Will work for attention (photo by Stephen Poff)

We’re all easily distracted. I know I am. Seems like everybody I know has multiple irons in the fire. A lot of our various projects may overlap, and everything cries out for attention. But what happens when many things really do warrant your attention? What ends up happening is you try to pay attention to multiple things at once, and not doing a very good job of it, as neither thing will get the amount of attention required to keep it running efficiently and smoothly.

It’s nothing revolutionary, but I think the trick is to only try to focus on ONE thing at a time. Not two, not three, not five. Just one. If something pops into your head that’s unrelated to whatever you’re working on at the moment, make a note of it, capturing it in such a way that you can review it appropriately later at a specified review time. Make that note quickly so you can stay on task.

This is a problem I see all too often in the workplace: our attention is pulled a million directions, and projects and relationships suffer.

That’s right. Don’t forget your attention to your relationships with people: if you give are distracted when someone is talking to you, that person is likely to come to the conclusion that you don’t value their time or what they have to say. If someone ignores me repeatedly, or disregards me or interrupts me, am I going to think they care about what I have to say? Probably not. In return, I’m probably less likely to pay much attention to them. It’s reciprocal.

Remember: until you respect people’s time and attention, you’re not likely to earn much respect — except by bullying. And that’s not “real” respect.

How have you dealt with harnessing your own time and attention to better focus on important projects and — perhaps more importantly — relationships? And what if you were the person being ignored? How did you deal with that? Share over in the forums.

Along the journey of life, it is good from time to time to stop, and take inventory of where we are. When we do this, we want to do our best to separate ourselves from the “treadmill”, so to speak, and try to take an outside observer’s view of ourselves.

I am not talking about a weekly review. I am talking about something we should do once or twice a year.

I am talking about asking ourselves objectively…

1. Are we on track with our goals?
2. Are we living in tune with those things that we value most?
3. What are we doing that can distract us from achieving our goals?

That having been said, this post is as much to me…as it is any other reader.

Though I have not taken a sabbatical or had a prolonged time of reflection, I have recently been pondering these questions and others to try to calibrate my own compass.

Change is not easy. Sometimes, the need for change can lead to a pattern of procrastination and self rejection. The truth is, however, that if we want our lives to be differnt…it is up to us to make it happen.

I was inspired the other day when I read a quote from Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

In developing our own self-awareness, many of us discover ineffective scripts, deeply embedded habits that are totally unworthy of us, totally incongruent with the things we really value in life. We are responsible to use our imagination and creativity to write new ones that are more effective, more congruent with our deepest values and with the correct principles that give our values meaning.

So I look at myself and recognize there there are some scripts that I need to rewrite…some things I need to do differently.

So how do I plan to approach this?

1. I need to review my goals and make adjustments where necessary
2. I need to evaluate those things that consume my time, and test them against the things I value
3. I need to work to determine what things create extra “noise” in my life and steal my focus
4. I need to then draw up a plan to eliminate those things that are not consistent with my goals
5. Most importantly…execute the plan

What kinds of things do you do to help you eliminate ineffective habits?

Let’s talk about it here.

I gotta say, carving out time to pursue creative efforts is tough. Probably because art is not justifiable in terms of actual “usefulness,” unless you’re making something like furniture. I’d say art is one of the least pragmatic of disciplines simply because there’s not much perceived utility, whereas something like plumbing is seen as more useful. Which is understandable to a degree. A toilet that flushes itself every 5 minutes is more annoying than blank walls.

Art is really hard to quantify and qualify. (It’s really hard to price for this reason. It also explains why art is so expensive, since so much time goes into making it. Sadly, a lot of artists are making less than minimum wage on their work.) I can argue that creative endeavors go beyond ordinary utility or usefulness since they’re centered around a different kind of Value that is indeed difficult to quantify. You can’t deny the importance of art. Who would want to live in a world without music, art, or good food? It wouldn’t be worth much.

I think it’s this un-quantifiable-ness that makes it so hard to justify putting time aside to do creative work, just as it’s hard to sometimes justify taking time off. If you take a fishing trip, you’re not getting any work done, are you? But you come back refreshed, right? All too often, though, we wait until we’ve burned out before we do anything about it. That’s been my experience, at least.

So, setting time aside to work on my art is something I’ve personally struggled with for years. Since graduating from college in 2001 I’ve had difficulty setting time aside for doing art, although it’s the thing I want to do most. (Part of it is having a proper place to do it, but then again maybe I don’t want to do it badly enough?)

A few days ago, Nathan blogged about how he gets burned out he doesn’t take enough time away from “work.” While art isn’t necessarily a leisure activity, it’s just as necessary for people with that sort of drive. (Art is actually kind of anxiety-inducing, but it satisfies a sort of OCD desire to resolve an idea on canvas, in stone, or in music. That resolution in itself is very satisfying.)

I think the real solution is to set time aside for doing those creative things and sticking to it. I read a really great post recently that introduced me to this idea over at the Fine Art Views blog, where Jeffery Sparks talked about an artist who set aside time each evening to work on his art and get ready for his studio day, which was Saturday since he worked a day job during the week. I’ve attempted to do this, but I haven’t had any success due to all my current responsibilities at home. Then there are a number of distractions. When I was a bachelor, it was TV: reruns on Nick-at-Nite and Sci-Fi channel. Then as a newlywed it was just getting used to sharing a house with somebody and keeping things running, and now as a brand-new parent, it’s keeping the baby fed and the wife happy and the bills paid on time.

Like Nathan, I’m curious to know how you’ve conquered this, and if you’ve actually scheduled time to do your creative stuff. How did you make it work? Sound off in the forums.

I’m sure I’ve said this before, but some days are better than others.  Thursday was definitely an “other” sort of day.  I work in IT, and last night I was on call.  A customer in India had trouble with their server, and I ended up baby sitting it most of the night.  Then I had to go into work at my regular time anyway, and that made for a long, “other” sort of day.

Since I was being massively unproductive anyway, I started thinking about the times when I was unproductive while at the office.  Was there a pattern?  Was I just tired?  Bored?  Thinking about golfing?  I decided to take a few minutes and identify my “other” days on a calendar – could I correlate those days to specific events (like being up all night helping a customer)?

Sadly, no.  There was no obvious pattern.  However, the exercise of looking for a pattern helped me to discover my real problem: Sometimes when I am “at work”, I just don’t feel like working!  I know there are tasks to do, I have my prioritized list (with real tasks and alternate, “fun” tasks for when I can’t handle the real ones), but I’m just not in the mood to do any of them.  Instead, I end up puttering around the web, or organizing my email folders, or water-cooler chatting with people, or some other nonsense that has little to do with what they pay me for.

Then, in my sleep-deprived delirium, I had an epiphany: It is more valuable to have an employee at work when they are going to be productive than have them take up space when they are unproductive.  An unfocused, unproductive employee is a distraction to the people around them.  They should go do something else, and come back when they are ready to focus on their real, work-related tasks.  I, for one, want to be “actually working when I work”.

Obviously you can’t let people just come and go as they please – there has to be some “reasonableness” test applied.  It would be easy for an unscrupulous person to take advantage of such a policy.  But in an organization of like-minded staffers, is it possible to say “we have some core work hours – you should be available during them. Otherwise, please get your tasks done by the deadlines, working when you can focus on those tasks”?  Or is this just too Utopian a concept for a typical corporate environment?  Let’s discuss it in the forums!

Last Saturday while waiting for lunch at the local Sonic Drive-In, I did a tiny bit of journaling about something that was on my mind at the moment. For whatever reason, I was thinking about the concept of value and what it means in terms of my day-to-day actions and activities. I suppose it arose out of my having just completed my normal Saturday morning routine, which consists of taking a trunk-load of garbage to the Cheatham County dump and filling up my car with gas for the week. Sometimes all these routines and chores just make me feel like I’m playing Whac-A-Mole: as soon as one chore is completed, there’s another one to be marked off in it’s place. Soon enough, the same chore comes back. But to what end? You know how it is: you have to clean the house again, do the laundry, mow the lawn, pay taxes, get a haircut, go grocery shopping, go to the gym, pay the bills, etc.

My point is not to bemoan the repetitive nature of these tasks, since many can be automated or outsourced (for a fee, of course) but I want to focus on whether any real value is created in doing them, whether that value is for me or for anyone else. And this is really directed at so-called “tasks” like catching up on Lost episodes or things that seemingly have value like organizing all your index cards. All too often I find myself filling up my time with “junk food” reading, whether it’s pointless magazines or websites or RSS feeds, things that don’t really add value to my life. Sure, there’s a place for all that, but if that’s all you do, you’re not doing much of value.

Personally, I’m trying to form the habit of asking myself, before I do anything, whether it’s on the job, at home, or elsewhere: “What value am I bringing to the world by doing this? Is what I’m doing bringing value to my life? My career? My family? How does it impact my relationships on a spiritual level, be it with God or those around me?” It’s interesting food for thought that has the potential to lead to a much richer, more productive, more creative life. It helps me find perspective when it feels like I’m just “doing chores.” It also helps weed out the unnecessary time-sinks.

Have you considered what kind of value you’re creating with what you do? What’s been the result? Please share over in the forums.