Tag: focus

Extra Focus – Jesse J. Anderson #reading

I first came across Jesse J. Anderson’s work in June 2025 via a live-streamed episode of the ‘A Productive Conversation‘ podcast that I was able to view through my membership of Mike Vardy‘s online community The TimeCrafting Trust (this is a link to the specific episode: A Productive Conversation – Episode 625: Jesse J. Anderson Talks About ADHD, Extra Focus, and Finding Flow). It was an interesting and engaging conversation discussing Anderson’s book (Extra Focus: The Quick-Start Guide to Adult ADHD) that, amongst other things, highlighted the idea that whereas most neurotypical people are motivated by importance, people with ADHD tend to have a more interest-based motivational drive. One impact of this is that it is generally assumed that if a task is important, it will get done, and so much of the advice on how to get (more) things done focuses on how to make tasks more important – or at least to seem more important. I guess that for many, perhaps even most, such advice can be useful, but for those battling against the unseen challenges posed by possessing an ‘ADHD-brain’, things are often rather more difficult. Not only do commonly used motivation-boosting tricks not work much of the time, but the fact that they don’t work, and for no apparently good reason, adds a big dollop of frustration and even shame into the mix too.

In the podcast interview, Anderson talked through what he calls the 4 Cs: a simple framework designed to enhance motivation by appealing to the ADHD-brain’s focus on interest. The 4 Cs in the name each stand for a different word that captures an approach that could be used to try to stimulate motivation, namely:

  • CAPTIVATE – making tasks interesting
  • CREATE – using creativity and seeking novelty
  • COMPETE – stimulating interest via competition and challenge
  • COMPLETE – making use of deadlines and ramping up urgency

After viewing the livestream event, I was impressed with the openness and authenticity in the way that Anderson spoke, and so a few weeks later I listened to the audiobook version of the book. It was an interesting listen, but whilst I enjoy listening to audiobooks, I do find it difficult to hold on to the detail of much of what I have listened to, especially as most of my listening takes place while I am walking to and from work. Consequently, my notes from this first pass through the material are rather limited, basically consisting of a restatement of the 4 Cs framework, along with a set of related questions that can be used to try to build motivation towards the completion of tasks when necessary:

  • How can I make the task more interesting for me?
  • How can I approach the task in a different/creative way?
  • How can I add a competitive edge to the task?
  • How can I ensure that I obtain positive (external) feedback on completion of the task?

Apart from this, my notes only reveal one other thing that I was particularly struck by, namely an assertion that the commonly-given productivity advice to ‘Eat the Frog‘, as popularised by the business coach/author Brian Tracey, is not at all effective for many people with ADHD. [The idea behind ‘eat the frog’ is that you should tackle your most difficult, significant, tricky, and as a result high value, task as your first action each day]. Instead, Anderson suggests starting the day with some fun/easy tasks in order to build up what he calls ‘motivation momentum‘. This chimes with my own day-to-day experience, and was perhaps the first time I had come across this way of thinking about my preference for a ‘slow morning’ start, rather than seeing it as being related to having a ‘night owl‘ chronotype (something that I am not convinced I possess to any great extent).

The rather limited nature of my initial notes might suggest that the content of the book did not prove especially interesting. However, I obviously did feel that there was more in Extra Focus that might be useful, not only for me, but to pass on to the considerable number of neurodiverse/ADHD-brained students that I work with in my job as a university lecturer, because in December 2025 I decided to make a second pass through the book, but in print format. Looking at my fairly extensive notes, it’s clear that in this second reading I did a much more thorough job of working through the material…

Anderson starts out with some general thoughts about the challenges of ADHD, noting that calling it an attention deficit is inaccurate, and suggesting instead that it is better viewed as being a dysregulation of attention. He then sets out the 4 Cs approach and suggests that instead of eating the frog first, ADHDers might be better served by eating the ice cream first… something which sounds like a much better idea to me!

The book then moves into a fairly long list of different motivation-enhancing strategies, things like adding action verbs to tasks, altering your environment to make it more stimulating, finding a ‘body double’ to provide some external accountability, gamifying tasks, and racing against the clock. There was not much in this section that stood out to me, but I think this would be a useful section for someone who is at the start of their ADHD-adaptation journey.

The later part of the book has three areas of focus – TIME, MEMORY, and EMOTION – and I think that all three of these sections contain useful content and advice. In particular, the chapter on Emotion, which covers topics such as ‘success amnesia‘ (the tendency to forget/ignore past successes), ‘imposter syndrome‘, ‘rejection sensitivity‘, ‘shame distortion‘, and ‘impulsivity and inhibition‘ might be quite eye-opening for readers who have not previously linked these characteristics or challenges to ownership of an ADHD-brain.

The book ends with encouragement that when you understand how your brain works you can use that knowledge to your advantage, guidance that may well seem obvious to many readers. However, my own experience of ADHD is that it can be very difficult, if not downright impossible at times, to understand how an ADHD-brain is working in any given moment. With this in mind, having a well-written and straightforward guide such as Extra Focus to lead you through consideration of many of the key related topics and ideas, can only be a good thing.

I’d say that of all the books I have read about coping with the challenges of owning an ADHD-brain, Extra Focus is up there in my top two or three. It’s written with the ADHD-brained reader in mind, in simple, plain language and has a clear emphasis on practical implementation throughout. Overall, I think it would be an excellent starting place for anyone new to exploring the challenges posed by an ADHD brain, whether driven by personal need, a desire to better understand or support a friend or family member, or just for general interest.

Now, where’s that tub of ice cream?

The Productivity Diet – Mike Vardy #reading

The Productivity Diet is the latest book written by Mike Vardy. Mike, who is based in Victoria, British Columbia, on the western side of Canada, describes himself as a ‘seasoned productivity expert, writer, coach and podcaster’ (quoting from his own website biography), and it was through the latter, his podcast A Productive Conversation, that I first became aware of his work. I don’t know how I initially stumbled on this podcast but for some years I have been a sucker for consuming content related to productivity (or ‘how we operate’ as I prefer to think of it). At some point, listening to episodes of the podcast led me to signing up for Mike’s email newsletter and then, after he sent out a request for people who felt they had a tendency to get started later in the day to contact him, I ended up chatting with him via Zoom about the productivity challenges that I faced and the approaches to overcoming those challenges that I used. At the end of the call, I politely declined the opportunity to join a coaching course with him (£££!!!) but did sign up as a member of his online community The TimeCrafting Trust. That was in March 2024, and over the last 15 months I have got to know quite a few other members of the community, most of whom are based in North America, and participated in a wide range of online events including monthly Book Club meetings, podcast livestreams, workshops and seasonal planning sessions. I think it’s fair to say that whilst Mike and I have never met in person, I could properly describe him as a friend, albeit of the online variety.

But what of The Productivity Diet itself? Mike’s basic view is that we cannot ‘manage time’ and so, instead, we should focus on managing our attention, in particular taking into account how much energy we have at any moment. To paraphrase the book: Productivity isn’t about managing time. It’s about how we use it, how we relate to it, and how we move within it. Mike argues that we should eschew rigid productivity systems in favour of thinking about productivity as a continuous interaction between Intention, Attention, Reflection and Action. Mike’s approach, which he calls TimeCrafting, involves laying out some broad intentions for our areas of focus, but then navigating the reality of our daily experience with a sense of gentleness and responsiveness to our evolving needs.

The Productivity Diet was the subject of a Kickstarter Campaign that Mike started before I got to know him. I think there were a few hiccups along the way, but the book was launched successfully earlier this year. The launch included Mike making appearances on a number of other productivity-related podcasts, and when he announced that he was going to focus an episode of his own podcast on the book I thought it would be fun to offer my services as a stand-in ‘host’ so that rather than it being Mike Vardy having a productive conversation with himself, the episode had a more normal host-author format. A little to my surprise, and despite the fact that I have pretty much no experience of working in broadcast communications, Mike thought this was a good idea and we went ahead and had a lot of fun recording the episode. You can pick it up here if you’re at all interested: A Productive Conversation Episode 603.

There are three major pillars to TimeCrafting as set out in The Productivity Diet: Time Theming, Attention Paths and Reflection.

Mike is big on the first of these pillars, Time Theming, suggesting that it can be beneficial to designate different kinds of themes to act as guide-rails as you decide, in the moment, exactly what to do next. These themes are time-based, for example, daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal or what are termed ‘horizontal’ themes where you select to focus your attention on a particular type of activity at the same time each day. At an even longer timescale, it is suggested that you adopt an ‘Annual Axiom’ – essentially a very short (e.g. three word) description to guide your overall approach to the year ahead. In the world of TimeCrafting, one might decide to group administrative tasks together to tackle on, say, Thursday, or to designate Friday as a day to consider finance-based activities, Tuesday for ‘creating’ etc. One might decide that the focus for the week ahead is, say, ‘rejuvenation’ or ‘correspondence’, or that the next month is for ‘growing contacts’ etc. A key aspect of Time Theming is that the themes are not meant to be a way to rigidly enforce a particular regime of action, but serve more as beacons to guide you back to an intended path if you move away from it. In addition, it is perfectly fine to do tasks and activities that do not match the current intended theme if there is time and space to do so.

The term ‘Attention Path‘ relates to a factor that will influence what you choose to, or can, focus your attention on at any given moment. The Productivity Diet introduces the acronym TREAT as a way to separate out five different types of attention path. TREAT stands for Time-based, Resource-based, Energy-based, Activity-based and Theme-based. The idea is that when selecting tasks to work on next, one considers the options in relation to each of these attention path types, asking questions like: Can this task be accomplished in the time I now have available? Do I have the resources I need to hand? Do I have the energy for this? Does it make sense to do this alongside some other similar task? Does this fit within my intended theme? I know from my interactions with him, that Mike is a firm believer in designating tasks as being low, medium or high energy so that, for example, when you hit a point in a day where you feel fatigued and might otherwise grind to a complete halt (as we all do…) you can glance at your list of possible tasks and pick one or two low energy tasks to accomplish. In this way, time which might otherwise be lost to the void of the internet (for example) can still result in some useful outcome.

The third pillar of TimeCrafting is Reflection. This is the key to continuous evolution and improvement. By reflecting on your actions, for example by writing in a journal, you can identify adjustments that can be made, obstacles to overcome, approaches that can be reinforced or extended. Without meaningful reflection there is no evidence base to use to help inform the decisions you make about what to do when and how etc., and so everything just unfolds somehow in a rather haphazard manner.

I will admit that in my own day-to-day operations, I have not had a great deal of success in using daily, weekly or monthly themes. I think my work days are too variable and I do not have sufficient control over exactly what needs to be done when, for them to work in a very consistent manner. But I think that having the general approach in mind is still helpful, especially at the longer timescales (‘this week/month I will focus on finishing X’). I have had more success with horizontal theming, but the variability of my days (sometimes I have classes to teach, other days I have a meeting etc) means that my attempts to impose order on my day through horizontal themes is generally most successful during the earlier and later (non-work hours) parts of each day. Similarly, I do consider attention paths to some extent, but I find that once my day is underway I tend to forget my plans and just go with the flow. It doesn’t help that I am not very good at checking in with myself to consider whether I would benefit from re-directing my attention (even setting reminders to do this doesn’t work very well – I just ignore them much of the time!). It’s not that I think the ideas underlying TimeCrafting are not valid, quite the reverse really, but I just seem to revolt against any attempt to constrain or direct my attention even though I would very much like to be able to do so!

I like the general approach of TimeCrafting that is set out in The Productivity Diet. I’ve tried to implement what might be called ‘heavier’ systems – things like time-blocking/time-boxing – and whilst they seem to offer an attractive level of control, I always (and quickly) end up revolting against them as my feelings in the moment take over. TimeCrafting offers a more gentle, sensitive, approach to keeping yourself on track, or at least somewhere close to being on track. To use a travel analogy, TimeCrafting is like having a traditional map, understanding what all of the symbols mean and knowing generally where you want to end up, but allowing yourself flexibility to move around the terrain, informed by the map, in the way that feels most appropriate at the time. This seems to me to be a much better way to travel than to switch on the SatNav and following it blindly to the selected destination, even when the road you have just been instructed to turn down is clearly little more than a rough and ever-narrowing track heading to an almost inevitable dead end and a ton of frustration as you try to turn around or back-up, surrounded by a herd of angry cows. Give me the map and my intuition any day!