Due to the stress levels this year my ability to focus has taken a big hit.  I see it in a variety of places and at a variety of times.

I usually sleep well, but when I wake, I wake to a racing mind. It's not racing toward any destination. It's just racing.  Often it's filled with throwaway thoughts. It takes me a while to get it under control. Sometimes it will settle of its own accord. Other times I will have to deliberately pull it in with meditation.

When I start work there are times when just the act of starting work is very difficult.  There are other times when I am able to start okay.  Sometimes I can get fairly deeply into the day before I get derailed.

It doesn't take much to derail me.  Something unexpected.  Something trivial.  Something irritating.  Whatever focus and motivation I had just goes away and I find myself caught in a mind-loop that won't let go.  The monkey has his hand in the jar and is not going to let go, even though he is trapped.

I can see it in the evening, at the end of the day, when I just want to stare blankly at the wall.  Once I stop for the day that is it, I'm done.  Consequently I am losing a good section of time where I am most personally productive - the evenings.

Another place I can see it is writing.  I have been having a hard time writing with any sort of attention to detail. It is far to easy to let myself be distracted and then just...do nothing.

I know that part of it is the mind/body healing from the high levels of stress.  I know that eventually I will make it through and return to a time where focus comes more naturally, more easily.  In the interim though it is irritating me.

So, let me just finish this up and post it.  Then we will see if I can focus back and pull myself out of  my focus-free mind.  Let go monkey! Let go!

Strange Days

These have been strange days.

If I had to sum it up in a nutshell - over the last year or so I've lost a lot of focus. Between the work overload and assorted bits of chaos in my personal life I became cluttered. I've been working this year to regain some of the clarity I've lost. My motivation has been low. When all it seems you're trying to do is move sand dunes you tend to get tired of shoveling sand.

This weekend was pretty good, though I moved through it under the shadow of work. The weather in this part of California was stunningly beautiful and a welcome relief from the long wet winter. It was nice just wandering around in the sun.

I met up with Tyrone at the Hickory Pit, then swung over to visit Bob for a while. It was a nice visit, all things considered. Brandy swung by my place during the day and dropped of several servings of chicken tortilla soup from her restaurant. After that I ran a few errands and then met Rick for lunch down at an Asian Fusion place. I had a miso glazed piece of sea bass that was truly outstanding.

From there I swung home and spent a lazy few hours watching a movie (Killing Me Softly) and then The Simpsons. My inner clock is still off due to the switch to daylight savings time today.

I'm not looking forward to work tomorrow because the chaos level is going to be pretty high. But, it will be a good day otherwise and I'll get a chance to work on my detachment from expectations and cognitive focus on attaining key steps in a wide variety of projects.

It's weird because I know all kinds of tricks and techniques for controlling workflow, detaching from expectations, and attaining clarity - I'm just struggling to implement them.

On that note I'm going to call it a night and curl up with a book to read myself to sleep.


Sent from my iPhone

A Quick Note

Well, it was a singularly unproductive day that I couldn't afford. I'm going to have to play catchup tomorrow. I've got a slew of tasks I have to knock off. We'll see if I can stay focused through the day and actually accomplish anything.

Meditations After A Hot Evening

We had a hot day here in this part of California yesterday and the heat carried into the night.  I got, maybe, four or five hours of sleep, well after midnight.  Up until then, I tossed and turned in the heat, even with the windows open and the fans running. It is the still hour before dawn right now and the apartment has finally cooled down to about seventy-two degrees.  I don't think today is supposed to be as hot as yesterday was, so I am hoping for a better night.

I did something I haven't done last evening - I spent three or four hours writing. I enjoy writing but I simply haven't done enough of it in the last couple of months, perhaps in the last couple of years, so last night had its own pleasures, the pleasures of creation. Now, today, I will re-read what I wrote last night and I might find that it is not particularly good, but that really doesn't matter - what matters is I definitely felt the creative juices flowing, all as the result of an incidental bit of inspiration that happened during the day.  I need to move myself into a point where I am in closer touch with my muse.

Today should be a good day - at this time, here in the early morning, it is a wide open day.  I am going to meet the guys for breakfast at eight, then, well, the day is open and I may find something to do.  I've been wanting to get over to the coast for lunch for the last couple of days, but I have balanced that with the need to just relax and do nothing.

Though I miss going to Comic Con, I am glad I made the decision to keep this vacation simple and close to home. I needed the time in solitude, I learned from it, I learned some things about myself and had some interesting dreams.

Two nights in a row I dream about shapes and patterns - specifically about layering those shapes and patterns. I think I have had an awareness for a while that I am not committing fully to the things I am doing as I go through my days.  I am doing things, and I am doing things I enjoy, but I am simply not fully loosing myself in the moment.  That is what I am going to work on for the next couple of months I think - continuing the process of focusing, of being in the moment, and of investing myself in the things that I am doing.

Process Certainty

Yesterday was a bit of a challenging day, from a work standpoint.  The computer problems in the morning through me off for the rest of the day.  I was able to salvage some of the day, the afternoon, once the computer issues had been resolved, but it still felt like a mostly squandered day. I am at the point right now in the project I am working where I’m deep into the details of design and configuration. That is just a process of details, finding them, documenting them, communicating them and double-checking them.  It leaves room for error, especially since, right now, we are working in solo silos, without the covering effect of peer reviews.  It is a time of focus and I really struggled with focus yesterday.

So, today is going to be an exercise in deliberate focus - staying tight, staying crisp, staying clear.  There are three major phases in my portion of the project and at this point it is just a question of focusing on the first phase.  I would like to get the first phase handed off by close of business today.  It is the complex phase, since it involves the most configuration change. Phase two is straight-forward and phase three is more a process of reduction then change.  It would be nice if I had process certainty beyond myself, but that is wishing for something that simply doesn’t exist on this project.

A More Focused Night

I definitely moved through today with more focus than Tuesday. I would probably credit most of it to having completed the first pass at the messy data analysis - it was both a load off my mind and it managed to let me slip out of the analytical portion of my brain. Work-wise, today was mostly weaving in and out of meetings - I think I had one complete, non-meeting, hour at the end of the day which allowed me to take care of a few things and get the deck stacked for tomorrow. I've only got three meetings tomorrow, so it should be a relatively productive day.

I definitely came home with more focus than I had last night. Last night was the rambling night I documented, but also a quiet night - I basically just sat in the stillness of the living room and read, then wrapped the evening with TR and fell fast asleep. Tonight when I got home I felt far more engaged. I watched a couple of programs I had stored up on the DVR ("Glee", "Chuck", "V", and "Mad Love"), I put a couple of miles on the exercise box, and I boxed the old PS2 and all the associated bits, pieces, and games for donation. It still works fine, but I haven't really played any of the games in, well, years. It was time to let it go. Time to set it free. Someone can buy it for $20.00 at Goodwill and get many hours of simple enjoyment out of it.

It is kind of strange to me how I seem to move through my simplifying in waves. I've pretty much stripped my possessions down to things that are either actively used or purposefully saved for another purpose or time. I went through my bookshelf the other weekend to see what I could donate there and to my surprise, I was really only able to purge less than a single shelves worth. What remains are art, poetry, and functional (in use) reference.

I still have one significant area to purge and it is one of the "big" to do items on my list. I have a dozen boxes stored in the spare bedroom - they are a mixture of old personal papers and miscellaneous keepsakes. I suspect I will be lucky if I will be able to pare it down to six boxes, but even that will be six less anchors holding me in place.