alt Hacker NewsLower early life performance we with lots of multidisciplinary experience, later life hyperfocus on a specific discipline until world-class levels are reached.
Sounds like they're describing ADHD.
(Side note after the important ADHD joke: there's an old sport textbook called "Periodization" that mentions focusing on breadth rather than depth of sports experience in early life is a better path to olympic-level performance than just going hard in a single sport from a young age.)
It’s amazing how far the pop-culture definition of ADHD has strayed from the medical definition. “Hyperfocus … until world class performance” is in no way consistent with the medical definition of ADHD. I’m well aware that “hyperfocus” is a prominent part of the Reddit and TikTok-ification of ADHD diagnostics, but being able to focus intensely on your job until you perform it at world class levels is decisively not indicative of ADHD. Hyperfocus is not part of official ADHD diagnostic criteria and the only pseudo-studies that have examined it have taken place as self-reported questionnaires with small sample sizes in the era since it became a popular topic on social media, unfortunately.
ADHD is not correlated with high career performance, sadly, and represents a real obstacle for those struggling with it. The current social media trend of equating ADHD to a superpower which propels people to focus intensely and excel is really unfortunate.