Thursday, March 28, 2013

Out of Focus

Ever have one of those days when you just can't seem to focus on anything? I had one of those, today, at work. Actually, now that I think about it, I had one yesterday, too.

Yesterday's lack of focus, though, was caused more by a ton of projects all coming at me at once - and all needing immediate attention. So I was doing what all sorts of jargon-happy people call "multi-tasking," but I fully admit that what it really meant is what it usually means whenever people day it: that no one thing was getting quite as much attention as it really needed.

Today was a different story. Today I had a great, focused energy spurt right when I got to work. I got a good 90 minutes worth of stuff done with only minor distractions. Then I had to shift gears to deal with a client phonecall, during which I spent a bunch of my time explaining how to use Track Changes in MSWord (which I know the guy had already been told how to do twice before by someone else).

After that, I went to lunch with a coworker who just got back from a (non-ironically stated) life-changing trip. She went on a sort of pilgrimage to Israel and now that she's back she's kind of unsure what to do with her life. She's also in her mid-20s, so part of me was spending time listening to her stories and thinking about what I was doing at her age...

Back in the current time and back at my desk, I could not get my head back into my work. I tried. I really did. I stayed off the Internet, even. But I just couldn't make any headway on what I was working on. So I printed out a new quote for my bad quote wall. And I helped a co-worker come up with some "getting to know you" questions for a survey. And then I went back online and printed out the Twins 2013 schedule so that I could see when traffic is going to be a mess.

Somehow, I did get some work done. And, miraculously, it eventually became 5 o'clock. I'm not sure how those things happened, though, since I wasn't... well... focused on them, either.

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