I’ve spent years trying to name the way creative people hold multiple ideas at once.
Not distraction.
Not ADD
Not lack of focus.
Not an inability to finish what we start.
Something else entirely.
I’ve called it Creative ADD.
Or Constellation Thinking.
Sometimes Strategic Wandering fits better.
And on my most entrepreneurial days, it feels like Entrepreneurial Multithreading.
(I’m still workshopping it.)
But recently, I realized the problem wasn’t the name. It was the frame.
For years, I measured my creativity against a model that was never built for it, one neat task, one clear path, one finish line at a time. And by that standard, having many projects in motion at once can look like chaos.
But creativity doesn’t move in straight lines and ideas don’t arrive in order. They arrive in clusters, connected by curiosity, memory, momentum, and meaning. One project sparks another, which sparks three more. A half-finished idea quietly informs the next. Over time, the shape reveals itself, not all at once, but with perspective.
That’s not distraction.
That’s how creative minds work.
There’s this idea that productivity looks like one neat task list, checked off in order. One project at a time. Clean lines. Clear lanes.
That model doesn’t work for me. (Or for most of the entrepreneurs I know.)
The creative or entrepreneurial brain doesn’t move in straight lines, it moves in connections. I might be writing one thing, but it unlocks an idea for something else. I might be deep in research, but suddenly I see a visual, or a story, or a detail that needs to be brought forward.
Momentum doesn’t always come from narrowing focus. Often it comes from letting multiple threads exist at once; trusting that they’ll weave together perfectly.
The week between Christmas and New Year is my favorite kind of limbo. The world slows down. Expectations soften. Time stretches just enough to breathe.
This year, I’m using it the way I always intend to, but rarely manage to during the rest of the year: to catch up on creative endeavors that have been quietly waiting their turn.
Like:
Finishing the Christmas stockings I was knitting for my family
Yes, after Christmas. And honestly? That feels exactly right. Handmade things don’t follow retail calendars. They follow care, patience, and the rhythm of real life.
Making a photo journal from the trip my sister and I took with our mother to Ireland this year
Thousands of photos deserve more than a digital folder. They deserve to be held, reflected on, and shaped into a story we can return to.
Writing a mother’s journal for my three daughters
A place to capture memories, recipes, thoughts, lessons, and love. The things I don’t want to trust to memory alone.
Catching up on blog writing
Because writing is how I make sense of everything else.
None of these projects are “urgent.” But, all of them are deeply important.