Dr. Finney is a board-certified physician who focuses his patient care on distractibility. He thinks the diagnosis of ADHD gets it wrong from the start—it's not an attention deficit, it's an attention control problem.
Your brain can hyperfocus on fascinating things for hours while struggling to sit through a 20-minute meeting. That's not broken. That's just mismatched to modern life.
James attended Dartmouth and earned a degree in Cognitive Science in 2007. His research focus at Dartmouth was AI and consciousness. Then he got distracted—premed at Harvard, followed by medical school at Tufts and residency in family medicine. But it wasn't a straight path to medicine.
Before medicine, James ran a radio station. Before that, he worked as a machinist. He's worked in aerospace engineering, as a campaign operations director, and spent a research year in neurosurgery.
His path to becoming a physician wasn't straight because his brain doesn't work in straight lines—and he suspects yours might not either. He sees this as a great strength, but it can be a tough one to harness.
James knows what it's like to sit in a lecture hall watching everyone else take notes while your mind has already wandered three tangents deep. He knows the guilt of snapping at his kids when they interrupt—because he'd spent the last hour just trying to focus.
He knows the frustration of having genuine capability but struggling to aim it consistently. He developed strategies through trial and error—some from books, some from desperation, and eventually some from the medications he now prescribes.
Attentionful exists because Dr. Finney believes no one should have to figure this out alone. Whether you have a formal diagnosis or simply find that modern life overwhelms your attention, you deserve strategies that work with your brain—and a physician who actually understands what you're up against and won't pass you off when you don't fit the textbook.
No judgment. Just help.
Interested in working with Dr. Finney?
