Last month, I set myself a 30 day challenge to write every day on this blog. The idea stemmed from the thought that 30-days was enough time to build a habit, so if I stuck by writing a post everyday, I would make a life-long habit out of it.
If you were an ardent follower, you will know that 'work' got the better of me and I did not write a post every single day. What I did do though was score the internet for material to write about and bookmarked it away.
Today was no different, I was about to blog about something when I saw an interesting tweet….that led me to a clever article about Occupy Wall Street, one thing led to another and soon I was lost deep down a rabbit hole. Wait a minute, what was I really planning to do again?
The truth is that there is REAL work that we need to do, and then there is all the fuss that we do as a part of starting this 'real' work. This happens a lot in sports. If you ever go to yoga class, watch how much hair-fixing and water drinking happens at the exact moment the instructor calls out a challenging pose.
If you were an ardent follower, you will know that 'work' got the better of me and I did not write a post every single day. What I did do though was score the internet for material to write about and bookmarked it away.
Today was no different, I was about to blog about something when I saw an interesting tweet….that led me to a clever article about Occupy Wall Street, one thing led to another and soon I was lost deep down a rabbit hole. Wait a minute, what was I really planning to do again?
The truth is that there is REAL work that we need to do, and then there is all the fuss that we do as a part of starting this 'real' work. This happens a lot in sports. If you ever go to yoga class, watch how much hair-fixing and water drinking happens at the exact moment the instructor calls out a challenging pose.
It feels minor, but think about all the wasted motion ( the fidgeting, drinking water, lying down, tying my hair) I was doing for the 45 minutes of stretching– energy spent, speed reduced, extra steps taken for absolutely no reason other than that I’d built up a bad habit.
This isn’t just about not getting distracted by social media and your inbox (though those are particularly dangerous because they pretend to be work). It’s about shortening the distance between “I’m going to start working” and “I’m working.”
No comments:
Post a Comment