Jaki Milakovic is an Indianapolis-based HR professional. She has ADHD. And she has a simple system: she gives herself 25 minutes, sets a timer, and tells her brain this task, this window, full focus.
"What works is timing myself and saying, 'OK, this task is going to take 25 minutes,' and if in the middle of that, I get interrupted, it really just throws off the rest of my day, and I'm unable to come back and focus," she said.
The rest of the day. Not the next 25 minutes. The rest of the day.
Here's the part that should land differently if you're a CEO: Jaki can hyperfocus. Her brain, under the right conditions, can produce output that would take a neurotypical employee significantly longer. You are not creating those conditions. You're destroying them — 275 times a day, per employee — and then wondering why your productivity numbers look the way they do.
The Data on What You're Actually Leaving Behind
Before we get to interruptions, let's establish what's possible. Because this conversation doesn't usually start with the upside — and it should.
JPMorgan Chase's Autism at Work program launched a pilot cohort in 2015. Within the first six months, those employees — new to the company — were 48% more productive than neurotypical peers who had been doing the same job for three to ten years. In specific technology roles, they completed task queues 90%–140% more productively, with zero errors. The head of the program called it "almost unheard of."
Deloitte found that teams with neurodiverse professionals in some roles can be up to 30% more productive than those without them. These aren't outlier results from optimized research conditions. These are outcomes from real workplace programs where the primary intervention was: give these employees the right environment and stop requiring them to perform neurotypicality.
Now here's the question that nobody asks: If those are the results under partial accommodation — a structured program, manager awareness, role fit — what are you leaving behind in the 97% of companies that haven't done any of this?
What Hyperfocus Actually Is (And Why It's Not the Same as "Really Focusing")
Hyperfocus is a distinct neurological state — documented across ADHD and autistic populations — where attention locks onto a task so completely that time distortion, sensory dampening, and output acceleration happen simultaneously. It is not "really concentrating." It is a different cognitive gear entirely.
A 2019 peer-reviewed study by Hupfeld, Abagis & Shah (ADHD Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorders, n=372) found a significant positive correlation between ADHD symptom severity and hyperfocus frequency: people with higher ADHD symptomology experience hyperfocus more often. A 2024 trans-diagnostic study by Dwyer, Williams, Lawson & Rivera (n=492) confirmed the same state across ADHD-only, autistic-only, and AuDHD populations. Different neurotype. Same underlying mechanic.
The ADHD brain has a higher dopamine activation threshold. Standard tasks — routine, repetitive, unstructured — don't generate enough dopamine signal to lock in attention. But a task with novelty, clear challenge, urgency, or real stakes? The same brain that struggled to start a routine report can sustain extraordinary concentration for hours. That's not a bug. That's the biology.
The Three Conditions. You're Preventing All Three.
Hyperfocus has three prerequisites. They're not exotic. They're not expensive. Your company is systematically eliminating all of them before the workday begins.
All three present → Hyperfocus state possible → 48–140% productivity above neurotypical baselineus is not degraded. It is structurally prevented.
On "Task Engagement Signal" — an honest reframe
The research literature describes hyperfocus as arising from tasks of "high interest" — but this framing is misleading in a work context, because employees don't always choose their tasks. The more accurate framing: the ADHD brain requires a dopamine signal sufficient to trigger engagement. Managers can create this through clear problem framing, visible stakes, challenge calibration, and removing bureaucratic friction that drains novelty. You don't have to assign employees only passion projects. You have to stop designing tasks to be maximally unengaging.
The Interruption Math Your Company Has Never Run
In June 2025, Microsoft published a special Work Trend Index report: Breaking Down the Infinite Workday. Methodology: telemetry from 31,000 knowledge workers across 31 markets. The headline finding:
Employees are interrupted every two minutes during core work hours — 275 times a day — by meetings, emails, or chats.
Microsoft Work Trend Index, 2025 · n=31,000 · 31 markets
That's the neurotypical baseline. Now run the math for your ND employees.
After each interruption… | Neurotypical | ADHD / Autistic |
|---|---|---|
Refocus time | ~23 min (Gloria Mark, Attention Span 2023) | 23 min + additional task-switching overhead, time blindness, emotional dysregulation cycle |
Hyperfocus state | Rarely enters it; deep work is interrupted but restartable | State is ended, not paused. Recovery can be the rest of the day |
Error rate after interruption | 2× errors post-interruption (research average) | Amplified — ADHD executive function challenges compound on re-entry |
Productive output available | ~3.4 hours of focused work/day (RescueTime baseline) | In a standard interrupt-saturated office: significantly less — and hyperfocus never activates |
Now look at what RescueTime's behavioral data shows across hundreds of millions of logged work hours: 40% of workers never achieve even 30 straight minutes of uninterrupted focus in a day. That's the NT floor. That's as good as it gets before the ND multiplier applies.
Why Async-First Companies Get This Accidentally Right — And How They Still Mess It Up
The companies that created the conditions for this weren't trying to build neuroinclusive workplaces. Doist built async-first because it scaled across time zones. GitLab published its handbook because distributed work requires documentation. Atlassian ran a two-week experiment to reclaim focus time: 43% of employees replaced at least one meeting with a Loom video. In two weeks, 5,000 hours were freed — the equivalent of 2.5 work years, reclaimed by a single behavioral nudge.
What they accidentally built: fewer pending social obligations, lower notification load, protected blocks of uninterrupted time. The three conditions hyperfocus requires.
But here's where even async-first companies fail: claiming to be async while running Slack as a real-time communication layer with an unspoken expectation of same-hour responses. The format changed. The culture didn't. The ND employee knows exactly how fast replies are expected. That ambient awareness is sufficient to prevent hyperfocus from initializing — even if no ping has arrived yet.
From my experiences running async-first teams
When I started running distributed teams, I built a rule: every meeting required a detailed written agenda shared at least 48 hours in advance. Not a calendar invite title — a document. Problem statement, expected outcome, who needs to contribute vs. who's FYI. If you couldn't write the agenda, you couldn't call the meeting.
The effect on endless meetings was clear. If you were needed for a specific action item you could provide it prior to the meeting and not attend. 50% of meetings I organized actually happened.
In retrospect when I look at ND more closely there was another positive effect. People who never spoke in cold-fire meetings showed up to the written async thread with complete, considered positions. The agenda removed the performance pressure sitting in the meeting. The written format removed the need to process and respond in real time. The meeting, when it happened, was a shorter convergence on thinking that had already been done — not 60 minutes of live improvisation.
I also built two SOPs that most companies don't have: rules for calling a meeting, and explicit permission to decline one. Both change the culture around focus time faster than any policy memo.
SOP: Rules for calling a meeting
A written problem statement exists before the invite goes out. If you can't write the problem in two sentences, the meeting isn't ready.
A shared agenda document — not the invite title — is sent at least 48 hours in advance. Async pre-read contributions are open and encouraged before the meeting starts.
The expected outcome is specified: a decision, a plan, an alignment. "Touch base" and "sync up" are not outcomes.
Attendance is tiered: who must contribute, who should attend, who gets the recording. Not everyone needs to be live.
All information-sharing content is async by default. Meetings are for decisions, unblocking, and relationship. Not updates.
SOP: Explicit permission to decline a meeting invite
Any meeting without a written agenda document can be declined without explanation or social cost. This is a stated team norm, not a personal decision.
Any meeting there was no action item or deliverable assigned to you.
A decline with a written async contribution is a full participation — not an absence. State this explicitly so neurodiverse employees don't interpret declining as professionally risky.
Recurring meetings are for building relationships; not doing work.
The Office Problem: When There's No Door to Close
Cal Newport's "office hours" model — post your available windows, protect everything else — breaks down the moment you're in an open-plan environment. There's no door. You can't put a sign on thin air. And in most offices, the cultural norm is that if someone can see you, you're interruptible.
This is solvable, but it requires two things working together: a physical signal, and a company policy that makes that signal mean something. The physical signal alone doesn't work — a pair of headphones is just a pair of headphones until the team has explicitly agreed that headphones mean do not interrupt. The policy alone doesn't work — a posted norm about focus time evaporates the moment a manager walks over anyway.
What does work in open-plan environments:
Open-plan focus protocols
Two-state desk signal, company-formalized. A physical object — red/green card, colored cube, small LED indicator — that signals focus mode vs. available. Kuando Busylight (connects to your computer, turns red automatically during focus blocks) has been shown to reduce unnecessary interruptions by up to 46% in open-office environments. Forty dollars. One team agreement. Immediate impact.
Headphones as a protected policy, not a personal preference. Write it into the team operating agreement: headphones on = do not interrupt unless genuinely urgent. This reframes it from individual rudeness to shared infrastructure. Managers model it first.
No-meeting mornings as a team-wide calendar default. Not "try to keep mornings free." A written policy: no internal meetings before noon. Exceptions require active justification. The morning block is the only time most ND employees will reach the conditions for hyperfocus in an office setting — protect it structurally.
Async-first even when physically present. "Quick questions" go to the async channel during focus hours, not over the desk partition. The visual "I'm here" doesn't make a question less interruptive. Train managers to model this explicitly: they message someone two desks away during protected hours rather than walking over.
Designated focus space available on demand. A bookable enclosed room or pod that any employee can use for a protected block — no explanation required. The existence of the space signals that the organization takes focus time seriously. The ability to use it without disclosure allows ND employees to access quiet environments without identifying themselves.
The Burnout Pipeline: What Hyperfocus Looks Like When It Goes Wrong
Matt Dumont had ADHD. He locked in on a project. The output was extraordinary — month after month, sustained, high-quality work. "The longer I hyperfocused on the project and the more I accomplished, the more important my work became to me. It was all or nothing." He kept the pace for a year and a half. Then, with almost no warning, he broke. Six years later, he was still in recovery.
This is what hyperfocus looks like when the conditions are created but the exit ramps aren't built. The ADHD brain's internal stop signal is structurally weaker than a neurotypical brain's. The same mechanism that enables extraordinary sustained concentration also makes it genuinely difficult to disengage — even when disengagement is the right thing to do. Your employee isn't going to ask for a break. They don't experience the need for one in the way you would expect.
In remote and async-first environments, this is harder to spot than it sounds. When you can't see someone's face, you lose the involuntary signals — the 3pm exhaustion that shows up on someone's face in a meeting, the slumped posture, the shorter answers. What you're left with is output data and behavioral patterns in your digital tools. Which means you have to know what to look for.
What Burnout Actually Looks Like: Six Signals Managers Miss
Most managers wait for someone to say they're struggling. That's the wrong strategy with ND employees — especially high performers who have spent their careers making their exhaustion invisible. Here's what to watch instead.
Signal 1 — Changes in ambient social behavior
During COVID, someone on my team was the GIF king. 3-4 GIFs in the team Slack every day. It was his signature, the way you knew he was there and engaged. Then it dropped to 1-2 and then less than daily. I knew something was wrong.
I didn't wait for a formal 1:1. I set up a check-in specifically because I'd noticed something was off. I was right. There was an issue, we worked through it, and it got resolved. But the signal wasn't anything dramatic. It was just a change in habit from baseline. Most managers never notice because they aren’t tracking the baseline in the first place.
What to do: Know what "normal" looks like for each person on your team. Not their job performance; their human behavior. The jokes they make, the channels they're active in, the way they respond to team wins. When that pattern changes, something changed. Find out what.
Signal 2 — The async standup emoji that most managers scroll past 😐
I ran a daily async standup with a feelings check-in. A simple emoji prompt at the top: how are you today? One sad face got a DM from me within the hour. Not at the next 1:1, not at end of day. ASAP. So did, three neutral faces in a row. Not sad, just flat came with a message: "I've noticed you've been at a bit 😐 this week. Everything okay?"
The check-in only works if you actually read it and respond immediately when the signal fires. Most managers treat it as a wellness theater checkbox. For neurodiverse employees who are rarely going to volunteer that they're burning out, this is often the only window you'll get before the collapse.
What to do: Build the response protocol into your routine, not your intentions. Sad face → message within the hour. Three neutral faces → check-in message same day. No exceptions, no "I'll catch them at the next sync."
Signal 3 — Face and body language, even through a screen
Video calls give you something. Not as much as in-person, but more than most managers use. I made a practice of actually looking at people during 1:1s, not at my notes. Tired eyes. Flat affect. Answers that are shorter than usual. Someone who normally leans forward and speaks with energy sitting back and giving you the minimum. Just remember my camera on for meetings policy. And that the person on Zoom may be masking.
The same obviously goes for being in the office. Be sure you’re paying attention while speaking with them directly or just people watching in the office.
What to do: Protect cameras-on as the default for 1:1s specifically for virtual meetings as they may be your only window into their world. In the office just window watch your team going about their day.
Signal 4 — The employee who's crushing it and hasn't slowed down in months
This is the one most managers get completely backwards. When someone is consistently exceptional and producing at a pace that most people can't sustain, your instinct is to celebrate it, lean into it, and give them more. That's exactly wrong for an ADHD employee in hyper-focus.
The math is simple: nobody can maintain 100% indefinitely. If an employee has been operating at an exceptional level for weeks without a visible slowdown, they need you to force the break before the break forces itself on them.
What to do: Vacation time is required and not a day here or there. I required every person on my team to take one full consecutive week off per quarter. Not a recommendation. A requirement. I'd sit on it in every 1:1 until they booked it. Multiple people came back saying they hadn't realized how much they needed it until they'd taken it. That's not a compliment to them. That's a system working correctly.
The GitLab lesson — when a productivity spike is a red flag, not a celebration
Weeks into the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, GitLab — already a fully remote, async-first company — noticed something in their data: productivity had shot up significantly. CEO Sid Sijbrandij told CNBC the reason was straightforward: "There's not much else to do, so people tend to work more to counteract that." Employees had nowhere to go and nothing to do but work.
Most companies would have called that a win. GitLab read it as a warning sign. They knew their team wasn't disconnecting the way they needed to. Rather than celebrate the numbers, they closed the company for a full week so the entire team could step away simultaneously. As one GitLab employee later described it: "Our CEO noticed that teams were producing more than they normally do and he was worried people were not taking normal breaks... so the leadership team created an opportunity for folks to spend time away from work."
The insight it encodes: when you're running a team where people genuinely love the work and have hyperfocus-prone brains, the productivity data can lie to you. Up is not always good. Sometimes up means nobody is stopping.
Building the Off-Ramps: What Mandatory Recovery Actually Looks Like
The word "mandatory" matters here. Suggesting that employees take breaks is performative. Requiring it and building the systems that make the requirement enforceable will help your hyper-focused ADHD employees and everyone else.
Recovery infrastructure that actually works
One full consecutive week off per quarter — required, not encouraged. Not scattered days. A week, consecutive, so the nervous system can actually decompress. Make it a condition of employment, tracked the same way output is tracked. If someone hasn't booked their quarterly week by the midpoint of the quarter, you bring it up in the 1:1 and you don't drop it until it's scheduled.
Calendar-blocked end times on focus sessions. Hyperfocus doesn't have a built-in stop signal for ADHD brains. Build external ones. Hard end times on deep work blocks, a calendar alarm 15 minutes before that fires even if the work isn't finished. The work will still be there. The person needs to stop.
Body-doubling as both a start and a stop mechanism. Nuerodiverse employees who use body-doubling (working alongside another person, in person or online) often discover it helps them disengage as much as engage. I used to host 30 or 60 minute open coworking sessions on Zoom. Show up or don’t. Do work side by side or chit-chat. The session ending provides the social prompt their brain needs to stop. This is free, available today, and dramatically underused.
1:1s that ask about recovery, not just output. Your 1:1s should be about them. Personally and professionally. "How are you actually doing? How's your energy this week compared to last week?" Make it the first question, not the last. If the answer is "I'm a bit tired but I'm fine," that's usually the signal to probe further, not accept at face value.
Unlimited PTO is not a benefit without active management. Multiple studies have shown that unlimited PTO policies result in employees taking less time off on average than capped policies because there's no visible "use it or lose it" incentive and no social permission to use it when everyone else isn't. For neurodiverse employees who won't self-advocate for rest, unlimited PTO without active enforcement is theater. Push people to use it. Make it normal. Track it. And as a leader, most importantly, take the time off yourself and be vocal about it.
I'd love to hear what brought you here. Reply directly — I read every message.
If this resonates, share it with a CEO or HR leader in your network. The conversation needs to start somewhere.
And if you're past the conversation stage and ready to actually build the systems — reach out. That's exactly what I do.