Creative Brains Need More than Interest

Rhythms of Focus

Feeling stuck waiting for motivation to strike? In this episode of Rhythms of Focus, we explore a gentler, agency-driven approach to productivity-especially for creative professionals, high-achievers with ADHD, and anyone whose mind tends to wander.

Instead of relying on force, deadlines, or shame, discover how small, mindful “visits” and emotional rhythms can help you move forward, even when motivation feels out of reach.

You’ll learn:

• Why traditional productivity advice often backfires for wandering minds, and how to honor your emotions as guides rather than obstacles.

• How the “CHIN-UP” emotions-challenge, interest, novelty, urgency, and passion- are helpful, but not enough for meaningful engagement.

• Practical ways to create gentle transitions into focus, using visits and self-compassion as your starting point.

Key Takeaways:

• Show up to your work with a single, mindful visit-no need to force action.

• Use your emotions as navigational tools, not barriers.

• Mark each visit complete, no matter how small, and return with self-kindness.

This episode features an original piano composition “Standing Deer” to inspire your own creative rhythm, a representation of passion to build in your own life.

Subscribe for more gentle productivity strategies and visit rhythmsoffocus.com for resources and community.

Keywords

#ADHD #WanderingMinds #GentleProductivity #MindfulFocus #Agency #CreativeBrains #EmotionalRhythm #SelfCompassion #ProductivityTips #FocusWithoutForce

Transcript

 

No Dopamine? No laundry

"Oh, I'm sorry. I, I can't do the laundry. I, I just don't have the dopamine."

I am paraphrasing this from a social media post that is quite humorous as these videos often are. My question is "now what?"

Do we wait for dopamine or interest or whatever to be able to act? Are we really at the mercy of some capricious muse?

We can certainly laugh at these videos, but I think we owe it to ourselves to pick up from this point, because otherwise we're left throwing up our hands and saying, well, I guess I just don't have free will.

Okay. But now what?

 Certainly, it can be hard to get started. Transitioning from doing nothing to something, from something to something else. These can seem impossible. Others ask us-- we ask ourselves, why can't I move forward? Why can't I keep doing the thing over time?

I had like to play for you this post that I found quite funny. Written across it is the words, "me absolutely riddled with ADHD applying for a job."

Instagram Post here

Again, quite funny, but I think we need to pick up from here.

In recent years, this idea of an "Interest- based nervous system" has come to the front. The idea is that we can only function if we have this inherent interest in doing a thing.

One psychiatrist, Dr. William Dodson describes a few motivating conditions for those with ADHD, and I think the concept can extend well for those with wandering minds.

Namely, these conditions are:

1. One. Challenge: a sense of being challenged within that window that works for us that can engage flow.
2. Two. Interest: the sense that you inherently would like to do something.
3. Three. Novelty is say, Hey, look, there's that shiny thing. I would maybe play around with this word novelty and replace it with the idea of discovery because I feel like it's more meaningful.
4. Four is urgency: a sense that something's on fire. It needs to be taken care of now.
5. And fifth. Passion: the sense that something developing over time throughout your days, giving you a sense of competency, identity, agency, and more.

Together, these have sometimes been called an "interest- based nervous system", though there are clearly more emotions involved than just interest.

One client of mine nicely put these together in a mnemonic called the CHIN-UP Emotions: challenge, interest, novelty, urgency, and passion. CHIN-UP.

Now, this set of conditions is contrasted with those who are more able to do things based on thoughts that something is important, that there's a reward involved, or that there's a punishment that something bad will happen if I don't do it.

These ideas of punishment of reward of importance, these tend to be largely intellectual. They're ideas. They might have associations. They might even connect with us at some way, but they're not emotionally strong in the Now.

More than just Interest - Broadening the Emotions

Coming back to those CHIN-UP emotions. I think we can unify them even further under the idea of play. Challenge, interest, novelty, passion, all or aspects of this playful sense. Play describes so much of what goes right when we're deeply invested. What can make it so difficult to engage in when it's not there.

But now we can go even further than play.

What about care? What about rage? Fear, love, lust. These can easily get us going as well. Organizing ourselves, our minds, our behaviors in some direction.

Emotions that we might even consider negative: confusion, overwhelm. These tend to clamp us down, have us curl up within ourselves, but I don't think it's that we're unmotivated so much as we're swallowed up in these worlds.

In other words, emotions organize us. They resonate from this place of meaning into the moment, merging into our experience. Our brains are not full of buttons and levers. The more powerful emotions are in the moment, the more we are in the winds and waters, the more they can either carry or crash into us.

Even scatter itself is an emotion. This mix of conflicting, contrasting, colliding feelings, enveloping us in the sense of overwhelm.

And when we engage well, we're in a flow. These emotions and intentions seem to be aligned, the motions of molecules, the firing of neurons from one node to the next, from one nucleus to the next create conditions no less nuanced or varied than our richest ecologies and our deepest oceans.

And for a wandering mind that has this magnified sense of The Now, our emotions become even more powerful. They are our worlds.

Transition is a Process

What I think tends to be missed is that we move through a process to becoming engaged. This motion from one state to another. Transitions.

It's not like we go from, "I don't feel like it" to, "I feel like it!" with some button pressed, some sudden revelation. Maybe occasionally that happens. But more so it comes from some unconscious depths, our emotions gather and our ideas form coalescing from these primal forces then that push the hull and fill the sails of the moment.

The thing is, we are not helpless against ourselves. We have agency. We can still be the captains of the boat that we are in on this sea.

The question is how can we position ourselves to begin those steps that make the transition out of where we are, into where we would like to be? Can we create the conditions that might invite a muse?

I believe that transition begins in the Visit. Same thing I described in episode four.

In other words, we can show up to a difficult task.

Whether that's the laundry, budgeting, a report, we can bring the materials of the work in front of us, move ourselves to it, preferably move distractions aside , and then for a few moments, simply be, maybe for that single deep breath. We don't have to force ourselves to do a thing.

A Power in Doing Nothing

It might seem strange. What good is it to do nothing?

Too often we privilege action.

"Just start!"

Is often a piece of advice given, but this advice can be destructive. The word "just" skips the emotion, this repeating admonition that you cannot trust yourself to make a decision and act based on where you are and your own abilities.

It's when we force ourselves that we invite this immense emotional wave against us. We fight agency, that sense of our very humanity, by not only saying we cannot trust ourselves, but acting like we cannot trust ourselves in that "just start."

But by being with the work, you're not doing nothing. You are engaging the emotions, the true realm from which our decisions are made, from which action of true conviction has a chance of finding conception, forming, and being born.

Whether we begin with anxiety, shame, irritation, or more likely, some entire mental ecology of emotion, any real flow begins in being with those sensations.

Every visit we make creates a wave of focus as rough or as smooth as those waters may be.

And of course we can do so to the degree that we care for ourselves. That single deep breath, maybe that's all we can withstand. Maybe less. That's fine. Mark the visit complete and come back tomorrow.

We are exercising agency.

In this way, we show up, we be, we decide. Gentle winds of dopamine, interest, engagement might even start to tickle the sails.

Takeaway

So as a takeaway, consider is there something you are waiting for, for better conditions to start?

Is there something you're waiting to be interested in to continue? Maybe there's a whole bunch. What if you chose one of them and you showed up to it and felt your way there? And if you could barely be there for that single deep breath, that's fine. Mark the visit done. Put it away. Come back tomorrow. Do it again.

You can stop at any time, but preferably do so at a visit.

Once you've been there, you've been there. Sometimes ideas start to bubble. The muse may even turn their head in your direction.

Standing Deer

  Sitting at the piano, I'm often confronted with this sense of worry.

What if I've got nothing to say? What if nothing new comes to my fingers? Or maybe why bother? Hasn't everything been written?

But in being there, staying there, sometimes doing nothing other than simply sitting at the keys, I can be with those senses, and that's where I start to work through those worries and maybe play that single first note.

Is that where it starts? Or maybe it really started when I sat at the keys.

I might start touching the keys. Something soft, something loud. Maybe I can make a piece of music with that one note. What if I added another note?

Maybe whatever it is I'm doing dies right there on the vine, and that's fine too. Maybe it'll be fodder for another day.

But occasionally I do catch a wave and even when I do get a wave I have a new worry.

What if I lose it? What if I make a mistake?

Still all I need to do is be there. Let it flow. Let it drift away. I could space out, let my mind wander, and when I catch myself wandering, I can bring myself back.

As I lean into challenge, I discover that next step. I don't need to know all the steps.

I only need to reflect on this feeling of some general direction, this blurry vision into the fog. And then maybe I can take that single gentle step. And if I can do that with regularity, somehow I seem to get somewhere.

The following piece of music is called "Standing Deer." I imagine being in the woods having come across some deer in the distance. It's turned its head to look at me. I'm not sure where the conversation is, but it's there somehow carried through the silence.

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