On building with ADHD

I was diagnosed late. By the time I understood what was happening in my brain, I had already built several things that should not have worked given the conventional wisdom about how ADHD affects productivity.

What I found is that the conventional wisdom is wrong about the important parts.

What ADHD actually is

Not a focus disorder. An interest-based nervous system. The brain does not struggle to focus — it struggles to focus on things it does not find genuinely interesting or urgent.

For building communities, for connecting people, for seeing the patterns that connect ideas across industries and cultures — that brain is not a liability. It is a superpower.

The practical version

I built SAGIE's operating system in Notion because I needed it to work even on the days when my brain was scattered. If a system requires perfect focus to operate, it will fail. The system has to be idiot-proof for the version of me that is running on three hours of sleep.

Every agent, every protocol, every automation exists because I cannot rely on remembering everything. So I built infrastructure that remembers for me.

What I would tell someone earlier in the journey

Stop trying to fix the brain. Start building systems that work with it.

The pattern recognition is real. The connection-making is real. The intensity when something matters is real. Those are not bugs. Build around them.