Distractions

This blog posting is not for you!

Oh sure, you are welcome to read it, in fact, I hope you do.  However, in truth, I am writing this as an affirmation for myself, reinforcing the things I need to pay attention to and, more importantly, not pay attention to.

Working from my home office requires an enormous amount of discipline and focus.  Especially when the task at hand is an unpleasant one, it is so easy to get distracted.  Here are some distractions that I struggle to control.

1.      Food

The proximity of my kitchen is a double edge sword.  My wife and I always keep the refrigerator and pantry stocked with the things I love.  The temptation, to take a snack break is sometimes overwhelming. 

What’s worse, is that I have the facility to make myself lunch.  I love to cook and sometimes find myself cooking some elaborate dish instead of working on work.

2.      Email

This is not unique to working from home, but is a huge problem for me.  One of my resolutions this year is to disconnect and try to schedule when I read my emails.  I find myself keeping MS Outlook open on my desktop all day long and hitting Send/Receive every couple of minutes.  My goal is to check my emails no more than once an hour

I keep my cell phone sitting on my desk and I am constantly looking at it to see if there are new messages.  My goal is to keep my phone in my pocket when sitting at my desk.  This will require me to retrain my clients to call my office phone first if they need to reach me.

I have a synchronization program that keeps my Google calendar in sync with my Outlook calendar.  I had it set to synchronize the calendar every 10 minutes.  To make matters worse, if Outlook is closed, the program pops up asking me to confirm which Outlook profile to use (never mind that I have only 1 profile, it asks anyway).  I changed the schedule to have the calendars sync up every 2 hours.  How can that not be enough?

3.      Chores, etc.

This is less of a problem for me but something that bears watching.  I call it the ‘you’re home anyway’ syndrome.  Today, for example, the roofer is scheduled to come over at 11:00 to see why my roof leaks.   Last week, I brought my wife’s car to be inspected by the insurance adjuster at 2 in the afternoon.

Many times, such activity cannot be avoided, but it can easily become a problem.

4.      Computer Games

I find myself obsessed with several games and websites.  

I am taking these games off of my computer:

·        Chess Titans

·        Solitaire

·        Spider Solitaire

·        Free Cell

·        Hearts

I am also going to stop looking at the following sites all day long:

·        Newsday

·        NYTimes

·        LinkedIn

·        Twitter

·        Jigzone

My goal is to check these sites no more than twice each day.

I urge you to follow my lead on this.  We can support each other in our quest to focus on the goals and avoid the distractions that can drain our precious time.