Narrowing Focus Leads To Easier Decision Making and Creativity

Let’s talk about narrowing your focus with ADHD. When you face a literal or figurative blank page with space for endless options, how often does your ADHD brain slip into overwhelm, spinning about where to begin? 

If it’s as often as mine, you’re going to love the concept we explore in episode 226 of the I’m Busy Being Awesome podcast. 

Tune in and learn how strategic constraint can give you direction and fuel your creative thinking as you shift into action.

From gift-giving and meal planning to idea generation and problem-solving, we uncover the magic that happens when we narrow our focus and expand our creativity. 

You can listen to the episode above or stream it on your favorite podcasting app here.   

Prefer to read? No problem! Keep scrolling for the entire podcast transcript. 

In Episode #226 You’ll Discover:

• How to shift from overwhelm to action by narrowing your focus
• Why this strategy is so supportive for ADHD brains
• Examples of how to narrow focus in different areas of your life.

Episode #226: Narrowing Focus Leads To Easier Decision Making and Creativity (Transcript) 

Today we’re talking about a powerful way to ignite creativity and start generating ideas any time you’re feeling stuck or overwhelmed…and we’re doing so in a potentially unconventional way. 

This topic was inspired by a conversation I had with a client of mine last week. It’s the first week of November as I record this, and last week we were talking about how her Halloween went. She lives in California, where it’s much more costume-friendly weather than Minnesota, where we got 3 inches of snow on Halloween, so she hosts a big gathering on her driveway with lights and food and all things Halloween for her neighborhood.

She showed me pictures of this unbelievable Halloween costume that an entire class of 7th or 8th graders did together. Apparently, the entire class does a theme each year, and this one knocked it out of the park.

Each person was wearing a giant hot pink box and went as a different Barbie, and the students got to choose their version. So there was Doctor Barbie, Chef Ken, Basketball Barbie, etc.

As I talked about the costume variations with my client, I realized what I loved so much about the idea.

I loved the fact that when you’re given a container in which to work – in this case, a Barbie box – it seems like the creative brain has even more space to play.

That’s what we’re going to talk about today…

The power of constraining our focus or limiting our options in order to create even more options, ideas, and freedom to express yourself on the other side.

It sounds totally counterintuitive – I know – and it may not be true in all situations. But I’ve found it to be quite compelling as I’ve pondered the concept over the last few weeks. I wanted to share these ideas with you in case it’s a useful exercise for you, too. 

As it turns out, this is not just useful for coming up with creative Halloween costume ideas.

Before we talk about the actual strategy, however, let’s explore why it’s impactful. 

Why Narrow Your Focus?

I like the strategy of narrowing focus – especially for the ADHD brain. It helps bypass overwhelm while tapping into our divergent, creative thinking more naturally. Here’s what I mean.

When the world is our creative oyster, and we have everything and more to choose from, but it’s too much. 

• The brain freaks out, and we think we can’t get a handle on anything.
• We spin in overwhelm, indecision, and freeze with too many options. 
• And ADHD paralysis from too much information takes over.

When we limit the countless options with a factor or two, however, the brain has something to hold onto; we support ourselves out of that freeze state, and the brain kicks into high gear. 

By narrowing down the countless options to a manageable few, our brains find the freedom to think expansively, generate innovative ideas, and express ourselves without limitations.

In essence, this approach is counterintuitive, but it’s so powerful in helping us move through the stagnation and the paralysis that comes from too many choices. It doesn’t constrict your creativity – it unleashes it, allowing you to explore new options in your mind. 

Let’s talk about different areas we can put this into practice. 

First, this past weekend I was putting together the Holiday Season Blueprint with all the final details. By the way – the blueprint is on sale NOW at more than half off for $7. This document is so comprehensive – it walks you step by step through the entire holiday season to make sure it’s one to remember. The discount is good until December 15, 2023. But seriously, if you’ve missed that date, don’t let that hold you back. This blueprint is gold. Get it HERE!

Examples Of Narrowing Focus

Here you’ll find a variety of examples of how to narrow your focus so you can make more decisions easier. Less options equals more peace of mind and simplicity.

Gift Giving

One of the things we explore in the blueprint is gift-giving, and I share some different strategies to help you simplify the gift-giving process. 

I know my brain can get REALLY overwhelmed when I think about everything in the world that’s available, and I need to narrow it down to a gift or two. No, thank you. Too much. 

By putting a container around what you’re gifting, it actually allows your brain to drop into creative mode so much more easily. 

Here are some examples of narrowing focus to expand your creativity with gifts:

Create a Theme For Gift Giving

• Gift your favorite books and include a note about why the person will love it.
• Buying multiple gifts for one person? Try this theme to ground your decisions.
  • Something you want
  • Something you need
  • Something you wear
  • Something you read
• Perhaps you have a 3rd grader, and they go to lots of birthday parties throughout the year. Maybe you decide that this year’s theme is puzzles, and they pick out whatever puzzle theme the birthday child would like.

When we narrow our focus, we expand our imagination. 

Idea Generation

I also love this approach for idea generation. The client I mentioned works with small business owners, and we talked about how narrowing in to talk about one unique challenge her small business owners face starts generating SO MANY ideas for social media and blog content.

So for all of you content creators, coaches, and business owners, listen up. Narrow your focus to expand your creativity. 

For example, when I think about podcast topics, if I just think about ADHD generally, my brain freezes. It’s too much. And I actually end up with really bland content that’s not super helpful to anyone.

When I zoom all the way in from… ADHD… to ADHD and scheduling… to ADHD and unpredictable schedules to… ADHD and unpredictable schedules at work and how to handle them, my brain lights up with so many ideas because it opens up so many doors for topics.

• Pressing deadlines
• Dealing with bosses
• Shift work
• Unpredictable personal life that impacts your ability to do your work.

If you are a website designer, what are 5 things your clients could do to create better conversions above the fold on the site?

This tactic applies to so many other areas of work too.

• English teacher: If you’re an English teacher and working on writing skills with your students, what are five different ways you could zoom in and help your students practice writing from multiple points of view? 
• If you’re in HR: and trying to reduce the turnover rate of a particular team, when you think about onboarding specifically, what are 3 new things you could try to start supporting those team members from the very beginning of working with you?

See how zooming in on one smaller topic within the overarching goal can generate so many more ideas?

Again, when we constrain our focus, we open up so many new avenues for creativity.

Problem Solving

Let’s think about problem-solving. This is one that I explore with my clients each round in my small group program, We’re Busy Being Awesome. I always tell them – the more specific and small the problem – the better.

We often think these little problems aren’t worth solving, and we really need to solve for the big issues like procrastination or planning or not following through on things that don’t have outer accountability.

However the truth is, when we have such a big problem, we freeze up and can’t think of the many different nuanced ways to solve for it. There are TOO MANY options.

When we instead think to ourselves, “I’m having a hard time with task initiation, especially with my work emails at the start of the week after two days off and a backlog that’s piled up,” that’s when we can really dig in, and start working through and troubleshooting.

This is when we can look at different approaches, consider what’s getting in the way, uncover what we think about these emails, and how we might release some of the resistance and get started.

Or, if you’re thinking, I just need to get better at routines. Okay, great! That’s a fantastic place to start.

We want to narrow our focus to identify the specific routine, and what’s actually going on so we can start brainstorming supports and ways, we might approach what’s happening.

• Is it about getting to bed earlier?
• Is it about remembering to take your medication in the morning?
• Is it about responding to text messages each day?
• Is it about putting your clothes in the hamper instead of on the floor? 

What is the specific habit or routine you want to lock in – when you clarify that and narrow focus, then we can lean into our divergent thinking and start taking action.

Meal Ideas

For myself, I’ve been thinking about this with meal ideas. I’m in a rut and completely uninterested in any type of cooking, so I just keep returning to the same 5-6 foods over and over.

I want to get a little more variety than that, but when I think about all the options out there, I freeze.

So I’ve been asking myself:

• What if I only made recipes that you eat in a bowl this week? Soups, rice bowls, salads…
• Or what if I chose one source of protein and cooked up a bunch on the weekend, and then I picked my meals to go around that.
  • So if I made chicken, maybe we have it as regular chicken on Sunday, and then the rest of the week we have chicken burrito bowls, chicken stiryfry, some kind of salad with chicken, chicken quesadillas, and chicken noodle soup.

In a meta way, this episode is an exercise in the strategy itself. We have one constrained topic – focus on only one thing to expand your creative thinking – and then I’m sharing a bunch of different ways we can use this technique.

I’m telling you, it’s super effective everywhere. 

Narrowing Your Focus: Next Steps

I’d love to hear where you might use it and where it’s working for you.

Pop over to instagram and let me know. I’m @imbusybeingawesome. You can send me a DM or post it on any of posts related to this episode. I can’t wait to hear what’s working for you. If I hear from enough people, maybe we could do an episode sharing different tips and hacks that put this concept to use. That would be super fun!