By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
The past few days haven’t been terrific
and the fault for this lies squarely with me.
So…I dropped my phone in water. Apparently, this is not a good thing to do to
smart phones. Not only did I drop it in
water, I didn’t even realize I’d dropped
it into water. There was no quick
rescue, so the phone was submerged for quite a while. Once I discovered it, I tried sticking it
into a bag of quick-rice, but boy, that thing was dead.
I have also broken a plastic container
that was full of leftovers (yes, this is
hard to do! But somehow…), chipped a bowl, ran into a doorjamb, and burned two
things I was cooking. Even for me, this
is a long list of issues.
The interesting thing is that after my
phone was destroyed (it was actually the last in the series of unfortunate
events), I immediately stopped having these calamities. I’m not going to blame my phone 100%, but it apparently
was a significant contributing factor.
A mom-oriented blog that I frequently
read recently warned
against the hazards of distracted living
in a post by a mother whose child could have drowned in a tub while she
was distracted…the kind of cautionary tale to strike fear in a parent’s heart.
I do multi-task some things very
well. If one of the things is completely
mindless…ordinarily housework of some kind or exercise…then I can do it and
write the next scene of my book in my head or plan a blog post or do any other
thoughtful task.
But if something requires
attention—whether it’s a conversation with someone or measuring ingredients for
supper—then I should just focus 100% on what I’m doing. Plus, it’s just really starting to stress me
out to do too much at one time. I get a sort of a frantic feeling.
Not only that, I’ve noticed a distinct
problem with single-tasking. I’ve gotten so capable at multi-tasking, that
my single-tasking abilities have taken a nosedive.
The phone’s accessibility and bright,
shiny icons mean that I check email and social media more than I intend
to. And, when I check them, I’m usually
doing something else at the same time.
What also feeds into this is a general
restlessness that I have. It’s also present when I write.
My top tip for combatting restlessness
for writing time is to:
1)
Either close all the windows I have open, turn off email/Twitter/Facebook/other
notifications, unplug the modem, or go somewhere with no WiFi (increasingly
hard to do)
2)
Then set a timer for myself for writing.
Either use Online Stopwatch
or I’ll Google “set timer for ___minutes” and let Google count it down.
3) Get done what I need to get done in
the space before that restlessness strikes –for me, that will usually be about
twenty minutes— and then do something else for twenty minutes…ordinarily for
me, that’s going to be something active (if, obviously, I haven’t left the
house to write).
4) Then write for another twenty minutes,
especially if I’m on deadline. Repeat
until I hit whatever my goal is.
Now I just need to apply that approach to
the rest of my day and I should be golden. :)
I get more done when I’m single-tasking, I feel less-stressed, and
whatever I’m focusing on is better-completed.
This is, for those of you who want to
adapt it for yourself, basically the Pomodoro
technique and I’ve been using it off and on since I heard about it. Michael Hyatt explained it well in
this post: How
to Use Batching to Become More Productive.
It works well for me for task-completion.
When I single-task, I get more done,
faster. When I get more done, I have more time to stare into space and
brainstorm and form ideas. I always know
I haven’t had enough quiet time in my day when I start getting tons of ideas
right before I fall asleep…it’s sometimes the only moment of the day when I’m
not juggling several things at once.
How is your multi-tasking? How does it affect your writing, if it
does? If you multi-task well, how well
can you single-task?
Image: MorgueFile: Seemann