Transcriber: Aarushi Raj Varrier . Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Roughly one in 10 of the world’s population are born
with brains genetically designed for super-powered creativity.
These rare individuals have the same brain traits that allowed Virgin Group founder
Sir Richard Branson to create 400 companies,
journalist Lisa Ling to break award-winning stories,
and marketing guru Seth Godin to become a serial entrepreneur and famous author.
It’s what allowed Albert Einstein to generate
more than 300 scientific works, which revolutionized science.
It gave us Leonardo da Vinci’s ornithopter,
Emily Dickinson’s 1,800 poems, Mozart’s “Magic Flute,”
and Picasso’s blues, roses and cubes.
Here are just some of the creative minds with this trait:
Now you may be thinking, “I want to hire someone with a brain like that
or invest in their projects.”
So it may shock you to learn that today people born with brains
designed for exceptional creativity are told their brain is disordered,
and that far from possessing special gifts,
they have a mental deficit.
All these individuals have been diagnosed with or are believed to have had ADHD,
what the DSM terms “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.”
It is a terrible name, and I believe we need to shift
the narrative together today from disordered to creatively super-powered.
Once you know how, thank you.
(Applause)
Once you know how the ADHD brain works,
you’ll agree we need to embrace the potential and the disruption
that ADHD thinking brings.
I was first diagnosed with ADHD in my early 30s
and felt overwhelming shame and disbelief.
If I experienced intense shame as a successful professional,
what would that label have done to me as an impressionable child?
What opportunities would I have passed on, believing I wasn’t capable?
Despite being told I couldn’t focus, I focused obsessively on researching ADHD,
and the more I learned the neuroscience of how my ADHD brain worked
and the long list of revolutionary thinkers
that shared this trait,
my shame transformed to intense pride because this so-called disorder
contains the very creative strengths that allow me and all the people
on that list to break from traditional thinking
and shape the world to our relentless imaginations.
What ADHD stands for is problematic because even brain experts agree
there is no attention deficit in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Let’s start with “distracted,”
a term often applied to ADHD by the annoyed people around them,
but actually our brains are just busy inventing.
Unlike most balls of gray matter, ours have an overactive default mode network,
the neural system responsible for imaginative thinking,
but ours never goes quiet.
The ADHD brain sees possibilities
like that kid in “The Sixth Sense” sees dead people.
They’re everywhere, and they’re constantly talking to us.
Usually, when you are talking to us about something really important to you,
this can make us seem like daydreamers,
but another word for daydreamer is “visionary,”
an overactive default mode network.
It's like having 360 degree vision for thought.
Yeah, it’s hard to care about TPS reports because -
oh my, space and time are stretchy, you have a helicopter idea,
a court can be a symphony, and why not paint cubes?
We have more thoughts than we have time to pursue,
so we do so at every moment available.
ADHD is sometimes associated with being impulsive,
but it turns out our brains have a special lust for dopamine,
the luxury chocolate of neurochemicals,
meaning we are wired to take bold, audacious risks.
We get a literal dopamine high out of high stakes situations
that give others high blood pressure.
Perfect brain wiring for a startup CEO
or a star athlete who must pivot on a dime when the moment requires.
Now you’ve all heard this one - procrastinator -
and it’s true because ADHD minds become super-powered under pressure.
Just like the Hulk needs anger to access his super strength,
we need the lit fuse of a ticking timer to activate our dopamine system
and send our creativity into overdrive.
And that brings me to “lazy.” I take this one so personally.
Those with ADHD can hyper-focus on our goals for hours,
days, or days and nights on end.
It’s why we can write or design a prototype or play video games
for 12 hours straight until we really, really, really have to pee.
(Laughter)
We’re sometimes called disobedient or disruptive,
but that is part of being relentlessly innovative.
Ask Steve Jobs or Einstein,
innovation means bucking traditions
and usually the authority figures that put them in place
And get this: There is an actual explorer gene
that is over-represented in the ADHD population.
The 7R variant of the DRD4 gene
is linked in studies to increased creativity and divergent thinking.
In other words, ADHD minds are designed to disregard procedure and experiment.
Finally, because we’re born to explore, our brains are motion-powered.
Researchers at the University of Central Florida
found, in multiple studies, that if kids with ADHD are allowed to move around,
they perform significantly better on executive functioning tasks
than when forced to sit still.
The opposite was true of their neurotypical peers.
So I ask you, who are classrooms and cubicles designed to serve?
I walked out of the first TEDx conference I attended
because after two hours of sitting, I was itching to move.
How many of you are itching to move right now after sitting for a while?
Our world needs people who are ADHD,
and by that, I mean people who are audacious,
driven, and hyper-creative by design.
ADHD means the audacity to challenge tradition and take risks;
the drive to explore the unknown;
and the hyper-creativity that generates new inventions, novel start ups,
works of art, and ways of thinking that benefit everyone.
There is nothing disordered about a need to explore and innovate,
unless you’re in the wrong environment.
Let’s imagine two worlds:
The first, we’ll call the world of tradition.
In the world of tradition, predictability and obedience are rewarded.
Children are taught a predetermined curriculum,
and any failure is cause for shame.
Those who climb the established ladder of success are held up as models,
so the next generation will work hard to climb those same ladders,
and life is a manual of what worked in the past,
and everyone is expected to learn it, unit by unit,
until we’ve filled every institution
with an impermeable layer of mediocre middle managers.
In the world of explorers - innovation, and creativity are rewarded.
This society is nomadic, and those who risk venturing into uncharted territory
are revered as heroes
and inspire the next generation to explore the unknown.
Children are encouraged to experiment and to fail
because failure is the process of innovation.
Life is a choose-your-own-adventure book, and each person is their own author.
But take an ADHD explorer and place her in the world of tradition,
and she will wither.
Worse than that, she will learn to see herself as a failure
because she is bored by textbooks and ladders
where outcomes are predictable.
Exploration requires risk and requires failure,
which in the world of tradition means you’re a loser and a liability.
The only difference between these revolutionary creatives
and the child labeled with ADHD
is that the former were celebrated for being disruptive.
But the child labeled by the DSM is trapped in the world of tradition
and shamed for the very gifts she was born to manifest in the world.
My hope is that one day, those who are audacious,
driven, and hyper-creative by design will be sought out to re-imagine
our existing institutions, companies, whole industries,
and create new ones from a very early age.
They’ll be in great company.
Thank you.
(Applause)