I like to mono-task, and I like to do it with focus and intention. In my opinion, multitasking is highly overrated. I am never as effective with a divided mind as I am when I can focus singularly.
One of the hardest parts of this for me to manage is distraction. Something comes up that should just take a minute (it rarely does) and by the time I can get back to what I am supposed to be focusing upon, I have lost the thread. And it can take hours for me to find that thread again, if ever.
Granted, sometimes, stepping away from a task and returning to it with fresh eyes can stimulate an “aha moment.” I have had that happen. But, they are rare and I don’t want to put that much weight on every text, ping, or doorbell ring that incites a random interruption in my day.
I seem to be at my best when I can boil a project down to the atomic level and find tasks that can no longer be simplified. Then, I schedule those micro-tasks and move through them, one by one. Because the tasks are small, they aren’t overwhelming. And, because there are so many of them, I get to check COMPLETE a lot, and that does feel good.
Even writing posts like this one is a complex series of tasks rolled up into one thing:
Until the first 4 steps are completed, I could be working with pencil and paper or an old school text editor. And, arguably, those first 4 steps take up most of the process anyway. So, do I really need a web browser open? Do I really need to be online? Would it be better if I simply cut everything else off, found some silence and wrote until I was finished?
Weirdly, this is a lot harder to achieve than it used to be. We are so very connected now, every single minute of the day. Much of our technology assumes that we are now and always will be connected.
In considering what I have said so far, it does start to sound/feel like the Delete Social Media “movement.” But with this, I feel more motivated to find a compromise. Maybe that has to do with my age, growing up in the era of stand alone green/amber screen machines? I knew another way of working with machines. I don’t long for those days but maybe I am mourning the loss of something.
At its core, the content of this post is text. And text files are incredibly small and space efficient by modern standards. If what I am doing is writing text, why do I need anything but a simple editor that can save text characters when I click keys on my keyboard? Once that is done, I can shift the file into a different place where it can be formatted/etc, but at the point of creation, maybe anything else is a distraction?
Yes, this feels like it is going to lead to a brand new “distraction” sometime soon. If anything comes of it, good or ill, I promise that I’ll let you know.