//Views in this post are my own and not indicative of those of my employer or the Science Museum Group.

I am sharing these thoughts with you over my lunch break. I feel tired, broken, and on the verge of tears – focussing on my work has been more of a struggle than it usually is. When I consider my situation objectively, I should feel the opposite way entirely.

For the last few months, pretty much all of 2024 until now, I have been working on a large project at work. In my day job, I am a Senior Hydrologist at the Environment Agency, England’s environmental regulator. The project was to organise the Agency’s activities at the Science Museum that was running for its third year. This year it had moved to a more prominent location, up on the David Sainsbury Technicians Gallery, and could expand. I volunteered to join a project manager team with a couple of others to lead and oversee the project.

Yesterday, August 5^th, that work culminated in the activity launching at the Museum. It will run for the month, featuring four separate activity areas and crewed by over 120 amazing volunteers from across the Environment Agency. We have developed the activities, obtained kit, designed our space, and trained the volunteers – it has been a considerable effort by everyone organising. I could not be in the space to set up yesterday, but I was sent a trickle of images by others in our organising team.

It looks great. The volunteers looked happy, confident, and enthusiastic. By all accounts, that first day talking to visitors at the Museum and demonstrating our activities to them was a success. We had done it and the hard work had paid off. We had done a good job – I had done a good job.

Yes, although I am proud of what we have achieved, and what I have achieved as part of it, I feel no joy in it. Logic, and possibly society, tells me I should be like an Olympian winning a gold medal. Smiling, jumping excitedly, waving to the crowd, kissing and biting my medal and overwhelmed by what I have just done. But no – drained, disconnected, and a little depressed is what I am left with.

I know this feeling. I had only a few months ago when I published the report for the UK Hydrology Skills and Satisfaction Survey, another large project I led. There was no joy in finishing that too, just the emptiness. I know this feeling well, it only lasts a day or two, but it does make me sad.

I am self-diagnosed ADHD and have been for a couple of years. It has been a revealing and difficult journey of discovery and understanding about who I am and why I am the way I am. ADHD is characterised by a low production of dopamine – the reward chemical that makes you feel good when you do the right things and reinforces that behaviour – in your brain. Consequently, ADHDers seek the often less good things that give you a quick, easy dopamine bursts. For example, starting new projects does this but when the novelty wears off, not so much. This is first reason why ADHDers, including myself, can be bad at finishing things.

The flipside of the ADHD struggle to focus is hyperfocus. Often unhelpfully described as a ‘superpower’, hyperfocus kicks in when we have something that really takes our interest or there is big pressure to complete it. When I’m in hyperfocus it is best feeling in the world – I love working hard and I love getting stuff done, especially if it is a writing task (I think I’m the only person ever to enjoy writing their thesis). I can achieve an order of magnitude more than others when in hyperfocus and produce quality work in a short space of time. But it is exhausting, and when I’m done I am often tired and migraines kick in. Sometimes, as projects approach their end and deadlines loom, I hyperfocus a lot. When it is over, then comes the crash. I think that avoiding this feeling is the second reason ADHDers are bad at finishing projects.

For the third reason, think of the difference between Type 1 and Type 2 fun. Type 1 are activities that are often short, exciting, and give you instant feedback. Type 2 fun activities require hard work where the process itself is not enjoyable but the pay off at the end is worth it. An example of Type 2 fun would be running a marathon. Type 1 fun appeals to me as it provides me that instant dopamine kick. I get nothing from Type 2 fun, firstly my timeblindness does not help me picture the end goal, and secondly, for whatever reason I don’t get that pay off at the end. There is no sense of achievement for me so I have never learned how to achieve Type 2 fun.

To translate this to a work environment, I love Type 1 work, tasks that are instant, achieved quickly, give me something to firefight or a problem to solve quickly. I struggle with Type 2 work – projects where the end is so long away, I can’t picture it and I also know I won’t get a pay off once it has completed. This has seen me in the past avoid initiating longer-term projects or struggling to really plan them (for example fellowship applications when I was still in academia). I have, and still do, lack confidence in my ability to lead things. Knowing this has helped me immensely in shifting my mindset from thinking I was just lazy and too disorganised to ever achieve what I wanted, to believing I can achieve and lead larger projects if I have the right support in place. For example, in my job I work alongside a project manager who is skilled in all the things I struggle with – they are like magic and let me focus on what I am good at.

My struggles to complete things, or more accurately my avoidance of the flatness I feel when finishing things, also influences my down time. I love games but actually enjoy playing very few of them. The ones I love and spend many hours playing are city-builder and simulation games – Timberborn, Cities:Skylines, Football Manager – a common thread here is that you can’t complete these games, they are open ended, you just keep going, building, and refreshing. I don’t have the motivation to complete or finish games, so these types of games just do not appeal to me.

I’m still on my journey, learning about myself. I am trying to push myself and lead larger projects including the things I want to do. For example, the only thing I ever wanted to do when I was younger was write a book – I am determined I will achieve this and now I know why it has been such a struggle. It does make me sad knowing that even if I was an athlete and won an Olympic Gold the height of my emotions would be “Well, this will look good on the CV”, but I am learning to get that sense of accomplishment in other ways.

Thank you for reading his, it has been cathartic writing it and you have helped lift me out of my doldrums! On to the next project…

Chris