Need a lunchtime challenge? Try writing a post “top-of-mind” style.
Here is mine entry:
Topic: How to focus at work.
Step 1: Find one thing to focus on.
If you have gotten to the point in your workday where you are fighting an uphill battle with your motivation, then there is no point in actually believing that the “To Do List” you put together is going to be accomplished. So screw being a hero, find one thing you can get done before quitting time and focus all your Chi on getting just that done.
And if you don’t finish before quitting time, don’t worry about it, the idea is to focus on one thing, not the 12 things you wrote down.
Step2: Time IS your friend.
Everyone says this when they are bored at work: “When will this day end?!” and everyone says this when they have too much to do before the day ends: “There just isn’t enough time in the day!!”
If you believe that time is a constant then you are more than likely to feel that the perception of time is not. That’s why when you are finding it impossible to focus at work, you allow yourself to forget that 60mins still equals 1-hour.
To fulfill this step is easy. Take off the watch, set your notifications to “not” vibrate and turn over the iPhone (or insert your cellphone here), cover the clock on your desktop with your minimized iTunes application after you have fired up genius and don’t look up at the wall clock in your office. By the way, if your office still has a wall clock look around and make sure you are not working in the 50s or 60s, your lack of focus maybe coming from a more complicated situation than my words can help you with.
In any event, this step is about removing time from the equation. If you are not thinking about it and focusing on just one thing, before you know it, it’ll be time to leave. And there is no better feeling than being pleasantly surprised by quitting time than being horrified because if you didn’t get those TPS reports emailed out to people who wont even look at them till sometime mid-day tomorrow.
Step 3: No matter what you think, the sun will rise in the morning.
You have gone through steps 1 and 2 and you are saying to yourself: “why in the hell did I read this, I could have been daydreaming for 20mins and probably would have had the same results?!”
TOO LATE 🙂
Now that you are here, take a moment and think about your job. If you didn’t accomplish one thing today what will honestly happen? Quitting time is going to come whether you finish or not, other people in the office are going to go home to their families or kick it with their homies. You deserve that option too. You have already proven yourself as a hard worker and a dependable person to have around (if you haven’t done this yet, disregard this entire post, you are sooooo screwed right now, get to work!). Not being able to focus is as natural as passing gas. Unless passing gas makes you unable to focus, in which case you should call your doctor.
What I am getting at is it’s not the end of world if you have an off day. Even if you were able to focus and you got it all done, by tomorrow there will be more and the day after that and the day after that. So I say go home, go kick it, go recharge.
I wrote this post in about an hour and a half because I couldn’t focus on anything today. I have a conference call and a lot of drawing to do before the day ends but all that drawing is not going to happen and if my attendance on the conference call was optional, I would be ditching that to. So I’m focused on being ready for the call, I am going to use the time between now and then to read over the materials for the call and since the call is at 3:40pm (why 3:40pm, I have no freakin’ idea), I am not going to promise to get anything out till sometime tomorrow. Steps 1, 2 and 3, done!
Enjoy,
DjD
DjD. 