Discover why your latest app or productivity hack is not the real hero—or the real challenge. In this episode of "Rhythms of Focus," we explore what truly lies beneath those endless quests for the perfect system, shining a compassionate light on wandering minds and ADHD.

Listeners will uncover how recognizing and respecting four key limits—time, agency, working memory, and trust—is far more liberating than forcing themselves into rigid molds. Instead of battling against limitations, you’ll learn to use them as anchors for meaningful work and creative rhythm. This episode unpacks the seductive promise of productivity systems, the artistry of aligning attention with intention, and gentle strategies to transform overwhelm into empowered agency.

Key takeaways:

Honor time, agency, working memory, and trust as necessary boundaries that support creative flow.
Replace shame and frustration with self-compassion—embracing playful mastery over strict discipline.
Discover actionable ways to build a trusted, resilient productivity environment that fits a wandering mind.

As always, enjoy an original piano composition woven into today’s episode, designed to nurture calm and focus.

If this resonates, subscribe and visit rhythmsoffocus.com for more insights, resources, and episodes to help your unique rhythm thrive.

Hashtags

#ADHD #WanderingMinds #Agency #MindfulProductivity #FocusRhythms #CreativeFlow #WorkWithLimits #SelfCompassion #AttentionMastery #OriginalMusic

Transcript

Why won't the system work?!

I found a new productivity app, let me tell you about, it's the greatest thing ever. Oh, did you hear about that productivity book by Mr. Awesome Sauce. It's the greatest thing ever. Fast forward two months, uh, another system down the drain. I can't do any of these.

Maybe there's just something wrong with me. I can't seem to make any of these work. What's going on? I what? What if it's not the app? What if it's not the book? What if it's not ourselves? All right, where is it then? Maybe it's in something we still need to acknowledge the limits.

Seduction of an App

The promises of some productivity system can be powerfully seductive.

The idea is that we'd get more done with less effort. Stay on top of it all. Everything's organized. Everything shows up exactly where we need it. Heck, I do have a system myself and I think it's pretty darn awesome. Lemme tell you, it's all shiny and new, but that may well crash too.

Pushing Limits

We often push limits.

It's important to push limits. Play, this depth and breadth of flow between self and world discovery, question and tension- it's a vitality that once it finds root can be such an inspirational flow. The sap of mastery and meaningful work and relationships. We see it in the toddler in their focus while they're stacking blocks and we see it in the craft's master that has that same focus as they're in that deep reverie.

Play pushes limits. We tend to think of limits as somehow enemies, or perhaps they're ever present challenges that must be dominated, broken through, if not destroyed.

And we can see that as well between the toddler and the adult.

Supportive Environments

To reach that place of being able to stack blocks, we have a sense that our environment can hold us, that it won't interrupt us without care or reason.

That's somehow takes us and our being hood into account. Maybe we push one way or the other. We try to wander this way or that. But time and again, in ways we know and in many ways we don't, perhaps only feeling it as this gentle wave from some distant shore, we are supported, in being here and now.

The craftsperson similarly has done the work themselves of establishing those things, the environment, whether appearing to be a chaotic mess or this pristine lining of tools and resources. Somehow it's been placed to be in tune with that sense of the creative self.

Internally too, skill and knowledge have been whittled as their own tools well worn in time and practice. They trust their environment to support that creative self. They can simply be and allow that creativity to well from within.

Discovering and Acknowledging Limits

But to get to those trusted environments, we discover those limits that line the objects of our world. Our words, our knowledge, our skills, our being hood exist by way of being bounded. Many artists quickly discover that limitations can, in fact, enhance creativity, but how? Is it simply that we limit options and therefore offer some relief to working memory? Is it some wordless inspiration perhaps? Well, it could be both. Likely more.

I think it's through these testing of limits that we establish what we can trust. We know what the playground is, we know what works, what doesn't, and certainly we can test and retest our limits, what we can trust and what we cannot.

But once we've established what we can trust, and more importantly, acknowledge, perhaps even respect them as things that exist, play has this tendency to appear.

Defining Productivity

In systems of productivity we have several limits that we need to respect. And before I even say what those limits are, I want to define productivity itself because it can be such a nasty and perverted word. Probably I could do a whole episode on that, but for now, just defining it.

Productivity is the art and skill of bringing attention to intention, and that's it. This art and skill of bringing attention to an intention. Now, perhaps I can also differentiate that from meaningful productivity, which I define as a practice of finding and weaving mastery and meaningful work into our daily lives and relationships.

Limits in Productivity

All right, so now that I've defined the idea of productivity, there are four limits that I currently count that benefit from our respect, some of which we tend to be okay with, or at least pay lip service to, and others we ignore completely.

These four are time, agency, working memory, and trust. I will say them again. Time, agency, working memory and trust.

The trouble with most systems is that we don't recognize, let alone acknowledge that we're limited, further, that we have to balance ourselves within these limits. As an example, when we're asked to make a "brain dump," we might initially feel relieved,

Hey, I don't have to hold this in my mind.

But quickly we become overwhelmed again, if not worse than before. We are overwhelmed with our sense of obligation, some responsibilities consciously, some unconsciously, agreed to, our sense of needing to organize this brain dump, now, to be able to even know what organized means when it comes to this mess we've now created.

We do not trust we can get to what we want to. We have no sense of time for it. It does not fit our working memory.

Let's take another example that of "hyperscheduling," this practice of scheduling every minute of the day as if we were budgeting our time like money. Here we clearly do acknowledge the limits of time, but we avoid the limits of agency in our sense of trust of being able to follow through.

For example, agency being this ability and skill to decide and engage non-reactively appears at numerous points when we've hyper scheduled.

When that time comes to do the thing, how would we feel? What if something more important were going on? What if we miss something? How do we stop if we're not done? And there are many other questions that can come to mind.

These questions are particularly important to a wandering mind, whose time sense is more aligned to nature's time than to that of the manmade clock. Check out episode 23 for more on that. Yes, we can make adjustments on the fly, but that drains that sense of agency and we're confronted with the worries of procrastination and the plain and simple, "I don't wanna" feelings.

Let's take a look at a third example that of the weekly review. The advice is to go through each one of our projects and make sure that all of them have a next action in place, getting the actions themselves generally more organized, that each of these actions are then listed on the correct action lists, all of which can be useful ideas.

I myself even listed in one of my books something like 20 different questions you could Review at a weekly review. And the idea is to do this every week.

One of my students described this process to be something like dragging sandpaper across his eyes. Quite a brutal metaphor. It's incredibly exhausting, and one of the reasons why many people often don't stick with this aspect of a system.

In this situation, we're not respecting the limits of agency.

We often refer to energy, but I'm not sure that's often useful in our thoughts here because energy can fluctuate widely depending on what we're doing, but we can still show up as in a visit and then make a decision. Sometimes we find the energy by plucking at those windows of challenge that meet us where we are.

But agency, that ability to decide and engage as we reflect on the sense of emotions and options of the moment, that does seem to have its limits. It's not clear what those limits are. It's not measurable in the usual sense of measuring it. Then again, most things that are meaningful cannot be measured.

We can still consider it internally. For example, I've since simplified my weekly review. The primary question I ask is, when and how will I see it again? I can tie it to my central attention hub, that then presents things when and where I want to see them. And I do that in a way that doesn't overwhelm me.

A Takeaway

There are many other examples of troubles that we can get into with our systems, but the takeaway is this, whatever system you have, consider how you might test, and then hopefully respect the limits of time, agency, working memory, and trust.

There are skills and tools that you can use for any one of them. And with practice, each of these can become well worn paths.

At that point, if something new comes to mind that, let's say we'd like to set aside for the moment or engage now, we can make that decision. We have a place for it either in front of us now or on some known path of attention to meet us where we trust we would see it and not be overwhelmed when we do. Play, care, mastery, meaningful work, these grow along with a greater sense resting sense of being .

Years will go by since I write a piece and I'll have no idea what I was thinking about at the time, but there's still this thread of, yeah, that sounds familiar. I remember that. Years ago when I was thinking about getting good at the piano, I would choose some small area to get good at and specifically a scale.

At the time it was C minor and with practice, I could eventually play it forward, backwards, hop between notes, really without thinking. Then I grew to trust my own skill with that, and as I did, I'd grow even more into the process of flowing through these windows of challenge alongside that sense of play. I can hear that in those pieces that I have from some time ago.

This following piece I picked outta my library from 2023. It's called Agradablemente Demasiado. I have no idea if I've said that correctly. I said it as I was learning my Spanish. It means pleasantly too much. I think I like to contrast things.

In any case, I hope you enjoy the peace

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