The ADHD Paradox: I Love Structure. And Also, Please No Structure.

So, I had a bit of an existential crisis this week.

And by "bit of" I mean: full-on stared at my screen for 42 minutes wondering if maybe I should just sell artisanal papier-mâché frogs on Etsy and call it a life.

To be clear: I love doing my own thing. I'm building products. I'm shipping code. I'm solving weird edge cases with SwiftUI and React Native that no human being should be subjected to. And it's great. Really. The freedom is intoxicating.

But also?

I am a chaotic goblin of a human who desperately needs structure.

And therein lies the paradox. The ADHD paradox. The shoopadox.

Structure Is My Best Friend

When I have structure, I'm a machine. A focused, effective, mildly-caffeinated machine.

I chunk time. I build. I ship. I knock out bugs and write actual documentation like a responsible adult who flosses regularly. I write. I remember to eat. I work out, sometimes twice a day.

There's a calm to having structure. A rhythm. A way to ignore the 9001 tabs I have open across 3 desktops.

But...

Structure Is Also a Prison

Eventually, my brain starts tapping the glass like a caged bird: "Dude. Broham. We've been doing the same thing for THREE HOURS. Can we burn it all down and pivot to something irrationally exciting like learning how to make an AI that writes fanfiction about autonomous banana vending machines?"

I crave novelty. I need the dopamine of a new project, a new idea, a new challenge that I have absolutely no business taking on but will definitely dive into headfirst because I saw one cool demo on TLDR.

Working Alone: The Hall and the Echo

Tiny business founder life is quiet. VERY quiet.

I frequently narrate my life out loud just to hear something:

"Alright dude, let's refactor this monstrosity because the compiler is growing sentient and I don't like the way it's eyeing my snacks."

There's nobody to high-five when I squash a bug. Nobody to groan at my carefully crafted archivist.ts jokes (naming is hard?). Just me, a wall of sticky notes, and the occasional type error that makes zero sense but it was because someone decided to be stricter with types between patch versions.

So What Do I Do?

Honestly? I'm figuring it out.

Some days I schedule my time like I'm back in middle school with a color-coded Trapper Keeper. Other days I throw the plan out the window and chase whatever strange idea passes through my mental hallway like a trash panda with a Rubik's Cube.

I think the answer isn't one or the other. It's not choosing structure or novelty.

It's building enough structure to anchor me—and leaving enough chaos to keep things interesting. (Some days, that falls down too. I'm learning to be okay with that.)

If You're Like Me...

If you're a grown-up with a combo kid-sometimes-adult-brain running the control panel, just know you're not alone. This life—entrepreneurship, ADHD, creativity, late-night debugging sessions that feel like existential philosophy-- it's weird. But it's also weirdly-wonderful.

Even when it's lonely, even when it's unstructured, even when I'm Googling "how to human" at 2:11 PM because I forgot to eat lunch again, it's still fun.

(Also maybe for a nap. Or a co-founder who brings snacks.)

— Brandon