Rhythms of Focus

This episode focuses on what small steps we might need to take in order to set reasonable expectations of ourselves to follow through on things we have been meaning to accomplish.
Instead of leaving ourselves a task list meant to check off, one that we can grow blind to as we continue walking past it trying to avoid eye contact, I invite you to focus on breaking things down into more manageable steps, ones you have agency over. We send an invitation to ourselves and it is our choice to accept it. Over time, this can help build the trust within ourselves to carry us across the finish line.

References:
S01E75 - Building Trust With a Wandering Mind
S01E57 - Anchoring and the Option to Work
S01E67 - ADHD, Mindfulness, and Anchoring
S01E72 - You Don't Need Another List — You Need a Better Prompt
S01E34 - Tripwires and "Sticky Decor Decay"
S01E24 - The Daily Invite

Transcript
I've got this note sitting on the counter. Wrote it last night. "Call the dentist."
These simple words written in our own handwriting exactly where we'd see it in the morning, and here we are in the morning, and we see it, and we walk right past it.
We knew, even as we wrote it probably, that this would happen.
Some part of us was already saying, "Why would this time be any different?" So let's hold on to that question for a moment. It's not a wrong question, but there might be some things we can do to change things.
The First Exchange
Everything in our approach rests on this exchange between ourselves through time.
This present you leaves a note > Future you then finds it and decides whether to show up.
Every guide we build depends on that exchange. Every project map, every reminder, every time we wind down something on a scrap of paper.
In the episode on building trust, I described setting something aside as this message in a bottle to our future self.
That very first bottle, when there's no history that says anyone on the other side of that shore is going to pick it up, that first one is our hardest.
I'd say it's one of the weaker points of the entire approach, or at least the place where I've seen people stall more than anywhere else.
The visit is useful, the anchor is useful, and a lot of people are able to enact those. But before those, there's this idea of building a guide, this thing that would help us return to stuff. And that all begins with that first return.

A Trust Problem First
Where it goes wrong is that we tend to reach for mechanics. We look for an app, we look for paper, we think about what time of day.
Maybe a sticky note would work better than the phone. Maybe the phone would work better than the sticky note.
Any of these mechanics are fine to consider, but they're secondary.
Creating a reliable prompt is a trust problem before it's a mechanical problem.
Many of us have been let down by this past self who promised, and a future self who didn't appear. So the first invitation goes out carrying that memory.
As we write our task, our note, whatever it is that we intend for our future self, some part of us already expects it to be ignored.
We can't argue against that expectation.
That expectation rests on emotion, and I've never won an argument with an emotion, and this one has evidence on its side.
Trust grows from experience.
The work isn't to convince ourselves that this time will be different. The work is to arrange those first exchanges so that they have a better chance of going well.
This is the idea of lifting a few pounds before we go to 300 pounds at a bench press. We have to build that muscle.

Two Places It Fails
There are two places that this exchange tends to break.
They both can be supported in different ways.
First, sometimes we never write the note at all. You know, we're in the middle of something, and that part of ourselves that would read the note doesn't feel real enough to stop for.
Why are we gonna pause for somebody who's not there? Right? That becomes this trouble of creating.
Second, sometimes we write a note just fine, and it shows up, and then we look away.
That becomes this trouble of relying on that future self.
Now, the first situation, it helps to pin the note to something we already do. Maybe we have a habit of getting coffee, sitting down at the desk, taking the dog out for their walk.
Some rhythm already worked in can lend that note some of its strength. It waits where we know we'll already be.
There's a caution there. A rhythm lends its strength, and the note can start to sound like a demand on that habit. "Every time I brush my teeth, I must da, da, da, da, da."
The idea in writing this note is that we keep it as an invitation, this visit, this idea that we can show up to a thing and decide what to do in that time.
Now for the second support. It helps to make that note single-use. This scrap on the pillow, an alert that fires once preferably at the moment we see it.
We know its very existence is to be temporary. Every time we leave a note that stands there, it fades, and it fades quickly, becomes part of the decor.
A note meant to be used once, and once it's met, is tossed, doesn't have time to fade.
We show up to the note take a deep breath, we can say no.
What does not count as walking past? Because a note is not neutral. Every time we meet that note is this opportunity to develop trust.
Every time we walk past it teaches us to ignore it and teaches the next note too. Met once at that moment, it's that smallest rep of return that we have. It's that practice of trust.
Writing to Someone
Now there are a few things that we can do to help with that, because oftentimes that note shows up when we're not quite ready.
Well, first off, when we write it, we can have that specific future self in mind, the specific place, but also the version of us that's tired.
We can write for that exhausted receiver rather than for the person that's writing it in the first place.
Present you can be more calm, maybe a little ambitious when that note gets written.
Future you has fewer reserves, so the idea is to aim an invitation at them.
When we can picture that self who will find the note, what that note might mean to them, making this sort of invitation, we strengthen a connection of selves through time. We're tending the relationship.
Further, it doesn't have to be something that we dread, especially as we're practicing this. We can make an invitation to something we enjoy.
That's another way of exercising the same idea. Every time we accept that invitation, again, the invitation is to consider maybe or to visit something maybe, grows that trust a little bit.
Maybe we can build that muscle to the point where we start being able to invite ourselves towards more challenging matters.

Closer Than Tomorrow
I've often suggested that a first invitation be for tomorrow, sometime between waking and going to bed.
For many of us, that's too large of a first leap. That distance is too long, the receiver is unknown, and that day has its own currents which can easily sweep up whatever message in a bottle that we have.
So we can aim closer, maybe later today, maybe the next time we sit down with coffee, or after, it is whatever we're doing at this moment.
Using an anchor, which I've talked about in previous episodes, helps a lot in this regard.
So let's say you get a message from your past self and this guide, you can write it on an anchor, and that way you have a more natural division to start getting into something.
You can allow what you're doing to come to an end and then decide whether to pick it up.
We write the options on our mind. Where are we? What has this interruption done for us? And then we can circle one option to be with while the others stay on the paper.
As we return to that anchor, if we can return to that anchor, that's another place where that exercise starts to build the repetition of returning to ourselves, to decide which way to go.
Beyond that visit, we can reflect. We can say, "Is this work done or not?" If not, and we care to keep it going, we can offer another invitation to another future self, perhaps the next day.
In this way, no single session, no single wave needs to carry the full weight. Instead, we can create this series of sessions, these waves over time that can carve mountains.

So as a takeaway, here's a small repetition to try.
Tonight, or the next time you're about to set something down, ask this question:
What prompt do I wish here for return?
And then write that prompt to someone that you're caring for. Not to a

This week I'm thrilled to be joined by Dr. Megan Anna Neff, an AuDHD clinical psychologist and the writer behind Neurodivergent Insights.
So many of us carry a quiet doubt about our own minds. Did I really turn off the oven? Could they actually enjoy my company? Underneath it, often, is something older: the slow wearing-down of self-trust that can come from growing up neurodivergent in a world not quite built for us.
A lot of what we are told about ourselves carries with it negative connotations, but as Megan rightfully questions, is our attention being pulled away because we are flighty, or "is it life force interrupting and giving you something more interesting to follow?"
We talk about neurodivergent woundings, the long work of learning to trust ourselves again, and what it means to live as what she calls a third kind of neurology, both autistic and ADHD.
You can find much of Megan's work in the links below.
Megan Anna Neff — Neurodivergent Insights
About Dr. Neff
Divergent Conversations podcast (co-hosted with Patrick Casale)
Instagram: @neurodivergent_insights
Erikson-through-a-neurodivergent-lens series (all 9 parts linked in the DEVONthink episode note):
Books: Self-Care for Autistic People; The Autistic Burnout Workbook; AuDHD Unlocked (Fall 2027)
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

You are in for a treat this week as I am joined by guest David Sparks. You may know him from one of his many projects, including his podcast, Intentional AI, which he cohosts with Chris Bailey.
As I am still experimenting, playing, and sometimes arguing with AI, I was curious to get his feedback on how he sees things where they are now and where they might be going.
It was a fascinating conversation with a lot of really great (and sometimes alarming) things to continue thinking about. I hope you enjoy it.
You'll find David's work, podcasts, and Field Guides linked below.
References:
David Sparks/MacSparky
MacSparky Field Guides (incl. the AI / "Robot" Field Guide)
Focused
Intentional AI Podcast (with Chris Bailey)
Mac Power Users
Automators
Chris Bailey
Epictetus, the Enchiridion
Alan Watts
Kurt Vonnegut
Ovid, Metamorphoses ("materiam superabat opus")
DEVONthink
OmniFocus
Claude (Anthropic)
Field Notes
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

Too often we're given the well intentioned advice to "just trust yourself." For some, it seems like such a simple thing to do, a forgone conclusion.
For those of us with ADHD and wandering minds, we've likely burned ourselves several times over, diving in too quickly, assigning unrealistic expectations, and unknowingly setting trust traps we have no other option but to step in.
Trust is something that can only be built over time. Something you have successfully shown up to in the past provides evidence for the future.
This week's podcast episode asks us to put trust on hold and begin with a leap of faith instead.

Resources Referenced: Rhythms of Focus podcast episode 75 - Building Trust with a Wandering Mind

Transcript:
Just trust yourself. Maybe we read that in a book.
Maybe a kind friend says so, or a course, or a poster with a sunrise on it.
We can nod because it sounds true, and then tomorrow shows up and we sit down to the work and nothing's different.
Whatever those words were pointing at evaporates. So what's going on?

An Instruction That Cannot Be Followed
I've defined trust before. I'll do it again because it is absolutely fundamental, not just to engaging our work, but our lives in general.
Trust is a developing sense that something will continue to behave as it has been, such that we can rely on it. Trust is a feeling. It's grown from experience. It's not a decision.

That's the trouble with the phrase, "Trust yourself," we cannot decide our way into a feeling.
I've never won an argument with an emotion. I cannot tell an emotion what to do. I cannot will an emotion into existence.
Told to trust ourselves while the evidence argues otherwise, we have two options.
One, we fake it. We repeat the words until they sound like our own voice. The power of positive thinking and its many descendants wait there to cheer us on.
Or two, when it inevitably doesn't work, we conclude that we're broken Everyone else seems to be able to follow the instructions. Why can't I?
Neither path is any good, so let's maybe consider a third option.

The Other Word
The other word that I think gets confused with trust is faith. And this is faith with a little F.
I'm defining faith with a little F as a decision we make without complete evidence.

While trust is grown, faith is chosen. There's a risk in it. There's a leap. We make a decision feeling the risk, all the emotions that come with it. It's a well-reflected list to take that leap.
Those two words are often blurred together on the self-help shelf and in our own minds. When someone says, "Trust yourself," what they're really inviting is an act of faith, a decision to risk something before the evidence is in.
That name change, that perspective change is important because it allows us this different path in, because now we can reflect on the risk.
The feeling cannot be commanded, but a decision can be made. We can't practice trust directly, but we can take leaps calculated.

The Smallest Leap
When I talk about building an honor guide in other episodes, this is the sort of thing that we use to help develop things over time, to orchestrate our days, to remove our dependence on deadlines and the like.
The initial seed of a guide begins with a question, not a promise. And it's a question made of risk. It's, "Can I make a visit to this tomorrow?"
It's not a vow. It's not a new life starting on Monday. It's a question inviting a measured act of faith, a risk, that tomorrow we might show up to something, look at a thing, and then decide for ourselves what to do in that moment.
The art and practice is in keeping that leap small.
It might be a visit rather than a finished project, a glance at the pile rather than a cleared room.
We spent a recent episode, episode seventy-five, on building trust the way we build a muscle, starting at a weight we can lift. It's the same principle here, beginning with where we are.
If tomorrow comes and we can make that visit, something happens beyond argument.
The evidence changes. The experience, more importantly, changes. A small invitation was kept, and a tendril of trust grows along behind that leap. That way, faith is about that leap. Trust grows behind it.

When the Leap Is Not Met
Now sometimes tomorrow comes and the visit does not happen, and then we might think, "See? I knew it. I can't be trusted."
But a broken leap does not mean we are untrustworthy. It means that something didn't work.
Something about the conditions was off. The conditions then can be changed. Maybe the visit was too large.
Maybe the type of thing that we were visiting was too large. Maybe we could scale it back. Maybe we put it at some scheduled time that didn't work.
Maybe we wrote it as a task for completion. Like "read a chapter" or "run a mile," and we'd be better off writing it as an entry for beginning, like "begin a run" or "open the book."
We make the leap smaller or move it, and we ask the question again. When we want something to be reliable and it repeatedly is not, fear tends to grow where the trust would have otherwise been.
That is true of the people we have leaned on, and it's true of ourselves. We can't argue that fear away. We already know how arguments with emotions go.
What we can do, however, is change what the fear is about, in that we shrink that invitation, understanding the risks, and measure them to one where we can say again, "Hmm, maybe this one I can try."

The Risk Is the Point
Every real decision has some risk or loss in it, otherwise it wouldn't be a decision.
So when we feel a hesitation at the edge of that leap, nothing's gone wrong. There's a message there.
The risk is what makes it faith rather than certainty. The feelings that stir are messengers. We can pause with them.
That pause is not a reassurance that there's nothing to fear. There may well be something to fear.
I never liked that advice to "think how bad could it be" and "what are the chances." Those are appeals to weakness.
I prefer to appeal to strength, that if something does go wrong, we'll meet that person, the person we are when things go wrong, and then hopefully figure out our next step. And that is scary.
It's the choice to meet what we fear at a size we can carry without yet knowing how it'll go. That's the bravery in the work. It's not the grand kind. It's tomorrow-sized.
So maybe we can set down the instruction we would never follow. We're not asked to trust ourselves tonight. If we're willing, we ask ourselves for that small act of lowercase F faith. Can I make a visit tomorrow?
And then we make that leap. We keep it small. And trust, which was never ours to command, gets its chance to grow along behind.
Music — Morning Bird
Today's piece is called Morning Bird. It was recorded, June 23rd, 2025. I hope you enjoy it.
Mentioned in this episode:
Waves of Focus YouTube Series
Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw

ADHD medications can be extremely helpful, but it's important to understand it isn't a catch-all that fixes everything. While it can have positive benefits when it comes to keeping our attention on the task at hand, it can similarly keep our attention on activities that are less productive.
This isn't to say the medication isn't working — it is working, we have just given our attention to something that is more rewarding at the time.
This week's Rhythms of Focus podcast explores what ADHD medication does do and what it doesn't. I highlight a recent study done out of Washington University, observing brain scans of children and adults, and the results may be surprising.
We finish with a composition entitled, "Water Dance."

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

Music — water dance
The following piece of music is called Water Dance. It was recorded July 27th, 2026. Hope you enjoy it
Mentioned in this episode:
Waves of Focus YouTube Series
Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw