Mrs. Homie has what I like to think of as the opposite of ADD. Rather than having a ridiculously short attention span, scattershot attention, trouble focusing, etc., she has a singular focus that literally shuts everything else out.
For example, we were visiting her mother one weekend and she was on the phone with some relative. The house caught on fire (literally). As smoke wafted up from the basement and the house filled with noxious fumes, Mrs. Homie continued blissfully chatting away, oblivious to the danger around her, until I literally yanked the phone from her hand and said “The house is on fire!”
For another example, let’s say I’m in the shower and Mrs. Homie has something to say to me quickly before she forgets it. She’ll come into the bathroom and, rather than gently pulling the curtain away, she’ll shove the shower curtain aside without care about its support and risk ripping it away from the hangers. She’s actually ripped about five shower curtains this way.
I could give you several more examples, but you get the idea.
I kind of have that-in my case, it takes the form of me thinking about one task, which causes me to completely forget the other task I was going to do first. This results in me entering a room, and having absolutely no idea what I wanted to do there.
I occasionally have this. Pretty much all of my major scientific breakthroughs over the last 10 years are due to this state. Its funny, because I normally am pretty scattered.
Unfortunately, its temporary and not voluntary - it happens about once a year or so. And there is no way to tell what I am going to focus on. It tends to happen when I am focusing on an all-consuming problem, but not always. The last time it happened I got focused on a statistical probability issue due to a question one of my students asked me - I spent over two weeks developing a novel statistical method that was interesting and completely irrelevant (other methods already existed to get at the answer). But during that 2 weeks, I did almost NOTHING else. Big waste of time.
But more often than not, it gets me through some important issue.
I would never want to spend my life in that state 100% of the time - its exhausting. When I come out of it it seems to me that it must be what it feels like to be mentally ill. I can’t sleep more than 1-2 hours a night, don’t want to eat, and get nothing else done. But it saved my ass on several occasions.
Heh—this sort of thing does remind me of the “absent-minded genius” types who get so absorbed in their work they’re oblivious to all else. See, for example, the “real life” examples on the TVTropes page for Absent Minded Professor.
Is your spouse always late? Does she get distracted by what she’s currently involved with to the point of not going on to the next step and is thus always late for where she needs to be?
My wife used to be this way. Having children broke her of this habit.
I have an ADD diagnosis and I have much more trouble with hyperfocus than I do being scatterbrained. I have a lot of trouble accomplishing tasks and I am usually oblivious to what is going on around me, and often careless.
I find that when I’m dealing with a really difficult problem, that actually concentrating on it is counterproductive. After a certain point you have to have to drop it and work on something else.
I find the solution will come to me when I’m in the shower or driving to work or even in the middle of the night.
It was my understanding that this is a symptom of a type of ADD. Makes sense when you think of it as the attention span’s inability to share, also a defecit in a way. Can’t focus on anything? ADD. Can only focus on one thing at a time to the exclusion of all else? Also ADD.
Both common manifestations of ADD. (OCD may also account for the latter, I would think.)
Unfortunately, this means ADD doesn’t pass the “global warming test.” Like climate change, it doesn’t always produce what its name implies (ie: sometimes it gets colder), so people can use the name to discredit the phenomenon.
Another ADHDer* here. Came in to offer Hyperfocusing.
Was told that people with ADD can’t not have OCD. That is, due to how someone with ADD is wired, they will get OCD automatically. I don’t agree here in the slightest.
OCD is nowhere near an opposite of ADHD, nor are the two disorders remotely the same. OCD is about having UNWANTED THOUGHTS that cause you discomfort, and feeling compelled to do UNWANTED BEHAVIORS to stop them.
Hyperfocusing is a symptom of OCD (just like it can be of ADHD), not the disorder. If your wife does not have extreme anxiety while being hyperfocused, nor reports it at other times, then she is not experiencing an OCD symptom. OCD is an anxiety disorder.
BTW, while there is a disorder for people who present OCD-like behaviors, but are completely happy with them called OCPD (Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder), it’s almost the opposite. They actually present anxiety symptoms when NOT engaging in the OCD-like behaviors. And, like all PDs, it’s something that would cause severe personal and social disruption. Think someone who’s world has to be perfectly orderly with black-and-white morality. In fact, it’s similar to Asperger’s syndrome, only without the social impairments. It definitely doesn’t fit the OP’s wife, either.