Rhythms of Focus

78. You Can't Trust Yourself on Command

Too often we're given the well intentioned advice to "just trust yourself." For some, it seems like such a simple thing to do, a forgone conclusion. For those of us with ADHD and wandering minds, we've likely burned ourselves several times over, diving in too quickly, assigning unrealistic expectations, and unknowingly setting trust traps we have no other option but to step in. Trust is something that can only be built over time. Something you have successfully shown up to in the past provides evidence for the future. This week's podcast episode asks us to put trust on hold and begin with a leap of faith instead. Resources Referenced: Rhythms of Focus podcast episode 75 - Building Trust with a Wandering Mind Transcript: Just trust yourself. Maybe we read that in a book. Maybe a kind friend says so, or a course, or a poster with a sunrise on it. We can nod because it sounds true, and then tomorrow shows up and we sit down to the work and nothing's different. Whatever those words were pointing at evaporates. So what's going on? An Instruction That Cannot Be Followed I've defined trust before. I'll do it again because it is absolutely fundamental, not just to engaging our work, but our lives in general. Trust is a developing sense that something will continue to behave as it has been, such that we can rely on it. Trust is a feeling. It's grown from experience. It's not a decision. That's the trouble with the phrase, "Trust yourself," we cannot decide our way into a feeling. I've never won an argument with an emotion. I cannot tell an emotion what to do. I cannot will an emotion into existence. Told to trust ourselves while the evidence argues otherwise, we have two options. One, we fake it. We repeat the words until they sound like our own voice. The power of positive thinking and its many descendants wait there to cheer us on. Or two, when it inevitably doesn't work, we conclude that we're broken Everyone else seems to be able to follow the instructions. Why can't I? Neither path is any good, so let's maybe consider a third option. The Other Word The other word that I think gets confused with trust is faith. And this is faith with a little F. I'm defining faith with a little F as a decision we make without complete evidence. While trust is grown, faith is chosen. There's a risk in it. There's a leap. We make a decision feeling the risk, all the emotions that come with it. It's a well-reflected list to take that leap. Those two words are often blurred together on the self-help shelf and in our own minds. When someone says, "Trust yourself," what they're really inviting is an act of faith, a decision to risk something before the evidence is in. That name change, that perspective change is important because it allows us this different path in, because now we can reflect on the risk. The feeling cannot be commanded, but a decision can be made. We can't practice trust directly, but we can take leaps calculated. The Smallest Leap When I talk about building an honor guide in other episodes, this is the sort of thing that we use to help develop things over time, to orchestrate our days, to remove our dependence on deadlines and the like. The initial seed of a guide begins with a question, not a promise. And it's a question made of risk. It's, "Can I make a visit to this tomorrow?" It's not a vow. It's not a new life starting on Monday. It's a question inviting a measured act of faith, a risk, that tomorrow we might show up to something, look at a thing, and then decide for ourselves what to do in that moment. The art and practice is in keeping that leap small. It might be a visit rather than a finished project, a glance at the pile rather than a cleared room. We spent a recent episode, episode seventy-five, on building trust the way we build a muscle, starting at a weight we can lift. It's the same principle here, beginning with where we are. If tomorrow comes and we can make that visit, something happens beyond argument. The evidence changes. The experience, more importantly, changes. A small invitation was kept, and a tendril of trust grows along behind that leap. That way, faith is about that leap. Trust grows behind it. When the Leap Is Not Met Now sometimes tomorrow comes and the visit does not happen, and then we might think, "See? I knew it. I can't be trusted." But a broken leap does not mean we are untrustworthy. It means that something didn't work. Something about the conditions was off. The conditions then can be changed. Maybe the visit was too large. Maybe the type of thing that we were visiting was too large. Maybe we could scale it back. Maybe we put it at some scheduled time that didn't work. Maybe we wrote it as a task for completion. Like "read a chapter" or "run a mile," and we'd be better off writing it as an entry for beginning, like "begin a run" or "open the book." We make the leap smaller or move it, and we ask the question again. When we want something to be reliable and it repeatedly is not, fear tends to grow where the trust would have otherwise been. That is true of the people we have leaned on, and it's true of ourselves. We can't argue that fear away. We already know how arguments with emotions go. What we can do, however, is change what the fear is about, in that we shrink that invitation, understanding the risks, and measure them to one where we can say again, "Hmm, maybe this one I can try." The Risk Is the Point Every real decision has some risk or loss in it, otherwise it wouldn't be a decision. So when we feel a hesitation at the edge of that leap, nothing's gone wrong. There's a message there. The risk is what makes it faith rather than certainty. The feelings that stir are messengers. We can pause with them. That pause is not a reassurance that there's nothing to fear. There may well be something to fear. I never liked that advice to "think how bad could it be" and "what are the chances." Those are appeals to weakness. I prefer to appeal to strength, that if something does go wrong, we'll meet that person, the person we are when things go wrong, and then hopefully figure out our next step. And that is scary. It's the choice to meet what we fear at a size we can carry without yet knowing how it'll go. That's the bravery in the work. It's not the grand kind. It's tomorrow-sized. So maybe we can set down the instruction we would never follow. We're not asked to trust ourselves tonight. If we're willing, we ask ourselves for that small act of lowercase F faith. Can I make a visit tomorrow? And then we make that leap. We keep it small. And trust, which was never ours to command, gets its chance to grow along behind. Music — Morning Bird Today's piece is called Morning Bird. It was recorded, June 23rd, 2025. I hope you enjoy it. Mentioned in this episode: Waves of Focus YouTube Series Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw

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77. Is the ADHD Medication Working?

ADHD medications can be extremely helpful, but it's important to understand it isn't a catch-all that fixes everything. While it can have positive benefits when it comes to keeping our attention on the task at hand, it can similarly keep our attention on activities that are less productive. This isn't to say the medication isn't working — it is working, we have just given our attention to something that is more rewarding at the time. This week's Rhythms of Focus podcast explores what ADHD medication does do and what it doesn't. I highlight a recent study done out of Washington University, observing brain scans of children and adults, and the results may be surprising. We finish with a composition entitled, "Water Dance." Transcript: "Hmm, I wonder if this medication's working. Maybe it is. I've been at this game for about four hours, and the report's exactly where I left it. Eh, what gives?" Another version of this is when a kind caregiver worries, "I'm not sure this med's working. He's not making good choices." That's another phrase I've heard. In both of these scenes, the medication may well be doing its job. Something else is missing. If the med is helping address arousal and attention, they're not the problem. Maybe the attention's fine, but it's gone to the wrong address. The story we are handed Many of us have heard this story about ADHD and medication, that the mind cannot pay attention, the pill seems to do something to guide that attention, and the rest should somehow follow. Sometimes that gives us hope. Sometimes it applies pressure in the voice of a well-meaning relative asking whether they've taken their meds yet, as though that were the entire solution. I prescribe these meds. I've watched them help people profoundly. And I have little patience for the voices that shame anyone for taking them, and nothing that I'll be saying here today argues against that. But the story of what they do is important and should be considered, because when we treat meds as the only or even main solution, we give it a job it can't do, and then we blame ourselves when that job goes undone. What the medications seem to do This past December, researchers at Washington University published a study in the journal Cell. They examined brain scans from nearly 6,000 children, comparing those taking stimulant medications with those not. They checked their findings against adults scanned before and after stimulants, and what they found might be surprising. The meds showed little action on the brain's attention networks. They acted instead on systems of arousal and reward. One of the researchers described stimulants as pre-rewarding the brain, letting us keep working at things that would not normally hold our interest. Attention does improve, but it does so indirectly. One comment I came across online put it this way: "It's like it untangles the knot in the headphones of my brain just enough that I can actually hear the music of my thoughts, and the melody properly heard, allows me to dance." I love that comment. In this case, the medication untangles, but the hearing and the dancing are something else Resting in a focus I often like to think of the wandering mind, the ADHD mind, as one of great power. It's like having a race car. But you put that car on the city streets, it's gonna have some troubles. It needs something to do. Medication gives it that stimulation, much as a fidget does. The mind can then engage without seeking more. And for those of us with wandering minds, pushing against distraction can be exhausting. It can feel like this chronic muscle clench held all day, every day against a current that never lets up. Medications then relieve that clench. The energy that goes everywhere settles enough for the mind to rest in some focus rather than being dragged back to one over and over. There may well be truth in the feeling that we can finally think. That rest is important. A mind that's not spending itself on the fight has something left over. What the medication cannot decide But resting in a focus is not the same as choosing one. Consider playing a game at 1:00 in the morning. If the medication works by pre-rewarding whatever's in front of us, then it has no opinion about what's in front of us. The game qualifies. The report qualifies. The medication makes the staying easier either way. It has nothing to say about the leaving or about what deserved our attention in the first place. So the hyperfocus that consumes an evening is not the medication failing. The medication's working. What's missing is not attention so much as it is decision and meaning. We decide our paths forward. We create meaning. The medication does neither of those. This is the piece the simple story leaves out. Medication can grant the wandering mind a certain type of rest. What we do within that rest, which work we meet, which people, which hours, remains entirely our own. When decision and meaning go missing, the temptation is to adjust the dose. But reaching for medications to fill that space tends to find only more side effects. The pill also says something There's one more layer. Twenty years ago, I wrote a post called Medication and Its Meanings back when my practice was young. A medication carries a message alongside its chemistry. Taken from someone who we feel understands us, let's say a child receiving it from a caregiver who sees them, the daily pill can say, "Hey, someone cares about me." They're worth tending. But if it's handed down as this verdict, the very same pill can say, "Ah, there's something wrong with me, something that can't be understood or I can't work with," and it can arrive feeling like a punishment. It's the same med, but a different message, and that message is important because it can shape identity. 20 years later, neuroscience seems to have come around to half of this at least. The chemistry turns out to be about reward and rest rather than attention. The meaning, though, is not in the pill. That comes from ourselves and the people around us. A takeaway So as a takeaway, medication can help ease that clenching muscle. It can allow us to better rest in attention, in a focus. That can be a big deal, and for many of us, it's the difference that makes so much more possible. Beyond that rest come the deciding and the meaning, each of them tangled deeply with emotion, shaping it and being shaped by it. There's no medication to address what matters to us, what to set down, what to return to. Those remain ours, and that can be difficult. We can't delegate the hardest parts of being human. So when we approach some focus or find ourselves in something, we can ask, "Is this where I want my mind to be?" If yes, great. If no, we can ask, "Where do I want my mind to be?" Simple questions, but oh so difficult to pause and ask them. And if we can, we can then assess, decide, and engage. Those are ours. Music — water dance The following piece of music is called Water Dance. It was recorded July 27th, 2026. Hope you enjoy it Mentioned in this episode: Waves of Focus YouTube Series Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw

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76. No Pain, No Gain, and the Wandering Mind

Far too often we operate under the assumption that "pushing" ourselves and "forcing" ourselves to do something are the same thing. Both can definitely be difficult, but the end results are vastly different. When we put effort into something, we have chosen to do it, we have agency over the decision. When we force ourselves, however, we lose our agency and are usually left with a combination of guilt, shame, and anger. Effort gives us the option to show up, meet ourselves exactly where we are, and build trust in ourselves over time to do things consistently. Force injures our relationship with ourselves and creates a sense of distrust. In today’s episode, we walk through the difference between effort and force, what each one leaves behind, and why the costlier one can feel like the virtuous one. Previous Episode Referenced: Rhythms of Focus Episode 26 - The Trouble Isn't Interest, It's Force Transcript It's 9:00 at night. The report is maybe two-thirds done. My back is killing me. Well, maybe I'll just keep pushing. There's something in that last sentence that we need to pay attention to. It's this idea of, am I failing at this because I still have to push? Underneath that question is the assumption that many of us hold, which is that pushing and forcing are the same thing. They're not, and the difference between them may be the difference between a practice that grows and one that wears us down. Effort deepens. Force injures. Effort is chosen exertion. It's our being moving through the work, a channel that deepens with use. That is why a practice running on effort tends to cost us less over time rather than more. Force is exertion applied against a channel rather than through it. It hurts or injures our sense of confidence in ourselves. It's the push that arrives with shame behind it or the deadline that we're waiting for because we can't seem to engage work otherwise. Effort deepens a channel, engages us and works with our sense of trust in ourselves, while force injures it. And injured often enough, we might even feel scarred. Particularly with a long habit of these forced ways of working, we find trouble. This single forced session is this injury that, that mends. Years of forcing leave the scar tissue, which is why some of us show up to work unable to feel trust in ourselves at all. So the practice we need to work with turns away from the injury, not exertion. Hard work is hard. Hard work is emotional work. There are mornings that writing doesn't show up. It doesn't work with us for whatever reason. And we can sit there for a while. We can be there in that visit. Being with the feeling itself is the labor, not distracting ourselves in the meantime, engaging that feeling to whatever degree feels caring to ourselves. Then what is the working made of? Why we keep reaching for it We don't use force because we are weak or foolish. We use it because it has, in fact, worked well enough for us to use it again. The deadline did get the report written. Shame did get us off the sofa. Have a listen to episode twenty-six for a fuller look at those methods and what each of them tells us about ourselves in that using. Force feels virtuous In this way, force half-works, but there's another way to approach things. In the community recently this came up. Our culture tends to hand us these lines ready-made, like no pain, no gain, no fight, no glory, life begins at the end of your comfort zone. She really worked hard on this. She deserves the promotion. Underneath these sits one motif, that exertion is value and breaking ourselves for a goal is a form of piety. To sacrifice is to be good. But that distinction between force and exertion is important here. What that equation of sacrifice honors is not effort. Effort is being, moving through work, a channel that deepens it. Sometimes we even find ourselves more engaged and even enlivened. What the equation wrongly honors is the damage. The claim is not, "I worked, therefore it counted." It was, "I, I was hurt, therefore it counted." And maybe this is why that voice in the back of mind says, "This is unhealthy," it feels faint. It's not competing with a preference, it's competing with a virtue. We can be mid-session aware that other matters are going untended. We've not gotten up in hours. We register this, if at all, at the edge of attention, and we don't stop. The absolution For those of us who spend a good deal of the week in shiny distractions or on the sofa with the project sitting untouched across the room, those times of pain offer absolution, if you will. The forced session is not only productive, it seems to redeem the days that weren't. You know, it's, "This is unhealthy, but look at me. Look at how hard I'm working now." Force now seems to arrive as this cure for the shame that force created in the first place. Force then becomes hard to put down, again, because it half works. It's hard to want to put down something because setting it down can feel like we're giving up on being good. Any turn away from force has to answer both. Showing that force costs more than it delivers is not enough on its own. We also have to address the sense that the cost was the point, that we seem to be drawing meaning from the pain. None of this says that losses don't matter. Where the loss actually comes from They do. It's a matter of seeing where that loss comes from. The word decide carries cut inside it, from decidere or decidere. I'm not sure exactly how to pronounce it. It means to cut off. Every decision cuts, and something is always either lost or risked as we cut. Choose to play the piano this evening and not the book. We take this project and not that one. But the loss is the residue of reaching for something. It exists only because we were engaged with something else, something we wanted. Somewhere along the way, the two got turned around and the residue, the sacrifice, became evidence of the worth. A needless cut is still a cut. A takeaway So maybe here's the takeaway. When the work is hard, and often it is, this changes the question we ask. Not how do I push harder, but whether there's a better way, something that engages the emotions of care and play rather than anger, anxiety, or shame. That framing, I think, tends to make it move better. The smaller version for the moment itself is the single question is, "Am I moving through this work or against myself?" And if the answer is against, there's somewhere to go. We use that visit approach, that smaller door back in. We show up, be there, engage the feelings, and then decide. We may not always be able to tell, and that's fine, but consider that after effort, we tend to be able to come back. And after force, coming back tends to be harder. It's not always true. This is not a clear, uh, sort of division, but I think there's something to that. Sometimes it takes days to show or weeks to show. Some part of us remembers, and the returning is where we can read it. So it's not that we stop working hard engaging the emotions. It's that we stop using caustic fuels. Music — Ascend Today's piece is called Ascend. It's recorded April 24th, 2026. I hope you enjoy it. Listen to/Download Rhythms of Focus Podcast Episode 76: No Pain, No Gain, and the Wandering Mind Mentioned in this episode: Waves of Focus YouTube Series Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw

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75. Building Trust With a Wandering Mind

Comparison can not only be the thief of joy, it can also be the bearer of guilt, shame, and inadequacy. For those of us with wandering minds, ADHD, and the like, it's easy to feel like running away from things our minds aren't instant experts at. But, much like someone using weights for the first time needs to start small and build up towards heavier pursuits, a wandering mind doesn't need to carry the full load of any task in the moment. If we can break a task down to meet us exactly where we are at and then trust our future self to come back to it later, we are much closer to completing what had once felt insurmountable. This week we focus on agency, showing up for ourselves, and building trust within ourselves over time. Episode Referenced: Trust, Decay, and Retooling (ep. 58) Transcript: Maybe others can do it, that trick, that hack, that system. I'm just not sure that I trust I could. We said that fast, almost in passing, a thought that just goes through and moves on. But there's something in that way of thinking and that way of considering ourselves that's worth slowing down to pay attention to. The Run From Failure It can be all too easy to feel defeated before we even start. We read about that new hack, some trick, some tip. Maybe we try it. A few days later, we lose it. Throw ourselves against the wall. Nothing seems to stick. Wallowing in whatever comes, running on whim, on deadlines, we stay at the mercy of the seas, hardly sailing on our own terms. Until that next idea comes by, and maybe that one will work. So we harness that new spark of interest and go with that, and go fast and go hard. Can't let that seemingly negative energy of past failures catch up to us. We run as fast as we can, hoping that maybe, just maybe, we'll cross some horizon into the place where things finally click. We can do what we wanna do, do it on our own time without guilt, be on top of what matters, engaged when and where we are needed. That promised land. Ha. Maybe this time I'll get there. And of course, we find that it doesn't exist, except that it seems to for others. So defeated again, we wonder, why can't we get there ourselves? What Trust Actually Is There's trouble hiding in this cycle. It's the run itself, the run from previous failures, that can create troubles. We can look at that distrust of ourselves with disgust and lose sight of how important that feeling of distrust itself is, and how much we need it to carry ourselves forward. Trust is this developing sense that something will keep behaving as it has been such that we can rely on it. It's vital. It's the thing we build. It's what makes our worlds. It's the very land we're seeking, that sense that we can trust ourselves and trust ourselves across time. Trust is not willed into being. It's a feeling grown from experience. In a conversation on trust, decay, and retooling with Michael Porter in an earlier episode, trust turned out to be something that we tend, something we rebuild rather than something we simply have. It can grow, it can strengthen, much like a muscle. Starting Where We Can Lift When we lift weights, we don't begin at three hundred pounds. That leads to injury, and that's what we do to ourselves when we ignore our current state of trust and dive straight into the next great idea. But what if instead we started with ten pounds? Maybe do three sets of six. That's fine. We sense it. Where are we now? Ah, I can do this. And over a few days, it gets easier. We might even find we've got some energy to spare. Now maybe we do three sets of seven. Hold there for a while. At some point, we're doing three sets of twelve, and we're ready to add weight. Go up five percent, ten percent. Drop back to three sets of six and begin again. Beginning with where we are doing this helps us build the muscles from where they are. Now, that small return teaches us something, about the mind caught in the pull of the moment, something the mind finds hard to believe. Setting Things Down We can put a thing down and pick it up later because the moment is singular. We can only do one thing at a time while the waves of the moment crash and carry us here and now. To do anything well, we need to be able to set other things aside. That setting aside is a kind of message in a bottle to our future self. It says, "Can you pick this up for me? I can't do it now." It asks us to trust that whoever finds will pick that up, that future self, decide with their own agency whether it's good to do, and in that deciding, honor and care for the self who sent it. What I'm talking about here is being able to send an invitation to our future selves and say, "Hey, can you make a visit here?" If they can do that, they can pick up with where we left off and then maybe send another invitation going forward. Doing that strengthens this muscle over time. It's a tall order. At the beginning, there is no trust. There's only that 10 pounds and a sense that we can maybe lift it Distrust as Messenger So we hold on to that distrust because that feeling itself is important. Emotion is a messenger. If we don't listen to it, we risk injuring ourselves. Maybe 10 pounds is too much. Maybe we don't set that thing for tomorrow. Maybe it's not a visit, maybe it's a consideration. Maybe it's for an hour from now, 10 minutes from now. Listening doesn't mean we only do whatever the feeling says. Being tired doesn't mean we only crash onto the couch. We might instead make a small visit to the work while we're tired, feeling the exhaustion there fully as we maybe nudge something forward, resting in that tension itself. Sometimes the, the session is a slog, goes nowhere. A Trust We Garden Sometimes a wave forms slow. Sometimes it gets fast. Even when nothing seems to happen, that visit can be the node that carries momentum from one session into the next. In that practice of listening, , the distrust can begin to shift. Oh, I can continue a thing. Ideas form between sessions. I can put something down and pick it up later. That land of trust, that growing confidence to carry ideas across our past, present, and future selves, that place of agency turns out to be something we garden, grown over time. So here's a small rep to try. Pick one thing you don't quite trust yourself with yet and ask what, what is its ten-pound version? Maybe its five-pound version. Small enough that you sense, "I think this is right there. This is about where I can do it." And return to that version a few times across a few days before you add any weight. Maybe it's about the dishes, maybe it's about a report you have to write, maybe it's whatever it happens to be. Alongside that rep, have a reflection. Consider the things you already trust yourself to do, the ones you don't, and of the ones you trust, ask, "What is it that I do trust here? How did that come to be?" Of the ones you don't, ask, "What do I not trust yet? What small risk could I take to grow it?" We begin with where we are and move from there. Music — Seeing the Tunnel Today's piece is called Seeing the Tunnel. I hope you enjoy it. Mentioned in this episode: Waves of Focus YouTube Series Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw

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74. The Break in the Work

For those of us with ADHD, wandering minds, and the like, coming up against the feelings of guilt, shame, and frustration at being unable to get our work done can feel like torture. This can lead to anxiety and the urge to run away entirely. Instead, if we sit with these hard feelings to examine where they may be coming from, we give ourselves the opportunity to name it, and give it a tangible presense rather than allowing it to be a mysterious force we are up against. Pausing with this fear then brings with it the possibility that the emotion is our mind's attempt to understand or maybe tell us something. If we can have the bravery to sit with our fears and combine it with the care of giving ourselves space, we are often more receptive to the possibilities which allow us to move forward. And even if we say, "This is all I can do for now," we can invite a future self to return. Transcript I should know this by now. I should be able to do this by now. Maybe I'm sitting at the piano, the spreadsheet, the page of whatever report. Somehow as this work sits in front of us, this tiredness appears, and we might wonder, maybe I'm just not able. Maybe I'm dumb. Maybe I'm not confident enough. There's that moment where the work stops making sense, and the mind reaches for some verdict about ourselves in that. That's where I wanna look at it right now. There's that feeling of tiredness, of bleakness, of confusion, a sense of not getting it, and it can happen anywhere. Recently I'd been playing at the piano. I was trying to understand some jazz chords. Symbols are right there in front of me. I know what they mean. Still, something stalls. There's this cloud that forms, hard for me to memorize, hard for me to know what goes where and when, and somehow it's just not coming to mind. Pushing through, using force often begins with that word of "should." I should get this. I'm not smart enough. I'm not capable enough. We're reading the emotion of confusion, or whatever it is, some negative feeling, as evidence of our own ineptitude. A shift, and the practice of it There is a way through, and it has a couple of parts that are hard to separate. A shift in how we hold the moment and the practice of that shift over time. What do I mean? The change of perspective is a change of how we look at something. We often hear this in a simple phrase like, "Don't worry about it." But a shift of perspective cannot be done by dissociation. Don't worry about it doesn't exactly work. Otherwise, I wouldn't have a job. We can't simply leave the original perspective behind. There's history behind it, and therefore emotion, which can't be argued with. We don't simply adopt a new view and drop the one that hurts. Instead, the practice is to hold both at once, the old sense and the possibility of the new side by side. This is one of those strengths of the psychoanalytic approach, for example. There we practice following associations. We come to a recognition that conflicting perspectives can be held at the same time. Nothing has to be banished for a new idea to show up. And then over time, one may form over the other. So we begin often by asking how we feel about the story we're telling ourselves. That asking itself can create a space of observation, an area a little bit freer of that belief's influence, even in the act of acknowledging it. That sense of, "Oh, this means I'm dumb." Okay, how do I feel about that idea, that thing that comes to mind? Well, I don't like it, or I'm upset about it, or whatever it is, but it's there. The pause initiates that process, pausing with the emotion, with the pain, with the fear. That space then holds a possibility that the emotion is the mind's own attempt to understand or maybe tell us something. It may not be telling us in the best possible way, but it's saying something. Confusion, at least in this way, is not inherently negative. The first step is to simply stay with it and to notice that the negative charge is something we have added in some way. The shove What turns the emotions negative beyond the perspective is that shove, is it's that I have to study this, the test is tomorrow. When we cut corners in that memorization and bypass the play that would have otherwise let that understanding settle in, we leave the session without having understood. We lose the signal that confusion could have given us. Further, we also deepen the sense that we cannot do things deliberately, that we must rely on these harsh measures against ourselves. Instead, resting our attention on the emotion, on the confusion, or any other negative sense, we can ask, "What is confusing about this?" An answer may or may not come. But more importantly, in that pause, in that waiting with that feeling, we've practiced bravery. What makes it bravery All right, what makes that bravery? There's this idea I keep returning to from a theologian by the name of Paul Tillich. "Anxiety," he says, "has no object." It's this cloud. Meanwhile, fear has an object, something that can be faced. Much of courage is the slow work of turning the cloud into an object, naming the thing so it can be met, turning the anxiety into a fear. When we stay with the confusion, perhaps worried about what it might mean to us, and ask what exactly is confusing about it, we're doing that. We're letting the fog crystallize into something we can look at. We remained with the sense that we do not know. We stayed with the confusion as it went on, being tangled up with the old belief that we're somehow dumb or otherwise. Were we to shove ourselves through or bolt off to find something shinier somewhere else, something on fire somewhere else, we would have lost that chance. That pause enabled the practice of bravery. The harder part is that even while staying with this thing that we fear we cannot do, we may still discover that we cannot. We may not understand it. We may still be just as confused as we began, if not worse. Injured this way can be terribly hard to hold on to a larger possibility, which is that I can't do this now, but maybe it's just about now. Maybe it's just about not today. That revisit again and again sometimes helps work it through. But it's hard to hold on to that perspective. Even so, it may never come to us, and we don't know. Tempering bravery with care That too is what makes this bravery. There's real fear. Fear is not always unfounded. So we temper our bravery with care. A sword is made out of steel. Steel that's only hardened, quenched, and made as hard as it can be is brittle and shatters at that first real blow. Tempering is a gentle heat afterwards, and it trades a little of that hardness for toughness, so the blade can flex under a strike and survive it. Care is that gentle heat. Bravery alone, untempered, is hard, brittle, tends to shatter on exactly the day it meets real resistance, the day we find the fear was founded. But tempered with care, it can bend and hold. So we can ask ourselves, to what degree does staying here actually serve me? I'll give you another example. When we lift weights, we don't do well by trying to lift the most we possibly can. That's how we injure ourselves. Muscle grows faster than bone and tendon. If we just try to lift as much as we can, something will break somewhere. We attend instead to the sensations of the movement, the good and bad pain that we can feel, a rough division between what builds us and what harms us. The same principle holds in our work. This bravery and care becoming courage. When care itself holds us back Care is not an unmitigated good. I did a episode on this some time ago. Overzealous, it can hold us back from the work. We procrastinate. We avoid on impulse. Maybe we tell ourselves we are waiting for better conditions or that things must be just right before we begin. With this hypertrophied sense of care, we may avoid the work entirely. And bravery without care is reckless. While care without bravery can lead to stagnation. Bringing them together, bravery and care, courage. Simple, but not easy The practice is simple and of course, not easy. Simplicity is this: when we run into the difficult sense inside work, the confusion, the overwhelm, the loss, we can pause and ask what exactly is confusing, overwhelming, and raging about it. Somewhere in there, we may be able to shrink our vision, slow ourselves down, find something smaller that we can hold onto, maybe even find some ease, and maybe face that question, is this all I can do? Back at the piano, the chord chart sits in front of me, C minor seven, F seven, B-flat major seven, two, five, one, rootless chords. How do I ever remember these formations? I don't know how to do this. How does anyone know how to do this? I feel that strain. My mind goes blank. I could stay and push, but then frustration builds. Trouble builds in that push. Try to give ourselves the hollow reassurance that belief alone would carry us. I can make it through if I only believe enough. No, I don't have that belief. Force is hollow. Instead, I face it with that courage, and I find, yeah, that's all I can do right now. It's all I know. And I can sit there and maybe somewhere in those moments I'll be able to find something. But if I push, I'll become injured. I'll start to not like it. I'll start not to want to play. That's where that child says, "Ah, I don't wanna play the piano anymore." That's why they say that, "I'm not good at this." Time, and the return But there is another strength at our side: time. We can say, "This is it for this moment," whether we pause for a few moments and see if another wave of something comes from within, or we go longer. We can invite a future self to return — a difficult thing for all the reasons I already mentioned. But if we can make that visit tomorrow, meaning an invitation to ourself, we might find that some part of us has worked out of sight, loosened the confusion, eased the overwhelm. Those are the moments of insight that seem to arrive on their own, that stir out of the times we stayed when we faced the demon, the lion, the darkness of the forest. So at the piano, I let go. I let go of the keys. In a few moments, I might bring my fingers back to the keys. Or I might realize, "No, no, no, this is pushing. This is going beyond something. It's time to let go of the session itself." But then invite myself tomorrow. I rest in the knowledge that I've been there now, and I can return tomorrow. And tomorrow comes, and I realize, "Ah, what if I shrink the vision to only practicing the two chord and the B formation? Ah, so that's the shape." And I work to only get better at that, that little tiny something. And in the ease that gradually forms in that simple repetition of something tiny, a bit of play often appears. What if I poke randomly at any key? Can I form a rootless two chord from that? Oh, yes, I can. What if I tried it there too? Ah. Well, sometimes nothing comes. Whatever we find, we're stronger for having made the attempt. Both care, bravery, and ultimately courage. Music — Unwritten Staying with a hard thing, setting it down for a while, its own kind of a return. I end with a piece called "Unwritten." I hope you enjoy it. Mentioned in this episode: Waves of Focus YouTube Series Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw

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73. I'm Sorry. I Can't Do the Laundry. I Just Don't Have the Dopamine.

I came across a social media post recently that made me laugh. "I'm so sorry," it said, "I can't do the laundry, I just don't have the dopamine." I laughed because it rang so true. And while it's funny, things also need to get done, so we don't laugh ourselves into tears. In today’s episode, we look at what “not having the dopamine” really points to, and how we might begin anyway. Not by forcing a start, but by showing up and, for a breath, simply being. #ADHD #FindingFlowWithADHD #WavesOfFocus #ADHDadults #WanderingMind #ADHDfocus #FlowState #ExecutiveFunction References: Dr. William Dodson, the interest-based nervous system: https://www.additudemag.com/secrets-of-the-adhd-brain/ Mesolimbic pathway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesolimbic_pathway Transcript Sorry, I can't do the laundry. I just don't have the dopamine. I saw this post on Instagram. It was funny. I laughed. It's this honesty that makes something real. We can join in with more examples, more laughter. It's great. I love that, "I can't do the laundry. I don't have the dopamine." Laughter's good medicine, but past a certain dose, any medicine can be a poison. We have to be cautious because we can fall together into this sort of celebration of helplessness. Not because any of us are weak, but because the joke becomes the whole conversation, and then it leaves us where we began. Those of us with wandering minds can have real difficulties, and they can be hard for others to understand. But I think it's vital that when the laughter fades, we need to be able to ask, "What, what can we do from here?" What do we do when we don't have the dopamine? We might even use science against ourselves, naming dopamine as the prime mover of a reward system deep in the brain. And because it's this chemical that we can't touch with our fingers, we might conclude that the only access we have is through medication or some trickery or something outside of our own sense of agency. Another path might be reaching for a more psychological version of the same move. For example, we can invoke Dr. William Dodson's otherwise very helpful description of what tends to engage an ADHD mind, namely challenge, interest, novelty, urgency, and passion. And then we can say, if none of these emotions are present, then like the missing dopamine, I suppose we are helpless. This is that interest-based nervous system we explored in episode eight. It's real, it's a useful description, but the trouble is that conclusion that we draw from it. Play and Its Cousin, Learning Much of this, though, we can gather under the single idea of play and its close cousin, learning. Challenge, interest, novelty, passion, dopamine itself are all aspects of playful. And, novelty is play reaching towards something new. Challenge is play testing itself against an edge. Interest and passion are play that has found something it cares for. Even urgency, at its best, is play with the stakes raised. And the ADHD mind, in my experience, both of myself and as a clinician, often carries this powerful capacity of play. And everything it represents, whether it's whimsy or discovery or deep engagement. That play describes so much of what goes right when we're in flow, and so much of what is missing when we can't begin. We looked at some of this before in episode seven as the cautions of dopamine and a lean toward mastery. Not Buttons and Levers So we need to be cautious not to reduce our brains to buttons and levers, this remnant and a metaphor of the industrial age. We can point to a dopaminergic pathway called the mesolimbic pathway, and tie it to pleasure, to reward, then to drugs and sex and food as though that were all it were for. But if we look experientially, where we actually have agency, we can notice that when we're engaged well, we're in flow. We're learning, at play. The motions of molecules and the firings of neurons from one nucleus to the next make a flow no less deep or nuanced than our climates and oceans. We can see that the experience is not some on-off switch. We don't leap from, "I don't feel like it," to, "I feel like it," by some sudden revelation. There's a process we move through from one state to another. Emotions Gather, Conditions Change From our depths, emotions gather, ideas form. They crest in their own time on the surface. We can't win arguments with an emotion, but we're also not helpless against ourselves. Emotions shift and change with their conditions, and we do have the ability to change conditions. We can position ourselves to make those small transitions that might stir the mind. The Visit One way I often espouse to changing conditions is through the visit, in which we show up to a task, hard or not, and then simply be. Whether it's laundry, a budget, a report, we bring the materials in front of us, move distractions aside, and for a few moments do nothing but be with it. We pause in the now. We don't need to force ourselves to do anything, and it can seem strange to think of this as a unit of work. What good is it to do nothing? Too often we privilege action. "Just start," we're told. But such advice can be corrosive, a repeated message that we cannot trust ourselves to decide and to act. By being with the work, we're not doing nothing. We're meeting the emotions, the true ground from which our decisions are made, from which action of any real conviction is born. Whether we begin in anxiety, shame, irritation, or more likely, a whole ecology of feeling, any real flow begins in being with those sensations. In this way, we do the visit, which is we show up, be, and then decide. The winds and waters of dopamine, of interest, of engagement, of whatever we choose to call them, may even begin to tickle the sails. So consider as a takeaway, what's something that you don't have the dopamine for? Sometime today, somewhere before going to sleep, can you show up to it or bring it to you and then simply be, if only for a single deep breath? You don't have to do it anywhere beyond any reality that says otherwise. And if you can do that, consider what's that like? Music — Wind at Play I end this week's episode with piece is called "Wind at Play" in C major, all the white keys, and in three-quarters time. Either of which just lends to that childhood play that I like to find. Not sure why, but it does. I hope you enjoy it. Mentioned in this episode: Waves of Focus YouTube Series Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw

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72. You Don't Need Another List — You Need a Better Prompt

One might say the road to hell is paved with well-intentioned lists. Wandering minds tend to collect a stockpile of the latest apps, notebooks, and sticky notes in an effort to keep tasks top of mind. Unfortunately, when these lists and apps accumulate, it's because they aren't working. It can be difficult to know what tool will meet us in the moment we need it, versus when it's inconvenient and has no chance of being accomplished. On this week's episode, we discuss why you don't need another list, you need the right prompt. #ADHD #FindingFlowWithADHD #WavesOfFocus #ADHDadults #WanderingMind #ADHDfocus #FlowState #executivefunction Transcript Maybe I just need another list. Things are piling up, something slips. Deadlines creeping up. Project we were working on starting to gather dust. If I could only find just the right app, the right notebook, the right system, this time it'll finally hold. All right, so then we build one. And for a day, maybe two, maybe three, it holds up. Then somehow we stop seeing it, slips out of the way. It's out of our fingers. The list is still there. We're just not there with it. The list was rarely the problem The lists we build are probably fine. Trouble is not usually that we pick the wrong tool or that we're the kind of person who can't keep a system. One trouble is often that a list stops reaching us in the moments that matter. For example, let's say we have a report to write. We put it on the kitchen whiteboard. We put it in bold, maybe alternate colors, draw a circle around it. However we've done it, by the end of the week, it's part of the wall. It's now just part of the decor. Nothing changed about the note. What changed is that it's no longer arriving. It's faded into the background. Organizing, at its heart, is this work of clearing and supporting paths for those things that we find to be meaningful. A list is one of those paths, but a path that never reaches us at the right time is hardly a path at all, which brings us to the part of organizing that does much of the work and the one that we tend to neglect. A prompt is about time When we ask something to reach us at the moment it matters, we're asking for a prompt. Very often our prompts are poor, not because we did not write something down. We wrote them down in 10 different places. We put them in bold, we circled them, we told the app to remind us. Still, the report sits, the taxes sit, the email we meant to send sits. None of it surfaced when we could actually do something with it, and stayed out of the way the rest of the time. A good prompt is a matter of timing before it is anything else. It's the sandwich that I hang on the doorknob so that I can take it on the way out when I go to work. It's resting in our path at the door so it's not left on the counter again. It's this reminder that says, "Get milk," as we're walking to the store, not while we're lying in bed unable to act on it. Something that simply sits there blending into the background hardly works. Something that shows up at the right time, well, that meets us. To prompt is to bring something forward, to make it ready right on time. The word carries its own instructions. Prompts, it's not about being loud. It's about being well-timed. A good prompt leaves the deciding to us Now there's a version of prompting that most of us have already tried and it can hurt, in fact. We make the note bigger. We add another alert. We stack up so many reminders that they begin to drown each other out. Underneath, there's often this force that's kind of bubbling through. If I can just startle myself hard enough, maybe I'll finally comply. Every louder Post-It is the small message that we can't be trusted. That we have to be cornered into our own life. A wandering mind feeling that way often pulls away. A good prompt has to respect our working memory. It can't ask us to hold everything in mind at all times. That's precisely the load we're trying to set down. In this way, a good prompt respects our agency. When that thing surfaces, we still get to decide. We're not commanded, we're informed. We're left free to say yes or not yet or in our own time, all without compromising that prompt. That freedom is not a loophole in the system, it's the whole point of it. So a good prompt presents itself clearly, arrives on time, and then gets out of the way. Presenting well, that its virtue, timing is its work. Where good prompts already live If we look at the tools of this practice, nearly all of them - they are ways of being that prompt, that leave the deciding to us. In episode 57, we got into the tool of anchoring. It can hold this moment's options in front of us so that short-term memory can stop grabbing at them. The honor guide brings a project back into view on the day we meant to return to it. The calendar carries an intention across time, hands it back to us when it's due. And the visit shows up at the work, then lets us choose whether to stay. None of these are force. Each one brings a thing forward at a useful moment, presents it plainly, and then waits for us. Now there's another layer, that a good prompt is worth building it all. The kind you can stop checking And it's that when a prompt is poor, we can't really rely on it. And as a result of that, we keep checking. We reopen the list to make sure it's still there or the thing that we need to do is still there. We carry the report around in the back of our minds because some part of it doesn't really believe that the note's going to do its job. And that checking can be exhausting, and it never fully stops. A prompt that we trust is one we feel we can stop checking. We set something down, and we can let it go because experience teaches us over time that it can come back to us when we need it. It's like this message in a bottle that we send forward to our future selves. First time, we don't really believe it'll arrive. We don't know it. We haven't experienced that. But when it does, and then does so again, that little tendril of trust begins to grow. We can leave things in that current, and they can come back to us, and it does so without force. In this way, trust is not built by trying harder or trying at all, really. It's built by experience. It's a longer conversation for another episode, perhaps. A takeaway Here's the takeaway. Rather than building another list, consider the following: Pick up something that you keep rechecking, this nagging item you keep reopening the app to confirm is there, or carrying around in your head because you don't quite believe it's handled. Just one of these things. And then ask a single question about it. What would prompt this at the right time, at a place that I can do something with it? What would bring it forward clearly at that moment that it's relevant and not before? Maybe it's a reminder set for the actual time, a place that you can act. Maybe it's an object that you leave in your path. Maybe it's a spot on your guide. You don't have to build an entire system, although a system can be made from exactly this process. You only have to improve one prompt. Notice whether you can even a little set that thing down. Could there be some practice in that? Today's piece of music is called "Wooded Hills." Composed in June of 2025. I've played it before once I think. Maybe, I don't know. It's a good piece. I like it, and I hope you do, too. Mentioned in this episode: Waves of Focus YouTube Series Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw

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71. Single-Threading: AI, ADHD, and the Cost of Switching

Using AI to help with productivity and multitasking is not for the faint of heart when you've got ADHD or a wandering mind. We may feel as though we are being more productive while bouncing from one open thread to the next. But we almost always end up with an overwhelming feeling of exhaustion. In today’s episode, we discuss the quiet cost our brains pay for all that switching. But if we stop to recognize it, we can also lean in to the small pause the machine hands back to us, the one we’re so quick to fill. Resources Mentioned in Episode: Interview with chess prodigy Bobby Fischer Rhythms of Focus Episode 39: Aligning Emotion and Intention with the 8 Gears of Focus #ADHD #FindingFlowWithADHD #WavesOfFocus #ADHDadults #WanderingMind #ADHDfocus #FlowState #executivefunction #AI #Productivity Transcript There are eight or nine of these in a row lined up left side of the screen, some pinned, some not, every one of them are waiting on me, teasing me. These threads of Claude, my AI of choice at the moment, I have to decide among all these different threads, much like I would decide about all these different projects, the tabs across my, my browser. I have to remember where I was last. I have to spin the drive in my own head to start doing anything. So I choose one, start going. Now it has to think. And in the time that it's thinking, maybe I start thinking, I could be more efficient by picking up some other thread. And so I do, and then I say my piece there, and then I glance back at that left-hand panel, and I see the first one was working, and then I move on to the third. And after enough of this, I'm bouncing. Waiting for one to start up, watching one turn blue, one turn gray, so it needs me again, and I'm juggling. I'm productive. I'm exhausted. Recently I've found myself bouncing around between eight or nine different open threads with my AI, choosing one of them, then starting another while it was thinking, and then reaching for a third, and I'm juggling, feeling like, "Am I being productive? Maybe." But I'm also feeling pretty worn out. Those with ADHD and wandering minds, I think, know the sense that bouncing between several things at once, whatever it happens to be, it doesn't have to be AI, can be this thrill and exhaustion, like I'm being used up in the process, something like a workout. But what are we working out? Decision, Consideration, and the Drain I've talked before about the foundational channels of decision, consideration. When we're deciding, we are choosing our intention. What is the thing that's in front of us? Where do we want our mind to be? And here, that boundary of what's holding where we want our mind to be is already porous. For a wandering mind, it's trouble. It takes some type of energy to hold that boundary, to keep ourselves in line. And once it's broken, it's easier to injure it again, like the sprained ankle. We can call it creativity, the realization of this vision and the act of making something. The channel of beginning — really this channel of beginning again and again, this iteration unifies with where we are envisioning things with that consideration The decision tends to hold better when we're drawing that border of whatever it is that we're making. We can always update where we want our mind to be, but there's effort in doing that. There's energy. It draws us out each time as we re-exercise that agency to realign what we want to be doing with how we feel. When we're considering something, we are picturing it in mind, we're envisioning. And we fill the border that decision established, we're there with it. We see what comes to mind, where things are, where they could be, and then have to realign ourselves every time that we switch. More energy gets drained. Twenty Games at Once I once heard this interview with Bobby Fischer, this chess prodigy. He said that he could play 20 games at once, moving from one to the next, cycling through. But he also said to the interviewer that it was for show, and he didn't like doing it. He described how the ideas could work themselves out, maybe in this unconscious world as he moved from one table to the next. This parallel process that I think we have within ourselves. We engage in a thing, and then we walk away as our unconscious mind can bubble around it. But do enough of this, this, you know, extended sort of rhythm between multiple things, and I think there's this exhaustion that comes with it. Holding things in mind has its gifts, of course. We can better traverse those maps of whatever it is we're doing. But when those intentions, those things we want to do, don't align as we run several things at once, we're, we're switch tasking, and there's a cost to it. When Threads Relate, and When They Don't Alright, so what's the solution? Well, I'm not sure there's a clean rule. Uh, for a moment, for a single thread, for, you know, this is one moment for several, it's not clear. It's not always obvious when things relate, but when they relate, it seems like it can be a good idea to bring several ideas together. It's like a tennis stroke that all aligns at once as we practice this part and that part and the other part, and we kind of bring them together. But sometimes they don't, like making dinner while learning how to play the piano and creating a mess. The Pause the Machine Hands Us I will say this, though, when I'm at Claude or any AI really, and I stay with a single thread, and I pause to watch the AI think, not filling every moment with something else, I'm giving my own thoughts a certain space to come to mind. I can rest in that more fundamental state of being. And when I do that, that reformulating of decision, of vision, of all the rest of those channels of engagement, things become simpler. That pause let me restore myself in that place of being. I can reflect on meaning, where energy is flowing from, from something within me, from beyond me. It's no longer me working against the grain of multiple waves, this sea of emotion and interest that's become this complex mess. Instead, I'm more in tune with what's already there. I define motivation as the degree to which our emotions align with our intention, something I explored in episode 39. So much of the work is the skill of sailing these seas of emotion with the intentions that we carry. When we can pause in that state of being, we're so much more in tune with that sea. Sometimes we find the intention we had can be set down or reformed, or it arrives, and we can sail it more readily too. Maybe I'm being a broken record here. I talk about pausing so much. Somehow it's still the hardest thing to do and the most important. But it's in this particular day and age when I can notice that there are times, like when I'm waiting for the machine to think, that I can pause to think. In a sense, the machine handed me the pause. My only move is not to fill it. Music — Waves on a Nights Shore Today's piece I won't say too much about. I think it's just a piece to listen to. It's called Waves on Night's Shore, and I hope you enjoy it. Mentioned in this episode: Waves of Focus YouTube Series Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw

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70. Should I Tell My Boss About My Wandering Mind?

This week we discuss the very real fear of disclosing our wandering minds with bosses and managers. Will they think less of us? Will they support the perhaps unique conditions of how our brains are capable of being used best? It's a complicated scenario, and of course can depend very much on the work and people involved. It's not something to take lightly, but it's important to recognize, at its core the question comes from a place of care for your work. While it can feel like a burden, a wandering mind is powerful, is creative, and can contribute positively. It's about asking ourselves the right questions to find the right structure for productivity. We close with a piece called Weight in Arms. Transcript Should I tell my boss about my wandering mind, my ADHD? It's an understandable but profoundly tricky question, rarely comes alone. A few other questions tend to follow in its wake, like what could I gain by saying something? Could it cost me my job? Would they even understand? And we can sit a long while in that not knowing. That question, should I tell my boss about my ADHD, about my wandering mind? The Stakes Are Real Before anything else, it helps to say clearly that that worry, what it could do, what harm it could create, it's not imaginary. Telling someone can carry real weight. How a manager hears it, the protections it may or may not apply, whether it suddenly changes how our work gets read. Some bosses can meet it with grace, others not. You might even get fired for it, but maybe they would just point at something else as the culprit. Even so, sometimes being fired, whether out of fear, wish, or both, can be useful. So even if that were to happen, is that the right thing? It's not clear. Weighing whether to raise it is not simple. It's not weakness. It's care. Nothing here, of course, is meant to talk us past some genuine risk. I want to be clear about it. It's meant to be an idea that opens the question wider once the risks have been honestly faced. A Weight of History These questions have a history, something behind them. Wandering mind, ADHD or otherwise, is not just a person living in the moment. There's this history that follows us into the now. In the days of school, there's a depth of creativity and intelligence that needs to connect with reality, and then it can be met with so many different attitudes. As an example, when you raise your hand in class and this young kid wondering, "Why do I need to know this?" One teacher may take the time to truly think about the power of the knowledge they are trying to impart, the sense of changing the world that could be beneficial to you, and then maybe find ways to connect with that driven spirit of care and play behind the question. But many others, exhausted by their own gauntlet of impossible rules, conflicting requirements, and the like, find that question to just be frustrating. And with enough accusations, enough feelings of frustration from up above in the class, we might lose sight of the positive behind that question. We might ask for accommodations. "Hey, give me more time. Give me a fidget. Give me a break." Any and all of them could be helpful, but the person asked to do more for us might end up feeling resentful, consciously or otherwise. Each of us carrying more than the other can easily see. We can try to argue that such resentment is or is not warranted, but arguing the resentment away hardly works. When Accommodations Become Apologies Our arguments for accommodations are often these attempts to do what others do, get the homework in on time, avoid disrupting others, pass the tests. Such approaches play out in the days well beyond school. In other words, behind the question of whether to tell a boss about ADHD is something along the lines of, "What if I forget something? What if I miss a deadline? Could it get me off the hook?" Or, "Give me lots of reminders. I can't handle them myself." And running underneath is all, "How can I not be a troublemaker?" What's missing is the wonderful power and beauty of a wandering mind, the deep focus, creativity, discovery, play, invention, and more. Why leave these behind in this discussion? When our strengths are unseen in the glimmer of another's eye, there's no mirror to see them in ourselves. A Practice in Presenting Strengths Growing up now in a world of work, we often forget that these powers are there laying dormant. Instead, we continue to ask for mercy and forgiveness in the form of accommodations rather than the conditions that allow us to shine. The trouble is often not that we cannot. It's that we do not have the practice of knowing and nurturing our abilities. Communicating, crafting the stories, conveying the sense of what we have to offer all take practice. In putting my own thoughts together for my dear audience of fellow wandering minds, I've had to practice describing how whatever I have to say might be of benefit. Without doing so, I'm just another talking head easily ignored. But when I can, for example, in the opening 90 seconds of my podcast, something I've worked hard to put together and then practiced, I hope to convey, "Hey, maybe I can help." Certainly I'm simplifying a deeply complex issue. This is not an overnight endeavor. It takes practice, visits over time. Sometimes it helps to recruit caring others to the cause. Among others, I give great thanks to my dear friends. one person who, uh, you've heard on an episode we did together, Rachel, who helped me recognize my voice, present my story, and describe the strengths I'm trying to portray. Another, Billy, who, uh, on another episode we did together helped me think through also, "How do I craft my voice? How do I present something? How do I present that I have something to offer, hopefully, to an audience?" With practice, we learn for ourselves where we can and cannot trust ourselves to follow through on something. We find how to structure our work, our ideas, so we can be alerted when we need to be, clear of distractions, respectful of our own working memory as unique as it is. We learn not only what we need to get by, but more importantly, what we can use to excel. When we know how we can excel, what it takes to support our ability to do well, it's no longer about, "Do I tell my boss whatever?" It's about discussing specifics that help nurture an environment that works for you, that helps you build the relationships between yourself and the work that helps you engage yourself as a best self. So for a moment, consider what helps bring about those spirits of play and care for yourself, maybe at home. What are those conditions? What comes from those conditions, those ways of working? And then rather than focus on conditions first, what if you considered what you could do and create if those conditions were there? Music — Weight in Arms Today's piece of music is called Weight in Arms. Enjoy. #ADHD #FindingFlowWithADHD #WavesOfFocus #ADHDadults #WanderingMind #ADHDfocus #FlowState #executivefunctions Mentioned in this episode: Waves of Focus YouTube Series Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw

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69. Further Adventures of AI and the Wandering Mind

As someone who loves tools and figuring out the best ways to use them, I've been intrigued with the potentials of AI, particularly using it as someone with a wandering mind. This week I delve into my recent experiments existential dilemmas, and adventures with the so-called artificial intelligence I am feeding my own intelligence into. So is it helpful, more efficient, how can I use it without giving away my agency? Let's find out. #Mindfulness #Neurodivergence #ADHDpodcast #ADHD #WanderingMinds #Anchoring #AI Transcript Every Friday morning, I sit down to write on my own without the help of any AI this draft of my podcast and newsletter. So this morning, I tiptoed to the edge and asked, uh, "Hey, AI, I like to write on Fridays. I usually do so from this blank slate, but I wanna give it a try here and see what, uh, you've been about. Maybe you can help me out. Maybe take a look at what I've been recently writing about. Give me... Show me what that's been and, and, uh, and then suggest something." And I used the latest and greatest from Claude, this Fable 5, and it gave me this perfectly cogent response, totally looked at what I did, and then I ignored it completely. So here I am writing about AI instead. Today's a bit of a wanderer, but I think I land somewhere useful, so tag along if you will. The Whirlwind Does AI help the wandering mind? My goodness, have I drunk the Kool-Aid with this thing. It's been a whirlwind, and my goodness, can there be controversy behind it? I heard this story about some school somewhere using AI to announce its graduates walking across the stage. It then mispronounced a bunch of names, forgot to mention others, and by the time it was all done, they couldn't go back and announce those that it had missed. And then I get these emails, much like you get emails, and can't you just smell the AI on them? What's that about? Why would I want to respond to a robot? I hear stories of the massive warehouses that are being built, draining water from an entire state perhaps. But hey, maybe it's providing jobs? Or is it taking jobs? Or is it changing jobs? Having frank discussions with my longtime graphic designer and friend, Matt, who, was a guest in episode 64. Play around with Claude Design and see what happens. Construction or Destruction? I wonder about our civilization as it progresses here. Going through the industrial age, we polluted the heck out of things, didn't we? Beautiful Chicago River and its tributaries were just nasty. We could barely go near them. We'd choke in the smog, walk through horse crap. It was awful. But once we made it through that developmental stage, if you will, we've now come to some place where things are cleaner and kinda nice sometimes. Progressively think about the world we live in. Is it a truism that we go through messy stages to get to cleaner ones? How do we know if we're going through construction or maybe destruction? It's not always clear. Sometimes we think of the fight between money and the environment, those greedy people who have more money than various countries. The question isn't how we resolve this fight between money and environment. It's, it's how do we align them? How do we make a clean environment profitable? How do we extend our vision beyond the myopic moment, beyond the quarterly report? But, ah, maybe that's not where I am. I'm one who likes to tinker. I like tools. The Tinker Man Tinkers Tagline for my website when I first built it in 2000 or so used to be Mind, Music, and Technology. So the tinkerman tinkers. After wrapping up the last bits of The Waves of Focus, I had this idea to put together a beginner's series of the course for YouTube, um, and, uh, why not test the waters with AI? Let's see what it can do. It's already released by the time, or at least partially released by the time this podcast episode's going out, so do check that out. I don't even remember the first question I had asked of AI. It was maybe something like, "Hey, I'm building a YouTube series. Help me out, would you?" A couple months later, I'm full steam ahead with not only that, but I've created several compendia of ideas from my DevonThink database. I've organized multiple next steps for marketing, extracted the nearly 360,000 words. Yes, I'm not so subtly bragging. From my course keynote to create a reserve of information from which to build the YouTube series and my next book and all that good stuff. How do I reconcile these? Please Think for Me Clearly there's a benefit, but clearly there are also problems. I often like to say the more powerful the tool, the more caution it requires. And I wonder about AI and its impact on the mind. The trouble comes from the sense of, "Please think for me." When we ask an AI to write our emails for us without our editing or rewriting it to fit our voice, when we ask it to come up with a gift idea for someone rather than reflecting on what we know of that person ourselves, when we ask it to tell us what to do without reflecting on what's meaningful to us in the first place, we only grow more lost at sea. Thought is this cresting of emotion into mind, and as such, it's not static it takes time to form, something we often find in scarcity. So we often come to this erroneous, unspoken assumption that thinking is hard. It's only hard in the sense of any hard work, that it's emotional work. We can pause where we offer the seed, the soil, and the sun, and somehow our brains seem to do the rest. But of course, there may be other waves of motion at work, maybe in the difficulty to finish things. We fear the feelings of failure and how this rests on our inability to trust ourselves. The effort, if you will, is in allowing and sustaining a vision where we pause and ask, "What's on my mind about this?" Allowing that question to linger and stir those unconscious waters, that's how we build the creative moment. Some part of us looks to reconnect, to grow. Whatever the distance, whatever the injuries it may represent, there's some posing of a threshold beyond which it's difficult for us to engage this moment. That vision that we have necessarily comes from within us. Our AI's vision comes from within it. The human tendency is to avoid difficult emotion, including those that would require forming a thought, these difficult things that are in our lives, marred by anger, irritation, shame, regret, pain of any and every sort. The bridge between is to recognize that the pain and the lost trust may be one and the same, easier said than done. Where am I wandering off now? Let me return to this, uh, episode I'd recently done, Anchoring and the Option to Work, Episode 57. Symbiotic, Not Parasitic Symbiotic, Not Parasitic We allow thoughts, emotions, sensations, and perceptions to come to mind. We pause to allow ourselves these thoughts. When they come to that place of being settled where no new thoughts are coming to mind and there are only ripples and variation, then all the information about whatever can come to mind has come to mind. That's the strongest ground on which we can stand. And from that firmly anchored place, we can then decide on our next action, this next direction, with whatever vision we have, as clear as we can make it. When we do that and then ask AI, "Hey, what do you think?" rather than it giving me garbage, it now gives me an approximation of where I am. I work with it and what I understand of it, and it can work with me and what it understands of me to develop a vision that I see as ringing true. We work together. It feels meaningful to me. But then I guess we're also talking about the art of relating to anything and anyone, aren't we? It's nice when we can engage symbiotically rather than parasitically. When we have a friend who hears and listens as we do the same. When we have a job that supports us, and we feel we can support it. When we sit with the dishes and feel engaged because we directly feel how that moment connects and clears paths for those things that we feel meaningful in our lives. Those are good moments. So does AI help the wandering mind? I think it's the same question about any of our tools, really. Are we asking it to be us, to create our vision? Or is it there to help us realize the vision that can only come from within ourselves? Depends on whether we've anchored, recognized where we are, where we'd like to be. From there, from that deep place of being, play, care, meaning, we can consider how to arrange for those places of symbiosis, for those gardens, if you will. Thought and AI, money and environment, self and world. Music — Torn Today's piece is an improvisation called Torn. It twiddles a bit between two or three main notes with some chords floating around. Improvisations are essentially the realization of some vision in the process of creating them. Well, I guess that's really any form of creativity, isn't it? Enjoy the piece. Mentioned in this episode: Waves of Focus YouTube Series Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw

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68. What If You're Not Time-Blind? — Three Rhythms Beneath the Clock

The anxiety of a task taking too long, a project starting too late, or the loud silence of an undone to-do list can be incredibly overwhelming. This is particularly true for those of us with ADHD, wandering minds, and the like. But what if the clock on the wall isn't the only conductor we should be setting our rhythms to? This week, we explore listening to the three foundational rhythms living within ourselves, and reflect on how the anchoring technique can prove useful across them all. Transcript The clock. The tick tocks of the clock. Be there at eight. Be done by three. How long will this go? Why can't I know how long this will take? Do I have time blindness? What if this so-called time blindness is less about being unaware and more that our own experience of time takes prominence? So much of our modern society runs on these external measures of time. Of course, it does. We have to share our existence. We have to meet in places, present our deliverables. But how much gets lost when we ignore our own experience of time? The time within ourselves While the clock does its thing, measuring our days by the seconds and the hours, I wonder if we do ourselves a disservice losing sight of the time within ourselves. The afternoon, the evening, the time before lunch, the walk from here to there, the time to remember a song, the time of being. Considering our own time isn't a selfish act, it's an act of self-reflection, and when we do it, we start to guide ourselves and gauge better, and sometimes even sync with the world's clocks better if we decide to. I find three foundational rhythms that I want to call attention to. One is the breath, second is the session, and the third is the day. Each of these are foundational because they rest in our experience. The breath So first, the breath. It's useful as a measure for a pause. When we can pause, which may be the most difficult of all the productivity exercises there are, we reach a higher state of agency. Agency is this skill of deciding and engaging non-reactively It's where we can make our decisions with our greatest sense of meaning. When we can pause, we're able to connect with those things that resonate with us more deeply. That connects with what we care for, how we play, which in turn help us guide our moments, our days into mastery and meaningful work. The session A second foundational fundamental rhythm of time is the session. This is the time in which our attention aligns with some intention, even if our intention is just to think about something for a moment. Every time we align our attention with an intention, we create a wave of focus. It might be disrupted, it might be rough, it might be smooth, but each one of these waves has a beginning, middle, and end. The most experiential way to practice this is to recognize the power of a visit. You know, listen to episode four for a deeper dive on it. But for here and now, the idea is that we approach, we reach this edge of action. We pause at some work in front of us to feel whatever is at risk, whatever we are feeling we might lose, or whatever frustration is there. We expose ourselves to the emotions of the work and hear what they have to say. And then as needed, we can mount the bravery and care that it takes to engage. At any time beyond, we can let go, whether it's done or not. A second, a minute, an hour, these have no feeling. But an experienced time, the moment of a breath and its pause, the flow of a thought and action in their own times, those we can pay attention to. We can feel the beginnings, the middles, and the ends. The beginning is where we approach. It's where we can get thrown off, how emotion might have us avoid something, how we might inadvertently defend against something. The middle, while we're in it, we might feel confused, overwhelmed, bored, angry, anxious. We could feel excited, excited about something else entirely, and the daydreams that pull us out. And then there's the ending, the transition out. Whether we're done or not, that dreaded hyperfocus or exhaustion or just dropping it and discovering later, "Oh, I didn't finish that." Or maybe the rare, "Oh, I'm done." Across all three, anchoring can always help. Check out episode fifty-seven for a deeper dive there. But for now, know that you can always grab a pen and paper and write down the thoughts that are on your mind and decide which one you wanna be with. Anchoring itself becomes this moment in time. The day And then there's the third, which is the day. Many of us keep some form of daily to-do list. We think about our habits. We wake up, hopefully every day, until one day we don't. Which, on reflection, points to a fourth cycle, the life itself, momentary or a hundred years, or either way, a single unit. But I guess that's tangent to these three. Back to the day. If we can visit something and not finish it, that idea that we can step away before it's done and still want to come back, well then, what do we do? We can invite our future self into the next day. Hey, future you, somewhere between waking and sleeping, can you make a visit to this? That person now has the whole cycle of the day to honor that self who sent the invitation, to then mount the courage to pay the visit, to expose themselves to the emotions of the work, and to make their own decision. Maybe even to extend yet another invitation to that next future you down the line. Using the experienced time of the day, we practice building a trust with ourselves, a sense that something will keep doing what it's been doing so we can rely on it. In this case, ourselves. Meanwhile, we distance ourselves from alarms artificially bolted onto the mechanical clock, designed to interrupt us wherever we are. Alarms do their job. They disrupt whatever wave we're in. But that's irritating, and I like to avoid it when I can. So that rhythm that we return to something perhaps every day can become a current, a stream, this river of trust that's formed of three parts: the honor for the self who gave us the invitation by showing up to it; the respect for the present self by deciding from that deep breath, from that place of, "I've been here"; and the care for our future selves by asking them to return tomorrow for another invitation if we want to. These are three fundamental cycles: the breath, the session, the day. We all share them, ADHD or not, neurodivergent or neurotypical. It's just that for some of us, they run choppy and hard to navigate, and sometimes our zoomed-in view makes the waves loom so large we lose sight of everything else. But that's another story. The takeaway Meanwhile, as a takeaway, may be that somehow you're feeling time blind. May be that your time hasn't yet found some harmony with the hands of a clock. But what if there's some way to begin practicing that harmony? What if you picked up one thing and invited your future self to visit it sometime tomorrow, sometime between waking and sleeping? It's not something you'd have to finish. You don't even have to do anything once you're there. That single deep breath counts. May not be easy, but there is a simplicity to it. And if you can do that, and then do it again, well, now you've got two beats. And in two beats, you have a rhythm. Music — Feet on Pebbles in Water Music's an art form whose very medium is time. And you may notice that it too doesn't necessarily connect with a clock. While there is a metronome, there's other ways of ar-arranging notes to, to music. Chopin's tempo rubato, this expanding and shrinking of, of the, time and the speed of the way, we play the notes, translates literally as "stolen time." When I play a series of quarter notes, then a series of half notes, I can tell something's shifted. It doesn't just feel longer, it feels larger, grander. And if I shift to whole notes, it can feel larger still. Yet the quarter notes and the half notes that came before simply are. There's a relativity of time. It's not just one against the other. It seems to give time its very definition, the experience of time itself. The piece I play in this week's episode is called Feet on Pebbles in Water, and I hope you enjoy it. Mentioned in this episode: Waves of Focus YouTube Series Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw

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67. ADHD, Mindfulness, and Anchoring

As someone with ADHD or a wandering mind, you may have been told to keep a scratchpad on you at all times. It's a great way of capturing our thoughts in the moment so they don't flutter away as our minds are want to do. But, a scratchpad on its own doesn't always spur us into action. And in some cases, it can turn into the thing we avoid at all costs, serving as a reminder of many things that have been left undone. So how to we move past the scratchpad phase and turn into a powerful tool that is helpful? This week we walk through the different layers of the anchor technique. It's a tool that has worked very well for my students and for myself when feeling scattered. It's one that can be used in conjunction with other tools and often makes them more helpful. We close with a new take on a composition I've played here before, Caregiver, in C minor. Transcript What do we actually do with a scratchpad? There are various ADHD talking heads out there who tell us, "Keep paper on the desk, in the car, by the bed, on your person. Capture whatever's loose. Get it out of your head." Good advice. But you've likely noticed writing things down doesn't make them done. Sometimes it just builds the pile higher. The list itself can become something we dread. So what's the difference between a scratchpad that helps us and one that haunts us? Again and again, students have told me how they find the anchor technique to be a powerful way of engaging work and life in general, whether they're scattered, exhausted, even when they are focused and they're just trying to figure out a way to be even more so. Whatever system they build or use, whatever productivity method or app they try, they bring this anchoring technique with them. And I've explained it in some detail in episode sixty-two if you wanna have a listen there. But what about it works? Isn't it just using a scratchpad? Well, this is similar to asking, "Isn't meditation just about focusing on one thing?" Well, eh, kinda, maybe, some ways, yes. But it also misses the entire point. Mindfulness, reconsidered We engage a type of mindfulness. The trouble, I think, is in that word, mindfulness. I, I don't know about you, but the word tends to make me feel a bit of the ick. I think it's been kind of mauled by the marketing machinery of, of everything. It's so amorphous, so soft and squishy. Aren't we mindful all the time? And even if I were to suddenly be mindful somehow, whatever that means, so what? I've still got things to do, matters to address, stuff to stuff. I like this comment that a particular Redditor pointed out and said, "Mindfulness is an unlucky translation of the Pāli word 'sati.' It's remembering to observe how mind's attention moves." When we do engage in this mindful approach, which I'll point out in a moment, we tend to help ourselves move from scatter to smoother waves of thought where we can more deliberately, deeply, calmly engage the moment. Okay, so well, that's all well and good. What am I talking about anyway? What is anchoring and how does it relate? So I'm gonna walk you through eight levels of how this practice of pen and paper deepens and, and how it becomes more mindful and hopefully it'll, it'll give you a sense of , what I mean by this. From to-do list to a menu of the moment Level one. We all know how to use a scratch pad, right? You write stuff and sometimes that's totally what we need to do. There's nothing more that we need to do. We just need to write what we need to do and do the things. Typically we write a to-do list of sorts. We throw things down, remember, "Oh, I gotta do this, that, the other thing," all the things that are weighing us down and ah, doesn't that feel good to get out? Trouble is none of it's done and that can be exhausting depending on what we've written. Sometimes we can even overwhelm ourselves looking at whatever we've just created, this awful golem ready to destroy its creator. One thing that's missing is any respect for working or short-term memory, those parts that engage the now. These are the things that would hopefully help us stay with this present moment instead of having to juggle the zillions of things that are bubbling outside. So level two. What if we just listed what was on our mind to do in this moment? What our mind is juggling just about the now. Those things that are not now, well, we could put those somewhere else. Those are quite likely important in their own ways. Fine. But just doing that, chances are you'll have reduced that list considerably. Just what's going on in our mind right now? What is on my mind? We might even recognize that having these items of the now sitting on paper can now support us. We have more mental energy available to clearly decide where we want to rest our attention next. We're not being dragged down by whatever we cannot do in this moment. In this way, anchoring answers two questions. First is, what's on my mind? Maybe something that's bubbling just below consciousness or right there. What's on my mind to do? And then secondly, where would I like my mind to be? And that's where we circle something. Now, we're only at level two here in terms of the levels of mindfulness, if you will. So let's keep going here. So far, we've only written down the things that are likely "shoulds", but what's also in our mind are "wants." What if we expanded? What if we allowed onto this list our current wants? I wanna play a game. I wanna step outside. I wanna watch a show. Even allowing ourselves to recognize that we have wants, that they might have a place to sit side by side with our needs, that can be a revelation. Not the least of which, and one that can take considerable practice for some, is realizing how this sheet of paper can now shift from "shoulds" and "have tos" into a list of options, a sort of menu for the moment. At the fourth level, even further, when we start to conceptualize more deeply how this is just about the now, we can start feeling like this paper is not here for us to serve it, it's there to serve us. It supports us. The way we do that is we allow ourselves to throw it away. We can throw this away at any moment, whenever it no longer represents the now. Now, of course, if there's something we wanna keep, we can put that somewhere else. But here we've got this thing that is dynamically shifting to meet us in this moment. Okay, but what about when we finish writing this beautiful list and perfect it in whatever ways, although I'm not saying that one ought to perfect it in whatever ways, but let's say you're doing it anyway, and then wander off immediately. Well, we've been impulsive, haven't we? So we can define impulse as this sort of flow of emotion into action that at least in part has overwhelmed or bypassed consciousness. Let me say that one more time. We can define impulse as a flow of emotion into action that at least in part overwhelmed or bypassed consciousness. In other words, something unconsciously happened. We suddenly realized we were in our emails or social media, three tabs open researching the best possible air fryers when all we wanted was a snack. Well then, what if we acknowledge those, too? That's level five. In those moments, we catch ourselves, which we may not always be able to do, but when we can, we can return to that list, that anchor path that we've been building here, and write down where we wandered. In that way, we're doing a few things. We're, we're making the unconscious conscious. But not only that, we're giving it a space, a place that it can rest, where our working and short-term memory can again be supported, where we can gently decide where would we like our mind to be. We're not forcing ourselves out of where we went. We're not forcing ourselves into something else. It is now an option amongst the rest. Agency is strengthened. WIN, WIND, WIND-E, BE WIND With these ideas so far, we've got want, impulse, need. A lovely mnemonic already. WIN. Win of the now, right? This prompt can already be helpful to help us be mindful in engaging, in helping support that sense of agency at the moment. But there's deeper we can go yet. What if we wanna do nothing? Level six. Don't we have that right? Of course. We can drift. D for drift. Adding to our mnemonic, we have WIND. Level seven, deeper yet. We can recognize how our options are all formed from emotion that which is cresting into consciousness. These emotions are coming from somewhere, maybe somewhere of meaning, known, unknown, conscious, unconscious, well beyond. We could, if we wanted, don't have to, write a word or two about where our mind is. Write one part frustrated, three parts worried, and a dash of curiosity somewhere in the corner. Maybe we start to journal or not at all, but doing so adds E for emotion to a misspelled WIND-E mnemonic. Finally, we've got level eight. We can think about how these emotions even rest in the body, a tension in the gut, a crinkle of the eyebrows, a tightening of the breath. Our bodies are trying to tell us something, whether clear or not. So B for body creates the mnemonic B WIND. I find there to be something deliciously paradoxical between the idea of anchoring and being wind, but it works. Anchoring is pausing, not tethering. Often when I mention anchoring, people at first think I'm talking about tying ourselves to something, and that is not at all the case. Anchoring is about pausing. It's creating that breather, that space between the waves of focus to look at the possibilities. Again, it's about where's my mind? Where would I like it to be? And within, it reminds us of this practice of being. Once we circle some destination around the visit, we're raising anchor, we're sailing wherever we decided to go. And even if we go somewhere else, somewhere that we didn't write down, whether impulsive or not, the idea is, have we acknowledged it? Is this where I want my mind to be? When we do this with clarity of thought, a knowing sense of what's influencing us, emotion is less driver than messenger. We can act from those places of deepest meaning. Often that also lends us this strength for greater courage, where we can pay attention to the tensions, consider the risks, rather than leverage, if not abuse ourselves to find some force of impulse. We can instead gently and deliberately find those places that we lean into challenge, and in so doing regularly, perhaps, we lean into mastery. Music — Caregiver This following piece I've performed here before, I've played here before. It's called "Caregiver." I'm doing so with another variation on it. I often like to vary pieces. In fact, I don't think I've ever played the same piece the same way twice. This piece is in C minor, three-quarters time. I hope you enjoy it. Mentioned in this episode: Waves of Focus YouTube Series Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw

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66. ADHD and the Power of Care in Story with Guest Neal Foard

This week I am joined by storyteller Neal Foard to discuss the act and emotion of care. Those of us with ADHD and wandering minds can often get overwhelmed by the negativity taking over our social feeds, looking at the news, or even just talking to those around us. Neal reminds us that while compassion fatigue is real, it's also not all doom and gloom. Our algorithms are created for engagement, doom sells and our attention is our currency. It's important to take a step back and look at the good things going on around us - even at a micro level. From the person letting you merge during heavy traffic, to someone turning in a lost wallet. Good things are happening all around us, and when we put more care into the world, more care comes back. Learn more about Neal and his work on his website StoryFire.net Mentioned in this episode: Waves of Focus YouTube Series Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw

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65. ADHD and the Seductive Pull of Passion

When the universe puts something fun or interesting in front of us, it can become a welcome distraction from what we are "supposed" to be doing. This can be especially true for those of us with ADHD and wandering minds. We can easily be swept away, like a boat at sea, riding the current of thoughts and emotions taking us further and further away from our plotted destination. Instead of going against the current, I propose a structured pause to reflect on where you are being pulled, as well as what is pushing you away. Take a deep breath and notice your thoughts and the feelings flowing through your body. Then name and write down the activity pulling your attention towards it. You can then turn tasks into options, allowing deliberate consideration for how you would like to precede and where to focus your attention. We end with a piece entitled “Waves on Night’s Shore.” Clunking down the stairs, dragging myself to the laptop, an idea or two rattling in my head. I need to get back to that person. It's been a couple days since they emailed me. Starting to get rude not to answer. Ah, but I still have to research something. Pet the dog, pull out the chair. Wait, I need my tea. Grab the decanter, go through the motions of preparing a gong fu session of tea, this wonderful little art of creating tea, a shortly brewed small cupful at a time. Finally, I crack open the laptop. Barely conscious whispers of that email evaporates as if I said, "I can wait. I have all day." 'Cause as I open that lid, that project I'd been working on, open overnight, greets me with its virtual open arms. "Hey, you, here's that next step ready to go. Just nudge me forward." The Project That Greets You So here I am, dragged myself to the laptop. I had an idea of what to do, and it's gone as soon as the laptop's opened and there was something sitting there waiting for me. What would it hurt if I just tapped it forward? I do have all day, don't I? And we all know where that thinking leads. I've been working on a major project both using and exploring the potential of AI and more specifically, Claude Cowork, building what are called "skills" along the way. Questions have been bubbling. Am I giving up my sense of agency? Am I harming the environment? W-I can do what now? This is the neatest thing. Back and forth ideas go as I come to grips with the ideas of its impact on society as well as the minutiae of the moment's project. All wonderful problems to wrestle with and excite me along the way and distract me from that email. I Can Feel the River I'm being pulled. Paraphrasing Dungeon Crawler Carl, "I can feel the river." A wandering mind can easily be caught in eddies of emotion. Interest, passion, that regular visit to something that engages us, tantalizes, promises, develops a sense of meaning, flares from play into challenge along some paths of mastery. Forget the dishes, forget that email. There's the thrill. We're doing something. Maybe we hadn't been doing something before. Maybe we're just pulling out of some period of exhaustion, some not only still but stagnant waters, and here before us is that feel, that pull. For some, it's a game. For others, it's a book, a garden, an exercise, an event, a world developing within and without. May even be the dishes or cleaning beyond. Whatever it is, we inherently sense that distortion that comes from that powerful emotion. Any emotion, particularly the powerful ones, passion or otherwise, distort that lens of the now. For those with ADHD, we're already myopic, monotropic, magnified. This moment is already heightened, in the not now, meaning beyond current conscious awareness, flows along the periphery, shrouded in a fog we hardly even know to be there. Maybe you have an overwhelming list of things to do. Maybe you have a meeting waiting to stare you down in a calendar. But those negative associations, themselves a rocky, thorny, ugly worry reflexively deflecting our gaze away, seemingly steer us even further into the rapids of that promised play. Boats, Not Cars I've often said we're not cars with poor brakes. We're boats floating on the seas of emotions, and there are no brakes. Why the Pause Is So Hard The pause is vital, but my goodness is it the most difficult of all the productivity ideas, the executive function skills, whatever terminology you want to give it. Pausing is difficult in part because we haven't a clue as to what to do with it. Do I look at the ceiling? Do I white-knuckle avoiding the thing I really wanna do? Do I force myself to do the thing I don't? Framing the Pause But how about if we frame a pause with the following? One, first know the pull, the push, the joy, the anger, the worry, the fear, the care, the overwhelm, the whirling winds and waters ready to drag us about. Again, the hardest of all steps. Second, take at least a single deep breath to be there, though to whatever caring degree makes sense. Give those feelings their space to be recognized as thoughts, felt as feelings, sensed in the body. And three, name the thing of interest. What's pulling us? Maybe even write it down, optimally with pen and paper. In this situation, part of what's thrown matters off is that ease of access. The laptop said, "Hey, I'm right here," as I opened it. The hope, though, is that we can then hold ourselves in that space so that we can better craft our environments. We can then raise the thresholds against those things that we'd prefer to avoid simply drifting into and lower the thresholds towards those things we'd like to engage more deliberately. We hope to guide ourselves. Begin, or Wind Down So here in this pause, where we've written down this idea, we can consider also writing the words begin and wind down next to whatever idea. So if I've been working on a project, I might write down wind down project with the idea that I would clear it out. Doing this, we've now created the options of one or the other, acknowledging that we can engage or deliberately consider how we can set it aside. With that deep breath, we can then more fully decide perhaps to wind it down, and let's say we did. The Project Map Now with a piece of paper again, I could write a title, play the game, garden, explore the AI. I can write down what's on my mind to do about this. I can write, if I were to put this away somewhere out of the way of other things that I find meaningful, maybe even out of sight, how would I get there? How could I get there from this document I'm writing right now? Could it be a link? Would it be directions? Could I start putting things in places, hiding them so that they're out of the way of other things? So that this thing won't jump out at me once I open the laptop, and then I can still get there from, from this piece of paper, from this document. Once I've done that, maybe I can think, is there anything else about this on my mind? Can I even let it consciously drift from my mind? If I can do that I'm acknowledging the momentum that's there, the strength, the power, the whatever it was that was, so fueling me in that moment, and with that, addressing that momentum. Now, those questions that I just mentioned, those steps that I walked you through, create what I call a project map. That document, that object can now act as a portal. Makes it easy to get to everything, but keeps everything else out of the way. You no longer have to rely on the thing to be the reminder of itself, a surefire way to distract or shame yourself as it continually sits there undone. Now you have this central place, and you can cross off wind down that you'd written earlier. One More Breath Pause. See what comes to mind. Maybe you still wanna dive in even after you've cleared it all out. But I also wonder if after doing something like this, you might have more mental room for other ideas to come to mind, other wants, other needs. Maybe write those down. You have every right to dive back in. Those currents are still there ready to ride. But if you decide to do so, you'll be much more conscious of that decision. "Waves on Night's Shore" Well, July just seems to be a month of improvisations. Years ago, I performed live on various stages. I remember one such performance about 20 years ago or so now at an electronics festival in Black River Falls, Wisconsin. I was talking with other performers. One of them asked me about the bed I used. A bed in the musical sense is this sort of background rhythm, a beat, something that would go where, you know, you could, create things above it. Generally something in a higher register, a melody, typically, it was something pre-programmed. But I said I didn't have one. Everything I did and continue to do is generated live. I take my inspiration from jam bands like Phish, who I admire greatly. There's an importance to underlying structure, but it needs to be able to match the energy, sound, rhythms, and the like of the melodies above, at least as I feel it. Maybe that can happen. Maybe those pre-recordings need to happen, especially if we're recording in a studio. But something fun does seem to happen when, the background and the foreground reacts with each other. Same thing that happens when musicians play together live. In any case, I hope you can hear that in this following piece called Waves on Night's Shore, and I hope you enjoy it. Mentioned in this episode: Waves of Focus YouTube Series Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw

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64. Creativity and the Wandering Mind with Graphic Designer Extraordinaire, Matt Strieby

This week I welcome creative mind and graphic designer extraordinaire, Matt Strieby of New Leaf Design. I was first lucky enough to work with Matt in 2005, when he captured the vision for the art gracing the CD for my album, Ontogeny. We've been collaborating ever since. We discuss the creative process for those of us with wandering minds and neurodivergent/ADHD traits, the importance of play balanced with structure. We also talk about embracing and learning from our earlier "cringe" moments, and the importance of sometimes literally walking away from a project to give space for our creativity to breathe. We talk about Matt's personal process: reflection/visualization (often sitting quietly or walking), playing in the “sandbox” phase of sketching and experimentation, a refining phase that narrows options while preserving play, and a final production phase with technical, structured execution. Matt’s design work is at newleafdesign.com. Mentioned in this episode: Waves of Focus YouTube Series Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw

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63. Creativity and Frustration

Frustration is an emotion that can be elusive in its origins while being capable of putting a halt to almost anything we're trying to accomplish. We feel frustration doing something like putting together IKEA furniture. Sometimes it really is about the furniture. Other times we may have something entirely different lingering in the back of our mind making it difficult to use the hex key, thus derailing our ability to put the Früken shelves together. We may buy a new tool or software that is supposed to make life easier, only to find it too complicated to use and too much of a burden or embarrassment to return. We may even feel a sense of failure tied to it. Frustration is the feeling that arises when reality fails to meet a preconception, whether that vision is clear or blurry. This week, we explore how frustration can be a great teacher if we pause to see what we can learn from it. Transcript Ah, it's going all wrong. Order the pieces of whatever's lying about. A screw is sitting there. Where did that come from? Frustration at work is quite the companion. Digital, physical, even mental piles of whatever sits about as we try to build whatever. How is this ever gonna come together? The garage, the report, the dishes. What do I do? So what do we do? When the Pieces Won't Come Together Demands from others pile on. The budget, the stakes, hidden or in plain view, all pile onto the pressure and overwhelm. A Camera, and a Decision Somewhere I decided, in the wake of completing the Waves of Focus materials, that I might work on my YouTube channel, maybe something to enhance the Rhythms of Focus podcast. A teleprompter would help me look at the screen. A webcam as opposed to a DSLR would save me some money. Research mode engaged. Days, if not weeks later, I emerge victorious. Decisions have been reached. Decisions themselves, these weighty beasts, desires, visions, fears, more ideally rest in reflection until they settle with some clear option forward But so often they don't. The ordered supplies sit there, and things aren't working. So I might wonder, do I know what I'm doing? Well, the answer is no, otherwise things would be moving forward. Will I know what I'm doing? Well, I don't know. I can only put one foot in front of the next. I think I may have made a mistake with that camera I bought. No, let me see how I can make it work. Frustration. The heart of it is frustration, the sense that appears when what is being realized is somehow not meeting that preconception, as clear or as blurry as that vision might have been. It's the same gap we find in story, that space between wish and fulfillment that just doesn't seem to resolve. But let me keep trying. Isn't that productivity? Sometimes. Push or Run Sometimes it's a matter of an unconscious fight playing out on the stage of the now, this anger at IKEA furniture that represents the troubles of an unsolved chronic argument in a relationship that has nothing to do with this. A confusion with a report that plays out at a sense of loss at work. Other times, it really is just the furniture itself. How do we know the difference? So often we can either push ourselves through or run. Pushing becomes hyper-focused, this unrelenting, "I need to do this. I need to get this done." Everything else is ignored. Seems like we're thinking something through, but in reality, we're being driven by that force unreflected. When we run, we look for anything else that's easy to solve. That temptation to jump into email where we can mark something as read, to look at a short video on social media for some easy sense of consumption. But what we lose, what I lose, is a recognition of frustration as teacher Frustration as Teacher Pausing to rest the mind on that sensation of frustration, sometimes we find a clue. In consideration, I might think of where the pieces are now. The camera's well-featured, but those features conflict with the setup. I've been trying to make it work. What if I freeze it in place this way? What if I get something to block the glare? All of them might be useful to experiment with. Where Bravery Comes In But I gradually realize this resistance. I don't want to return it. Not only is it more time, but there's this sense of failure with it. Maybe imagined confrontation with the staff of the place that it's ordered from, the sense of mistake, error, part and parcel of the creative process. And while I can consciously say that there might be some emotional part of me that just doesn't see it that way, there's another part that may. Once confronted, though, I can then say, "Oh, that's the point where I can apply bravery." In retrospect, it seems simple. While the cost of returning something, the effort, the packing of stuff, yeah, it's there. It's the whatever that might come from conflict that blocks that true work. Thought Born from Frustration Frustration, when managed well, has opportunity to become thought. In fact, psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion would say that thought doesn't exist without it. If mastery is an ability to do something without thought, frustration gives us the path there, a reflection that something meaningful is attempting to unfold. Deliberately pausing with those sensations, allowing thoughts to form from the emotions beneath as we witness the process, lets us see them in greater relief, lets us see the ideas below the surface, the greater meanings, the greater places for bravery. Mentioned in this episode: Waves of Focus YouTube Series Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw

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62. 3 Unlocks from Scratchpad to Anchor

This week we explore how ADHD-related working-memory limits create a bottleneck. While a scratchpad can help, it often fails without a mindfulness-based technique called “anchoring.” Anchoring uses pen and paper with three “unlocks”: 1) Shift your mindset from thinking of what is written as tasks and to-dos, to thinking of them as options. This reduces wrestling with the “I really should” thoughts, reduces shame, relieves working memory, and increases agency. One mnemonic to help identify what's present is WIND(E) “want, impulse, need, drift, wind” (optionally emotion) helps identify what’s present. 2) While lists are useful, it is also important to recognize that lists decay. You must periodically return to update them, thus creating a conversation with your past self and building trust with your future self. 3) When a list no longer reflects the present, archive or discard it. We close with an improvisational music piece, “In the Interim,” blending minor and major keys. Transcript One of the struggles of ADHD is this trouble with working memory that can be very small. Meanwhile, intelligence is trying to get through this bottleneck. It's a difficult situation. The Scratchpad, and Where It Falls Apart One quick way that we tend to resolve this issue is by using a scratchpad. Write down a few thoughts about what we have to take care of and then go through them. Often feels positive to do this. Sometimes we go overboard, write a gazillion things. Sometimes we're just able to capture what's on our mind in that moment. Feels very empowering. At least for that moment, and then things often fall apart at that point. We can expand the use of this, though, through a mindfulness technique and what I call anchoring. I've mentioned it on several episodes before. There are two or three, I wanna call them rules, but I also don't wanna call them rules. All right, let's call them rules. Anchoring is a powerful way of bringing our mind to the moment using pen and paper. But there are a few different unlocks that need to be put in place before it really blooms, because otherwise we're just using pen and paper. So what are these unlocks? Unlock 1 — From Tasks to Options Well, the first one is to transition from only writing tasks and to-dos to writing options. All right, so what's that about? There's a sense in meditation that we are not our thoughts — a commonly mentioned phrase that seems mystical in nature. Mystical maybe being another word for mystery beyond our understanding, unless we sit down and do this difficult thing every day. And especially for those with ADHD, that sort of meditation can seem well out of reach. So what is that? One of the troubles with ADHD is that we tend to wrestle with our thoughts. For example, we have this idea of a thing we "should do," the laundry, taking care of the fridge that's starting to rot, other things that may or may not have deadlines. Usually the ones without clear deadlines are the more insidious. And then we might try to push them out of our minds, try to focus somewhere else. Acknowledging them in one sense, for example, writing them down, can be a difficult proposition because now we're even more directly facing this thing that we don't wanna do. We don't know where to write it. We don't know how to convince ourselves to do it. We're enraged by it, among other possibilities. Meanwhile, it may shame us, worsening matters. When we can write a list as options, for example, if we have the option to start cleaning the fridge using a small, tiny step forward rather than cleaning the entire thing, among other possibilities, acknowledging what's on our mind, we're relieving our working memory. That's part of us that's already strained. This allows us then to have more ability to decide. Not only do we have more ability to decide, but now we have more energy to face the difficult emotions, the storm of emotions that are waiting for us around these difficult matters, whatever it is we decide to do. The point is that we've heightened our sense of agency. We've not forced ourselves one way or the other to do the thing or not do the thing. Reading the WIND I like to use this mnemonic: want, impulse, need, drift, wind. There's also this optional E at the end of it for emotion, if you like. So windy. It's useful as you're getting a sense of what those winds are, what's on my mind in this moment. When we practice that sense rather than writing our tasks, we then get to more, uh, clearly decide which direction to head. We have more resources to make that decision as we're not trying to push ourselves against one or the other. In this way, we're not our thoughts. We're not being driven by the thoughts. The thoughts and the emotions behind them are messengers. Unlock 2 — The List Decays Now, the second thing that happens, second rule maybe, second unlock, occurs when we realize that the list decays. Not only do we realize that, but we acknowledge it, and we do something about it. Let's say we've chosen something on this list to visit. We've circled one thing. We've gone ahead and made that visit. If we can return to the list, when we are able, if we haven't lost our way, we have this benefit. We can see who we were before that session, before that visit that we'd engaged in. We're now in this position to say, "Hmm, what's different?" Maybe a little, maybe a lot. We can cross things off, add them, update things in whatever way, shape, or form so that it now reflects the now. As we do that, we are engaging in this conversation with our past self. That process develops a trust over time that we can use for our future selves. We can recognize, "Oh, I can hold onto an idea and come back to it, even if it's for a brief moment." It's a practice. Trust is something of a muscle that we form. It's a sense that something will continue to behave as it has been, such that it might be relied on, and developing that is a muscle. Unlock 3 — Let It Go Now, the third unlock is that once this is no longer representative of the now, we can trash it. We can archive it. We can get rid of it. It's no longer an anchor. From Scratchpad to Anchor These three unlocks move a scratchpad from a simple thing to a very powerful ally in our day-to-day, helping us reduce scatter, manage exhaustion, connect to our task lists if we have them. We're getting more buckets of email and all the rest all the time. It helps us manage those as well. For example, we can write something like, "Visit the inbox." That can be one way of acknowledging, "Oh, there's a thing." In the Interim Today's piece of music is called In the Interim. It's an improvisation oddly written in both minor and major keys, sometimes with minor in the lower registers and major in the higher. Other times, there's a full-on transition to the major. At first, uh, you know, you might think that music doesn't allow for this kind of transition. But somehow, if you commit to it, it does. But that commitment isn't blind. It isn't like, "I'm gonna do this no matter what." That's often a recipe for might makes right type of a disaster. Instead, it's an acknowledgment of both the major and minor, respecting both as they are. I hope you enjoy it. Mentioned in this episode: Waves of Focus YouTube Series Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw

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61. How Much Do We Delegate to AI - A Discussion with Brett

This episode I am joined by Waves of Focus community member and fellow wandering mind, Brett. As a software developer, he is no stranger to technology, and as a creative mind with many ideas, he is also no stranger to getting lost in the mounting pile of notes and files that continue to accumulate. Some of his latest experiments in organization have led him to exploring ways that AI can help as a personal assistant managing his workflows and preparing Daily Engaged list based on his energy levels. While he is getting some good results based on he prompts he has built, we also talk about some of the pitfalls of AI and the need to refrain from outsourcing all of our thoughts and creativity to a tool that has been programmed to be a "yes man." I hope you enjoy and will share your experiences and thoughts on using AI as a productivity tool. You can find Brett at @ebrett on GitHub. Tools Mentioned Obsidian Claude City Personal AI Infrastructure Cowork Claude Code Pai Antinote Setapp Mentioned in this episode: Waves of Focus YouTube Series Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw

60. The Power of Boredom

In this podcast episode, I reflect on boredom. Boredom is a restless, sometimes frightening emotion that can feel like an indictment of a life being wasted. This leads some of us to run toward distractions, productivity tools, or urgency. The problem as I see it, isn’t boredom, but the avoidance of it. Shaming ourselves with “shoulds” and infinite task lists amplifies the dread. Instead, how about taking a different approach by pausing to acknowledge boredom as a signal rather than a driver. Can we look for small glimmers of life to sow seeds of play within the necessary chores or uninspiring moments which are simply part of living? I end the episode with a piano piece blending two of my other compositions, “Herd” and “Alight”, both in F minor. As with all of my music, it is ever-evolving. Transcript Ah, boredom. What am I gonna do? Nothing to do? Ugh. It seems as if boredom has a sense of a exhaustion to it. Restlessness? But it's base, I think it can feel quite scary. Some can even view it as this indictment against themselves. Of, somehow this reflection of an empty life. And so we might look to occupy ourselves with the next productivity tool, the next craft, the next project interest, whatever. Well, to put it more bluntly though, we run from that feeling of boredom. But the trouble isn't the boredom, it's the running. The Guilt in Boredom Whenever we dismiss, cutoff, any emotion, we cut something from ourselves. Sometimes we shame ourselves with the shoulds. I should be that person. I should have done more in my younger years. I should do the laundry. I shouldn't be bored. We use the should as this sort of knife. Any of these emotions can be painful, and so we distract ourselves. Sometimes we become overwhelmed standing at the edge of some work, some field of knowledge, the gaping maw of some effectively infinite task list. Just start. Just start might be the admonition here. One I'm certainly not a fan of, especially as it can easily touch off more of the, "I don't wanna" feelings. Running from boredom can sound like, well, I better act now and get rid of that feeling. The feeling is like it's pesky. Something to push away. As we dive into another activity, often fueled by and further fueling some sense of urgency, but if we pause, pay attention to it, allowing it to be neither indulging nor ignoring, we might acknowledge its power, it's grip. Sometimes it's a small tingle, but other times it's this existential dread. A sense that life itself is being wasted. And now we add on that we only have our shameful selves to blame, effectively compounding the problem. Things Still Need to Get Done Some of those boring things, taxes, laundry, dishes, and the like, yet need doing. And when we pause without running, we can hear that emotion as a signal and less have it become our driver. When we pause, we might be able to consider, "How can I find some life, some flow within whatever it is that might be boring? What tiny plant of play perhaps can I find in here and nourish?" The answer, of course is not obvious. Sometimes it's not even possible. But what we do start doing is we stop avoiding the things that are causing us boredom and troubles, and instead start recognizing that we can try to find life within them, and that that itself is a practice. When I returned to the piano on those days that I'm not feeling it, I'll still sit with it. I'll breathe it in. Feel the moment as it is. Maybe just maybe lightly brush a key with a gentle touch, and then maybe just maybe press a key. I'm not acting, I'm not "faking it until I make it," a phrase that makes me otherwise nauseous. Finding Life in One Note Instead, what I'm doing is I'm listening for the life. Within that note, can I hear that? I'm not trying to defend against the space time, distortions of boredom and other strong emotions, but I'm trying to integrate it, sing through it with it, form with it. I am where I am in the mush of the moment. And can I hear the beauty of that single sound in a single note, in that mush? And if I can find that itself, not a simple task, but if I can, even if the entire session is about that, somehow something unlocks. Whatever comes next, somehow rings more deeply, whatever's left of that session, even if it's only for a few moments that I'm playing something, somehow it feels more engaging and powerful than had I spent hours pounding away at the keys. Next sessions, both at the piano and in other things of my life throughout the day, somehow carry a different confidence. This confidence that's born in the bravery of facing that stalwart foe of boredom once again. It is a challenge, but it's a worthy one, and it's one that's rewarded not by some pot of gold at the end, but by a return to where work itself feels alive. If we can find that life, that play, that care, then we're also finding maybe the mastery and meaning in the moment. Sitting with Boredom It's not solved in a day, and I don't have a hack for you, but I do have a suggestion. The wandering mind wanders, not least of all through avoiding flaring and difficult emotions, but also we can guide it with practice engaging emotions like boredom again. In this way, it becomes less driver and more messenger. The next time you might feel that wave of boredom approach even envelop you, can you be with it? Can you be with it at a place that engages you in that boredom? Can you do so not to a degree that overwhelms you, but also not so little in such a way that you pretend it doesn't exist. Can you do so to whatever caring degree makes sense to you? And if so, what does it have to say? Maybe it says nothing beyond some vague feeling. I wonder how you might experience making that next decision. What would your next session be like, whatever you decide. Might it not be richer than if you simply acted? Heard and Alight in F minor The following piece is a mix of a couple of, uh, pieces called Herd and Alight, both of them in F Minor. They're both, I suppose relatively old, a couple decades old. But as with all of these pieces, they tend to evolve. I like the, um, structure that's formed in these that they, um still allow for a flow and a change from one performance to the next. Sometimes I repeat one thing more often and another thing less often and I vary here or there, but still that structure's within it. Anyway, hope you enjoy this piece, that's kind of meld between the two. Um, sometimes I'll think of these pieces as something of a garden, if you will. You know, one grows and another thing fades. Sometimes they combine, sometimes they become two. Anyway, this is called Herd and Alight. Mentioned in this episode: Waves of Focus YouTube Series Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw

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59. Creativity and Error

This episode explores how those of us with ADHD and wandering minds often link our “scatter” to creativity. Of course, turning creative ideas into finished work requires managing motivation, energy, time, and life rhythms. And when scatter turns into "error", we can become completely derailed. It may seem counterintuitive, but I would argue that "error" is a vital part of creativity. That being said, while Bob Ross’s “happy accidents” and Miles Davis’s attitude toward mistakes can be inspiring, this mindset tends to only ring true for masters of their craft. Perfection paralysis and self-accusations about mistakes can cause harm and prevent us from moving forward or even starting in the first place. But I like to define creativity as discovering what you’re making over time. This should leave no room for what may be perceived as a mistake, whether in art or even in practical tasks. So when we are confronted with a perceived error or mistake, I invite you to pause, acknowledge any emotions coming up, and use error to realign rather than ignore it. We close out with an experimental music piece, “Inspawn,” which is a combination of "inspire" and spawn". It gives you a glimpse of how I learn jazz techniques through play and letting creativity take me on a journey with no mandatory destination. Transcript The Lovely Chaos of Creativity But my scatter is my creativity! Those with ADHD, wandering minds and the like are often creative. Sometimes we attribute that creativity to the feelings of scatter itself. This idea, that idea, they all jump in and suddenly there's a connection. But there can be troubles with creativity. Guiding it to a conclusion means several things, including managing motivation, energy, time, balance in the rhythms of our lives and more. Today I thought we can consider the vital role of error in creativity. The Shackles of Perceived Mistakes Pithy statements from Bob Ross. Talks of "happy accidents." Or Miles Davis who talks about not fearing mistakes as there are none, sound wonderful. They can even resonate as true. But really mainly is true for a master in their craft. If I were to pick up a paintbrush, and by some amazing luck was able to create the Mona Lisa, but then somewhere I, I dunno, threw a splash of red paint across it because that's really where my painting abilities are, that might be a mistake. But the truth in those pithy statements is that we can create more trouble for ourselves by accusing ourselves of making mistakes. Creativity as Playful Discovery Anyway, let me back up a moment. Creativity. What do I even mean by creativity? Creativity is this development of something over time as a discovery. We discover what we're making in the act of making it. We don't know the steps there. We don't know what the end will be. There's some blurriness to the vision. We don't know, maybe both the steps there or what the end might look like. In this way the information, the skills, it's not entirely within our conscious awareness. Some aspect of the work is outside of us. And in this way, the act of creativity is about discovering something as we make it. That doesn't have to be about art then, it could be a budget, a report, fixing a door that's stuck. Whatever it is, we try to envision something and then take some gentle step forward. That idea of a next action of breaking off, a small piece, of slowing down, of searching for the simplicity, the fundamentals, but then there is error. The Perfectionism Problem Somewhere we discover that whatever we're doing is deviating from that blurry vision, making it worse. We don't know where we're heading, but where we're heading doesn't seem quite right. Many with ADHD end up berating themselves somewhere here. The so-called perfectionism may have prevented even reaching that first step, as effective as it is in defending ourselves from the shame that might arise when we're looking at trying to complete a thing. As we are a creative, we weave together this unknown as we resolve this vision. Discovering Curiosity in Emotion Let me take another side step for a moment and define emotion. I've defined it in other episodes, is that which comes to mind. Admittedly a different definition than what you might be used to, but it allows for a different point of view that can be helpful here. For example, words, thoughts, even logic. These are the cresting of emotion into consciousness. We're trying to understand what we can trust to exist, for example, when these thoughts then are the manifestation. Now what does that have to do with ADHD? If we define emotion this way, every emotion has discovery within it. There's this unknown becoming known, and this transition can touch off other emotions. When we're in flow, things are building. It can be delightful. We're moving through those windows of challenge. Neither overwhelmed nor bored. But when errors appear, that deviation from vision, because emotions are involved, they have this tendency to find their way through the windows that are open now. The "I should have known," it leads to this wave of regret. "What don't I know," can touch off fear. "What does this say about me that I don't know?" Well, this wave of shame can grow. The shoulds, the woulds, the potentials, and all the rest, entwine with anger, if not rage, themselves finding lightning rods in ourselves and the worlds around us. These feelings might have been born in the early years of being chastised and accused of being lazy and whatever. They all echo. Finding their way through those channels that are now open to consciousness. Practicing the Pause What can be most helpful, as it is often most helpful, as it is also often most difficult, is to first pause. Within that pause, we can now practice acknowledging those emotions as they come to mind. As we're in those sessions, in those visits. Because as we do that, we can see those symbols, the stories, the ideas, whatever they are that relate to the vision or not. We can engage this lifetime practice of care, bravery, and mastery. Whatever the craft, you can see that pain of lacking perfection. And in so doing, we see that error that's inevitable. The path will always deviate from the vision. The mistake is ignoring it. The lesson is in acknowledging it 'cause that's where we can realign and engage once again. Inspawn Today's piece of music is called Inspawn. It's kinda like inspire and spawn mixed together as a word that probably isn't a word. Anyway, that's what it is. Um, I've been experimenting a bit with, with, uh, jazz, trying to learn it. As if that's a thing I can actually completely learn. It's not, it's, it's another vast field, mountain range on which to, to try to climb. But you can hear a bit of the dominant major, or major sevenths I should say, and maybe some, uh, as well, some ninth chords in here. It starts to grow more into the jazz realm when you start adding more of those higher, harmonic registers. Anyway, just learning it. And when learning, I think it's always about, uh, trying to integrate play in some way, 'cause that's the way you make it a part of yourself. And, and so that's what I'm doing. Anyway. Hope you enjoy the piece, it's not exactly jazz, but you can hear some of the little echoes of jazz in here perhaps. Mentioned in this episode: Waves of Focus YouTube Series Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw

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