Having productive blocks of time is incredibly important to technical workers–and creators of all kinds. Our curiosity can take us from the main path toward our objective without us even realizing that’s happening. The amount of time it takes to rebuild my mental state and get into a flow again is highly non-linear: there’s a big difference in the amount of time to get back on track after ninety seconds and after six minutes of self-interruption.
One of the many ways I deceive myself is with the idea “I can deal with this in just a couple minutes and be done with it. It isn’t worth adding to the list”. These interruptions show up in the form of emails, texts, and most often: looking up information related to my current goal.
As a curious, intelligent person I’m sure you’ve gone to Wikipedia to understand something necessary for your immediate goal (say, writing an article on productivity) only to realize ten minutes later you’re four link levels deep, learning about the difference between psychopathy and sociopathy. Or perhaps you start out googling some economic data you need for a techno-economic analysis about aviation fuel and get clickbaited by a headline implying electric planes are near ready for an economic takeoff.
But it isn’t just clickbait that gets me, it’s also reality. I start with a simple thought like “She wants to be sure the kid’s laptop makes it to class. I can just put that in the car right now before I forget. It will be faster than making a calendar task or setting an alarm to do it later.” When the laptop isn’t where I thought, I look a few other places before finding it. I notice the laptop isn’t charged, so I get the charger and set it up to plug in by the front door where I won’t miss putting it in the car on the way out tomorrow. Then I notice that the charger light isn’t coming on. At this point, I’m almost four minutes in, and now the plug won’t go far enough into the jack. I have the tools to fix this, it is just six screws on the back of the laptop…and now I’m a frog sitting in a boiling pot.
I kept hitting small setbacks and continued to pursue the quick dopamine hit of task completion rather than entering items into my todo/calendar system. As soon as I hit an obstacle, I need to admit my previous optimism, GIVE UP, and get back to what I intended to do. This is why, whenever I know I’m leaving my productivity roadway, I have to set a timer. Four wheeling off-road is fun: it provides useful breaks. However, if left unchecked, I will mentally fling mud and spin donuts as I dart from article to link to curiosity to subtask to recollection to association to link. It’s fun, but it’s not helping me reach my goal.
The longer I am out mentally off-roading, the more I lose context and inertia towards my goal. When I don’t realize I have left the path, perhaps because the initial interruption was related to goal progress, GIVE UP is the mantra that gets me back on track. I used this while writing this post: after eleven minutes of looking for a good example of the kind of clickbait that would lead me away from doing aviation fuel research, I made up the line about electric planes.
There are other techniques you can use: keep your goal tangibly in front of you on a sticky note, keep a side list of things to get back to later, use your browser history to track just how often and deep your distractions are. But whenever you do allow yourself a quick interruption, give up at the first hint of an obstacle–or when your timer dings. Allow yourself to take care of that little task, but if the book isn’t where you thought it would be or the email might require a little research–GIVE UP trying to do it right now so you don’t derail your flow.
5 responses to “It is important to quit at the first hint of an obstacle”
So true! I like this.
Is what you are going after really important to you? Some distractions take hold as a way to alleviate or distract from a fear of failure. Is the distraction a result of others not being responsible or accountable? Some distractions are from what I call “the squirrel affect”. You can stay on point until a “furry distraction” turns your head and you are off on the chase, only to find yourself tired, and disappointed.
Creativity is often sparked by life. Life, can also be the enchanting siren call, driving you to the rocky shore of destruction. Only you can choose your focus.
I am trying to re-connect my intermediate goals to the big picture things that mean something and that I get excited about. That seems to be helping some. The other issue for me is putting other people’s goals and priorities ahead of mine. It may just be that working on things with a social aspect to them is more appealing. Or it may be my identity as a person who follows through that drive me away from my goals that don’t have other people involved and towards goals that have someone else’s expectations and hopes tied to them.
Thanks Isaac. That’s a very useful approach to consider especially as I wander into the Internet trying to find the second and third layers of underlying information. I need to set up a timer on my desk… I think I’ve got a mechanical egg timer that might be perfect.
Even when I reset the timer a couple of times, I still spend less time off target than if I don’t use it.