Ever found your whole day thrown off by “a thing at five”? In this episode of Rhythms of Focus, we explore the quiet storm that happens when time anxiety, fear of distraction, and perfectionism collide. Together, we reflect on why even the simplest tasks can feel impossible when something looms on the calendar—and how we can practice agency and gentler rhythms to bring flow back into our days.

Listeners will uncover how our relationship to endings influences our ability to begin, and how mindful transitions can help us rebuild trust in our focus. We unpack four subtle fears—the fear of the groove, of distraction, of the unfinished, and of courage—and discover how embracing closure can unlock momentum.

Link to ADHDinos - a delightful comic on ADHD: https://www.instagram.com/adhdinos/?hl=en

Takeaways:

• Recognize how fear of endings quietly blocks beginnings.

• Learn mindful strategies to release time vigilance and ease into focus.

• Rebuild self-trust through small, intentional completions.

This episode also features an original piano improvisation, “From Fall,” a contemplative piece in a minor key that mirrors the mood of transition and soft courage.

For more, subscribe and visit rhythmsoffocus.com.

#ADHD #WanderingMinds #MindfulFocus #TimeAnxiety #ADHDProductivity #NeurodivergentLiving #SelfTrust #FlowState #FocusRhythms #EmotionalRegulation

Transcript

There's a wonderful ADHD based comic called ADHDinos Two Dinosaurs talk to each other, and in this particular comic, one of 'em says to the other, Hey, what's wrong? You seem stressed. The other says, well, I've got a thing at five. Well, that's six hours from now. You still have the whole day ahead. I'm confident you can accomplish a lot in that time.

The other one lying on the floor. says my day has absolutely ruined

Dealing with "A thing at 5"

What do we do when we have a thing at five?

We could seemingly do any number of things before five, consciously, rationally, we might even be able to calculate. Such and such would take an hour and that would take half an hour and this errand and that report and the dishes and whatever, and yet we're paralyzed.

Why can't we seem to get much of anything done at all until that time? I think an important clue comes from the paralysis itself. Because paralysis stems from fear. And in fact there are likely several fears. So I'd like to go through about four of them here and see where we get.

Fear of the Groove

The first fear is the groove.

What if I get into a groove? Seemingly getting into a groove would be a wonderful thing. We get into the work, diving in and maybe even enjoying a sense of developing meaning somewhere within and through our lives.

But there's that hyper focus. There may well have been times in our life where we got into a thing and just couldn't seem to get ourselves out.

Maybe we're thinking, Ugh, I can't let go now. I've been procrastinating on it forever. I'm in it now, and I never know if I'll ever be able to come back. And so what if I do a little more now? Oh, I can still make it to that next thing. Maybe I'll be a few minutes late. That's okay. Oh, no, I'm missing it. Oh, no. I'm ashamed that I'm terribly late. I may as well not go at this point.

Yeah, I think a number of us have probably been through that one. The fear of not being able to stop is a real one. There have been times where we've not been able to stop.

We might even fear that we would entirely lose sight of the thing at five. Our sense of time has likely not been our ally, and so we do not trust ourselves for good reason.

Maybe we've tried alerts and we blow those off. Maybe someone calls and we ignore the phone. Without the sense that we might be able to break away, we feel doomed and the day is ruined.

Fear of Distractions

The second fear is that of distraction, mental turbulence, interference to working memory. We may well have a history of getting distracted in whatever it is we're doing, environment or anxiety or some other strong emotion, thinking about plans, daydreaming, incomplete projects and decisions floating into mind, stumbling into doing two or even three things at once, losing a sense of connection between this and that, flooding ourselves with confusion.

As we then seek relief in some emotion that might bring some cohesion to our mind state, whether it's playful, whether it's urgency, we're just looking for the relief of one thing.

All of it can have us lose sight of that thing at five. And so together with a lack of trust in ourselves that we wouldn't be distracted from any signal to remind us of the thing at five, we stay vigilant.

So to compensate, we keep our eye on the clock, hoping we don't look away at the wrong time. But as a result of this, we can't invest ourselves in the thing that we'd like to get into before five.

Vigilance is exhausting, paralyzing us with this understandable fear.

Fear of the Unfinished

The third fear is what might be called the unfinished symphony. What if I can't get back into the groove? Let's say we do start a thing before five and we're able to stop, but what if we've got this history of leaving projects incomplete? The worry is that we would now risk placing yet another thing in the pile of incomplete projects shaming us from the corner.

When we're working, we often don't know how something might appear in the end, how we might get there, and often both. And as a result, we cannot guess the time it would take. And unfortunately with the lack of trust in ourselves that we could end something on time or pick it back up if left incomplete, we're left with the impossible goal of trying to figure out if the thing can be done in the time we have available.

As soon as there's a thing at five, our time has become limited and our work is shot.

Fear of Courage

And I add one more fear, which may or may not relate, but somehow it seems to fit in my own head.

What if the thing we want to get into before five requires some courage?

Dealing with a sense of maybe we're not intelligent enough to do a thing. Maybe the depth of field of it is too vast for us to comprehend. Maybe we're too old to start now, too young to start now. We'd never be able to get good enough among any other possibility.

Similar to our lack of confidence to estimate time here, we lack a confidence in our own abilities, which then would translate to, I'm not sure how long this would take. The work of mounting courage, acknowledging the risk, knowing we might fail, are not insubstantial, and while we're frozen in vigilance, the resources to mount that courage are not available.

Fears of Endings

Common to all of these fears are the endings. In other words, our difficulty in starting is often related to our fear of how we may or may not be able to handle the endings. If we can practice how we end things, we would then be in a better position to start them.

If we feel we can set something aside that we can trust ourselves to return, or better yet make a clear decision as to where it does or does not fit in our lives, and then stay out of our way in the meantime, we can start.

If we feel that we might be able to not only hear an alert, but it's well positioned to help us transition when it felt like we could smoothly do so, so that the work could then stay out of our way until it meaningfully be picked up again, that we could trust ourselves to be able to make those decisions and engage, we can start.

More fundamentally, we'd feel that the thing at five is more or less safe because we can end.

We practice mindfully bringing our mind to the momentum of work. It's not that we have bicycle strength brakes, it's that we are like a boat on water. We can practice our endings and as we do so, we improve our beginnings.

I'll end with a quote from a book that I've cited in a recent episode. The, uh, Hagakure book of the Samurai. in the Kamagata area, they have a sort of tiered lunchbox they use for a single day. When flower viewing upon returning. They throw them away, trampling them underfoot.

The end is important in all things.

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The Weekly Wind Down is an exploration of wandering minds, task and time management, and more importantly, how we find calmer focus and meaningful work.