I cannot focus. I have too many pressing things to do: plant Apricot Beauty tulip bulbs and grape hyacinths around my new skyline honey locust tree, pretty up the chat capability for the podcast jam website, review a load of database design docs for a client, hire an afterschool nanny so I don’t turn into a pumpkin every day at three o’clock, refactor and rebrand my blogging, switch to TextMate from emacs, finish another glass of 2004 Tenuta La Volta Cabutto Dolcetto D’Alba.
At least there’s one thing on that list I’ll get done. My new favorite grape is dolcetto. Fruity and drinkable but with bitterness and leather–isn’t that how life ought to be? It almost makes it worth the migraine I’ll certainly suffer from its ingestion tomorrow. Fruit and leather and migraines, that’s what life is made of.
I like Michael Buffington’s ideas for getting into flow. But sometimes in the grip of wanting to do more, more, more, I ask myself, “am I here to be productive, or am I here to live?” In twenty years, my honey locust might be fifty feet tall, without having followed any particular goal achievement scheme. Might I be able to do the same?
What do you do, dear reader, when you can’t concentrate enough to make any headway on your to do list?
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I knit. Unless knitting is on the to do list, and then it gets tricky. Video games can eat up the whole day. A short walk is good. I used to go weed the garden for a bit, when I had one.
Audrey - that’s a good thought–doing something that is engaging and different, but not on the to do list. I started painting with acrylics over the summer but felt too busy to keep it up. Maybe I need to try that again.
If I’m smart, I turn off the computer or at least, close email. It’s amazing how much I can get done when I’m offline. But I’m with you… I question my insatiable need to always be productive and also, to produce. I like seeing lists of items with checkmarks beside them. It’s feels like a disease sometimes!
I read weblogs. Duh.
Oh, you meant what do I do to *start* making headway…
Hmm. I’ll let you know if I ever come up with anything more effective than just calling it a day and getting up the next morning.
Exercise!
Running, martial arts, cycling, whatever. Sometimes with music, sometimes not.
And just like the grape, you’ll feel it in the morning
ah you are a wine person as well… there is a lovely little argentinian grape called torrontes,
Good suggestions. I should probably have a blog-free, email-free period during each day. And get out and exercise, that’s something that got lost in the shuffle of my schedule this September.
James, I will have to try torrontes; nice that it’s a white meaning much lower migraine risk.
take the dogs out into the woods for a long walk…I do my best thinking when I’m not trying and untethered.
I used to buy domain names. That was fun, but expensive. Now I walk the dogs.
Walking the dogs–that’s a great idea, although in my case, it’d be “dog” since we only have one. I really ought to get outside more. I think part of my problem right now is the change of seasons and shortening daylight.
If I need to make sure I’m out the door at a certain time: set the timer on the oven for ten to fifteen minutes before time to leave. It’s loud and annoying, and it dings for two full minutes, so I pretty much have to get out of this chair to turn it off — then I can collect meeting materials or Gatorade/water, depending whether I’m headed for business or tennis.
If I’m avoiding starting a project, I quit out of Safari and tell myself I’m just going to look at the email or the file or whatever that is the first step. Then, once the right windows are open, it’s as easy to start messing with whatever’s on the screen as it was a minute before to keep reading blogs or investigating Web 2.0 tools.
BTW — I’ve been reading about the Office 2.0 speaker-panel diversity issue. By the same token, have you noticed how graphically homogeneous a lot of the Web 2.0 brand identities/site designs/app interfaces seem to have become? It’s all very clean, very pretty — made up, actually, of my favorite typefaces, colors, graphic tricks — but I think I’ve seen it about a hundred times too many.
Mary, yes, taking one small step towards working on something productive sometimes creates enough momentum to get me going. I also use a timer, but in a slightly different way–I’ll set it for ten minutes and tell myself I have to work on the dreaded task for that long. Once I finish that ten minute increment, I’ll take a ten minute break. Then back on the clock.
I have noticed a sameness in the look of Web 2.0 brand identities. Ten years from now we might look back at their logos and think they look really dated. Also, it will be interesting to see how many Web 2.0 services survive.
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