ADHD, Noise, and the Architecture of Distraction

ADHD, Noise, and the Architecture of Distraction

Every week, someone asks me for Adderall.
Not always by name — sometimes by implication: “I just need something to help me focus,” or “I know what I have to do, I just can’t get started.” These are not abstract frustrations. They are real, painful daily struggles to push through what feels like molasses between thought and action.

I believe ADHD is real. I treat it. I see its impact in patients of all ages and walks of life. The executive dysfunction, the inertia, the difficulty regulating what gets attention and what gets postponed — all of it is real, and none of it is a character flaw.

But here is what I also see:
We live in a world that erodes vectoriality — the capacity to hold a direction and move toward it.
Even those without a formal ADHD diagnosis are drowning in ambient noise:

• Notifications that splinter attention.

• Infinite content loops that replace linear action with circular consumption.

• Emotional bandwidth consumed by micro-crises, alerts, and obligations.

We often speak of ADHD as if it were just a personal malfunction in an otherwise neutral system. But what if the system itself is designed to fracture attention? What if it rewards short loops and penalizes long arcs? What if the modern environment is not just challenging for ADHD — but built to produce ADHD-like functioning in everyone?

Adderall can help. But it is not a strategy.

Optimal performance — with or without ADHD — requires an intentional architecture:

• Environmental simplification.

• Behavioral rituals.

• Sensory tuning.

• Goal design that matches not just ambitions, but actual bandwidth.

• And — perhaps most radically — permission to work differently.

This is where therapy becomes more than insight. It becomes infrastructure.
A good therapeutic process doesn't just explore “why.” It helps build the “how”:

• How do I design my days so that I’m not always behind myself?

• How do I limit the inputs I never consented to in the first place?

• How do I choose what matters before the world decides for me?

We talk a lot about productivity. We should talk more about friction.

There are people who are not lazy, not disorganized, not weak — they are simply navigating ten times more friction than the system was built to acknowledge. ADHD magnifies this. But the rest of us are not immune.

So yes — I prescribe stimulants. And I help patients assess whether they’re appropriate. But I also invite them to see the wider field. To notice what is being asked of them, and why.

Because it is not just about attention. It is about agency.
And in a world built to distract, clarity is not a trait — it is resistance.