Rhythms of Focus

This episode examines how our minds can often wander in the middle of conversations, while reading, or tackling a project. This can lead to embarrassment and concern of being perceived as uncaring.In reality, our minds are processing and making connections, participating in a bit of play.Instead of suppressing our wandering mind, what might happen if you explore some of the connections and bring it into conversations or creative work?Mentioned in this episode:Join the Weekly Wind Down NewsletterThe Weekly Wind Down is an exploration of wandering minds, task and time management, and more importantly, how we find calmer focus and meaningful work.

We do something a little different on this episode of The Rhythms of Focus. Join me for an informal piano practice session and get a glimpse of my own wandering mind as I reflect on the role of emotion in learning.We explore the constant tension between free play and structured learning and the need to make real-time choices while respecting limits and using questions as a container for confusion.I end with a developing piece called “Witch/Which Beauty.”TranscriptWelcome to another episode of The Rhythms of Focus. I thought today I would sit down at the keys and just kind of, um, have a practice session, kind of describe what goes on.The Practice of a PassionYou know, I think something that's not often talked about is, the sense of passion and mastery, when it comes to wandering minds, ADHD and the like.There's the so-called, interest-based mind — which I still have troubles with the idea of using that phrase, because brains all flow with emotion and there are many emotions.And, interest is an important one, certainly, but even there, Dr. William Dotson psychiatrist points out, what one client abbreviated to the Chin Up Emotions: challenge, interest, novelty, urgency, and then passion.And I'll leave aside for a moment that there are many other emotions as well that can be very driving, even for ADHD and wandering minds, and perhaps even especially so.But for the moment, I just wanted to get into this idea of passion, which I, to some degree, maybe even entirely, equate with mastery. Because mastery is a path, it's something we do over time, it's, it's not a line that we cross so much, although I think that idea can be put in there too. So the idea of mastery, it's in many ways simple, it's that we be with a thing every day. If you can do that, you know, here I have this practice I picked up from my piano teacher from years past who said, touch the keys every day. Which has since translated into this idea of a visit every day, being with something every day.And if you do that, there's a good chance you're on the path of mastery. And there's something incredibly organizing to that process.Anyway, I'll just play a piece here. I like minor keys.I often play in what are called a modal style of playing, where I stay within a scale. This piece that I'll play here is called "Speaking Spirits."A Balance of Play and StructureWhenever I sit down to practice, I have to balance there's part of me that wants to play and goof off and go wherever the heck I want to go. And this other part of me that says, well, if you just do that, nothing will get learned, nothing will happen, nothing will grow, there is no structure.And this is kind of a major issue, if you will, for wandering minds in general. This tug of war between the ideas of play and structure. We manage this with the ideas of agency that we are able to pause and make a decision and say, okay, what if I go in that direction?And then at that point we throw ourselves into play once again. But it becomes a real time issue, it's a constant thing.For example, if I am playing a piece and I'm enjoying it, there's this part of me that wants to keep enjoying it, just wants to keep going with it, keep going with that flow and finding where it goes and all that.But, if I let it go on too long, it grows bitter. You know, there's a, I think a philosophical, something about the respect of death in that. But there's also, this feeling of, I need to respect limits, right? It's, it's that there's something to learn in that.Anyway, I think I'm going off on a tangent now.Sitting with FrustrationLet me tell you what I've been studying lately. So I've been looking at this book, "The Jazz Piano Book" by Mark Levine. Bought this many years ago when I was in college. And when I had looked at it then, it didn't make much sense to me. There were these things that were written in there, these chords.I'm just flipping through it now if you hear the paper rustling, I was looking at the chords and I'm like, where are you coming up with this?I'm even looking at it on page two and it says that there's a G7 cord. And there's no G in the chord. Like what are you doing? The G7 flat 9 it starts in an F in the base, and then there's a B, and there's an E, A, G, sharp and a B, and he calls that a G7 flat 9.And maybe it is. But there's no G and that just bugs me. And that just in itself — I ran into a couple of incidents like that in this book and that was enough to stop me. That one stopped me many years ago, and only recently have I come back and started to play with it. So if I take that chord that I just mentioned, let me play this here.Right? That's supposedly somewhere in there, a G7 flat 9. Here's the 7 here's the major third, which makes it a major key. This E is a sixth, which he doesn't mention anywhere. And then there's this G sharp, which is the flat 9. And again, we've got this B at the top, which is a repeat of the B before, which is that major third.Now that resolves into a C— is it a dominant? Yeah, dominant C. But once again, here's a 9 in here in the right hand and a sixth and a third in the base, the major third of the E. So it goes and I'm like, how? How, why is that the cord? What are you talking about anyway? So once again, I got stumped.Using Questions to Contain ConfusionSo what do I do with that? I think the important thing is to be able to add questions to things and recognize the question as being the container.So I look at the thing and say, my question is essentially, huh? Just H-U-H question mark. Huh? Then I can resolve that a little further into, well, as I was talking about, I don't see these, in one case, I don't see the root note in the chord at all. And the other one, it's at the very top. Does that count and what are the sixths in there doing?So anyway, I make these questions. Whether you understand the music of it or not, it's regardless of whatever field you're in, you'll have your own unique questions to you. But the questions do, help contain the confusion.And so once I do that, I can start flipping through and going, okay, well maybe I'll just play these chords a little bit here and there, and then I'll get to something that might make more sense and I can come back to this.I can resolve into something about this and ah, you know, I get to the next little bit here and it starts talking about triads. Oh, okay. These make sense. The C major triad, here you go, starts with a major third and then a minor third on top of that.And you call that a C major triad. There's a major, that's a minor. We got the C minor triad, which reverses it. You got the minor in the bottom and the major top. Right. So you got just basically you move the middle note down a half step. There you go. Diminish, you move the top note down a half step, which means there's two minor triads in there.And then you got the augmented triad where you've got a major in the bottom again, and then another major on top. So it's all just a mix of different majors and minors and how they all play out.And you keep playing with these things and realize, oh yeah, I could do that, I could do that and then, oh my goodness, is this hard? The simple, supposedly simple, minor 2 7, 2 seventh, and then you go to a major, a dominant seven for the fifth. And go to the, root note or little, major seventh in that guy.It's a nice little combination you got there, you know. Sounds good.And then you just goof off. So it is like, okay, there's a part of me that just wants to start playing and then I start playing.What if I did a minor there?Would it still resolve well?Yeah. And what if I throw in other things? And then I don't know what I'm doing. Then I want to go back to something that has structure, something I can hold onto and say, yeah, I can make some sounds. And I kinda listen to myself. I say, you know, what am I interested in playing right now? And maybe something I've been doing recently.Here's one called "Witch/Which Beauty" that I kind of like.Anyway, that one still needs work. I'm playing around with it. You can tell that there's some structured kind of form in there — or at least I can tell.Anyway. Not sure if you guys are enjoying this sort of thing. Uh, I thought why not do an episode where I'm just kind of making some sounds and talking about it out loud.If you're enjoying this and would like to hear more of these, let me know and maybe I can make that happen. Alright, till next time.Mentioned in this episode:Join the Weekly Wind Down NewsletterThe Weekly Wind Down is an exploration of wandering minds, task and time management, and more importantly, how we find calmer focus and meaningful work.

When does AI help—and when does it hinder our agency? In this thoughtful episode of Rhythms of Focus, we explore the delicate balance between using powerful tools like AI and staying connected to our own creative process. Together, we reflect on ancient wisdom, modern technology, and the vital tension that fuels genuine discovery.Listeners will learn:• How the “tension of not knowing” nurtures creativity.• Why AI can both empower and erode agency.• A mindful way to stay engaged with our work’s unfolding.Featuring the original piano piece “If You Feed a Squirrel.”For more, subscribe and visit rhythmsoffocus.com.#ADHD #WanderingMinds #MindfulProductivity #Agency #CreativeFocus #ADHDAdults #AIandCreativity #FlowState #IntentionalWork #RhythmsOfFocusTranscript I've got a problem. I don't know how this works. I don't know how to write this. I don't know the best order. I don't know where this new idea fits. Maybe I can get AI to do this. Wow. AI has become quite the thing, more than a flavor of the month it's found its way into so many of our apps and tools.Using a simple Google search now returns with an AI formulation of my query first.There are AI apps that are used to, break down tasks and help us get moving forward. There are AI things that help us think through how to build an entire book among other possibilities. But the more powerful a tool I find, the more caution it requires. So how much caution does AI require? The More Powerful the Tool, the More Caution it RequiresThere's a rather ridiculous statement. I remember hearing in medical school a sort of backhanded joke towards this pharmaceutical world. Something like this, "Hey, there's a new medication let's use it before it has some side effects."We often look around at our tools as these unmitigated positives, especially when they first start out.Some promise, some efficiency, sometimes some clear boost to something we desire opens the door and there's no going back.As humans, we use tools. The spoken word itself is a tool by which we ask and receive our wants and needs and nuance.Socrates' Warnings Against the Written WordEven the written word though can be of concern. I wanna quote a story of Socrates, but before I do, it's important, dear listener, for you to know that I found this reference using ai. The story goes that an ancient God called Theuth first discovered numbers and calculations, geometry and astronomy, as well as the games of checkers and dice, but above all else writing.And this God Theuth was excited about his inventions and came to the King of Egypt, Thamos, and he would describe the positives and negatives of these inventions. And one day he said, "oh, king, here's something that once learned will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memory. I've discovered a potion for memory and for wisdom."Thamos, however, replied, "Oh most expert Theuth, one man can give birth to the elements of an art, but only another can judge how they can benefit or harm those who will use them. And now, since you are the father of writing your affection for it has made you describe its effects as the opposite of what they really are."In fact, it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it. They will not practice using their memory because they'll put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside completely on their own."You've not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding. You provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they would've come to know much, while for the most part, they will know nothing."And they will be difficult to get along with since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so."Now, even as a writer myself, I absolutely love that paragraph. There are plenty of times where I thought, for example, that I was ready for an exam 'cause I went over the notes over and over again only to realize that it wasn't that I'd known the material, I hadn't remembered them from the inside. I could just recognize them.So here we are with ai and again, the more powerful the tool, the more caution it requires.A Discovery without AI I want to describe a recent experience I had.I'm inviting you into some of my thinking process lately about this concept I've been working on called The Eight Gears of Work. I go into some detail about it in episode 33, and in short, these eight gears are as follows. There's "Be", how we are without any intention, I should say.There's consider where we reflect on it. There's our approach where we start dealing with the emotions involved. There's a visit where we are with the work, whatever we do, whether we do anything or not, there's our beginning where we start to iterate. There's complete, which is where we dedicate ourselves to completing the task or project.There's schedule where we line ourselves up in some synchronization with other people or other times. And lastly, there's perform, where we do things with real live stakes.And in any case, I was thinking of it as a way to represent, how to manage our sense of, I don't wanna, in the midst of it all,So what's the spectrum here? What is the line from one end to the other? And my first response was effort.But then I quickly realized that that was wrong, but I didn't know what was right. Is it engagement? Is it agency? Is it that extension into the world? How does it relate to those? I don't want a feelings. Why is it that the further you go, the stronger those feelings can become?I had a strong temptation to take the currently 200 plus slide keynote presentation, all my process thoughts on the matter, and then maybe, uh, however many thoughts I have in my my Devon Think app where I have a ton of text files and just throw 'em into my AI app.And say, here, please make sense of this, but what was that impulse?The Vital Tension of Not KnowingThere's this tension that comes from not knowing. Creativity is about discovering something in the act of creating it. When we don't know something, we hold on to that not knowing. Maybe we write our questions, maybe we write what we wanna explore, but that feeling, that tension that lives within us when we get an answer to something from elsewhere, we risk bypassing that important path of growth through ourselves, where that release of tension that would come from discovery would create an effect within ourselves.In the regular visits to the project. I kept coming to the words extension and engagement, and I suddenly realized this focus on agency, this skill and ability to decide and engage non-reactively, not on doing, for example.So in this reflection, I came to this realization, oh, I've modeled this perspective of agency. Now, I don't know how entertaining this is to you, but for me it was important because now I have a way to describe and help people with those "i don't wanna" feelings in an even better way. I have a more solid foundation within myself that I could then translate.If I had asked AI to solve my problem, maybe it would've come up with something like this maybe. But I doubt it, more importantly, it was crucial that I did not rely on it to prematurely resolve that sense of tension within me.Tension and AgencyThat tension without irony is exactly what agency is about. Our ability to sit non reactively with our emotions, with our sensations, where ideally, that they can no longer be driver, but instead messenger, had I allowed that tension to be a driver, I would've jumped right into the AI to give me the answer, Hey, tell me what, what, where I need to go.And so AI is certainly powerful. But I wonder how much of our recent concerns that are bandied about on the internet relate to this idea? Could AI be something by which we abandon our sense of agency? Mentioned in this episode:Rhythms of Focus - CTA - Subscribe, Rate, and Review

Ever found your whole day thrown off by “a thing at five”? In this episode of Rhythms of Focus, we explore the quiet storm that happens when time anxiety, fear of distraction, and perfectionism collide. Together, we reflect on why even the simplest tasks can feel impossible when something looms on the calendar—and how we can practice agency and gentler rhythms to bring flow back into our days.Listeners will uncover how our relationship to endings influences our ability to begin, and how mindful transitions can help us rebuild trust in our focus. We unpack four subtle fears—the fear of the groove, of distraction, of the unfinished, and of courage—and discover how embracing closure can unlock momentum.Link to ADHDinos - a delightful comic on ADHD: https://www.instagram.com/adhdinos/?hl=enTakeaways: • Recognize how fear of endings quietly blocks beginnings. • Learn mindful strategies to release time vigilance and ease into focus. • Rebuild self-trust through small, intentional completions.This episode also features an original piano improvisation, “From Fall,” a contemplative piece in a minor key that mirrors the mood of transition and soft courage.For more, subscribe and visit rhythmsoffocus.com.#ADHD #WanderingMinds #MindfulFocus #TimeAnxiety #ADHDProductivity #NeurodivergentLiving #SelfTrust #FlowState #FocusRhythms #EmotionalRegulationTranscriptThere's a wonderful ADHD based comic called ADHDinos Two Dinosaurs talk to each other, and in this particular comic, one of 'em says to the other, Hey, what's wrong? You seem stressed. The other says, well, I've got a thing at five. Well, that's six hours from now. You still have the whole day ahead. I'm confident you can accomplish a lot in that time.The other one lying on the floor. says my day has absolutely ruinedDealing with "A thing at 5"What do we do when we have a thing at five?We could seemingly do any number of things before five, consciously, rationally, we might even be able to calculate. Such and such would take an hour and that would take half an hour and this errand and that report and the dishes and whatever, and yet we're paralyzed.Why can't we seem to get much of anything done at all until that time? I think an important clue comes from the paralysis itself. Because paralysis stems from fear. And in fact there are likely several fears. So I'd like to go through about four of them here and see where we get.Fear of the GrooveThe first fear is the groove.What if I get into a groove? Seemingly getting into a groove would be a wonderful thing. We get into the work, diving in and maybe even enjoying a sense of developing meaning somewhere within and through our lives.But there's that hyper focus. There may well have been times in our life where we got into a thing and just couldn't seem to get ourselves out.Maybe we're thinking, Ugh, I can't let go now. I've been procrastinating on it forever. I'm in it now, and I never know if I'll ever be able to come back. And so what if I do a little more now? Oh, I can still make it to that next thing. Maybe I'll be a few minutes late. That's okay. Oh, no, I'm missing it. Oh, no. I'm ashamed that I'm terribly late. I may as well not go at this point.Yeah, I think a number of us have probably been through that one. The fear of not being able to stop is a real one. There have been times where we've not been able to stop.We might even fear that we would entirely lose sight of the thing at five. Our sense of time has likely not been our ally, and so we do not trust ourselves for good reason.Maybe we've tried alerts and we blow those off. Maybe someone calls and we ignore the phone. Without the sense that we might be able to break away, we feel doomed and the day is ruined.Fear of DistractionsThe second fear is that of distraction, mental turbulence, interference to working memory. We may well have a history of getting distracted in whatever it is we're doing, environment or anxiety or some other strong emotion, thinking about plans, daydreaming, incomplete projects and decisions floating into mind, stumbling into doing two or even three things at once, losing a sense of connection between this and that, flooding ourselves with confusion.As we then seek relief in some emotion that might bring some cohesion to our mind state, whether it's playful, whether it's urgency, we're just looking for the relief of one thing.All of it can have us lose sight of that thing at five. And so together with a lack of trust in ourselves that we wouldn't be distracted from any signal to remind us of the thing at five, we stay vigilant.So to compensate, we keep our eye on the clock, hoping we don't look away at the wrong time. But as a result of this, we can't invest ourselves in the thing that we'd like to get into before five.Vigilance is exhausting, paralyzing us with this understandable fear.Fear of the UnfinishedThe third fear is what might be called the unfinished symphony. What if I can't get back into the groove? Let's say we do start a thing before five and we're able to stop, but what if we've got this history of leaving projects incomplete? The worry is that we would now risk placing yet another thing in the pile of incomplete projects shaming us from the corner.When we're working, we often don't know how something might appear in the end, how we might get there, and often both. And as a result, we cannot guess the time it would take. And unfortunately with the lack of trust in ourselves that we could end something on time or pick it back up if left incomplete, we're left with the impossible goal of trying to figure out if the thing can be done in the time we have available.As soon as there's a thing at five, our time has become limited and our work is shot.Fear of CourageAnd I add one more fear, which may or may not relate, but somehow it seems to fit in my own head.What if the thing we want to get into before five requires some courage?Dealing with a sense of maybe we're not intelligent enough to do a thing. Maybe the depth of field of it is too vast for us to comprehend. Maybe we're too old to start now, too young to start now. We'd never be able to get good enough among any other possibility.Similar to our lack of confidence to estimate time here, we lack a confidence in our own abilities, which then would translate to, I'm not sure how long this would take. The work of mounting courage, acknowledging the risk, knowing we might fail, are not insubstantial, and while we're frozen in vigilance, the resources to mount that courage are not available.Fears of EndingsCommon to all of these fears are the endings. In other words, our difficulty in starting is often related to our fear of how we may or may not be able to handle the endings. If we can practice how we end things, we would then be in a better position to start them.If we feel we can set something aside that we can trust ourselves to return, or better yet make a clear decision as to where it does or does not fit in our lives, and then stay out of our way in the meantime, we can start.If we feel that we might be able to not only hear an alert, but it's well positioned to help us transition when it felt like we could smoothly do so, so that the work could then stay out of our way until it meaningfully be picked up again, that we could trust ourselves to be able to make those decisions and engage, we can start.More fundamentally, we'd feel that the thing at five is more or less safe because we can end.We practice mindfully bringing our mind to the momentum of work. It's not that we have bicycle strength brakes, it's that we are like a boat on water. We can practice our endings and as we do so, we improve our beginnings.I'll end with a quote from a book that I've cited in a recent episode. The, uh, Hagakure book of the Samurai. in the Kamagata area, they have a sort of tiered lunchbox they use for a single day. When flower viewing upon returning. They throw them away, trampling them underfoot.The end is important in all things.Mentioned in this episode:Join the Weekly Wind Down NewsletterThe Weekly Wind Down is an exploration of wandering minds, task and time management, and more importantly, how we find calmer focus and meaningful work.

When every choice feels like too much—what to do, where to go, even what to eat—indecision can quietly drain our focus and energy. In this episode of Rhythms of Focus, we reflect on the psychology and mindfulness of decision-making for adults with ADHD and wandering minds. Together, we explore how to turn hesitation into awareness and uncertainty into creative flow.Listeners will discover practical ways to approach decisions with clarity and gentleness, learning how to work with their ADHD rhythms instead of against them. This is not about forcing productivity—it’s about developing mindful structure, emotional insight, and trust in our intuitive process.In this episode, we explore:• How emotions guide decision-making and shape focus for ADHD minds.• A mindfulness-based technique to ease decision fatigue and anxiety.• How to transform choices into creative, intentional acts of agency.The episode closes with an original piano composition, Icicle Drips, to help listeners ground in reflection and calm.For more, subscribe and visit rhythmsoffocus.com.#ADHD #WanderingMinds #MindfulFocus #ADHDMindfulness #DecisionFatigue #NeurodivergentCreativity #CreativeFocus #IntentionalLiving #ADHDWellness #MindfulProductivityTranscriptShould I or shouldn't I? What should I have for dinner? What if I did this or maybe I should do that. But if I do this, then what if it goes wrong? Well, if I don't decide, well, that's a decision too, isn't it?Decisions do weigh heavy, don't they? What gives?Matters of Great and Little ConcernThere's a quote I like that I got from, watching this movie called Ghost Dog. It's a Jim Jarmusch film, main character, quotes from the book Hagakure, the Book of the Samurai," Matters of great concern, should be treated lightly matters of small concern should be treated seriously."I dunno how well I follow that advice, but it is something curious.The Weight of DecisionsDecisions are in no way simple. Even the seemingly small ones, like deciding what to order at a restaurant, making small purchase, these can weigh us down into paralysis. Meanwhile, large ones like considering a change of professions, a move and more, these can plague us. They occupy the crevices of our every day, miring us in this anxieties, fears, regrets, and more.Sometimes we don't even realize we had a decision we could make until some regret form somewhere later, too little, too late. Or we leave them undecided as they create and sustain multiple waves and storms within us, worsening that scatter of a wandering mind.So decisions can certainly weigh heavy. When we decide, we cut, the word having the same Latin root as homicide, for example.We go this way and not any of the others. The universe of possibilities collapse into one.In fact, one piece of advice for decision leverages this, where we use a coin flip, not because we follow where it lands so much as we realize what's important to us. Something that we don't see or feel in our emotional landscapes until that coin is in the air. And this gives us a clue.Risk and Loss - Decisions and ConsciousnessEvery decision involves risk or loss. If it didn't, there wouldn't be a decision. We'd simply act. Consciousness itself may only exist for the reason of decision if we are to adopt a neuropsych analytic point of view. That even echoes William James from 1890 who had said "consciousness seems to arise only in response to a problem."It's like the brain doesn't call attention to itself until some system of pattern matching is off.We have tension, frustration, excitement, play care. Emotion- all of these cresting into thought as they brush into consciousness.Decisions rest on the sea of sensation, intention and emotion. Emotions connect into and through the deepest recesses of our mind and beyond emanating from meaning that we can only partially understand.We sail these seas from a singular point flowing on and within this moment of now, and we think we decide which emotion, which wave of focus will I sail.Agency. This ability and skill to decide and engage non-reactivity begins when we pause, examining these emotions as they are. We can maybe sense the meanings behind them.What are the associations? What comes to mind?Decisions as Creative ActsWhat we might sense then is that decisions themselves could even be a creative act. As these ideas do come to mind, we can place one with another. Set this option with that until no new information comes to mind there.And if decisions can be a creative act, well, what if we supported them in the ways we would support a creative act?For example, what if we were to hold that intention to decide to capture it in the power of a task? But not just any task, a regularly repeating considered task.For example, let's say we're ruminating on the decision to move, the ideas keep coming to mind, weighing us down. They do so because the decision's never completed and it has no boundaries. It doesn't have a place. So it is given free reign to spill over into every thought. By writing a regularly repeating task that says something like, "consider moving." We can give that decision a place, a time within our day for us to reflect, to be creative with it.We can give it our full attention, at least for a few moments, and sometimes that makes all the difference. If that task can appear somewhere we trust we can see it, if we can take that moment that maybe a deep breath worth of time, we can allow the thoughts and more importantly, the emotions, the reflections to come to mind.Ideally, we would give these thoughts space to form and settle.At that point. We've fully acknowledged the decision and the options that are there. We might feel the risk, we might feel the anxiety, but they're not changing.With this structure, we have a place for a decision to rest, to build with that caring, creative spirit, rather than only be fueled by anxiety and the fear of regret.It's there that we can feel the risk of one option or another. Mount the courage and then cut.Mentioned in this episode:Rhythms of Focus - CTA - Subscribe, Rate, and Review

This episode explores the complex nature of care and how especially those with ADHD can be caught in a vicious cycle of others feeling as though we don't care at all, or caring too much, to the point of being unable to take any steps to move forward.We address common feelings of being overwhelmed and questioning self-worth. The confusion that sometimes comes mistaking care with worry and highlighting the burdens that can bring.We delve into how care, when practiced skillfully, can help individuals better support themselves and others.The episode concludes with a relatable Reddit comment on simplifying life's purpose to care and an original musical piece titled 'Aging.'For more, subscribe and visit rhythmsoffocus.com.#ADHD #WanderingMinds #focusstrategies #neurodivergent #findingfocus #RhythmsofFocus #ADHDPodcastTranscript:I'm being pulled, every which way. I need to do the dishes, I need to do the laundry, I have to write the report - maybe I just need to rest.If I tell others I can't do this right now, they might tell me I don't care enough.Well, do I not care enough? How do I know if I'm being selfish?The Push/Pull of CaringIn our younger days, we may have turned in so-called sloppy work. Often some comment of not caring enough is applied somewhere along the way.Said enough times, we might wonder about this of ourselves. Maybe it's true.Wandering minds already have enough to struggle with. To stay on track we can create any number of guides, lists, markers, all these sorts of things that help us move forward.But in the meantime, even with these in helping us, we often have to pull ourselves back from one thing after another.We move into one thing, we get distracted. We dive deep into another, we might have to fight to pull ourselves out.It can be terribly exhausting, and yet there are still things to do.Wallowing in the Overwhelm of CaringDo we not have enough willpower? Or is it that we don't care enough?Even when we say, "I don't care," the fact that something entered our mind, even to negate it, means that something about it has our attention.In this way, caring is hardly some binary thing.What is care?What is it though? What is care?In one sense, well, it's an emotion. We can even point at it neuroanatomically: pathways and transmitters, dendritic connections and the like.We can also see it as an emotion in the sense of that which brushes into consciousness. Whether gently in barely perceptible waves or in crushing impossible storms.What I think is often missed in discussions about care is that it's more than an emotion. Beyond that, it is this spirit and practice.Harnessing the Power of CareCare flows through, and with, emotion. Emanating from meaning in the stories of our lives into that of perception, thought, action — at the very least.Often, care can be this wonderful spirit around which we can organize ourselves; doing the things that we feel to be helpful to those around us.Care involves a depth of attention on something.It's the spirit that nourishes, that creates the bed of intuition, that tempers and guides strength, the force of mystery of a force at all.We care in considering, when we rest our minds in some experience, our interests, our intentions attuning to what is.Ideally, we may even take our time. Find patience to reach some gentle acknowledgement where our decisions are deliberate. We can heighten that powerful measure of being. Agency itself.When we care for others, when we care for ourselves, when we care for the emotions of play and curiosity and discovery within ourselves.We can often fly on this feeling of mastery, meaningful work, and meaningful relationships.The Invisible Weight of CaringBut there can be a burden to caring. As a spirit, it's eons old, an entity carried within and through us from the inception of whenever life began to care for life.Care is its own life, running deep within us. And as a spirit, it has its own needs. It draws resources from us. It takes our time, our attention, the materials of ourselves. And resources are limited. Caught within us.Care can be pressed and pulled in many competing directions. Loved ones, ourselves, multiple others.Because of limits, we must make decisions and sometimes they are terribly difficult, sometimes at our sacrifice, sometimes at others, and often at both.In losing sight of limits, we often then wonder whether we care enough, that we don't care for everything then, and somehow because of that we are terrible.It's not the care itself that is limited, so much as it is the resources.In losing sight of these limits we then might wonder, do we care enough? And if we don't, that somehow we're terrible.Often, this leads into a feeling of burden. We may even resent the feeling of care itself, sensing that burden. That sense itself, in turn, can feel selfish — touching off feelings of guilt and shame and more as care's complexity grows.Care Confused with WorrySometimes care is confused with worry. Worry, anxiety, these signals that something might be wrong, something's amiss. Maybe something might happen in the future. There's some risk for loss.We might then feel that in order to care, we have to exacerbate that feeling, indulge it, stir it, stoke it, fan the flames.But this too becomes a path where we might exhaust ourselves into a sense of worry that we are uncaring, not just exhausted.Often, then that leads to some method of abusing ourselves, shaming ourselves, yelling at ourselves, accusing ourselves of being uncaring.Maybe that would help us care more, that would help us get the things done.If we continue to use worry as our measure of care, we might try to bring risk to zero. Essentially attempting to rid ourselves of anxiety as the measure.But worry cannot be brought to zero. We not only exhaust ourselves, but risk crushing others. We smother.Other Confusions of CareCare may even be fused or confused with righteousness. This attempt to be good or moral then perverted into cruelty.Of course worry can relate to care. It's a message of something that might be injured or lost. To the degree we can, perhaps an ideal, we can acknowledge that message and say, "Thank you, I'll take it from here."Even here, we must be able to accept risk, limits, and mortality itself as an inevitability in order to care well.Even more maliciously, care can be hijacked by others who intend to manipulate. A weaponizing of vulnerability, an indulgence of victimhood to pull at the heartstrings.Whether done consciously or unconsciously, we may end up sacrificing ourselves, perhaps inadvertently. Losing the path's care we could have otherwise offered to others.In this way, care is not simply some unmitigated good. Care needs its own care.And of course, as we care for ourselves, we can care better for others. Doing so, beyond spirit then, beyond emotion, care is a skill. And as a skill it can be practiced.Sometimes it's simple. Putting on your mask before putting someone else's on, is very much this practice.Nurturing Our Care PracticeCare, also as the mother of consideration, of acknowledgement, as the holder of agency, can be practiced.When we anchor ourselves considering the options of the moment. When we pause at the edge of action. When we pause to consider how to guide our momentum of the moment.When we recognize the limits of our working memory. When we know and stand up for the limitations we've discovered. When we pay attention to our frustration and sense.When we pay attention to our frustration and use it to help find the ease within it. To discover a way forward.When we clear and support paths for the development of things we find meaningful. When we recognize the limits of our lives, our days, and feel the pain in those limits without indulging them, without ignoring them.We practice care.I'd like to close with a comment that I'd read on Reddit. It goes like this, "When I was younger, I had many dreams and complex purposes like getting rich, become a famous doctor, and things like that. By living life and having experiences, good ones and bad ones, job and relationships and life overall, I learned that a simple purpose made me happier than ever.And that purpose is to care. Care for my family. Care for those in need, care for my dogs. Now I just care and that's my purpose 'til the day I die. "Aging" in C minorThe following piece is written in C minor. It's titled Aging. The name comes from the idea that its initial seed, the first aspects of what I used to create the piece itself, comes from one of, if not the earliest kept phrases that I wrote.Now since then, the phrase has changed. I can't stop change. In fact, if the piece does stop changing, it tends to die. I lose interest and never play it again.But I do have a say in guiding it. In fact, isn't that a sign of care itself? I hope you enjoy the piece.Mentioned in this episode:Rhythms of Focus - CTA - Subscribe, Rate, and Review

Miles Davis says, there is no such thing as a mistake. How can we understand the truth within this seemingly odd idea?We’ll explore how to gently reframe errors as part of our creative rhythm, not as failures that derail us. We'll consider how to distinguish between - an error (a deviation from our path), - a mistake (an unacknowledged error), and - a lesson (an acknowledged opportunity to learn). This episode features an original piano composition called *Enter* For more, subscribe and visit rhythmsoffocus.com.Hashtags #ADHD #WanderingMinds #MindfulProductivity #CreativeFlow #AgencyOverPerfection #ErrorAsLesson #RhythmsOfFocus #FocusWithoutForce #NeurodivergentCreativity #MistakesAreDataTranscript A jazz musician. Miles Davis once said, "don't fear mistakes. There are none." Now I might wonder if that would go for the pilot flying my plane, there's still a powerful depth of truth and beauty in the statement.Today's episode, I'll be reading a passage from my book, workflow Mastery about Error, mistake, and Lesson.And I hope you enjoy it.   I make mistakes. I'm convinced that no one can avoid making mistakes despite the authority with which miles may make his claim.But there's a beauty and truth within that phrase. Do not fear mistakes. There are none.While I do not know for certain if "no mistakes" is applicable to every craft beyond art, its presence as a path in art is undeniable.The lesson as I understand it, is of learning and adapting to what is originally perceived as error so that it becomes a path towards mastery, even in the moments of improvisation.I imagine that at least some of this concept bears truth in all endeavors. We can distinguish the ideas, the concepts between error, mistake and lesson.An error is a perceived deviation from a path towards a vision.Deviations are influenced by whatever reality throws at us. Reality may include any object, including those external to ourselves or even meaning itself. If, for instance, we assume a meaning of something to be different than what it does mean, maybe by way of not seeing it's unconscious elements, then it's an error. On the other hand, we may discover some incompatibility between vision and reality. In setting the alarm clock for 6:00 AM to begin a 7:00 AM workday, we may have neglected to take into account the preparations for the morning and the commute amounting to 75 minutes of time.A mistake is an unacknowledged error.A lesson is an acknowledged opportunity to learn, such as an acknowledged error.So in this way, acknowledgement is precisely the difference between mistake and lesson. The degree to which an error is acknowledged in a depth of its details is the degree to which the lesson it provides may become useful.We may then decide for or against developing that lesson as an intention for learning.Acknowledgement allows an error to become a lesson. It brings an object's consideration to our sense of agency. We can then create the playgrounds, workspaces, habits, systems, and other means of organizing to effectively develop any intention based on this error, and we turn it into a lesson.In the case of the alarm, we may ignore it or chastise ourselves for being lazy or incapable of predicting time. We may instead decide it's meaningful to sleep and therefore make arrangements for an earlier time for bed. On the other hand, we may realize a much greater meaning found in a sense of irritation with the work itself, and that we've just unconsciously acted out against it.It becomes clear that errors may be viewed as not necessarily objects themselves so much as their misalignments between vision and reality.The degree to which we can acknowledge the discrepancies between vision and reality is the degree to which we can see the depth of meaning behind our errors, the fault lines, and consequently turn them into useful lessons, as daunting as that may be.A troublesome societal comment is that we only fail when we stop trying. Well, this may ring true in some sense. It does not take meaning into account. The energy of our lives measured in motivation and time is limited. Deciding that we've made an error in placing our efforts poorly and then consciously and carefully recalibrating is not failure.It's learning. We fail if we stop trying to find and develop a meaningful flow as a union of play and work in our lives, not in completing some specific task or project.If though, we find we must repeatedly drop or change varying projects. Such a process can be very disheartening. Wading through the confusion of repeated incomplete visions threatens to drown us in a lack of confidence.Any potential lessons offered by error can be mired in these feelings of futility.A compass of meaning, however, can provide continuous direction. We can break down the obstacle before us into smaller and smaller components until finally that smallest aspect of the obstacle may be overcome.We can do it again and again. Learning from our errors and presumptions, organizing, reorganizing, gaining courage, confidence to continue moving forward.All the while we can acknowledge that the onslaught of unrewarded attempts may very well continue. If we realize the path before us is mistaken, or its meaning has been lost, we can rest in a pause to reflect upon meaning.The compass may yet change what we thought was important, may only have been a facet of something deeper. We might decide to continue forward despite the hostility of conditions before us.Sometimes we do require luck.Creative works may require a degree of being in the right place at the right time, and many artists whose works are not accepted when an audience is unable to hear or see the meaning of the work, whether because of the lack of development or because the myriad conditions for its communication were just not right. So much of the groundwork to develop our art is communication is below the radar of community. Years and years may be spent in isolation before we've mature and craft something suitably. Find a receptive audience, cultivate a good path for the communication of that work, and there's no guarantee that it ever will be found.Yet. Continued persistence is required for meaningful work to have a chance at finding a community. For this reason, among others, I define success as the process of bringing play into work such that the world feeds back and sustains that person in play.Failure is when we stop the continued attempts of finding and fostering the conditions for play that ultimately develops a sense of meaning.The mistake is not adapting or learning. Mistakes are a matter of perspective. If they're viewed as ends, then there are failures.If we are without error, it is only because we haven't tried.Every attempt to connect with the world requires adjustment. Each attempt to reach out in intention or question is a fumbling of sorts.It's not that we do not perceive error so much as it is the grace with which we fumble, by which there are no mistakes. The elegance, integrity, honesty, and attempt to learn from our inevitable misalignments between vision and reality, give us our continued path toward mastery. Today's piece of music I won't say too much on. I think it's a pretty piece. It's called Enter. I performed it live in October of 2025. I hope you enjoy.   Mentioned in this episode:Rhythms of Focus - CTA - Subscribe, Rate, and Review

Caught between “I can’t start” and runaway hyperfocus, many of us feel like passengers in our own minds rather than pilots of our days. In this episode of Rhythms of Focus, we explore how wandering minds and ADHD can move from stuckness and self-blame toward genuine agency, ease, and purposeful action.We reflect on why “I don’t wanna” feelings are not failures of willpower but signals from our emotional world, and how redefining motivation can help us align emotion and intention without shame or force. We also walk through the Eight Gears of Focus, a gentle framework for moving from simple awareness into meaningful action, completion, and performance in a sustainable way.Listeners will learn:- How to see emotions as waves moving through awareness, rather than enemies to overpower. - How “force-based” productivity (shame, urgency, pressure) quietly erodes our sense of agency—and what to do instead. - How to use the Eight Gears of Focus to locate where flow is blocked and create kinder, more rhythmic next steps. This episode also features an original piano composition that mirrors the movement from hesitation into grounded focus, supporting a calmer nervous system as we listen. To stay with us on this journey of mindful productivity for wandering minds, subscribe and visit rhythmsoffocus.com for more resources and practice invitations.Hashtags #ADHD #WanderingMinds #MindfulProductivity #EmotionalRegulation #Hyperfocus #Agency #Motivation #Neurodivergent #PianoMeditation #RhythmsOfFocusTranscriptStuck Between Inaction and HyperfocusI cannot act. If I act, I'm in hyperfocus and my emotions. Well, they're dysregulated, as they say. Why are there so many problems? Where's the commonality between these? What can I do? ADHD, Wandering Minds, and the Question of Action I continue to search for some commonality, some simplicity that would explain the wandering mind. With ADHD, the central character in the coterie of wandering minds, it's useful to hear out the experts.Dr. Russell Barkley says, "ADHD is not a disorder of knowing what to do, it's a disorder of doing what you know at the right times and places."Is It Willpower, Free Will, or Something Else?What is it to not be able to act? Is it a lack of free will? The alignment of emotion and action are disrupted at the moments that would otherwise be meaningful to us? Sometimes we point at motivation. There's something can be said about this, but often that idea of motivation, this messy word can raise the cackles on the back of our collective necks, conjures the idea of willpower.Redefining Motivation for the ADHD BrainBut these depend on our definitions. I define motivation as the degree to which our emotions align with our intentions. One trouble, however, are these pesky, "I don't want our feelings," powerful and complex as they can be, and they don't align. So how do we align our emotions and our intentions?Defining EmotionWell, first, let's consider what emotions even are.Certainly there are multiple approaches from the spiritual to the practical, to the molecular and beyond. Rather than say what's right, I'm simply going to define it here, and now.Emotions are that which flows into consciousness, whether by brush or by storm.Essentially, whatever comes to mind. Is the cresting of an emotion.Perception as Emotion and the Role of ResonanceNow, this is a very different definition than what you're likely used to. Words, ideas, actions all crest into and through consciousness from emotion. What that means is that perception is also an emotion. Something outside of us resonates with something inside of us. If there was nothing within us with which to resonate, it wouldn't register. It would not reach conscious awareness.But as emotion arrives, we cannot argue with them. We might find new perspectives, the so-called insight, but even these need to resonate deeply with the most fundamental emotion that of trust without which our reality itself crumbles. In order to affect an emotion, we can only do so through affecting the conditions in which it exists, internal and external.Where “I Don’t Wanna” Feelings Come FromThe "I don't wanna" feelings can stem from multiple sources. One perspective is the biological, which simply states it is. The physical structures, the chemistry, the like. All represent objects outside of our sense of agency, perhaps reached indirectly with chemicals, sex, and ice baths.A psychoanalytic approach is one in which we examine the ideas, sensations that come to mind, consider potential meaning. Meaning is this depth and breadth of connection, conscious, unconscious, and beyond comprising the storehouses, the capacitors, the antenna from which our emotional waves emanate. Story.We may not want to do something for any number of reasons, such as fear, worry, overwhelm, despair. There are also positive emotions that can throw us off, like excitement for something else, distraction, even playfulness. Any of these in turn might only come to mind Manifesting in ideas and words like,"I fear what this would say about me. If I were to begin it would mean that I'd have to finish it. And what if I can't finish it? And I've rarely have ever been able to finish things. And what if the thing just stinks anyway?"More fundamentally though, saying "I don't wanna," can be this foundational stage of our will trying to assert itself, our attempt to regain, if not create a sense of agency. It says, I'm alive. I exist because you want me to go this way and I wanna go that way.Check out episode nine for more on that.The Trap of Defining Yourself by OppositionBut being in this way of being has many troubles as the things still need doing. If we only operate out of opposition, we rely on the things we oppose. In this way, we're still being driven by the thing we oppose.If we define ourselves by not being the opposing side, we've allowed the opposing side to effectively define us, and then we can get angry at the thing that seems to force us the seemingly uncaring others, the deadlines that don't cooperate with each other as well as ourselves for having to work this way.How Shame, Urgency, and Force Undermine AgencySo we rely on the things we've learned to rely on those things we can trust to circumvent the, "I don't wanna" feelings, namely force. Force is the negative emotions like shame, urgency, and more perhaps is represented by the deadlines and other matters where stakes are involved.Something's at risk. It doesn't care if we don't wanna.And so the injuries to our sense of agency perpetuate. Not just biologically, but in the world of meaning, if not identity.But I'd rather not take the position that we're helpless against ourselves. If we can examine and engage these emotions as they are, learn how we might sail with them, tack against them, we can start directing ourselves in a more deliberate manner.Over time, we can even learn how to create the conditions for those emotions such as such that their waves are more and more in our favor.Revisiting the Eight Gears of FocusIn a recent podcast and webinar, I presented what I call the eight Gears of focus. This sort of stretch between one side and another of the types of focus and the flow that can happen throughout.Zero is being the awareness of what's in mind. One is approach. Aligning our intention with attention. Where we choose a feeling we follow, a tension that we try to form into ease. Two.Consideration -picturing something in our mind.Three is a visit where we're there with the work. Four is where we begin, we take action confronting the reality of ourselves within the work. Five is where we complete something, a task, a project. We bind ourselves to the external world and structures of things. Six, we schedule where we attempt to synchronize our internal sense of time, the waves as they exist within us with the clocks that we share with others.And seven, performance where we're examined, assessed in real time, whether on stage or maybe the console is on fire.Bringing Vitality Through Every GearBetween all of these, there's a flow from the zero to the seventh. We bring our sense of being, our vitality throughout. The more powerfully we do. So the more practiced we are, the more powerful the performance might be. The more vitality it has at any one of these stages, the more engaged we are.When I can perform at the piano for an audience, when I can fully be there with my sense of knowledge of therapy and understanding mind for my clients, I can resonate at depth with them. At the zeroth gear of being. We have a sense of meaning, a depth of self-conscious, unconscious, and beyond. At the other end, we're held in place by performance.Structure Can Trigger “I Don’t Wanna” FeelingsThese latter gears show increasing structure, but as a result, have increasing tendency to stir emotions such as the, I don't want to feelings. And using these eight gears, figuring out where we can support ourselves throughout. We can assess where and how our flow might be impeded. Whether you use the tools of the waves of focus, like anchoring, guides and visits, maybe something beyond it like meditation, therapy, or practice of schedules and clocks.We're attempting to find a way to connect with the world such that it supports us in turn a flow and flowing state of success. We start being able to act from our sense of self.Mentioned in this episode:Rhythms of Focus - CTA - Subscribe, Rate, and Review

When we finally finish a project yet still feel behind, it is rarely about the checklist and almost always about our relationship with time, memory, and trust. In this episode of Rhythms of Focus, we explore how wandering minds and ADHD can turn “done” into “never enough,” and how we can gently reshape that story using an Honor Guide rather than another rigid system. We discover how time blindness, working memory limits, and fragile self-trust quietly fuel our endless to-do lists, and how a visit-based approach can restore a calmer rhythm to our days. We also walk through the three core parts of the Honor Guide—the Engaged, the Horizon, and the Steady—so we can build a meeting ground between our past, present, and future selves. - We clarify why finishing a project does not settle our nervous system and how to respond with agency instead of pressure. - We learn how to design an Honor Guide that protects our attention while still honoring our desires and energy. - We practice shifting from force and deadlines to gentle, daily visits that create sustainable momentum. This episode also features an original piano composition, “Spoken Speaking Spirit,” as a kind of emotional journaling and time-travel through music. If this resonates, we invite you to subscribe and visit rhythmsoffocus.com so we can keep cultivating these rhythms of focus together. ## Hashtags #ADHD #WanderingMinds #MindfulProductivity #HonorGuide #TimeBlindness #WorkingMemory #CreativeFocus #NeurodivergentFriendly #PianoMusic #RhythmsOfFocus Transcript> Whew. Finally finished a project. I can't believe it. I finished a project. Time to celebrate. Wait, there's the, oh, I gotta do that one thing first. Well, what about, what about that other thing? Oh my goodness, there, there's zillions of things I still need to do. How does anyone do anything?### Big Rocks, Hyper-Scheduling, and Endless To‑Do ListsOrganizing the day is not a simple matter. Some suggest setting up three "big rocks", these three large items that you wanna make sure you deal with today. Otherwise, all the little things take over, it can be a highly effective approach.Others suggest what's called hyper scheduling. It's a method of estimating a time for everything you need or want to do and scheduling every minute on your calendar. It's kind of similar to using a budget for money, but here with seconds, minutes, and hours.Others create long lists, infinitely long lists. They spend the day scanning that list, searching for something simultaneously easy, important within their energy levels and interest. And these things kind of pile up until the lists, toxicity levels break, and we start a new list.Well, any of these have their utility, but sometimes they also have their troubles. Even the simple three big rocks. In a recent episode of the rhythms of Focus, I described, uh, four limits to productivity, namely time, working, memory, agency, and trust.### Time Blindness, Working Memory, Agency, and TrustWandering minds in particular struggle with all of these. So-called Time Blindness, a constriction of working memory, an exhaustion of an injury to agency in which we say I don't wanna, and a lack of trust between the past, present, and future selves, such that sending messages between them is rife with strife.The waves of focus methodology includes a number of tools to help manage, and today, rather than go into so much of the, philosophical underpinnings of it. I just wanna describe what are the rudiments of what I call an honor guide.Introducing the Honor Guide – A Meeting Ground for Your SelvesThe honor guide is a meeting ground between the past, present, and future selves. It has a fairly simple structure, but building it over time is not so simple as it involves the development of trust with oneself.But, what is the overall structure? Well, three main parts. ### The Engaged List – Visits Instead of DeadlinesOne  is a set of things that we're working on. These are things that we're paying daily visits to. If you'd like to know what a visit is, consider listening to episode four. I like to keep this number of things that I'm visiting daily between one and three, and doing so respects my sense of time and agency. I call this list the engaged. It's probably the most parallel to that idea of three big rocks, but again, I like to look at these things as visits rather than milestones I have to achieve in a day.### The Horizon List – Protecting Working Memory and Reducing OverwhelmSecondly, there's a set of things that I'd like to get to.They're waiting for me to get through something in the engaged, maybe something I dispose of, move along, complete whatever it is it's waiting for, its turn to be engaged. I like to keep this number to about five or less. Doing so respects my working memory.I call this set the horizon,### The SteadyThirdly, as I work things into my days, things that maybe they're a project that's now only being maintained. Exercise, for example. I have a sense that I know how to go about it. I've already done the work of putting it into my daily routines.These are things that no longer have such a strong emotional valence anymore.And that's it.I have a way of setting these up in a template for me on paper and a way to do this in my task manager. The one I use is OmniFocus. So you can use any one really. ### Simple on Paper, Deep in Practice, Powerful Benefitsit seems simple and it is simple, but there is a practice to it.And if you do start to practice it, you might start noticing a few things. , It can be the central hub for attention, this way of thinking through the day. It also gives us a finish line for the day. It orchestrates our visits across time, allowing us a stronger sense of being able to take on larger projects, even complete them. And start creating the rhythms of our focus, figuring out which ones compliment us, where, start having a better sense of what we can and cannot take on. Now, being able to say no where we need to.We can develop things over time and even see that development. There's less of a need to push ourselves. We can even shift away from deadlines as the pressure that would move us forward and instead we look towards things we'd like to get to do. You create this meeting ground between past, present, and future selves where you can kind of create this trust over time.Anyway, I think it's a pretty dandy tool and, uh, pretty proud of having developed it. And you know, if you try it out, love to hear how it goes for you.  ### Music as Journaling and Time Travel - "Spoken Speaking Spirit" There are often tough times in life. I don't think anyone race, religion, money, whatever is spared of some degree of suffering somewhere in their lives. Now, one of those, let's call it extended moments in my own life, I'd written the following piece, originating some decades ago. But as with all of these pieces, they evolve in time.I remember the struggle, but the stories of our past can shift and shape over time. We can affect our perspectives, our perceptions of the past. I don't mean we have some direct conscious way of rewriting the past, but something does seem to happen whenever it is that we observe it.And music to me is, uh, something of a journalling, I suppose.The following piece is called Spoken Speaking Spirit, and I hope you enjoy it.   Mentioned in this episode:Rhythms of Focus - CTA - Subscribe, Rate, and Review

When we sit down to read and realize we’ve “read the same paragraph four times,” it can feel like proof that we’re broken. In this episode of Rhythms of Focus, we explore a kinder, more rhythmic way for wandering minds and adults with ADHD to meet the page and actually feel alive in the words.### What we exploreWe look at why reading can feel like climbing a mountain, especially when working memory, emotions, and confusion fog the “now” of our attention. We also unpack what “active reading” really means for wandering minds and how we can use confusion, sleepiness, and resistance as gentle signals instead of verdicts against us.Together, we: • Reframe mind wandering and re-reading as part of the brain’s natural “formatting” process, not personal failure. • Practice questions like “What does this have to do with that?” and “What do we know, think, and not know?” to restore agency on the page. • Explore simple, environment-based supports (like single-path attention and fewer “infinite gravity pools”) that make sustained reading more possible for ADHD minds.This episode also features an original solo piano composition, “Alight,” inviting us to feel how staying alive in the notes mirrors staying alive in the sentences. If this resonates, we invite you to subscribe and visit rhythmsoffocus.com to keep traveling these gentler paths of agency, mindfulness, and rhythm together.## Hashtags #ADHD #WanderingMinds #mindfulproductivity #readingwithADHD #workingmemory #activeReading #neurodivergent #focusstrategies #gentleproductivity #RhythmsofFocus## Transcript “I’ve Read This Paragraph Four Times” – When Reading Feels ImpossibleI think I've read the same paragraph four times without absorbing a thing. How the heck do people read?   📍 ​ Wandering Minds, Books, and the Mountain of Focus for some wandering minds, reading a book is about as difficult as climbing a mountain, mountaineers notwithstanding. Getting to the book at all is one hurdle, and staying with the book is yet another. We might blame that wandering mind, this sense I just can't focus, or maybe I'm not a visual learner well either, might be true.Interestingly, though, I've met quite a number of those with wandering minds who find reading delightful. This ready made path, easily followed without needing to hold back.The guardrails of the words and the passage lead them along this gripping story. Now, sometimes they might fall into other troubles like an attention tunnel hyperfocus. It's hard to break out of. While the troubles of being inflow are certainly important and worthy of our attention, I wanna focus today on the other side of matters, which is getting into the book.When a Book Feels Dead – Boredom, Assignments, and ResistanceThere's a sense of deadness, the words, the boredom. We could argue that sometimes a book just isn't very engaging. It's the book's fault, not mine. No, certainly that can be the case too, but I would just say, okay, we'll find another. And then you're saying I'm assigned this one. Well, okay. Okay. I give up.Let's see what we can do, anyway.  Chapter 4: Single-Path Attention – Why Planes (and No Wi‑Fi) Help Us ReadThere are any number of approaches we can take. In recent episode I describe being on a plane with a book without wifi. We're able to allow our mind to wander about, as opposed to having the internet, hobbies, or other infinite gravity pools pulling, we have the singular path forward for our attention.Cracking open the book, we can weave back and forth between being and engaging a word here, a sentence there. And sometimes we can even dive deep pretty quickly.But sometimes if you're like me, you might just fall asleep.Sometimes I'll even go through waves of falling asleep, open the book, read another sentence, and I'm out again. But after a while, sometimes something clicks and I'm off and running.Three Ways We “Read” – Sleep, Edit, or Write Something NewMy own psychoanalyst years ago would describe his own process of reading, and he said one of three things would happen. One, he'd fall asleep.Two, he'd start editing the paper, or three, he'd start writing a new paper altogether. Funny enough, he left out reading the paper itself.The Hidden Stage of Reading – Formatting, Meaning, and ConfusionAs we read, I think there's a formatting stage that isn't often discussed. Especially when we're first starting a book, new concepts are coming to mind.For them to make any sense, we need to reflect on them between what we know, what we don't know, as well as connect things together. When our minds have this tendency to wander, the initial sensation of discovering, difference, and discrepancies isn't always about wonder sometimes that would otherwise draw us in.Instead, it's about confusion. And because the birth of confusion is often unconscious, we don't recognize what caused it. Confusion appears when something doesn't make sense. Usually two or more things somehow don't connect. Maybe this sentence and that don't seem to have anything to do with each other. And we just went by not realizing it. Maybe an idea just appearing seems to conflict with something Only vaguely remembered from this last page, last paragraph, last chapter.Or maybe the words stir a set of associations, some thoughts and daydream. Something gets touched off within a recollection, A moment of sadness, joy, shame, excitement. The grocery item you just forgot. Another matter of confusion is how large of a cloud it can create within our minds. Blocking out our working and short term memories.Working Memory, Fog, and the “Reading the Same Line Again” ProblemWorking memory is that part of us that's engaged in this moment. It's the central fovea in the lens of consciousness. Short term memories about the small handful of ideas bouncing in and out of that center is that peripheral vision flowing from into the lens of consciousness. Together, these create the now.And when confusion appears, it can be this large billowing fog obstructing much of whatever it is that we would see, dragging us off into one thought after the next emotional waves pulling this way in that, mostly unconsciously, until hopefully we can find some clearer skies. We daydream, read the same sentence, the same paragraph over and over.Sometimes we don't even do that, and instead fall asleep. The wandering mind myopic and magnified it as it is and its views of the now are particularly susceptible to emotions, huge in swallowing as they can be. So how do we regain ourselves? How do we engage and feel alive again?What “Active Reading” Really Means for Wandering Minds We often hear this importance of being active in our reading. Well, what does that even mean? My analyst mentioned either editing or writing, and I agree that these are useful, but sometimes we still need to read that thing, don't we? We can use these feelings, exhaustion, confusion, and the like to recognize that some things somewhere has a disconnect.I like to use the question, "what does this have to do with that?" We identify. One sentence, one idea. Wherever my mind went, perhaps with something else, perhaps what I just read. Sometimes I discover a connection, and when I do, I'm often feeling alive again, and sometimes I don't. But having asked the question itself somehow helps contain that confusion.A Gentle Framework – “What Do I Know, Think, Not Know?”In those times that I've particularly been able to engage, I pause and wonder to myself, what do I know? What do I think about this? What do I not know? In this way the initial stage is not active in some physical sense. In fact, I go in the opposite direction. I pause, I stop reading. I ground myself with what I know, and now when I go back I can argue, I can say, wait a second.That doesn't make sense. Oh wait, I agree with that, but your foundation is wrong. But I like your conclusion. Maybe I'll even start to write whatever the case. I am alive.Why You Fall Asleep While Reading – A Theory of Brain “Formatting”Now, of course, even this is not foolproof. Sometimes I still fall asleep. I have this theory that as I sleep, my brain is formatting itself.I'm consolidating whatever I'm reading. I know it's more than a theory. There's science to say sleep is good for you and your ability to remember. But I think it goes beyond that. It's this consolidation. It's this bringing together of worlds of thought and idea between myself and another person. And the deeper the resonance into the unconscious worlds, the greater the mysteries of sleep are ready to do their work.Or I just ate a Turkey sandwich.  📍 ​ Staying Alive in the Notes - "Alight" Today's piece of music is an older piece. I think I wrote it some 20 years ago or so, and as with all my pieces of that age, they tend to evolve. I need to be alive in the performance. If I'm fading out, I think you can hear it in the notes, but it's the life of a piece and the performer that resonates with an audience.Same thing happens as we read. It's that resonance with the author. The following piece is in F Minor. It's called alight, and I hope you enjoy it....

When a language app starts running your day instead of helping you learn, something vital is off. In this episode of Rhythms of Focus, we explore what really helps a wandering mind learn—and where streaks, scores, and mascots quietly get in the way.We look at why traditional metrics like lesson completion and streak counts so often backfire for adults with ADHD and wandering minds. We then explore how to shift from checkbox-driven learning into a more playful, embodied relationship with language, work, and creative practice. Along the way, we rethink what it means to “make progress” when our real goal is connection, not just completion. • Redefine success with measures that actually matter to you, like having a warm, real conversation instead of just hitting 80% on a quiz. • Bring play, feeling, and immersion back into your learning so that words—and work—start to flow instead of fight you. • Use milestones as gentle trellises rather than rigid rulers, so your attention can grow in its own, more natural rhythm.This episode also features an original piano composition, “Petty Walk,” a title born from a happy mistake that became its own small act of creative discovery.If this resonates, we’d love for you to subscribe and visit rhythmsoffocus.com to continue exploring calmer, more humane rhythms of focus.Transcript Okay, so if I get 10 in a row, correct, complete the next two lessons and score 80%. Three times I'll be done with studying Spanish today. Wait, how long have I been using this app and why can't they speak Spanish yet?  If I can speak a single sentence in Spanish without my Cuban mother-in-law looking at me funny, I'll consider it a success. Other reasons for the funny looks notwithstanding.Meanwhile, I've been using this language app for years now, and I continue to struggle.Curiously on various forums and subreddits, i've read similar concerns.Hey, this app is no good. I haven't learned the language yet!The Real Problem Isn’t the App – It’s How We Measure ProgressI don't believe though that the trouble was the app. Certainly it's not the be all, end all of education. It is crafted quite well, presents things very nicely, and I speak and understand a heck of a lot better than I did before using it.So what's the trouble?When Metrics Backfire – Goodhart’s Law in Everyday LearningThe trouble's, the measure. In studying and work and whatever endeavor we engage in, we'd like to have a way to step forward. Complete this. Do that move from here to there. Whatever it is, some measurement comes into play.The trouble with measuring, though, is how it can disrupt and sometimes even destroy the very thing we are trying to measure. There's a lovely quote, also known as Goodhart's Law, which says, "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."I would even argue that most of what is meaningful cannot be measured, whether that's about an idea, a diagnosis, a set of symptoms.But because completion, time, characteristics, these can be measured, they become our default. Whether in learning and communications and our business transactions, we often function through measures.How much did this make? How much did you do? When will it be done?Checkboxes, Burnout, and the Death of Meaning at WorkMeasurements are not bad, but they are tools, and the more powerful the tool, the more caution it requires. When we're not cautious, we don't recognize the potential negative effects, we do so at our own peril. In fact, it may even be abused.For example, what happens at work when we only check the boxes but do nothing else? We could argue, well, we're getting the work done. What's missing is the spirit, the sense of meaning, what builds from vision and life into a living result, whether product, service, or simply being present in the culture, our existence at work becomes devoid of life.Consider checking out episode two of this podcast in which George Costanza of Seinfeld displays this problem very nicely. Conversely, when our environments where we work, whether employers or coworkers don't care for more than the checkbox, then doing more in terms of thoroughness and care might even be punished.Not only is the sense of self rejected, but the vitality is accused of being somehow "extra" or an ass kiss or something that may well make things more difficult for those nearby, even if it would be better in the end for all. The environment becomes hostile to joy and meaning, and even success as defined as a flowing union of play and work.From Milestones to Play – Bringing Life Back Into LearningWhen we wonder why we're not learning from an application, it might be more useful to considerwhere can I bring life and play into this moment rather than aim for the get through the next lesson goal?Maybe staring at a single sentence in a foreign language and consider, do I know what this means? Can I say it? Can I play with it?Or could I use it? Does it roll off the tongue? And if not, can I make it do so? What if I played with the words and the sentences until they flowed smoothly? Can I feel the sentence, can I feel it to where I can say it without having to translate it in my mind?All of this takes time. All of this moves us away from the measure of completing the lesson.When Streaks Turn Against You – Mascots, Milestones, and Misaligned GoalsThe mascot might get angry and still come after me. It becomes more clear how a measure can actively work against the thing it purports to support. But the milestone or measure is again, not bad in and of itself. In fact, we can now use the milestone of completing a lesson as a framework. A context of support within which we can find that life within the thing.It's not obvious, and it takes a deliberate focus to do so. It takes that, oh, so difficult. Pause.The Courage to Pause – Letting Play and Care Take RootBut when we pause, we can now consider and envision lean into the challenge to bring our sense of play and care to bear fruit, to have the language take root where a new channel for our voice can now form.We can further follow that play towards what one Reddit forum runner suggested. Immerse Yourself. Play, often thrives in immersion. We can read magazines, follow the news, speak with others, and more we can follow that playful sense into new realms beyond the app.Redefining Success – Better Measures for ADHD-Friendly MasteryCertainly milestones and completion are important. Measurements are important, but play is vitality. And without it, our measures petrify. Whether we complete or pursue and measure by milestone or not, it'll certainly have their consequences.Arguing for the spirit of play may even be the work of the brave and the work of the brave often fails as without the potential for failure. What bravery was there anyway? But without playing care, forming, filling the vessels of meaning, what have we got?And of course, we can create our own measures Maybe. I like the idea of being able to measure, having an easy conversation with my mother-in-law. That seems to be a better measure than any.Petty Walk, Happy Accidents, and Creative DiscoveryToday's musical piece was originally titled Pretty Walk, but I mistyped it and it became Petty Walk. I have no idea what a petty walk might be. But I like the error and I decided to keep it. Creativity, after all, is a discovery of what we're making in the act of making it. Errors are often only deviations from some original vision.Well, here's the piece. I hope you enjoy it.

In today’s episode of Rhythms of Focus, we how motivation can seem to slip away when someone else's "should" enters the equation.Why do wandering minds rebel against orders? How does honoring our unique mental rhythms restore our sense of agency, especially when ADHD shapes our day to day.Takeaways:Recognize the subtle ways internalized authority undermines our drive—and how to gently reclaim itPractice strategies for honoring our past, present, and future selves to smooth task transitionsReframe lists and routines as creative allies rather than rigid overseersThis episode features our original contemplative piano piece, “Shallow Breath,” designed to accompany your mindful moments.Subscribe and join our compassionate community at rhythmsoffocus.com—let’s transform productivity into an art, not a struggle.Hashtags #ADHD #WanderingMinds #Agency #MindfulProductivity #Neurodivergent #FocusStrategies #SelfCompassion #CreativeProductivity #TaskTransitions #RhythmsOfFocusTranscriptTranscript I might just might do the dishes now. Oh my goodness, I'm getting up. I'm walking over to the dishes. I'm gonna do it.Suddenly a voice calls from the other room. Hey, you haven't done the dishes in a while. When are you gonna do them?Uh, I don't feel like doing them anymore. What just happened? Sometimes we're right about to do a thing with our own volition. And somebody else suddenly says, Hey, go do the thing, and suddenly our desire to do it is gone. Our sense of agency was, in a sense, attacked wittingly or otherwise. Our hero already struggling with a want of motivation. Whim, or the muse finally had the winds tickling the sails.When someone else told them to do the very same thing, the desire was gone. Many of us struggle with being told what to do.Some blame dopamine. There's not enough. It's outta balance. It isn't interesting or urgent enough. Some make a moral accusation of laziness and the like.However, when we approach from perspective our ourselves as growing human beings, you might recognize an early template at work. When our environments tell us what to do in this out of tune manner, in some way that doesn't quite recognize where we are, we might reject it.Clean your room when our minds are elsewhere. When any process of transition is ignored rather than guided, doesn't work, it often creates problems.The lack of empathy may not have been malicious. It was simply a disengaged approach to a mind that wanders, a mind fueled by, and reveling in play, creativity and discovery.It may not even have been possible. The transition simply too long in whatever the scope of what needed to happen.But when these things happen over and over, we absorb this message that our natural mental rhythms are somehow wrong, contrasting with the self that clearly exists, regardless of how wrong we accuse it of being and so we rebel.Unfortunately, we may internalize the rebellion as well, forming a form of reflex, an unconscious ready path of rejection. We rebel against ourselves. The authority within.How often have you written, write report, or some similar item on a task list? Only to see it later and then say, well, "not now."Later. Continues to be later, as later always does, and the task languishes until it sinks below the surface or a deadline threatens from the horizon. We saw our past self as this unempathic authority to reject. When we see the task "do dishes" and the like, our emotions swell reflecting the relationships we've internalized.Without a simultaneous honoring of our past self, caring for our future selves and respect for our present self, we channel and perpetuate the injuries. Our tasks, lists, and shiny new apps only become the medium.Music - "Shallow Breath" Today's piece of music is a quiet, contemplative one. It's called shallow breath. I hope you enjoy it.  Mentioned in this episode:Rhythms of Focus - CTA - Subscribe, Rate, and Review

In this episode of 'Rhythms of Focus,' listeners explore the concept of 'trip wires' as a tool for mindfulness and task management. Discover how to set effective reminders for your future self and understand the phenomenon of 'Sticky Decor Decay,' where unaddressed reminders blend into the background over time. Learn actionable strategies to prevent task overwhelm and ensure your reminders stay effective. Plus, enjoy an original piano composition titled 'Humming the End' that underscores the episode's themes. Subscribe and visit rhythmsoffocus.com for more insights tailored for adults with wandering minds and ADHD.00:00 Sticky Decor Decay01:37 The Need to Store Intentions01:58 Trip Wires03:47 "Sticky Decor Decay"05:24 SDD as a List06:19 An Equation Makes Science!?Hashtags #ADHD #WanderingMinds #MindfulProductivity #FocusHabits #CreativeAgency #Intentions #SelfCompassion #Neurodivergent #RhythmsOfFocus #PianoMeditationTranscript I gotta do this and I gotta do that. You know what, I'll just leave this thing over here. Yeah, I'll leave this here to remind myself.Three months go by.What the heck is this doing here?  The Need to Store IntentionsWe can't do everything at the same time. The options are many, but the actions need to be singular. We need to take out the garbage, but something just fell to the floor. We need to remember to move a thing to the garage, but right now we're doing the dishes. We need to buy stuff from the store, but right now we're not going to the store.Trip WiresOne means of managing this is to use a trip wire. What do I mean by a trip wire? Well, a tripwire is a reminder that we set for our future selves. We have some intention now that we're not done with, we'd like to get to, and so we ask our future self,"Hey, can you pick this up for me?"The hope is that future self will then see, hear, feel somehow experience this reminder, then pick up that thing and follow through while our present self does whatever else.We do this all the time. Maybe we put a grocery list on a sticky note by the door, so we see it as we leave the house. Maybe we leave that book by the nightstand to remind ourselves to read it. Maybe we'll leave a vacuum cleaner out in the morning before leaving to work, to remind ourselves, perhaps optimistically, to vacuum later in the afternoon.The hope is that we'd be reminded about a thing and then do something in that moment.This can be a viable strategy. That does apply a certain pressure on our future selves and that they need to not only receive that information, but also then act in that moment acting in a way that aligns with present self, including managing those "I don't wanna feelings" when they receive it. Even so it's still not the whole picture. For example, I prepared sandwiches for myself for lunch later in the day, only to leave them on the kitchen table, unrefrigerated, only realized when lunch rolls around.I partially solved the problem with a trip wire by putting it in a plastic bag and hanging it on the doorknob. But then again, sometimes I still forget. I walk through the door, seemingly only mildly annoyed that there's something hanging on the doorknob, as I walk out,"I have places to go, things on my mind. That thing in the doorknob, well, I'll deal with that later." "Sticky Decor Decay"The funny thing about trip wires is that when we don't act on them, they decay. It's not just sandwiches, it's anything. In fact, I've come up with this phrase that's kind of fun to say. It's called "Sticky Decor Decay." Sticky Decor Decay.It has zero basis in any scientific rigor whatsoever, but I wonder if it might resonate with you, and I'm trying to come up with an equation to describe this. Maybe one that you, dear listeners can help me out with. So if you come up with some ideas and think that it's, uh, I'm onto something, or if you can improve on it, whatever it is, drop me a line.It goes something like this. When we first see a trip wire, something we've laid out for ourselves, we can address it or not.When I say addressing something, I mean taking action with it, or maybe changing it, or at least acknowledging its presence, the lack of a possible current action, and what would be necessary to take action with it, and arranging for that.If we don't address the trip wire, it has, let's say a 50% increased chance of blending into the background.In fact, every time we don't address it, it keeps fading by another 50%. So, as an example, if the trip wire had a 0% chance of blending into the background in the first instance, we saw it, by the time we pass it five times without addressing it, it has approximately a 97% chance of blending into the background.It has now become part of the decor. It decays into decor. Sticky Decor Decay in a ListNow we can see the same process happen with our tasks and lists. For example, let's say you have a list of things to do that dreaded "things to do" list.Quite easily, items can sit there undone. We jump from one side to another, everywhere in between searching for what's simultaneously easy and important or maybe best aligned with our current state of interest and energy. But somewhere along the way, the tasks in between the serious ones, the heavy ones, the poorly worded ones, the ones that don't reflect our current realities, all that well stick around.Not only do they stick around. They are ignored and as they're ignored, they seem to accrue like coat hangers in a closet or rabbits in the spring, they just multiply, choking out the list, contributing to that sense of overwhelm. As they multiply, they just glom onto each other. They're sticky, sticky decor decay.An Equation Makes Science!?So. Here's an equation I've come up with, and I understand that the audio podcast is totally not the medium for describing an equation, but whatever. I'm gonna do it anyway.From the get go. A trip wire has a certain percentage chance of standing out. Let's call that T for trip wire.How well it stands out also depends on the clutter around it. P for physical clutter, M for mental clutter, like scatter, exhaustion, confusion, and more.But there are also these undercurrents of habits, H of managing that area. For example, if we have a habit of cleaning the dishes in the sink, adding a mug there is an easy to use ready trip wire to remind us to clean the mug. But if we don't have that habit, it doesn't work so well, often just becoming more clutter.There's also how much the trip wire loses its power over time as we pass it by without addressing it as I was just describing. Let's call that L for power loss. I gave it 50% in the example earlier.And then there's how many times we've passed it by. We can give that letter N for number, so the equation. T tripwire times H, habit times L, loss to the nth power divided by P times M, mental clutter, all multiplied by K, where K stands for the sticky decor decay constant.And now because it's an equation, it's totally scientific. If this makes any sense whatsoever to you or not at all, I'd love to hear your thoughts. So the next time you plan to leave something out, to remind yourself to do something, consider writing an equation about it, then making a podcast out of it and consulting your podcast community, then write about it to your newsletter, and that way you don't have to do the vacuuming, at least not just yet.Wine and Music - "Humming the End"I once took a wine tasting class. It was my senior year of college, and I remember the teacher saying something along the lines of, there are many things that can go into the taste of a wine, but one thing I appreciate most is how long the taste lasts.When we listen to music, a similar thing happens.First pass is really only a formatting of sorts. While much is already there from past listens. This projection we do as we try to understand anything really, there's this new world to discover in sound. The worlds are simple spaces created by left, right, up, down nature of it all. Twos are contrasted with fours highs, with lows, all creating this sonic playground for the mind, this part of ourselves after listening that said, Hmm, I had fun in that playground. I'd like to do that again. It comes out as I'd like to listen again.Our minds are asking to play in that world to form, to grow our minds associate and bound about. If you have ever found yourself humming along with a piece of music, whether it's the exact notes or some harmony, it's your mind playing.We listen again and again, though often with decreasing frequencies trailing off as we've learned through that play, whatever it is that we would learn.Sometimes these pieces become parts of our communities. Our worlds the supportive riverbed for our intentions, if not spirits, we hear them because they mean something to us and sometimes we don't. The swing sets may not fit us anymore.Either way, we come to some settled place with it. New ideas and sensations only come through as ripples, if at all. No new information comes to mind.And so I have a similar measure of music as my teacher did with wine. I like it when a piece of music stays with me and I listen to it and I come back to it over time.I like it when seems to stumble at the beginning. I'm like, what is this? But then as you give it a few more listens, the structure becomes more and more apparent.That number of times that some part of us genuinely asks to repeat those listens, that length of how long it lasts, it resonates as being a good piece of music.So this piece of music that I'll play for you now, it's called Humming the...

Discover eight distinct “gears” of focus—stages we moves through, from simply being, to considering, approaching, and ultimately performing at our best. Honoring each gear transforms frustration and procrastination into creative flow and agency. Drawing parallels to music, emotional waves, and mindful play, this episode invites listeners to see hard work not as a battle, but as a dance with emotion, context, and self-compassion.Learn to recognize and move through all eight "gears" of focus, from daydreaming to performingEvery episode features an original piano composition—this time, enjoy “On a Dare” in C minor. Subscribe and find more mindful productivity resources at rhythmsoffocus.com—because your rhythm matters more than rigid rules.Hashtags#ADHD #WanderingMinds #MindfulProductivity #FocusStrategies #Agency #Creativity #EmotionalWaves #RhythmNotRules #GentleSelfMastery #PianoAndFocusTranscript Sometimes we could just fall right into a project, pick it up, and bam, we're in it. Even when we hit a bump here and there, we can make it through sailing. Other times, sometimes even with the same project, just on some other day, a sense of revulsion can just emanate from it.Or maybe we barely consider, it doesn't even come to mind, or maybe we start to ruminate about it. Keeps coming to mind and we think, Ugh, I really have to figure that one out. Meanwhile, the deadline creeps along until it crosses that threshold where we finally kick into gear. In either case, whether we're enjoying something or we're trying to avoid it, we go through many of the same steps, and when we know them, we can start to more deliberately take on the things that are difficult or have that, "I don't wanna" cloud around it. I in fact, count eight different gears in which we can engage something, what I call eight gears of focus.In a Plane with a BookHave you ever been on an airplane or some enclosed space? Where you didn't have wifi or minimal distractions, but you do have a book. I imagine somewhere in your life you've been in something of the situation. What happened?You may well have started to read. Not only that may have even started to get into it and then wondered,Why can't I always do this?Somewhere in here you might think you were forced to read 'cause that's all you could do, but I'd suggest that's not really what's happening. In fact, what's happening is that we're supported by the zeroth gear of focus.There are eight gears of focus that I count starting with this zeroth gear.When we're good at something, we naturally move back and forth through these gears. Shifting is needed without even thinking about it. Sometimes we support them, sometimes we ignore them and get into a lot of trouble. It's when we get into difficult matters where things really throw us off.We lose sight of these gears, or we don't even feel them as we naturally progress through them. And that's where we can get into a lot of trouble, like habits that don't take hold and projects that are never followed through.So today I thought I'd outline these gears.They're, uh, an important part of the waves of focus course that I've put together for those with wandering minds, ADHD, and beyond. But I think we go through all of these gears, regardless of neurology. See I have this theory that hard work is emotional work. Complex work requires the management of overwhelm. Even physically threatening work like being a firefighter requires the management of fear. Logic itself is a flow of play through seeking and understanding.Emotion, and at least the definition I use is that which crests into consciousness, whether by caress or crash.Our focus is our means of choosing and riding one or some set of these emotional waves that are currently brushing into the hull of conscious awareness. And as these waves continue to move, into crash into us, the distractions, the struggles, the confusion, overwhelm, rage, "I don't wanna" feelings and more we have to still navigate amongst them.We do this all the time unconsciously. Particularly when we're engaged, enjoying a thrilling video game, we constantly are confronted with the challenge. If we weren't, the game wouldn't be successful. Once we hit challenge, we have a means of thinking through what to do and where to go next to explore limits and follow some story step that we co-create, whether to walk into a cave or take the next headshot.When we consciously are aware of these steps, we're that much better equipped to address the difficult tasks, the hard, the emotional as they present.Zeroth Gear - BeSo let's begin with the beginning. This zeroth gear of being. In being we're without intention. We stare off into space, we daydream, we simply exist. It would seem silly to call this anything.How does having no intention relate to work or play or anything related to productivity at all? In the example of the book on the plane, we weren't forced. No one's forcing our eyes into the page. No one's forcing the words to travel into our minds and embed themselves anywhere. Instead, we move rhythmically back and forth, maybe staring first at the fabric of the seat in front of us.We might look up at the flight attendant and wonder about who they are. Maybe get annoyed at the leg room. I wonder about the person sitting next to us, back to the pattern on the fabric on the seat in front of us. But at some point, maybe we touch the binding of the book, admire its craft or not at all.Flip the book open. Look through it. What's in the chapter headings? The words start their way in. Maybe an idea comes to mind and then somehow we're back looking at that fabric, that pattern. What is that pattern? Flight attendants coming back. I wonder when I can say what I want to drink, how long it's gonna take, wait, what do I want to drink?Wait, if I drink, do I have to go to the bathroom? Oh man. And then you're back in the book. On and on. This goes on. But somewhere along the way in this flow back and forth, something happens and we are in it. We can imagine the characters, the foundational principles, the whatever of the book. What started as slow is now this proper flow.The stories that come to mind, warm us, anger us, capture us in the world between the words.We could simply be. And when we allowed ourselves to simply be, we also found a way to tune in. We connected at our pace. In pausing, we can space out and allow thoughts and associations to bubble into consciousness. In being we better perceive and receive.So much of the work of work is in crafting our contexts to be able to support our ability to be, where the thresholds are raised, to avoid going off into other things, but allowing us to be there with what we decide our intention to be. So that was our zero gear being.First Gear - ConsiderNow, our first gear is where we begin to relate to our intentions. And intentions about wanting something to be in a different state than it currently is. When concrete, we can see the end state. We know the steps. When it's creative, we cannot see the end or know the steps there.Instead, a creative intention, something that we have to be creative with, is about discovering something in the act of creating it. Every step reveals something , blurry as that vision may be.And when we consider, we imagine where we are, where we'd like to be, we allow thoughts to come to mind, we associate in those ideal times where we can allow our associations to come to a standstill or a gentle ripple, simply where no new information comes to mind. We reach that point of acknowledgement. We see those parts as best as we can. We, this moment, as clear as they can be, risks, fears, concerns, they're there, unchanging. Our options are before us, including inaction. What do I know about this book? What are the chapters? Who are the characters? What can I bring to mind? Where do I think this might go?Grounding ourselves in our present experience, and the vision that we have gently starts stirring the emotional pools within our mind.Second Gear - ApproachSo zero is being, one is consideration. Two is our approach as we approach. Looking at the book, looking at the project, looking at the garage that's in disarray, whatever the project, somehow we start to feel something. We might even be an immediate hit with a sense of wanting to run away. But if we can stay with that emotion, connect to that tension, that frustration, or whatever the feeling is, doors, windows, portals of challenge might start to appear.If you've ever done yoga, you might have a physical sense of this.In approaching a position, you can feel the tension come alive. Paying attention to that tension, you can then slow yourself down, find some simplicity in it, find something small you can do within that tension. If you ignore it well, you might hurt yourself. But in paying attention to it, you start engaging something, growing something, developing something within yourself.With a book, you might feel overwhelmed, lost in the characters, the ideas confused. We might try to hold on to those feelings of confusion, we can then wonder, what is it that's confusing me? What's overwhelming me? Again, we can slow it down. We can shrink down. We can find some tiny next action, simplify down to a single sentence, if not word.It's in that slowing down, simplifying, shrinking down, that we can find ease. And in finding ease as small as that may be, maybe just brushing the dust off that project that's been sitting there forever, we start to find what we can trust. And finding what we can trust within ourselves, we can start finding that place of play, that spirit, that growth that...

In this episode of "Rhythms of Focus," we consider distraction and stimulation. When our minds wander and the pull of the phone grows strong, we search for stimulation is actually a longing for real meaning and energy in what we do.Explore how our emotions shape the way we focus and why boredom so often pushes us toward escape. In pausing—noticing our feelings instead of avoiding them—we can find agency. Mindfully, we practice shifting from reactivity to a state where we can choose what feels truly right for each of us.Takeaways from this episode:Recognize what fuels the urge to distract ourselves and how to address it with understandingLearn a practical technique for pausing and noticing emotions to unlock a new sense of agencyDiscover how awareness can transform moments of discomfort into opportunities for meaningful actionThis episode features our original piano piece, “Prelude to an End,” to help anchor these reflections and support our mindful rhythm.Subscribe for more supportive conversations, and visit rhythmsoffocus.com to deepen your journey with us.Hashtags #ADHD #WanderingMinds #MindfulProductivity #Agency #EmotionalResilience #Creativity #FocusChallenges #Neurodivergent #IntentionalLiving #PianoMusic Trancript  "What if I did my weekly review? Oh, but I just gotta write that report. I'm a nails need clipping. I would rather go and do that. No. How about if I just, uh, yeah. Hopeless. But I think I just need a reset. Let's see what's on Instagram here."Three hours go by."Where did the day go? Oh my goodness, I had so much to do."     Getting lost in the day. The media politics, both grand and in the family, it's far too easy to lose our bearings. We might blame this sense in ourselves that we need stimulation. Whatever it is we're "supposed to do" is simply not stimulating enough. Might be quite boring, in fact, but what is that craving for stimulation?The word itself is so bland.We might say, well, I need something that's shiny or on fire as a client of mine would say. But even these are not enough to describe what this is.Stimulation, is this stand-in for a sense of vitality. We want to feel alive, some depth of meaning growing somewhere within us. All right, so how is that related to this infinite scrolling on our phones? Well, any number of emotions get touched off. Humor connects because it draws attention to something we haven't considered. Some surprise and discovery, some edge of society. Fear connects because it tells us to look over here at the risk of peril. Sex connects because the creative spirit in lust is just that powerful, this massive momentum carrying us through the ages.All of these emotions connect to some sense of meaning within ourselves.So how can a report possibly compete? We need stimulation again because we need something to feel real.Alright, so what the heck does this have to do with any form of productivity in whatever shape or form? Well, when we can acknowledge that the so-called need for stimulation is more truly about some need to feel alive, we can find a new direction.For example, let's say we're able in some rare moment to catch ourselves scrolling through the phone, wonder to ourselves, well, what am I doing? The initial impulse might be to say, how do I avoid this? How do I get out of this phone?Well, I'll try to do nothing. Well, that rarely works. Nature of which our minds are apart abhors a vacuum. That phone is easily reached for once again, the unconscious forces are powerful, much more so than that blip of consciousness with which we sail our lives and we ignore that power at our own peril.It's all too easy to just find ourselves in the phone, not realizing we were there. Another impulse might be,I'll try to do something. Anything else!Sometimes this works, like a smoker trying to quit finding some chewing gum. Or maybe we throw ourselves into that report, maybe even getting something done.But there is a third option, which is not so apparent, and that is to pause.Pausing seems like nothing. What's the difference between pausing and doing nothing? Well, in a pause. We're conscious, we can deliberately feel the boredom, pay direct attention to it, might even attempt to locate it in our body.Where does it register? How does the feeling feel? Again, what's the point? The point is that this practice begins shifting emotion from driver to messenger.Boredom is the driver that sent us scrolling.In other words, by pausing, we heighten our sense of agency, that ability to decide and engage non-reactively. That non-reactive bit, that shifting of emotion from driver to messenger is born in the pause. That ability is core to deciding what's most meaningful, what's most alive in us in this moment of the Now, and we can decide which of the many waves we wish to ride from that pause.Maybe instead of continuing to scroll, we decide to rest ourselves in the face of the tensions of that report, to sit with them, brave the feelings that it seems to emanate. Maybe we find within those feelings some window of challenge, that kindling of play.And when we don't acknowledge an emotion, we don't hear its message, so its spirit has this greater tendency to blend into us, suffuse us, take us over. In the internal family systems model of psychotherapy, we could say it doesn't trust us, and so it takes the driver's seat without our knowing.So as a takeaway here, consider the practice of pausing.Maybe after this episode ends, take a moment to pause and consider what is the feeling? It's probably the hardest of the entire range of productivity ideas, but I think it's also the most important.    Every session, every wave of focus comes to an end. But as we end, we can take a deliberate approach to setting things aside and preparing for some next visit, some next time we return, in effect, sending a care package to our future selves. And doing so is something of a wave within a wave with its own approach, middle and end.Today's piece of music is called Prelude to an End.  Mentioned in this episode:Join the Weekly Wind Down NewsletterThe Weekly Wind Down is an exploration of wandering minds, task and time management, and more importantly, how we find calmer focus and meaningful work.

Feeling stuck—where even the simplest task feels too heavy to lift? In this episode, instead of chasing rigid productivity, listeners will discover the subtle art of finding ease within challenge, tuning into the rhythms of play, and learning how to gently move forward even when motivation wanes.Listeners will learn:How play, frustration, and challenge intertwine, illuminating gentler ways forwardPractical methods to surface and honor emotions that hinder focus, catalyzing growth through compassionTakeaways:Pause to reflect deeply before acting, creating space for authentic decisionsShrink tasks down to their smallest steps, inviting ease rather than pressureChannel rhythms of natural play into even the most stubborn work momentsThis episode features a performance of Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag. Subscribe and join our growing community at rhythmsoffocus.com—where wandering minds thrive along waves of agency and creativity.Keywords#ADHD #WanderingMinds #Agency #Mindfulness #GentleProductivity #PlayfulFocus #EmotionalEase #CreativeFlow #CompassionateGrowth #MicroActionsTranscript  All right. Let's see what I've got on my list here to do today. All right. Uh, visit the gym. Are you kidding me?  Sometimes the simplest things can feel like the heaviest weights. The simpler they are, the more paradoxically we "can't be bothered."Head to the garage, show up to the dishes, open the report- all of these can come with a wave of revulsion.How could we ever move forward?I often and continue to espouse a "visit" as a powerful unit of work. This idea of showing up to something or bringing it to ourselves and staying there for one single deep breath, and then making a decision as to what we wanna do, whether walk away or into the work.It is a powerful unit of work, but even so, it might still be too difficult to make it there, even with this idea of not having to do a thing.What then? I imagine there have been times that you've been here. Maybe someone kept bugging you, maybe a due date crept along far enough, or just yelled at yourself into this sort of painful, "just start" and you finally started going.But there are gentler paths and you may well have done those too.Take for example, how we already act when we are in play. When we enjoy something naturally, we might bump into frustrations, take stock of where we are, slow down, break things down, simplify things, find some ease once again, and finally return with that ease back into challenge. Dynamically, we tune to the windows of challenge for where we are in that moment.We find those places that are not so easy to be boring and not so intense as to be overwhelming.We can adapt the same process to difficult work, hard work, something we can also call emotional work, only by bringing the process to consciousness. The first and perhaps most important step is to pause, where we reflect without reacting, where we can connect to that deeper sense of self. It gives us that space to decide:" Maybe this isn't even a thing that is meaningful for me at all."But if we do decide to move forward. We can also sense in that pause where we rest in those emotions that we discover something hidden in the words that we've been using. The sort of, "I just don't wanna" sort of phrase, we might be saying to ourselves, we can discover this deep, complex, emotional world beneath those words.In that pause, we might see one such emotion that's contributing that of let's say, exhaustion. This consequence of repeated hits to our sense of agency, dropping, losing, forgetting things. We lose the sense of capability. Any attempt risks yet another injury as a fear of true inability would rear its ugly head in these clouds, choking us into collapse.Fully engaging these emotions, maybe even feeling them physically within our body, we can now better find this genuine tendril of ease, somewhere within there, somewhere within ourselves, or at least something easier. Whether we slow down, we break something down to some tiniest of tiny next steps, or find this fundamental basic within the complex moment, there may be something we can work into an ease.A being able to do with barely a thought, even if it's to hardly lift a leg off the couch. Finally, if we're able to find that path to that tiny ease, we can then ask,"Can I gently bring that ease with me forward and to some next step?"Sometimes we may even be able to continue onward to make a visit, stepping up to the work to stare at the vista now with our full emotional selves, and we can then fully decide whether or not to engage that wave of focus as smooth or as rough as it may end up being.So much of our culture, extols the virtue of the hard. Challenge- it can be wonderful, but how do we deal with it? It's not about pushing harder. No pain, no gain. This sentiment is there might be some truth to it somewhere within it, but it also skips the part of how the pain is more messenger than fuel.Why lose sight of the gentle origins of play nourished in an earth of gentle ease? We can certainly pay attention to pain, but we can also spend time and care where play may build into a more matured, elegance and supple power.So the takeaway here is the next time you find yourself in play in something you're enjoying, that feels meaningful to you, that has you in some depth, see if you can find those moments of frustration. Those moments where it's like,"Oh, how does this work?"And see how it fits in with challenge, how you might slow down, simplify, shrink things down, and then find that ease and come back and how that might be happening naturally without even conscious awareness.And if you can do that, think of how you might start bringing that to things that might be more difficult, things you might wanna avoid and see if that might actually be able to be transferred there too.   Scott Joplin, king of Ragtime, created this wonderful piece of music called the Maple Leaf Rag. Copyrighted in 1899  the piece is this jumble of back and forth ideas. One thing happens here, but it doesn't happen there. Over and over throughout the piece as I play it, I need to be in this sort of meditative question ofWhere am I?Because as soon as I lose sight of that question, I'm in the wrong place and have made plenty of mistakes.By many accounts performing this piece should be "hard." But the practice, as is with mastery in general, is about bringing what's hard, to easy and the gentle path there. We can break things down into the tiniest of single notes, single chords.Maybe I'm asking myself, oh, what's this about? And then I allow myself to wonder in my own time to form with the sounds.It's an absolutely lovely piece and I do hope you enjoy it.   Mentioned in this episode:Join the Weekly Wind Down NewsletterThe Weekly Wind Down is an exploration of wandering minds, task and time management, and more importantly, how we find calmer focus and meaningful work.

Discover why your latest app or productivity hack is not the real hero—or the real challenge. In this episode of "Rhythms of Focus," we explore what truly lies beneath those endless quests for the perfect system, shining a compassionate light on wandering minds and ADHD.Listeners will uncover how recognizing and respecting four key limits—time, agency, working memory, and trust—is far more liberating than forcing themselves into rigid molds. Instead of battling against limitations, you’ll learn to use them as anchors for meaningful work and creative rhythm. This episode unpacks the seductive promise of productivity systems, the artistry of aligning attention with intention, and gentle strategies to transform overwhelm into empowered agency.Key takeaways:Honor time, agency, working memory, and trust as necessary boundaries that support creative flow.Replace shame and frustration with self-compassion—embracing playful mastery over strict discipline.Discover actionable ways to build a trusted, resilient productivity environment that fits a wandering mind.As always, enjoy an original piano composition woven into today’s episode, designed to nurture calm and focus.If this resonates, subscribe and visit rhythmsoffocus.com for more insights, resources, and episodes to help your unique rhythm thrive.Hashtags #ADHD #WanderingMinds #Agency #MindfulProductivity #FocusRhythms #CreativeFlow #WorkWithLimits #SelfCompassion #AttentionMastery #OriginalMusic TranscriptWhy won't the system work?! I found a new productivity app, let me tell you about, it's the greatest thing ever. Oh, did you hear about that productivity book by Mr. Awesome Sauce. It's the greatest thing ever. Fast forward two months, uh, another system down the drain. I can't do any of these.Maybe there's just something wrong with me. I can't seem to make any of these work. What's going on? I what? What if it's not the app? What if it's not the book? What if it's not ourselves? All right, where is it then? Maybe it's in something we still need to acknowledge the limits.Seduction of an AppThe promises of some productivity system can be powerfully seductive.The idea is that we'd get more done with less effort. Stay on top of it all. Everything's organized. Everything shows up exactly where we need it. Heck, I do have a system myself and I think it's pretty darn awesome. Lemme tell you, it's all shiny and new, but that may well crash too.Pushing Limits We often push limits.It's important to push limits. Play, this depth and breadth of flow between self and world discovery, question and tension- it's a vitality that once it finds root can be such an inspirational flow. The sap of mastery and meaningful work and relationships. We see it in the toddler in their focus while they're stacking blocks and we see it in the craft's master that has that same focus as they're in that deep reverie.Play pushes limits. We tend to think of limits as somehow enemies, or perhaps they're ever present challenges that must be dominated, broken through, if not destroyed.And we can see that as well between the toddler and the adult.Supportive EnvironmentsTo reach that place of being able to stack blocks, we have a sense that our environment can hold us, that it won't interrupt us without care or reason.That's somehow takes us and our being hood into account. Maybe we push one way or the other. We try to wander this way or that. But time and again, in ways we know and in many ways we don't, perhaps only feeling it as this gentle wave from some distant shore, we are supported, in being here and now.The craftsperson similarly has done the work themselves of establishing those things, the environment, whether appearing to be a chaotic mess or this pristine lining of tools and resources. Somehow it's been placed to be in tune with that sense of the creative self.Internally too, skill and knowledge have been whittled as their own tools well worn in time and practice. They trust their environment to support that creative self. They can simply be and allow that creativity to well from within.Discovering and Acknowledging LimitsBut to get to those trusted environments, we discover those limits that line the objects of our world. Our words, our knowledge, our skills, our being hood exist by way of being bounded. Many artists quickly discover that limitations can, in fact, enhance creativity, but how? Is it simply that we limit options and therefore offer some relief to working memory? Is it some wordless inspiration perhaps? Well, it could be both. Likely more.I think it's through these testing of limits that we establish what we can trust. We know what the playground is, we know what works, what doesn't, and certainly we can test and retest our limits, what we can trust and what we cannot.But once we've established what we can trust, and more importantly, acknowledge, perhaps even respect them as things that exist, play has this tendency to appear.Defining ProductivityIn systems of productivity we have several limits that we need to respect. And before I even say what those limits are, I want to define productivity itself because it can be such a nasty and perverted word. Probably I could do a whole episode on that, but for now, just defining it.Productivity is the art and skill of bringing attention to intention, and that's it. This art and skill of bringing attention to an intention. Now, perhaps I can also differentiate that from meaningful productivity, which I define as a practice of finding and weaving mastery and meaningful work into our daily lives and relationships.Limits in ProductivityAll right, so now that I've defined the idea of productivity, there are four limits that I currently count that benefit from our respect, some of which we tend to be okay with, or at least pay lip service to, and others we ignore completely.These four are time, agency, working memory, and trust. I will say them again. Time, agency, working memory and trust.The trouble with most systems is that we don't recognize, let alone acknowledge that we're limited, further, that we have to balance ourselves within these limits. As an example, when we're asked to make a "brain dump," we might initially feel relieved,Hey, I don't have to hold this in my mind.But quickly we become overwhelmed again, if not worse than before. We are overwhelmed with our sense of obligation, some responsibilities consciously, some unconsciously, agreed to, our sense of needing to organize this brain dump, now, to be able to even know what organized means when it comes to this mess we've now created.We do not trust we can get to what we want to. We have no sense of time for it. It does not fit our working memory.Let's take another example that of "hyperscheduling," this practice of scheduling every minute of the day as if we were budgeting our time like money. Here we clearly do acknowledge the limits of time, but we avoid the limits of agency in our sense of trust of being able to follow through.For example, agency being this ability and skill to decide and engage non-reactively appears at numerous points when we've hyper scheduled.When that time comes to do the thing, how would we feel? What if something more important were going on? What if we miss something? How do we stop if we're not done? And there are many other questions that can come to mind.These questions are particularly important to a wandering mind, whose time sense is more aligned to nature's time than to that of the manmade clock. Check out episode 23 for more on that. Yes, we can make adjustments on the fly, but that drains that sense of agency and we're confronted with the worries of procrastination and the plain and simple, "I don't wanna" feelings.Let's take a look at a third example that of the weekly review. The advice is to go through each one of our projects and make sure that all of them have a next action in place, getting the actions themselves generally more organized, that each of these actions are then listed on the correct action lists, all of which can be useful ideas. I myself even listed in one of my books something like 20 different questions you could Review at a weekly review. And the idea is to do this every week.One of my students described this process to be something like dragging sandpaper across his eyes. Quite a brutal metaphor. It's incredibly exhausting, and one of the reasons why many people often don't stick with this aspect of a system.In this situation, we're not respecting the limits of agency.We often refer to energy, but I'm not sure that's often useful in our thoughts here because energy can fluctuate widely depending on what we're doing, but we can still show up as in a visit and then make a decision. Sometimes we find the energy by plucking at those windows of challenge that meet us where we are.But agency, that ability to decide and engage as we reflect on the sense of emotions and options of the moment, that does seem to have its limits. It's not clear what those limits are. It's not measurable in the usual sense of measuring it. Then again, most things that are meaningful cannot be measured.We can still consider it internally. For example, I've since simplified my weekly review. The primary question I ask is, when and how will I see it again? I can tie it to my central attention hub, that then presents things when and where I want to see them. And I do that in a way that doesn't overwhelm me.A TakeawayThere are many other examples of troubles that we can get into with our systems, but the takeaway is this, whatever...

Break free from the tyranny of the unbroken streak—what if focus meant something deeper than chasing another checkmark? This episode of Rhythms of Focus invites wandering minds and adults with ADHD to let go of the pressure to “never miss a day,” discovering a kinder, rhythm-based approach to meaningful growth.In this episode, explore:- Why the “Don’t Break the Chain” habit method can create more anxiety and shame than mastery.- How shifting from scorekeeping to presence transforms habit-building from a rigid tally into a playful, mindful journey.- Practical strategies to reframe loss and missed days as part of life’s natural ebb and flow—fostering agency rather than guiltKey takeaways:- Learn why focusing on experience rather than streaks fosters real mastery and self-compassion.- Discover the three-part Daily Invite: decide, be, and act—without the weight of perfection.- Begin to view your habits as musical rhythms, not broken chains—open to improvisation, pauses, and creative renewal.This episode features an original piano composition, “Ascend,” reflecting the dance between struggle and growth. Subscribe for more gentle, empowering strategies, and visit rhythmsoffocus.com for resources tailored to creative, neurodivergent thinkers.### Hashtags:#ADHD #WanderingMinds #FocusRhythms #MindfulProductivity #GentleHabits #SelfCompassion #DailyInvite #CreativeGrowth #Agency #NeurodiversityMentioned in this episode:Join the Weekly Wind Down NewsletterThe Weekly Wind Down is an exploration of wandering minds, task and time management, and more importantly, how we find calmer focus and meaningful work.

A short little poemMentioned in this episode:Rhythms of Focus - CTA - Subscribe, Rate, and Review

Uncover a revolutionary approach to managing ADHD and wandering minds in this episode of 'Rhythms of Focus.' Discover the 'Waves of Focus,' a comprehensive guide designed to transition you from force-based productivity to trust-based agency. Delve into key concepts such as the anchor, visit, and visit guide. Understand how to create a meaningful, rhythm-oriented life framework that enhances agency and mindfulness. - Key Takeaways: - Learn to transition from force-based to trust-based productivity. - Discover tools and techniques like the anchor and visit guide. - Understand how to create meaningful rhythms and improve your sense of agency.Subscribe to 'Rhythms of Focus' and visit rhythmsoffocus.com. ### Links- [Crocodile and Cube: In the Studio](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaRbIj8RyZIaLGCiP4DYnPBsTbKuSj1Nw)- [Episode 4](https://rhythms-of-focus.captivate.fm/episode/from-force-to-flow-with-a-visit/)- [Episode 9](https://rhythms-of-focus.captivate.fm/episode/i-dont-wanna-and-the-practice-of-agency/)- [Episode 14](https://rhythms-of-focus.captivate.fm/episode/the-magnified-mind/)### Keywords #WavesofFocus #Agency #Mindfulness #RhythmsOfFocus #Tools #ADHD #WanderingMinds #TrustBasedProductivity #AnchorTechnique #VisitGuide00:00 The Principles of the Waves of Focus03:36 What are the Waves of Focus?03:47 One - a Goal04:30 Second - a Philosophy06:19 Three - a Metaphor08:01 Four - A Set of Tools09:29 Five - A Framework12:25 Six - A Set of Rhythms14:55 Seven - a Practice15:26 Final Thoughts15:59 Music - "The Dust Cleared"Transcript How do we approach challenge? Sometimes we turn away, sometimes we dive in, sometimes we sidle up next to it. Gently stir the water with a big toe slip our legs in, sit with our feet dangling as we look across the pond and wonder. So I put a challenge before myself here now. It's about trying to explain my life's work, this Waves of Focus.A guide for those with wandering minds, ADHD, and beyond. This course that I've put together, and I wanna be able to describe it in as short and simple as possible in this episode today. How the heck am I gonna do that?    When you live and breathe something, it can become difficult to say what it's about to someone who doesn't live and breathe that same thing.Sometimes we simply have a vision in our head. It could be a vision of a deck. We're trying to build a memory that came to mind from something that was said, an interesting idea about a story.Whatever it is, it's hard to explain it, and sometimes it's even hard to explain to ourselves.There's this hilarious set of YouTube videos called Crocodile and Cube. I'll link to it in the show notes. In which there's this one character, where he, hears something in his mind, this music, and he wants to create it.And there's this other person that he's working with and they're trying to make sense of it. They're saying, okay, one person tells the story of what they want to hear. The other person tries to put it together, and together they try to bring this out into the world. It's a wonderful metaphor for the parts that can live within ourselves, even.And wandering minds tend to connect with a depth of experience, a reality that feels alive. Words can feel hollow and brittle at times, unless they're really backed up by that sense of reality within them. How do we translate these ideas, these images, these somethings within our mind, into words, into images we can describe to others. and to anything?But somehow we do. Artists, authors, creators, we all practice, define, refine over time, and eventually we come up with maybe not just a single story, but. Many perspectives. Really many stories. Well, anyway, . Enough rambling.What are the Waves of Focus?What are the Waves of Focus? Well, it's really about seven different things, honestly, which is probably why I've had such a tough time explaining it.But I'm gonna break 'em all down here and give 'em to you. One at a time.One - a GoalFirst off, the Waves of Focus is a goal. I've described this transition from being able to move from force -based work to one that is more trust -based, where if we can believe in our own ability to engage things, take things on in our own time, and genuinely believe that, then we won't have to force ourselves to do things.And when we believe genuinely that we can decide and act of our own accord, we tend to find, play and care, these spirits of mastery and meaningful work.And these emotions of play and care as we are able to deliver them and find meaningful work connect them to our lives, our intentions, our relationships. It helps us feel alive.Second - a PhilosophySecondly, waves of focus is a philosophy that when we force ourselves, it's often because we don't trust ourselves. We drop things, we lose things, we forget things. We stumble through the social world and more.We lose trust that we can make things happen of our own will. I mean, why would we? We've proven it that we haven't been able to. As an example, I have to act on this thought. While it's on my mind, I have to drop these other things because otherwise I'll lose it.In this case, we suspend our ability to decide because we don't feel like we can. It's a luxury.We force ourselves through many methods, many, besides the one I just mentioned. Deadlines, shame, sometimes asking others to be reminders, asking them to take on our agency because we feel we have none.But if we could restore that trust in our abilities and our skills, in our sense that we could meaningfully, responsibly, be in tune with our own rhythms, where play and care tend to appear, and that felt genuine.Wouldn't that be wonderful?Trust is a feeling, a sense that something will continue to behave as a has been such that it might be relied on. Trust cannot be forced, cannot be willed into being. It's not a decision.In order to trust ourselves, we have to genuinely believe that we can, for example, set something aside and come back .Trust grows with agency. Agency is our skill and ability to decide and engage non-reactively. It's where and how we take risks, find, challenge, engage what's meaningful.I believe it to be the centerpiece of any meaningful productivity. Not action, not, not even the task. Whether you're looking at sport, study, art, leisure, business, whatever the field, the focus is trust grows with agency. Three - a MetaphorAlright, first the Waves of Focus is this goal of moving away from force and towards trust and self. Second, it's a philosophy that practicing a sense of agency could help us get there.Third, is that the Waves of Focus is a metaphor of experience this boat on the sea of emotions As wandering minds, we struggle with a constrained, but magnified world. We exist in the now and profoundly so.The Now exists. We can't see too far, but what we see is our world, and it looms large. We can explore deeply in this moment and then lose sight of the rest because that is what our lens of consciousness is.The periphery, the Not Now, the distance beyond that now whether weeks or even seconds away, can feel unreal.The storms, the winds, desire, regret, worry, demands, urgency, commitments all hit us that much stronger because The Now is our world, as much as those waves may come in from the Not Now this melding blend of dream, fear and fantasy flowing into the moment.Meanwhile, we must do the things.It can be difficult to deliberately set sail in any particular direction.What if I miss something? I really wanna do this, but I need to do that. I don't have the motivation or the interest. How can I do anything?While we may not trust ourselves, we do trust the power of the winds and waters around us. Urgency, desire, the shiny, the on fire, we can grab onto those.Four - A Set of ToolsSo first the Waves of Focus is this goal moving away from force to trust. Second, a philosophy that our sense of agency is center. Third is this metaphor of a boat in the winds and waters of emotion in which the wandering mind can often feel at the mercy of these elements.Fourth is that the Waves of Focus is also a set of tools that help us manage, that help us sail in this sea.There are quite a number of tools within the Waves of Focus, three of which I'm certain you know very well already and these are the calendar, alerts, and pen and paper, though you can substitute digital files if you'd like.The Waves of Focus gives again a number of additional tools, but three of them probably give it its most unique nature. And these are the anchor, the visit, and the guide. Together with calendar and alerts, pen and paper, these tools create the foundational supports for the Waves of Focus, and they can rest on top of whatever else you use.The Waves of Focus are not meant to supplant whatever system you've got. Whatever you've been building has been built over a lifetime. Some of it works, some of it doesn't. But rather than replace it, it'd be better to build trust where you...