I've fidgeted for as long as I can remember.
Clicking pens. Bouncing my leg. Turning things over in my hands. Fiddling with whatever happens to be within reach while I'm listening or thinking.
Like a lot of people, I grew up with the assumption that this was something I should stop doing. Fidgeting meant you weren't concentrating. Paying attention meant sitting still.
I can still hear my mum and my teachers telling to "just sit still!".
But I'm increasingly fascinated by research that asks whether we've got that relationship quite right.
Science is beginning to challenge the assumption that movement is always the enemy of attention.
And for adults with restless minds, particularly those with ADHD, that's an interesting idea.
What if movement is sometimes part of concentrating?
In 2024, researchers at UC Davis and the MIND Institute studied 70 adults with ADHD, aged between 18 and 50, while they completed a cognitive task requiring sustained attention.
The researchers used movement sensors on participants' wrists and ankles to objectively measure their fidgeting.
What they found was fascinating.
Participants fidgeted more during trials in which they responded correctly than during trials in which they made errors or failed to respond correctly. As the task progressed, participants with more consistent reaction times also tended to fidget more.
The researchers suggest that fidgeting may act as a compensatory mechanism that helps some adults with ADHD maintain attention during cognitively demanding tasks. Importantly, they don't claim this proves that fidgeting causes better concentration, and alternative explanations remain possible.
But their findings raise an interesting practical question.
If movement is helping someone maintain attention, should we always be asking them to stop?
The researchers themselves suggest that discouraging adults with ADHD from fidgeting during cognitively demanding situations such as work meetings or lectures could potentially be counterproductive.
As someone who has spent plenty of meetings absent-mindedly clicking a pen under the table or doodling on a notepad, I find that really validating.
The meeting where you look distracted
I think this becomes particularly interesting when you put it into the context of modern work.
Imagine you're sitting in a 60-minute meeting. Twenty minutes in, your attention begins to wander. Your leg starts bouncing. You pick up a pen and turn it between your fingers while someone else is talking.
From the outside, those movements can look like distraction.
But what if they're actually your brain's response to the effort of staying engaged?
An earlier study into fidgeting and sustained attention filmed adults while they watched a 40-minute lecture. As time passed, attention and retention declined while fidgeting increased.
Interestingly, the researchers also found a relationship between fidgeting and retention that remained even after accounting for reported attention. The study was small, involving only 21 university students, and wasn't specifically about ADHD, so we shouldn't read too much into it. But it adds another interesting piece to the puzzle.
This doesn't mean everyone should start moving constantly in meetings.
It suggests something more subtle: movement and attention have a more complicated relationship than we might assume.
But there's an important catch
This is where I think the science becomes even more interesting.
Evidence that spontaneous fidgeting can play a functional role does not mean that giving someone a fidget toy will automatically make them concentrate better.
They're two different questions.
A 2025 study involving adults with ADHD tested whether providing a fidget ball would improve self-regulation during a stressful task.
The results interested me.
The researchers found no significant differences between the fidget-ball and control groups in heart rate, heart-rate variability or intrinsic fidgeting. Their results also raised the possibility that externally prompted fidgeting with an object might interact differently with self-regulation than the spontaneous movements people naturally make.
So the evidence isn't saying:
Buy any old fidget. Become more focused.
And I'm not surprised. There are no silver bullets or magic wands that instantly solve it.
I think the more interesting question is:
What makes a useful fidget?
Designing something that doesn't become the distraction
If you're trying to concentrate on a meeting, conversation or piece of work, the last thing you need is another object competing for your attention.
That principle is increasingly influencing how I think about Focus Lab.
A useful tactile interaction shouldn't require you to stop what you're doing and stare at it. It shouldn't need instructions, flash, notify you or required too much attention for your to engage with it.
Ideally, the interaction becomes almost unconscious.
Your thumb finds a switch while you're listening. Your fingers turn a dial while you're thinking. Your hands have something to do without your mind having to follow them there.
That's very different from an object designed primarily to entertain you.
And understanding that distinction is something researchers are still working on.
Designing with restlessness, not against it
The research into adult fidgeting is still relatively young, and there are plenty of unanswered questions about who benefits, what kinds of movement are useful and whether dedicated fidget objects can reliably reproduce the effects researchers sometimes observe with spontaneous movement.
But I find the direction of the research fascinating.
For years, restlessness has often been treated as something that needs to be suppressed before concentration can begin.
My own experience has often been the opposite.
How many of us with ADHD and neurodivergence have fought the urge to fidget or stim, to try and mask and fit in and look profressional or "normal".
The fact is, sometimes I listen better when my hands are occupied. Sometimes I think better when I'm on the move. Sometimes having something physical between my fingers makes it easier to resist reaching for the infinitely more distracting object sitting beside it: my phone.
That's part of what I'm exploring with Focus Lab.
Not trying to eliminate restless energy, but designing better places for some of it to go.
Because perhaps the goal isn't always to sit still and focus.
Perhaps, for some of us, a little movement is part of how we focus in the first place.
Sources
Son et al. (2024), A quantitative analysis of fidgeting in ADHD and its relation to performance and sustained attention on a cognitive task. Frontiers in Psychiatry.
Read the study on PubMed | Read the full paper
Farley, Risko & Kingstone (2013), Everyday attention and lecture retention: the effects of time, fidgeting, and mind wandering. Frontiers in Psychology.
Read the study on PubMed | Read the full paper
Elahi et al. (2025), Impact of fidget devices on anxiety and physiological responses in adults with ADHD. Research in Developmental Disabilities.
Read the study on PubMed | Read the paper
