ADHD Cheat Code: Hyper-fixation
How I Started Treating My Life Like a Video Game Because… ADHD
Welcome to my brain, otherwise known as The land of “Too Many Tabs Open!”
I’m Alice — professional digital creator, neurodivergent nightmare-mode gamer girl, and someone who once hyper-fixated on organizing her cheat code Google Drive for eight hours straight and called it “self-care.”
If you also live in the chaotic kingdom of I have 47 ideas, 129 open tabs, and zero executive function, congratulations — you’re in the right place! Grab a controller and let’s yap.
Today we’re talking about:
How ADHD hyper-fixation stopped ruining my life and started building it.
(Or at least… making it less catastrophic and slightly more sparkly.)
Let’s start with The Sims.
Remember playing The Sims and being the most productive version of yourself you’ve ever met?
Your Sim wakes up at 6 AM.
Your Sim reads skill books.
Your Sim becomes a level 10 chef in like… two in-game days.
Meanwhile you IRL:
ate only cereal out of the box
somehow forgot how to respond to texts
haven’t sat through an entire TV episode without distractions since… ???
Life hits different when you are the Sim.
At some point, I realized something that changed everything:
**I wasn’t lazy.
I wasn’t unmotivated.
I was just trying to play real life on nightmare mode… without any cheat codes.**
The dopamine wasn’t dopamine-ing.
The “just get it done” advice never helped.
And the planners? Oh god. The planners.
What DID work?
Treating my life like the game I was escaping into.
🎮 Gamifying My Reality: The Cheat Code
Look, I love escapism.
I will escape into a video game faster than you can say “limited time event.”
But one day it hit me:
What if I used escapism as a blueprint instead of an avoidance strategy?
Instead of escaping from my life…
what if I escaped into a version of life I actually wanted?
Hyper-fixation becomes powerful when you point it at the right target.
Gamification gives it a target.
💡 So here’s how I started leveling up IRL using ADHD tendencies instead of fighting them:
1. Treating tasks like quests.
❌ “Do laundry” = boring.
🏆 “Defeat the Mountain of Clothes to earn +10 Confidence” = actually doable…
2. Building reward systems that actually hit the dopamine button.
❌ Not “reward yourself with a 15-minute break.”
🏆 More like: unlock a new outfit, an emotional support beverage, or 30 minutes of guilt-free scrolling.
3. Creating a character I wanted to play.
💖 Aesthetic is motivation.
🏆 If my IRL self feels like an NPC, I will simply not participate!
4. Turning hyperfixation into a skill tree.
🧠 If I’m gonna latch onto something for 3 days straight?
🏆 It might as well be something I want to improve at.
5. Using world-building as a mental health strategy.
🧠 If I can build a dream house in The Sims…
🏆 why can’t I build one for myself here?
🌈 And that’s how this digital space was born!
I didn’t want to escape from life anymore.
I wanted to escape into the life I was creating.
And I realized I’m not the only neurodivergent gamer trying to hold together a dream life using:
hyper-fixation
vibes
aesthetic motivation
the occasional breakdown
and a “new era” every 4–6 weeks
So here we are.
You can watch me gamify my entire life —
but you can also play alongside me!
This space is your Save File now.
We’re building your dream life like it’s an open-world adventure game.
No perfection. No pressure. Just progress, power-ups, and community!
Press start when you’re ready, Player 2
I’ll be waiting on the load screen!
