Ever felt your mind swept clean, like cobwebs brushed away, simply by admiring true craft? In this episode of Rhythms of Focus, I invite you to explore how the art of meaningful work—whether in a beautifully designed board game, a shared conversation about football, or the deliberate crafting of music—can nourish even the most wandering minds. We’ll journey into “The Unconscious Mind” board game as a living metaphor for navigating the playful, intricate decisions woven through daily life.

You’ll discover:

• How appreciating and creating craft—and noticing its layers—can provide sustenance and grounding for adults with ADHD or restless focus
• Why “the confusion barrier” is a vital threshold in learning and creativity, not a flaw
• New ways to recognize meaning and resonance in everyday moments, from the symbols on a board to a fleeting improvisation

Plus, this episode features an original, never-to-be-repeated piano improvisation: “Morning Bird”—a gentle musical reminder that mastery and play grow together.

Subscribe and explore more at rhythmsoffocus.com—reclaim your focus, your rhythm, and your creative spark.

Keywords

#ADHD #WanderingMinds #MindfulProductivity #Agency #BoardGames #Mastery #MeaningfulWork #Neurodivergent #PianoImprovisation #Resonance

Transcript

Clearing the Mental Cobwebs

A colleague once told me that when she'd look at a piece of art, she'd feel the cobwebs of her mind swept away. I find the same thing happens when I admire any real craft- a fine meal, an expert dancer's, effortless appearing feats, a well-made fountain pen, drifting across quality paper.

All of these we can feel. All carry that depth of play and care brought through time. This practice of bringing the spirits of mastery and meaningful work through some development into a bloom. Particularly for wandering mind, I find that mastery, meaningful work can be nourishing.

Football

  I was once at a party finding myself in a room entirely full of men. I only say that because you kinda get this feeling of the masculine energy in a room. They were all shouting periodically at a television screen, watching this football game.

Now I know the rules of the game. I have a sense as to what's going on, but it's never really turned me on. Last time I watched with any real interest was the Super Bowl, 20 Chicago Bears as the Super Bowl shuffle was playing on the radio near nonstop.

Other than that, when I encounter such environments, I generally slink into the corner, maybe look for some task to relieve me like getting a snack or maybe tidying the place up. But if neither of those are available, I wait for the pain of boredom to subside into some world of daydream or solving puzzles that come to mind, or something like that.

On this particular occasion, though, things were cleared, dishes were done. I was tired of the gummy beers sitting there, which says a lot.

For whatever reason, between those synchronized shouts, I turned to the gentleman beside me. I made deliberate eye contact, not an easy feat, and asked , what do you enjoy about this game?

And he paused as I knew he would. You know, it's not often I was aware for someone to ask such a pointed and odd question perhaps. I decided to search for craft. "What do you enjoy about this game?"

With a little more than a pause. Maybe sensing that sincerity, he began to talk about the battle on the field, the nuance of strategy, the importance of the individual players and their own histories. He thought about his own relationship with his family and his youth, and how they would share the game together.

His excitement was palpable. I enjoyed hearing him out. He'd even lose a couple of seconds in that synchronized shouting as he continued to explain certain moments, seeing that I was there with him. And I could follow and appreciate the beauty that he saw behind the strength on the field.

Now, I still don't watch the game. I have other interests. I have other things going on, but I appreciated the gift he offered.

It reminded me of someone's comment about relationships. If your partner's into basket weaving, you don't need to be into basket weaving, but you do need to be into the fact that they are into basket weaving.

Not a Paid Advertisement - The Unconscious Mind

And so just as he shared with me, I'd like to share something with you so long as you're up for it. Of course. Now this following bit is not a paid advertisement, but I do get into it.

I was on this trip overseas and I was at the Freud Museum. I found this board game called out to me.

It's called the Unconscious Mind. How could I resist?

What makes for a good game?

I do love a good board game, but what makes for a good board game?

They are these restrictions of reality. These playgrounds of the mind built with the Lego blocks of decision. The more meaningful the decisions, the deeper the consequences of thought, the more profound the gameplay itself.

Within games, We play with the structure of decision itself. Whether we're dealing with the emotions as they flow into us quickly like on the sports field, or we have a moment to sit and think like chess. We explore, push and pull through confusion and assertion. We gather our working memory to hold multiple possibilities, decide and then act.

And then if you're anything like me, you wonder why the heck did I just do that?

Looking at the box of this game, this Unconscious Mind, I wondered, is this another cash grab? Some light connection of theme to some poor gameplay. But no, I found craft.

After purchasing it, putting it in front of me. I look at it. I look at the art. The pieces are well portrayed. It's clear that the artists cared about their craft and how they would present the material beyond simply just covering of the pieces. They meant something.

A Representation of Dream

Part of the game is about curing patients. There are these cards that are dreams, but not just dreams themselves. They're latent and manifest dreams. These are real concepts in psychoanalysis, and they find a way into the gameplay itself. A manifest dream. That's the stuff that comes to mind when you're dreaming the latent is what you can meaningfully interpret from it.

Now this is a point of some contention within psychoanalysis. I, I think some people look at it and say, Hmm, what do dreams have to do with anything? You know, what does the interpretation have to do with anything? Are they right? And I'd point out that that question of. Are the interpretations right to be a wrong question in and of itself?

A better question is the same as with any interpretation I make in sessions with clients, which is, "does it resonate with you?" Does it connect to you? Do you feel something within you When we talk about whatever, when we look at whatever, and the same thing can be said about Dream.

One mentor of mine nicely described dreams like paintings. He said, you can return to them. Discover new ideas, new themes, new meanings. You might even create meanings in the act of interpretation. After all, psychoanalysis is much less about, "Hey, look at that thing I found in your head" so much as it is about learning to author your life going forward.

looking at these clients in the game, you work their way through those dreams, generating insights. There are different units of insights. There's three types and three levels. It's almost laughable how much detail there is. But what's truly funny is that it all makes sense within the scope of the game. There's actual connection between theme and mechanic.

You've generate enough of those insights in the right configuration, and you can remove this clear plastic layer that's over the card. It has the sort of Rorschach image to it that represents grief, and as you remove that, this neat mechanic, starts coming into place, which is not only does the client change, but now so have you, whether in the game mechanic of what happens with the ideas as they form or in the final scoring of the game.

Wincott another analyst from the, uh, sixties or so, he wants nicely wrote in his forward of one of his books that he thanked his clients for teaching him, and he's right. The moment you stop learning from your patients is the moment you stop being a good doctor.

The fact that this theme is woven so nicely into the gameplay tells me that designers have not only done their homework, but they've probably enjoyed the process of doing so. You know, without care play, I'm not sure there is any soul to a craft.

A Reflection in History

It goes further in the point of the game. You know how you win.

There's this representation of how you earn points, and that comes from the history of psychoanalysis. Freud would gather with his colleagues and friends to discuss psychoanalysis and where it was going and what it was about every Wednesday. He made rings for the crew. Kind of silly, uh, totally cringe, but totally relatable too.

And to win in the game, you gather points through influence, you gather in treating patients, doing research, writing papers, all in the interest of becoming this distinguished colleague of Freud's. Again, totally irritating and goal, but as also seemingly resonating. True and hilarious. I love it. The theme of the game runs even deeper.

A Notebook

In the center, you have this notebook. Every player gets this ink pot to use as a marker. This lovely little fidget, to boot, that represents what aspect of the notebook you're working with when connecting to your patient. And you build that notebook with ideas placed at various intervals, each having its own effect, and you can modify them with units of coffee.

My daughter pointed out, she wondered if the coffee was really a proxy for cocaine. Freud himself had a stint of using it for a period of time. And before you go, uh, slighting Freud for this, it's, uh, useful to know that Coca-Cola had used coca leaves in its drink somewhere through the early 19 hundreds.

Power in Symbols

Beyond the art the symbols used have meaning. Every shade, every shape where things are placed all have meaning, quite endearing to the game's material itself. I mean,

symbols are powerful. These are objects that hold a message that touch off this emotional burst within us. Whether it's a small one that directs us to go here or there or really create something that changes the nature of what's going on in our consciousness in the moment.

The Confusion Barrier

You might wonder, this all seems a bit complicated, doesn't it? Well, yes. Yes it does. It's not the heaviest game in the world, but I imagine it would be a tough place to start for the hobby.

Complication for complication's sake is often garbage, this headache in a box. But when complexity is born of simplicity, when we see the tendrils of growth from some singular seed gathering and living in some harmony, well that's something else entirely, and that's how I see this game.

Every game, every craft for that matter, has what I would like to call a confusion barrier. When we're first learning it, when we first listen to a piece of music or a new genre, for example, there's this period of getting lost.

Within a game it might look like, what does this have to do with that? What's that thing? What am I supposed to know already? Did I already read about this?

I wind up having to flip between pages, look things up online. For goodness sake, I didn't realize that there were these four pages of symbol interpretations included as a guide in the box.

Once I found that, wow, okay, now I know what I'm doing, sort of. But even through it all, I felt like I could follow and hit those moments of frustration and then follow them into the next window of challenge and get through my first game.

The work as a whole from instruction through art, through mechanics, it's clearly that of a passion. The creators had to live within the characters, the ideas, and connect deeply.

The Vital Importance of Craft, Passion - Mastery and Meaningful Work

I am not trying to sell the game. As I mentioned, though, I do realize I'm giving it praise.

What I am trying to do is talk about the importance of craft and how I think of it as this artifact of passion and mastery and meaningful work. It is far too easy to look at what one client of mine described as the CHINUP emotions- challenge, interest, novelty, urgency, and passion, as described by Dr. William Dodson, and then focus too much on one of these interest, for example.

Here we might skip past passion. Admiring craft, participating, creating over time- these are healthy nutrients for a wandering mind, that mastery and meaningful work. Certainly there's concern in overdoing it, fixating on one thing, well beyond even our own care, perhaps doing so as a way to defend against feelings of inability in other spheres of life.

But I think that in many cases, there are ways to practice balance much as we would with any diet.

Morning Bird

Now, on the flip side of consuming and appreciating craft is creating it. There's just something grounding to connecting with that play and care within, making craft, connecting to things that we hold deeply.

There's that measure again of does this resonate? When it does, we can go from that simple something to find a complexity that really becomes admirable.

The following piece of music is a simple piece, but I hope it generates that sense of complexity from it. It's a single improvisation never to be played the same way again. In fact, I'm not sure I'll ever play it again at all.

It's called Morning Bird, and I hope you enjoy it.  

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