Though I wonder if I can really call it a distraction.
Yesterday I wrote about getting the iPad 6 and Apple Pencil to take my number one productivity/OCD-management tool (journaling) from a Morning-Routines-at-Home tool to more of an All-Day-Wherever-I-Need-to-Go-and-Whatever-I-Need-to-Do tool.
Now my brain is focused on getting all “afternoon” uses for the thing squared away so that I can focus on morning tasks in the morning without any question as to whether or not it’s supposed to be an afternoon task. This includes, most notably, all items pertaining The Penrose Trekkie.
I can’t watch anything Star Trek while I’m streaming without:
- violating their copyright because of screen-sharing; or,
- having one of the most boring/confusing livestreams in existence because you’d be watching me while I watch a show you can’t see (because I wouldn’t be screen-sharing) or hear (because I’d be wearing earbuds) and — as per usual — I wouldn’t be interacting with the chat during any of it.
That matters because my workflow for every episode of the project is:
- watch episode,
- jot down initial thoughts,
- compose sonnet (or make preliminary outline of some other project idea), and
- write a blogpost about the episode.
I’ve put off going full-steam into an Afternoon Writing routine because afternoons (particularly weekday afternoons) are when I go for groceries or run other errands or try to schedule appointments and such. A substantial in-home afternoon routine would make trying to do those things next to impossible in terms of properly shifting focus and doing things calmly and in a timely manner.
But knowing that I currently have a tentative job schedule, that a set job schedule is in the works, and that I have the physical tools to start planning things right now to ensure the smoothest transition possible, is pulling my focus away from my writing projects. And when something is that distracting (OCD or no), sometimes you’ve got to lean into the distraction and tease out the knot of it.
Like all the work I’ve been doing to replace my hoarding compulsion with homemaking habits (which hopefully this new tool will also help with, at least with slowing the stockpile of papers), not maintaining a base level of tidiness distracts from the work just as having a tool to make sure all tasks are in their proper time unit distracts from the work.
So that’s really going to be my focus today. Getting the new toy as squared away as a tool as possible as quickly as possible will mean getting back to the work of writing as distraction-free as possible.
Also published on Medium.