The DUMP-SORT Revolution: How I Stopped Fighting My Brain and Started Riding It

"I can't have ADHD."

I was sitting across from my therapist, arms crossed, absolutely certain he'd gotten it wrong.

"I have the opposite of ADHD. I have this ability to intensely concentrate on things. Sometimes I'll look up and eight hours have passed. That's not ADHD."

He smiled that therapist smile. The one that says oh boy, you have no idea what's coming.

"Yeah Guy, that's a symptom of ADHD. It's called hyperfocus."

The room tilted. Fifty years of my life suddenly snapped into focus like a camera lens finding its target. Every failed job, every broken relationship, every project started with fire and abandoned in ash, every accusation of laziness, selfishness, not caring enough to try—all of it suddenly had a name.

And that name was ADHD.

The Long Road to This Moment

For decades, I'd been drowning. Not in water, but in the relentless flood of my own brain.

People called me lazy, accused me of only doing what I wanted to do. I was labeled disinterested, disorganized, selfish, rude. More than once, just an asshole. It touched every part of my life—friendships evaporated, relationships crumbled, family connections strained to breaking.

"How could I be so stupid?" became my daily mantra. Things that had been easy in my twenties were now insurmountable mountains. I thought I was brilliant—I could feel it burning in my bones—but I couldn't apply it. The gap between my potential and my performance was a chasm that swallowed everything good.

So I did what every undiagnosed ADHD adult does: I had to silence it. I tried to drink my brain quiet.

The First Revelation: You Can't Turn Off the Firehose

In 2022, after years of trying to manage what I thought was just a personality defect with alcohol, I found myself in an AA meeting. If you know, you know. If you don't, consider yourself lucky.

AA taught me something crucial: acceptance. Not the "give up and stop trying" kind, but the "stop fighting yourself and start working with what you've got" kind.

"First, get it all out," they said. "Every resentment, every fear, every shameful secret. Put it on paper. You can't deal with what you won't acknowledge."

I learned to DUMP.

During Step Four—the "moral inventory"—I used the suggested structure to write it all down. Something I initially approached with dread turned into relief as I got decades of guilt onto paper.

But here's the thing about turning off alcohol when you have ADHD: You can stop consuming alcohol. You can't shut your brain down. (Though God knows I'd tried to with wine.)

The firehose that alcohol had been dampening? It came back full force.

The Search for the Magic Solution

After the ADHD diagnosis, I became convinced that somewhere out there was THE APP. THE METHOD. THE SYSTEM that would finally make me normal.

I tried them all:

• Getting Things Done (got nothing done reading about getting things done)
• Pomodoro Technique (my brain laughed at 25-minute timers)
• Bullet Journaling (beautiful notebooks full of one week of entries)
• Sunsama, Notion, Obsidian, some with complex systems I'd spend days setting up and never use
• Every ADHD app ever made (worked great for exactly one week)

Each new system was going to be THE ONE. Each failed for the same reason: they were built for neurotypical brains that can simply decide what's important and then do it. Most of them would turn me off instantly with detailed or required tutorials you needed to step through in order to even use them. My Dragon brain needs to DO, not learn how to do!

My brain doesn't work with tutorials. My brain has its own agenda, its own priorities, its own inexplicable urgencies that have nothing to do with objective importance.

The Financial Crisis That Changed Everything

In early 2025, after getting sober, getting diagnosed, getting medicated, and getting nowhere, I hit rock bottom. Again.

I'd lost accounts. Money was beyond tight. My wife Jane was carrying us financially while I spiraled in shame. The meds helped with focus, sure, but I could now focus intensely on the wrong things for eight hours straight. Progress!

I remembered the work I had done getting sober and rather than once, maybe every morning I could write. Stream of consciousness. No editing, no organizing, just pure brain vomit onto the page. It was like opening a pressure valve. The anxiety would drop, the chaos would quiet—temporarily.

I was doing my morning DUMP—sometimes in voice memos because writing hurt too much—when I stared at this massive collection of thoughts, ideas, tasks, anxieties, and dreams. The DUMP was working to get it out of my head, but looking at it all just created more anxiety.

"I can't sort through this," I said out loud. "I don't have the executive function to figure out what's important."

And then it hit me…

I can't. But what if something else could?

The Silicon-Based Executive Function

Here's what nobody tells you about ADHD: It's not an attention deficit. It's an executive function disorder. Executive function is your brain's CEO—it decides what's important, allocates resources, manages time, organizes information. Mine is drunk. Permanently.

But AI? AI has perfect executive function. It can look at chaos and find patterns. It can prioritize without emotion. It can organize without getting overwhelmed.

So I started experimenting. I'd dump everything into AI with some context about my life, my work, my ADHD. Then I'd ask it to SORT it for me—not by traditional importance, but by what my brain would actually do.

"What has genuine urgency? What matches my current energy? What would feel good to complete? What is my Dragon (what I started to call my ADHD brain) actually willing to work on today?"

Holy shit. It worked.

Building Scaffolding, Not Fixing

This is the revolution: I stopped trying to fix my broken executive function. I stopped trying to become neurotypical. I stopped fighting the firehose.

Instead, I built scaffolding. External structure that works WITH my brain instead of against it.

The DUMP isn't organized or pretty or logical. It's the full, unabated firehose of everything in my brain. No judgment, no filtering, just pure output.

The SORT isn't about what's objectively important. It's about what my brain will actually do. It factors in:

• Current energy state (is the Dragon breathing fire or sleeping?)
• Genuine vs manufactured urgency
• Interest level (boring important things will never happen)
• Quick wins to build momentum
• The reality of ADHD, not the fantasy of neurotypical productivity

This isn't giving up. This is what AA taught me: Acceptance is the first step to recovery.

The Method That Saved My Life

Today, The Firehose Method is more than just DUMP and SORT. It's a complete framework for riding the Dragon instead of fighting it. But at its core, it's simple:

1. Accept that your brain is different (not broken, different)
2. Stop trying to use neurotypical systems
3. Build scaffolding that works WITH your brain
4. Use external executive function (AI, partners, systems)
5. Measure success by YOUR standards, not theirs

I still have ADHD. I always will. My executive function is still drunk. The firehose still runs full blast.

But now? Now I have scaffolding. Now I have a method that works WITH my brain instead of against it. Now I can ride the Dragon instead of being burned by it.

The shame is lifting. Work is getting done. Relationships are healing. Not because I fixed myself, but because I stopped trying to be something I'm not.

You're Not Broken. The Systems Are.

If you've read this far, you probably recognize parts of yourself in this story. The years of trying and failing. The gap between potential and performance. The shame of knowing you're bright but being unable to prove it.

Listen to me: You're not broken. You're not lazy. You're not selfish.

You're a Dragon Rider trying to use pony equipment.

The Firehose Method isn't about becoming neurotypical. It's about building systems that work for the brain you actually have. It's about riding the Dragon instead of fighting it.

Your intensity isn't a bug—it's the feature.
Your hyperfocus isn't a disorder—it's a superpower waiting for the right target.
Your inability to do boring shit isn't laziness—it's your brain demanding work worthy of its power.

The revolution isn't fixing ourselves. The revolution is building systems that work WITH our brains instead of against them.

Welcome to the revolution. Time to ride.