Caught between “I can’t start” and runaway hyperfocus, many of us feel like passengers in our own minds rather than pilots of our days. In this episode of Rhythms of Focus, we explore how wandering minds and ADHD can move from stuckness and self-blame toward genuine agency, ease, and purposeful action.

We reflect on why “I don’t wanna” feelings are not failures of willpower but signals from our emotional world, and how redefining motivation can help us align emotion and intention without shame or force. We also walk through the Eight Gears of Focus, a gentle framework for moving from simple awareness into meaningful action, completion, and performance in a sustainable way.

Listeners will learn:

- How to see emotions as waves moving through awareness, rather than enemies to overpower.

- How “force-based” productivity (shame, urgency, pressure) quietly erodes our sense of agency—and what to do instead.

- How to use the Eight Gears of Focus to locate where flow is blocked and create kinder, more rhythmic next steps.

This episode also features an original piano composition that mirrors the movement from hesitation into grounded focus, supporting a calmer nervous system as we listen. To stay with us on this journey of mindful productivity for wandering minds, subscribe and visit rhythmsoffocus.com for more resources and practice invitations.

#ADHD #WanderingMinds #MindfulProductivity #EmotionalRegulation #Hyperfocus #Agency #Motivation #Neurodivergent #PianoMeditation #RhythmsOfFocus

I cannot act. If I act, I'm in hyperfocus and my emotions. Well, they're dysregulated, as they say. Why are there so many problems? Where's the commonality between these? What can I do?

 I continue to search for some commonality, some simplicity that would explain the wandering mind. With ADHD, the central character in the coterie of wandering minds, it's useful to hear out the experts.

Dr. Russell Barkley says, "ADHD is not a disorder of knowing what to do, it's a disorder of doing what you know at the right times and places."

What is it to not be able to act? Is it a lack of free will? The alignment of emotion and action are disrupted at the moments that would otherwise be meaningful to us? Sometimes we point at motivation. There's something can be said about this, but often that idea of motivation, this messy word can raise the cackles on the back of our collective necks, conjures the idea of willpower.

But these depend on our definitions. I define motivation as the degree to which our emotions align with our intentions. One trouble, however, are these pesky, "I don't want our feelings," powerful and complex as they can be, and they don't align. So how do we align our emotions and our intentions?

Well, first, let's consider what emotions even are.

Certainly there are multiple approaches from the spiritual to the practical, to the molecular and beyond. Rather than say what's right, I'm simply going to define it here, and now.

Emotions are that which flows into consciousness, whether by brush or by storm.

Essentially, whatever comes to mind. Is the cresting of an emotion.

Now, this is a very different definition than what you're likely used to. Words, ideas, actions all crest into and through consciousness from emotion. What that means is that perception is also an emotion. Something outside of us resonates with something inside of us. If there was nothing within us with which to resonate, it wouldn't register. It would not reach conscious awareness.

But as emotion arrives, we cannot argue with them. We might...