I keep thinking about bees.

Not in the way most people think about bees – not about honey or pollination or colony collapse. I'm obsessed with something specific: scout bees. These are the weird ones. The restless ones. The ones who can't help but venture out to explore even when the hive has plenty of food.

Why am I fixated on these particular bees? Because I think they might help explain something about ADHD. And about me.

See, I have ADHD. For years I thought this meant something was wrong with my brain. But what if we've got it backwards? What if people with ADHD aren't broken – what if we're scout bees?

The Pattern

Here's what scout bees do: While most of the hive contentedly harvests nectar from known sources, these scouts constantly buzz off to explore new territory. They can't help themselves. It's wired into their DNA to seek novelty, even when staying put would be more efficient.

Sound familiar to anyone with ADHD?

This isn't just a cute metaphor. The same brain chemicals that drive scout bees to explore – dopamine, glutamate, GABA – are the exact ones implicated in ADHD. Nature apparently keeps reinventing this pattern: In any population, you want most members to reliably exploit known resources. But you also need a small percentage of scouts who can't help but explore.

Which makes me wonder: Throughout human history, who were the people most likely to wander over the next hill to find better hunting grounds? Who would have been compelled to try that strange new plant that turned out to be medicinal? Who would have wondered "what happens if I mix these metals together?" while everyone else stuck to tried-and-true methods?

I'm willing to bet many of them would qualify for an ADHD diagnosis today.

The Contradiction

Here's what's fascinating: We know scouts are essential. Every successful hive needs them. Yet when it comes to human scouts, we treat their exploring tendency as a disorder to be corrected.

I felt this contradiction acutely in my own life. I spent years feeling broken because I couldn't just settle into the 9-to-5 routine like everyone else seemed to do. My mind was always racing ahead, connecting dots others didn't see, getting excited about possibilities that seemed irrelevant to most people.

Then I started my own business, and something clicked. Suddenly, these same "problematic" traits became superpowers. That inability to accept "this is just how things are done"? It helped me innovate. The tendency to hyperfocus on things that interest me? It turned into deep expertise. Even my scattered attention became valuable – I could spot patterns and connections across different industries that others missed.

The Numbers

Let's talk scale: If 5-10% of the global population has ADHD, that's 400-800 million potential scouts. That's also about the same percentage of scout bees in a typical hive. This probably isn't a coincidence.

But unlike the bee colony, we're failing to harness this potential. And that failure matters now more than ever.

The Opportunity

Here's what's changed: AI is about to remove the biggest barrier that's been holding scouts back.

See, scouts have always struggled with what psychologists call executive functions – the mental skills that help you plan, organize, and complete tasks. It's like nature optimized us for exploration at the expense of execution.

But AI is getting surprisingly good at exactly these executive functions. It can handle email management, financial tracking, scheduling, and all the other organizational tasks that scouts typically struggle with.

This is a bigger deal than it might seem. Throughout history, scouts needed worker bees to help translate their discoveries into real progress. But AI could change that equation. For the first time, scouts might be able to both explore AND execute effectively.

What Now?

I'm working on two things that I think matter:

1. Building AI tools specifically designed for scout brains. Not just generic productivity apps, but tools that work with, rather than against, the scout mindset.
2. Creating the education I wish I'd had growing up with ADHD. Not how to be more "normal," but how to harness the scout mindset as a strength.

I'm tackling this two weeks at a time. Every two weeks, I'll release either a new tool or a new piece of curriculum, test it with a small group, and iterate.

The Bigger Picture

There's something bigger happening here. As automation handles more routine tasks, the ability to explore, to see unusual connections, to generate novel ideas – these scout traits are becoming increasingly valuable.

We're entering an era where the future will be discovered, not planned. And that means we need our scouts more than ever.

[1] The science here is fascinating. In their paper 'Molecular Determinants of Scouting Behavior in Honey Bees,' Liang C et al. found remarkable similarities between bee scout behavior and human ADHD at the neural level.

Acknowledgments: This essay was written in collaboration with Claude AI (Anthropic). While all core ideas, concepts, and original material are mine, Claude assisted with structure, editing, and refinement of the text.