Tag: Focus

Workplace Weakness

I’ve been thinking about personal weaknesses I have in the workplace – besides missing my regular posts for this blog…

Focus and persistence are two things I think I am weakest at. On a macro level, I have poor focus to stay on task. The consequence of poor focus means I either flit from project to project, or I self-sooth to avoid the pain of friction (typically by going on YouTube).

Poor day-to-day focus leads to poor persistence, which means I don’t carry things to completion. I stick in the ideas or early implementation phase. I chase the next shiny distraction. This would be somewhat remediated through better habits and intentional prioritization of my tasks and time. It would also be partially addressed through better task management, where everything is organized and resurfaced at the times I need them.

Solutions:

Focus
– short work sprints (pomodoros)
-discrete tasks (break projects into small, well-defined, finite steps)
-block out the world (headphones and white noise)
-block out distractions (website blockers)

Persistence
-organized task management system
-calendar blocking
-show up each day with focus habits (see above)
-project and tasks planning
-recognize that progress is made in small steps

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

WFH: Struggles in Focus

In March, I will have been working from home (WFH) for a full year. You’d think that with my experience being employed pre-pandemic, I’d know how to manage my time and motivate myself. But, I have to be honest that working from home has had its challenges. Every time I think I’ve got it figured out, I somehow end up reverting back to a less productive mode of work.

You’d also think that after working from home for a year that I’d have a handle on the situation, yet there, too, I’m finding it difficult. I could attribute it to having a child and the challenges that come with that level of life adjustment, but I feel that would be a disingenuous excuse for my poor integrity.

I know I’m not alone; many people are feeling this. In the beginning, the articles were about learning to draw boundaries in work/life balance. Then came the articles urging us to dress for the office, trying to capture the liminality inherent in a structured schedule. Then came the posts lamenting the late nights with alcohol and doom-scrolling. We all are feeling the anxiety of trying to remain in the present while our focus is pulled towards thoughts about a dimly lit uncertain future.

The best I can do is continue to experiment and see what sticks for me. At the moment I’m trying to be more intentional with my work calendar. I set up to three priorities for the week, block off time in my calendar to work, and spend the first moments at the beginning and the last moments at the end of the day to plan, reflect, plan, and review.

One thing I’m enjoying with this approach is that I’m having an ongoing dialogue with myself in my work calendar. At a high level, I’m leaving a paper-trail of my thoughts, and with that trail I can autopsy where I’m successful and why I fail. But in the day-to-day moments, voices from the past come to help my present understand itself, then I leave little notes for the future to pick things up after rest.

I’ll keep practicing this approach and write some comments in the future, if it sticks.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Friday Round-up – April 24, 2020

Note – this is an experimental posting format. I’ve thought about increasing the number of posts I commit to per week, but I don’t want to add unnecessary work if I’m not willing to stick it out. Let’s be honest: sometimes it’s really hard to get a single post out each Monday that I’m satisfied with, so increasing my posting frequency just to for the sake of increasing my output is a terrible idea. I will run a short experiment to see how easy it is for me to get out a Friday Round-up for the next month. If the experiment goes well, I’ll consider making it a part of the regular rotation.

Many of the bloggers and thinkers I follow have some sort of curated list they share on a regular basis of the best pieces of content they came across in their weekly browsing. During this week, I came across a few thought provoking posts that I felt deserved to be shared.

Here is my round-up list for the week ending on April 24th:

📖 Blog – All models are wrong, some models are useful | Seth’s Blog

We should be reminded that maps are not the terrain, and that models are predictions (read: guesses), not certainty. We rely on models to help us understand the world, but we should remember that they have their limitations.

📖 Blog – COVID-19: What’s wrong with the models? – Peter Attia

Paired nicely with Seth Godin’s post above, Dr. Attia gives a good lay-primer on how a model is created, and what the limitations are when trying to model something like a virus when so little is known about it. The two takeaways I have from this piece are: we should be more willing to accept that good models gives us ranges, not fixed numbers (and we should be more comfortable with the ambiguity); and just because the worst case didn’t arrive, it doesn’t mean that the model was overblown – we need to find out more about why the model was off. It might be that the virus isn’t as dangerous as we initially thought, or it might be that physical distancing greatly impacted the viruses capacity to spread (it’s probably a little of both), but until we know which side maps to reality, we can’t be confident of what we should do next.

📽 Video – BEST Pomodoro Timer on YouTube | Ticking Sounds … – Virtual Crickets

This is actually something I’ve used for some time, but wanted to share. When I’m trying to focus, I have discovered that I can’t listen to music (even of the lo-fi variety) because I find the melodies too distracting. However, I’ve found it helpful for me to listen to regularly repeating noises, such as white noise and ticking metronome sounds. I’ve experimented with a few options, such as a 10-hour “cosmic white noise” video, but while working from home during the pandemic, I’ve settled on this Pomodoro video that I also have paired with a Pomodoro Chrome browser extension that plays white noise (the ticking gives me focus, the white noise blocks out ambient sounds in my room). Forcing myself to focus in 25-minute spurts keeps me on track while I move through my to do list.

Let me know if you find any of these interesting or useful. Also, feel free to share your best round-ups in the comments below.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan