Your brain isn't broken. It's optimized for a different environment.
The traits that make modern focus difficult—scanning for novelty, responding quickly to environmental changes, difficulty sustaining attention on low-stimulation tasks—these were survival advantages for most of human history.
The person who noticed the rustle in the bushes survived. The person who couldn't sit still explored more territory and found more resources. The person who got bored with repetitive tasks innovated.
Modern life has created an environment where sustained attention to abstract, low-stimulation tasks is heavily rewarded. Sitting in meetings. Reading dense documents. Following multi-step procedures. These are recent inventions that our brains haven't had time to adapt to.
So you're not maladapted in some absolute sense. You're adapted to conditions that no longer exist in most work environments.
This isn't just feel-good reframing. It has practical implications:
You might thrive in certain contexts. Environments with variety, urgency, and novelty can bring out your best. Some distractible people excel in emergency medicine, entrepreneurship, creative fields, or roles with constant change.
You can engineer your environment. If you can't change your brain, change your surroundings. Add stimulation where it's lacking. Remove it where it's overwhelming. Create external structures that do the regulating your brain struggles with.
You can stop blaming yourself. The mismatch isn't your fault. You didn't choose your neurology. What you can choose is how you work with it.
Your ancestors' restless scanning is why you're here at all. That's worth remembering when modern life makes you feel defective.