Idea Powers No. 5 of 28
They call it: Distracted by everything We call it
Also known as wide-open attention.
The short version You take in a lot of the room at once, and that is where the good details come from.
Collected. 0 of 28.
Your attention is wide. Most people filter out the fridge hum and the shirt tag. You take more of it in. Researchers who study creative people have a name for a looser filter: leaky attention.
Adults with more creative achievements filter less. In a study of 84 young adults, those with more real-world creative work let more background information through.Source 1 A study of high-IQ students found the same link.Source 2
Now the catch. Those studies were not done with people with ADHD, so joining them up is our guess. High scorers on a standard idea test went the other way and filtered more.Source 1 What does hold is that ADHD attention is hard to steer more than it is short.Source 3
Early evidence
The filtering studies did not include people with ADHD. Joining them to ADHD is our own inference.
Nothing comes with a filter. Every sound and detail arrives at the same volume, which is tiring, and bright rooms are hard work.
Close your eyes for one minute in a loud room and name the sounds one at a time.
You are like a cat in a new room. You hear the fridge, the clock and a bird outside all at once. You catch things other people miss.
Chef behind The Fat Duck
I’ve had so many health checks, brain scans and tests over the years, until I was eventually diagnosed with very, very, very high ADHD.
Said in: Blumenthal, 2022
Heston Blumenthal was diagnosed as an adult. He describes a busy mind and a somewhat obsessive personality.