Today was pretty good along most metrics. I would (and did) mark it as “well executed.”
The biggest blocker was that my attention was pretty “jumpy”. I didn’t really “settle into” my work (particularly my research work for Elizabeth Van Nostrand), so that it was absorbing my full attention and I was engrossed and engaged in what was happening. Rather parts of me were flitting towards other priorities, and my attention was unfocused.
I would like to improve this. If my work time entails me “sinking into” a task or project for at least an hour or two at a time, I think I will be much more productive (in the literal meaning of producing more value rather than working more).
Some ideas that have occurred to me:
- Again, meditation is supposed to improve this, but that’s a long term, fairly fragile solution. Furthermore, meditation seem to be a good general boost, but that for every specific skill that I have wanted to get from meditation, I’ve found that I can get a lot more mileage, with a lot less effort, by just training the relevant TAP directly.
- I think maybe I should take inventory before I start work: make space for all of the things that have some pull on my attention, and then decide, before hand, if I want to commit the next [whatever length of time] to a specific task, and put aside all the other things for that time. That maybe entails scheduling, so that they can rest, confident that they’ll happen.
- (I notice that if I want to have a practice like this, that means that I have to maintain slack in my schedule. I already “knew” this intellectually, but I feel like I can see more directly that it is true here: if I don’t have that space a “taking inventory” practice / system can’t work. It’s missing a necessary component.)
- I’ve heard that starting a work session with a 5 minute mediation can be good for this.
- I think that I should seriously amp up my practice of noting and logging every time I get distracted or feel the urge to get distracted.
- Actually exercise. When I noticed this happening today, I responded by going to dead lift (man, it’s really great to have a barbell on my premises). I think this was a really good choice. Exercise intense enough to leave me perceptibly pooped in the evening, and sore the next day, is I think, way more efficacious than meditation at inducing this kind of attentional stability, in both as a general supporting practice, and as an immediate intervention.
I’m going to review this post in the morning, and try these interventions tomorrow. We’ll see how that goes.
Efficacy Engineering 