Hyperfocus and trying to cover all the bases at once are ADHD traits.
ADD'er tend to see the whole forest - and the bark on each tree, and where the shafts of sunlight showe through, all at once. Neurotrypical people have to focus on one part at a time with only a general view of the whole system.
I know.
As an educator in my past life I specialized in bringing these kids around. i researched, developed programs specifically for them, watched a good number of them do more than succeed - they excelled.
Very often ADD and ADHD go undiagnosed - as those traits are often accompanied by hyper-intelligence. We get by with our wits, learn to compensate for and overcome our non-normative traits in a world geared to the norms. Normal, to us, may as well be nothing more than a setting on the dryer, not a description of how we should operate. We tend to exceed the norms, go beyond therm instead of being confined by them, when and if we find our niches.
We also tend to recognize and intuitively understand each other. That's why, among other things, I could dig those kids out. I know what I see in McVay. I watch somebody much like him, temperamentally, shave every day.
You see them everywhere in high profile positions; once they catch on they tend to be high achievers. ADD or ADHD for me is less a stigma than realizing that some people's minds run faster than others, and operate on several different planes at once. We're non-normative. It ain't a disorder, as it's been labeled. It's a particular syndrome with many variants that fall into certain patterns. I call it hyperfocus/distraction syndrome.
We tend to hyperfocus and do best in roles that demand uber-attention at multiple levels simultaneously, (such as football.) When not in hyperfocus mode, we tend toward distraction.
Distraction is our enemy.
Distractions lead us up blind alleys or creates messes to be dealt with later and we never get back on task - unless the task is so compelling that it consumes all of our attention, and eventually all of our energy. We tend toward high achievement followed by burnout, rinse and repeat.
We tend to be hyper-competetive, wanting to excel at whatever rivets our attention. As such, ironically, we want to control what distracts us. (Curious how that works, but it's there.)
And stay with me here: Delegation or letting something go that we could do better if we didn't have something more important to do is a conundrum for us. We can get stuck in it - it"s difficult to outgrow but it can be done - usually on the end of blunt force earning from something that completely knocked us off the tracks.
We need to do more than simply get back on track - and when we realize it, (may take several blunt force experiences) we can go from there. (I hope and pray that McVay reached that point coming out of last year.)
Einstein had a messy desk, while he saw the allness of the universe and could reduce some of its working essentials into mathematical formulas. Edison persevered, hyperfocused on tasks he simply wouldn't - couldn't - let go of in a messy lab for how many years? Inventing what, besides the electric light bulb?
Both of those guys have been assiduously diagnosed, after the fact, as ADD'ers.
I have nothing but high hopes and admiration for McVay. What he learns about himself, how deeply he digs into his own soul will have more to do with his successes from here on out that what else he might learn about football.
Godspeed, coach. I'm pulling for you.
