If you have ADHD (#ADHSteve) or what I like to call the Hunter Mentality, you can probably feel this statement in your soul:
You were never meant to be a smooth, slow, steady person.
The way your brain runs, you can sit down for three hours and do what might take someone else two full days. When hyperfocus hits, you move like a laser, like a scalpel. You lock onto a task, a problem, a project, a creation and suddenly everything flows. You’re producing, creating, solving, connecting dots no one else even sees. Building something never before conceived.
And then… you crash.
Not because you’re lazy or inconsistent or undisciplined. Your nervous system wasn’t built to run at 40% output, forever, doing the same thing over and over again. You were built to sprint, not shamble.
Yet most of our modern work culture is based on exactly that: the Farmer Mentality.
The Farmer vs. the Hunter
The Farmer mentality is what most jobs assume you want:
Show up at the same time every day
Do roughly the same tasks
Maintain a steady, predictable output
Keep going at a moderate pace, indefinitely
It’s not bad (It’s just bad for Steve). Farmers are the backbone of stability. They plant, maintain, harvest, repeat. The whole system is built to be as smooth and predictable as possible. This is how we have a world where we expect the things we need to be on the shelves.
But if you’re wired like a Hunter, this feels like slow suffocation. Hunters are designed for:
Bursts of intense focus and energy
Locking onto a target and going all-in
Responding quickly to changing conditions
High stakes and high rewards, novelty, and movement
A Hunter can track an idea, a crisis, a creative project the way their ancestors tracked game: alert, attuned, fully alive. But once the hunt is over, the crisis resolved, the project done, the problem solved, the system needs to reset. It needs to rest, wander, daydream, find the next meaningful target.
We were never meant to be “on” in a linear, predictable way all day, every day, forever. Yet that’s exactly what the modern world demands of us. And when we don’t fit into a world never built for us they call it a Disorder.
How Did We Get So Misaligned?
Part of the problem is who designs the systems we live in. The people building our workplaces, schools, and institutions are often obsessed with stability and security and for good reason.
From a Farmer perspective, this makes perfect sense. If your nervous system craves predictability and routine, you’re going to design a world that gives you exactly that. This is how Farmers survive a random, tragic, and dangerous reality.
But if you have ADHD, if you are wired like a Hunter, you weren’t built for that world. You were built for:
Times of instability and upheaval
Moments when everything is on the line
Times of war where quick adaptation is survival
The pandemic level events where the old rules no longer apply
The days when the food runs out and someone has to go explore what’s over that mountain that no one else has ever returned from.
Your nervous system is tuned to notice the rustle in the bushes, the shift in the group’s mood, the opportunity or danger no one else has seen yet. You are built to cross the path no one has crossed before; geographically, creatively, emotionally, professionally.
And now you’re sitting under fluorescent lights, filling out forms, answering emails, and pretending your brain is totally fine doing the same thing at the same time every day. No wonder so many people with ADHD feel broken.
But you’re not broken. You’re misplaced.
If this is resonating, here’s the most important take away;
There is nothing wrong with you for struggling in a world that wasn’t built for you.
You are not a defective Farmer. You are a displaced Hunter. The collapse after a burst of hyperfocus isn’t failure. It’s your nervous system doing what it’s designed to do after a sprint. The boredom, restlessness, and frustration with repetitive tasks aren’t moral issues, they are not personal failures. They’re mismatches.
We have built an entire culture around the idea that “good” workers are stable, predictable, and endlessly steady, and then we pathologize the people who are wired for intensity, responsiveness, and exploration.
I’m not saying you need to go live in a literal war zone or throw yourself into constant chaos. What I am saying is that you need;
work that enlivens you, not just fills time.
tasks that entrance you, not just distract you.
space in your life for hyperfocused sprints, and permission to actually rest afterwards.
You need environments, projects, and relationships that recognize and celebrate your Hunter Mind instead of constantly punishing it.
When a Hunter is aligned with the right targets; a mission that matters, a monster to slay, a path no one else has forged yet, they’re not just “coping with ADHD.” They’re doing exactly what they were built to do. They are being the person they are supposed to be.
The world desperately needs that.
Are you more Hunter, more Farmer, or more mixed? This week, notice one situation where you’re asking your Hunter brain to act like a Farmer. What happens if you build in a sprint and a real rest instead of forcing yourself to grind?