Focus, or lack thereof

One thing (of many) that I've had trouble with for a long time is focus. I'm a bit of a magpie at times, easily distracted by shiny objects. For instance, it took about ten minutes between writing that last sentence and this one.

Lately, I've been working on getting myself focused for work and writing, and it hasn't been easy. I've found that meditation helps to a certain extent, if nothing else than to get me to calm down and take the edge off my anxiety. Generally, it goes focus --> lose focus --> get upset about losing focus --> get anxious about not focusing. Meditation is helping me go between the first two steps without making it all the way to step four.

I also figured out that there are ways to break my concentration that I can avoid. Notifications drive me nuts - if my phone buzzes due to an email or text, I will HAVE to see what it is, even if I'm in the middle of something. Same with my work email - if I get the desktop alert of a new email, then I need to open it ASAP.

Earlier this week, there was a training from someone at Microsoft about using Outlook and how to make it work more efficiently. The training itself wasn't great, but there was one thing that I got out of it that's been helpful - turning off desktop alerts and only checking email at specific times of day. Now, I can't just get off email completely - most of my work comes via email, so I need to be able to access the email threads to figure out what the devil I'm doing - but just turning off the alerts has made it easier for me to focus on what I'm doing, rather than jumping back and forth all day.

As for my phone, I generally set it to "do not disturb" when I'm at work. In both cases, I have exceptions to the general rule - phone calls will still notify me on my phone, and I get alerts for emails from my manager and my husband - but overall, it's made it a little easier to carve out the time I need to get things done. I've also taken to meditating for a few minutes either in the morning or right after lunch, which is when I usually have the hardest time getting back into the flow of things.

How do you focus? What do you use to keep yourself on-task and not distracted by all the things? I'm always looking for new tips and tricks.

Comments

Wanna Hear Me Talk?

I mentioned in my last post, but now I'm doing the official promotional thing. I'm going to be doing a couple of presentations at the Flights of Foundry convention next weekend! Specifically, I'll be doing a game demo for Rolling Realms on Saturday, September 28 at 1pm Pacific. On Sunday, September 29 at 3pm Pacific, I'll be doing a panel presentation on copyright and public domain basics; finally, also on Sunday, September 29 at 5pm, I'll be on a panel sharing my handwork (specifically my crochet, cross stitch, and blackwork) with a few other fantastic people. This is my first time doing this kind of presentation, and so I'm a wee bit nervous. Still, I'm super excited, and the fact that it's all online means that I'll at least be in my home, and the cats may or may not make an appearance on camera. So! If you're interested in what's looking to be a fabulous online convention (that's FREE!), come join us next weekend!

Calm Your Mind with Needle and Thread

I was fortunate enough to be able to host a workshop at GeekGirlCon last weekend, which went extremely well. My friend Erin was in town for the convention and was kind enough to co-host the workshop with me, which worked wonderfully because she was able to answer some questions that I didn't know how to answer, and also keep us on time (she's a professor, so she's experienced with dealing with classrooms full of people). I thought it would be a good idea, for my own benefit if nothing else, to document the first part of the workshop, which was a talk about embroidery and mental health. I've made the PowerPoint and list of resources available on a separate page of this blog ( here ). I don't know about you, but the last few years have not been especially kind to my mental or emotional health. I discovered early on in the pandemic that going back to something I learned when I was a child, cross stitch, was something that could help ease my anxiety and give me somethi...

Hope is a Four-Letter Word

I've been bouncing around with this for the last few weeks, ever since I read a couple of quotes from the book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. The book overall had some interesting ideas about reframing the idea of trying to get everything done. Even though there were a couple of things that made it clear the author was not approaching things with an eye toward neurodivergence (his discussion of distraction, for example, only talks about the "choice" to be distracted, and not how some people's brains simply don't focus the same way others' do), I was feeling generally positively toward the book until I got to the last chapter, and read this: "Hope is supposed to be 'our beacon in the dark,' [environmentalist Derrick] Jensen notes. But in reality, it's a curse. To hope for a given outcome is to place your faith in something outside yourself, and outside the current moment - the government, for example, or ...

Search This Blog