I’ve spoken to many people who are having trouble focusing after last week’s election.  A Trump victory, with a multi-month transition process before he actually takes office, provides plenty of mental fodder for imagining disaster scenarios.  Certainly on environmental issues, with a compliant congress, there’s virtually no limit to what he can do to unravel environmental protections.

But fear not — all that mind-wandering may actually be good for you, as a recent UC Berkeley/University of British Columbia study found:

“Everyone’s mind has a natural ebb and flow of thought, but our framework reconceptualizes disorders like ADHD, depression and anxiety as extensions of that normal variation in thinking,” said [study co-author and postdoctoral scholar Zachary] Irving. “This framework suggests, in a sense, that we all have someone with anxiety and ADHD in our minds. The anxious mind helps us focus on what’s personally important; the ADHD mind allows us to think freely and creatively.”

In the months and years to come, we will likely need that creative thinking as we figure out how to protect the environment and stabilize planetary temperatures in the face of this new political order.