chaos

This is a chaos spiral. It's where my ideas start.

Unstructured, but not random.

I pull threads — sometimes loosely affiliated, other times at complete tangents. Ideas collide, ideas merge, they spawn new ideas. I'll take two or three threads, juggle with them, and maybe their quantum counterparts come and join the party.

There is no evaluation during the spiral. I ride the currents. Ideas swirl into my orbit and are plucked from the ether for closer inspection. What's alive? Pull on that thread. I just see where it takes me. I surrender to the momentum. The process becomes the output.

I have no idea where I'm going to end up. Things connect together that shouldn't connect. The spiral finds things you couldn't have planned to find. When I land, I'm in a new place. I have a new idea. And I go and build it.

It's my ADHD superpower. The hyperfocus tornado.

The chaos spiral is the shipping mechanism, not the obstacle.

I usually start the day with a chaos spiral. It removes any friction I have with what to write about, because I simply don't know what that will be until I land. I just trust the process and build something off the back of it. Sometimes I write. Sometimes I build an app. I don't know, and frankly I don't want to know — because if I did, I probably wouldn't do it. Knowing things in advance causes nope outs.

My chaos spiral, paradoxically, keeps my day grounded. It's the exact opposite of a task manager and a to-do list. Those tools help some people stay on track — for my ADHD mind, they're kryptonite. I enjoy putting tasks in, but then looking at a full page causes overload. Looking at one task reminds me of all the others hidden behind it.

I have found salvation through shipping my products downstream of chaos.

Still figuring it out. You?