Rhythms of Focus

For those of us moving through life with ADHD or wandering minds, “SMART Goals” can act as too rigid a process. One that may impede the value of the end results.
These so-called “SMART Goals” can actually feel dehumanizing, as if something measurable and specific were given more weight than something that might allow your wonder and creativity to flow even more freely.
Premature goals can be weaponized by workplaces, while much of what matters in creativity has little to do with relevance, specificity, and time.
Creative work, meaningful work, is often inherently blurry. There is an act of discovery when we allow our minds the freedom to ask questions, to play, and to pause and reflect.

Transcript:
How big? How small?

Word of warning, today's episode is one of my crankier ones.
You may have heard of the so-called "SMART Goals". Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Some employers even demand them in their relationships with you.
But I find SMART goals to be anything but smart.
When it comes to goals, we often hear something along the lines of:
“What do you see yourself doing in 5 years?"“Dream big! Now dream bigger! You are only limited by your imagination!"
Ugh.

Does anyone else find this to be similar to "Think of a number. Now think of a bigger number"? I guess we're supposed to keep doing this until we're all wearing Infinity Gauntlets or something.
Then we are supposed to write them down, perhaps using the obnoxiously titled "SMART" mnemonic to make them Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.
Perhaps a boon for the ever de-humanizing forces of parasitic corporations, I have some concerns about these so-called "smart" goals:
Premature specificity can lead to a rigidity that can shatter the goal, the individual, as well as injure nearby innocent bystanders. (See also every story villain.)
Not everything that can be measured matters. In fact, I'd argue that most that matters cannot be measured.
How do I know what's achievable until I'm there?
How do I know what's relevant until I explore?
And for those of us with wandering minds, Lord help us with the clearly implied use of clock time rather than that of self time. (See also Clock time vs Self time)

What goes horribly missed is the over-privileging of the written word, and the under-privileging of the wordless experience born in the seemingly menial but utterly vital, tiny world of a single visit.

Privilege the Wordless

Experience is largely a wordless place.
Much of the Now cannot be translated into words. As much as I love playing with words, they are hardly more than emissaries, often beaten and beleaguered when sent on meaningless missions.
We discover what we are creating in the act of creating it. What we once thought was clear and concrete, becomes obviously not as we are there, in the Now.
We learn what we can learn in the act of learning it.
Any creative vision will be, by definition, blurry in one sense or another. We don't know the time it would take. We don't know the steps there. We don't even know what it will look in the end.
Envisioning that blurriness, sensing a direction, we wordlessly feel the tensions and decide from there how to shape and shift the moment's sails.

Privilege the Tiny

When we focus on the tiny, we often unlock the large.
Catching a tiny turn of phrase in a client's concerns, I ask,

"Wait, what do you mean by that?"
From here, new worlds may open.
What they once stated as a goal perhaps of therapy even is now revealed as only an attempt to further suppress an important part of themselves. "Make me not angry" - but what if there is reason for the anger, a reason you hadn't considered? "Make me not worried" - what if the worry is doing something for you? What do we do with that? Make me do my work - What if doing your work is a bad idea.
I'd rather not collude in their collapse.
Working on the second movement of Beethoven's Sonata 14, I stumble here and there, a bit at the beginning, a bit at the end, and a bunch in the middle.
Diving into a single measure, slowing it down, feeling for the basic nature of the single notes involved, I gently rework a small knot in the fabric.
Why here? Why now? I don't know.
But something interesting happens in that discovery in the tiny, a turn of phrase, I realize my goal was wrong as the whole piece begin to flow different from this tiny place of practice.

Of course...

Of course there is utility to thinking of large matters.
Of course we can revisit where we thought we were going to make adjustments.
Of course it is useful to think of small steps on the way there.
But premature goals can be weaponized - forced, forming a procrustean bed of words, twisted into submission. Have you done the thing by now? Why haven't you done the thing? Update the ticket. Say where you were, say where you'll be, convince me.
Returns and revisions take time, a time easily burdened upon our future selves.
I wonder if the world beyond goals is one far more vast and rich than they'd have us believe.

Kourosh

PS What do I see myself doing in 5 years? Probably eating a sandwich or something.

PPS I'm still cranky.
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This episode discusses the concept of willpower, particularly in relation to the struggles of individuals with ADHD.
We question the traditional notion of willpower as merely doing, or not doing, something despite our internal emotional opposition.
We explore how creating supportive environments and pausing enables wandering minds to make better choices and engage in meaningful activities.
We discuss:
What defines willpower
Willpower versus the wave of emotions
The power of holding tension
Supporting our needs with pauses

We conclude with a piano improvisation piece called 'On a Dare'.
For more, subscribe and visit rhythmsoffocus.com
Transcript
Willpower. What a troublesome word. Those with ADHD in particular supposedly don't have enough. Fight more, do more, do the thing you don't want to do. But what is this willpower thing anyway?
What Defines Willpower?
Have you ever had a cut and then knew, while it was healing, that it was important not to pick at it. But there was some part of you that just felt like, "Hmm, I just gotta scratch it,"
And when you hold back, and you just keep holding back, is that willpower?
Maybe we can define willpower as the ability to deliberately do, or not do something, despite an unaccommodating, if not deeply opposed, emotional world that surrounds it.
But is that really the focus? To do things we don't want or not do things we do want?
Willpower Versus the Wave of Emotions
The emotional world, is a swirling world.
At times chaotic, at times peaceful, sometimes vengeful. Throwing one wave after another at us.
Is it a lack of willpower to fail to stand against some typhoon of emotion? I think there's something here, some tension.
When going with the flow, we follow some line of least resistance, a summed vector of internal fields of boat floating wherever the sea of emotion takes us in this moment.
But we know that it's important to occasionally hold back.
The Power of Holding Tension
When we're having a bad day and someone asks us for one more thing, we hold a certain tension to not respond.
When meditating and trying to hold onto awareness itself. We hold a tension.
When we try to understand, build, create, maybe hold two ideas in mind simultaneously. Once again, there's this tension that we're holding onto.
But holding that tension seems about as possible as chronically holding a 50 pound weight in the air. At some point we lose it. Consciousness being the way it is.
We don't even recognize that we've lost it. I dunno about you, but, even though I've meditated for many years, there's still plenty of times that I wonder, wait, where did I go?
Beyond the Path of Least Resistance
Pushing ourselves through a difficult task can be similar. Somehow we lose track, exhausted. There's something that happens when we can hold tension.
We discover, if not create, options. We have this option to place ourselves on alternate paths. We realize that there's more than just the path of least resistance.
And as such, we can create more accommodating situations, make better choices. We can even create supports for ourselves.
When practicing on the piano and only going with the flow, I engage in some empty form of play. Playing the same piece I know all too well, doing the same licks over and over.
But in that pause I see other paths. This I know, this I don't. Here's a book that I can look at. Here's an idea and an area to study. How would I even do that? Options we did not have before begin to form.
And from here, we can seek the windows of challenge within the difficult. We can simplify things, shrink them down, slow them down. Whether in piano or in therapy, or in hobby or work, whether habit or craft.
To resolve, if not dissolve, the difficult into the newly easy. Mind can discover paths of tension to now release.
Support Through Pausing
In other words, what we seek is not necessarily more willpower, some finite resource if there ever was one. Instead, we look to practice using our limited reserves to pause.
To pause for leaving that itch unscratched, to decide what we can to support ourselves — we place ourselves in situations showing up to a visit.
We create our environments to support us, reducing our distractions so that we can find ways we can support ourselves, so we don't need to hold ourselves back so much. And that way we can engage with our nature of curiosity, if not grace.
The following piece is called, “On a Dare.” It's an improvisation. It'll never be played again. I hope you enjoy it.
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This week we explore how to “find your voice,” when it feels as though everything has been done before. How do you create something to put you on par with masters like Michael Jordan, Miles Davis, and Van Gogh, who are instantly recognizable?
Finding one’s voice isn’t mysterious alchemy but a complex process of tapping into one’s unique, often blurry stream of thoughts.
Using Richard Feynman as an example of distinctive thinking, Dr. Kourosh Dini describes a practical method through music: improvising, then pausing to review recordings, identifying structures and connections, and consciously internalizing what has emerged unconsciously.
This deliberate cycle of play, study, and reflection builds a tangible conduit to deeper self and clearer communication.
We close the episode with an evolving piano piece, “Alight,” in F minor, 3/4 time.
Transcript
How do I create something new, something unique? How do I not sound like everyone else? Whether writing a piece of music, searching for a unique perspective at work, or even trying to write an interesting newsletter, it can be easy to fall into a sense that it's all been done before.
The common advice is to use your own unique perspective. In other words, find your voice. Great, but how?

Voices of the Masters at Their Crafts

Finding our voice is never simple. But we see it in the masters of any field. Watch a video of Michael Jordan playing basketball. You'll see no one plays like him.
You'll listen to Miles Davis and you know it's Miles Davis. You see a painting by Van Gogh, and you know it's Van Gogh.
Even when we copy them, emulate them, well it all came from that original voice.
You might think it's a matter of art, some secret alchemy bestowed on the blessed few that lets somebody create from some hidden spirit within. Well, if so, how do we tap into that world?
That voice, whatever it is within us, can be rather complex, and there are likely many paths to fostering and caring for that voice.

Richard Feynman's thoughts on thoughts
Richard Feynman, this brilliant quantum physicist who beyond his understanding of subatomic particles, had a wonderfully quirky approach to life and learning. He would often share how he thought.
I hear how he thinks and I hear a reflection of my own thoughts, my own deepest thoughts, not because I know much of anything about quantum physics, but because of the blur of ideas that can come to mind.
The process of organizing that and the like, and it's not at all simple, but the unique nature of thought, tapping into that, I believe this is where we find our voice.
Here is the link to Richard Feynman's "Fun to Imagine" talk.

ADHD and the Cauldron of Thought

ADHD, wandering minds, I believe we often share this sense of blurring rapid fire thought. This cauldron of the unconscious is what we often look at, whether we're saying we have a superpower or we're drowning in scatter.
I do believe there is a process in which we can organize in self-reflection, a sort of flywheel of building our voice.
I think it connects with this idea of voice itself, like, you know, what is that anyway though. I think it relates, if not, is, a sense of deep self. A sense of nature within embodied in the spirit of play and care among other emotions.
And connecting that self with the world that surrounds us as the practice of expressing that voice, whether the individual, the corporation, or any spirit, we can extrapolate this to any aspect of nature.

Trouble in Communicating with Others, an example in Music

Then there's this struggle in communicating with others. We need to not only understand our own jumble of thought, but the words that others use and the beliefs that others hold for us to have any chance at being understood, if not being understandable at all.
Well, maybe I can bring this somewhere concrete. Lemme give you an example in music. Sometimes I'll sit at the keys and create something, some improvisation, some structure, who knows?
It is a common cliche that artists channel something from somewhere they don't understand.
It's quite often a musician will create something and wonder, whoa, where did that come from? And wonder whether they could ever do it again. As unique as it makes the person, it creates this shared experience amongst us all.
Rarely after I've created something, can I reproduce it again as it was, at least not at first. I readily forget what I just made, if not how I made it.
My first response is to seek that feeling again, that feeling of creation because it's so much fun. And it can be useful certainly, but I've never found it to be a reliable path for reproduction.
Feelings rarely if ever bow to my conscious whim, and if they do, can only be for some short period of time, and even then demand some form of payment, whiplash of exhaustion, anger, or some opposite somewhere.
In the world of music, I generally just create a headache between the notes if I try to push myself in some direction. But if I rest my mind on what I created, maybe listening to the recording, feel out the structures, oh, this contrasts with that, oh, here there's a note that aligns with that.
This flows here and there. All these connections with what I already hold to be true within me. I grow this repository, this ball of understanding within. I often wonder at it, and my goodness, I wouldn't have consciously created such an intricate set of connections. And I wouldn't have.
But in that study of whatever it is that I had created from some unconscious realm, maybe spent in exhaustion, arrest my hands on the keys, and suddenly there's this new bursting forth, new ideas where I can create not only with whatever I had just made and learned again.
But now with variations and complexities and new structures. With the understanding of the internal I am building on my voice.
It seems strange to need to internalize what already seems internal, but this practice, whatever the method of reviewing what we've just done to create from there gives us a more tangible, visceral connection to whatever the materials are.
If I study and find somewhere within that I can play and I can move forward.
But if I can find what that play means to me, where that connects within what I understand in a way that means something to me in depth, I'm creating a conduit to my voice. I am building my voice even further.

No Longer a Passive Receptacle
We're no longer this passive receptacle. We're no longer connecting by rote. We're now taking the information and building from a deeper sense of self, one that's more accessible to our emotions of play and care.
It's a practice, not something given. It's not something that one either has or doesn't have.
Again, similar to playing an instrument of the piano, maybe as some of us start with a talent, but no matter where we begin, we still need to regularly connect with that field learning, engaging, being with internalizing.
And this is where beyond showing up to practice, we find a deliberate act. Sitting at the keys with the words, somewhere in the midst of work and play, might fall into this path of least resistance, seeking only the feeling. But in a pause, I can decide, ah, you know, I don't know where this came from, what that means.
Deliberately if I rest my mind in that blurry soup of thought and understanding and see where things resolve from confusion into clarity, I'm developing my voice.
When I remember to take my hands away from the keys, resting them in my lap for a moment, closing my eyes, maybe I picture the shapes and interactions of the sound, the rhythm, the harmony.
In doing so, I can return to the keys with new ideas, new energy. What was once unconscious is now conscious. Where I can more deeply connect and guide the sounds reflecting whatever universal spirits there are without getting in their way. Another trope of artistry.
Whatever I find will necessarily be attached to some unique voice because there's only one me, much as there's only one you.
A Take Away
So I guess if there's a takeaway here, is there some piece of play or work where you can pause, and for a moment, close your eyes and ask, what about this do I not understand? What can I reproduce from where I am? Can I rest my mind there and see what comes to mind? Can I find some ease within it? Some marker of mastery perhaps.

"Alight" - Music
The following piece of music is called "Alight". I may have even played it for you before. It's one of those pieces that have clear parts, but somehow those parts keep shifting in relationship to each other every time I play it.
And I like to explore those shifts, why is it that I do it two times there and three times there and, and, and not so much this time and more in that time, and who knows?
But if that didn't happen, if those shifts and changes didn't happen every time I played it, then I think the piece would probably die. I wouldn't wanna play it anymore. It's in F minor three quarters time. I hope you enjoy it.
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This episode examines how our minds can often wander in the middle of conversations, while reading, or tackling a project. This can lead to embarrassment and concern of being perceived as uncaring.
In reality, our minds are processing and making connections, participating in a bit of play.
Instead of suppressing our wandering mind, what might happen if you explore some of the connections and bring it into conversations or creative work?
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We do something a little different on this episode of The Rhythms of Focus. Join me for an informal piano practice session and get a glimpse of my own wandering mind as I reflect on the role of emotion in learning.
We explore the constant tension between free play and structured learning and the need to make real-time choices while respecting limits and using questions as a container for confusion.
I end with a developing piece called “Witch/Which Beauty.”
Transcript
Welcome to another episode of The Rhythms of Focus. I thought today I would sit down at the keys and just kind of, um, have a practice session, kind of describe what goes on.

The Practice of a Passion
You know, I think something that's not often talked about is, the sense of passion and mastery, when it comes to wandering minds, ADHD and the like.
There's the so-called, interest-based mind — which I still have troubles with the idea of using that phrase, because brains all flow with emotion and there are many emotions.
And, interest is an important one, certainly, but even there, Dr. William Dotson psychiatrist points out, what one client abbreviated to the Chin Up Emotions: challenge, interest, novelty, urgency, and then passion.
And I'll leave aside for a moment that there are many other emotions as well that can be very driving, even for ADHD and wandering minds, and perhaps even especially so.
But for the moment, I just wanted to get into this idea of passion, which I, to some degree, maybe even entirely, equate with mastery. Because mastery is a path, it's something we do over time, it's, it's not a line that we cross so much, although I think that idea can be put in there too.
So the idea of mastery, it's in many ways simple, it's that we be with a thing every day. If you can do that, you know, here I have this practice I picked up from my piano teacher from years past who said, touch the keys every day. Which has since translated into this idea of a visit every day, being with something every day.
And if you do that, there's a good chance you're on the path of mastery. And there's something incredibly organizing to that process.
Anyway, I'll just play a piece here. I like minor keys.
I often play in what are called a modal style of playing, where I stay within a scale.
This piece that I'll play here is called "Speaking Spirits."

A Balance of Play and Structure
Whenever I sit down to practice, I have to balance there's part of me that wants to play and goof off and go wherever the heck I want to go. And this other part of me that says, well, if you just do that, nothing will get learned, nothing will happen, nothing will grow, there is no structure.
And this is kind of a major issue, if you will, for wandering minds in general. This tug of war between the ideas of play and structure. We manage this with the ideas of agency that we are able to pause and make a decision and say, okay, what if I go in that direction?
And then at that point we throw ourselves into play once again. But it becomes a real time issue, it's a constant thing.
For example, if I am playing a piece and I'm enjoying it, there's this part of me that wants to keep enjoying it, just wants to keep going with it, keep going with that flow and finding where it goes and all that.
But, if I let it go on too long, it grows bitter. You know, there's a, I think a philosophical, something about the respect of death in that. But there's also, this feeling of, I need to respect limits, right? It's, it's that there's something to learn in that.
Anyway, I think I'm going off on a tangent now.

Sitting with Frustration
Let me tell you what I've been studying lately. So I've been looking at this book, "The Jazz Piano Book" by Mark Levine. Bought this many years ago when I was in college. And when I had looked at it then, it didn't make much sense to me. There were these things that were written in there, these chords.
I'm just flipping through it now if you hear the paper rustling, I was looking at the chords and I'm like, where are you coming up with this?
I'm even looking at it on page two and it says that there's a G7 cord. And there's no G in the chord. Like what are you doing? The G7 flat 9 it starts in an F in the base, and then there's a B, and there's an E, A, G, sharp and a B, and he calls that a G7 flat 9.
And maybe it is. But there's no G and that just bugs me. And that just in itself — I ran into a couple of incidents like that in this book and that was enough to stop me. That one stopped me many years ago, and only recently have I come back and started to play with it. So if I take that chord that I just mentioned, let me play this here.
Right? That's supposedly somewhere in there, a G7 flat 9. Here's the 7 here's the major third, which makes it a major key. This E is a sixth, which he doesn't mention anywhere. And then there's this G sharp, which is the flat 9. And again, we've got this B at the top, which is a repeat of the B before, which is that major third.
Now that resolves into a C— is it a dominant? Yeah, dominant C. But once again, here's a 9 in here in the right hand and a sixth and a third in the base, the major third of the E. So it goes and I'm like, how? How, why is that the cord? What are you talking about anyway? So once again, I got stumped.
Using Questions to Contain Confusion
So what do I do with that? I think the important thing is to be able to add questions to things and recognize the question as being the container.
So I look at the thing and say, my question is essentially, huh? Just H-U-H question mark. Huh? Then I can resolve that a little further into, well, as I was talking about, I don't see these, in one case, I don't see the root note in the chord at all. And the other one, it's at the very top. Does that count and what are the sixths in there doing?
So anyway, I make these questions. Whether you understand the music of it or not, it's regardless of whatever field you're in, you'll have your own unique questions to you. But the questions do, help contain the confusion.
And so once I do that, I can start flipping through and going, okay, well maybe I'll just play these chords a little bit here and there, and then I'll get to something that might make more sense and I can come back to this.
I can resolve into something about this and ah, you know, I get to the next little bit here and it starts talking about triads. Oh, okay. These make sense. The C major triad, here you go, starts with a major third and then a minor third on top of that.
And you call that a C major triad. There's a major, that's a minor. We got the C minor triad, which reverses it. You got the minor in the bottom and the major top. Right. So you got just basically you move the middle note down a half step. There you go. Diminish, you move the top note down a half step, which means there's two minor triads in there.
And then you got the augmented triad where you've got a major in the bottom again, and then another major on top. So it's all just a mix of different majors and minors and how they all play out.
And you keep playing with these things and realize, oh yeah, I could do that, I could do that and then, oh my goodness, is this hard? The simple, supposedly simple, minor 2 7, 2 seventh, and then you go to a major, a dominant seven for the fifth. And go to the, root note or little, major seventh in that guy.
It's a nice little combination you got there, you know. Sounds good.
And then you just goof off. So it is like, okay, there's a part of me that just wants to start playing and then I start playing.
What if I did a minor there?
Would it still resolve well?
Yeah. And what if I throw in other things?
And then I don't know what I'm doing. Then I want to go back to something that has structure, something I can hold onto and say, yeah, I can make some sounds. And I kinda listen to myself. I say, you know, what am I interested in playing right now? And maybe something I've been doing recently.
Here's one called "Witch/Which Beauty" that I kind of like.
Anyway, that one still needs work. I'm playing around with it. You can tell that there's some structured kind of form in there — or at least I can tell.
Anyway. Not sure if you guys are enjoying this sort of thing. Uh, I thought why not do an episode where I'm just kind of making some sounds and talking about it out loud.
If you're enjoying this and would like to hear more of these, let me know and maybe I can make that happen. Alright, till next time.
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