Why I never build the same thing twice — and how my phone became the only hard drive fast enough for my mind.
I used to think something was fundamentally wrong with me.
Every time I started a new venture, the fire inside me burned white-hot. I would conceptualise a product, engineer the system from scratch, and bring it to life. But the exact moment it started running smoothly, the fire went out. While everyone else was celebrating success, I was suffocating in boredom. I felt guilty. Why couldn't I just be happy with what I built? Why was I already desperate for the next thing?
For years, this pattern isolated me. At work, I was constantly drowning in frustration. I would look at my peers and think, “Why can't you see this? It’s so simple!” I tried to explain my ideas, pouring them out at the breakneck speed my mind was moving. But all I saw were blank stares and defensive walls. It felt like I was speaking a language no one else could understand — the same translation failure I later wrote about in The Gift and the Gap.
Then came the shift that changed my life: our brains are simply wired differently.
I stopped viewing my peers as slow and stopped viewing myself as broken. I realised my mind runs on a high-velocity engine. It connects dots automatically and processes reality at a speed that standard systems aren't built to handle. My fast explanations weren't helpful; they were a firehose. Accepting this didn't just cure my frustration — it gave me empathy.
What I was living inside, groups like SENG and the Davidson Institute describe every day: the intensity Kazimierz Dabrowski called overexcitability, and the pull toward many directions that the National Association for Gifted Children names multipotentiality. I would just have called it Tuesday — until I read Gifted Grownups and finally had a word for it at 47. That moment is the founding story behind why Gifted Grownups exists.
Understanding my brain didn't solve the heavy, restless boredom that always threatened to drag me down. I had to learn how to manage the storm inside my own head.
First, I had to stop losing my own thoughts. My ideas move so fast that brilliant flashes of insight would vanish into thin air before lunch. Now, my phone is my external hard drive. The moment an idea strikes, I open my notes. Sometimes I type, but often I speak — using my voice to capture the thought exactly as it arrives, before my brain can overwrite it with the next one.
Writing is still the anchor. But for a mind that moves at this speed, the method has to be digital: notes on the phone, sometimes captured at the speed of thought through voice. When your brain moves that fast, even a pen can feel too slow. A voice note or a quick thumb-typed entry is the only way to download the data before the next innovation overwrites it.
To keep the boredom away, I’ve learned to move my own goalposts. I don't let my goals stay static. I keep them on my screen, tracking them, hitting them, and immediately iterating them into something harder. I have to create my own friction, constantly challenging myself because the world won't do it for me.
That same pattern — finish one milestone, and the next is already tapping its foot — is what I explored at length in The Idea Never Stops. The difference here is the how: capture the idea before it evaporates, then raise the bar before comfort sets in.
I also discovered a strange paradox through physical exercise. People told me to work out to “calm down” my racing mind. But I noticed that no matter how hard I pushed my body, my brain never got tired. Instead, the more vigorously I exercised, the sharper my mind became. High-intensity workouts don't exhaust my brain; they clear out the noise, creating a vast, quiet space for even bigger thoughts to grow.
This is the psychomotor intensity many gifted adults recognise in the gifted adult experience — restlessness that wants a channel, not a sedative. The same horsepower that once made me shut down my own best-seller — the story I told in I Killed My Own Best-Seller — is the horsepower I now try to aim, not apologise for.
I finally stopped trying to fit into a “normal” life. I learned that my brain demands total, relentless engagement to survive. My life is now a continuous loop of capturing voice notes, shattering goals, and sweating out the restlessness.
If you are like me, stop trying to sit still in the systems you build. Build them, document them, hand them over, and go find the next wall to break. That is not flightiness when it is done with responsibility — it is how a high-velocity mind stays alive without pretending it was designed for a single finished product.
You can start with a simple check: are you a gifted adult? If the answer lands with relief rather than ego, you already know why the pen sometimes feels too slow.
A high-velocity gifted mind often generates the next insight before the previous one has been written down. What feels like forgetfulness is usually overwrite — the brain has already moved to the next connection. External capture systems (notes, voice memos, sketches) act as a second brain so the idea survives long enough to be used.
When thought outruns the hand, speaking can keep pace with the idea as it arrives. Voice notes capture tone, sequence and unfinished edges that typing often sanitises or slows. For many gifted adults, the phone is not a distraction — it is the only capture tool fast enough for intellectual overexcitability.
Yes, it is very common. Multipotentiality and intellectual overexcitability mean finishing something often reveals the next, harder version of the problem. Many gifted adults report they were never bored of life — only of what they had already built. Moving goalposts on purpose is one way to create healthy friction instead of waiting for the world to challenge you.
Not always in the way people expect. Some gifted adults find that hard physical work does not tire the mind — it clears noise and leaves a sharper, quieter space for bigger thoughts. The goal is not to shut the engine off; it is to give the restlessness somewhere useful to go so cognition can focus.
If the pattern is that stability feels like suffocation once a system runs smoothly, documenting, handing over and starting the next hard problem can be a strength rather than a failure — provided the handoff is responsible. The risk is abandoning people or unfinished emotional work while chasing the next build. Build, document, transfer ownership, then find the next wall — with awareness, not escape.
Kunwer Sachdev is an Indian entrepreneur and inventor known as the Inverter Man of India and the Solar Man of India, founder of Su-Kam Power Systems and Kunwwer.ai. He identified as a gifted adult later in life and founded Gifted Grownups and GiftedKids.in so late-identified gifted adults and children in India would not wait decades for a language that fits how their minds work. More on kunwersachdev.com.
It can be. Gifted adults often experience a firehose of connections that others have not yet made, which can look like impatience or arrogance if left untranslated. Organisations such as SENG describe this intensity through Dabrowski's overexcitabilities. The useful shift is from “they are slow / I am broken” to recognising different processing speeds and practising empathy and translation.
From a jungle of wires on his living-room floor, Kunwer built Su-Kam into one of India's best-known inverter brands and created the world's first plastic-body inverter, the Chic. After losing it all, he is building again with Kunwwer.ai. He discovered he was a gifted adult at 47 — the experience that led him to found Gifted Grownups and GiftedKids.in.
Editorial note: This essay reflects Kunwer Sachdev's personal experience as a gifted adult and founder. It is intended for reflection and is not a substitute for professional psychological or medical advice.
Honest writing on gifted adulthood — from inside the experience, for the Indian reality.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. support@giftedgrownups.com
