Deep dive: on inconsistency
There's something strange about ADHD that the standard explanations don't quite capture. The same person who can't reply to an email for three weeks can spend twelve hours building something complex without a break. The same brain that loses track of time mid-conversation can recall intricate details of a random Tuesday from 2007. If this were simply a deficit, it would be consistent.
It's not.
That inconsistency is the interesting part.
The Standard Model
The conventional understanding of ADHD centers on executive dysfunction. The prefrontal cortex - the brain's planning and impulse-control center - doesn't regulate attention and behavior in the same way as in neurotypical brains. A 2021 meta-analysis in Neuropsychology Review confirmed these differences are measurable and consistent across studies.
The logical response follows: strengthen executive function through medication, behavioral training, and external systems. Structure compensates for internal dysregulation. And this approach can work - clinical interventions do show improvements in organization, time management, and task completion. The research supporting this model is substantial and genuine.
Right 🤔
The Wrinkle
However, there's something this framing doesn't explain.
If ADHD were purely about weakened executive control, we'd expect uniform struggle across all tasks requiring sustained attention. Instead, we see WILD variability.
Hyperfocus exists - hours of unbroken concentration that neurotypical brains rarely achieve. Crisis performance exists - the ability to produce exceptional work under pressure that seemed impossible the day before.
The deficit model treats these as anomalies. But they happen too reliably to be anomalies (ask anyone with ADHD - they'll describe this pattern immediately). They're features of the same system.
A Different Allocation
What if we're looking at this wrong? The pattern makes more sense when you stop thinking about attention quantity and start thinking about attention rules.
Different criteria.
Different gatekeepers.
A 2023 paper in Frontiers in Psychology described this as "interest-based nervous system" functioning. In neurotypical brains, the prefrontal cortex weighs abstract factors - importance, obligation, future consequences - and allocates attention accordingly. In ADHD brains, this top-down regulation is weaker.
What fills the gap?
The limbic system - the part of the brain that responds to:
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Immediacy - what's happening right now
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Novelty - what's new or different
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Emotional salience - what feels urgent or important
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Intrinsic interest - what genuinely engages
Call it a different allocation system. The brain is still prioritizing - just using different criteria. Importance and obligation don't generate the neurochemical signal needed to activate focus. Interest, urgency, and emotional engagement do.
The inconsistency suddenly has a logic to it. Email doesn't engage the limbic system. Complex problems do. Routine maintenance doesn't. Crisis response does.
What About it?
This changes how several puzzling patterns make sense.
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Body doubling works because it adds social immediacy to otherwise abstract tasks.
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Artificial deadlines sometimes help because they convert future importance into present urgency.
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Gamification appeals to ADHD brains because it makes engagement criteria explicit rather than relying on internalized importance that doesn't register.
It also raises uncomfortable questions about how we've structured work and education. Systems built around delayed gratification and intrinsic motivation toward abstract goals assume a particular kind of brain. When someone with a different allocation system enters those structures, the mismatch looks like (and has been defines as) pathology.
That's not to dismiss the real difficulties ADHD creates - it does create them. Subscriptions linger on. Opportunities slip away. Relationships strain under forgotten commitments. The costs are there. But the frame of "broken executive function" versus "different prioritization logic" leads to very different places when thinking about what might actually help.
Sitting With It
I don't know what the right scaffolding looks like for interest-based brains operating in importance-based systems. But I'm fairly certain it doesn't start with "try harder to care about things that don't engage you."
It probably starts with accurately understanding what the thing actually is.
Attention that answers to different masters.
Inconsistency might be the most honest description of the ADHDer, for a good reason.