Rhythms of Focus

When the universe puts something fun or interesting in front of us, it can become a welcome distraction from what we are "supposed" to be doing. This can be especially true for those of us with ADHD and wandering minds.
We can easily be swept away, like a boat at sea, riding the current of thoughts and emotions taking us further and further away from our plotted destination.
Instead of going against the current, I propose a structured pause to reflect on where you are being pulled, as well as what is pushing you away.
Take a deep breath and notice your thoughts and the feelings flowing through your body. Then name and write down the activity pulling your attention towards it.
You can then turn tasks into options, allowing deliberate consideration for how you would like to precede and where to focus your attention.
We end with a piece entitled “Waves on Night’s Shore.”
Clunking down the stairs, dragging myself to the laptop, an idea or two rattling in my head.
I need to get back to that person. It's been a couple days since they emailed me. Starting to get rude not to answer.
Ah, but I still have to research something.
Pet the dog, pull out the chair. Wait, I need my tea. Grab the decanter, go through the motions of preparing a gong fu session of tea, this wonderful little art of creating tea, a shortly brewed small cupful at a time.
Finally, I crack open the laptop. Barely conscious whispers of that email evaporates as if I said, "I can wait. I have all day." 'Cause as I open that lid, that project I'd been working on, open overnight, greets me with its virtual open arms. "Hey, you, here's that next step ready to go. Just nudge me forward."

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

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

Frustration is an emotion that can be elusive in its origins while being capable of putting a halt to almost anything we're trying to accomplish.
We feel frustration doing something like putting together IKEA furniture. Sometimes it really is about the furniture. Other times we may have something entirely different lingering in the back of our mind making it difficult to use the hex key, thus derailing our ability to put the Früken shelves together.
We may buy a new tool or software that is supposed to make life easier, only to find it too complicated to use and too much of a burden or embarrassment to return. We may even feel a sense of failure tied to it.
Frustration is the feeling that arises when reality fails to meet a preconception, whether that vision is clear or blurry.
This week, we explore how frustration can be a great teacher if we pause to see what we can learn from it.

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

This week we explore how ADHD-related working-memory limits create a bottleneck. While a scratchpad can help, it often fails without a mindfulness-based technique called “anchoring.” Anchoring uses pen and paper with three “unlocks”:
1) Shift your mindset from thinking of what is written as tasks and to-dos, to thinking of them as options.
This reduces wrestling with the “I really should” thoughts, reduces shame, relieves working memory, and increases agency. One mnemonic to help identify what's present is WIND(E) “want, impulse, need, drift, wind” (optionally emotion) helps identify what’s present.
2) While lists are useful, it is also important to recognize that lists decay. You must periodically return to update them, thus creating a conversation with your past self and building trust with your future self.
3) When a list no longer reflects the present, archive or discard it.
We close with an improvisational music piece, “In the Interim,” blending minor and major keys.

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

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

Mentioned in this episode:
Waves of Focus YouTube Series
Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw