This is what happens when hyperfocus meets reality – and why sometimes our “brilliant” solutions are actually brilliant messes.
The Setup: My Content Creation Superiority Complex
So there I was in April 2025, watching other entrepreneurs struggle with content creation while I was over here churning out posts like some kind of content machine.
I had a team. I had systems. I had prompts for everything.
And in that moment of peak ADHD confidence, I thought: “I should save everyone from their content struggles.”
Classic ADHD move #1: Assuming what works for my specific brain will work for literally everyone else.
The Hyperfocus Phase: One Month of Pure Obsession
I decided to create something I called the Content Repurpose Rocket – because apparently I was also in my “name everything like a NASA project” phase.
The vision: One magical Google Sheet with formulas that would auto-populate content across Facebook, Instagram, and everywhere else. You’d fill in one section, and BOOM – content everywhere.
I spent an entire month building this thing.
One. Whole. Month.
Complex formulas that talked to each other. Automated systems. It was like watching a beautiful, complicated machine come to life.
My ADHD brain was in heaven. This was the kind of systematic, logical puzzle-solving that makes us hyperfocus for hours without eating.
Reality Check #1: Even My Team Couldn’t Figure It Out
After my month of obsessive building, I excitedly presented it to my team.
Their faces said everything: “Hema, what the hell is this?”
They needed extra columns. The formulas wouldn’t allow modifications. The navigation was confusing even to people who knew how my brain worked.
But did I take this as a sign? Of course not.
Classic ADHD move #2: Doubling down when people don’t immediately understand our genius.
I told them they could “adjust and things like that.” (Yes, that’s exactly how helpful I was.)
Reality Check #2: The Live Demo Disaster
I decided to test it with an actual ADHD entrepreneur. Live demo. Real person. Real feedback.
She couldn’t grasp it.
Not even a little bit.
Here’s the thing about ADHD brains – we’re all wired differently. What feels intuitive to my specific chaos doesn’t automatically translate to someone else’s chaos.
My ADHD brain: “This makes perfect sense! Input here, magic happens, content everywhere!”
Her ADHD brain: “This looks like a tax form had a baby with a spreadsheet and neither parent wants custody.”
The Final Test: When Friends Become Beta Testers
I arranged live Zoom calls with other people to walk them through it.
The first session was… educational.
She couldn’t understand anything. The process to learn it felt overwhelming. The implementation seemed like more work than just creating content normally.
And that’s when it hit me: I had built a solution for content creation that made content creation harder.
The Two-Month Reality: When Hyperfocus Meets Real Feedback
After two months of working on this thing – building, tweaking, explaining, re-explaining – I finally accepted the truth:
It didn’t work.
Not because the idea was bad. Not because the execution was poor. But because I had built something that only worked for my specific ADHD brain.
I had created a system so tailored to my way of thinking that it was completely unusable for anyone else – including other ADHD entrepreneurs.
The Classification: Failed vs. Abandoned
Here’s something I learned about project failure versus project abandonment:
Abandoned projects = I lost interest but the core idea had potential
Failed projects = The thing fundamentally didn’t solve the problem it was supposed to solve
The Content Repurpose Rocket was a failed project.
It solved a problem that didn’t exist in the way I thought it existed. It created more complexity instead of reducing it.
What This Taught Me About ADHD Entrepreneurship
1. My Hyperfocus Isn’t Always an Asset
Just because I can obsess over something for a month doesn’t mean it’s worth obsessing over.
2. ADHD Solutions Aren’t One-Size-Fits-All
What works for my ADHD brain might be absolute torture for another ADHD brain.
3. Test Early, Test Often
I should have tested this thing after week one, not month one.
4. Sometimes the “Simple” Solution is Actually Complex
In trying to make content creation “easier,” I made it exponentially harder.
5. User Experience ≠ Builder Experience
Just because building it felt good doesn’t mean using it would feel good.
The Real Cost: More Than Just Money
Time invested: 2 months of intensive work
Financial cost: ~$3000 in opportunity cost (time I could have spent on profitable projects)
Emotional cost: The humbling realization that my “brilliant” solution was actually a brilliant mess
Team cost: Confused team members who tried to make sense of my chaos
What I Should Have Done Instead
- Started with user interviews instead of assuming I knew what people needed
- Built a simple MVP instead of a complex system
- Tested with ONE person before building the whole thing
- Asked “Does this actually solve the problem?” at every step
The Plot Twist: This Failure Led to Something Better
While the Content Repurpose Rocket crashed and burned, the process taught me something valuable about building ADHD-friendly systems:
The best ADHD tools are stupid simple.
Not complex. Not clever. Not impressive.
Simple.
This failure directly influenced how I approach all my current ADHD systems – they’re designed for brains that get overwhelmed easily, not brains that love complicated formulas.
The Bottom Line for Fellow ADHD Entrepreneurs
Your hyperfocus is powerful. But just because you CAN build something complex doesn’t mean you SHOULD.
Sometimes the most loving thing you can do for other ADHD brains is to build something boring and simple instead of something exciting and complicated.
The Content Repurpose Rocket taught me: Not every problem needs a rocket. Sometimes people just need a bicycle.
Where I Am Now
These days, my ADHD systems follow one rule: If I can’t explain it in 30 seconds, it’s too complex.
The Content Repurpose Rocket lives in my “expensive lessons learned” folder, right next to other brilliant ideas that worked great in my head and nowhere else.
And honestly? I’m grateful for this failure. It saved me from building a bunch of other overcomplicated “solutions” that would have solved problems nobody actually had.
Sometimes the best thing your ADHD brain can do is build something that doesn’t work – so you can learn to build something that does.
P.S. If you’re an ADHD entrepreneur who’s built something “brilliant” that nobody else could figure out, you’re not alone. We’ve all been there. The difference between successful ADHD entrepreneurs and struggling ones isn’t that we stop having these ideas – it’s that we learn to test them before we fall in love with them.
Building chaotically (but smarter now),
Hema