Disclaimer: this article is not intended as medical advice. Please consult your physician regarding any questions or concerns about your own health or mental health, particularly regarding medication.
As a law student who just finished his second year as an evening student, I have been applying to post-law school jobs. I work during the day as a special education teacher, so I take fewer credits than the regular law students the year below me and am competing against those students for these positions.
To be fair, we’re all only applying to summer internships next year, but in law school, the narrative is “the internship you get after your second year of law is your job after law school.” I have applied mostly to law firms, through a process known as “pre-OCI.” In the past, recruiters used to come directly to law schools to recruit students, but right now, most law firms are skipping the whole OCI process to start early and get the best candidates.
I have, for lack of a better term, been neurotic about the process. Use any word you want to label — obsessed, hyperfixated, and borderline anxious. I have had a couple of interviews so far and all of them have, in my estimation, gone well. In some, I have asked insightful enough questions that the interviewer has talked more than I did.
However, these interviews have an initial “screening” interview and then, if you pass that stage, you get called back for a more extensive, 90 minute interview. This latter interview is called a “callback,” and if you pass this second interview, you usually get an offer.
I have not heard back from a single firm about the callback.
Yes, I had all my interviews in the past week and maybe it’s just too early to hear back. But I started not only freaking out not only about the interviews, but whether I would get a job after law school at all. I irrationally started wondering whether I should ask the interviewers about whether I would hear back at all, despite knowing how desperate it seemed.
I started to hyperanalyze whether I had completely misunderstood how amicably or how well the interviews went. I started to wonder what was wrong with me that I wasn’t getting a callback. I started to doubt whether I would get a job at all, and whether wondered whether this whole law school thing was a complete waste of time.
Of course, all of these thoughts are pretty unreasonable and irrational. First of all, it’s incredibly early in the process, and second, it’s not the end of the world if I don’t get a job two years in advance of this summer. It’s not the end of the world if I don’t get a law firm job at all and just work in the government or a public interest group.
It is safe to say I started panicking. But I am the type of person that likes to channel panic into action — it isn’t always the answer, but it gives me a much higher locus of control. Instead of checking my email every five minutes to see if a law firm extended a callback interview, I started mass applying to other law firms. It wasn’t all I did to calm myself, but any time my mind focused and fixated on the process of getting a job, I would just apply more and more to cast a super broad net and maximize my chances.
The ongoing fixation and panic surrounding getting a job reveal yet another episode of an ADHD symptom I have had my whole life. It has had a plethora of benefits, but also some drawbacks: hyperfocus.
. . .
According to Royce Flippin at ADDitude, hyperfocus (or hyperfixation) is an intense fixation on an interest or activity for an extended amount of time, to the extent that the world around the person is blocked out. People with ADHD will often hyperfocus on things that interest them, and hyperfocus comes in direct contrast to the other side of the ADHD coin: inattention. Inattention is one of the most common ADHD symptoms, which, according to VeryWellHealth, is difficulty focusing, getting distracted easily, and being easily forgetful. When people think about ADHD, they mostly think of inattention of hyperactivity, but not hyperfocus.
I have often thought of hyperfocus as a superpower — as long as I directed it to the right tasks. Playing video games eight to 12 hours a day was not a very productive use of hyperfocus when I was younger. But I struggled mightily to break out of the video game habit and addiction for years. To this day, when playing some RPGs and MMORPGs, I can play video games for eight hours a day or more if I don’t set limits and regulate myself.
Whether I exhibit hyperfocus or inattention depends on how engrossed I am by the task and how interested I am in it. Something I deem undesirable, like mowing the lawn, cleaning the house, or doing the dishes, is an area where inattention often takes over. Watching TV or reading a book I really enjoy is a time when hyperfocus takes over.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the problem with ADHD and vacillating between hyperfocus and inattention is the sheer lack of balance. Flippin notes that ADHD often means a dysregulated attention system rather than a balanced one. Hyperfocus is due to a dopamine deficiency which makes it very difficult to shift gears to another task, and is a coping mechanism to deal with distraction.
When I am in a state of hyperfocus binging a Netflix show I really enjoy, four hours can fly by without me even realizing it. When I am in a state of inattention, three minutes can drag on and feel like an eternity. I realize this is what everyone goes through with activities they find engaging and unengaging. It’s not that these are problems unique to people with ADHD, but ADHD does exacerbate them.
There is also hyperfocus when something seems incredibly urgent, when there seems like there is a life or death deadline at stake. It does not always feel like I am going to die, but something comes over me, an almost animalistic instinct that does not let me focus on anything else.
It is almost like I can internally sense and triage the importance of very urgent situations, like the last mile of the marathon, the thirty minutes before a paper is due, the day before an exam, or the day I need to finish a report without my school going into noncompliance. Because this has felt like a survival instinct, I have embraced it rather than pushed it away. I have, at times, tried to control it.
I have used some variation of the Pomodoro Technique to spend 20 to 25 minutes doing an undesirable task, and then keep going on that task if I start to enjoy it or see the importance. This has worked extremely well for some tasks, like doing law school readings I initially dread starting but eventually enjoy analyzing. When I feel like I’m making good progress, it’s momentum that keeps me going.
. . .
Inevitably, however, this hyperfocus is not always helpful and has backfired, particularly in my obsession over these law firm interviews. I can deem certain tasks helpful, but then misgauge my actual locus of control. My grades and credentials are set in stone at the moment, and without another semester of school, I cannot change them. My interview skills can be worked on, but I largely have little control over this process and do not have insight over the internal recruiting conversations or mechanisms that determine hiring decisions.
So this neurotic obsession over why I’m not getting callback interviews can be a bit unhealthy.
I think a lot of us, especially those with ADHD, can try to rationalize and embrace hyperfocus because it can be put into very productive uses. It also seems to be a lot better than the flipside inattention.
But this hyperfocus does have a dark side by making us obsessive and neurotic. I won’t attribute all of this to ADHD — I am just obsessive and neurotic by nature, too. But the ADHD definitely makes it worse.
It is bad when it is put to unhelpful uses, like social media, binging Netflix, or online shopping. It is bad when it is put to unimportant uses, and there is a time and place for unhelpful and unimportant uses because we’re all human and need to relax and have fun. But the challenge and misery is the excess, not the actual act of relaxing or having fun. Not knowing when to stop is its own curse, and sometimes be a liability when left unchecked, according to Flippin. It can lead to missed meetings and deadlines as an adult, and trouble socializing. It can also lead to poor time management when unmedicated.
People know me for being obsessive and for not being able to stop when something is on my mind. I won’t get the hint to move onto another topic, and won’t learn to read the room that people don’t want to talk about something anymore. Given my affinity for politics, sometimes my friends do not want to talk about the most controversial or sensitive topics of the day, but I insist anyway.
Personally, I don’t take medication for ADHD but am working on taming my neurotic hyperfixation and hyperfocus through giving time cutoffs. Even in tasks I enjoy or when the hyperfocus kicks in, I try to force myself to stop after 20 to 25 minutes and set limits. Sometimes, I channel that hyperfocus into another task that is also pressing, so if I feel the need to apply to more jobs, I will stop myself at a certain point so I can do the dishes, spend time with my wife, or go on a run. I will stop so I can go to bed at a reasonable time and get an adequate amount of sleep.
Again, hyperfocus has served me well in my athletic, academic, and professional endeavors. But I have to admit it’s maybe not the best for my personal life or my own mental health when put to certain uses. I won’t cut off a cognitive tendency which is a huge asset, but I will do my best to turn it off when it’s time to take care of myself.
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This post was previously published on Invisible Illness.
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