ADHD Holds Potential for Genius
I am a physicist and I have ADHD. All my life I have struggled with time management, focusing attention, and impulse control. My ADHD doesn’t just make me a better scientist, it is the reason I am good at it.
ADHD is one of the most studied psychiatric conditions and yet we may have missed something remarkable about it. Studies are plentiful showing the relationship between ADHD and a host of undesirable outcomes: poor academic performance, job loss, addiction propensity, and even failed relationships. It has become a favorite disorder of psychiatrists and schoolteachers alike, since a child medicated for ADHD may become more manageable and attentive. Big Pharma is also a fan. It is no secret that over-medicating those who might or might not have ADHD is good for business. It is possible that overmedication is both responsible for and encouraged by careless diagnoses and serious potential for abuse. This isn’t surprising given the focus on the negatives of ADHD. What is surprising is that so much research focused on judging ADHD as an impairment had been missing the full reality that this condition is actually a cognitive advantage.
“If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Those words of wisdom are often attributed to Einstein. Whether he is the original source of the quote is disputed, but I believe the quote’s value comes from how we read it. If it brings to mind the act of judging a student by their ability to learn, this reads like a feel-good statement aiming to tell us all that we’re special even if we aren’t. If it brings to mind judging a genius by their ability to find their keys, that might be a more valuable interpretation.
“The ADHD narrative is changing.”
We have been judging people with ADHD with the wrong metrics at great cost to their potential for success. Growing up, my grades never reflected my actual knowledge. Before I was diagnosed, I had no accomplishments that matched what was described to me as “a lot of potential”. As an adult, I was lucky to find institutions that valued knowledge and ability over performance metrics, otherwise my career in physics would be nonexistent. But once I started doing the work of scientific research, the weight I had been carrying all my life became my superpower. I often wondered if ADHD being such a big aspect of my brain couldn’t also be responsible for some of my best attributes. The research didn’t seem to back that intuition. . . until recently.
The ADHD narrative is changing. At least there are some indications that this is the case. Doctors Hallowell and Ratey, who popularized the term ADD/ADHD in the 90s best seller “Driven to Distraction”, published “ADHD 2.0” in 2022. The most remarkable change in their new book is the lens through which they cast the condition. Not only do they recognize the inappropriateness of the name attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, they now present positive and negative traits as two sides of the same coin. Framing impulsivity and entrepreneurship together, for example, is not how ADHD has been described in the past.
Creators and social media influencers who embrace their ADHD are becoming more and more popular. Olympians like Michael Phelps and Simone Biles have achieved cultural acclaim as icons of ADHD success. And in recent years, a growing body of research about positive ADHD traits is beginning to emerge. For example, we are learning that ADHD correlates with greater potential for creative thinking, and that successful individuals with the condition have powerful strengths such as cognitive dynamism, energy and resilience.
“I wonder how I would have felt about myself growing up without the judgment”
We may be entering an era of research focused on understanding the full potential of people with ADHD and how to enable it. Imagine treatments aimed at unleashing the Michael Phelps, the Simone Biles, even the Albert Einstein in people with ADHD. The change would be a striking departure from a focus on diagnosing that we’re broken and encouraging us to appear neurotypical.
I wonder how I would have felt about myself growing up without the judgment of being lazy, inattentive, or incapable (which I came to internalize), and how my future children–who will likely have ADHD–will see themselves if they learn to love their passionately-creative brains. Our brains may come with their own set of minor inconveniences (what the ADHD field calls symptoms) but this is not what defines them. And while it may seem scandalous to frame serious executive function deficits as minor inconveniences, I believe that it’s partially due to our collectively internalized ableism.
Our society still equates punctuality with respect, careful proofreading with thoroughness, and social convention with politeness. If you have a loved one with ADHD, with dyslexia, or on the autism spectrum, you’re likely to question the validity of those judgements. Inaccurate as they may be, I still cast them on myself almost every day, when I run five minutes late for yet another meeting or find myself repeatedly interrupting an important conversation. Internalized ableism is a cruel self-judgement that we carry on top of our disability. It’s the desire to fit in in a world where our crutches are invisible. Perhaps we wouldn’t feel so inadequate if ADHD was broadly understood as a brain quality with potential for the exceptional. It turns out that it might be just that.
It is well known that Einstein struggled in school. His grades in math were abysmal, he felt unchallenged in his studies of physics, and his most brilliant work was developed at a time when physics wasn’t even his day job. Some people believe that Einstein himself had ADHD, but we can only speculate. Still, I imagine that back then, a naïve acquaintance could have unfairly judged him as a lazy, clueless, possibly irrelevant patent clerk - always distracted with who knows what, before he proved himself to be who we remember today as an icon of genius.
The difference between success and failure is more than just hard work, ability, and self-agency. For many, success is largely determined by perception. How others see us and how we see ourselves are especially life-defining for those with hidden disabilities like ADHD. It’s about time for the research and the rhetoric to acknowledge a condition that could be hiding potential for genius, so that someone with ADHD who achieves their potential - like me - is recast as the rule and not a lucky exception.