Rhythms of Focus

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.
Hashtags
#adhd #adhdtools #neurodivergent #attentiondeficit #wanderingminds
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Many of us with ADHD and wandering minds have been told our motivation problems are mainly about dopamine dependence. This has led to numerous activities and products built to "gamify" motivation and productivity.
But trying to “game” oneself with reward apps, points, quests, races, or even caffeine often works only briefly because it goes against what is true for ourselves.
What makes video games engaging is not flashy stimuli, but a flowing progression of challenges calibrated to be neither too hard nor too boring, where enjoyment comes from the activity itself.
Motivation can come from pausing with existing frustration and tension, asking what feels boring or irritating, then simplifying, shrinking, or slowing tasks to gently reduce tension and “titrate” challenge. Then, dopamine becomes an afterthought.
We end with one of my oldest and ever-evolving compositions, “Aging,” written in C minor.

Transcript:

Maybe if I trick myself. Maybe if I reward myself. Maybe if I use that app that gives me points, sparkles, and a lot of fanfare, I'll get my chores done.
The idea of dopamine dependence, or maybe dopamine starvation, is often a suspect in the world of ADHD and wandering minds.
If I only had more dopamine I'd get things done.
The phrase is supported by this idea of an "Interest-based" nervous system - this idea that has somehow been interpreted to mean that we can only do things that we have some a priori interest in, effectively arguing for a lack of free will.
And so, some of us look for ways that we can "game" ourselves. Maybe we consider ways to set up a points system for which chores are worth something. Maybe we turn our to-do list into a set of quests with levels, loot, and the like.
Or how about "how fast can I clear this Inbox?" reminding me of trying to get a kid to tie their shoes in the morning by asking them to race out the door.
Maybe we even use a chemical like coffee after the work report is done, quite literally trying to get a flush of dopamine after doing something that we'd otherwise avoid.
Look, if any of these work for you, great. But I believe, more often than not, it'll work once or a few times, and then some part of us, starts to say "no."
Why? Because we have been dishonest with ourselves.
Any Worthwhile System Requires Honesty
Any system of work worth its salt, requires honesty with ourselves.
Part of the problem is in how we interpret the word "game" itself.
We look at video games, for instance, as this poster child of dopamine dependence. Things flash and make noises on a screen, beaming photons into our eyes, jiggling air molecules at our eardreams, sending signals into some secret lairs in our brain, a mesolimbic pathway of the ventral tegmental area, the nucleus accumbens, working its way into the dorsal striatum.
Whatever the terminology, the more seemingly scientific, the more it becomes a metaphor for whatever lies beyond our control. We may as well imagine some evil villain with a smirk and a lab suit, standing in our brains, laughing as they pull the levers for the things that make us do wrong.
What is "gaming"?
"Gaming" in this context is a word that seems to be interpreted as, maybe I can trick that guy into pulling the levers at the times that I want, by attaching something that already makes the dopamine flow with the thing that doesn't.
But gaming, video gaming, is very much not about this process at all.
Things that go blip and bloop do not excite us. Or maybe they do briefly, but then that fades off all easily, its novelty spent.
What excites us is not the reward
What excites us is a flow of moving from one challenge to the next. At first we see something that somehow fits some window of not too difficult, not too boring, and maybe even completable.
We nudge forward, stomping on that one bad guy. And then we see some next window of challenge, maybe bringing some of what we've just accomplished with us.
One at a time, and then blending into each other, like picture frames across old-school film, we get into it, stomping, swinging, dashing, grooving, ready to take on more.
What began as a trickle became a river.
Whatever it is, we are enjoying the thing for the thing itself. We haven't skirted meaning. We haven't cheated ourselves.
Beyond games, we can do this with any type of play or work, enjoyed or not.
The Path is Through
The path in is through the frustration, the tension, the emotion that already exists, not by avoiding it.
If we can pause with that sensation, not force ourselves through or hide from it, we can then ask, "what is boring, frustrating, irritating about this?"
And then, simplify, or maybe shrink things down, or slow down and try to render some of that tension into ease. Gently, - as we do.
And then with doing so, we then start finding the real levers that can adjust the challenge within ourselves - tuning into where we are. We can adjust those levers for ourselves.
Once we learn how to titrate a challenge for ourselves, dopamine is an afterthought. The word itself experienced distant as it always has been.
Sometimes we can even transform an experience from frustrating to enjoyed, even bridging the “why can’t I just start because I know I’ll be ok once I’m there?”
We bridge that into beginning with an honoring of the emotions that make up who we are now, rather than treating ourselves as if we don't know better.
#ADHD #WanderingMinds #ADHDandMotivation #Neurodivergent
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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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