The Art of Distraction

Distraction… planning to do something, and then – squirrel!!!

Does this ever happen to you? You sit down with one task in mind, and the next thing you know, you’re doing something totally different and unplanned, and often unrelated to your goals – it’s a bright shiny object distraction. The last time this happened to me, I decided to turn it into a blog post. Recently I’ve seen similar blog articles about “multi-tasking vs. single-tasking.” Following is a snapshot of my distractions.

1. Time to schedule some social media posts.
   
2. Go to the office, search my laptop for the current social media marketing file.
   
3. Oh look, it needs the link to my current opt-in offer.
   
4. Log on to the WordPress dashboard for my website.
   
5. Hey look, I’ve got lots of good opt-in offers I need to share.
   
6. Start creating a new page to add to my website… What should it say?
   
7. Look up examples for inspiration on Google… this one looks pretty good.
   
8. Oh hey, look at all this great stuff they’re giving away. I should watch these videos, read these articles, wait! That’s NOT why I’m here!
   
9. Back to my WordPress page, open opt-in pages to get links. Wait, plain links are boring. The page need some style and branding.
   
10. Look through theme widgets…
    
11. Crap, I don’t have time to create a whole new web page right this minute. Well, yes, I guess I do, but I don’t want to right now. I was planning to create cool posts to schedule on my social media profiles. I’ll get back to this later.
    
12. Grab the updated social media marketing file, without the opt-in link, and go back to the couch, plug in the flash drive.
    
13. Wait, I’d better make a note of what I want to do with that free resources page, so I don’t forget. Grab the notebook.
    
14. The next thing I know; I’ve got a new blog article written on the art of distraction. Brilliant!
    
15. Time to play with the dogs.

Lessons learned from this period of distraction –

I rarely get random tasks finished because this kind of distraction is too common as I go through my day.

I need to put tasks into buckets, and focus until the primary task is complete.

Oh, and I truly believe the term multi-tasking should be abolished.

In past careers I have tracked my daily activities for many consecutive days, at the request of managers. Each time was to determine if adding an employee could be justified. In my current position as owner, this exercise might be to decide if it’s time to hire a VA, or more likely it would show that I’m a scatterbrain, and can’t finish what I start! A great reminder that one of my words for 2016 is FOCUS! Obviously I need to work on this some more.

PS: I did finally write the notes about the free resources page. But I never did create social media posts that day.

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