What I learned about ADHD on sabbatical, and what it taught me about leading (and living)
On sabbatical, I finally had space to think clearly. I had no meetings. No context-switching. Not performing seventeen different versions of myself depending on which teams or WhatsApp channel I was in. And in that clarity, I finally understood how my brain actually works.
I have ADHD. I have dyslexia. I have dyspraxia. I’ve known the diagnoses for years. But I’d never had the time to actually understand what that meant in practice, or how these wired differences show up in my work, my relationships, my decision-making, and in my burnout patterns. Sabbatical gave me that understanding. And now that I can think clearly again, I can see the brilliance and the beast.
Rest was the only way I could actually see myself.
So let me tell you what I learned: I hyperfixate. When I lock into something that brings me joy or demands mastery, I go all the way in. As a child, I learned the piano, then horses, then chess until I became a champion. As an executive, it’s been strategy, team building, and perfecting every detail of whatever I’m obsessed with. The hyperfocus is real and very powerful. It’s also what makes me a dangerous strategist. I can see what others miss, hold multiple complex patterns simultaneously, and obsess over quality until it’s undeniable.
But there’s the other side, the second something is no longer in my immediate focus, it’s not just out of sight. It’s out of mind. This has shown up in every corner of my life: friendships that vanished because the person moved out of my field of vision; projects I abandoned the moment the hyperfixation wore off; jobs I seemed to stop caring about the second I’d perfected the role. People used to ask why I was able to move on so quickly, or what seemed like an inconsistency to some. The truth is, I wasn’t inconsistent. I was fixated, then unfixated. And there’s no in-between.
(Well, that’s not entirely true - there is. But that’s a conversation for another day.)
I didn’t have a word for this until a friend named it. My friends could predict my entire life. It was either Ocean Prime or Dante’s, always the same two restaurants; the same dishes; 5 a.m. wake-ups no matter where I was in the world; the same small circle of friends. One day, a friend called me while I was walking toward Ocean Prime and asked which of my two restaurants I was heading to. I laughed and said, “Am I really that predictable?” She said: It’s not that you’re predictable, Tope. It’s that once you like something, you lock in.
It’s not that I don’t care. It’s that my brain has moved to the next hyperfixation, and the previous thing now lives in a room I can’t access.
As a leader, I found this hyperfocus an asset. I would obsess over brand coherence, over the details other leaders let slide, over building systems that worked because I couldn’t let them not work. But it also burned me out. Because the moment a project was ‘done’ in my mind, I’d already moved on mentally. My team would still need guidance. The work still needed maintenance. But I’d locked onto the next thing, and they felt abandoned.
In dating, this showed up differently. In fifteen-plus years, I dated genuinely intelligent men. Smart enough that meeting their intellectual needs was easy, I could lock into their curiosity, understand their ambitions, and match their thinking. But I learned that…. I could be brilliant for them, and it still wasn’t enough.
Over time, I became hesitant to enter relationships at all. I’d scan potential partners like I was running a compatibility audit, testing for vulnerability, searching for signs they could handle all of me. The constant vetting kept me safe, but it also kept me unknown. So I did what I’d always done: I retreated to work. The one place I knew I could excel, be valued, and be needed. I poured all that relational hunger, the wanting to be desired, wanting to matter that deeply to someone, wanting to be wanted for all of me, not just my brain - into work instead (sometimes into platonic relationships). And that definitely contributed to the burnout.
This pattern showed up in conversations, too. The moment I’d interrupt them mid-sentence (because ADHD brains think out loud), they’d ask me to stop. They’d call it rude. I’d apologize, but the apology felt increasingly hollow. It wasn’t rude, though some may have disagreed. It was my brain working. But I was also learning that I couldn’t keep shrinking myself, my way of thinking, my pace or my needs, just to fit into someone else’s comfort.
Recently, I had a conversation with someone who is also neurodivergent. The conversation flowed differently. We interrupted each other, and neither of us saw it as rude. We just understood that’s how we think, we need to get it out there, and that’s not an attack, it’s just the architecture of our minds. And more than that, there was no shrinking. I looked at them and said.. “This is refreshing, not asking permission to exist as I am, just an appreciation of both my brilliance and my need.”
But then there’s the beast - the burnout, yes, but more than that, the relational damage. The teams that felt abandoned when I mentally moved on (or expected them to). The partners I scanned and rejected before they could reject me. I poured everything into work because it was the only place I could excel, be valued, and be needed. The loneliness of being brilliant for everyone but known by no one. I was locked in everywhere, except in genuine connection. That’s the cost of hyperfocus without understanding it.
So, the sabbatical gave me a lot of clarity. I stopped seeing these things as flaws to manage. I started seeing them as the price and the gift of how my brain is wired. The hyperfixation that burnt me out is the same hyperfixation that made me see patterns others missed. The inability to context-switch that frustrated my teams is the same focus that let me go deep on strategy. The ‘out of sight, out of mind’ that feels like not caring is actually my brain’s way of managing cognitive load. I can’t half-ass things, so I hyperfixate, or I release.
Sabbatical taught me that I need rest to think strategically. The same is true for teams.
Now I’m thinking about what this means for executive culture. We’re designed for a brain type that can context-switch infinitely, that can half-attend five meetings and feel fine, that can abandon a project and pick it back up without losing the thread. But some of the best strategic minds I know don’t work that way. We lock in. We go deep. We need focus time for thinking. And when we don’t get it, we burn out or seem not to care, when really we’re just cognitively overwhelmed.
The executives I know with ADHD aren’t flaky. They’re not uncommitted to their teams. They’re locked into the next strategic priority. They’re not brilliant one day and useless the next. They’re in a different phase of the hyperfixation cycle, and if you don’t understand the cycle, you’ll misread everything about them.
So here’s what I’m learning: I need to be around people who understand this. People who are intelligent enough not to take it personally. People who can say, yes, I see you locking in, that’s brilliant, and also I’m here when you unlock. I need teams that make space for depth, not just flexibility or half-assed attention in meetings.
And if you’re a neurodivergent executive, or you’re building teams with neurodivergent leaders, remember that the world doesn’t need you to understand yourself less. It needs you to be more involved and more vocal. We need cultures that can hold both the brilliance and the beast. That can say, your brain is wired to go deep, so we’re going to architect your role around that. We’re going to hire people who can handle the context switching you can’t.
Sabbatical gave me a lot of rest, and the rest gave me clarity. And clarity is finally teaching me that the way I’m wired isn’t a problem to solve or something broken to be fixed. It’s a pattern to understand and architect around. That’s what I’m building now. Well, at least it’s what I am building in all the areas of my life.