I Can’t Focus, So I Build

I love to build.  I love to create.  I thrive when I do.. I die when I don’t.

When I get in a zone… I hyperfocus on it.  Like – can stay up around the clock… sleep 2-4 hours a night for weeks on end.. because my brain just won’t stop.  

This is both good and bad.  I’ve built some pretty amazing things… if I say so myself.  Not bragging.. just facts.  I’ve made a life for myself and my family that I could never have imagined.  This wiring I’ve been blessed with… yes blessed… allows me to do things and push past limits most people would be scared to do.  Risk taking?  It’s a total dopamine rush!  Impossible? Let’s go! Insane? I’m all in.  Wildly colorful… paint me purple, and mustard, and turquoise, and all the things… 

I’ve developed a pattern.  I do think I can walk to the kitchen for a glass of water… come back an hour later with a new business started… and still not have the water.  No.. I’m not joking.  Many days I realize the only water I’ve drank all day was filtered through a coffee bean or added to my Lotus Energy concentrate.  More days than not… 5 PM hits and I realize I’ve not eaten today. 

That pattern is both crazy successful in some areas… and crazy debilitating in others.  

I have not written much for a few months.  I’ve been analyzing me.  I’ve come to belive that there is a lot of physical, mental, emotional…. and a whole lot of spiritual meshed together. 

 It’s easy to assume the struggle of the day  is ADHD – and that certainly compounds it at times… but it could be TRIGGERED by physical exhaustion… mental fatigue… emotional stress… or a spiritual battle that is attacking the mind.  

I feel like I have been waging war on most of these fronts simultaneously for about a year.  Actually about 3 and a half years.  I was physically exhausted and mentally fatigued from trying to run 5 businesses and work for the company that bought my IT company.  My emotions were a mess and some days I even found my head under the covers crying my eyes out for no reason I could pinpoint.  But above all of that… I now know I was in a very hard spiritual battle for my mind and direction for my life.  ADHD yeah it’s real.  It makes life really interesting.  Do I still believe it’s my superpower… absolutely… I’ve hyper focused on writing software for the last few weeks and even I am astounded at what I’ve accomplished. 

My crazy has led to a whole line of software I’ve developed and have decided to use Wired Differently as a brand. Because I’m writing them to address MY challenges, MY frustrations, MY wants… 

What did I do when I got mad at QuickBooks? Built a replacement. Overwhelmed by my todo lists across 5 businesses? Built a dashboard. Looked at my phone bills and got irritated? Built a whole phone system. My wife needed a $135/month wholesale shopping app? Built her one in a weekend. I call it This Little Piggy… because we are going to market.

I’ve lost count. There’s probably 20 of them now. All wildly colored, fun gamifications mixed in, and confetti. Lots of colorful confetti. Everyone needs to feel celebrated.  

But in the middle of it all… I’m a preacher.  And I struggle to study.  I don’t really know how to.  My brain doesn’t get it.  I am all over the place… until I feel what I need to work on then I hyperfocus.. usually last minute – even if I’ve been trying and praying for days… it’s still always last minute before the dots connect.  It’s frustrating.  It’s exhausting.  It’s at times an emotional challenge.  I need to study the word of God… but I am so scattered in my mind… so hard to focus… so I write a whole sermon prep tool… which I’m about to use to prepare for Sunday School class I am teaching on Sunday.  I call it Wired Pulpit.  Check it out here – https://pulpit.wireddifferently.app/preview.html

My app addresses my scattered prep, my difficulty with structure, my past sermons on 4 hard drives, 3 computers, a stack of paper, 3 cloud services, a laptop, phone, and iPad.  My last minute panic… even my frustration with software on my ipad that scrolls my message out of my view and makes me scattered at the pulpit. So I added color codes, Quick references in 6 Bible versions, AI coaches (not writer) ADHD friendly chunking 19 step checklists.  Daily devotion tracker, scripture memorization, brown noise generators, Dark mode with bright colors, confetti, and achievement badges.    

Could I have just taken a few hours to study and prepare a message?  Sure… but instead I took a whole week to build a software to help me with my frustrations of ministry prep. 

So this superpower is real, but it doesn’t replace prayer. The apps help, but they’re not the answer. God gave me this brain AND a calling, and I’m still figuring out how they work together.  My study software hopefully will assist me in getting that hyperfocus going way before the last minute and take some of the stress off so I can be more effective.  

Yeah… I’m trying to figure me out… until then.. I’m going to keep building stuff… and scattering confetti.