Picture this: It’s 2 AM, and I’m lying in bed when suddenly—ping—an idea for a campaign hits me. Then another. And another. My brain feels like a radio with twenty stations playing simultaneously, each one broadcasting something potentially brilliant, while the DJ has apparently lost the remote.
Welcome to life with ADHD in the creative industry, where “focus” is both your greatest enemy and your secret weapon.
For years, I genuinely thought everyone’s mind worked this way. You know, that constant stream of “what if we did this” and “oh, but imagine if we tried that” bouncing around like caffeinated squirrels. I figured everyone could see connections between a cereal commercial, quantum physics, and their childhood pet goldfish. Turns out, not so much.
I wore the badge of “idea guy” with pride, even when it felt like trying to catch lightning bugs in a thunderstorm. Ideas would fly in and out of my consciousness so fast that I’d sometimes forget genuinely brilliant concepts somewhere between the coffee maker and my car keys.
Then came the plot twist: adult ADHD diagnosis, hyperactive type.
Suddenly, everything made sense. It was like finally getting the instruction manual for a gadget I’d been randomly button-mashing for thirty-something years.
The Beautiful Contradiction
Here’s the thing about neurodivergent brains in creative work—we’re walking contradictions wrapped in an enigma, served with a side of “wait, what were we talking about?”
Those twenty radio stations I mentioned? They’re not static; they’re a feature, not a bug. The real challenge wasn’t having too many ideas—it was learning to let them flow through without grabbing onto each one like it might save my creative soul.
This became my personal Mount Everest: allowing ideas to visit without immediately setting up permanent residence in my brain. Some thoughts are meant to be tourists, not tenants.
But here’s where the magic happens. When I can somehow negotiate with nineteen of those stations to take a coffee break and focus on just one idea—boom. Hyperfocus mode activated. Time becomes irrelevant. The outside world might as well be on mute. It’s like having a creativity cheat code that only works when the stars align and I’ve had exactly the right amount of caffeine.
My AI Co-Pilot (Who Never Judges My 3 AM Ideas)
This is where AI entered stage left and completely changed the game.
For someone whose brain operates like a newsroom during a major story break—everyone shouting, papers flying, pure controlled chaos—AI became my impossibly patient editor who never rolls their eyes when I pitch my fifteenth idea before lunch.
Those thoughts that once felt so complex, requiring a PhD in executive functioning just to organize, can now be easily shared in a conversation with AI. Suddenly, I have a thinking partner who never tires of my mental ping-pong matches. This collaboration helps me sift through the valuable ideas, identify patterns I might be too close to notice, and—most importantly—actually take action on ideas that would otherwise end up in the graveyard of “brilliant thoughts I had that one time.”
I’ve essentially become my own client, which sounds either very zen or mildly concerning, depending on your perspective. I can step back and critique my own ideas like I’m watching someone else’s creative process unfold. It’s like having a consultant who knows exactly how my brain works because they’ve been taking notes this whole time.
The Creative Spark That Can’t Be Manufactured
Here’s what I believe with every fiber of my hyperactive being: humans are, and will always be, the pilots of this creative ship. There’s something flowing through all of us—call it creative energy, divine inspiration, or just really good pattern recognition—that can’t be replicated or replaced.
AI is like the world’s most sophisticated typewriter. The printing press revolutionized how we shared ideas, but it didn’t write the ideas. The typewriter made writing faster, but it didn’t make us more creative. AI just happens to be really, really good at helping us organize our thoughts and execute faster.
When people choose to hand over repetitive tasks to AI, they’re usually doing themselves a favor. Let the robots handle the busy work. That leaves more time for the stuff that actually matters—the projects with heart, the campaigns that make people feel something, the ideas that shift the conversation.
The Call for the Impossible
In my corner of the creative universe, we’re the team that gets the phone call when someone has a “situation.” You know the one—when there’s a project that landed like a meteor and nobody quite knows how to handle it. Universities facing impossible deadlines. Agencies with clients who’ve asked for something that technically shouldn’t exist. Organizations trying to reach audiences in ways that haven’t been invented yet.
Here’s the thing—I might be the one telling this story, but I’m really just the front person for something much bigger. Behind the scenes, we’ve built what can only be described as a creative powerhouse spanning nearly 25 years of collective experience. We’re talking about a nationwide network of strategists, designers, writers, developers, and creative problem-solvers who’ve seen it all and somehow still get excited when someone says “this is impossible.”
Our internal team reads like a creative justice league. We’ve got people who’ve shepherded brands through complete identity overhauls, strategists who can spot market opportunities three moves ahead, designers who think in colors that don’t have names yet, and writers who can make insurance policies sound like poetry (okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but you get the idea).
A lot of this work lives in the shadows. We’re often the creative equivalent of special ops—we parachute in, solve what seemed unsolvable, and disappear before anyone thinks to ask how we did it. But here’s what makes it work: when that impossible project lands, I’m not facing it alone. I’m backed by nearly a quarter-century of combined creative firepower, each person bringing their own flavor of expertise to whatever challenge just walked through the door.
What I love most about these impossible projects is how they prove, again and again, that human creativity is irreplaceable. Sure, AI can help us think faster and organize better, but the spark that makes an audience lean in? The insight that cuts through the noise? The ability to understand what will make someone stop scrolling and actually pay attention? That’s pure human magic.
Embracing the Gorgeous Mess
I used to think my scattered, hyperactive brain was something to fix, like a car engine that wasn’t running quite right. Turns out, it’s more like a different kind of vehicle altogether—one that’s perfectly designed for the creative landscape we’re navigating.
The ability to hold fifteen ideas at once while hyperfocusing on one? That’s not a bug in the system. The tendency to see connections that others miss? Feature, not flaw. The way my brain can ricochet from concept to concept and somehow land on something unexpected? That’s exactly what this industry needs.
We’re living in this incredible moment where we have tools that amplify our natural creative abilities without trying to replace them. We can offload the mundane and double down on the magical. We can let our beautifully chaotic brains do what they do best: make unexpected connections, spot opportunities hiding in plain sight, and create something from absolutely nothing.
The Ideas Keep Coming
So whether your brain runs like a Swiss watch or feels more like a creativity tornado (I’m obviously in the tornado camp), here’s the thing: embrace whatever makes you uniquely you. Find tools that amplify your strengths. Build teams that complement your gaps. And remember that in a world increasingly filled with artificial intelligence, the most valuable thing you bring is your gloriously, messy, unpredictably human way of seeing the world.
The ideas will keep flowing—they always do. The real adventure is learning which ones to catch, which ones to let drift by, and which ones might just change everything.
Trust me, the ride is worth it.