I think my hyperfocus works differently than the literature describes. I want to test the theory with you.

Standard hyperfocus is the single-pointed kind: lock onto one thing for hours and surface dazed and hungry when you remember to stand up (or to go pee). I have that mode sometimes. The more common version for me looks different.

Right now I've got nine Claude Code sessions open across two desktop profiles, a couple of managed agents on the web platform, seven Substack drafts in other tabs, and three chat threads going on my phone. From outside this probably looks like inattentive bouncing (SHAME!!). The actual experience is closer to tending. Multiple irons in the fire, where the tending itself is the work. Do the next thing on session A while session B compiles, then check on session C, then back to A, then start something in D that just occurred to me. For hours. I emerge from it feeling like I was in flow the whole time, even though no single window held my attention for more than a few minutes at a stretch. (And yes, the resulting browser tab count is exactly what you'd expect.)

The tabs are the signature. They accumulate as the trail of where I branched without parking the return point. The buffer can't hold the breadcrumbs and the architecture keeps moving. 🐇

I'm calling it Distributed Hyperfocus. The single-thread framing was something I borrowed from the literature because it was the closest available label. The real thing runs on the same dopaminergic engine that powers the single-pointed kind, but the lock is on the mode rather than on the content. Cognitive rigidity (per my EEG) holds the mode in place while the Explorer architecture branches inside it, and the catecholamines fuel both for as long as either is firing.

Tell me if this lands. Especially you 2e/AuDHD/gifted folks. I think we've been getting mislabeled as "distractible" when the architecture is doing something more specific.