The Reverse Rumba: A Timer Trick for When You Can’t Force Yourself to Focus

Timers are usually one of the best tools an ADHD brain has. They keep you moving, they stop you from losing track of time, and they feed that craving for urgency that keeps you going. But there’s a flip side: when a task actually needs sustained focus — not quick hits — that same constant ticking clock can leave you feeling jittery and unable to settle in. Worse, it can quietly train you to defer anything that takes real concentration, pushing it down the road again and again until you realize the big stuff never gets touched at all.

So here’s a different way to use a timer — one built specifically for stretching your attention span instead of just racing it. I’m calling it the Reverse Rumba.

Why “Reverse”?

If you’ve ever watched Dancing with the Stars, you know the rumba has a rhythm: slow, slow, quick, quick, slow. Our brains crave urgency, not a slow build, so we’re flipping the pattern entirely: quick, quick, slow, slow, quick — five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes, twenty minutes, five minutes. One hour total.

All you need is a timer and something to jot notes on — a pad of Post-its or your phone’s notes app both work fine. Physical writing tends to help some brains more, so use whichever actually gets used.

You don’t need the full hour in one sitting if that’s not realistic, but if you can carve one out — say, the window between dropping kids at preschool and picking them back up — this is a great way to fill it.

The Five Steps

Quick #1 — 5 minutes: Brainstorm your lists. Set a five-minute timer and jot down two kinds of things. First, quick, brainless tasks that would make life a little nicer if you just got them moving — starting a load of laundry, making the bed, loading or unloading the dishwasher. Second, the tasks you’ve been avoiding because they feel big, complicated, or hard to concentrate on — a phone call to the insurance company, an email that actually requires real thought, sorting through that donation box you’ve been stepping around for weeks. Don’t filter or judge either list. Just get it all out of your head and onto paper.

Quick #2 — 10 minutes: Move fast on the easy stuff. Set a ten-minute timer and rush through as many of those brainless tasks as you can. Get the laundry going, make the bed, clear the kitchen counter into the sink even if you’re not washing anything yet. The point isn’t to finish everything — it’s to get your body in motion and rack up some fast wins.

Slow #1 — 20 minutes: Start the hard thing. This is the part that’ll feel like an eternity, and that’s expected. Set a 20-minute timer, pick one item off your “avoiding it” list, and just start — no pressure to finish. If the task is calling the insurance company, that might mean simply finding your insurance card, gathering the bill, and figuring out what information you’ll need before you even dial. If the timer goes off before you’re done, that’s completely fine. You’ve broken the seal on something that was stuck.

Slow #2 — 20 minutes: Keep going or move to the next thing. If you’re in a groove, reset the timer and keep working the same task through to completion. If you finish early, glance at your list and start the next slow task — maybe scheduling a doctor’s appointment, pulling out calendars and phone numbers. Either way, by the end of this block you’ll have pushed further into something you normally avoid than you probably expected.

Quick #3 — 5 minutes: Leave yourself a note. This last stretch is where the Post-it really earns its keep. Write down exactly where you left off and what the next step is. Slow, effortful tasks rarely wrap up neatly on the first try — you get put on hold, someone needs to call you back, you realize you need one more piece of information. Whatever state you’re in when the timer goes off, capture it. That note means the next time you sit down to tackle it, you’re picking up exactly where you left off instead of starting cold all over again.

When that final timer goes off, the hour’s done. Go do whatever’s next on your day. Or, if it felt productive, reset and run the whole cycle again.

A Real Example: The Kitchen Cabinets

Take something like wiping down all the kitchen cabinets. In my head, that’s a three-to-four-hour job — realistically it probably isn’t, but that’s what my brain insists — so I talk myself out of ever starting. I’d need the cleaning solution mixed, the step stool out for the tall cabinets, maybe dust them first before wiping.

Instead, the Reverse Rumba approach says: commit to 20 minutes and see how far you get. If you’re on a roll, do a second 20 minutes. If you have to stop, leave yourself a literal note stuck to the inside of a cabinet door — stopped here — so you know exactly where to pick up next time, working the same direction around the kitchen rather than second-guessing which ones are actually done.

Why This Works

The quick bursts at the start and end keep your body moving and your brain fed with the urgency it wants. The slow blocks in the middle force just enough sustained focus to make real progress on the tasks that quick timers alone would never touch — and the note at the end means none of that progress gets lost the next time you need to come back to it.

Give it a try: 5, 10, 20, 20, 5. I’d genuinely love to hear how it goes for you — email me at joy@joylovinghome.com. I’m slow to reply, but I do read every one. You can also join the free community at bit.ly/joylovinghomecommunity, or check out the $10/month membership with weekly Tackle It Tuesday accountability at joylovinghome.com/membership.

Continue to choose joy.