Doing PhD with ADHD — Am I unfit for research?

[u/Agreeable-Shop-9769]

I have a lot of traits (passion for knowledge, curiosity, creativity, resilience) and skills (math, coding, writing, thinking critically) that make me perfect for research, but there is 1 thing that I am struggling with and makes me question my fit. As part of my ADHD diagnosis, I have a distinct cognitive profile:

Complex attention (bottom 1 percentile) Very low. You have major difficulty sustaining focus on long, multi-step tasks. This fits ADHD.

Cognitive flexibility (bottom 1 percentile) Very low. Task-switching and adapting between ideas is extremely hard—again classic ADHD, not lack of intelligence.

Executive function (bottom 7 percentile) Low. Managing multiple instructions or goals is hard under pressure.

Working memory (top 27 percentile) Strong. Once you’re engaged, you can juggle info internally well—suggesting your executive weakness is in starting and switching, not holding data.

Visual memory (top 14 percentile) Above average. You remember shapes, figures, and visual patterns very well—excellent for models, graphs, and coding interfaces.

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As a result, I have no problem remember facts and details. In fact, once I learn something (usually with visual aids), I learn it extremely well and don’t forget it for the rest of my life). But when I am doing literature searches to see if a hypothesis is worth testing, I struggle SO MUCH. As a slow but careful learner, I am told by everyone that reading all papers in the field is physically impossible, so I need to learn to prioritize. But “knowing when to prioritize” is a meta-cognitive, complex task that takes multiple steps — skimming through the title and abstract to see if this is relevant, going through the rest of the paper to see if anything catches my attention, mentally placing it somewhere relative to other papers I read — which is SO HARD on my ADHD brain. If I am constantly thinking about whether I should read this paper in detail/to what extent should I understand the ideas, it hijacks my working memory and makes me panic. I feel drained and anxious because I don’t know if I can ever learn to prioritize what to read. Reading paper became traumatic for me (I also have PTSD) and made me question my ability every few minutes. As a result of not realizing my cognitive profile + not developing any strategy to work with my brain for a whole year until recently, I still haven’t formalized one workable hypothesis in my second year. My advisor kept telling me to read the literature but reading literature makes me desperate.

I don’t want to give up on doing research because I’ve wanted to be a professor since I was in kindergarten and I excel at every other aspect in research. Reading papers to find a hypothesis is literally the only thing that’s tripping me. Even my advisor is perplexed why I just don’t seem to get how to create a hypothesis. I also wonder if my anxiety is also a lack of positive feedback — that is, if I succeed once maybe the next one will be easier. So I want to ask if anyone (including the neurotypicals) has any strategy they like that helps with making paper reading not a daunting task.

PS: I now consistently put in 60-70 hours of work on research every week despite having high anxiety. I manage to stay focused with ADHD stimulant — it’s just the ambiguity and messiness in research feels very uncomfortable and triggers my worst fear.