SINGULAR FOCUS
Saturday Feb. 24, 2018
Catching up is hard to do, hampered by “if I’d finished that when I started it, I’d not be catching up on it now …”.
Worse, I suppose, would be an empty in-basket – or an empty chair.
Just imagine, nothing to do, nothing to catch up on.
Every day my volume of work – those many different things I do every day [you probably experience this too] require attention and time, so often too many items to allow adequate time for thinking, breathing and deciding. When that happens I tend to do things in a rush. Not all the time, not everything, but enough times and often enough that I notice …
Lately I’ve been finding a remedy. It doesn’t work every time – but it produces interesting results. Of course I won’t do just ONE thing all day, but if I plan my day that way, focused just on that one thing without letting anything else invade my desk, my screen or my frontal lobe, several things happen:
I do better work. I get it done more quickly than expected. Fresh ideas enter my mind. Interruptions are inevitable, but I come back to that first ONE thing until it is done.
At the end of such a day I probably do as much work as if I hadn’t instituted this plan, but it feels like the work is better, the writing is better – and lately I am feeling better.
