Trying Harder Could Be Sabotaging Your Focus
A Galley Rule I Keep Forgetting
The other day I blurted out, “Sometimes I love my brain, but sometimes I hate my brain.”
I’d been staring at the same paragraph for too long, and I could feel myself getting agitated.
My father-in-law watched me spiral for a minute and then said, “When you stay frustrated, you’re robbing your brain of time. You’re not giving it what it needs to sort out the solution. Take a break. Let it catch up.”
When he said that, I stopped what I was doing and listened intently, because what he said made complete sense and described something I’ve been dealing with for as long as I can remember.
For me, this is the ADHD version of getting stuck. You lock onto the problem, and instead of making progress, you start grinding. Same sentence. Same thought. Same mistake. Over and over. It feels like effort. It’s actually a loop.
The Part of My Brain That Works in the Shower
Here’s what I learned when I went looking for the “why.”
There’s a difference between the part of your brain that’s good at focused effort, and the part that solves things in the background when you’re walking, showering, or loading the dishwasher.
That’s the part of my brain that shows up when I stop trying to choke the solution out of the page.
And frustration is the accelerant. Once I’m keyed up, my thinking gets narrow. My patience drops. Everything feels personal. The more I push, the hotter it gets.
The View From the Galley
This is the best metaphor I can think of:
“My brain is like a small yacht galley during a 10-person dinner service. If I drop a tray of appetizers, I can’t just keep screaming at the stove to cook faster. I have to step out of the kitchen for sixty seconds, breathe, and reset the line, or the whole service is going into the weeds.”
So now I’m treating “stepping away” as part of the work, not a failure of discipline.
HOW I RESET THE LINE
Here’s what I’m trying.
Stop talking about the problem.
Explaining it to someone else feels good at first, but then it’s like I just re-loaded the frustration back into my head.
Change my scenery.
I stand up and change rooms, or better yet, I go outside for a minute. ADHD is weirdly attached to context. If I stay in the same seat, I stay in the same loop.
Do something physical.
Not a self-care ritual. Just a reset.
Water my husband’s plant (it was starting to die, oops). Grab a snack. Ideally not sugar. Realistically, we’ll see. Touch something cold like the countertop. Notice the texture of Chase’s leash in my hand.
Anything that moves my attention out of my head and back into the room.
Half the time, when I come back, the “solution” isn’t some genius breakthrough. It’s just obvious again. I can see the next sentence. I can see the next step. The line has reset.
I’m not an expert. I’m just paying attention and writing it down, like a recipe I don’t want to forget.
And like cooking, the moment you get tense and start forcing it, things usually get worse.
Sometimes the ‘try harder’ move is exactly what sinks the service. Stepping out of the galley for a minute is what saves it.
-R. Michael
I’m looking for more reliable ideas that will help me pull me out of my spiral. If you have any, I would love to hear them. I have a feeling I’m not the only one.