Ever find yourself cleaning the closet or deep in a video game while a deadline quietly sneaks up behind you? In this episode of Rhythms of Focus, we unravel the real story behind procrastination for adults with wandering minds and ADHD. Instead of blaming laziness or lack of willpower, we explore how avoidance can be a form of recovery—and how to gently reclaim your agency.

Force-based productivity (deadlines, shame, rigid systems) often backfires for creative, neurodivergent minds. A rhythm-based, visit-oriented approach can help you find meaningful focus. You’ll learn how to move from cycles of exhaustion and self-criticism to a more mindful, compassionate path forward.

In this episode, you’ll take away:

- Gentle, actionable ways to recognize and shift out of procrastination without shame

- How to use acknowledgment and tiny steps to restore your sense of agency

Plus, enjoy an original piano composition, "Three is More" to support your focus and reflection.

Subscribe for more episodes and visit rhythmsoffocus.com to join a community that honors your creative mind and helps you thrive—one gentle wave at a time.

Links

• Episode 9 - "I Just Don't Wanna" and the Power of Agency
• Episode 11 - An Interview with Dr. Joel Anderson - Philosophy and the Wandering Mind
• Episode 4 - From Force to Flow with a "Visit"

Keywords

#ADHD #WanderingMinds #Procrastination #MindfulProductivity #Agency #GentleFocus #CreativeMinds #VisitBased #RhythmOverRigidity #SelfCompassion

Transcript

More than Meets the Eye

Have you ever found yourself cleaning out a closet right when you know there's something else important you should be doing? Maybe you're playing a video game and that other thing needs to happen.

You tell yourself, I'll start soon, but the weight of the task feels heavier every passing minute. Your mind drifts Suddenly hours have slipped by of leaving you feeling a bit guilty, maybe relieved even, or you just start wondering, ah,

"it's just me. I'm lazy."

But what if there's more to this cycle than meets the eye?

A Cycle of Deadlines and Exhaustion

Those who rely on deadlines often cycle between frantic work and exhaustion. They find it impossible to move forward without a deadline hounding close behind. Meanwhile, in the collapse that often follows them, they can call themselves lazy. Unable to find some footing forward.

But what if avoidance is actually this attempt to recover from exhaustion? Whether it's a period of forced flow or flailing scatter.

Procrastination as Survival

At first glance, procrastination seems quite different from the relief that danger of deadlines can bring, as I described in episode nine, where you finally know what to focus on. But it's really the other side of the same coin.

Exhaustion overwhelms the mind's ability to continually find and fight danger, and so it runs, engaging in this type of flight to survive.

It's a bit like turning our head away.

If I can't see it, it doesn't exist.

Now, why would we ever do that?

The unconscious mind is powerful, particularly when we are frightened or depleted.

The Many Faces of Avoidance

Maybe we lie on the couch, barely able to follow a thought. Maybe we sleep through an important class or meeting. Or maybe we find deep focus elsewhere, cleaning the closet to some near, spiritually immaculate level, or finding new achievements on that game, while some deadline steadily sneaks across the calendar.

As thoughts fly by readily missed by this wandering mind, it can be hard to even know that we're procrastinating at all.

In the moments we do realize it, our pain and exhaustion still present, maybe now flaring with shame, we might hope even more to find some way to soothe ourselves. So we say

"I'll rest for a bit. I'll do it later."

Unfortunately, while the phrase, "I'll do it later," feels like a kindness, it rarely is that unfulfilled task easily becomes another stick to beat ourselves with.

Still, it's hard to know if any alternative as doing it now hardly seems possible.

The Fight, the Collapse, and the Injury to Agency

When the alarm sounds and the danger of some new deadline returns to push us through our exhaustion, we once again engage, fight using the anxiety as fuel and stimulation until we collapse again on the couch.

Throughout the whole process, our ability to decide is injured again and again.

Getting ourselves to do anything that feels important or meaningful can seem impossible. Those feelings of "I don't wanna" kick in, not only against others, but within ourselves as well.

What Is Procrastination, Really?

There's several definitions of procrastination that I appreciate.

Dr. Joel Anderson, our guest from episode 11 describes it as "Culpably unwarranted delay" using the negative emotion itself as a measure as hidden in that word "culpable." Dr. Neil Fiore calls it a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision.

Dr. Tim Pychyl describes it as a mechanism for managing mood or mood repair. Merlin Mann puts it simply "doing something and thinking you should be doing something else." My wife once said, "it's not procrastinating, it's marinating."

I do wonder about the unconscious element in it all. Here's how I see it.

Procrastination is an action or inaction related to avoiding an experience, primarily fueled by maybe anxiety or some other negative emotion. We think, I don't wanna prove my inability. I don't want to be that person. I don't want to be seen that way. Some feeling comes to us that paralyzes us.

Procrastination can be found insidiously in any part of our workflows. Any tool can be used against ourselves. We can avoid work by organizing, by adjusting a task system, even by clearing time to work.

Returning to Agency: The Power of Acknowledgment

instead to return a sense of agency, that ability to decide and engage with clarity non-reactivity, we can pause and reflect on whatever the emotion is, anxiety or otherwise.

In this way, acknowledgement becomes our main tool to counter procrastination.

Philosopher Paul Tillich might say, we can begin converting the cloud of anxiety into an object, fear, that we can now bring into ourselves and better mount and muster courage against. In other words, a visit and even better, regular visits become the practice of courage that helps us defeat at least this dragon.

Takeaway

And so as a takeaway, maybe the next time you notice yourself avoiding some task, some project, some whatever, take a moment to pause. Consider, what is this feeling that I have about this thing? Simply be with that feeling, anxiety, overwhelm, or anything beyond. Perhaps naming it if you'd like or just feeling out its contours can start to soften its hold and begin to restore that sense of agency.

And for extra credit, if you can be there with that thing you're avoiding, as you would with any visit, as I described in episode four, while you're there, you can decide, is this something I want to nudge forward or not? You have every right to decide either way.

At that point, You have taken charge, whatever your decision.

"Three Is More"

  Today's musical piece is rather new in my repertoire. I've been building it out recently. I've been juggling a number of titles. Deadlines, as much as I tend to berate them, do have their use, and here I'm using the deadline of posting this here podcast episode to say, you know, I think I better settle on a title.

So I've settled on one. This one's called "Three is More". I'll give you the other titles, but that usually just confuses matters. It is written in F Minor. Not quite the saddest of scales as Nigel Tufnell famously mused in, This is Spinal Tap, and if you haven't seen, This is Spinal Tap, please see, This is Spinal Tap.

Anyway, here's "Three is More".

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The Weekly Wind Down is an exploration of wandering minds, task and time management, and more importantly, how we find calmer focus and meaningful work.