Rhythms of Focus

Could there be power to “doing nothing”?

In this episode of Rhythms of Focus, we untangle the unexpected value of “the visit”—the art of showing up to your work, play, or creative project without any pressure to act. It’s a practice especially vital for adults with ADHD and wandering minds, offering a way to foster agency and mindfulness beyond the rigid mold of traditional productivity.

You’ll learn:

• Why allowing yourself to simply “be” with a task—without expectation—can spark clarity, motivation, and self-understanding.
• How daily visits help you navigate fear, procrastination, and the deeper emotional storms that influence your focus.
• Why embracing thoughtful pauses can nudge your creativity and reveal new paths, even in moments of resistance.

Key Takeaways:

• A “visit” to your work strengthens agency and self-compassion, helping you move at your own rhythm.
• Facing the discomfort of pausing with your project is emotional work—often more powerful than sheer action.
• True progress begins in the quiet moments between doing—where insight and motivation have space to emerge.

This episode features an original piano composition, “Where Did the Table Go?”,

Subscribe for mindful strategies and visit rhythmsoffocus.com to explore more rhythms for your wandering mind.

#ADHD #WanderingMinds #MindfulProductivity #EmotionalWork #Agency #DailyVisit #FocusStrategies #CreativePauses #RhythmsOfFocus #PianoMeditation

 What's the point of doing nothing?

I've recommended this approach that we can make to our work where we can sit with it and even not do a thing. I call this a visit, and so when I make this recommendation, I regularly hear a quite understandable question.

What's the point of doing nothing?

Well, as it turns out quite a lot, and I can get into those reasons, but simply saying that and going through those reasons often isn't enough to make it appealing. In fact, this question, what's the point, can often be a way of avoiding the attempt. It's protecting us from something.

It can even act as a proxy for several quite understandable reasons for avoiding what could be a powerful tool in your life.

A visit, even more so, a daily visit to some work that you have in front of you, some play that you wanna get into can be an absolute force to be reckoned with -this wonderful unit of work that can guide projects, habits, even developing relationships into fruition at a pace that works for you.

I've described visits in some detail in episode four, but in short, they're about showing up to a thing, whatever that thing is, desired, dreaded, and then fully being there without any obligation to doing any of it.

We could sit there staring out at the garden. Maybe we nudge it here or there. Maybe we get into a flow, or maybe we walk away without having touched it at all.

The important matter is that we're somehow fully there for at least a moment, maybe for a single deep breath.

Allowing ourselves to do nothing is not only important, it's absolutely vital. It supports that sense of agency. It's like the difference between being assigned a book to read in school or choosing to read that same book yourself.

While a visit can sound simple, it is by no means simple.

In fact, it can not only be difficult, it can be dangerous and scary. In this question, "what's the point of doing nothing?" There's a clue in fear. Somehow we'd waste our time. The fear of wasting time is one of wasting life- this existentially awful feeling.

What would we gain in taking this chance of being and not necessarily doing?

For example, let's say I'm struggling with a school report. If I simply avoid it, I might fail the class. If I wait for urgency to take over with an approaching deadline, I could exhaust myself, lose out on more fun things, get thrown off by other deadlines, illness among other possibilities. Or if I shove myself through, I might not be able to recognize more creative ways to engage or even learn from it, also exhausting myself.

But if I can simply be for a few moments, maybe giving myself time well ahead of a deadline, if possible, I can sense the fears, maybe a sense of, I'm incapable, I'm lost. I don't know what I'm doing. But then I can start thinking, okay, well how would I test that? Maybe I can try this, try that. I might find that, oh, I, I do know how to do some things.

But on the other hand, I might also find that my heart is just not in this, and my heart's actually in another major of work entirely that I'd like to change majors, but then that butts up against another fear of having to talk to my parents, for example, this deeper fear, but also a place for stronger courage, a more important fight than the paper in front of me.

In avoiding the pause, in avoiding being with the work, either forced ourselves through, moved on elsewhere, we miss that sense of what does this mean to me? Every pause gives our mind time to have feelings and thoughts themselves alive only in time given the room to settle. They strengthen the grounds of meaningful decision.

Rather than wait for motivation, we begin creating the conditions for motivation to form.

When I say do nothing, when I say be there, maybe another idea comes to mind too, something like meditation. You know, it seems like this peaceful thing, these peaceful images of just being.

But it could also be terrifying. And by the by, I think real meditation can also be terrifying. Many of us have a number of emotional tensions and storms.

I don't write the report, not just because "I don't feel like it," but possibly for fear of what it might reveal about my abilities and lack thereof. Therefore being unlikeable, unsuccessful, unable to find relationships, unable to set limits, unworthy, and more.

Doing nothing puts us in front of those horrors.

Doing something, taking action- hyperactive, impulsive, regardless of the direction, is often this attempt to escape the dread.

Being lets us engage in the hard work, which at its core is emotional work.

When we visit something daily, we can always step away. We can always titrate. We can let our unconscious mind percolate between visits. Having done the work of exposing ourselves to those emotions, maybe it gets harder, maybe it gets easier. Maybe we shift gears to only envisioning the work.

So consider if a visit is avoided, not out of hand, but from not hearing some important part of you that has a concern. When you say, "what's the point?" It might be that you're afraid of a waste of time or a worry about what it might reveal, but know that it then, if you can get there, if you can be with the work and nothing comes to mind, that's okay.

Your time was not wasted. Things often come up in the time between visits as the mind kind of bubbles. One thing you can be sure of though is that if you're not with the work at all, some point in time, neither it nor you would go forward.

There is a challenge to this. Hard work is emotional work, and I know I'm supposed to say something like, "Hey, believe in yourself. It'll work out and all that." I don't know. You might even be impossible. Courage isn't something that we automatically reward with a prize. By definition, we might meet catastrophe. It may not work. There might be things that are scary. But we also might find things that are meaningful, beautiful, and a life otherwise missed.

So the takeaway here, if you haven't given a visit, a try, placing something in front of you, being with it. What's holding you back?

A piece of music is a place of rest. It's somewhere for the mind to drift through for a few minutes. It can distract, it can confound, but in the end, I often find music to be refreshing in the inevitable pauses of a visit. As I hear music sitting in the background, it can catch my wandering attention and gently help me return it to whatever it was wherever I was.

Losing My attention is a regular process as I work or write. It's part of the process. It's part of being there in that visit. I might be in the middle of something that seems to be quite moving, and yet the more moving it is, sometimes the more my mind can wander off without my realizing it. To that end, I've titled this piece with an absurd notion of losing something in plain sight.

It's called "Where did the Table Go?" 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

In this episode, Dr. Kourosh Dini challenges the limits of “chemistry-only” explanations and explores the deeper rhythms of agency and engagement. Drawing on Dr. Thomas Brown’s vivid metaphor—ADHD as “erectile dysfunction of the mind”—we ask: What if the real key isn’t willpower, but the mindful cultivation of agency and self-trust?

Listeners will learn:

• Why “willpower” is a problematic concept for wandering minds.
• How agency differs from willpower and why it matters for daily life.
• The power of “the daily visit” as a compassionate practice to nudge forward on tasks, even when motivation feels absent.
• How emotional waves and environmental supports can be harnessed to create meaningful engagement.
• Why practice is more about care than force, and how to honor both present and future selves in the process.

The episode closes with a personal reflection on the role of music and meaning, featuring Beethoven’s Pathetique as a metaphor for settling into rhythms of focus.

• Dr. Thomas Brown’s metaphor: 
• (Referenced in the episode introduction.)
• Instagram post quote: “The ADHD brain isn’t lazy or undisciplined. It’s wired to need stronger stimulation to maintain focus.”
• Episode 4: Introduction to the “daily visit” practice.
• Episode 9: Deep dive into the concept of “injured agency.”
• Episode 14: Previous metaphor of the magnified mind and emotional waves.
• Karl Haas & Adventures in Good Music: (link) Inspiration for the musical closing and reflection on the power of loving one’s craft.
• Beethoven’s Pathetique: Featured musical piece at the end of the episode.

1. ADHD
2. Agency
3. Willpower
4. Daily Visit Practice
5. Emotional Regulation
6. Productivity
7. Self-Compassion
8. Focus Strategies
9. Neurodiversity
10. Musical Metaphors

Have you tried the “daily visit” approach? What helps you nudge forward when motivation is low? Share your experiences or questions by replying to this episode or connecting on social media.

Music for this episode: Beethoven’s Pathetique, performed by Dr. Kourosh Dini.

For more resources, exercises, and community support, visit the Waves of Focus course page or explore the Letters of a Wandering Mind series.

I refuse to believe that any science would tell me I have no free will. The slippery slope of victimhood can plague the science of ADHD Because once again, I've seen the statement.

"I do not have the interest. Therefore, I could not do it."

 Dr. Thomas Brown, an important voice in the ADHD community recently described it as an "erectile dysfunction of the mind." Let me play the clip for you here.

Certainly the sexual nature of the metaphor is exciting. There's something immediately and viscerally engaging about it. There's a useful sentiment in there, but there's also the possibility of a slippery slope that could be used against ourselves to advocate the sort of victimhood and helplessness, this trouble of actively doing something for ourselves.

So I want to take this apart and see where we can use its ideas without trapping ourselves.

An important caution in the statement that's made is perhaps the conclusion that the problem is one of chemistry. The implication is that it's that the only valid perspective for wandering mind's difficulties, and when it comes to our sense of agency, our ability to decide and engage something, I would much rather prefer to at least entertain the notion that other potential perspectives exist.

There's a spoiler warning here. I believe they do.

We can look at the entire universe through the lens of chemistry.

So much of our existence can be seen through carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, as these are bonded, taken apart, and rearranged. But even here, within this one perspective, it starts to invite other perspectives. We see the windows to other places. Smaller and larger.

On the smaller side, of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen -these are atoms. Within atoms, we're talking electrons and their orbitals, neutrons, protons. Smaller, yet we can go to quarks: up, down charm, strange. We can go to the forces that are involved of weak, strong electromagnetic can throw in gravitational.

We're here at the level of physics now. In this way, chemistry and physics are something of an artificial distinction. Chemistry being more of an epiphenomenon of physics.

But we could also go larger from chemistry to biology. For instance, we have molecules and ions that construct the bilipid layers of our cells, each one with gates and channels that leverage cycles of osmosis on one side and active shoving of ions through another set of channels, powered by adenosine tri phosphate in the right key of an enzyme.

Larger yet organs, blood, skin, thyroid, kidneys. One of my favorites is the brain, but why stop there?

There's a larger phenomena yet, which to me seems pretty important. Our existence. Meaning, story, day- to- day, the mind.

To make a metaphor, we have the components of our violin: strings, tuning, the wood, how it's constructed.

These are all important.

But I want to make and hear music. In fact, I wanna make enjoyable, meaningful music. And when we cannot hear it or make it, there might be a problem, certainly with the violin. It could be, it could be a crack in the wood, maybe there's a broken string. Maybe it's out of tune, but maybe just maybe there's some form of practice that could help us write or play a lovely piece.

Interestingly enough, within the text of the Instagram post itself was an important statement:

"the ADHD brain isn't lazy or undisciplined. It's wired to need stronger stimulation to maintain focus."

The stronger the emotion, the more aligning it is. This can be true for anyone, wandering mind or otherwise, but it can be particularly helpful for a wandering mind in the sense that it can create the sort of emotional wave that we can ride.

Or in the metaphor of the magnified mind that I gave in episode 14, it can help us create this consistency in our short-term memory, this sort of peripheral strength to the lens of awareness, this bed on which our consciousness can better rest, that helps to stabilize our vision, reduce distractibility, and then engage us.

Doing the dishes, an often considered aversive task for the wandering mind, can be every bit as complex as creating a piece of music, an epiphenomena of many things.

Not only in a complexity of motion, but sometimes even in the emotions we confront as we stand at the edge of the sink.

"I can't believe I can't do this. I know how to do this. I don't want to do this."

Just as there are many possibilities to how we might not be able to play a piece that we'd like, there are many paths by which we might arrive at this wandering mind from the curious to the brilliant, to the hurt, to the anxious, to the concerned, to the artistic and well beyond.

Now there's a second trouble that I have with this word "chemical," which is the same that I have with "dopamine" or "norepinephrine," in that it can quickly become this metaphor of having no free will, that the only way to make things happen is to access it using this method that is outside of our experience.

And I refuse to believe that we have no free will.

Now, to be fair, he did not use the phrase "free will," but he did use a very parallel word "willpower," which itself is a terribly problematic word.

As the best as I can understand it, willpower means being able to do something that we would otherwise not want to do, implying that there is some form of force involved.

Now, there's some troubles with this point of view.

First missing is that there are multiple emotional fields at play.

For example, in order for this scenario itself to exist in which we're, let's say, complaining that we don't want to do the dishes, there's some part of us that says, "I do wanna do the dishes." Otherwise we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Now, certainly there's another part, perhaps huge and outweighing the first part that says, "I don't want to."

But again, it's only a part.

Even the very analogy of erectile dysfunction can be tremendously complicated. Certainly there are illnesses, certainly there's age, these can have an effect, but there are also times where a man can have trouble performing with his wife, but get quite excited when it comes to their colleague at work.

To write off that there might be something psychological going on disconnects us from

other important possibilities, many of which could be worth looking into.

Another perspective then, a psychological one, that's at least worth considering is that of injured agency.

I get into this in detail in episode nine, but just to give a thumbnail sketch here, agency is that part of us that can decide and engage non-reactively. I'll say it again. Agency is that part of us that can decide and engage non-reactively.

That may sound boring, may not sound like much. Quite literally, it's not as sexy of a description, but to decide and engage is a vital purpose of consciousness. In some circles, it is the only purpose of consciousness, and by extension it is our very personhood itself.

When we do not trust ourselves in how we can decide and engage. In the moment. Over time with small matters or large matters, we do not trust ourselves.

Our very personhood feels injured, if not under threat.

When we lose things, forget things, can't get to things instantly, we lose that sense of our own cohesion that we exist. We yell, "no." To others, we yell "no" to the others that we have internalized as a part of our cry to the universe that we exist. The exhausting struggles sap the resources that we have, the emotional worlds that we have within ourselves to be able to engage, to be able to decide.

To regain that ability to heal that injury, that sense of agency means being able to decide and engage non-reactively. That word "non-reactive" is vital.

That means there's no force to making things happen because otherwise we're reacting.

When we bounce between this and that, praying that we'll find some way to engage something somewhere that feels meaningful to us , we're trying to stave off that free fall sense of existential dread.

Nicely said in the text of the post that it is not about trying harder.

It's about creating environment supports and strategies that align with how the ADHD brain is wired to succeed. End quote.

But still, it's only part of the story.

The second trouble in the word "willpower" is the sense that it either exists or doesn't. It's on or off. It's binary- instead of the idea of agency, which is something we can develop and practice over time, a skill that we can have more or less of. That we can face and understand our emotions as they are, as sometimes having meaning and then deciding what to do with that.

Sometimes we don't want to do the dishes because of what it represents or because right now it might just not be a good idea. Sometimes our sexual faculties aren't working because there's something about the relationship itself that's not working.

Acknowledging the trouble might lead to some considerations about what's not working. Are needs not being met? Are there conversations that could be had? Are there styles of communication that could be better practiced to help get needs met for both parties?

We can face the emotional fields as they are, be with them, and feel how they might be influencing our sense of agency.

We can create and decide from that state and however we decide at that point. We do so from a place that feels most meaningful to us, rather than reactively.

Concerns of "Practice"

So how do we practice that sense? Because even the word "practice" itself can be troublesome. Practicing an instrument, exercising, getting good at some craft, we might hit that frustration quickly if not instantly and say, "oh, I need to try harder. No pain, no gain."

Either of these statements are a terrible distortion of what practice actually is.

At its heart, practice is no different than care: a process of clearing and supporting paths for the development of those things that feel meaningful to you. In this case, agency itself.

There are several ways to practice this, and one that I tend to return to over and over is this idea of the daily visit. It's not easy, but it does develop a sense of power.

If you'd like, give a listen to episode four for an overview about it. But let me give you a thumbnail now.

It's that we show up to something and be there fully with it, and then make a decision. We show up to the dishes, honoring the self that does want to do the dishes, as small as that part might be.

But then. We respect the present self that can make a decision. We do not have to do it. That present self can weigh the emotions as they are the big voices, the small, respecting that sense of agency. Maybe we nudge it forward, maybe we don't.

And then when we want to step away, whether we've done a lot, a little or none at all, we can practice care for that future self by creating an invite for a return to another visit. Once again, honoring that part of us that does want to do it while respecting the agency of the future self who will come to that next visit and make their own decision.

Every visit builds momentum, conscious and unconscious.

Maybe you nudge something. Maybe the next time it starts to turn into a flow, maybe you realize why it's not a good idea.

Every time we do make that visit, particularly regular visits daily, perhaps, we guide the waves of focus within ourselves using our own rhythms.

We practice agency.

So as a takeaway, as one practice, something you might want to try: the next time you don't want to do the dishes or the laundry or something else you don't want to do, are you able to show up to the thing? Can you go there and be with that thing? You don't have to do any of it.

You can nudge it forward if you like. You can do the whole thing if you decide to within and through it, or you can do absolutely none of it.

And if you're not done with it, could you make some sort of invitation to yourself to come back and do the same once again?

  Years ago, my father would listen to a radio show called Adventures in Good Music hosted by Karl Haas. This beautiful show in which Karl Haas would play classical music and describe what was going on, whether it was about the composers, the musicians, the music itself. He had this lovely voice. My father once said, "Sometimes I don't know what he says, but I sure like how he says it."

I really like that.

Whatever Haas would say, you could absolutely hear his love of good music.

Every show would begin with Beethoven's Pathetique a marvelous piece. So whenever I heard that piece, I knew I could settle into his words and the worlds that he would describe.

Beethoven's Pathetique is a beautiful work. This rendition that I do here is faster than the one that you might hear on the radio show if you search it online somewhere, but I think the beauty still holds up and uh, 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

This episode delves into the intricate nature of the wandering mind, exploring the complexities of attention, focus, and the diverse manifestations of ADHD. It challenges the traditional objectivist approach in scientific inquiry, emphasizing the value of human experience, metaphor, and emotion in understanding mental processes. The narrative presents a metaphor comparing the lens of an eye to the lens of consciousness, illustrating how mental wanderings impact focus and productivity. Additionally, it discusses the role of short-term and working memory and the emotional bed of consciousness. The episode concludes with practical insights for managing a wandering mind and a musical improvisation piece that embodies the themes discussed.

00:00 Open

03:33 An Appeal to Human Experience

07:52 A Metaphor of the Eye's Lens

11:36 The Lens of Consciousness

15:16 A Return of The Now and Not Now

16:02 The Vitality of Emotion

18:18 Bringing it Together

25:57 An Improvisation

The Magnified Mind: Metaphors for Wandering, Focus, and Emotional Depth

Welcome, fellow wandering minds! In this episode, we set sail through the complexities of attention, memory, and emotion—exploring how the wandering mind, so often misunderstood, can be a source of both challenge and creative strength. Below you’ll find references, resources, and further reading to deepen your journey.

• ADHD Types & Neurodiversity:
• CHADD: Understanding ADHD Types
• ADDitude Magazine: ADHD Presentations

• Objectivism in Psychology:
• E.L. Thorndike and Measurement in Psychology
• Quote from Dr. Frank Summers, The Psychoanalytic Vision:
• Book Information

• Task Positive Network vs. Default Mode Network:
• ScienceDirect: Brain Networks
• Neurotransmitters & Attention:
• Verywell Mind: Dopamine, Norepinephrine, Serotonin
• Short-Term & Working Memory:
• George Miller’s “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two”

• Neuropsychoanalysis & Mark Solms:
• Mark Solms, The Conscious Id
• International Neuropsychoanalysis Society

• The Anchor Technique & Session Pad:
• Waves of Focus: Anchor Technique
• Session Pad & Honor Guide

• Bianca Raphaella:
• Bianca Raphaella’s Art
• Esref Armagan:
• Esref Armagan Profile

• Improvisation in Music:
• Music & Podcast Archive
• What Is Musical Improvisation?

• The Anchor Technique:
• A practical, pen-and-paper approach to regaining agency and clarity in moments of overwhelm or distraction. Learn more and access exercises.
• Session Pad & Honor Guide:
• Structures to help carry momentum and maintain a gentle rhythm between focus and rest. Explore the system.

• The Lens of Consciousness:
• Seeing attention as a shifting lens—sometimes magnified, sometimes blurry—mirrors the lived experience of focus and forgetfulness.
• Agency as Sailing:
• Agency is a boat navigating a sea of emotions, learning to tack and use the winds of emotion to guide, rather than fight.
• Improvisation:
• Mastery grows from playful exploration, much like improvising music within a framework of learned fundamentals.

This episode closes with “Meandering Improv in E-Flat,” a spontaneous piece that mirrors the episode’s theme of wandering, discovery, and playful structure. Listen to more original music.

• Waves of Focus Course:
• For a step-by-step guide to building your own rhythms of focus, agency, and creative mastery, explore the Waves of Focus course.
• Newsletter:
• Subscribe for more insights, metaphors, and practical tools for wandering minds.

Thank you for joining me on this voyage. May your focus be as gentle and resilient as a boat riding the waves—and may you discover new strengths in the very places your mind tends to wander.

If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a friend or leave a review. Your voice helps others find their rhythm, too.

  There are those times where we can dive deep into that one thing, engaged in this wonderful flow gathering and holding on to multiple ideas, pulling that from there and this from here, and sometimes remembering that some obscure thought from some seeming random other field of knowledge.

And then we discover this new idea and the connection and, uh,

"Why did I come into this room again?"

How can it be so easy to lose touch with something that seems so important from only a few moments ago? What's going on?

 A wandering mind's complexities can seem staggering.

There are many forces, paths, spirits that can lead to those familiar meanderings from the tightly wound, the anxious, the hurt, the confused, the lost, the misunderstood to the deeply curious, the brilliant, the wonderfully artistic.

The very poster child of focus struggles, ADHD, has its own multiple variations. Some struggle with constantly messy environments while others are impeccably clean. Some are never on time, while others are obsessively early. Some can hardly string actions together into any form of habit while others clutch dearly to routine.

What singular idea could ever describe these variations?

We already have so many perspectives: psychological, biological, social, the motor, the mental, the interpersonal, brain anatomy, task positive network versus default mode network, ideas of the neurodivergent versus neurotypical, neurotransmitters of dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, the neural pathways between.

And here I am trying to throw another perspective on the pile. Why? Well, because mine's right, of course. But uh. Well, joking aside, I do think it's one worth playing with. I'll be making a few stops in this journey, this argument, pulling into port here or there.

But first we'll be looking at the nature of how we view science itself. A bit of a stepping back. Then, I'll describe a metaphor, get into a bit about time, emotion, and finally bring it all together. So hang onto your proverbial hats here as I hope to string a few meanderings into some central meaning.

Kindly, uh, wish your captain here, good luck as we make this voyage.

An Appeal to Human Experience

The first stop is a rather abstract one. But it is also a vital one, I believe.

I'd like to present this different perspective on a wandering mind, but rather than dive as many do into molecules, structures, graphs, and the like, I want to appeal to human experience. We often do this on the internet and look at it this way or that way. Oh, isn't that funny how I thought of it this way, or how I did that thing? And everybody chimes in and says, oh yes, I agree. The trouble is, is we tend to look down on these human experiences as truly they are useful measures of thought.

We tend to look at numbers and stats and graphs and plots and say, well, that must be the real truth, somehow looking to bend our experience to fit the science rather than to recognize the science is there for us.

There's some claim to this objectivism, this tendency to lay stress on whatever's external to or independent of the mind, as if that's where the truth lies. The mind itself is somehow too fuzzy to consider scientific.

If we're generous, we might say it's the last frontier of science, but sometimes I look at that phrase as some backhanded way of keeping it at arm's length.

Years ago, this psychologist named El Thorndyke in 1918 said "whatever exists, exists in some amount and whatever exists in some amount can be measured."

Eh, sounds nice, but it's a sentiment that's damaging and it's also soaked into our scientific discourse far too deeply and far beyond psychology, overshadowing the power of the mind. It's somehow become this sense that only things that can be measured are worthwhile measured by some external means.

We see this in our graphs and charts of medicines, such as how much cholesterol this has and how much potassium is there and whatever, in the units of productivity at work as we measure it, by time, for instance, or in the measure of success of a company through its financial returns, rather than say an, ultimately unmeasurable, but vital sense of wellbeing that it might generate.

Sure, we can measure some things and add 'em all together and say, well, this might point us in a direction, but it's ultimately the individual who is the arbiter of those measures.

I want to quote a mentor of mine, Dr. Frank Summers, he's one of those, brilliant minds who you can tell has read everything, but can use any of those thoughts to support his own voice, which I deeply respect. He's also extremely humble and would probably be surprised to know that he is being mentioned here.

He comments about psychology in this quote I'll say, but , as I said, I think the issue is far beyond that and well into the sciences in general. So I quote from his book, The Psychoanalytic Vision:

"This concept of reality has been accepted uncritically by academic psychology for almost a hundred years, despite the failure of its adherents to provide any justification for it.

That is to say objectivism is a dogma, a tyrannical imposition on human inquiry. The contention that reality is quantity cannot hold up to its own terms because that statement itself is not measurable. According to objectivism, the very statement of objectivism does not exist."

I do get a kick outta that.

What does all that mean? What does it matter for, a wandering mind?

Well, I say it because to approach a wandering mind from a point of view of experience, we need to value experience. Metaphor, story, the tools of the human mind are just as powerful as any other means of understanding, if not more so than a ruler or a plotted graph. Meaning, that which connects to and through us conscious, unconscious really is the ruling class of any measure.

But there's no reason to malign, the examination of the external world, either. I think that has its place, certainly, and it's when we combine them that things can become truly interesting.

A Metaphor of the Eye's Lens

So let's move to our next stop : metaphor.

Let me present a scenario. Imagine sitting in a chair at a table. You see the foreground, maybe your laptop, a book, a table itself. Maybe you'll look up to see the room. There's a tea kettle, a hanging painting, the wall. You look further past the door and see the other room. In that room, there's a chair, a table, some shoes that need to be straightened out.

These objects sitting all around us at different distances somehow register in our mind. To do so, the light that bounces off of these objects flow into and through the lens of our eye, and that lens guides that light to a singular point at the back of our eye, known as the fovea.

This highly sensitive area of our retina is rich in receptors, able to gather detail and nuance of whatever we're focused on, and then pass that information along to the back of our brains and onward and its relays to represent the world in front of us

in order to see what's in front of us, what's close to us, and what's further away, that lens that's in our eye needs to be able to shift. It needs to adjust to bend the light as needed from close or from far to land on that one point.

And when it doesn't, what we register in our mind, what we see is a blur. The further off from making a pinpoint of those rays of light, the blurrier it is.

For some of us, we can't make these adjustments. We're stuck seeing things that are close or maybe seeing things that are far or some distortion in between.

One of my own eyes is significantly myopic, also known as shortsighted, while the other is only mildly so. Without glasses, I can only see my hand if it's right in front of my face, mere inches. And beyond that point, without correction, the world rapidly becomes a blur.

But there is something else interesting that happens. There's a magnification. In fact, if I want to see something in detail. I can take off my glasses and probably see things better than others do, at least in that small area.

The metaphor for the wandering mind should be apparent by now. We lose things. We drop things, we forget things that slip past. Things become blurry quickly. Meanwhile, what we can see in front of us is in great detail.

And I think this metaphor, this experienced idea, can be a centerpiece to understanding a wandering mind.

When we bump into things, forget things, lose things, there can be this cascade of problems leading to this sense of injured agency that I got into in module nine, where we feel that we have to force ourselves to do things.

These methods of force are then confused for the problem itself. Waiting for deadlines, shaming oneself, and more. These are all attempts to manage this central issue and the further problems that fester and feed on themselves from there, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

We will come back to how these problems can lead from this central concept , because we're not quite done with this metaphor.

A metaphor has a resonance. It has two ends. One thing comparing to another.

So if we're looking at this idea of the lens of the eye, what's at the other end?

The Lens of Consciousness

Well, this brings us to our next stop. The other end is the lens of consciousness itself. Okay, so what do I mean by the "lens of consciousness?" What sort of malarkey is this?

Well, let's look at it for a moment through the concepts of short-term memory and working memory.

Short-term memory is said to be this part of her brain that holds seven plus or minus two- five to nine items, things that we can hold in our mind. If I understand history correctly. We've even used this concept to establish the number of digits used in our telephones, making the numbers easier to remember back when we needed to remember them.

Working memory is then just what is in front of us, what is on our mind? What are we playing with? But either of these are areas where I believe our adherence to the scientific description does us a disservice.

Reading about short and working memory this way makes it sound, at least to my ears, like we've got five to nine objects sitting in a box next to us. You put things in the box and take things outta the box, but that doesn't seem quite right. It's not alive, and these things are divided, perhaps even artificially.

Instead, I see it more as this flow around a singular fovea of attention itself, where this maybe five to nine is more about these meandering ideas, sensations, feelings, rhythmically moving in and out of direct awareness. Maybe they overlap , envelope, and fold into each other as they hover around, if not compete for a central awareness, that place of working memory.

In this way, what are these short and working memories other than this sphere of consciousness that fades into the depths of the pre-conscious, if not unconscious worlds?

And what if like the objects in a room? Some of us can only see these mental objects upfront and magnified while the rest quickly blends into a blurred background.

A Stabilizing Video Camera

There's another parallel of the magnified mind worth considering too. A video recorder. When you record a video, there's this process called stabilization. In recent years, cameras have gotten pretty good with this. You hold the camera, you might jiggle your hand a little bit here and there, but the video itself feels steady.

In order to do this, the camera records a larger area than you see. It has peripheral vision. It uses peripheral aspects of the recording to make up for and adjust as needed.

When we don't have much of peripheral memory. That short-term memory, we don't have much to keep us steady.

When we dive deep, we gather ideas and sensations that relate to each other, allowing items to chunk and build. We can then see more deeply yet entering that hyperfocus, almost like hyperspace, where the periphery flows past blurred. As the paths forward reach this pinpoint of clarity, whichever direction we head has this feeling of moving forward.

We...

This episode explores the frustrations of procrastination and task management, particularly when relying on others for reminders. It delves into the emotional cycle of resentment that builds between individuals and suggests a 'visit-based' approach to break free from the endless creation of incomplete tasks. Instead of arguing with emotions, the episode advocates for simply being present with tasks to foster productivity and reduce resentment, ultimately aiming for more aligned and harmonious task completion. The episode concludes with a piece of music titled 'Wooded Hills' in D Minor.

00:00 Avoiding a Taskmaster

01:45 The Sisyphean Struggle: Why Organizing Feels Impossible with ADHD

02:46 The Trap of Outsourcing Agency: “Can You Remind Me…?” and the Taskmaster Effect

04:34 Beyond “Feeling Like It”

05:22 Wooded Hills

Picture this: feeling scattered, surrounded by a sea of sticky notes. You ask a friend to remind you to do that one important thing, but when they actually do, you find yourself saying, "well, not now. I'm busy." Suddenly you're both caught in this cycle of frustration and resentment each waiting for the other to make the next move.

So what's going on here?

"Hey, can you remind me to do that thing?"

Trying to do the dishes, getting the report done, making that important call, it can all feel like some Sisyphean task, seeing the world around us full of incomplete projects. Scribbles on the calendar, post-it notes, all trying to yell past each other as they turn to some vague yellow sea.

It's a rare thing for those stars to align. But when they do, you're in it. Well, that is until you're either done or exhausted. And either way, chaos returns as inevitable as it is in our world.

So you might reason, you know what?

If something's important enough, it'll find me.

But when those things arrive, we still not only have some sense of inability, we have that injured sense of agency described in episode nine.

When the important thing shows up, unless it's shiny or on fire, some part of us might just refuse lay down and say No, I don't wanna, I can't be bothered. Many other possibilities.

Then we can have this idea. What if I ask someone to help me, a friend, a loved one.

Hey, can you remind me about whatever it is?

But then when it comes time for that, someone else to say, Hey, what if you do that thing Now? We might just say,

"well, not now. I'm busy, or I'll get to it."

Something in us just isn't quite feeling it. What happens here though is that we've just thrown the ball back at the other person who now continues to hold the task. Both you and they have now colluded to create a task master.

Worse yet this new task master is now in a position of having to read our mind better than we even know it ourselves.

They have to target this often impossible place where we'd feel like it, where our own conscious and unconscious worlds and stars would align in ways that we ourselves don't even know. These positions create resentment. Both in ourselves as we begin to feel them as harassing us and in them who feel that they have to harass us.

Whether boss, spouse, parent, child, friend, or otherwise, any relationship- this can happen sadly, often in our most vital relationships. This resentment can build. And importantly resentment's a particularly insidious emotion. Much of it is unconscious. We may try to suppress it because after all, they often love care for feel dependent on us or us on them.

How is it that I can feel so angry?

How is it they can feel so angry with me?

I shouldn't feel this way.

Well, making these arguments, I mean, how often has that strategy of arguing with these emotions ever worked for you?

The benefit of a visit based approach as I've gotten into in episode four, is that we don't need to feel like it to be there.

We can simply be, be at the materials, be at the place. It's in our being there, let's say at the dishes, where we might decide to nudge something forward, we might nudge another one forward and get on a roll perhaps, or maybe we stop.

And then if we're not done, we can always create this invite for ourselves for another future visit where we would make the same attempt. By making a visit, we begin to create the very conditions we need for those stars to align.

As you improve your abilities to take greater and greater charge of your calendar, your tasks, and yourself, you remove these seen and sometimes unseen burdens on your relationships.

And what can that do other than improve those relationships?

Untangling these enmeshments are by no means easy.

That can only happen as we learn how we can trust ourselves, a genuine trust. How can we develop the relationships between our past, present, and future selves often embodied in these markings on the calendar, in our tasks, and in the reminders we create for ourselves.

Can we rely on our future selves when we send them a message? But as these relationships rely on trust, they take time to be nurtured into some strength. There are many skills we can practice , and it can be overwhelming to think of practicing them.

But I do find that things tend to go well when we start small.

So as a takeaway, if this seems to be a problem that you tend to get yourself into, maybe consider one small thing that you've somehow offloaded to someone else and consider, is there a way to bring that back to you? Something that you can do to remind yourself.

When that reminder comes, then can you honor that past self that created that reminder by showing up to the thing, showing up to the materials, showing up to the phone call, whatever it happens to be, being there and then deciding whatever it is you decide to do, respecting the present self that's there.

  Piano has been a companion of mine for years now, and much like any relationship, I develop a sort of shorthand. Things said, get compressed, and more is said in smaller tones, words, phrases. Some of these pieces have developed almost an impressionistic vibe, like paintings that come together as a series of dots.

The notes themselves don't seem to matter quite so much as what they carry together.

This piece is called Wooded Hills, and it's written in D Minor for the most part. There are some moments where what would normally be B flat becomes a B major throwing things off a little, I suppose, or maybe that's just me hears it that way.

In any case, 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

I'm taking a break! I should be back in a few weeks (end of July/beginning of August)

Ever find yourself cleaning the closet or deep in a video game while a deadline quietly sneaks up behind you? In this episode of Rhythms of Focus, we unravel the real story behind procrastination for adults with wandering minds and ADHD. Instead of blaming laziness or lack of willpower, we explore how avoidance can be a form of recovery—and how to gently reclaim your agency.

Force-based productivity (deadlines, shame, rigid systems) often backfires for creative, neurodivergent minds. A rhythm-based, visit-oriented approach can help you find meaningful focus. You’ll learn how to move from cycles of exhaustion and self-criticism to a more mindful, compassionate path forward.

In this episode, you’ll take away:

- Gentle, actionable ways to recognize and shift out of procrastination without shame

- How to use acknowledgment and tiny steps to restore your sense of agency

Plus, enjoy an original piano composition, "Three is More" to support your focus and reflection.

Subscribe for more episodes and visit rhythmsoffocus.com to join a community that honors your creative mind and helps you thrive—one gentle wave at a time.

• Episode 9 - "I Just Don't Wanna" and the Power of Agency
• Episode 11 - An Interview with Dr. Joel Anderson - Philosophy and the Wandering Mind
• Episode 4 - From Force to Flow with a "Visit"

#ADHD #WanderingMinds #Procrastination #MindfulProductivity #Agency #GentleFocus #CreativeMinds #VisitBased #RhythmOverRigidity #SelfCompassion

Have you ever found yourself cleaning out a closet right when you know there's something else important you should be doing? Maybe you're playing a video game and that other thing needs to happen.

You tell yourself, I'll start soon, but the weight of the task feels heavier every passing minute. Your mind drifts Suddenly hours have slipped by of leaving you feeling a bit guilty, maybe relieved even, or you just start wondering, ah,

But what if there's more to this cycle than meets the eye?

Those who rely on deadlines often cycle between frantic work and exhaustion. They find it impossible to move forward without a deadline hounding close behind. Meanwhile, in the collapse that often follows them, they can call themselves lazy. Unable to find some footing forward.

But what if avoidance is actually this attempt to recover from exhaustion? Whether it's a period of forced flow or flailing scatter.

At first glance, procrastination seems quite different from the relief that danger of deadlines can bring, as I described in episode nine, where you finally know what to focus on. But it's really the other side of the same coin.

Exhaustion overwhelms the mind's ability to continually find and fight danger, and so it runs, engaging in this type of flight to survive.

It's a bit like turning our head away.

If I can't see it, it doesn't exist.

Now, why would we ever do that?

The unconscious mind is powerful, particularly when we are frightened or depleted.

Maybe we lie on the couch, barely able to follow a thought. Maybe we sleep through an important class or meeting. Or maybe we find deep focus elsewhere, cleaning the closet to some near, spiritually immaculate level, or finding new achievements on that game, while some deadline steadily sneaks across the calendar.

As thoughts fly by readily missed by this wandering mind, it can be hard to even know that we're procrastinating at all.

In the moments we do realize it, our pain and exhaustion still present, maybe now flaring with shame, we might hope even more to find some way to soothe ourselves. So we say

"I'll rest for a bit. I'll do it later."

Unfortunately, while the phrase, "I'll do it later," feels like a kindness, it rarely is that unfulfilled task easily becomes another stick to beat ourselves with.

Still, it's hard to know if any alternative as doing it now hardly seems possible.

When the alarm sounds and the danger of some new deadline returns to push us through our exhaustion, we once again engage, fight using the anxiety as fuel and stimulation until we collapse again on the couch.

Throughout the whole process, our ability to decide is injured again and again.

Getting ourselves to do anything that feels important or meaningful can seem impossible. Those feelings of "I don't wanna" kick in, not only against others, but within ourselves as well.

There's several definitions of procrastination that I appreciate.

Dr. Joel Anderson, our guest from episode 11 describes it as "Culpably unwarranted delay" using the negative emotion itself as a measure as hidden in that word "culpable." Dr. Neil Fiore calls it a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision.

Dr. Tim Pychyl describes it as a mechanism for managing mood or mood repair. Merlin Mann puts it simply "doing something and thinking you should be doing something else." My wife once said, "it's not procrastinating, it's marinating."

I do wonder about the unconscious element in it all. Here's how I see it.

Procrastination is an action or inaction related to avoiding an experience, primarily fueled by maybe anxiety or some other negative emotion. We think, I don't wanna prove my inability. I don't want to be that person. I don't want to be seen that way. Some feeling comes to us that paralyzes us.

Procrastination can be found insidiously in any part of our workflows. Any tool can be used against ourselves. We can avoid work by organizing, by adjusting a task system, even by clearing time to work.

instead to return a sense of agency, that ability to decide and engage with clarity non-reactivity, we can pause and reflect on whatever the emotion is, anxiety or otherwise.

In this way, acknowledgement becomes our main tool to counter procrastination.

Philosopher Paul Tillich might say, we can begin converting the cloud of anxiety into an object, fear, that we can now bring into ourselves and better mount and muster courage against. In other words, a visit and even better, regular visits become the practice of courage that helps us defeat at least this dragon.

And so as a takeaway, maybe the next time you notice yourself avoiding some task, some project, some whatever, take a moment to pause. Consider, what is this feeling that I have about this thing? Simply be with that feeling, anxiety, overwhelm, or anything beyond. Perhaps naming it if you'd like or just feeling out its contours can start to soften its hold and begin to restore that sense of agency.

And for extra credit, if you can be there with that thing you're avoiding, as you would with any visit, as I described in episode four, while you're there, you can decide, is this something I want to nudge forward or not? You have every right to decide either way.

At that point, You have taken charge, whatever your decision.

  Today's musical piece is rather new in my repertoire. I've been building it out recently. I've been juggling a number of titles. Deadlines, as much as I tend to berate them, do have their use, and here I'm using the deadline of posting this here podcast episode to say, you know, I think I better settle on a title.

So I've settled on one. This one's called "Three is More". I'll give you the other titles, but that usually just confuses matters. It is written in F Minor. Not quite the saddest of scales as Nigel Tufnell famously mused in, This is Spinal Tap, and if you haven't seen, This is Spinal Tap, please see, This is Spinal Tap.

Anyway, here's "Three is More".

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

In this extended episode, professional philosopher Dr. Joel Anderson engages in a deep and stimulating conversation about Wandering Minds, ADHD, and Beyond with our host Dr. Kourosh Dini.

Discussing philosophical and practical issues around agency, procrastination, and the balance between forcing oneself and creating affording conditions, they explore the concept of 'agentic play,' the importance of creating environments that invite rather than coerce, and the role of emotions in the effort to engage with tasks meaningfully.

They question the differences between motivation, effort, and naturally flowing engagement, and consider the implications of removing distractions and setting guiding conditions in a caring manner. The episode ends with reflections on how these philosophical dialogues can shift one's approach to work and life.

00:00 Introduction to the Conversation

02:33 Joel Anderson's Background

03:48 Diving into Philosophical Concepts

05:01 Exploring Agency and Play

05:48 Affordances and Environmental Design

10:08 Self-Binding Strategies and Productivity

17:59 Emotional Work and Hard Labor

21:11 Navigating Procrastination and Effort

30:21 Meeting Tension with Care

30:43 Hierarchical Set of Binds

32:50 Facing the Fog of Tasks

35:40 Building Trust and Self-Efficacy

43:49 Effortless Engagement and Motivation

52:52 Listening to Yourself

55:09 Concluding Thoughts and Reflections

• Dr. Joel Anderson's Inaugural Lecture
• Joel's Home Page
• No Bad Parts - Richard Schwartz PhD

I've got a treat for you today. Joel Anderson is a good friend of mine. He's a wonderful guy, brilliant philosopher. He's a professional academic philosopher, even. He's got a way of thinking things through in a way I truly admire. Every time we talk, I, I walk away feeling stimulated. I'm ready to write, uh, suddenly I'm seeing something in a new light.

We've been having these conversations in one way or another for over a decade now. Uh, and I thought, you know what, what if we just recorded one and shared it on a podcast? I have no idea whether you'll enjoy it as we do or not, but,

uh, it's, it's, it's cool. We sort of start slow and build up as things go on. Listening to it, I wonder if we've developed a sort of shorthand. This sort of thing happens. It's like any place or person where you've been hanging out or with for a while. Uh, things line up, you know, the organization of either physical or thought space just falls into this functional sort of place.

In any case, I thought it would be entertaining and I'd love to hear your feedback about it. If you're up for it, drop me a line at [email protected]. That's W-A-N-D-E [email protected].  

I have a chair in moral psychology and social philosophy in the Ethics Institute, which is part of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies in the faculty of the humanities at Utrecht University. So that's the whole hierarchical layering of that.

That's the thing. Alright, cool.

Nested communities.

We've been chatting since, I was looking, I was trying to find the first email between us, and the earliest I found was 2014, but it looked like it was in the middle of a conversation.

Yeah, it always feels like that with you, that as whenever we pick it up, it feels like we're just in the middle of a conversation that's been going on for a while, so I

Totally, yeah. So anyway, thank you for being here. You're the first guest and, this is cool.

Well, just so everybody knows, I mean, I'm a huge fan, right? So for me, this is, quite an honor. Following all the things that you've been doing through the years, both in your therapeutic and psychiatric work. I work on, procrastination, research adjacent work that you've been doing, but then also just the tools that you've provided for people and advice on how to get the most out of DEVONthink, or especially OmniFocus.

So you're, you're a very generative and generous human being, and I very much appreciate that.

You are incredibly kind. Thank you.

One of the things that I really enjoy in our conversations is how stimulated I feel and that I feel like we really get into stuff . So, for, um, at the risk of, of going all inside baseball, you know, during this, this talk here, I, I'm totally fine with it. Um, because we might just jump in and dive in and talk about concepts and like, do we, how do we define it? How do we present it to the audience that Yeah. You know?

Right.

Know, and really I think, um, what are the times when we feel most alive? I mean, you put it in terms of play, right? I mean, for me, I'd, I think it's a big part of what drew me into philosophy. I. Exploring the possibilities of various words and concepts and ideas is, you know, just like what you're doing if you're noodling on the piano or trying to solve some or other people are trying to solve some problem or a creative endeavor, you've got this canvas and you're trying to figure out how can I represent something with the paint I've got. It's, um, it's this, it's this exhilaration that comes from seeing opportunities and being able to just give yourself over to that creative elaboration of what's going on there.

And I think conversation is, is, is, is a great context in which that happens.

Totally, totally. That discovery, I like that phrase, "give yourself over." Yeah. You know, that, that, that, that, um, um.

One of the concepts that , we talk about is agency is one of the main, main things I get into and defining it as, um, uh, uh, being able to decide non reactively, um, or decide and engage non-reactively.

But in that idea of play and discovery and creativity and all that, that "give yourself over," it's like, do you suspend that? Do you like, do you, like, do you let that go? That part of you that has to like, that has to, uh, pause to decide Or then there was this other phrase that you, you'd said, I think the last time we spoke, which was age, "agentic play."

I'm like, oh, wow, that isn't that nice blend of, of ideas. And uh, but that just idea of like creating the space, right? So we're, we're trying to invite the muse, give ourself over, like be able to, to invite that, that that flow and um. And, and the job of the practice, the job of the work, the thing we do is, is we create the conditions for it and then, and then we become it.

Yeah.

I mean, there's this wonderful word that I love using for capturing some of this: "affordances," right? So affordances for thoughtful and intentional play, uh, or affordances for, for insight. I mean, it's got this notion of, um, an invitation. So it's, it's a bit of an odd use of the word affordance, but it was developed by very, uh, thoughtful, it's known as an ecological psychologist named Gibson. And, uh, this notion of an affordance is like a chair. You know, there are chairs that afford sitting, they just like invite you to sit in them. Yeah. Or you have a, a well designed. One of my favorite examples is, you know, you have, you have doors where you want to know, should I push or should I pull?

And a well-designed door is flat, has a flat panel on the side that you should push and has a handle on the side that you should pull . It in certain sense, it, it creates a, a almost a, it prepares you for an experience of flow. It signals to you what's to be done and, and invites you to engage in a certain way.

And I think, that contrast, we're all too familiar with, that contrast between a, uh, a, a situation, a, a work setting in which there's various tasks you need to complete that is aversive. And it's like everything feels like a barrier. There's, or there's things that they're pulling you in all kinds of directions.

And then there's those context in which. You, you kind of this alignment, uh, of what you need to do and what you want to do is kind of ready to hand there. It's just inviting you to take those next steps and, you know, and that's, that's what you're doing in all these different, uh, in all the work you do with like, whether it's, you know, setting up a to-do list in such a way that when you get to the to-do list, you're not suddenly confronted with raw panic of where do I even start?

Mm. But that it's a manageable kind of welcoming space in which to exercise your, uh, your agentic freedom. You're, uh, uh, your, yeah, your agency.

I love that phrase, affordance. You'd, um. I remember we played around with those ideas like that, and I think you'd even had at one point, I don't remember this, but you'd,

I think it was a paper you'd written or something

where you had like seven Yeah, it was my, my inaugural, yeah, my inaugural address.

What we make a, we can make a link, make a link available to that. I mean, I don't know if people wanna see some pomp and circumstance, uh, of a, of a Dutch , formal lecture. So I have this, I mean, I, 'cause I just love playing with these different images. I heard you actually using Trellis. We had a long discussion of the use of scaffolding trellis.

Um, and uh, and I think of kind of affordances as another species of that, of that genus, right? Mm-hmm. So these are ways in which our environment is structured so as to be supportive of our agency.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, when we look at, for example, you know. The to-do list you bring up, you know, like there's, it, it's so easy to be repulsed by it.

It's so easy to look at it because it's been written by someone else. It's been written by past self, it's been written by, right. Who was that jerk? Right, exactly. And, uh, and, and then, you know, that easily touches off the part of us that's like, I haven't been able to follow through on the things I've asked myself to do.

You know? Yeah. And, and, and, and past self may have, you know, punted to, to our current self, uh, because for whatever reason they didn't feel like it, or they, or they made the, a very clear decision at that time. This is the thing and everything else has to wait. Whatever it is. But then that's where I think it's, it's, um, it started to transform for me.

So I, I, I think you're right that I, I started very much with the trellis. I still have that, that or, and the affordances. And how do we, I. You know, make it so that we can not have to think. So that to, in terms of getting into the flow to, to smooth that process, but then realizing that, uh, we do have to think in terms of, um, uh, we are, we are a unique person right now.

Whoever we were 10 minutes ago, 10 years ago Yeah. Is, is a different person. And, and we can set ourselves up relatively well. Um, and, and we can even stumble into like an inspiring amount of friction based on what they've, they've presented. But things change. Everything changes. And that's just, you know, that's, isn't that the ever.

The ever thing that things change,

but Yeah. But, but,

and it, but it comes, it, it comes back to your contrast with, um, more force based approaches, uh, as well. I mean, one thing that, one strategy that we can use when we're subject to temptations having trouble focused, getting pulled in all sorts of directions, is, um, uh, we can bind ourselves to the mast, right?

This is the, this is the story from the mythology of Odysseus who is gonna be passing. He needed to guide his ship past the sirens of Kalis and, and, uh, Cheribdus and, and, um. And he knew that if he, uh, he wanted to hear the song, but if he knew, if he were, if he were, were listening, he would order his, uh, his crew to head towards the cliffs and, and like many ships before him would've been, would've been destroyed.

So you have these, these, these efforts at self binding where you have a commitment mechanism, you lock yourself in. He had his crew tie him up so that he could listen to the song, but wouldn't be, wouldn't be tempted. And then, you know, once you're past the period of temptation, you let go. Um, so there are all these, there are all these kinds of kinds of mechanisms.

One of my favorite ones is people who have shopping addictions. Um, I mean, it used to be the case that if you didn't have the actual physical credit card, you couldn't go shopping. And so if you froze a credit card in a block of ice, I. Would, it would take like an hour or two to let it melt again. To be able to use it without, without having to, uh, you know, without risking damaging it.

Or there are people who will take the router of their internet, uh, their wifi at home and they'll mail it to themselves. So they have to wait for the delivery of that to come back. So there are all these ways that are, that are, there are forced strategies, right. They're, they're, you're being coercive toward yourself.

Yeah.

And I, I mean, I think one of the things that really resonates with a lot of what you say is we should be really careful about reaching too quickly for those kinds of strategies. 'cause they're, you're really doing, you're, you're relating to yourself in a mode of, of coercion force.

Hmm.

You're kind of doing, you know, you're.

You're not respectful of your own need for freedom and choice and autonomy. And sometimes frankly, we, you know, we're in a really bad way and we need that, you know? Mm-hmm. Maybe if that's gonna be the thing that, that, that, that, that turns things around for you, then that's a, that's a strategy. But I think it's, um, it's a strategy.

We should be, we should be keen to avoid if we relying on, if we can, right? If, 'cause we, we rely on that too quickly, then we get into these relations of, you know, as you, as you, you've talked about in a number of these podcast episodes already, we're then trapped in that mode of using force to get things done instead of creating these affordances, these spaces, these invitations to the exercise of agency.

All right. . Now here's my, here, let me, let me throw out a, uh, devil's advocate type of thing. I don't know. Good. The, the, the. So I, I'm trying to think through the idea of force, right? So that we have, you know, uh, you know, I have to start, um, yeah. Or, um, uh, waiting for a deadline or shaming ourselves.

I often , put it in the context of emotion, like the sort of negative emotion, right? All right. So freezing the credit card. What a neat idea. I never thought of that. So you, or, or the mailing, the router. So either one of those, is that binding to the mast I, I, I, I, I hear what you're saying, but could that be, how is that different than, let's say, turning off notifications to focus?

Right. Um, I want to, I wanna read a book. I wanna read a physical book. The internet is right there. So I'm gonna take that router and mail it to myself and that'll force me to, or at least it won't force me to read the book, but it'll, it'll remove an option deliberately. Um, and I'll be more inclined to read the book.

I might, I might also be more inclined to do many other things too, but, but yeah. Uh, it'll, it'll be one of the guides that'll start. So I guess the question I'm asking is, that's great. What's, what's distinguishing that as a force or as a, uh, as, as creating an affordance of sorts, a limitation that would help me engage in something I'm intending to do?

No, that's really, that's really good Kourosh. 'cause I think, I mean, you're right that from one perspective, you could look at all of these things as just a matter of reducing the number of temptations we're exposed to, right? So why isn't that just, you know, all of a piece with kind of setting up your environment?

And so I think at some level you're right, but my, my sense is that we do want to draw a distinction between those ways in which we are as it were indirectly steering ourselves, those ways of doing that, that are kind of coercive and manipulative. Yeah. And those, those ways of doing that, that are just, you know, it's kind of like the care of the future self and, you know, uh, curating an environment that's supportive of yourself.

Right. And so it's like, when is, when is something, when is something a helpful kick in the kick in the rump mm-hmm. Um, to nudge you along? And when is it abusive? When is something like a, a kind of patronizing form of paternalistic intervention? And when is it just giving good advice? So I think this is, you know, I'm, I'm not, I'm not trying to just split hairs here, but I think this is, in one way, this is describing the challenge of finding the appropriate ways of, of dealing with our, our shortcomings, our tension, our our, our temp, our giving into temptation, uh, and so on.

And I don't think, I don't think there's like, I don't think like if you're using the computer somehow it's in a different category. 'cause all of these tools can be used in more manipulative or more supportive ways. But I just, I just wanna underscore this idea, which I think aligns with what you're saying about the contrast between, um, play and visit on the one hand and like force and shame on on the other, on the other side.

It, it aligns with that to say there are ways of relating to ourselves that might increase our productivity. But at the cost of treating ourselves, manipulatively and with and without self-respect.

Um, okay. A couple of thoughts. First, splitting hairs is fun, so let's go ahead. I hope the listeners, I hope the listeners can, uh, can split along with us.

Yeah. Uh, uh, second note to your point of, um, I, there there is very much that thread I think that has been out there, that's been, that has been subtly called and sometimes quite overtly called about like a meaningless productivity, you know, a productivity that's, you know, just, um, kind of empty. Kind of empty, yeah.

Yeah. Um, or, or the productivity for productivity's sake. Um, where, where, or, or, I think the, the best way I I'd heard it was when, um, someone I'd, I'd been talking to described it as, I'm, I'm, I get nauseous when I hear. X or y person, you know, like that, that, that their way of approaching it and there's something revolting, there's something that happens that, um, that I think it touches on that, that feeling of you just need to force yourself more, uh, you need to work harder, you need to it.

And these words are not well defined in themselves. So,...

Ever notice how your focus sharpens right before a looming deadline, as if the ticking clock finally sweeps away distraction? This episode of *Rhythms of Focus* dives beneath that familiar surge, exploring why urgency can both ignite and exhaust wandering minds—especially for adults with ADHD.

Join me as we untangle the hidden costs of deadline-driven focus and discover a gentler path: one where agency, rhythm, and self-compassion replace force and burnout. You’ll learn how to trade the chronic anxiety of “last-minute mode” for a kinder, more sustainable rhythm of engagement—one that honors both your creative energy and your need for rest.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• Why the “deadline rush” feels so compelling—and so draining
• How force-based focus erodes self-trust and agency
• A practical, visit-based approach to build momentum without pressure

Three actionable takeaways:

• Try a daily “visit” to your project: just show up, take a breath, and mark it done—no pressure to finish
• Use simple tools (a calendar, habit tracker, or even a scrap of paper) to gently anchor your attention
• Reframe deadlines as prompts for reality, not engines of anxiety—allowing your focus to flow with less self-judgment

This episode also features an original piano composition, “Dandelion Wine”—a musical invitation to warmth, presence, and gentle growth.

Subscribe for more mindful strategies, and visit rhythmsoffocus.com/visit for your free guide to building a rhythm that works with your wandering mind.

• Your First Step to Breaking Free from Force Based Work (free PDF with signup)
• Rhythms of Focus - Episode 4
• Rhythms of Focus - Episode 9

#ADHD #WanderingMinds #MindfulProductivity #Agency #FocusRhythm #GentleHabits #VisitBased #SelfCompassion #CreativeFocus #DeadlineAnxiety

Picture this. It's the night before a big project is due. Your mind starts to feel sharper. Distractions fade. You're finally able to focus, powered by the pressure of this ticking clock. For many with wandering minds, ADHD, and beyond, this last minute surge is all too familiar.

So what's going on under the surface? Join me on this episode of Rhythms of Focus as we consider reasons in the costs of deadline driven work and maybe find a kinder approach to making things happen that hopefully leaves you with a calmer sense of focus.

When we can't seem to get ourselves to do things, whatever those things are, we often resort to some form of force. And there's several means of force.

One of them we've already looked at in episode six, which is the moral approach. This is where we can tell ourselves to "try harder" or shame ourselves among other possibilities.

Another method, many use, is to leverage deadlines. As we go through our lives, we lose things, forget things, have trouble starting and stopping and more. Often this leads to feelings of guilt and shame. Every attempt and injury worsens our wounds and the world becomes that much more dangerous.

It's difficult to know where danger is, but it always seems to be there. Having got ourselves into trouble many times over throughout our lives.

So, we're always on the hunt for danger, sometimes believing or even finding ourselves to be the source. We can wonder,

"What am I missing? What am I doing wrong? What can I do now that would hold off the most problems?"

Fight, Flight, or Freeze: How Urgency Hijacks the Wandering Mind

Another name for this is fight or flight. Activated by the sympathetic nervous system, fight flight, and you could also add freeze, is usually a state of mind and body that comes and goes, engaging us as we need to survive .

It's a state in which we might feel charged. We can often leverage this hoping that this danger feeling can be an anchor. This is where the deadline steps in. Very often those with wandering minds say,

"I need a deadline to work!"

A deadline gives us that handle on the danger that we need. It says, "I finally know what's dangerous!" And we can keep it in front of ourselves as this buoy of reality, not daring to let it go. As painful as it is, it can provide the sense of relief. "It's finally something I know to focus on!" Sometimes I'll hear it described as "an excuse to focus." We can let other things fall away because this is the most important thing.

When we depend on a deadline, we depend on this fight- or- flight sense, this strong, powerful emotion. That emotion is what makes it feel real.

When we ask a teacher, "when will I use this?" It's not necessarily because we're being smart asses. It's that we need something to feel real.

In other words, I'm not so certain that we depend on the deadline itself. I think it's more this deep emotion, this stimulation that has something feel real and alive. It makes sense. There's an intensity to it, and sometimes it gives us enough stimulation to get going.

unfortunately, a deadline is also a dreaded and painful master to work for. Demanding and uncaring about the inevitable other things that life throws our way. Whether we get sick or three other deadlines suddenly appear to demand our time, it doesn't matter. The deadline consumes our time and attention now and rarely cares about anything else in our lives, let alone the sense that it's hard to gauge how much time it might take to do a thing, and so our work becomes compressed, tense.

Still, if it's the only thing that we've managed to make work, maybe it's better than nothing?

But now because we sense danger as ever present, or if it's not there, we're looking for it- we're essentially leaving the fight or flight switch in a chronically on position. We've in fact, created a system that is dependent on anxiety. For example,

when you say,

"I'm fine, I don't need to think about this right now because it's not due yet."

All we're doing is applying a brake to the fuel of anxiety. Anxiety is the center. It's waiting for something to overwhelm the sense of, "I'm fine" to tip over into, "I'm not fine" to tell you when to start.

From chronically being in this fight or flight state, further hindered by the wandering mind and its own tendencies, we can cycle then between this deep frenzied work and then exhaustion and scatter.

Continued attempts to force focus often lead to this painful exhaustion and injury to our sense of agency, as I described in episode nine. Because it's painful and exhausting, our body adapts defenses. We need to find relief somewhere. It's not just that we seek relief, it's that our bodies may even force us into a state of relief.

Out of energy, our bodies seek some form of recovery almost regardless of our will. Unfortunately, like many psychological defenses, that type of recovery is not always beneficial. Nor is it always conscious.

The crash into the couch waiting for the next deadline is barely a rest.

But I do believe there's a better way, and let me give you this takeaway to consider here. You might look at relying on deadlines then as this source of urgency to get things done. But as I mentioned, it leaves us in this chronic state of anxiety and self-doubt. But if we instead look at it not about urgency so much as it is about craving reality, this powerful stimulant, we can then maybe leverage a rhythm of focus, regular visits and recognize the compounding possibilities that that may give us.

Okay. What does that look like? How would you do that?

The Daily Visit: Building Gentle Momentum Without Pressure

So one tool you might want to use to do this is something like a habit tracker or some app that has a repeating task to it or something like that. It could be a simple piece of paper if you want. It could be a calendar where you mark a little X next to it, something that just marks the day.

Now, consider some project or task in your world, preferably something with even a far off due date, something you'd barely even start thinking about in the moment because you don't feel that pressure or urgency, at least not yet.

With these in hand, this thing that you can mark daily and the project or idea that you'd like to get into, make a visit sometime today to that thing. If you'd like to review the idea of a visit, consider episode four.

Put the materials of the project in front of you or go to it, and while you're there, take a single deep breath. You can respect your sense of agency, knowing you don't have to do any of it beyond that single deep breath. Whether you do nothing, maybe nudge it forward a tiny bit or even do a bunch, whatever it is, you can set it aside anytime that makes sense to you.

At that point, decide if you'd like to invite future you to do the same thing again tomorrow, where once again, you won't have to do a thing if you decide not to at that time.

At that moment, step away. Whether you've done a little, whether you've done a lot, whether you've done nothing beyond that single deep breath, you can mark it complete on that piece of paper or on that app.

If you can do this, and maybe that's a big if, but if you can do this, not only do I believe that you'd vastly improve your chances of getting something done well ahead of time and even with better quality than it would've been otherwise. You also start to connect with the realities and nuances within the work without the blaring urgency drowning it all out.

You will have created and engaged a rhythm of focus.

If you'd like a PDF to guide you through this, even show you how to set it up with a simple reminder app, head over to RhythmsOfFocus.com/Visit. So "rhythms" is plural and "rhythm" starts with RHY RhythmsOfFocus.com/Visit. You can enter your email address on there somewhere. You'll sign up for the Weekly Wind Down newsletter. Wonderful newsletter. If I do say so myself, and you'll get this free PDF that'll walk you through it.

Passion can be a powerful organizing force for a wandering mind. A daily visit to something that we find to be meaningful within us helps us connect with those feelings of reality. I remember reading years ago a copy of Ray Bradbury's book called Dandelion Wine.

I remember nothing about it other than this emotional sense of warmth. The phrase putting on a comfortable pair of old gym shoes comes to mind. The following piece is called Dandelion Wine, named after the book.

Music tends to be this nuanced language when it comes to convey the feeling that I remember of that book. It's in B Flat major six eight 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

Feeling trapped by rigid productivity hacks or the pressure to “just start”? This episode of Rhythms of Focus invites you to reimagine focus—not as a battle of willpower, but as a gentle practice of agency.

For adults with ADHD and wandering minds, agency is the skill of deciding and engaging non-reactively, even when emotions or distractions surge like waves. Instead of forcing yourself forward, you’ll discover how to nurture a sense of agency that honors your rhythms and restores trust in your own choices.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why agency—not force—is the missing ingredient for meaningful productivity and self-trust
• How to move from shame-based or deadline-driven habits to a visit-based approach that supports your creative mind
• Practical ways to pause, sense your options, and make decisions that feel true to you

• Practice “visits” instead of forcing action, building agency one gentle step at a time
• Use mindful pauses to transform overwhelm into clarity and choice
• Reframe “I don’t wanna” moments as signals to honor your agency, not shame yourself

Enjoy an original piano composition, Wind at Play, highlighting the practice between play and agency.

Subscribe to Rhythms of Focus and visit rhythmsoffocus.com for more resources, support, and inspiration designed for creative, wandering minds.

#ADHD, #WanderingMinds, #agency, #gentleproductivity, #mindfulfocus, #visitbasedproductivity, #selftrust, #creativity, #selfcompassion, #rhythmsoffocus

• Episode S01E04 - From Force to Flow with a Visit
• Episode S01E07 - Cautions of Dopamine and a Lean into Mastery
• “I just don’t wanna” and the Power of a Visit - Neurodivergent Insights
• What’s the Difference Between PDA and Demand Avoidance? - Neurodivergent Insights

it's a familiar refrain for those with wandering minds. So what do we do when we just don't wanna.

You may well know that once you're in it, you're good to go, but getting there can be terribly difficult. Yelling, "just start" hardly works. And when it does, it carries this host of troubles.

In earlier episodes, I talked about dopamine and the "interest-based nervous system" as it's been called, and how we might use these ideas against ourselves to say that we need some chemical or preexisting emotion to get to work. We adopt a sense that we cannot work by our own will.

But I did also hint at a third point of view.

We often focus on attention. For example, one type of wandering mind often carries such a diagnosis. ADHD. It's right there in the title, right? Attention Deficit hyperactivity Disorder. And there's even the inattentive type where we say that is the main focus.

But what's profoundly missing from the title and other wandering minds, such as the anxious, the creative, the absent-minded, and the like, is the sense of agency.

Now, what is that? It sounds simple. Maybe boring. Why bother with such an abstract idea? What does agency have to do with anything?

This central idea is a pillar to everything I write about, how I function as a psychoanalyst, and how I function as a teacher.

If you want to know the secret to what makes me stand out as a productivity talking head, I believe it comes from this focus on supporting our sense of agency and not about doing things.

So I hope you'll indulge me for a moment as we take this concept apart because I strongly believe that this not so simple skill is a trellis that supports so much, if not all, meaningful growth.

Now, what do I mean by agency? Here's the definition.

Agency is the skill and degree to which we can decide and engage non-reactivity.

Let me repeat that definition: agency is the skill and degree to which we can decide and engage non-reactivity.

Alright, so let's take that apart and see what we get. Hopefully. I'll be able to convey what is so vital about this.

When I use the phrase "non-reactive", that's the end of the sentence there, that deciding and engage non-reactively, it means that we can sense our world within us, that emotional, thoughtful world without being swept away.

It is far too easy and maybe even the default to be carried by these waves. When we catch ourselves in the middle of an email, not realizing how we even got there, we're reactive. When we worry and can't decide on something, we're reactive to that worry. When we flip off that person that almost ran us off the road, were reactive to that anger.

Our interests, wants, needs, impulses, worries, and cares- they all touch, wash over, if not crash into us as waves. But when we can sense these emotions, these feelings, these thoughts to whatever degree we can and begin seeing them as information, we start to recognize the options they represent. Hearing that information, these messengers from within, were much more likely to engage from a place of meaning rather than one of reaction.

As such, we can now decide from the options they give us, connecting to whatever we find most meaningful in that moment.

And from this point, we can begin to engage. Here, the decision starts to take shape. We begin closing, collapsing the cloud of possibilities that once had been perhaps mourning the fantasies of what could have been.

From this non-reactive space, we can deliberately choose our next path, whether that's about deciding to have a cup of tea instead of diving into cleaning the closet, or planning out the next quarter's business plans.

In that nameless space where we form our options from our experience, non-reactively, we act with our greatest clarity.

The beauty of agency is that it's a skill, something we can nurture and strengthen over time. Every time we notice a wave and choose a response, we're practicing agency. It's like a musician learning a new piece. We improve not by perfection, but by returning to the practice again and again.

And of course we all get swept away from time to time. That's not failure. It's part of being human. But every time we can catch ourselves or we can notice and realize we have a choice, we strengthen our skill.

As a simple example, I'm writing and I notice this message alert at the top of my screen.

"Oh, hey, message from someone I've been waiting for,"

so I click it.

"Maybe I could just take care of that real quick."

And somewhere on the way to that message, maybe even as I'm writing it, there's this brief flicker of awareness that comes to mind.

"I'm wandering,"

I may not even remember where I'd wandered from, but in that skill, that pause, that's where I can start to sense my options.

"Oh, I'm writing a message here, but I have this vague feeling that I was just doing something else. Oh wait, I was writing."

And then maybe I feel a disappointment that I even wandered off, or maybe I feel an excitement for what I'm about to write to the friend of mine.

And maybe a thought about being thirsty comes to mind too.

And while I'm waiting in that pause, I wonder how I drifted from writing. It's not just distractibility, it's that I hit a wall of confusion while I was writing. I didn't know what to write. I didn't know the order.

"Oh no, people are gonna think that I'm full of it, and I don't know what I'm talking about."

That message that showed up in the corner of my screen gave me a way out. And my magnified mind, the small work table from which I can work, can easily have its contents knocked aside.

It's not just distractibility, it's that the emotions as they are, are huge. And they flash past quickly.

But as I paused, I thought,

"You know, if I can sit with that confusion in the writing, I often can find a path forward discover something useful and interesting along the way.

The work is to be with it.

I bring the document back, and I leave it in front of me as I wait there, seeing what comes to mind, maybe starting to nudge something forward.

That decision came from heightened agency that came from an acknowledgement of my world within which came from consideration, which ultimately, came from the birthplace of it all: a pause, the simplest and most difficult of any form of meaningful productivity.

But because this is a skill means we can practice. It is something we can get better at.

Behind this practice of agency is the agent itself .

Some of the neuropsycho analytic community, for example, might argue that the purpose of consciousness itself is decision agency.

We might wonder whether we have free will or if everything's determined. But rather than view things through this dichotomy, what if we instead focused on this sense of our ability to make a decision non-reactively something we can practice and then have more or less of.

Now, when it comes to a wandering mind, we often struggle. We lose things, we drop things, we lock ourselves outta the house. We dive deep, but then connect, we wade through scatter. We can do well here, but not there. But only today and not tomorrow. And not yesterday. And it's not clear why.

We might fear that if we decide to do something, we might choose poorly. And maybe that's because we have in the past.

When we struggle to get things done while others nearby make their calls, do their work, get to the things they enjoy with little difficulty, we might wonder

"What gives?"

And well-meaning others alongside our own internal voice might point out our problems and ask,

"Why can't you just?"

These gaffes, these stumbles, these insults over and over hit us.

Many of us start to believe that there's something wrong with us.

We lose trust in ourselves, and more specifically in the sense of agency: our ability to decide and engage non-reactivity.

In other words, this core sense of agency becomes raw, injured and hurt.

"Why can't you just?"

And other statements like these reinforce the injury. When we tell ourselves or hear from others to do the laundry, the taxes, the whatever, and then some sensation holds us back- what's that?

Some call it demand avoidance or pathological demand avoidance. Author Megan Anna Neff has a nicely considered article on her blog in which she makes a case for calling it Pervasive Drive for Autonomy.

Embedded within is this feeling of,

"I don't want to,"

or it's close cousin,

"I can't be bothered."

When I hear these phrases from others or myself I hear it as this cry of injured agency. Beyond decision is this agent, the self, the person making the decision. The center of consciousness becomes this marker that we exist.

When we don't trust ourselves to make decisions that feel meaningful, that feel to be in our best interest and the best interest of those we love and care for, we can feel lost.

And in those moments, someone tells us what to do, they're taking away not only our decision, but our sense of personhood. Losing autonomy, we collapse, rebel, yell with the raw power of the time in our lives where we began to insist on our being.

The toddler within.

"I don't wanna! No!"

These simple but powerful ways, tell the world,

"I exist."

We instantly create this contrast through contest, through opposition, separating ourselves from the world. This injured sense of agency screams,

"I am!"

Even if that looks like lying on the couch.

And in those moments we managed to fight through and stumble into some flow forward and someone else says,

"Hey, can you go do that thing?"

That thing that we were just about to do anyway, we collapse. Not because of some chemical, , but because of that sense of agency, our personhood, our place to practice and grow from feels like it's been taken.

Crashing waves in the seas of a wandering minds, times of stress a only make it worse. Our desire to simply exist, becoming that much more profound striving as we are not to drown.

It might sound strange. But when agency is injured, some part of us absolutely resents being told what to do, even if that person is ourselves. And every attempt to force ourselves makes this rejecting part of us stronger, if not louder.

Our sense of,

"Hey, I should go do that thing"

becomes this authority to which our injured sense of agency says,

"no."

When we're in this position where we can't make ourselves do the things and yet feel we must, we often resort to force.

This can take many forms: waiting for deadlines, creating fake deadlines. Overscheduling ourselves, shaming ourselves, staking our reputation on something through public declarations of goals that are impossible. Waiting until we feel like it, trying to fake feeling like it, asking others to remind us over and over, among many other possibilities.

However we do so, it comes from this feeling that we cannot do it on our own. We do not trust ourselves.

Still, once the momentum is there, from whatever means we got there, once we quote, just start, sometimes we can keep going. We might even support this, with our tendency to conflate morality with sacrifice: maybe our desire to be a good person requires pain.

And with that idea in mind, we now have this recipe for an ever worsening spiral, an awful torrential wind that creates a swing back and forth between tremendous effort and terrible collapse .

And perhaps worse seeming success at using force directly says we need force, that our sense of agency doesn't work. We cannot decide we have no free will, and that to get any work done, any emotion that says otherwise should simply be ignored.

Navigating can feel like moving through quicksand.

And just as an aside, let me make things a little worse. The wins we achieve are often hollow. Even if the results outwardly look like we've done well, there's a fragility that comes from this forced nature.

For example, let's say you get an A on a test, you've crammed for it the night before, but the knowledge disappears quickly. This emptiness comes not just from the superficial nature of the achievement, but from how we got it.

Had we absorbed the same material over the same timeframe, driven by genuine curiosity, a desire to learn, we would likely have remembered it much differently. We would likely have remembered it much differently embedded within at our disposal, rather than held in some fragile box of rote memory

Agency is injured. "I don't wanna," is the cry of an injured self.

We double down on the things we can count on. Maybe that next deadline will light the fire of that fickle and dangerous fuel of anxiety maybe.

So of course the question comes back, how do we regain agency? How do we heal it? How do we do what we want to when we just don't want to? The simplest though, also most difficult answer comes from the definition.

Once again,

Agency is the skill and degree to which we can decide and engage non-reactively.

To reach this state of being non-reactive means that we pause. We pause with that experience and with that decision, whatever the feeling, the object, the thing is that we are trying to confront and we wait with that.

We wait for our thoughts, for our feelings about it to come to mind about that experience, that decision, whatever focus we've chosen. And when those feelings of anxiety, excitement, and the rest no longer tell you anything new, whether they've come to a standstill or they're simply repeating, they've come to this point of being settled.

When we reach this point, we've let our ideas and sensations about something come to this standstill, we now have our options before us.

We see the thoughts, the feelings, the sensations. We translate the messages they present, as well as we can. At least for this moment, we've reached a height of agency.

Simple, but not at all easy.

I can tell you that I personally approach this in two ways, and I'll start with the more complex one first. The first is my being a psychoanalyst.

In psychoanalysis, we look at a person's world through the lenses of meaning, motivation, and experience. We recognize the emotions, the thoughts, the winds, the waters, whether they caress or bash into this vessel of consciousness. We consider how in our attempts to survive these seas, we might even inadvertently create and worsen conditions for ourselves.

By examining these thoughts as they come to mind, their potential meanings that resonate from the stories within, we try to know where we might regain, discover, or create a sense of agency so we can start taking charge of our lives once again.

The human mind is a deep, vast, rich, and complex world, and the work can be considerable.

But I believe there's also this second simpler approach, at least, it has a much simpler beginning.

And I've mentioned it already and I'll mention it again.

Pause.

Quite likely you're in the middle of something. When aren't you?

Maybe you're deciding what to do next. Maybe you're working on something, maybe you're having dinner, maybe you're spending time with someone.

But in that pause, if you're able to do so, see what comes to mind about whatever it is you're doing.

Some things might seem related, some may well not. You might even be surprised.

You don't need to do a thing. But in being there, at least to whatever degree that's caring to yourself, you connect more strongly with those forces within, including the subtle complexities that run beneath a deceptively simple, "I don't wanna."

Be there. And when no new information comes to mind, the options are before you. Thoughts from your past self- past intentions, memories- considerations for your future self -desire, worry- these are brought together in a respect for present self- your energies, the conditions where you are in this moment.

At this height of agency, you can decide to engage wherever you'd like, including doing nothing.

Certainly there's more to say. Certainly there are means of structuring our decisions. In fact, that's the nature of story of games, of tasks over very existence.

In fact, in my Waves of Focus course, I outline several places where pausing can help, and then the structured decisions that can guide easing the burdens of a workflow, particularly for a wandering mind.

So as a takeaway, maybe sometime this week, try to notice some moment where you feel swept away by a wave of emotion or some impulse. Can you pause even briefly and see what comes to mind? Maybe ask yourself, what are my options here? What feels most meaningful right now?...

Feeling stuck waiting for motivation to strike? In this episode of Rhythms of Focus, we explore a gentler, agency-driven approach to productivity-especially for creative professionals, high-achievers with ADHD, and anyone whose mind tends to wander.

Instead of relying on force, deadlines, or shame, discover how small, mindful “visits” and emotional rhythms can help you move forward, even when motivation feels out of reach.

You’ll learn:

• Why traditional productivity advice often backfires for wandering minds, and how to honor your emotions as guides rather than obstacles.

• How the “CHIN-UP” emotions-challenge, interest, novelty, urgency, and passion- are helpful, but not enough for meaningful engagement.

• Practical ways to create gentle transitions into focus, using visits and self-compassion as your starting point.

Key Takeaways:

• Show up to your work with a single, mindful visit-no need to force action.

• Use your emotions as navigational tools, not barriers.

• Mark each visit complete, no matter how small, and return with self-kindness.

This episode features an original piano composition “Standing Deer” to inspire your own creative rhythm, a representation of passion to build in your own life.

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"Oh, I'm sorry. I, I can't do the laundry. I, I just don't have the dopamine."

I am paraphrasing this from a social media post that is quite humorous as these videos often are. My question is "now what?"

Do we wait for dopamine or interest or whatever to be able to act? Are we really at the mercy of some capricious muse?

We can certainly laugh at these videos, but I think we owe it to ourselves to pick up from this point, because otherwise we're left throwing up our hands and saying, well, I guess I just don't have free will.

 Certainly, it can be hard to get started. Transitioning from doing nothing to something, from something to something else. These can seem impossible. Others ask us-- we ask ourselves, why can't I move forward? Why can't I keep doing the thing over time?

I had like to play for you this post that I found quite funny. Written across it is the words, "me absolutely riddled with ADHD applying for a job."

Instagram Post here

Again, quite funny, but I think we need to pick up from here.

In recent years, this idea of an "Interest- based nervous system" has come to the front. The idea is that we can only function if we have this inherent interest in doing a thing.

One psychiatrist, Dr. William Dodson describes a few motivating conditions for those with ADHD, and I think the concept can extend well for those with wandering minds.

Namely, these conditions are:

1. One. Challenge: a sense of being challenged within that window that works for us that can engage flow.
2. Two. Interest: the sense that you inherently would like to do something.
3. Three. Novelty is say, Hey, look, there's that shiny thing. I would maybe play around with this word novelty and replace it with the idea of discovery because I feel like it's more meaningful.
4. Four is urgency: a sense that something's on fire. It needs to be taken care of now.
5. And fifth. Passion: the sense that something developing over time throughout your days, giving you a sense of competency, identity, agency, and more.

Together, these have sometimes been called an "interest- based nervous system", though there are clearly more emotions involved than just interest.

One client of mine nicely put these together in a mnemonic called the CHIN-UP Emotions: challenge, interest, novelty, urgency, and passion. CHIN-UP.

Now, this set of conditions is contrasted with those who are more able to do things based on thoughts that something is important, that there's a reward involved, or that there's a punishment that something bad will happen if I don't do it.

These ideas of punishment of reward of importance, these tend to be largely intellectual. They're ideas. They might have associations. They might even connect with us at some way, but they're not emotionally strong in the Now.

Coming back to those CHIN-UP emotions. I think we can unify them even further under the idea of play. Challenge, interest, novelty, passion, all or aspects of this playful sense. Play describes so much of what goes right when we're deeply invested. What can make it so difficult to engage in when it's not there.

But now we can go even further than play.

What about care? What about rage? Fear, love, lust. These can easily get us going as well. Organizing ourselves, our minds, our behaviors in some direction.

Emotions that we might even consider negative: confusion, overwhelm. These tend to clamp us down, have us curl up within ourselves, but I don't think it's that we're unmotivated so much as we're swallowed up in these worlds.

In other words, emotions organize us. They resonate from this place of meaning into the moment, merging into our experience. Our brains are not full of buttons and levers. The more powerful emotions are in the moment, the more we are in the winds and waters, the more they can either carry or crash into us.

Even scatter itself is an emotion. This mix of conflicting, contrasting, colliding feelings, enveloping us in the sense of overwhelm.

And when we engage well, we're in a flow. These emotions and intentions seem to be aligned, the motions of molecules, the firing of neurons from one node to the next, from one nucleus to the next create conditions no less nuanced or varied than our richest ecologies and our deepest oceans.

And for a wandering mind that has this magnified sense of The Now, our emotions become even more powerful. They are our worlds.

What I think tends to be missed is that we move through a process to becoming engaged. This motion from one state to another. Transitions.

It's not like we go from, "I don't feel like it" to, "I feel like it!" with some button pressed, some sudden revelation. Maybe occasionally that happens. But more so it comes from some unconscious depths, our emotions gather and our ideas form coalescing from these primal forces then that push the hull and fill the sails of the moment.

The thing is, we are not helpless against ourselves. We have agency. We can still be the captains of the boat that we are in on this sea.

The question is how can we position ourselves to begin those steps that make the transition out of where we are, into where we would like to be? Can we create the conditions that might invite a muse?

I believe that transition begins in the Visit. Same thing I described in episode four.

In other words, we can show up to a difficult task.

Whether that's the laundry, budgeting, a report, we can bring the materials of the work in front of us, move ourselves to it, preferably move distractions aside , and then for a few moments, simply be, maybe for that single deep breath. We don't have to force ourselves to do a thing.

It might seem strange. What good is it to do nothing?

Too often we privilege action.

"Just start!"

Is often a piece of advice given, but this advice can be destructive. The word "just" skips the emotion, this repeating admonition that you cannot trust yourself to make a decision and act based on where you are and your own abilities.

It's when we force ourselves that we invite this immense emotional wave against us. We fight agency, that sense of our very humanity, by not only saying we cannot trust ourselves, but acting like we cannot trust ourselves in that "just start."

But by being with the work, you're not doing nothing. You are engaging the emotions, the true realm from which our decisions are made, from which action of true conviction has a chance of finding conception, forming, and being born.

Whether we begin with anxiety, shame, irritation, or more likely, some entire mental ecology of emotion, any real flow begins in being with those sensations.

Every visit we make creates a wave of focus as rough or as smooth as those waters may be.

And of course we can do so to the degree that we care for ourselves. That single deep breath, maybe that's all we can withstand. Maybe less. That's fine. Mark the visit complete and come back tomorrow.

We are exercising agency.

In this way, we show up, we be, we decide. Gentle winds of dopamine, interest, engagement might even start to tickle the sails.

So as a takeaway, consider is there something you are waiting for, for better conditions to start?

Is there something you're waiting to be interested in to continue? Maybe there's a whole bunch. What if you chose one of them and you showed up to it and felt your way there? And if you could barely be there for that single deep breath, that's fine. Mark the visit done. Put it away. Come back tomorrow. Do it again.

You can stop at any time, but preferably do so at a visit.

Once you've been there, you've been there. Sometimes ideas start to bubble. The muse may even turn their head in your direction.

  Sitting at the piano, I'm often confronted with this sense of worry.

What if I've got nothing to say? What if nothing new comes to my fingers? Or maybe why bother? Hasn't everything been written?

But in being there, staying there, sometimes doing nothing other than simply sitting at the keys, I can be with those senses, and that's where I start to work through those worries and maybe play that single first note.

Is that where it starts? Or maybe it really started when I sat at the keys.

I might start touching the keys. Something soft, something loud. Maybe I can make a piece of music with that one note. What if I added another note?

Maybe whatever it is I'm doing dies right there on the vine, and that's fine too. Maybe it'll be fodder for another day.

But occasionally I do catch a wave and even when I do get a wave I have a new worry.

What if I lose it? What if I make a mistake?

Still all I need to do is be there. Let it flow. Let it drift away. I could space out, let my mind wander, and when I catch myself wandering, I can bring myself back.

As I lean into challenge, I discover that next step. I don't need to know all the steps.

I only need to reflect on this feeling of some general direction, this blurry vision into the fog. And then maybe I can take that single gentle step. And if I can do that with regularity, somehow I seem to get somewhere.

The following piece of music is called "Standing Deer." I imagine being in the woods having come across some deer in the distance. It's turned its head to look at me. I'm not sure where the conversation is, but it's there somehow carried through the silence.

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