and leverage it correctly...But it's something that you need to be aware of this other side...because if you're just completely ignoring it...they do become much more of a problem and makes it much harder to leverage as a strength.”

[11:39] William:

“Especially when you're waiting for it and you're waiting for it and it's not happening because for whatever reason you're lacking. This happened every other time before, but I just not...feeling it today. And it's...What do you do?”

6. Hyperfocus, Deadlines, and “Chasing the Butterfly”

[12:07] Skye:

• Many ADHDers rely on the stress of a near deadline for the dopamine spike that triggers hyperfocus.
• Over time, this pattern trains the brain to wait even longer before hyperfocus kicks in.
• “Chasing the butterfly”: cycling between projects, starting many but finishing few, is another common phenomenon.

7. The Toll of Hyperfocus: Burnout and Borrowed Time

[16:08] William:

“...with hyperfocus is that it's often we're borrowing executive function from ourself, from our future self.”

[16:16] Skye:

“Everyone knows this, like crash after hyperfocus. And it's...you are borrowing from your future self. And the further you dig into those resources, this is how you hit burnout.”

8. Practical Takeaways & Strategies

• Recognizing that hyperfocus is tied to executive functioning struggles may help reframe ADHD experiences.
• Hyperfocus and executive function weaknesses are often two sides of the same coin.
• It’s possible—and healthier—to foster focus by supporting dopamine and memory outside of crisis moments.
• Skye offers a resource:

  “You can just message me 'hyperfocus' [on Instagram @unconalorganization] and I will send you a focus flow framework that you can use...” [10:53]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Skye [01:59]: “Hyper focus is...when you’re focusing and the world disappears and time disappears and suddenly you’re in the zone.”
• William [03:06]: “This is my ADHD superpower...but also part of our difficulties with executive function.”
• Skye [05:01]: “The realization that actually these...surveys...aren’t measuring the same thing.”
• William [08:14]: “Is this hyperfocus kind of a precursor symptom to what else is going on?”
• Skye [09:08]: “If it’s a strength, it’s a strength related to a weakness.”
• William [16:08]: “With hyperfocus...you are borrowing from your future self.”
• Skye [16:16]: “Everyone knows this...crash after hyperfocus...this is how you hit burnout.”

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [01:59] – Defining Hyperfocus
• [03:06] – Societal perceptions: superpower or struggle?
• [04:05] – Study methodology: self-reported ADHD, executive functioning, and types of hyperfocus
• [05:01] – Measuring and distinguishing hyperfocus from flow
• [06:27] – Key findings: symptoms, executive function, hyperfocus
• [08:14] – Hyperfocus and its downstream effects on memory and organization
• [09:08] – Hyperfocus: strength linked to weakness
• [12:07] – “Catching the butterfly”: hyperfocus as a last-minute coping strategy
• [14:00] – The “wall of awful” and the role of anxiety-driven hyperfocus
• [16:08] – The cost: borrowing executive function and risk of burnout

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Episode Takeaways

• Hyperfocus isn't simply an “ADHD superpower”—it’s often a sign of deeper executive functioning struggles.
• The ability to hyperfocus is often proportional to the severity of ADHD symptoms and executive dysfunction.
• Reward-related hyperfocus (aka “flow”) is distinct and less associated with ADHD symptom severity.
• Relying exclusively on hyperfocus for productivity can be detrimental, leading to cycles of stress, avoidance, and eventual burnout.
• Building intentional strategies for focus—rather than waiting for “the zone”—is healthier and more sustainable.

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Further Resources

• Skye’s Focus Flow Framework: Message “hyperfocus” to Skye on Instagram [@unconalorganization] for a practical framework.
• More ADHD tools and support at unconventionalorganization.com

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This episode is a must-listen for anyone curious about the science of ADHD hyperfocus, how it intertwines with day-to-day struggles, and how to reframe it for healthier, more reliable productivity.

Transcript

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[William Curb]

Welcome to Hacking youg adhd. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have adhd. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Today, I'm joined by Sky Waterson for our Research Recap series. In this series, we take a look at a single research paper and dive into what the paper says, how it was conducted, and try and find any practical takeaways. In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called the Role of Executive Function in Mediating the Relationship Between Adult ADHD Symptoms and Hyperfocus in University Students. Now, I think this is a really interesting subject, and how about we just jump right into it? Can you tell me a little bit about this paper?

[Skye Waterson]

Yeah, for sure. So this is a. This is an interesting paper. They wanted to go a little bit deeper on the idea of hyperfocus. So for anybody who needs a little refresher. Hyper focus is a state of intense and narrow attention on a stimulus object or task, along with diminishing awareness of the surroundings and some relationship to potentially increasing cognitive performance, otherwise known as when you're focusing and the world disappears and time disappears and suddenly you're in the zone. It could be on something fun, which we'll talk about in a minute. It could be on something work related. But that is what they were looking at and they really wanted to investigate in a, you know, survey of 380 university students, whether there was a relationship between ADHD, executive functioning and hyperfocus, which seems obvious, but I think that's one of the things that research is about. It's about taking the stuff that we think we know and really diving into whether we truly. Whether it's truly the case that these things are connected.

[William Curb]

Yeah. And I think that hyperfocus is a really interesting subject in itself because it's something that a lot of people go, hey, this is my ADHD superpower. But looking at this in terms of, hey, this is also part of how we're having difficulties with executive function. It's like, this is a interesting subject. And also I think it's really interesting to hyper focus too, because people are like, this is. I can get paper done in two hours. That would take someone else two weeks. And I'm like, yeah, that's great. I can also get hyper focused on sorting my spices or figuring out trying to find the best pair of socks online. And that's less useful.

[Skye Waterson]

Yeah, yeah. It's like one of those, you know, sitcoms where you have a. Have an ability and everyone's like, that's amazing. And you're like, you know, it gets you into all kinds of wild shenanigans. It's not actually always the best.

[William Curb]

Yeah. So, well, what did they really find about hyper focus on here?

[Skye Waterson]

Yeah. So if we jump into it, the first thing I'd say is they did self reporting, so self reports of adhd. So important to note that they weren't looking for, like, diagnosed ADHD necessarily. And they did a bunch of surveys. So they were surveying people who, you know, were struggling with. So 60% female. They measured the Barclay executive functioning scale. So did you have daily executive functioning struggles, that kind of thing? And what they found is that hyperfocus, first of all, they found that there was. They had tests of hyperfocus and it seemed to be measuring different bits of focus, which I thought was really interesting. That was maybe my favorite part of the whole paper was the realization that actually these. These surveys that people have been doing to measure hyperfocus, this idea isn't measuring the same thing.

[William Curb]

Yeah. Because one of the things that I always come into trouble with thinking about is like, what really is hyperfocus versus just being very focused. And in other stuff I've talked About stuff about hyperfocus versus flow, which are very similar concepts but I think ultimately slightly different because they just don't quite sync up the way because you don't get into hyper or you don't get into flow about stuff you're not interested in. And so that's kind of like the big difference for me. I'm like that's kind of where they diverge there. And yeah, it is really something that we want to be like, hey, what is, what are we actually measuring here?

[Skye Waterson]

Yeah, yeah. And what they found was that there was a difference between hyper focus, which is the idea of attention on stimulus and reward related hyper focus which is doing something that you enjoyed. So hyper focusing on a game that you're playing or hyper focusing on food that you're eating or something that you enjoy, which is obviously very. A very different experience. And it's that experience of like, well, you know, it's all very well to say he hyper focuses but he only does it on xyz. You know those stories that people say all the time.

[William Curb]

Yeah. And they, they did find that definitely the severity of your ADHD symptoms was correlated with both your hyper focus and your executive function difficulties. And that, that. But that the with in regards to that reward related thing did not really correlate with reward related hyperfocus. That was more of hey, yeah, we. And so that might be one of the differences that we see of hey, are we measuring hyperfocus or are we measuring flow?

[Skye Waterson]

Yeah, exactly. Because flow is more of the reward, potentially reward related hyper focus. And yeah, they found. So executive functioning ADHD like you said, associated with hyperfocus. There seemed to be. Which is what they were trying to find. The idea that ADHD symptoms was connected to hyper focus mediated through executive functioning difficulties. So the more executive functioning difficulties you had, the more hyperfocus you had, which was really interesting. And I just found the fact that more ADHD symptoms is more hyper focus really interesting because it made me wonder a little bit about this idea of some people say that they struggle with hyperfocus a lot, some people say that they don't. And it made me wonder if there is a correlation between. Yeah. The severity of your adhd. Not everybody has and experiences ADHD in the same way. Some people are taking medication for adhd. So maybe they're not experiencing at the same level all the time. And the fact that could be affecting how you are, how much you're hyper focusing and what you're focusing on.

[William Curb]

Yeah, absolutely. Because. Well, and then it's makes what I was getting when I was like stepping back and thinking about it was is this, so is this hyper focus kind of a precursor symptoms to what else is going on? Is losing being bad at tracking my time because I'm too focused on something else and I can't control where my focus is going and like that's like an easy give me there. But the, the same could be go for, hey, I'm disorganized because I'm not, I'm hyper focused on one thing. I'm not focused enough on where I'm putting things down and putting things away. So it's never going into the short term memory and that, that can be played for a lot of hey, if I'm focused on one thing, my memory encoding is not as good everywhere else.

[Skye Waterson]

Yeah, yeah, 100%. It's interesting the connection especially for people who feel like it's a, it's a strength, this idea because it is. If it's a strength, it's a strength related to a weakness. According to this research, at least outside of reward related hyper focus, which for the purposes of this we're going to call flow so we remember what it is. But yeah, it reminded me as well of sometimes when people take medication, I know people who would not be on medication for some reason they'll say okay, I don't want to take medication over the weekend or I don't want to obviously doctor's permission and all that kind of stuff. And they'll do something called like catching the butterfly or chasing the butterfly and they'll just flip from one thing to another. And so they might half organize parts of their house and do a project and that video of somebody being like going from project to project and project and then the person comes home and they're like, this is the day of my ADHD spouse. It's almost there's a hyper focus that is. Involves like shifting attention and you're not even realizing that can happen as well.

[William Curb]

Yeah, it's one of the things and I don't want to completely dismiss the idea that people, for people that are like, hey, this is my strength and it's yeah, this absolutely can be a strength if you can manage these other parts that come with it and leverage it correctly. And that's often a lot of weaknesses are just leveraging their strengths are leveraging weaknesses in a way that they can be used that way. But it's something that you need to be aware of this other side of things because if you're just completely ignoring it, then it that they do become much more of a problem and makes it much harder to leverage as a strength.

[Skye Waterson]

Yeah, 100%. And just as a note for some people, if you are listening to this and you're going, I'd really like to be able to focus. I have no idea how you can DM me on Instagram nconalorganization. You can just message me hyperfocus and I will send you a focus flow framework that you can use because there, there are ways to slightly more intentionally support your focus with support for dopamine, working memory, things like that. And a lot of times what we see is people will feel trapped because they can only get things done when they're leveraging their hyper focus. And that can be a really dangerous place because you're sort of waiting till the last minute or you're waiting for lightning to strike, which can be so frustrating.

[William Curb]

Yeah. Especially when you're waiting for it and you're waiting for it and it's not happening because for whatever reason you're lacking. This happened every other time before, but I just not. I'm not feeling it today. And it's. I've had that where when I used to write all of my episodes and it would be, oh, I need to get something to happen. My brain can't get it going. And what. What do you do?

[Skye Waterson]

Yeah, and sometimes it's that really weird. I'm going to explain this idea of sometimes what will happen is we will be stressed about doing something because a lot of the hyper focus will tend to come for people right around the deadline because it's a dopamine thing. And so we'll be like, okay, last time I did this the day before and I was really stressed out about it, but it worked out really well. So this time I'm gonna know that's coming. But your ADHD brain knows that you did it well last time. So now maybe you won't get the dopamine boost until the evening before the deadline. So we can be very frustrating like that.

[William Curb]

Yeah. Yeah. And it's one. Yeah. Relying so much on that minute before can be really stressful if.

[Skye Waterson]

Yeah.

[William Curb]

Especially if you're trying to break that habit where you're like, oh, I know I'm not going to be able to do it this time because you know something else is happening and you're like, now I have to bail on these other plans I had because I couldn't get myself to do it beforehand. And I was relying so much on this last second motivation and it's still not coming because it's just not there. It's different this time.

[Skye Waterson]

Yeah, yeah. And it can really ruin your. You know, I work with a lot of clients on this particular topic because it's a big way, you know, figuring out how to focus without having to wait for hyper focus is a lot of how we get time back. Because we can spend a lot of time hanging around waiting for this like hyper focus moment and we can put off plans. Like you said, I've worked with people who say, like, I want to go out, I want to go to dinner, but I'm stuck kind of like working on this thing, but really I'm not working on it. I'm just kind of waiting to get into the zone to be able to do it. And that can be very debilitating in many ways. It can be very frustrating.

[William Curb]

Yeah. It's also making me think a bit about Brendan Man's wall of awful methodology where we have these things. And so we're using this idea of hyper focus to get us through that last hurdle.

[Skye Waterson]

Yes.

[William Curb]

But one of its things is that getting over that wall is often you can be. This is making me think of cleaning at the last minute where you're like, oh, I need to have the house clean because we're having parties. And then you're doing it like through this crazy last minute anxiety, anger and you're yelling at your spouse or yelling at yourself and it's damaging to yourself in the long term.

[Skye Waterson]

Yeah, yeah, 100%. So what can people take away from this paper?

[William Curb]

I think it is one of the big things is being like, hey, we can look at our executive function through this lens of hyperfocus and how hyperfocus is giving us these. While we may be able to find some strengths in it, we should also be considering all these other aspects of how it can be affecting us even if we're not. It's not like the direct effect.

[Skye Waterson]

Yeah, yeah. And I think also understanding. I always talk about this idea of strong strengths, strong weaknesses. It's. Yeah, maybe you can hyper focus. And you've done some amazing things. Gosh, the things that I've pulled off in my 20s, especially thanks to hyperfocus, it could be studied, but at the same time, it is maybe almost in proportion to how much ADHD struggles you have. So it's that strong strengths, strong weaknesses and hyper focus can be so fun. It could just be fun when you're doing it and you're not worried and you're just pitter pattering around, getting something organized, getting lost in time. And space. But if you actually want to get things done, it's not a long term, great strategy, most for most people, most of the time. And there are other ways to do it. Like I said, you can just DM me and I'll show you what those are. But it's. There are other ways to focus without hyperfocus that are still adhd, friend.

[William Curb]

Yeah. And one thing I also like to make people consider with hyperfocus is that it's often we're borrowing executive function from ourself, from our future self.

[Skye Waterson]

Oh my gosh.

[William Curb]

And so like everyone knows this, like crash after hyperfocus. And it's. Yeah, you are borrowing from your future self. And the further you dig into those resources, this is how you hit burnout.

[Katie Duke]

Hello.

[Skye Waterson]

So you were just listening to a research recap. I'm Skye Waterson of Unconventional Organization. If you like that there's lots more information about ADHD and support for [e-mail] you can go ahead and check that out. Lots of free resources, lots of strategies, and if you want to join our programs, you can do that as well. And we'll see you there. Unconventional Organization.

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