In this episode of Rhythms of Focus, we explore the paradoxical power and challenge of living with a wandering mind, whether of ADHD or otherwise.

Ever notice how, when the winds are right, you can ride a wave of creativity and clarity—only to later find yourself scattered, lost, or exhausted when the tide shifts?

In this episode, we’ll consider the troubles of even describing what is happening. While diagnoses can help, they can hinder has well.

We’ll consider why “just try harder” and rigid productivity hacks often fail wandering minds—and what actually works instead

This episode features an original piano composition, “Bunnies on the March.”

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Keywords

#ADHD #WanderingMinds #FocusRhythms #Agency #Mindfulness #SelfCompassion #GentleProductivity #Creativity #FlowState #Neurodiversity

Transcript

 When conditions are right, we’re sailing strong, getting more done in a shorter time than most. Ideas click. Insights seem obvious, if not simple.

In diving deep, the world fades away and this inner critic mercifully loosens its grip.

We are creative.

Feeling that free flow. We might wonder, why can’t we just be here all the time?

 As I described in the opening, when conditions are right, we’re sailing strong, and we can wonder why can’t we always be here? The trouble is, conditions are ephemeral, a mysterious muse drifting off far sooner than we’d want.

Trying to hold on beyond its natural end, creates tension, exhaustion, and a blindness to other matters.

… Into Scatter

We can fall into scatter. Maybe we walk into a room forgetting why we went there in the first place. Maybe we need so many reminders to navigate our day that they blend into the background, leaving us lost once again.

Losing things, forgetting things, struggling to engage, buried under feelings of “I don’t want to”, and we sigh:

“I’ll do it later.”

Maybe we even vaguely believe ourselves despite the repeated failures to fulfill that promise. So we plot some path forward with whatever we have at hand. Maybe deadlines will work, maybe following the moments whims will work, but there are no control levers to either one.

Due dates and interests exist without our input. Neither can they be faked. As painful as they are, they may seem to be our only tools, but their faults and pains leave us wondering,

“Why can’t I just,…”

A Paradox of Potential

There’s a paradox of potential. We’re told we’re smart. We might even suspect it ourselves, but how can that possibly be true, especially when we cannot bring ourselves, our minds to a place to do a thing that feels important. That disconnect between perceived potential and the realization of that potential creates a powerfully painful point for the wandering mind.

Minds wander for some more so than others. Some season, some days, some hours more than others, sometimes well beyond some threshold where it can become quite difficult to navigate the day, running in fits and starts, excelling than crashing.

The struggles that come with a wandering mind go beyond a simple trouble of focus. How do we explain to someone, anyone, others, or ourselves that we can do this, but not that, focus here, but not there, now, but not then?

“What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you just get started?”

Well we’ve already been going through enough, we’ve got enough going on, enough troubles trying to move forward, keeping up with responsibilities desperately searching for a moment of joy and relief where we can, having to explain how our mind wanders is just one more difficult task on the pile.

Beyond Labels

Some people get a diagnosis, anxiety, sleep deprivation, attention deficit among other possibilities. Diagnoses are sometimes helpful. They give us common terms for the mysterious forces that are affecting us. Psychiatrists, neurologists, and others examine neurotransmitters, pathways, behaviors, and more. Checklists say “this many” meets criteria. Perhaps we find and use medicines and treatments along the way, many of which can be helpful, but none of these address either meaning or decision.

In ADHD, for example, medications can be very helpful for reducing distractibility. But how and where do we choose to place our attention to begin with?

Further, medical terms can sometimes even be used against ourselves. Inherent is a sense of “This is abnormal. How do we make it normal?” We may even use these diagnoses to shield ourselves from further, admittedly painful attempts to forge new paths forward.

I gave this example of a fever in the first episode, and let me describe it once again. When a person has a fever, they often reach for medication to reduce it, but there are at least a few considerations that could be helpful.

One, we don’t know where the fever’s coming from. What if it’s acting as a messenger? This sort of downstream effect.

Two, fevers can often, in fact be helpful. Could it be acting as a support?

And three, meanwhile, there are also times when a fever can be damaging. How do we know when and how to reduce it? Perhaps a wandering mind’s situation might be similar.

It’s not arrived at in some singular way. Our troubles, after all, aren’t static. They’re better or worse in different days, different times of day. They flare in certain conditions and not in others. They’re beneficial in some ways and not in others, and there are many ways that we can magnify the Now.

Further, what if many of these troubles are downstream effects of something more central?

In other words, what if there’s meaning behind, if not utility to, the troubles, which could then be understood if not guided into strengths?

Strength and Struggle

Reading and listening to online discussions, many recognize the strength that might be there, some even calling it “awesome” and a “superpower”. Meanwhile, others understandably so bristle at that idea that there can be anything super about it, as debilitating as it can be.

Meanwhile, for those of us who don’t qualify for a diagnosis, we’re often left more confused than before.

There’s no word, no physical thing to point to. We’re at a loss to know what’s going on. Even with a diagnosis, there’s still a mystery to it. In other words, pointing at a word, what are we even pointing at?

In the coming episodes, we’ll be staying with these sort of rough, icky parts.

I do think there are positive paths forward, but it’s important to recognize the ways that we try to make things better can often make things worse.

I do believe that a Visit- based approach, as I mentioned in this series, can be helpful in engaging a sort of positive feedback loop to help get us out of that pit and becomes less about avoiding that sort of magnification of the moment and more about engaging and using it to power the moment.

Bunnies on the March

Early in this episode, I described trying to hold on to something beyond a natural end, and I found this to be a very important matter in creating music in the individual session or visit while creating, improvising, writing, performing.

If I sit there and push something beyond its natural end, I create a headache. There is a sort of working through of challenge that’s always important. There are these sort of frustrations that we need to sit through, but there’s this feeling of meaning behind it as vital. In mastery, things move in these sort of plateaus and bursts, but it’ll be hard to know when is it that I’m working through a challenge that’s useful, and when might I be grinding my gears in a way that’s going to create troubles?

I believe we can best answer that question at a Visit itself within a pause where we can look at the Windows of Challenge that sit before us and decide.

Once we decide that something works or does not work, that it might be time to step away. There can be a mourning that happens. And with practice, I’ve learned to listen to a piece of music to tell me when it’s ready to end.

We can get excited by its thrills, but in paying attention to its passing on, we give it more than just dignity, but a power and elegance in that beauty that can stay with us.

How about I present a piece in a major key? This one is called Bunnies on the March, and it’s written in F Major. You can hear a single bunny in the beginning that then sees this march going by and decides to join up, and then it leaves and does its own thing again, and then rejoins.

Why? I have no idea, but I hope you enjoy it.