Hyperfocus and Hyperplanning
My girlfriend says I have Asperger’s. Obviously, that is not the case, but I suppose this is not a matter of black and white. ChatGPT says I show some traits of inattentive ADHD and Asperger’s. I know ChatGPT is not the most reliable authority in the world when it comes to psychology —or anything else— but hey, it has also saved lives.
This is not a matter of life, nor even of psychology, but of how to face creation. Perhaps I do have some neurodivergent traits, perhaps only in a small percentage, and maybe that changes everything, and what I am about to say is not universally useful for everyone. Still, it is always better to say it, just in case.
A friend told me that hyperfocus is a trait of ADHD. People who can spend hours doing something while forgetting to eat or sleep. I do not forget those things, although at times I do lose track of time, especially when writing fiction. There is, however, something that happens to me, and I do not know whether it is hyperfocus, but it appears with shades of obsession. I am capable of becoming absorbed in a task for hours, days, weeks, and devoting all my usable time to it.
It has happened to me with countless things: certain video games; tutorials on how to build your own electric guitar; visiting every page of the discounts section of an online store selling something that interests me —role-playing games, Warhammer miniatures, terrain—, making tables with all of it, sorting them and classifying them according to criteria such as immediacy, interest, or price… and the vast majority of those occupations were not particularly constructive beyond providing an interesting escape from reality.
That, which may seem like a great defect, I nevertheless believe is an enormous virtue if one knows how to redirect it. And that is something I have managed to achieve over the years, especially in order to push One Man [RPG] forward. Some of the tasks to which I have devoted my time obsessively have been: constantly thinking about and revising the entire publication plan; running innumerable tests with Midjourney until finding the necessary style or styles; consuming all the available material on YouTube about digital marketing, SEO, personal branding, and sales… and connecting this with another anomaly that had rarely appeared before with such intensity as it has now: hyperplanning.
I do not know whether this even exists as a concept, but for me it consists of the capacity —or disorder— that forces me to create structured creation and publication plans stretching years into the future. Publication order, names, hours and thousands of words for various future new settings, covers and interior layout design, planning —types, cycles, order, themes— for 5e-Free, a future Patreon… Obviously, all this entails a deviation, or an extension of the time I should have devoted to immediate tasks, but at least it is a form of productive procrastination. Time spent structuring and producing elements that will be of great use in the future.
And what is the key to all this? For me, perseverance and hard work are two fundamental elements for making progress in my project. Clearly, not in the way I should, or at least not in the most direct and fastest way, but I think that, as compensation for the delay, I may be able to achieve better results than if I had acted with greater immediacy.
The mental image I have is that of a spring being compressed more and more. When the force oppressing it is released, it will travel farther, or with greater force, than it would with normal compression.
It is also a consolation.
