We often focus on “information overload”, but we’re often more caught in decision overload.

Discover the deeper reasons behind that compulsive scrolling and indecisiveness, and learn how moments of mindful pause can help you reclaim your agency and bring relief to your wandering mind. Here’s what you’ll uncover:

• The hidden connection between decision-making, emotion, and the experience of overwhelm for ADHD and creative thinkers

• Why seeking relief, rather than just a dopamine hit, drives compulsive behaviors—and how to channel that toward agency

• A practical anchoring technique to hold options in mind and lighten decision fatigue, even in the busiest moments

Key Takeaways:

• Learn the anchor technique in brief

• Identify the emotional undercurrents behind your toughest choices, rather than blaming “willpower”

• Practice settling into silence after considering your options, building the clarity you need to move forward

And as always, enjoy an original piano composition, “Veranda,” inspired by the rhythms of thought and the calm that emerges when scattered moments coalesce.

For more mindful agency and creative flow, subscribe and join us at rhythmsoffocus.com.

Links

Resources & Links

• Podcast Home: Rhythms of Focus

• Waves of Focus Course: wavesoffocus.com

• Author: kouroshdini.com

• Anchor Technique on Youtube

Keywords

#ADHD #WanderingMinds #decisionoverload #mindfulfocus #agency #creativity #anchoring #emotionalclarity #productivity #originalmusic

Transcript

 Information vs Decision Overload

We're not in a state of information overload. We're in a state of decision overload. What does that even mean?

Looking for Relief

 "Uh, I can't even get off TikTok or Instagram or any of these things."

We have so many things coming at us. We're looking at so many different ideas and jumping from one thing to the next, trying to figure out what's the next best thing?

Scrolling through our phones, we can wonder, okay, is it dopamine again? And as I've described elsewhere, we tend to use dopamine as this metaphor for those things we can't control, this button embedded somewhere in our brains connected to sex and food, hijacked by present day technologies.

But drifting off somewhere into these things that stimulate our minds- it's not new. The internet's just the most readily available latest thing. The ancient game of Go, this fantastic game that dates back thousands of years, once referred to "Go widows", the wives of husbands whose entire days were consumed by the game.

Look at a picture of people on a train from years ago, and you'll see most if not all of them, with their faces buried in newspapers. It's not just dopamine. If we stay with that word, we tend to lose meaning. We're not just looking for that quick hit.

We're also looking, I theorize here for relief.

What from? Relief from decision.

"Where do you wanna go for dinner? I don't know. Where do you want to go? Can't someone just decide?"

Decisions are heavy. It's nicely pointed out by author Charnas, in his book Work Clean, the word "decide" shares its origins with "homicide" and "suicide." The word means to cut. We examine a ball of options and then cut. The decisions quicken when we engage in some related action.

This is by no coincidence, quite related to how I define "agency," and you might wanna listen to episode nine for more on that.

But as we cut off options, we lose fantasies of what could have been. To decide well, we need to mourn the loss, taking the time that mourning takes, recognizing the pain, giving it the time it takes.

Many small decisions are barely even noticeable in terms of that mourning a moment or two, if that, for small matters. But there is some time involved.

Every time we make a decision, we walk into unknown and possibly risky territories. Whether we're deciding on dinner, considering what to watch next, or making some major life decision, we are weighing risk and loss.

Without either of these, risk or loss, we wouldn't have a decision. We would simply act without even knowing a decision were there. But if we look at it even more deeply, decision's not only about cutting. There are those who act impulsively, who seemingly make decisions, never look back. Maybe they're calloused against these feelings of sorrow and regret.

I would prefer my decisions to be well made.

Interestingly, while the origin of the word "decision" involves cutting, another important meaning evolves somewhere in the late 14th century, at least according to the internet:

Settling

In one sense, settlings about settling a dispute.

You have these two different things, people, ideas, battling out, and where do things settle? Does one side go this way? Does one side go that way? Is there a compromise? Is there some synergy?

We can take the word beyond that idea though, because it does involve even the battle of ideas within one's own mind. I see settling as this means to achieve a type of "silence" where we can acknowledge everything that can be acknowledged perhaps about a decision, at least for this moment.

You see behind options, behind words, behind the logic are the winds and waters of the mind. Emotion that which crests into and forms consciousness is emotion. Our sense of being that little boat that floats on the sea of emotions only forms in the moments of awareness and decision.

At least from one neuropsych analytic point of view, consciousness only exists for decision. And to decide, we wait, we pause, we sit with those thoughts, sensations, feelings, anything else that can come to mind about that experience, that decision, we allow it to come to mind.

We pause and wait.

And when we do, that information gradually becomes less and less new. It starts to still, it starts to repeat. Nothing new comes to mind about the situation, about that decision.

My goodness. That takes work. Not only does it take work, it takes courage. It takes bravery.

I mean, do we really want to face these feelings and these ideas that can come to mind? What if I'm thinking about the projects I'm not doing? What about the family I haven't called? What about that shameful thing I did or said last week, last month, 20 years ago that still haunts me? What if I think about death and mortality? What if I think about the people I'm letting down around me? What does any of this have to do with deciding on what to have for dinner?

Wouldn't it be a relief to not have to decide or at least have decisions that are lighter? Even better make the decisions trivial, artificial, chewing gum.

Clicking on the next thing to watch, nicely organized so it doesn't overwhelm my working memory. Hey, I saw that funny bit a little while ago. I'll click on that.

So I argue it's more than dopamine. It's relief.

For wandering minds, ADHD, the exhausted the brain fog, the creatives and the like. Were often consumed in the moment, magnified and constricted in the now. Our emotions are themselves magnified, often crowding out the others, if not leaving us with some confused conflation of multiple emotions as they throw out one thought sensation and more after the next.

To make a decision, let alone a settled decision, is that much harder.

It's no wonder that so many wandering minds fall into the social media, into the games, into more, where all the decisions are nicely laid out. We sense a relief from the heavier weights of decisions, those that mean something deeply.

The decision not only of the moment, but of the work to do of the things we're not doing and well beyond. Decisions are heavy. They are what create us. They take power to wield an exercise of free will itself. We delegate decisions to others, asking them to remind us about things, not only because our attention doesn't hold them, but because we reduce having to consider our options.

It's also no wonder that those with ADHD complaint of lacking quote, willpower end quote. But if we look at it from this perspective of trouble and decision and not in action, we have a new vantage.

We can support our ability to make a decision.

When we make a decision, we have multiple options that we then cut away.

We hold these options in mind before we cut them away. But the trouble for a wandering mind is that this work table is constricted. Many things can knock it off quite easily. Any emotion can make it such that we forget one thing or lose the other thing and act impulsively here before we forget. Say I've gotta do that thing before I lose it.

Using a very simple technique, we can support holding these options. I call it anchoring and essentially it's this: taking out a piece of paper, writing down our options, not tasks, but our options of what we'd like to do, only for that moment, for this moment of the Now. Doing this freeze, the mental energy that is used to hold the options and now is available to make the decision itself.

There's a lot more to it than that, but that is the essence of it. I do get into it in quite a lot of detail, a couple of hours worth in my course, Waves of Focus. I've also put a brief video about it on YouTube that I'll add to the show notes.

Even more deeply, though the essence is again about supporting that sense of decision. So here's the takeaway.

The next time you catch yourself, somewhere in TikTok Land or Instagram or Reddit or wherever it is that you find yourself "mindlessly" being, see if you can pause for a moment and ask yourself, is there a decision I'm not making? And even deeper than that, consider, what are the feelings? What are the images? What are the fantasies? What comes to mind around that decision?

Can you wait until those ideas come to some standstill, to some degree of silence, where you've acknowledged it? I'm willing to bet that if you can do that maybe once in a day, once in a week, whenever you do it, I can bet that whatever you do next, will have more conviction, will have less scatter.

"Veranda"

So much in music reflects the goings on the mind and in life. I like to sometimes start off a piece with something that feels like scatter and somewhere you realize that what you felt to be scattered isn't scatter. There's actually a structure to it. There's something behind it. It's in those moments that something coalesces, that the ideas come together and it's like,

"oh, that's where things are going."

It has me realize that it's, it's not about forcing myself to do a thing. It's like, oh, I'm not thinking well enough. I'm too scattered. I'm too overwhelmed. I'm too this, that, or the other. While those things can be the case, sometimes it's just that I haven't seen the order behind it yet.

Pausing, being with those feelings, those thoughts, those ideas helps me recognize where the lay of the land is, and then I'm in a better position to start moving forward.

This next piece of music called Veranda is brand new, just in the last month or two. I've created it  July of 2025. If you're listening to this in somewhere in the future, which of course you're listening to this in the future.

'cause I guess that's the way time works. Uh, um. In any case, it's in a minor key. I like minor keys. It starts in this sort of scattery, sort of like, what is going on here? And then you can start feeling where, where it comes together. Anyway, hope you enjoy it.   📍

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