In this episode of 'Rhythms of Focus,' listeners explore the concept of 'trip wires' as a tool for mindfulness and task management. Discover how to set effective reminders for your future self and understand the phenomenon of 'Sticky Decor Decay,' where unaddressed reminders blend into the background over time. Learn actionable strategies to prevent task overwhelm and ensure your reminders stay effective. Plus, enjoy an original piano composition titled 'Humming the End' that underscores the episode's themes. Subscribe and visit rhythmsoffocus.com for more insights tailored for adults with wandering minds and ADHD.

00:00 Sticky Decor Decay

01:37 The Need to Store Intentions

01:58 Trip Wires

03:47 "Sticky Decor Decay"

05:24 SDD as a List

06:19 An Equation Makes Science!?

Hashtags

#ADHD #WanderingMinds #MindfulProductivity #FocusHabits #CreativeAgency #Intentions #SelfCompassion #Neurodivergent #RhythmsOfFocus #PianoMeditation

Transcript

 I gotta do this and I gotta do that. You know what, I'll just leave this thing over here. Yeah, I'll leave this here to remind myself.

Three months go by.

What the heck is this doing here?

The Need to Store Intentions

We can't do everything at the same time. The options are many, but the actions need to be singular. We need to take out the garbage, but something just fell to the floor. We need to remember to move a thing to the garage, but right now we're doing the dishes. We need to buy stuff from the store, but right now we're not going to the store.

Trip Wires

One means of managing this is to use a trip wire.

 What do I mean by a trip wire? Well, a tripwire is a reminder that we set for our future selves. We have some intention now that we're not done with, we'd like to get to, and so we ask our future self,

"Hey, can you pick this up for me?"

The hope is that future self will then see, hear, feel somehow experience this reminder, then pick up that thing and follow through while our present self does whatever else.

We do this all the time. Maybe we put a grocery list on a sticky note by the door, so we see it as we leave the house. Maybe we leave that book by the nightstand to remind ourselves to read it. Maybe we'll leave a vacuum cleaner out in the morning before leaving to work, to remind ourselves, perhaps optimistically, to vacuum later in the afternoon.

The hope is that we'd be reminded about a thing and then do something in that moment.

This can be a viable strategy. That does apply a certain pressure on our future selves and that they need to not only receive that information, but also then act in that moment acting in a way that aligns with present self, including managing those "I don't wanna feelings" when they receive it.

 Even so it's still not the whole picture. For example, I prepared sandwiches for myself for lunch later in the day, only to leave them on the kitchen table, unrefrigerated, only realized when lunch rolls around.

I partially solved the problem with a trip wire by putting it in a plastic bag and hanging it on the doorknob. But then again, sometimes I still forget. I walk through the door, seemingly only mildly annoyed that there's something hanging on the doorknob, as I walk out,

"I have places to go, things on my mind. That thing in the doorknob, well, I'll deal with that later."

"Sticky Decor Decay"

The funny thing about trip wires is that when we don't act on them, they decay. It's not just sandwiches, it's anything. In fact, I've come up with this phrase that's kind of fun to say. It's called "Sticky Decor Decay." Sticky Decor Decay.

It has zero basis in any scientific rigor whatsoever, but I wonder if it might resonate with you, and I'm trying to come up with an equation to describe this. Maybe one that you, dear listeners can help me out with. So if you come up with some ideas and think that it's, uh, I'm onto something, or if you can improve on it, whatever it is, drop me a line.

It goes something like this. When we first see a trip wire, something we've laid out for ourselves, we can address it or not.

When I say addressing something, I mean taking action with it, or maybe changing it, or at least acknowledging its presence, the lack of a possible current action, and what would be necessary to take action with it, and arranging for that.

If we don't address the trip wire, it has, let's say a 50% increased chance of blending into the background.

In fact, every time we don't address it, it keeps fading by another 50%. So, as an example, if the trip wire had a 0% chance of blending into the background in the first instance, we saw it, by the time we pass it five times without addressing it, it has approximately a 97% chance of blending into the background.

It has now become part of the decor. It decays into decor.

Sticky Decor Decay in a List

Now we can see the same process happen with our tasks and lists. For example, let's say you have a list of things to do that dreaded "things to do" list.

Quite easily, items can sit there undone. We jump from one side to another, everywhere in between searching for what's simultaneously easy and important or maybe best aligned with our current state of interest and energy. But somewhere along the way, the tasks in between the serious ones, the heavy ones, the poorly worded ones, the ones that don't reflect our current realities, all that well stick around.

Not only do they stick around. They are ignored and as they're ignored, they seem to accrue like coat hangers in a closet or rabbits in the spring, they just multiply, choking out the list, contributing to that sense of overwhelm. As they multiply, they just glom onto each other. They're sticky, sticky decor decay.

An Equation Makes Science!?

So. Here's an equation I've come up with, and I understand that the audio podcast is totally not the medium for describing an equation, but whatever. I'm gonna do it anyway.

From the get go. A trip wire has a certain percentage chance of standing out. Let's call that T for trip wire.

How well it stands out also depends on the clutter around it. P for physical clutter, M for mental clutter, like scatter, exhaustion, confusion, and more.

But there are also these undercurrents of habits, H of managing that area. For example, if we have a habit of cleaning the dishes in the sink, adding a mug there is an easy to use ready trip wire to remind us to clean the mug. But if we don't have that habit, it doesn't work so well, often just becoming more clutter.

There's also how much the trip wire loses its power over time as we pass it by without addressing it as I was just describing. Let's call that L for power loss. I gave it 50% in the example earlier.

And then there's how many times we've passed it by. We can give that letter N for number, so the equation. T tripwire times H, habit times L, loss to the nth power divided by P times M, mental clutter, all multiplied by K, where K stands for the sticky decor decay constant.

And now because it's an equation, it's totally scientific. If this makes any sense whatsoever to you or not at all, I'd love to hear your thoughts. So the next time you plan to leave something out, to remind yourself to do something, consider writing an equation about it, then making a podcast out of it and consulting your podcast community, then write about it to your newsletter, and that way you don't have to do the vacuuming, at least not just yet.

Wine and Music - "Humming the End"

I once took a wine tasting class. It was my senior year of college, and I remember the teacher saying something along the lines of, there are many things that can go into the taste of a wine, but one thing I appreciate most is how long the taste lasts.

When we listen to music, a similar thing happens.

First pass is really only a formatting of sorts. While much is already there from past listens. This projection we do as we try to understand anything really, there's this new world to discover in sound. The worlds are simple spaces created by left, right, up, down nature of it all. Twos are contrasted with fours highs, with lows, all creating this sonic playground for the mind, this part of ourselves after listening that said, Hmm, I had fun in that playground. I'd like to do that again. It comes out as I'd like to listen again.

Our minds are asking to play in that world to form, to grow our minds associate and bound about. If you have ever found yourself humming along with a piece of music, whether it's the exact notes or some harmony, it's your mind playing.

We listen again and again, though often with decreasing frequencies trailing off as we've learned through that play, whatever it is that we would learn.

Sometimes these pieces become parts of our communities. Our worlds the supportive riverbed for our intentions, if not spirits, we hear them because they mean something to us and sometimes we don't. The swing sets may not fit us anymore.

Either way, we come to some settled place with it. New ideas and sensations only come through as ripples, if at all. No new information comes to mind.

And so I have a similar measure of music as my teacher did with wine. I like it when a piece of music stays with me and I listen to it and I come back to it over time.

I like it when seems to stumble at the beginning. I'm like, what is this? But then as you give it a few more listens, the structure becomes more and more apparent.

That number of times that some part of us genuinely asks to repeat those listens, that length of how long it lasts, it resonates as being a good piece of music.

So this piece of music that I'll play for you now, it's called Humming the End. After I recorded it, I listened to it and I listen to it again and again. Maybe it's good. Well, I think it's good. I hope you enjoy it.  

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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.