Let’s be honest about what’s actually happening when you finally “focus” at the deadline
I need you to sit with something uncomfortable for a moment.
You know that feeling when the deadline is breathing down your neck, and suddenly, finally, everything clicks? The fog lifts. Your brain engages. You produce brilliant work in a fraction of the time you’ve been stalling for weeks. You might even call it your “zone.” Your superpower. The proof that you work best under pressure.
I’m going to challenge that narrative.
Because here’s what I’ve learnt after years of watching high-achieving professionals repeat this cycle: What you’re experiencing isn’t peak performance. It’s not even close. And the story you’re telling yourself about “thriving under pressure” is masking something far more serious, and far more treatable, than you realise.
Let’s talk about what’s really happening in your brain when crisis becomes the only condition under which you can work.
What You Think Is Flow State Is Actually Dissociation
Picture this: It’s 11 PM. The presentation is due at 9 AM. And suddenly, you’re there. Focused. Calm, even. Hours pass like minutes. You don’t feel hungry. You don’t feel tired. You’re just… executing.
It feels incredible, doesn’t it? Like you’ve finally accessed the person you’re supposed to be.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Your nervous system is shutting down everything except task execution.
What disappears in those hours?
- Your awareness of hunger
- Your recognition of physical fatigue
- Your emotional processing
- Your connection to discomfort
- Your ability to feel, period
This isn’t you “getting in the zone.” This is your body making an executive decision that the threat in front of you is significant enough to override all other systems. You stop feeling because feeling would slow you down.
And we’ve been calling this productivity.
Why Crisis Is the Only Time Your Executive Function Turns Up
If you have ADHD (diagnosed or not), you’re intimately familiar with executive function deficits. These are the cognitive processes that neurotypical brains access relatively easily:
- Task initiation: starting things without massive resistance
- Working memory: holding information whilst you manipulate it
- Sustained attention: staying with something that doesn’t provide constant stimulation
- Cognitive flexibility: shifting between tasks or approaches
On a regular Tuesday? These functions are like trying to start a car with a dying battery. You turn the key, and… nothing. The task sits there. You sit there. The gap between intention and action feels insurmountable.
But at the deadline? Suddenly the engine roars to life.
Here’s what’s actually happening: Under extreme time pressure, your sympathetic nervous system activates. Fight-or-flight kicks in. Your body floods with cortisol and adrenaline. And these stress hormones temporarily patch the executive function deficit.
The crisis isn’t bringing out your best. Crisis is the only condition under which your brain chemistry allows you to access these functions.
Let that sink in.
The Neurological Payday Loan: Why You Crash After Every Deadline
You know what happens next, don’t you?
The deadline passes. The project is submitted. The presentation is delivered. And then you collapse. Not just physically tired but utterly depleted. Sometimes for days. Sometimes you can barely get off the sofa. Your brain feels like static. Simple decisions become overwhelming.
You’ve probably told yourself: “I just need to push through.” Or: “I’ll recover over the weekend.” Or my personal favourite: “Why am I like this?”
Here’s the reframe: You’re not recovering from hard work. You’re recovering from repeatedly hijacking your nervous system.
Think of it as a neurological payday loan. You borrowed tomorrow’s cortisol and adrenaline to function today. You accessed executive function you didn’t organically have by forcing your body into a stress state. And now? The bill comes due.
The crash isn’t a character flaw. It’s debt collection.
Your body is saying: “You used emergency resources for routine operation. Now I need to restore what you depleted. And I’m shutting down non-essential functions until that happens.”
This pattern isn’t sustainable performance. It’s repeated nervous system trauma that you’ve been valorising as work ethic.
Recognising the Pattern: From Identity to Mechanism
So how do you tell the difference between actual flow state and dissociative crisis productivity?
Actual Flow State:
- Feels energising, even after
- Maintains body awareness
- Allows for breaks and shifts
- Doesn’t require recovery period
- Can be recreated without crisis
Dissociative Crisis Productivity:
- Feels disconnecting from your body
- Eliminates hunger, fatigue, emotion
- Can’t stop even when you should
- Followed by multi-day crash
- Only accessible under extreme pressure
Here’s when this mechanism is genuinely useful: Actual emergencies. Your presentation to the board. The client crisis that requires immediate response. The situations where short-term nervous system override is appropriate.
Here’s when it’s destroying you: Using crisis as your default operating system. Treating every deadline as life-or-death. Organising your entire work life around the only neurochemical conditions under which you can access focus.
The shift that changes everything is this: Moving from “I’m someone who works well under pressure” (identity) to “My brain requires specific neurochemical conditions to access executive function” (mechanism).
One is who you are. The other is how your brain works. And only one of those can be worked with.
The Reframe: What This Actually Means for How You Work
Let’s land this plane.
If you recognise yourself in this pattern, here’s what’s actually true:
You’re not lazy on regular Tuesdays. You literally don’t have access to the same cognitive functions. The task initiation that feels effortless to others requires neurochemical conditions you don’t have access to without crisis.
You’re not a procrastinator. You’re waiting for the neurological conditions that make task execution possible. Your brain has learnt: “We can’t start this until the deadline creates the chemical environment we need.”
You’re not weak for crashing. You’re experiencing the predictable consequence of borrowing from your stress response system to patch executive function deficits.
The question isn’t “How do I fix this?” The question is: “How do I design work systems that account for variable executive function access?”
And I’m not here to prescribe the answer. Because the answer looks different for everyone, and it might not look “healthier” by conventional standards. Some people need artificial deadlines. Some need body doubling. Some need medication that addresses the underlying neurochemistry. Some need to completely restructure how they work.
What matters is that you stop glorifying what’s harming you.
You have permission to stop calling dissociation “productivity.” You have permission to stop wearing your nervous system dysregulation as a badge of honour. You have permission to acknowledge that “working well under pressure” has been costing you more than you’ve been willing to admit.
The Truth You’re Ready For
Here’s what I want you to walk away with:
Your brain isn’t broken. It’s operating exactly as designed: just with different baseline neurochemistry than the systems around you were built for. What you’ve been calling “thriving under pressure” is a real phenomenon with a real mechanism. And understanding the mechanism is the first step towards working with your brain instead of against it.
You don’t have to fix this tomorrow. You don’t have to have the answers. You just have to stop lying to yourself about what’s actually happening when crisis becomes your only entry point to focus.
Because once you see the pattern for what it is—once you understand the mechanism instead of the mythology—everything changes. Not because you’ve suddenly gained willpower or discipline or whatever other neurotypical fantasy gets sold as the solution.
But because you can finally ask the right questions.
- Not “Why can’t I just start things?” But “What conditions does my brain actually need to access task initiation?”
- Not “Why am I like this?” But “How do I create sustainable access to executive function?”
- Not “How do I get better at working under pressure?” But “How do I stop requiring pressure to work at all?”
Let’s Continue the Conversation
I want to hear from you: Does this pattern sound familiar? Have you been calling crisis productivity something else? What would change if you stopped treating your stress response as your work strategy?
Drop a comment. Let’s talk about what working with your brain actually looks like.
About the Author
Roxana is an ADHD coach and business psychologist who specialises in helping high-achieving professionals understand the neuroscience behind their work patterns. She holds an MSc in Industrial/Organisational Psychology from UCL and is a PCC-certified coach with lived experience of ADHD.