Focus is a concept that's at once difficult for me and all too easy. If I make the mistake of starting a new book, and I enjoy it, my focus is guaranteed for the next handful of hours until I've completed it. I can put it down and work on other tasks, but I'll be at least somewhat distracted if I do, and given how quickly I read it's usually more efficient to just buckle down and get through it.
My projects can be like that, as well, all jostling for attention. I've started likening focus and task management to walking a pack of dogs. Some, like a good book, grab me and start dragging me down whatever path they want, and have to be wrangled back into order. Others want my attention, but meander unproductively down side roads. "Oh, you want to work on your short story? Absolutely! Let's research tangential but fascinating details for the next three hours without writing a single sentence." Like real dogs, they can be trained to some degree, but it seems to be on a dog by dog or project by project basis, and it's not a quick process. Enough work on a specific task or thought will allow me to properly pace and channel my enthusiasm and inspiration. I can trust that letting it sit on the back burner while I deal with other priorities won't result in losing it forever, and I can dredge up some momentum when it's finally time to get to work. But very few of my projects reach that level of maturity.
Today, in what free time I can scrounge between work and scheduled obligations, I could do any of the following: pick which poem I'm posting tomorrow, make plans for my trip to NYC in a few days, brainstorm and write up details for two upcoming LARP characters, work on my short story, see if I can make progress on my next tattoo, set up a second blog for SCA-related thoughts and make a post there, sort out logistics for the next several months, or make progress toward either getting a vocal teacher or at least researching some exercises I can do at home. Instead I'm writing this, because it's been nagging at me off and on for days, and I'd like to wrap it up and see what conclusions I can draw. (I'd also like to avoid the twenty minute rumination I ran into earlier this week where I tried to figure out what dog breed my various projects must be.)
Before I'm deep into a task, I can be easily distracted by other thoughts and priorities, leading to a very flighty and honestly somewhat uncomfortable state where my mind flits from shiny to shiny until I pick something or drown out the noise with forced quiet. Usually this involves chaining my mind to something engaging enough to carry me along, but self-contained enough not to spawn further jostling thought threads. Fencing can be good for this. Netflix is less healthy for me, but similarly useful. A quick 20 minute sitcom is sometimes all I need to reset all the pending threads and reassert control. The act of definitively finishing something, whatever that something may be, is usually helpful. Alcohol usually dampens most of my excessive brain energy (hooray for lowered anxiety!), but doesn't encourage single-minded focus, so it's better for relaxing than productivity.
But once I've started moving and gotten deep into something, I don't context switch well. Turning around and switching to an entirely new task takes time. I've taken efforts to minimize this in my work environment, but I only recently realized that I need to worry about it for my personal productivity as well. As it stands, on a good day I'm home for five hours before I need to turn in. A significant chunk of that is taken up with cooking, eating, and cleaning up after dinner, leaving me with even fewer usable, consecutive hours in the day. And yet I have this strange notion that I'll do a little fencing and a little writing and a little guitar and a little research and a few small improvements and maybe those pending e-mail tasks and... And shockingly, that hasn't been working out well for me. I can't research in dribs and drabs any more than I can set a new novel down before I've finished it. And I really can't write that way. I can plan! I can outline and brainstorm and let the threads run wherever they may, but the hard work of sitting and typing and forcing words to happen takes at least a half an hour before it clicks and starts moving properly.
This blog has been helpful. Arbitrary, self-imposed deadlines aren't particularly useful to me, but ones that are visible to other people are. That added bit of urgency helps me get through whatever it is I'm needing to work on. (See also: my entire academic career) Which is why I'm likely to start an SCA blog once I find the time to properly devote to it. And beyond that, I think I'm going to go back over my plans and schedules and cut out all the "spend a half hour on this regularly" thoughts, replacing them in as many places as I can with larger chunks of time spread further apart. That won't work for everything, of course, but it might help with a couple of my projects that have stalled out.
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