When I Code, I Disappear

Hyperfocus, Architecture, Gifted Depth, and the Discipline of Containment

Teo days ago I started a new project.

Yesterday I started coding at 11:00.

It was suddenly 23:00.

I barely left my desk.

I forgot lunch.

Forgot to stretch.

Forgot the world.

I didn’t study Dutch.

I didn’t study Greek.

I didn’t go to yoga.

I didn’t work on my posts.

I didn’t edit the powerful recording I made with Adrian.

I didn’t apply for jobs.

I didn’t look at my todo list.

After one hour of client work in the morning, I didn’t talk to anyone.

I didn’t check emails.

I didn’t respond.

I built.

And I disappeared.

Hyperfocus Isn’t Productivity. It’s Immersion.

When I code, I don’t feel busy.

I feel like I fall through a portal.

I get stuck inside a labyrinth within my own mind.

🔥 Time dissolves.

🔥 Sensory input fades.

🔥 The system becomes louder than the room.

Hyperfocus is powerful.

Hyperfocus is dangerous.

Hyperfocus is sacred.

It can build worlds.

Or quietly burn you down. 🔥🔥🔥🐉

Gifted Depth Is Not Distraction

There is nuance here.

Hyperfocus is often associated with ADHD.

There is overlap in neurodivergent traits, but they are not identical.

Gifted cognition often looks like:

💚 Sustained concentration

💚 Pattern stacking

💚 Systems thinking

💚 Completion drive

💚 Distraction resistance

💚 High tolerance for complexity

The risk is not scattering.

The risk is total absorption.

I complete.

I don’t fragment.

I disappear.

And that distinction matters, especially in conversations about neurodiversity and inclusivity.

Not all intensity is disorder.

Not all immersion is dysfunction.

Different nervous systems regulate differently.

Inclusive leadership means understanding that.

The Dragon of Hyperfocus

Hyperfocus magnifies direction.

It does not choose direction.

That is why the first step yesterday was not code.

It was clarity.

Before writing a single line, I defined:

❤️‍🔥 The North Star

❤️‍🔥 The philosophical boundaries

❤️‍🔥 What must never be violated

❤️‍🔥 What is MVP

❤️‍🔥 What can wait

(By the way, I did all of this after months of stakeholder research.)

Because hyperfocus without purpose becomes obsession.

And obsession without boundaries becomes rework.

The Architecture Always Takes the Longest

If you watched me yesterday, you might have thought:

“Why is she still drawing boxes? Just build it.”

But architecture is thinking.

And thinking is the real work.

For my Worth-to-Impact Engine, I designed:

1️⃣ Conceptual Architecture

💎 North Star: Growth expands expression, not worth.

💎 Core belief protection layer.

💎 AI Reflection Engine.

💎 Data persistence for participant responses.

💎 No evaluative scoring logic.

💎 Growth without worth-measurement.

Every feature had to protect the philosophical spine.

Without that clarity, I could have accidentally built:

🖤 Gamification that measures worth.

🖤 Feedback loops that feel evaluative.

🖤 AI reflections that distort intent.

Hyperfocus can amplify blind spots.

So I slowed down.

2️⃣ Technical Architecture

Then came:

🔥 Webhook trigger

🔥 Input normalization

🔥 Insert row (store raw reflection)

🔥 Model call (AI synthesis)

🔥 JavaScript transformation layer

🔥 Update structured outputs

🔥 Webhook response

But even there, the deeper questions mattered more:

Where does data live?

What is mutable?

What is immutable?

What happens if model output changes?

How do I prevent overfitting?

That’s leadership thinking applied to systems.

Avoiding the Perfectionism Trap

This is where gifted depth can betray you.

If I let myself:

🖤 I would refactor endlessly.

🖤 Optimize prematurely.

🖤 Solve edge cases no human will hit.

🖤 Polish invisible elegance.

Perfectionism is often disguised anxiety.

The antidote is MVP discipline.

I asked:

Does this deliver core value?

Does it protect the North Star?

Is it safe enough to test?

If yes, ship.

Architecture must be intentional.

Polish can wait.

The Honest Layer, The Cost

Here’s what depth took yesterday:

No yoga.

No languages.

No relational touchpoints.

No email hygiene.

No voice cultivation.

No visibility work.

Coding is mastery.

Dutch and Greek are humility.

Yoga is embodiment.

Emails are relational threads.

Editing Adrian’s recording is courage and presence.

Posts are voice and contribution.

Depth builds product.

Breadth builds life.

Leadership requires holding the whole field.

Hyperfocus narrows the field.

That narrowing has a cost.

The Cognitive Clash

Hyperfocus is immersive.

Leadership is interruptive.

Coding requires:

🔥 Deep working memory

🔥 Long uninterrupted blocks

🔥 Internal simulation

🔥 Quiet

Leadership requires:

🔥 Context switching

🔥 Emotional availability

🔥 Rapid responsiveness

🔥 Strategic zooming

You cannot operate both at maximum intensity daily.

If I code deeply every day:

🖤 I resent interruptions.

🖤 I delay responses.

🖤 I withdraw socially.

If I lead deeply every day:

🖤 My technical sharpness dulls.

🖤 My system intuition fades.

🖤 I risk becoming theoretical.

This is the tension.

Pretending it doesn’t exist burns leaders out.

The Controversial Part

Engineering leaders should still code.

But not own production code.

Not compete with their team.

Not anchor identity in execution.

They must stay close to the arena.

Because if you detach completely:

🖤 You forget friction.

🖤 You forget cognitive load.

🖤 You forget toolchain pain.

🖤 You forget what flow feels like.

When I wire flows myself:

🐲 I feel latency.

🐲 I feel naming friction.

🐲 I feel unclear requirements emotionally.

That empathy makes me better.

But writing production code daily?

That narrows leverage.

If you are responsible for:

💎 Direction

💎 Capacity

💎 Psychological safety

💎 Alignment

💎 Growth

💎 Stakeholder communication

Your highest value is orchestration.

Not execution.

A disappearing leader creates insecurity, even if the system improves.

Why I Still Code (1–2 Times Per Year)

I immerse deeply during vacation.

Contained hyperfocus.

Not daily immersion.

It recalibrates:

🐲 Intuition

🐲 Empathy

🐲 Pattern recognition

🐲 Respect for friction

Then I step back.

Because leadership is leverage selection.

FinOps, The Same Pattern

This is exactly what happens in FinOps.

You can hyperfocus on:

🔥 Cloud cost reduction

🔥 Efficiency metrics

🔥 Resource tagging

🔥 KPI dashboards

But if you don’t ask:

What value are we enabling?

What capability are we protecting?

Where does optimization slow innovation?

You optimize locally.

And damage globally.

Hyperfocus optimizes locally.

Leadership optimizes globally.

Both require a North Star.

The Portal and the Labyrinth

When I code, I don’t just concentrate.

I fall through something.

It feels like stepping through a portal.

The world softens.

The room disappears.

Time bends.

And inside, there is a labyrinth.

Not chaos.

Structure.

Complexity.

Paths branching into paths.

Logic folding into logic.

I walk those corridors alone.

Sometimes it’s beautiful.

Sometimes it’s endless.

Gifted depth feels like this.

You don’t skim surfaces.

You descend.

And the labyrinth rewards you.

Every solved piece opens another chamber.

Every refinement reveals another pattern.

Every abstraction invites another layer.

It is intoxicating.

But here’s the danger:

Labyrinths are self-contained worlds.

Leadership is not.

Leadership requires exiting the maze.

Looking up.

Seeing the village.

Holding the whole field.

If I stay inside too long, I lose peripheral awareness.

Emails wait.

People wait.

Bodies wait.

Languages wait.

Life waits.

The labyrinth always offers one more corridor.

The discipline is choosing when to leave.

The Real Discipline

Hyperfocus is not the superpower.

Clarity is.

Architecture is.

Boundaries are.

Feedback loops are.

Yesterday I built for twelve hours.

But the most important thing I did was pause and ask:

“What is this actually for?”

That question protects me from building beautiful nonsense.

Dragon Wisdom 🐉🔥

Fire is not the enemy.

Uncontained fire is.

Gifted depth is not dysfunction.

Unbounded depth is imbalance.

Inclusive leadership begins with understanding your own wiring

so you can create space for others’ wiring too.

The best technical leaders do not float above the system.

They stay close enough to remember the friction.

And wise enough to step back.

Because coding is a language I speak.

Leadership is the world I shape.

And worlds require presence.

Not disappearance.

One Last Caveat

AI is fucking amazing.

It accelerates ideation.

It expands solution space.

It compresses iteration cycles.

It surfaces patterns faster than any human can.

For enriching our solutions?

It’s extraordinary.

But let’s be clear about something.

AI does not replace engineering.

It amplifies it.

Without:

🐉 Clear architecture

🐉 Thoughtful boundaries

🐉 Data integrity

🐉 System design

🐉 Ethical framing

🐉 Performance awareness

🐉 Human judgment

AI produces noise at scale.

It can generate.

It cannot architect intent.

It can suggest.

It cannot hold responsibility.

It can accelerate.

It cannot decide what should exist.

That still requires great engineers.

Engineers who think deeply.

Who define North Stars.

Who understand trade-offs.

Who protect philosophical integrity.

Who ask:

“Should this be built?”

AI is a multiplier.

And multipliers magnify whatever foundation they sit on.

If the foundation is unclear, it scales confusion.

If the foundation is strong, it scales brilliance.

So yes.

Use AI.

Experiment wildly.

Prototype faster than ever before.

But never confuse acceleration with architecture.

The future is not AI replacing engineers.

The future is engineers who understand AI

building things worth accelerating