I've always wondered about this. I've been searching for a word that describes the things that I "want" to do, and the things I want to do. For example, I can program for eight hours straight on personal projects without batting an eye or needing to apply motivational strategy X or Y. I'll just fix a bug and I'll look up at my clock and find that it's four in the morning. It took me by surprise when my coworkers said that they didn't realize that having a programming hobby outside work was a thing at all, much less at the level of my dedication (if hyperfocus could even be called that).

However, I constantly question whether or not that is my "calling." I feel that programming games for eight hours a day and putting myself in that box for life is leaving too many other things on the table, ideas I want to express in other ways. If I just programmed with most of my free time and played games or something with the rest until I died, I would find something fundamentally wrong with my personal choices.

The issue is that without a dopamine-adjusting substance, it really feels like there is no way out of that loop. And I can't even deny that I'm succeeding at the programming thing, in a way that so many people can only dream of doing. But the art that I say I want to do requires Adderall at a certain point for me to make tangible progress, and the other kind of art doesn't. One has a limit of however many hours the drug lasts, the other has practically no limit except my ability to stay awake.

By now I understand the feelings of the people who say they can't program for more than X hours a day. I find it hard to do anything besides programming that requires deliberate effort for more than a few hours a day.

I feel that ADD isn't even a disorder indicating a deficit of attention, instead it's such that the attention is tightly bound to things that you don't get to choose. I kind of got lucky in my case, in that I legitimately enjoy programming and do want to finish the project I "want." But then there are other things that I want, that I tell myself that I want to scream at the world at the top of my lungs one day, but never do. I believe it would be the saddest thing if I passed on that opportunity. I only have one life.