Rhythms of Focus

I am delighted to be joined by speaking coach and producer Rachel Hanfling, who has coached everyone from shy speakers to Fortune 500 leaders to help them find their authentic voice.
In fact, she was instrumental in helping me shape my course, “Being Productive,” and the ADHD-focused adaptation that came after. We discuss how people with wandering minds often struggle to express ourselves under pressure and how effective speaking is a learnable skill requiring guided practice, not an innate trait.
We discuss communication with a focus on the wandering mind. Hanfling shares how the foundation of helping anyone sound like the best version of themselves, starts with understanding both the audience’s needs and the speaker’s intent. We also get into using nonverbal elements of communication like eye contact, body language, voice, and energy.
You can learn more about Rachel Hanfling at her website. And if you're interested in learning the tools to find your authentic voice, make sure to check out her upcoming course, Own the Power of Your Story.
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This episode explores the concept of "doing nothing", which, ironically, is still an act of doing "something." In fact, “doing nothing” is a valuable practice where thoughts wander, tensions release, and ideas form.
When you think about the usefulness of empty space in an uncluttered closet you can draw parallels to the clutter of our own minds.
We continue questioning what “nothing” really means. A teenagers’ common response to what they've been doing, “nothing,” reveals that phone time, games, and chatting still contain connection, creativity, humor, and art.
Life is hectic and there is always something to do, which may make "doing nothing" one of the most important parts of your day.
The episode ends with an extended piece in C-major titled “Wind at Play.”

Transcript:
Vitamin Nothing

Eyes closed, thoughts wander by, an idea connects...
Whether returning from vacation, waking from a nap, or riding a single deep breath's trailing exhale -- energy flows, tensions release, and ideas form from what seemed to be nothing.
Doing nothing can of course be a good thing. Maybe it's a trope by now. But let's see where we can run with that trope.

But, What Is Nothing?

There are parallels of practicality to nothing.
A closet, for example, when overfilled makes getting to things difficult. What we can get to is either wrinkled or just in front. Meanwhile, when there's empty space, getting to what we want becomes much easier.
There must be a parallel to engaging our lives, work, and play.

But, What Is It to "Do Nothing?"

Turning to what may be our resident experts, teenagers, we hear with rare exception, in response to what they've done with their day,

"Nothing."
But nothing cannot simply be staring at a wall. Even sleep has active components.
So I ask,

"What does doing nothing look like?"
"I'm on my phone," "playing games," "talking to friends,"...
Asking further eventually reveals worlds of connection, creativity, music, art, humor, and more.
So even nothing is something.
Still, what then is "nothing"?
Is it a sense of release from responsibility? A responsibility to others? from ourselves? Could anything beyond responsibility be just one of a myriad species of Nothing?

The Art of Nothing

Such a practice must be a rhythm of structure and a lack thereof. Some even find it useful to schedule unstructured time, particularly as the weights of adulting accrue.
But then, how much is too much Nothing?
Is it when we feel good and ready to do Something? Is it when the world demands Something from us? Is it only when we parent ourselves through a proxy of lists, calendars, and timers to say,

"That's enough for now"?
Personally, I add "leisure" (perhaps another word for "Nothing"?) as a deliberate part of my daily visits. (See below) That Nothing may last a few minutes or hours. But once a day, I must acknowledge to myself, this is my time.
Is that it then? Is Nothing when I have the sense that I own this moment of time?
Whatever it is, when I cannot make it to Nothing, my day feels crowded, strained, or perhaps better said, unhealthy.
Nothing, in this way, is both a vital resource and a useful measure. Somewhere, I need my daily dose of Vitamin Nothing.
Kourosh

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Growing up in the 1980s, heavy metal hairbands were rock gods looked up to by kids and adults alike. While studying piano and awkwardly attempting early compositions, I wanted to hurry and get to the "rocking out" part of my musical prowess, just like the bands I admired so much.
It's so easy to fixate on an immediate reward that you forget practice is what helps us climb the ladder to success. It takes us to another level of connecting with ourselves and with our art.
Improvisation still depends on structure. It's the balance of chaos and structure that allows you to create your own "voice" that becomes authentically you. Mastery comes from loving the craft itself.
We end with an improvised piece in C minor called “A Flavor of Slop.”

Transcript
Ah, the 80s Growing up in the eighties, Friday night music videos, then MTV, these were the big things I'd get so excited to see. Aha, Billy Idol, Michael Jackson, Madonna, the rest. Big hair metal was amazing. Guns and Roses was still underground. Metallica was counterculture.
Practicing my scales, arpeggios, playing green sleeves on the piano with my teacher. I drift off to wonder how do these people, how do these musicians make the music they do?
My First Compositions
It seems so far off from whatever it is I'm doing. I try to make up this, that, or the other. My first composition was something of a series of notes running up and down a scale and some key that I made sure to include sharps and flats, just to make sure it was complex enough.
Eagerly I'd show it off to my piano teacher and she patiently, kindly, maybe even sincerely said something along the lines of, "That's nice," followed by a "Now, let's get back to work." And in my mind, but, but I'm not rocking out like Poison yet.
It's Not About the Reward
We're so accustomed to reward. The end goal, the vision of whatever we think will bring us joy, happiness, if not some unconscious fantasy of immortality. And we see it in our psychology with Skinner who linked stimulus and reward. We push it in our science and medicine when we implicitly say that the only thing that matters is what can be measured.
We say it in our day-to-day lives when we believe that we only need that hack or trick to make something work. We do it to ourselves when we aim for a score in that language app, rather than using the app to connect with our own voice within.
The trope of focus on a journey over its reward persists as a trope because we so often don't live it.
We Practice ADHD
Students often wonder about the WAVES approach to dealing with an ADHD mind. But it's not about "dealing with", it's practicing. We're practicing ADHD.
Well, what good is that? Well, when practicing the piano, we do eventually find a place of ease within the notes, we discover a voice.
Regularly I hear others tell me that they can instantly recognize my style of playing. It's not that I deliberately sought that out. I got there by practicing the fundamentals. The voice came of its own accord.
Over time whatever unique bubble I represent in the current wave of existence manifests on its own. It's just the way it happens. My job is to be aware and remove impediments where I can regularly over time. It's also known as practice.
Real Practice Helps Us Find Our Voice
Not only that, but the thing is I enjoy it. I enjoy that process. I enjoy the engagement of challenge in the small and large, finding a possible trailhead of mastery where I can.
Feeding the play that comes with that, that resonates with the sense of meaning within and often with others. The same thing happens when we practice our way of being.
ADHD for example, is this flow through a thin passage of the now. Strong and powerful, or stumbling and turbulent. It's like air within a flute, bow across a string, a tap on a drum
We don't manage ADHD, we practice it. And in so doing, we can find our strength and power, and more importantly, our own voice.
When hearing the simple ease of Frank Sinatra's, almost spoken, but clearly sung tunes, and we watched the smooth moves of Michael Jackson's feet.
When we know those moments of care, calm, play, and mastery, all hidden in that gentle, barely perceptible smile of a craftsperson at work, we know that they're in love with the craft, the practice itself. And when we bring that joy to the moment's challenge, we bring that self into the work.
The funny thing about improvisation is that it rests on structure. Without structure, we'd only have a mess. As I say, there's something interesting that does seem to happen at this interface between chaos and structure.
Whatever systems we build have to include the nature of our wandering, that flow of thought, that delight in play. Otherwise, we ourselves are not there. We're simply acting as some automaton.
So much of those, "I don't wanna" feelings are about rebelling against being that automaton. When we approach structure, when we practice. When we look at the study of others, their systems, their views of the world. There can be something powerful about pausing, and aligning this with our own voice, with our own moment of challenge, which then lets us take in whatever it is we're studying to grow our own voice.
The following piece is an improvised work, but it rests in a very clear structure of C minor, a particular set of notes. And as a home of C, that root note and the notes and the structures of the notes themselves all form something.
But all of those notes, all of those ideas, all of the ways this sonic building has come to be over the eons, if you will, has been brought in into that studied place in order to become play, which I hope you can hear between the notes.
The following piece, it has a silly name, it's called "A Flavor of Slop". I like that name. It's in C Minor, as I mentioned, and I hope you enjoy it.
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When building a thing to bring out to the world, we face “marketing.” Some of us who have had to put this on their to-do list may well have had a similar response to me, which is a rather complex mess of emotions perhaps summarized by:

“Ugh”
The whole enterprise can touch off feelings of selfishness, manipulation, and more. Here’s a thing. Gimme money.
“Ugh"
Some time ago, I learned of Billy Broas’ work in marketing, joined a course he’d put together, and was duly impressed by how he focused on honoring a person’s agency, that ability for a person to decide for themselves.
As agency is truly the centerpiece of the work I do, whether as a therapist or as a productivity talking head, I invited Billy onto the Rhythms of Focus.
In this episode, Rhythms of Focus S01 Episode 52 - Agency, Story, And Symbols with Guest Billy Broas, we wander this way and that, true to the name of the show.
We get into the ideas of:
Marketing as argument
People’s inherent dignity in decision-making
The importance of story, and how it is is about consciousness, attention, and meaning, not just chronology.
and much more


I hope you give it a listen and let me know what you think!
You can also learn more about Billy at his website, ​BillyBroas.com
Check out Billy's book, Simple Marketing for Smart People
And find his manifesto at marketingisanargument.com

Chapters:
[00:01:24] Introduction
[00:03:35] The Problem with Manipulative Marketing
[00:06:29] Humans as Machines — The Reductionist View
[00:09:14] Ontology, Dignity, and a Different Starting Point
[00:14:10] Story, Meaning, and the Limits of Facts
[00:15:11] Heaven, Earth, and the Architecture of Meaning
[00:23:33] The Masculine, the Feminine, and Creative Wandering
[00:25:15] Purpose, Worship, and What We Sacrifice To
[00:28:24] Pausing, Routine, and the Practice of Reflection
[00:34:02] The Hero's Journey and the Chiasmus
[00:37:10] Thoughts as Messengers, Not Masters
[00:39:41] Artificial Scarcity and the Theft of Agency
[00:40:51] Philosophy Over Psychology — Enhancing vs. Removing Agency
[00:45:32] Trust, Love, and the Voluntary Transaction
[00:47:54] Where to Find Billy

Telling ourselves “I should just do that thing” rarely motivates action and instead can lead to self-judgment.
The word “just” can be an unconscious way to trivialize the emotional difficulty of starting the work we have been avoiding. "Just" becomes the gatekeeper of procrastination that protects us from feared feelings while costing self-esteem.
By noticing and isolating “just,” we can recognize the emotional “wall” it hides and reframe it as an opportunity to explore what the task evokes—fear of incapability, resentment of others’ demands, boredom, or a sense of wasting life — so we can practice becoming able, reconsider responsibilities, and renegotiate agreements with ourselves and others.
We end the episode with a piano piece titled “Running on the Sun.”
Transcript
How often have you tried to start something you've been avoiding by saying:

“I should just do that thing”?
Unfortunately, the phrase rarely, if ever, gets us moving. Instead, we can slump into a pile and call ourselves lazy.
While trying to get ourselves to work, we've also introduced this insidious culprit - the word “Just”.
Using "Just" as a Gatekeeper
The word "Just" so readily slips into our speech. It’s as if we’re trying to say that the work, whatever work we are avoiding, is easy. Once we start, we'll be moving.
Using the word “Just” is often an unconscious attempt to trivialize the emotions of the work or at least those that surround starting it.
It’s not easy. We know it when we hit a wall. But since the word is so often unconsciously invoked, we don’t see the wall.
"Just" is a gatekeeper. By ignoring the word “Just”, we allow it to keep us in the world we know, protecting us from dreaded feelings, albeit at the cost of self-esteem. It's the sentinel of procrastination, guarding us from actually examining any ghosts of negative emotions we fear lurk within the work.
Since we don’t know what is “just” keeping us from doing it, a sense of incapability and inferiority creeps in, but at least we’ve saved ourselves from the dreaded unknown of the work.
"Just" is a guardian of the First Act, protecting us from some worrying feeling but also keeping us from the solutions we may seek, much like any form of procrastination.
Behind the Wall of "Just"
But when we see and know its magic, we can dispel it. Now, when we see the word “Just”, we can see the wall, often this puzzle of emotion standing between us and the thing to do.
By singling out the word “Just” in the sentence, we can now reframe it as a place for exploration. “What are the feelings of this work?” Better yet, “What is it about that thing that conjures these feelings?”
In sitting with the work and allowing ourselves this sense it can appear, we might start wondering, “If I tried, would my inability reveal itself? By doing this, am I just bowing down to someone else’s whims? Would I expose myself to boredom, this sense of wasting life?”
In acknowledging these sensations more directly, we can start finding where we feel unable and begin practicing to become able.
We can consider how we have taken on responsibilities and where our decisions were in that process. And we can then face the fears in renegotiating agreements and more. Agreements with ourselves, and with others.
None of these are simple questions to answer, but starting tells "Just" to step aside so we may enter Act II.
Running on the Sun
Today's piece is "Running on the Sun." I don't know why anybody would ever want to run on the sun, it seems mighty painful. The gravity would be too much at least. The floor would be pretty hot. Just all around inhospitable.
Nevertheless, such is the title of the piece. I hope you enjoy it.
For more, visit and subscribe at rhythmsoffocus.com.
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#adhd #adhdtools #neurodivergent #attentiondeficit #wanderingminds
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