How Do You Write a Book When You Can Barely Focus Long Enough to Read One?

Early Struggles with Focus

In high school, my parents would usually get a letter around the middle of the semester warning them that I was failing one of my classes. The ensuing teacher conferences followed the same script: "Keith is bright, but he never turns in his homework." My parents struggled to understand my behavior. They knew I understood the material. Why wasn't I completing my assignments?

What I didn't tell my parents was that I found it impossible to hold assignments in my mind. Unless a class captured my interest, thoughts of due dates and homework seemed to evaporate the moment I stepped out the door. I didn't know how to make sense of this, so I wrote it off as a strange quirk of personality.

Fast forward a few years. In my first job after college, I found myself in a management role. I felt honored to be invited to weekly leadership meetings, but immediately I noticed that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t follow what people were saying. At first I thought it was just a knowledge gap, so I raided the local library for business books and studied up. But even after that, I found myself drifting, my mind shutting down in the middle of conversations I desperately wanted to engage in.