I have been distracted lately.
Maybe not lately; maybe I just am distracted. I notice when I meditate: my thoughts spiral and I have to pull myself back to the breath again and again. When I read, even when I am enjoying the story, I find myself reaching for my phone or clicking to another tab on the computer without realizing what I’ve done. I’ll work on a task in the office and ten unrelated tasks later remember what I was trying to do in the first place. It’s a waste.
Even now, writing, I find myself itching to task switch. And I like writing.
On the surface, this is annoying. I don’t want to be the kind of person who reaches for Instagram anytime my brain is unoccupied for more than a second.
Deeper, this is concerning. I know I’m not going to accomplish what I want to unless I can practice being a state of focus. Training programs at work, long-form writing, reading more books. I’m starting to see I need to wrangle my brain into shape; she is in need of some serious gym time.
I started reading the book Deep Work by Cal Newport this week. It’s a book a handful of my coworkers read a few months ago on the value and practice of eliminating distraction and doing ‘deep work’ to be most productive. It was recommended to me then and I was, frankly, not that interested. I knew already that focused stretches of time were needed for big projects. I got it, okay? But I don’t like working from home and I wasn’t going to shut my door or power down my Slack.
I have a fundamental belief as a HR professional that my job is to be there for employees: to be responsive, supportive, and available when they need me.
I’m starting to question it. Not that at the core that isn’t true: it is Human Resources after all, I need to be a resource for the humans in the office. But right now I respond to email quickly, always stay logged into Slack, never shut my office door unless I’m in a meeting, and always say ‘yes’ when people ask if I have a minute. As you can imagine, I am interrupted all the time.
Being interrupted is part of my job. But it’s also my job to roll out training programs, create the infrastructure for a great hiring process, and roll out employee-driven initiatives to the company. Last year, most of this longer project work took place on weekends.
I would not have picked up Deep Work to read – I was actually looking for Good to Great in our modest company library. In its absence, Deep Work stood out, and I had been beating myself up since the start of the year with how dependent I was feeling on Instagram notifications.
It’s a good read and has me naming what I was starting to feel: I need to reorganize my habits if I want to get shit done.
Inadvertently, I’ve already given some of this deep work time in my personal endeavors with this blog. By allowing myself time every morning to write and setting a deadline (write, edit, publish all in one sweep) I set my brain to an intensely focused mode. I don’t have time to check Facebook if I only have an hour or less to get this done. (On a separate topic, I don’t have room for perfectionism either, but that has never been my burden).
I’m not sure yet how I need to change my working habits. I know I don’t want to work late nights or early mornings on a regular basis – I’ve reserved those for personal routines (writing, exercise, reading), so I need to make my working hours count. Scheduling my email check times, having a day where I’m offline, closing my door for an hour or two every morning, working from a library for an afternoon a week … I have ideas.
For social media, I think the strategy of scheduling may also apply. More simply, I could take notifications off my phone screen.
Okay, fine, I’ll do that today. Email too.
Ideally I’d have a castle retreat in the woods somewhere, with a writing room and a couple lap cats.
For now, I guess I’ll have to make do.
With Love,
Natalie