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

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