The Circuit Breaker I Never Had

Is AI the First Productivity Tool That Actually Works for ADHD Brains?

I read Justin’s piece twice. The second time, I kept stopping.

Not because I disagreed. Because I recognized the person he was describing. It wasn’t me. It was the version of me that used to sit in Microsoft meetings — furiously taking notes, hoping nobody would notice I was tracking three conversations at once and losing all of them.

Justin writes that when meetings get transcribed, he checks out. AI will condense thirty minutes of talking into a two-minute summary later. So why give it his full attention now? (You can read his piece here.)

I had the opposite experience.

The first time I sat in a meeting with live transcription and realised I didn’t have to write anything down, I nearly cried. That’s not hyperbole. I’ve spent 35 years taking notes faster than my handwriting can keep up — not because I’m diligent, but because if I stop, I lose the thread. Transcription didn’t make me less present. It was the first time I was actually there.

‍I have ADHD. And I want to be careful how I say what I’m about to say — because I genuinely respect Justin’s perspective. Smart, rigorous thinker. His relationship with AI is clearly working for him. But his brain and mine are wired differently. And that gap is more interesting to me than either of us being right.

Justin also writes about the cognitive circuit breaker. The feeling of running out of brain — the moment you stop tracking the meeting thread, or write an email that makes no sense. He says that feeling was useful. A signal. AI, he suggests, has started to remove it.

I take his point. And then I laugh. Quietly. To myself.

Because I have never had a working circuit breaker.

Can AI Compensate for the Cognitive Circuit Breaker ADHD Adults Never Had?

ADHD means the breaker fires randomly. You’re fully tracking a meeting and then suddenly you’re elsewhere — not because you’re tired, but because that’s just how the wiring works. You write an email that makes no sense not because you’ve run out of brain, but because two thoughts arrived simultaneously and collided on the way out. This has always been a particular challenge for me. I’d start an email, or a conversation TBH, tackling one thing and before you know it I’ve swamped you with half a dozen things. You’ve been staring at the same paragraph for ten minutes not because you’re done — but because you got interested in something three tabs ago and forgot to come back. Or you just zoned out on the back of zoning out. I’m talking Inception levels of zone out. Ever had that?

AI didn’t take my circuit breaker away. It gave me something that compensates for the one I never had. ‍

I have a setup I call Brain Buddy. It’s Claude, loaded with 35 years of context — personality profiles, my operating principles, a documented map of my own avoidance patterns. I explicitly asked it not to be a cheerleader. Its job is to notice when I’m growing — and when I’m running the same loop in a different jacket.

‍It does that well. Better than I expected, honestly.

Where Justin uses AI to do less with his attention, I use it to direct more of mine. I use AI the way a good executive uses a good EA. It reads everything — Slack, email, transcripts, the LinkedIn thread I meant to get back to. I ask it what matters. Then I go deep on what actually needs my brain.

‍What used to take me a morning of painful re-finding, re-reading, re-summarising — I now get as a three-line brief. Then I spend the morning on the thing that actually moves something.

‍That’s not outsourcing my thinking. That’s finally having a system that keeps up with it.‍ ‍

I hit a glass ceiling at Microsoft. Not officially. Nobody said it out loud. But I felt it.

Too contrarian. Too high-energy in the wrong meetings. Too scattered when the culture needed methodical. The people who rose were systematic, operational — the kind of brains that read every email, write impeccable meeting notes, and track seventeen threads without breaking a sweat. I also noticed how they’d reply to ALL those emails and so quickly.

‍I was not that brain.

Why Do People With ADHD Experience AI Differently?

I built workarounds. Color-coded notebooks. Voice memos in the car. Elaborate systems I’d set up on a Sunday and abandon by Wednesday. I got good enough at performing the expected version of productivity that nobody — including me — named what was actually happening.

“You’re so orgniazed, Matthew!” They’d say when they saw my OneNote notebook, my mindmaps, my “inbox to zero” approach. Little did they know…

And then AI arrived.

AI was built to work like the brains that already worked. Systematic. Structured. Organized. Searchable. And somewhere inside that design, it accidentally became the first tool that works like mine. Or at least, worked for mine.

Not because it does the thinking for me. Because it handles the administrative cost of having an ADHD brain — the re-finding, the re-summarizing, the keeping-track-of — so I can do the thing I was always better at than I was given credit for.

‍Going deep. Making unexpected connections. Asking the uncomfortable question in the room. Making sense of really complex random shit.

‍Justin ends his piece with quiet unease. He’s wondering what it means to “be there” anymore. He wonders if the meeting was really for him.

I’m not uneasy. I’m curious.

‍For the first time in 35 years, I’m not working around my brain. I’m working with it.

When we next chat you might want to ask me about some of the things I’ve used AI to help me do. My latest and greatest go so deep and detailed (installing a custom HAOS set up for whole home energy monitoring) it ended up with soldering, side loading operating systems on consumer silicon to avoid using the public cloud of the device manufacturers. I’m doing more. I’m more engaged and excited about what I can create than ever before.

What if the era of AI doesn’t just level the playing field? What if, for some of us, it tips it?

‍ Justin’s original piece is here. Worth reading — especially if your brain looks more like his than mine.

Obligatory biz promo bit: If you’re curious about the sort of sense I can make out of a mess — or you’re heading into a raise and not sure the story will hold under pressure— book a 20-min narrative diagnostic.

p.s. And in the spirit of his “here’s the prompt for this article,” here’s mine - but it was co-authored with AI in a Claude “Work writing” project I have that has some pretty strict Matthew rules :)

voice: Matthew Woodget, founder, Go Narrative. 1st person. Self-deprecating.

ADHD declared early — not as excuse, as lens.

thesis: mutual adaptation. AI and ADHD brains are a better fit than most people realise.

The people worried about AI making them less present are not the people who never had a

working circuit breaker.

hook: response to Justin's piece at workflowlabs.net/blog/em-dash-war.

Acknowledge and link. Respectful disagreement — different brains, not wrong vs right.

Justin = systematic, operational. Matthew = contrarian, high-energy, pattern-connector.

The gap between them IS the point.

structure (desire / difficulty / resolution):

- desire: to be present, effective, trusted with complexity

- difficulty: ADHD means the circuit breaker fires randomly, not when you're done

- resolution: AI handles the administrative cost of an ADHD brain so the good stuff

  (depth, connection, uncomfortable questions) can finally show up

3 moves:

1. meetings — transcription made Matthew MORE present, not less. No notes = in the room.

2. information — uses AI as an EA: brief me on what matters, then go deep.

   Brain Buddy (Claude + 35 years of context, personality profiles, avoidance patterns,

   operating principles) as the honest thought partner, not cheerleader.

3. Microsoft / glass ceiling — too contrarian, too scattered for the culture that rewarded

   methodical. Built elaborate performance systems nobody saw through.

   "You're so organized, Matthew!" They had no idea.

close: not outsourcing thinking. Finally a system that keeps up with it.

Closing question: what if AI doesn't just level the field — what if for some of us it tips it?

tone: warm, funny, specific. Self-deprecating but not self-pitying.

"Inception levels of zone out" energy throughout.

No ADHD-as-superpower clichés. No manifesto. Questions that make people lean forward.

link Justin's piece twice: once in body (first reference), once in footer note.