Focused - 153: A Wandering Mind, with Kourosh Dini

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

Kourosh Dini is back to talk about being with the work and the dark side of flow.

Welcome to Focused, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by Batuu's favorite content creator, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, man. Batuu's only content creator. We are also joined by a special guest here today. Welcome to the show, Kourash Dini. Hello. I should say welcome back to the show, Kourash Dini, because you've been on a couple of times. And today we're going to talk to you about A Wandering Mind.

And I'm looking forward to this conversation. Cool. Thanks for having me here. I appreciate it. Yeah. The Wandering Mind idea has gradually grown on me, and I think it's been me all along. So I think I get closer and closer to what motivates me and how I write and what I get into. So this is good timing and I really appreciate being here. It does feel like, Kulrash, you're throwing darts and just getting closer to

the bullseye every time with the stuff you're doing. But before we get started, a couple things. I have released the shortcuts for Macfield guide hooray it was a big project not so related to focus although i do talk about focus mode in it but you can get it now just go to maxbarkey.com or learn.maxbarkey.com you can check it out there is a discount on it for the release period which is not much longer after the show publishes. So if you want to check it out, please go do so. I worked really hard on it and I hope you like it. And also today on Deep Focus, we're going to get into a topic that's near and dear to all three of our hearts, music. So if you want to hear about music and focus or just music, honestly, stick around for

Deep Focus. That's the ad-free member-sponsored portion of the show. We'd love to have you there. Indeed we would. I will just give out a plug for your shortcuts field guides. Your field guides are always great. The shortcuts one in particular, I learned a lot from the previous version. I haven't spent a whole lot of time going through the new one,

but I know you've been working hard on this as shortcuts for Mac has been in development. So I can give my ringing endorsement that this is a good one. Thanks, Mike. I didn't realize it until we got to the end, but it's eight and a half hours. It's a lot of video. A lot of shortcuts right there. Well, you know, I want anybody who buys it to be able to get good at it, and you've got to cover everything. So I did.

I took that literally. Kourosh, we were talking about a wandering mind kind of in our conversations offline and the stuff you're doing about it these days. But can you share a little bit of your journey with us as you've kind of approached this concept? Sure. your journey with us as you've kind of approached this concept? Sure. You know, I first started off anything public was about 12 years ago with like OmniFocus writing about, you know, task management. And gradually I started thinking about like, okay, what's behind this? What's the psychology about it? Because I was also going through my training at the Chicago Psychoanalytic

Institute. And so I'm always thinking about the mind and agency and how do we make decisions and focus and the things that affect our focus. So as I was trying to combine these thoughts and I thought, I think the reason why I have any sort of unique voice in the, in the public space is because of these sorts of things. And, um, what was happening throughout, of course, um, which you think is obvious, but only in retrospect is, you know, I'm writing about myself. And, uh, so I, I build on this, build on this, and at some point I had a course which was like a downloadable video course that was like sort of a getting things done type of thing. It's like here's how you build a system. But it wasn't quite similar to a lot of troubles people might have with any sort of system, whether it's getting things done or bullet journaling or anything like that, some people just weren't connecting with it, that the tires weren't meeting the road.

And so in my discussions with clients, I was trying to figure out where the issue was. trying to figure out where the issue was. And I came to this idea of the struggles with focus and what happens in different parts of how you might divide up a session of work, whether it's at the beginning, middle, or end. And this idea of there is difficulty connecting as a result of a, I would say, a hyper-focus on the now, or a deep connection with the now that leaves one feeling disconnected with things that are happening outside of the now, past and future. happening outside of the now, past, and future. And through a series of cascading sort of events,

then that results in this sort of wandering mind. There's a difficulty in engaging focus. There's a difficulty in getting your mind to where you want it to be. The flagship version of it is attention deficit or ADHD. But that's not the only one. There are many actually paths to having difficulty with managing one's focus. And that ranges way beyond any sort of psychiatric listed sort of thing. I like the old adage, everybody's mind wanders.

But I think you have to add to that some wander more than others. And even then, sometimes a different hour or day, it might wander more or less than others. And how you come to a relationship with that is a lot of what I've started to get into. Yeah, I do think ADHD comes up a lot in relation to the work we do. And I do think that a lot of people who are struggling with that are drawn to this type of content because they're struggling with it. And Mike and I had a guest on recently who was talking about how a lot of traditional productivity advice is actually ill-suited for people struggling with that. It can be. In some ways, they can kind of wind up using it inadvertently as a way to kind of hurt themselves, to kind of beat themselves with it.

Oh, I can't get this thing to work. There's something wrong with me. And they fall into the cycle where it just actually worsens things in that way. And then the other piece of this, I think, is that technology has made us all a little ADHD. You know, it's on a spectrum, right? I mean, suddenly the world around us

is throwing stimuli at us constantly and making it so much harder, even for people who aren't, you know, clinically suffering from ADHD. But all of us have this issue with focus. I mean, that's the reason why this show exists. And I think there's something we could all learn from that. Absolutely. I think that the under that, why the show exists, it's this idea of attention hygiene. There's this new type of hygiene we have to start dealing with in these last several decades. It used to be that, oh, that thing that's important, it's jumping up. And some of them trigger feelings of interest, and some of them trigger feelings of fear, and any number of other emotions. And now you have to, if you just fall into following those emotions, now you're being impulsive, and no longer getting to the things you want to do. You're no longer putting your mind where you'd like it to be, and you're kind of at the whims of the world rather than your own interests. I like that term you just used, attention hygiene. Do you mind

explaining that a little bit more? What do you mean when you use the term attention hygiene? And maybe what are some of the things that go into that thinking of hygiene is like washing your hands, brushing your teeth. How can we do that for our focus? Certainly. One of the things that we work with is what's called working memory. And this is that part of our brain that looks at things, examines things, and puts them together, takes them apart. Years ago, you could have called it ego, and then the word ego kind of fell apart, and now we use this. But it's the thing that looks at inside and outside and says, where can I find a harmony? And there have been various ways of looking at it. Some people think that you can hold about seven plus or minus two things in there at one time. I think

it's called Miller's Law, if I remember correctly. And then somebody else later on said, no, it's actually a smaller number than that. And maybe there's only a small handful of things, maybe even one or two. And rhythmically, things are bouncing around it that you kind of juggle with that might amount to the same sort of number. And the idea is that you need to be able to respect those limits. So if you look at a list, here's an example. If you look at a list of something that has 20 things on it, making a decision with that list is very difficult as opposed to a list of, let's say, five to seven things. So managing your lists so that they work within those limits suddenly elevates things for you. Suddenly your decisions can be quicker, can be more meaningful, can be more in the direction that you want without having to look at that list and then either feel overwhelmed or have to sit down and process all of it, or more likely feel overwhelmed and just defeated. So as you start managing more than just your lists, your entire environment in this way,

you start to heighten your ability to make meaningful decisions, which is ultimately what I try to aim for. When you say respect your limits, I really like that term. And I think that's at the heart of everything that David and I try to talk about here with Focused. But the follow-up question, which I don't have a clean answer for, is how do you know what your limits are other than you crash and burn

and then you figure out not to do that next time? I think some of that is involved. I think we tend to romanticize this sort of like, push your limits, keep going. But it's a hard question to answer. How do you know when you've reached it? How do you know when it's too much, too little? question to answer, how do you know when you've reached it? How do you know when it's too much, too little? This sounds a little too soft, but I think it's still the most useful word I can come up with, which is caring. You want to care for yourself in the process. So you might venture

an attempt at, okay, I think I can try 12 things on my list or 15 things. And let's see how that goes. And if you crash, how do you approach that crash? Do you, um, do you recognize that as something, uh, where you can, uh, pick yourself up and care for yourself where you can say, you know what, let's try it this way instead. Or do you berate yourself and then try 20 next time? Um, you know, the, you know, if you, um, let's say due dates, people tend to, especially those with wandering minds, tend to leverage due dates because that seems to be the only thing that works for them. Even though I don't think it is, and I think there's ways to practice other ways to get ahead of things without the due date. But because they're leveraging that, they wind up abusing themselves with it. Okay, well, I need to get this thing done, this thing

done, that thing done. I can't fake a deadline. So I am going to schedule this, that, and the other thing. And I'm going to make it so that, you know, I have major problems that'll happen if I don't make it in time. And so there's this sort of repeated injury that happens that makes it harder and harder to feel like they can concentrate, they can focus. And instead they wind up falling into a more and more chronic state of fight or flight where they're either in that sort of deep flow of that might be inspired by a tyrannical deadline. But it's also, you know,

painful one or they're, they've, they've, they're crashing. They're like, I can't move there. You know, once that's,

that fuel has spent there, you know, on the couch and barely able to move. Yeah. I feel like there's a couple of points I want to follow up there that like taking, you know, do you care about yourself is one question that I want to follow up there that like taking, you know, do you care

about yourself is one question that I think is involved here. But another one is, do you care about the work you make? Because not only does it have a negative impact on you when you get, you know, overburdened, it has a negative impact on what you produce. And there's all sorts of consequences for that as well. Absolutely. You know, when I, I know we're going to talk about music later. When I push writing, so a lot of things come from my, like while I'm practicing and composing in particular, if I'm, if I keep pushing something beyond a certain point, if a piece of music I try to make it go on too long, it grows bitter. Or when I listen to it later, it gives me a headache. There's something

that begins very sweet and gentle and kind, and then later on it's like, and I've ruined the piece. There is a, I don't know, wordless or something way of approaching it that you have to approach your work. Especially if you care for it, then that tends to be more inspired. That you do a better job. Another point you bring up is this idea of saying, I need a deadline. And I feel like anybody listening to this that's a warning sign you know um if you if you're one of these heels as well i can't do anything without a deadline i do my best work in the last 12 hours i think you're diluting yourself i say that with

kindness but i don't think anybody does their best work in the last 12 hours i think that um if you found that you had a way to work on that without the looming deadline, you might find that you did better work. It is a practice to get there. Until then, it might be the only way that works. But there is a practice. There is exercise. There is sort of like, how can I enter that flow, that feeling of challenge, that feeling

of I am interested in this, even in those times where you don't like the thing, like you have to do it, you know, some report that's been given or something that often has some just awful feeling associated with it, then that practice of getting there helps you distance. But until then, yeah, you're kind of at the whims of, you know, and so particularly bad when you have to deal with multiple deadlines because they're often coming from different agents and they don't care about each other. And then you get sick somewhere along the way and now action at the last minute. But since we're talking about attention hygiene, the quote by Simon Sinek comes to mind

that consistency is better than intensity. He equates intensity to going to the dentist for professional cleaning, but consistency is brushing your teeth every day. And I feel like a deadline could be a form of increasing intensity, but recognizing that that's really not good long-term. You may feel like you got the project out the door and there I got it done, but it's not having the same effect, just like not brushing your teeth for months at a time. You're not going to feel it after a single skip session, but after a while, you're not going to have any teeth left in your head.

to motivate for somebody with this wandering mind. What happens is that there might be a punishment related to something or some negative effects that might happen if you don't do it in time. But as long as you can avoid it, as long as you can look away, then you don't have to manage that feeling. When you can no longer manage that feeling because it's pushed beyond that ability to tell yourself, like you're trying to be kind to yourself by saying it's okay. I don't need to worry about it now, but when it's pushed beyond that, uh, because you're still relying on anxiety to, to deal with it, then, um, now, now you have the feeling, the feeling is now, uh, the feeling of urgency of demand is, is there, and now you can finally act. So it's, it's a leveraging of a feeling that exists in the now. And until one can find a different way of accessing a different feeling, uh, one that's

more creative, perhaps one that's more playful and enjoyable and engaging, then, um, then you're kind of at the mercy of these sorts of things. This episode of the focus podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Make your next move and enter offer code focused at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase. Just go to squarespace.com slash focused. Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that lets you build your brand and grow your business online. You can stand out with a beautiful website, engage with your audience, and sell anything. Your products, services, and even the content you create with Squarespace. Because Squarespace has got you covered. With Squarespace, you can use insights to grow your business.

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Kourosh, one of the things that the repeating themes of all productivity, and I think this is maybe one of the biggest things where people learn is you honestly have to do less, you know. So many people come to productivity because they're overwhelmed and they think there's some magic piece of software or concept they're going to get like if only i could get a kitchen timer that looked like a tomato then i could do 200 of the work i need to do you know when i only have 100 of the time yeah and i feel like what you're talking about kind of relates to that recurring theme, is no matter how hard you try, you can't put 10 gallons of water in a five-gallon jug. I think there's something to it, though I like thinking of things as rhythms.

If you listen to my favorite albums, as Abby wrote, Beatles' swan song album, I think, unless you count the Get Back ones, the Let It Be, I mean. There's something delightfully spacious in what happens, but you can see that there's also a lot of things going on, but they all kind of come together. No pun intended. that there's also a lot of things going on and but they all kind of come together no pun intended um but there's uh i think the same thing can be said about our days you know there's a rhythm to our days there's every day there's there's very primal rhythms there's there's our breath which is one type of rhythm and there's the the cycle of the, which is another type of rhythm. And if you can start adapting your habits, your rhythms, like I do this every day, I do that every day,

I do this every other day, I do that, and start building it in that way, then I think you wind up making your days work for you. So oftentimes I think there is less that's required, just like I was alluding to in the album. But I think it's more than just going with less. I think there's also how do things, how do they gently connect to each other? How do you gently add things or remove things rather than do so in some, how do you go with evolution more so than revolution?

And I keep going with the Beatles references, pardon me. No, I like it. I like it. What do you think is the reason behind the, I'm going to call it artificial urgency that makes people feel like I need to do this now? I'm thinking of myself specifically, but I know a lot of people struggle with this where, and this kind of ties to now versus not now too, I guess. This thing feels important and I feel like I should do it right now. It's almost like we don't trust the rhythms and then I'll have the space to do the thing tomorrow or next week. So it's going to get done. It's got to get done now. What contributes to that and what can we do about it? That's a great question. Yeah. So I think you're right

onto it with that idea of trust. If you don't trust that you will be able to return to something with any reliability, then that feeling of I can't let it go starts to well. And conversely, well. And conversely, if you feel like you can't let something go, then you might be afraid to start something as well. So these things sort of feed into each other. If you have the sense like, I don't know if I'll be able to come back. I don't know what my schedule is going to look like. I don't know what my rhythms tend to be. I don't know how to guide those rhythms. I don't know how to come back.

They often say you never step in the same river twice. And there's truth to that. And you might be afraid, I will not be able to get back to what I'm thinking of now. And you have, particularly when you're in some flow, you're thinking of not just one but there's a feeling of it's not so quick it's not scattered anymore it's now play because you have this direction you're heading you have this sense of completion that you're moving towards and it's all within this sort of bounded entity that you're now engaging whatever this piece of work is whatever this project is and there's a thrill to that and and and like and you can have less of that inner critic going when that happens client of mine coined that I really like, which is called the dark side of flow, where you are into it, but now you're losing track of other

things. And now you're not doing multiple, or you keep going and you exhaust yourself, and then it's hard to function afterwards. So I think that right within your question, Mike, that idea of I can't trust myself to re-engage, I think is exactly where it is. So then the question is, how do you practice that trust? How do you start getting into that? I love that dark side of flow phrase that you just mentioned there, because I think a lot of people who listen to Focus specifically would be familiar with flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as kind of the standard for focused productivity. That's kind of the holy grail that people put up on a pedestal.

Oh, yeah. And I think that there's obviously a lot of benefits to being able to focus in on a single task and not worry about anything else. But I never really thought about it having a shadow side too. But I definitely see that now that you brought it up where you just are so focused on something and you don't even notice that the other thing that you were supposed to be doing, the time came and went. And it's funny because I'm guilty of that. I succumb to this myself. Sure. I think it leads to, you know, on the other end is this issue of procrastination that often winds up with those who have wandering minds. This idea of,

you know, if you look at, you know, the closet that needs cleaning or something like that, and you're like, once I start this, I'm going to be like somewhere, whether consciously or not consciously looked at, it's like, I am going to be in this for days. I cannot let that, and therefore I'm never going to start. So it, you know, the same thing with a report, the same thing with, um, you know, whatever it is that one is, is, um, procrastinating unless you have a way to feel like you can disengage, then you can be very reluctant to engage at all. Do you guys experience that? Because like, it's a thing in my family that if i'm working on something you have to really try to get my attention like i am completely unengaged i feel like it's a it's a failing with my relationship with my wife that like if i'm working and she asks me something

i have no idea what she's talking about i have to really really like, you know, pull the rip cord, you know, pull a little chain on the train or whatever it is to like, get off what I'm doing and like, pay attention to her. Something I struggle with. I don't know if this was related, but I can get irritable. I can, you know, like if I'm deeply into something and somebody starts, you know, interrupting me, I get like, ah, you know, hey, quit it. Stop it. And yeah, no, I think there's something to that. And so I think that's part of that, even attention hygiene, again, is like, how do you relate to the people around you? Hey, I'm going to be engaged in something. Hey, I'm going to be writing.

Or would you mind if I have this time? And at that point, it might be, well, sure. But you know, there are dishes to be done. Okay. So then I go do the dishes first and then I go and focus. Yeah. So, you know, there's, there's certain, you know, uh, things that need to be addressed and, and, but also the people around you, like, okay, are my, are my kids like, are there homework? Is there, are they settled with that? Do they know what they're doing? Okay, fine. Is this thing settled? Okay, fine. Great. Now I can be here with this, hopefully. And then sometimes you still get that phone call you need to handle. I definitely struggle with this. Short personal story. When I decided to

make faith-based productivity, I went into monk mode and basically worked seven days a week from the moment I got up to the moment I went to bed because I was going to get this thing done. I was so focused on this goal and looking back on it, there's so many problems with that particular approach. But I also recognize I added a whole bunch of extra stress to myself in the process. And that's my default mode that I go into

when I have clarity on what, or at least what I think is clarity on what a project should be. But I'm intrigued by this word that you used, Kourosh, play. So it occurs to me, we play a lot of board games at my house. We actually have a board game table in our living room. It doubles as our dining room table. And I don't get frustrated and irritable when I'm playing board games. So I'm kind of curious, you know, it, does it have to be that way that when you're focused on a project, you become irritable because you don't want anything to take you, uh, take your focus away from that thing. But, uh, I'm, is it possible to approach your personal, even professional

projects through this sense of, of play where it's just fun. You're curious. And again, how do we do that? Absolutely. And I think you've even gave a great example of you're, you're able to do that while playing board games. The, the way I look at play is, is, is the play of a toddler. The toddler is, um, you know, in deep focus playing with blocks, working on, you know, their, their muscular skills, their visual skills. They're doing these things that are important, and they're not realizing they're doing that, but they're in this path of exploration between self and world. And they can do that when they have a trusted space. Their caregiver has arranged their, hopefully, their environment such that they're not getting hurt, they're well fed, everything's addressed in such a way that they can engage in that sort of window of challenge that is neither overstimulating nor understimulating. And I define success this way, that success is that sense, it's a flowing something of merger between play and work, work being

defined as the thing you do that helps support you, whether that's financially or psychologically or emotionally or otherwise, that if you can engage in that state of play while working, you know, you win. But it's something that's not like a line you cross and you're like permanently past it. It's something that you find in a state of balance. And when you fall away, you try to rebalance and return to. The other thought of it is, I think, coming back to the music,

you know, when you can be in that state of play while writing, then that's where the music is not a headache. That's where the music, you, the audience, I think, this is the theory, is that I think they enjoy the feeling and sound of play behind the notes. That's where it becomes something good. And I think the same thing can be said of any of our work, whether we're writing something or doing something with some financial report. It may not look like there's somebody blowing some New Year's Eve streamer type thing in the background. It's about that seriousness of the toddler at play that's important to think of. The toddler at play brings so many pictures to my mind because I have a four-year-old, I have five kids at home, so I'm not too far removed from that. And it occurs to me, what you're talking about, I latch onto this because you mentioned it and I can see this in

myself where you become irritable when you get interrupted. If I interrupt a toddler who is playing, they're not upset. They invite me to play with them. My presence is not an obstacle to be overcome in them achieving their outcome. And I kind of am questioning now, like, where do we pick that up along the way? Well, see, the thing is, you're being a good dad there. The other way you could have done it was like, hey, quit that. We're going now. And then you might get a different reaction. Sure, sure. Yeah. So the more you can, I think there's something mindful to that. There's a meditational approach to that. Like, when something enters our sphere, how do we acknowledge that, allow that, and say, okay, this is where my mind is. This is what's entering our world now, and how do I relate to that? Yeah, you struggle so hard to be present with your work that you lose presence. I think that's true yeah the other thing that i'm curious

about is uh just the whole idea of play as it pertains to your work is kind of fascinating to me like does it have to be as much of a struggle as it it really is the thing that comes to mind for creative types specifically is like stephen pressfield's description of the resistance. And it's this epic struggle. And you got to slay the dragons before you can do the art. And I feel like if you could approach it with an attitude of play, there's no pressure there. no pressure there. Maybe that changes the minute that you start getting paid for the work that you're creating. I don't know. But I also think that maybe some of this is just our own attitude and perspective. And so maybe you look at it from the outside and you say, well, that's great. You get to do all these awesome things. If I was in your position, Mike, and I recorded these podcasts and made these videos, whatever, I would have a good

attitude as I approached my work too. But I got a nine to five and a boss that doesn't understand me and yada, yada, yada. But I kind of am thinking that you can take this attitude of play and apply it pretty much in any situation. You maybe can't control everything, but focus on control what you can control. And the bad stuff doesn't have to dominate all the rest of it. At least myself, I tend to let it. So the idea is that you want to find the play within whatever it is, whether it's a relationship or within work, because you are being supported. I don't think it's just about payment because anything is still a support. There's a support there regardless. I want to go back for a moment. David, you said something about losing presence when you're deeply in work.

And I suddenly had the thought of I think that's where the irritation comes in. I think it's when you've lost presence. When you're engaging with work and you still have some sense of the environment, you still have a sense of the entirety of your mind, that mindfulness, I think that irritation tends to be less. Anyway, it's a bit of a tangent to what we were just talking about, but that's where mind returned to. Mike said something I thought pretty insightful in the last segment,

talking about Steven Pressfield and the resistance. And it got me thinking, does resistance have to be that hard, guys? I mean, are we making this harder on ourselves by kind of building it into this dragon we have to slay? I think there's a couple of thoughts I have with it. One, resistance, if you think of it in like an electrical circuit, you have V equals IR, you have this voltage equals the current times resistance. So what it basically means is that when there's any form of flow, if there's any form of motion in a circuit, there is some form

of resistance that's moving against it. I don't think it has to be a dragon, a thing you're always fighting. It could be something you're moving with, you're dancing with, you're engaging with. The other thought I had, and I really hope I get this right, there was a, I have to look for it, there was an article I'd read not too long ago by, I think it was Ursula Kalik in the science fiction writer in which she was railing against how much of writing in general had this very masculine nature to it of being slaying dragons of like, there's like this process in which you go out and kill things with pointing sticks. And she went into this lovely description of the idea of gathering and these other sort of what we would traditionally call a more feminine sort of

approach. And the idea of a story as being container. Anyway, it's completely tangential in one sense. But in the other, I think there's something very useful in that approach to our work, that it's not always about slaying things and fighting things. There is a nurturance and there's a development, there's a gardening, there's something that feels more, I don't know, earth-like. I don't know. Whatever phrase you want to put in there that I think work can be. And it feels more natural and engaging and enlivening. And that gets back to the idea of joy in work, making it easier to engage. There is a bit of a flywheel there, if we can wrap our arms around it. it. Yeah. I like the description of dancing. Well, on the one hand, I like it. On the other hand, I am not a dancer, so it's slightly terrifying. I gave my wife ballroom dancing lessons one year and I participated, but I'm definitely not good at it. And as I was reflecting

after I heard you say that, if I'm honest with myself, I would rather have a dragon to slay than someone to dance with. Because my personality is like, I'm going to overcome this obstacle. I'm going to achieve this goal regardless of the cost or the stakes. I understand that that's maybe not the healthiest approach though. And the whole idea of dancing, again, very limited understanding of it from my perspective, but it's all about responding to the movement that somebody else is making. It's a very small feedback loop, if you want to describe it that way, where you move, they move, they move, you move. It's constantly back and forth like this. And I feel like that obviously fits a lot better with the whole idea of play and being present and not getting frustrated when you do get

interrupted and you can't do your thing right now because you're just responding to what is in front of you there's a certain being with work yeah like can you can you sit there and be with it that's good i think that leads into the four parts of a work session that you were talking to us about in the prep call here too you mind walking us through those and how those relate to being with the work? Absolutely. So yeah, I look at the work session as having four separate parts. And all distinctions in some ways are artificial, but I think these have been very useful to me. The first is the decision to do something. Where do you want your mind to be? And how do you go through that?

Because that's a big part of the wandering mind, this sort of constantly dropping one thing for the next and never fully making a decision as to where you want your mind to be. Once you practice that and you get a certain way of approaching, like, okay, these are my options, this is what I want to, okay, this is where I want my mind to be for the time being, then that often helps with focus tremendously. Secondly, you have this opening phase, this engaging phase, this approach to your work, where you're moving things that are not related aside, and you're bringing to you

things that are related, and getting to that stage where you can be with the work, where you can sit and the work is simply in front of you. And that is that stage of the engagement. At that point, you can nudge it forward, you know, just a bare touch, and you're in it. You're now in that next stage of being. And so in that way, that engaging and that being is kind of like a wave you're riding as you move forward. And being has its own, you know, what do you do when you get confused by something? What do you do when you are angered by something? What do you do when you start feeling lost? All of these can be addressed in one way or another to help you re-engage the work,

or even use some of those feelings to say, oh, maybe that's what that thought's about. No, that's what that feeling's about. Okay, let me see how that can help me in my work. And then finally, there's that disengagement. How do you let go of the work, especially when you want to feel like, I'm not done with it. I need to do something more with it. especially when you want to feel like, I'm not done with it. I need to do something more with it. If you feel like you cannot let something go until you're done with it, then you're enslaved by it. It can be an awful feeling. And you lose that agency, which is, again, part of why one may be so reluctant to get into something. But if you know how to, okay, I'm putting this aside. This is how I'm going to return. I have a good sense that I will see this when and where I how to, okay, I'm putting this aside. This is how I'm going to return. I have a good

sense that I will see this when and where I need to, and I have a way of approaching it. Then I have a better chance of disengaging. And then once you've done that, you can return to the next stage of those four parts. Now you're ready to decide again, what am I going to do? Yeah, the disengagement one is the one that I struggle with. I think a lot of it has to do with, do I feel like what I need will be here when I need it? Do I have a sense that I will see this when and where it's important? And the more you can go through that process, allowing yourself time to go through that process, rather than, let's say, you have to be at the next thing at 3 o'clock and you just drop it and run. If you take some time to set those materials that you can return, you're in a much better place to feel like, okay, i can get back to this have you been watching me kurash i just guessed i also like i mean for that specific

problem like something that a practice i developed when i was a lawyer was always planning for like kind of a debrief time whether it was a phone call or even extended work session on something that wasn't going to be done. Like you have all the stuff up in the air as you're working on it. And then how do you slowly lower it to the ground before you move on to the next thing? And it started for me with phone calls and meetings. Like I would always schedule 20 minutes afterwards and I would add things to my task list and just kind of like follow up on what had just happened. And I found it so useful that I brought it into my large block time work. I do find that, you know, bringing the plates to the ground, so to say, really makes it easier to move on to the next thing and to resume the old thing the next time it shows up on my calendar.

Absolutely. It's like giving yourself time to digest. It's giving yourself to consolidate information and ideas. You know, one of the things that as I was going, and ideas. One of the things that as I was building the course, I moved from one cohort to the next. As soon as I started adding more time to allow reflection and, here, what questions do you have? What thoughts do you have here? Or let's just take a moment here. The consolidation of information became much different, and we can do that for ourselves. I find a good teacher does that for us, a good parent does that for us, and the more we can do that for ourselves, the more we can, just as you're doing, you're describing, David, I think it makes things move. The waves of our days become much less choppy, and we can ride them much more easily. You mentioned the reflection questions. Now I got to ask, I love this topic. What specific

sort of reflection questions do you ask yourself? Which ones are beneficial to you? I think the central one to ask is what will genuinely get this off of my mind? What would allow me to not think about this at all until the time that I'd like to? The better I can answer that question, the more it'll be, the more organized, the more set, the more smoothly I can return. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Indeed. For your company's next hire,

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You need Indeed. Our thanks to Indeed for their support of the Focus podcast and all of RelayFM. Now, Kourosh, you've been putting a lot of thought into this. You actually have a course now for the wandering mind, which I'm fascinated by and I encourage people that are interested in these

topics to go check out. We'll put a link in the show notes, but one, and you have many techniques you're teaching in the course, I know, but one of them is what you call the anchor in sale. And I was wondering if you could share a little bit of that with us. Sure. So, um, the anchor in sale technique is a, it's really simple pen and paper way of managing your, supporting your working memory. It's a way of making a decision. It's a way. So in those four parts of the session, it's that first part, it's how do you make a decision? And a very distilled way to describe it is you get a pen and paper, you write out the options of what you can do in the moment. And very crucial that these

are options. These are not tasks. These are not to do's. These are just options. And you can list out things that are fun or you need to do or any, any, you can impulsively do any range of things. do or any, any, you can impulsively do any range of things. You circle one of them. You decide, where's my mind going to be? You circle that. You can cross it off as soon as you want. Whenever you're done, that's when you cross it off. It doesn't matter if you've done a ton, done a little, whatever it is, cross it off and come back to the list and update it. So once again, it relates to the now. Again, this is about what are your options for the now. It sounds super simple, and it's probably something you've already done, but you lost because you didn't realize the rules behind it.

There's one other thing that I forgot to mention. Once you're done with this, you've got to throw it away. You've got to get rid of it, because otherwise it becomes something about the not now. So if you're, if you're interested in this, I did write it up. I did, uh, I put it into like a nice, you know, um, uh, you know, a little PDF thing. And if you go to waves of focus.com, you can download that. And so the course, um, I start with that. That's like a whole lecture. And how do you start using this? How do you start engaging it with all the components of your day? But I've found that when you start

practicing this, again, it sounds super easy, like what is this? What I found is that it really adds a certain buffer and a certain layer between you and your task manager or your to-do list or whatever it is that lets you really heighten that sense of agency, that ability to decide and, you know, like, okay, I can do this, I can do that, and I can play a video game. And you're honest with yourself in that. And then you may or may not play that game, but in whatever, whatever you decide will start to feel more like, okay, that was me and not so impulsive. So if I'm hearing you right, you make your list and you mentioned these are just options and you pick one. And right away I'm thinking, but Kourash, I want to do more than one.

But you pick one and I understand why. So I do the thing and then I just cross that out or do I start over with a new list and follow up to that? How many of these things do you see that you are able to complete this way? I guess what I'm getting at is we probably think if I just pick one instead of a bunch of them, then I'm not going to get as much done. But I'm guessing, having gone through it and practicing it for a while, what you actually find is the opposite. So answering your question, first, yeah, you cross it off. You can have done a little or a lot or however much. You could have done 0.5 seconds of the work and cross it off. Or you could have done, you know, 0.5 seconds of the

work and cross it off, or you could have done, you know, three hours, whatever makes sense to you. And then you can update that list just so long as it, um, reflects now, whatever it is, you know, you cross other things off, add new things, whatever it is that feels like these are options for now. And you can keep using that, that list in that way. But when you're done with it, that's when you throw it away. And, all right, I lost your second question. It was basically around the quantity of the things from a larger scale. So, for example, one of the things that I do, which I think is a little bit different version of this, but I've got my tasks inside of Obsidian and I

have a note card, which I put on my desk every day. And that has up to five tasks on it, just because I know five is the number that I can absolutely get done without feeling like I'm pulling my hair out. And I want to get those five things done every single day. It is more important to me that I get everything done that I want to, the number of things if I were to have a Herculean effort and ship 20 things one day. I'd rather be consistent and make it sustainable. So where does the measured output, as you look at this from a more macro level, I guess,

what sort of insights can you provide from this technique on a larger scale? I find that you tend to get not necessarily more or less done, but more of what you find important to you or meaningful to you done. You might wind up on certain days, use it to procrastinate and, you know, I'm going to play this and then I'm going to do that and I'm going to do the other thing. But it's the when you do that, there's a more deliberate nature to that. And so you can add on there, let's say, watch this show, watch that show, play this game, or consult my five-item list, whatever you call that list. And at some point, you might go, you know what? I think it's time for me to consult that list.

And so you go to that list, and maybe you'd add one of those to the, to what I call an anchor pad, this thing I've just described. And now you start use that list. You can still, and that list is probably very important. And I like how you've got five on there, you know, that idea of like, you're respecting your, you know, the limits of, of that working memory, but it lets you, um, it creates that buffer between you and it so that you can, um, feel more, more like you are there rather than you are stuck to it. I don't know if that quite answers your question. It does. I like what you just mentioned there, the description of having your system support you in doing the things that are important instead of being a slave to the system. Right. I feel like that is the struggle is people have these complex task management systems

and thousands of tasks in there filtered by context. That's great. But the result is that you've got 30 tasks that you should be thinking about right now and you're overwhelmed. So the net result is that you do none of them. Right, right. This lets you acknowledge where your mind is right now. It's not coming back to you from three months ago or something like that. You can use this list to help you consult those lists if you need.

But this pad lets you ground yourself in where your mind is now. I want to add one thing that I didn't mention. I find it super helpful to use pen and paper and not a computer for for this technique i mean you could i suppose but i i just found that pen and paper is um something about it so much more grounding i just wanted to add that okay you are preaching to the choir now um so i i do this uh i've got the note cards now but this previously was a fancy notebook with fancy paper that I punched myself and I used my fancy fountain pens. And it's completely ridiculous. I spent way too much money on this stuff, but it actually is, there's joy in that process. And I have never been able to really figure out why. So you've just enabled me, but I'd love to dig into that a little bit more if

you're willing to share any sort of thoughts you have on why that is the case. I think there's something that it's evolved with us for much longer than computers that you have, you know, let's say you're using a fountain pen, you know, you have a nice ink, you have a nice flowing, you know, mechanism through which that ink can get to the page, and you have this organic page that's a nice piece of paper. And so there's something that feels inherently more natural to it. That's one. Secondly, there's the slowing down process that, you know, because part of the issue of a wandering mind is that thoughts are fast. They're so fast that they're hard for the working memory to hold. So it's that there's this

discrepancy between the speed of thought and what working memory can handle. So handwriting tends to slow things down so that working memory has a greater chance. And even more, if you can slow down to the point that you write nicely, that you're making something that looks good, then there's even more of a sense of, now you're into that greater sense of creation and creativity, and again, returning to play. So I think those are my ideas as to why handwriting is so nice. So how do you mix that? Because I know you are a big OmniFocus database guy, and how do you mix between those two?

So I might write down, you know, watch a show, go to Reddit, or clean the inbox, and consult my quick list or something like that. So those are all options that I might write down. And so I still use, definitely, OmniFocus. But this gives me that buffer. Well, Kourosh, I think it's great what you're doing. And I would encourage anybody that is interested in working with their own wandering

mind to check out garage's course. We're going to have a link to the show notes. I know you've been doing it for a while now, and it's something that's been kind of evolving for you. And I'm just really happy to hear you focusing on this. Cause I, I think, you know, you're aiming at the same problem we are with this show. Yeah. You can have all the productivity hacks in the world, but if you can't figure out what's important and how to get that done, you're spinning your wheels. Agreed. All right, Kourosh, where do people go to learn more?

Go to wavesoffocus.com. I'll have the URL point to where the course is or where the lead magnet might be, one or the other. Okay. All right, check it out, everybody. And thanks for listening today to the Focus podcast. You can find us at relay.fm. Thank you to our sponsors today, Squarespace and Indeed.

And we'll see you next time.