How do you find balance when your brain prefers to hyperfocus?
It’s a question that’s been on my mind over the past few weeks as I took a step back from work to spend time in nature, reflect on my priorities, and plan for 2025.
A strength of many autistic people is the ability to hyperfocus on a single task or topic, pursuing it with an intensity that may seem extreme or obsessive to others. This quality can also be found in many individuals with ADHD, although it is by no means a trait exclusive to neurodivergent people.
Hyperfocus can be both a blessing and a curse.
It’s a blessing when it enables a flow state that sparks new and creative ideas. And over time, prolonged hyperfocus can help us find fulfilment by allowing us to master a craft and achieve a deeper sense of purpose.
I, for one, am immensely grateful for the focus that my own mission has given me, allowing me to channel most of my energy toward one goal: helping people navigate neurodiversity in their lives and organizations.
But there’s also a dark side to hyperfocus: it can make it incredibly difficult to stop once we’re immersed in a task or project. We may work for hours on end without breaks, only to realise at 9 pm we haven’t had dinner yet. It’s as though the world outside our brain ceases to exist − including our own bodies.
In the long run, a single-minded pursuit of one interest can inadvertently harm other aspects of life – including our relationships, social connections, and overall health and well-being. Some of these, we can never get back.
How, then, can we find balance in life when we are hard-wired for imbalance?
While everyone is different, perhaps part of the answer is to redefine balance itself.
Rather than viewing balance as a perfect equilibrium that we must seek to achieve every day (which may run against our nature), it may be better to think of balance as a constant process of aligning how we spend our time with what truly matters to us.
This means we may consciously choose to fully immerse ourselves in a passion or interest, accepting that our lives will be unbalanced for a time as long as it doesn’t compromise our or other people’s basic needs.
As author and philosopher Alain de Botton wisely said, “There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.”
However, this also requires recognizing when to shift focus to make space for other areas of life, ensuring balance over time. I haven’t always done a good job of this, which is why I’m now carving out more rest periods in advance. Others have likened it to embracing seasonality in our lives, and I believe that’s a helpful way of looking at it.
There’s a season for everything in life – times to focus intensely, and times to let go to remind ourselves that we are more than our work.
Photo: A lakeside path winds by the water at Parc de la Per du Lac in Geneva, with a tree of yellow and orange leaves arching over it. Captured on a sunny morning in late November.
