www.andrewmackay.net:

Focus is an area of struggle for me. I am prone to multitasking. Everyone knows men can’t multitask. Why we continue to try, I’ll never know. Nevertheless, I’m often found with music playing, seventeen browser windows open, and a blank word document floating in the background. Empty.

It’s likely to stay empty, too, unless I focus. So here are 3 tips to help:

Pick a steady soundtrack. I’m certain I first heard this on writing excuses… someone was talking about what they listened to while writing, and basically said he had three or four CDs that he listened to on repeat. They were fairly anthemic (I think one was the soundtrack from Braveheart), and yet could be played in the background without being distracting. I’m trying to do better at this, so I can cease stopping myself to ask “What did that song just say?”

(Aside: duh, songs don’t say anything!)

Turn off the orange button. Chances are — if you write on a laptop, anyway — that you have a switch or button that enables your wifi connection. Did you know it disables it, too? That’s right! Push that button, and you’ll be cut off from the internet. Not so handy if you’re researching, but it usually doesn’t take more than a few seconds for your wifi connection to, well, reconnect. The rest of the time, your email won’t ding, your instant messenger notifications won’t notificate, and you’ll be left in relative peace.

(Aside: don’t try that one if you use google docs online to write in. You’d probably lose some work).

Do Less. Leo Babauta said it better than I ever will. But I’ll say it here where you’ll read it. Slow down! Save a life. Wait, wrong campaign. Slow down! Save your sanity! That’s the truth. Empower yourself to do the things you want to do. For me, that’s meant taking the time to get ahead on this blog so that instead of being a burden, it’s become a joy. It’s also meant saying no to more extra-curricular things. But it’s good, because they weren’t the things I needed to spend time on.

So there you have it. Three ways that you can refocus today. I hope it helps. I hope it helps me too… I’ve got to get back into my groove!

Tags: Focus, writing

This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 7:00 am and is filed under writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.