The Guy Who Turned His ADHD Into a Superpower
How Justin Roiland built Rick and Morty
I had a dream about Justin Roiland last night.
The guy who created Rick and Morty.
He has ADHD.
Severe ADHD.
His brain jumps between ideas so fast he can barely finish sentences.
He'll start explaining something.
Jump to three other things.
Circle back.
Restart mid-thought.
Sound familiar?
When he was a kid, teachers told him to focus.
To slow down.
To finish one thing before starting another.
He tried.
It felt like drowning.
So he stopped trying to fix his brain.
He started using it.
He'd record himself doing voices.
Random characters.
No script.
Just improvising.
Jumping between ideas.
Most of it was garbage.
But buried in the chaos were these moments.
These flashes of pure genius.
He learned to mine his own brain.
Let it race.
Capture everything.
Sort it later.
That's how Rick and Morty got made.
He'd improvise entire scenes.
Record twenty minutes of nonsense.
Then find the thirty seconds that were gold.
The show's famous for its chaotic energy.
The way it jumps between dimensions.
Starts stories and abandons them.
Circles back episodes later.
That's not a writing technique.
That's his brain.
He turned his ADHD into the show's DNA.
The thing that made him different.
The thing everyone told him to fix.
That became his signature.
His superpower.
I woke up thinking about that.
About how the things that make your brain different.
Aren't bugs.
They're features.
If you learn how to use them.
Justin didn't slow down.
He built a system around his speed.
He didn't fight his brain.
He became its architect.
That's the dream.
Not fixing yourself.
Building around yourself.
Turning the chaos into something only you could make.
← All Dreams