“Why can’t he just sit still?”
Growing up in a middle-class family in Pakistan in the 1990s, nobody used the word ADHD. There was only:
- “Why can’t he sit still?”
- “Such brilliant marks last term, if only he could focus.”
- “He could get a scholarship if he tried a bit harder.”
On some days I felt almost genius-level focused on things I loved. On other days I felt broken, lazy or simply
“not serious enough” for school and family expectations.
From Rawalpindi to Berlin
I studied Information Technology in Pakistan and later moved to Germany to do my master’s in Innovation Management
at TU Berlin. I worked as a developer, as a Requirements Engineer and now as an SEO and technical consultant.
Only much later I realised: the patterns I had lived with all my life had a name – ADHD.
What ADHD looks like in my work
For me, ADHD is not just “being distracted”. It is:
- Hyper-focus on interesting problems and systems
- Fast pattern recognition in messy data or content
- Real struggle with boring, unclear or badly structured tasks
In SEO and consulting, this actually helps. My brain naturally wants to clean up chaos, find the underlying
structure and turn it into clear next steps.
Why I talk about this at all
In South Asian communities, and even in parts of German work culture, topics like ADHD are still uncomfortable.
But many people quietly recognise themselves in these patterns. They think they are lazy, when in reality they are
running with a different operating system.
I am not a therapist or coach. I am just someone who writes requirements, audits websites and builds a life between
Pakistan and Berlin with an ADHD brain. If sharing parts of this helps one person feel less broken, it is worth it.
If this resonates with you
Maybe you are a founder, a developer, a marketer or a student trying to make sense of your own patterns. If you
want to talk about websites, SEO or just this experience in general, you can
send me a message or
book a short call. No pressure, no performance review.