I Am on a Tangent
There's a children's book called If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, written by Laura Numeroff and illustrated by Felicia Bond. A boy is hosting a mouse at his house. The mouse asks for a cookie. This then creates a domino effect of other things the mouse thinks he needs - a glass of milk, a broom, some tape, a pillow to take a nap. It goes on and on and ends up back where it started - with the cookie.
I am often reminded of this book when "one thing leads to another" (to quote Lisa Loeb's theme song for the show version of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie). Focusing on one thing has been a theme among my coaching clients recently, and as you know, the topic of myriad books and articles. Maybe it's spring fever, but it certainly feels like the problem is getting worse.
I don't think you need me to tell you to time block, close extraneous tabs in your browser, and choose your focus, although those are certainly effective strategies.
The problem is more nuanced. Sometimes, the fact that one thing leads to another is helpful. Like when the mouse decides to get a broom to sweep up after trimming his whiskers?), we handle a need that we may not have noticed.
If you're wondering how to increase your ability to focus, the nuts-and-bolts solution is going to be quite personal. However, there is a universally helpful solution. This is something perhaps more challenging than a tactic you can read in an article or book:
real-time mindfulness.
I could have just called it mindfulness, but the adjective emphasizes the point.
You are operating at two layers. You're doing the thing, and you're watching yourself do the thing. The goal is to always be able to answer the question "What am I doing right now?"
The other day, I consciously decided to opt into the task tangent that presented itself to me. Call me a nerd, but I literally repeated to myself over and over "I am on a tangent" until the tangential task was completed so that I didn't forget to go back to the original task.
Real-time mindfulness will help you:
choose the best focus for your current time window,
stay committed to that choice, or
consciously go on a tangent or switch gears,
consciously finish the task and repeat, or
decide it's time for a break.
With this framework, you can also decide when you might deliberately work within an UNfocused time. Maybe you have a smattering of 2-5-minute tasks and you want to allow your attention to flit from one to the next without such a conscious process. The point of time-blocking is so that it doesn't bleed into the type of work where you do need more focused, deep-thinking time.
If you feel like you struggle with remaining mindful in real time, just start practicing.
