I hope you all had a great summer. We certainly needed that time to get out and ‘live in our hands,’ to make up for all the time we lost due to COVID and lockdowns etc, etc.
As some of you know I took a break from work for my health and that extended to removing myself from social media, from blogging and from just about all forms of ‘work.’ Instead I took the time to enjoy the parks and green spaces around me, joined an art class and went on some beautiful and inspiring hikes and generally allowed my mind and body to do what it needed to do to recuperate and soak up the summer. I literally just meandered through my days, surrendering to my brains innate way of being which was blissful and did its job of restoring my health, both mentally and physically.
There’s something so very healing and necessary about meandering and as ADHD adults, we all can count that as a strength right?
When I wasn’t meandering and absorbed in some light reading, I did read a couple of interesting non-fiction books that touched on this meandering quality I’d like to share with you.
In his book Stolen Focus by Johann Hari he highlights how very necessary this meandering state is for our creativity, even ironically for productivity, but also for our mental and emotional health. This meandering / daydreamy kind of thought pattern has a name. It’s called the brain’s default mode network or DMN ( I prefer to call it day dreaming myself! )
You may also have read about this in Ned Hallowell’s & John Ratey’s latest book, ADHD 2.0. Or maybe you’ve seen it mentioned on Social media.
If I had to sum it up in simple terms that make sense to me, I’d say the DMN is kind of like the Yin to the Yan of focussed, deeper, linear thinking & learning.
The trouble is for ADHD brains, is we often find it super tough to switch from this DMN thinking (or daydreaming quality) to the Yan type of energy needed to say write a blog or follow through on a project or any of the multiple goals we have that need a more linear focus.
One author that explains these two very different styles of thinking and how they work together is Tiago Forte. ( which I also devoured over the summer 🙂 )
In his book ‘Building a Second Brain,‘ he explained this Yin & Yan type of thinking energy and shared a model (I’m showing a similar one below ) that illustrates exactly the two types of our thinking/ energy needed to bring our goals or creative projects to fruition.
The first half on the left is the meandering type they call Divergent thinking (That’s the DMN too, as we just learned) And that’s mostly where my brains been all summer.
The second is called Convergent thinking. It is the more focussed linear or deeper thinking, energy and actions.
Of course as ADHD adults, we can ‘do’ divergent thinking to infinity and beyond! that’s our happy place right? So quick brain break and a shot of dopamine coming.
Let’s pause for a second and soak up the fact that as ADHD adults we’re already innately skilled, (masters even ) of the Divergent meandering needed to begin to make our dreams a reality!
Using the above illustration as a guide, I like to think that we’re already halfway there and so I’d like to give ourselves a pat on the back for our amazingly divergent, creative and meandering brains! 🙂
The second ‘Convergent half’ of this equation is not so easy for us, but it is doable!
What we absolutely will need to make it possible, is some sort of external ‘prosthesis’ to help corral our thinking and focus.
This is where the notion of ‘Scaffolding’ comes in for us. Scaffolding ( in case you are new to the term) simply means any external support structure such as a calender or a filing system etc, anything that we adopt to keep us on track which exists outside of our brains. ( See more great ideas for this in Tiago’s book)
As ADHD adults, we must have these external structures, as they help us stay in that tougher ‘convergent’ space long enough to get our shit done! 🙂
Whether that’s a Body Double, a Community work space, locking your device in a box ( thanks to my client for sharing that with me) or a myriad of other accountability ‘fail safes’ such as personal trainers, a class, a coach, a partner or a group etc.
Without these in place we can be damn sure that our ADHD brains will quite happily stay in the DMN ( Divergent) space for a lifetime! Dreaming, meandering, creating beautifully, but sadly never taking the type of action needed to have those great ideas and longed for dreams to move forward.
Do you have any scaffolding in place to ensure you can capitalize on all that beautiful ADHD dreaming to make your dreams a reality?
Now that September’s here, we’re at the start of a season that naturally lends itself to the more Yan type, or ( convergent ) energy, so, what are your plans for the Fall? Do you have goals you set back in January? Or even new ideas you dreamed up over the Summer that you’d like to progress?
If you don’t currently have any reliable or consistent scaffolding in place, check out these links two of my current offerings, My Body Double Group group and My new ADHD Action & Accountability group both of which give you the accountability piece of your scaffolding, making it more likely for you to stay the course.
I hope you got some value from this topic, I had a lot of fun finally getting back to writing and creating something tangible from my own meandering thoughts and ideas. It’s great to be back and feeling healthy, motivated and ready and for some more convergence 🙂
Please comment below and let me know what your favourite types of scaffolding are to help you with that second type of energy.