I didn’t learn to code because I loved code.

I learned to code because I had things I wanted to build. Coding wasn’t the dream, it was the lever. It was the tool that let me ship ideas.

Sure, I can throw on some chill music and slip into a flow state. I know the satisfaction of solving a gnarly CSS bug or wiring up an API endpoint cleanly. But if I’m honest, I don’t romanticize code. I want the thing built. I want the idea alive in the world.

I’ve had ADHD my entire life — or so I’m told, by therapists and practically anybody that knows me. I’m unmedicated. Always have been. And I’m not convinced it’s a flaw that needs fixing. In the right context, it’s a superpower.

People think ADHD means you can’t focus. That hasn’t been my experience. I can focus so intensely I block out everything else — which drives my wife crazy. The catch is that I can’t force that focus onto things that don’t interest me. If a task feels meaningless, I will procrastinate like it’s an Olympic sport. I’ll go surfing. I’ll redesign a logo. I’ll invent a new product before finishing the one I’m supposed to be working on.

But when something clicks? I melt into it. I’ll think about it while driving, showering, making coffee. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night with a solution. That kind of hyperfocus is rocket fuel — if you can harness it.

The downside has always been the long tail.

Building is the fun part. Then comes marketing, advertising, sales, support, maintenance, optimization… *Yawn*. The slow, steady grind after the initial creative spike. Historically, that’s where I’d feel the drag. Burnout would creep in. My attention would drift to the next idea. And the cycle would repeat.

Enter vibe coding.

With AI as a collaborator, the time between idea and execution has collapsed. I can prototype in hours what used to take weeks. I can test concepts before my motivation expires. I can build while I’m still excited about the idea. If the idea falls flat during the build, I didn’t waste months of my life exploring it.

That changes everything.

Instead of fighting my shifting focus, I can work with it. I can follow curiosity aggressively. If an idea sparks, I build it. If another one pulls me, I can spin that up too. The cost of exploration is dramatically lower.

For someone wired like me, that’s freedom.

All the things I used to think, “I’d build that if I had more time” or “I’d build that if I were better at X” — those constraints are dissolving. The bottleneck isn’t skill anymore. It’s taste and judgment. It’s deciding which ideas are worth pursuing. It’s finding the problems you want to solve.

Vibe coding doesn’t remove the need for discipline. It doesn’t eliminate the grind entirely. But it compresses the painful parts and amplifies the creative ones. It rewards momentum and hyperfocus.

For an ADHD builder, that’s the dream scenario.

I don’t want to sit and polish syntax for the sake of it. I want to ship weird, interesting, useful things into the world. I want to test ideas at the speed they appear in my head.

Now I can. I relish the problems I discover, because now I feel like I can solve any of them.

And for the first time, my brain doesn’t feel like something I have to fight. It feels like something I can almost keep up with.