What Do You Do All Day?
(or "Stop Me Before I Volunteer Again")

Wednesday, February 09, 2011

 

Focus

I find that the older I get, the harder time I have switching gears when working. When I was younger, multi-tasking was easy, and even helped me stay interested during the day because there was always something new to turn to when my attention wandered.

These days, I find that once I get myself to focus on a task, to the degree that I need to to really get into a good flow state and accomplish something, I find it almost impossible to break that focus and turn to something else anywhere near as productively during that day. So I've recently been trying to organize my work days around a single major task, or at least work for one single entity (church, neighborhood school, son's school, neighborhood association, Neighborhood Council or personal project) for the best results. Trouble is, just when I'm getting into that day's project or task, I'll get a phone call or e-mail from one of the other organizations, with something that needs to be addressed Right Now...and then my focus/concentration/flow is broken for the whole day and I don't get much done.

Today, I don't have the luxury of focusing on one task or organization (I even have to attend meetings at two different places), but I'm going to try a single theme for the day: finance. I need to pay household bills that have been stacking up for about three weeks, take care of all the NC finance tasks and reports I've been putting off for the last month, and pull together some school grantwriting reports and information for a meeting this evening. We'll see how it goes.

How It Went:

- Tidied kitchen and a few other spaces
- Dealt with the most urgent morning e-mail
- Solved an urgent computer problem for my dad
- Followed up with speakers, microphone rental and captionist for candidate forum
- Paid household bills
- Talked to friend about yet another new committee I might join
- Attended PTA executive board meeting at neighborhood school
- Answered more e-mail, confirmed more details for tomorrow night's meeting
- Got a call from a friend with an urgent computer problem
- Updated grant list for tonight's Fundraising Taskforce meeting
- Attended Fundraising Taskforce meeting for son's school
- Did as much of the financial work for the Neighborhood Council as I could before my printer ran out of magenta toner and wouldn't let me print any more
- Finally stopped working at 1:10 a.m.

posted by Elizabeth 1:12 AM

All material © 2002-2004 by Elizabeth Fuller. Please do not reproduce anything you find here without the author's permission.

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