38. An Honor Guide

When we finally finish a project yet still feel behind, it is rarely about the checklist and almost always about our relationship with time, memory, and trust. In this episode of Rhythms of Focus, we explore how wandering minds and ADHD can turn “done” into “never enough,” and how we can gently reshape that story using an Honor Guide rather than another rigid system. We discover how time blindness, working memory limits, and fragile self-trust quietly fuel our endless to-do lists, and how a visit-based approach can restore a calmer rhythm to our days. We also walk through the three core parts of the Honor Guide—the Engaged, the Horizon, and the Steady—so we can build a meeting ground between our past, present, and future selves. - We clarify why finishing a project does not settle our nervous system and how to respond with agency instead of pressure. - We learn how to design an Honor Guide that protects our attention while still honoring our desires and energy. - We practice shifting from force and deadlines to gentle, daily visits that create sustainable momentum. This episode also features an original piano composition, “Spoken Speaking Spirit,” as a kind of emotional journaling and time-travel through music. If this resonates, we invite you to subscribe and visit rhythmsoffocus.com so we can keep cultivating these rhythms of focus together. ## Hashtags #ADHD #WanderingMinds #MindfulProductivity #HonorGuide #TimeBlindness #WorkingMemory #CreativeFocus #NeurodivergentFriendly #PianoMusic #RhythmsOfFocus Transcript> Whew. Finally finished a project. I can't believe it. I finished a project. Time to celebrate. Wait, there's the, oh, I gotta do that one thing first. Well, what about, what about that other thing? Oh my goodness, there, there's zillions of things I still need to do. How does anyone do anything?### Big Rocks, Hyper-Scheduling, and Endless To‑Do ListsOrganizing the day is not a simple matter. Some suggest setting up three "big rocks", these three large items that you wanna make sure you deal with today. Otherwise, all the little things take over, it can be a highly effective approach.Others suggest what's called hyper scheduling. It's a method of estimating a time for everything you need or want to do and scheduling every minute on your calendar. It's kind of similar to using a budget for money, but here with seconds, minutes, and hours.Others create long lists, infinitely long lists. They spend the day scanning that list, searching for something simultaneously easy, important within their energy levels and interest. And these things kind of pile up until the lists, toxicity levels break, and we start a new list.Well, any of these have their utility, but sometimes they also have their troubles. Even the simple three big rocks. In a recent episode of the rhythms of Focus, I described, uh, four limits to productivity, namely time, working, memory, agency, and trust.### Time Blindness, Working Memory, Agency, and TrustWandering minds in particular struggle with all of these. So-called Time Blindness, a constriction of working memory, an exhaustion of an injury to agency in which we say I don't wanna, and a lack of trust between the past, present, and future selves, such that sending messages between them is rife with strife.The waves of focus methodology includes a number of tools to help manage, and today, rather than go into so much of the, philosophical underpinnings of it. I just wanna describe what are the rudiments of what I call an honor guide.Introducing the Honor Guide – A Meeting Ground for Your SelvesThe honor guide is a meeting ground between the past, present, and future selves. It has a fairly simple structure, but building it over time is not so simple as it involves the development of trust with oneself.But, what is the overall structure? Well, three main parts. ### The Engaged List – Visits Instead of DeadlinesOne  is a set of things that we're working on. These are things that we're paying daily visits to. If you'd like to know what a visit is, consider listening to episode four. I like to keep this number of things that I'm visiting daily between one and three, and doing so respects my sense of time and agency. I call this list the engaged. It's probably the most parallel to that idea of three big rocks, but again, I like to look at these things as visits rather than milestones I have to achieve in a day.### The Horizon List – Protecting Working Memory and Reducing OverwhelmSecondly, there's a set of things that I'd like to get to.They're waiting for me to get through something in the engaged, maybe something I dispose of, move along, complete whatever it is it's waiting for, its turn to be engaged. I like to keep this number to about five or less. Doing so respects my working memory.I call this set the horizon,### The SteadyThirdly, as I work things into my days, things that maybe they're a project that's now only being maintained. Exercise, for example. I have a sense that I know how to go about it. I've already done the work of putting it into my daily routines.These are things that no longer have such a strong emotional valence anymore.And that's it.I have a way of setting these up in a template for me on paper and a way to do this in my task manager. The one I use is OmniFocus. So you can use any one really. ### Simple on Paper, Deep in Practice, Powerful Benefitsit seems simple and it is simple, but there is a practice to it.And if you do start to practice it, you might start noticing a few things. , It can be the central hub for attention, this way of thinking through the day. It also gives us a finish line for the day. It orchestrates our visits across time, allowing us a stronger sense of being able to take on larger projects, even complete them. And start creating the rhythms of our focus, figuring out which ones compliment us, where, start having a better sense of what we can and cannot take on. Now, being able to say no where we need to.We can develop things over time and even see that development. There's less of a need to push ourselves. We can even shift away from deadlines as the pressure that would move us forward and instead we look towards things we'd like to get to do. You create this meeting ground between past, present, and future selves where you can kind of create this trust over time.Anyway, I think it's a pretty dandy tool and, uh, pretty proud of having developed it. And you know, if you try it out, love to hear how it goes for you.  ### Music as Journaling and Time Travel - "Spoken Speaking Spirit" There are often tough times in life. I don't think anyone race, religion, money, whatever is spared of some degree of suffering somewhere in their lives. Now, one of those, let's call it extended moments in my own life, I'd written the following piece, originating some decades ago. But as with all of these pieces, they evolve in time.I remember the struggle, but the stories of our past can shift and shape over time. We can affect our perspectives, our perceptions of the past. I don't mean we have some direct conscious way of rewriting the past, but something does seem to happen whenever it is that we observe it.And music to me is, uh, something of a journalling, I suppose.The following piece is called Spoken Speaking Spirit, and I hope you enjoy it.   Mentioned in this episode:Waves of Focus YouTube SeriesLook out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw