Tag Archives: focus

Getting unstuck

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I remember teaching Grade 6/7’s about Nigerian fables. One of them was about a greedy animal during hard times. All the animals had collected food and stored it in a clearing to share, but each night some of the food went missing. To catch the culprit they put tar around the food and the thief got caught in it. The next day after an apology the other animals started trying to pull the animal out. He was extremely stuck and they yanked so hard that they stretched this animal and ripped of its legs.

The fable is about not being greedy, but the title is something like, “How snakes came to be.” I love when the moral is not explicit in the storytelling.

I got thinking about this for a totally different reason, one I’m far more explicit about in my title… the idea of getting unstuck. Sometimes we absolutely have to step out of our current experience in order to see what’s possible beyond where we currently are.

The saying, ‘No matter where you go, there you are,’ has come up a few times recently in conversation. This is only true if you let it happen, if you stay inside of the tiny box you put around yourself. There are people who travel all around the world and they look forward to seeing a Macdonald’s, Burger King, or Starbucks. They look to keep their world the same. But travel can give you so much more than that. There are people who keep friends that aren’t nice to them, who dismiss an entire genre of music, who stick to a plan and never take side adventures. None of these people might see themselves as stuck but they are.

For me personally, I’ve been stuck in pain and/or drowsiness for a couple months and while I’m slowly recovering, I am also stuck in the way my days go. I’m not following any healthy routines to consistently workout or meditate. I can still ride a stationary bicycle without causing any harm to the bulged disc in my neck. Meditation would actually be great right now and I’ve let my daily habit slip.

I’m going through slow (admittedly often dizzy) motions of the day waiting for moments of clarity, but when they come I don’t necessarily take advantage of them. I need to see beyond my current condition. I need to see what I what to accomplish in the future and I need to do things now to support that. I need first to have goals that I want to achieve beyond where I am now, then I need to move towards those goals.

Sometimes it only takes baby steps, sometimes it takes a massive leap. But you don’t get unstuck thinking ‘No matter where you go, there you are’. The issue with this is not about geography, it’s about moving who you are to who you want to be.

Time and attention

I feel like in the last 5-10 years i’ve seen a shift in how time and attention are spent. Distractions are everywhere, especially in our phones that are almost always within reach. Distractions take time. Distractions draw our attention. But what about when we aren’t distracted?

When phones with on demand social media, streaming movies and series, and time sucking games or scrolling are not what we are doing, what then? Are we being efficient? Are we dedicating time to the right things, the things we say are the priorities in our life? And when we do spend this time, are we doing so with our full attention?

That’s the key question: when I’m giving of my time, am I also giving of my full attention?

What, and more importantly who, deserves your full attention?

Time and attention

This is going to be one extremely busy week. I don’t usually get stressed out about about my schedule but I’ve got so much going on, pulling me in so many directions, that I get tired just thinking about it. Just cancelled a meeting I want to do, but know that it’s optional. This week is about focus and clearing my schedule for the big items.

Sometimes I can get a bit lost in doing the little things and in following the most recent issue in front of me. This week I need to keep my attention on the ‘must do’s’ and stay focused. Distractions need to be at a minimum. What I have control over is my attention. What I pay attention to gets my time. It’s a simple formula, but not always easy to follow… especially as a school administrator.

Sometimes emergent issues rule the day. Many times the priorities of others become my issues. But there are days when I need to look to others for support. Times when I need to ask others for help. And this week, I need to focus my attention on the things that need to get done right away. What I pay attention to gets my time… and this week time is precious.

Back to archery

Yesterday I shot my compound bow for the first time in 10 months. I never intended to take such a long break. I write daily, I try to meditate daily, and I workout about 5 days a week on average. I also used to shoot arrows fairly regularly in 2021 and up to February of last year, then I let it drop off, and in April stopped altogether. The time commitment seemed too much with everything else I was doing plus work.

Going back and shooting again was fun. I had a blast and shot fairly well considering the gap. Here was my scorecard yesterday:

And here was my last score card back in April:

I also shot a 284 that morning as well. Looking at yesterday’s score, I would have been on par had I not shot my worst end to finish off the round.

Some of my shots were rushed. Most felt ‘punchy’ with my technique being more trigger pull than back tension, but I had a few good shots. Where I really struggled was keeping my focus, but that’s a lifelong challenge for me, as my continued struggles with meditation prove.

Overall it was enough fun that I now want to figure out how to add this back into my schedule? Habits are easier to break than to form and this habit involves a big time commitment. My short term goal is to not worry about scoring and putting in full rounds. I’ll try to refine set up and tear down time so that I can get 50-60 shots in and be in-and-out in an hour or so. First step is to get myself shooting a couple times a week and then I’ll worry about getting my arrow count up.

I remember why I took this sport up, and I want to find myself some time to enjoy it.

The shallows vs the deep

When you meet some people, you instantly like them. They are friendly, personable, and genuine. Some people take a while to grow on you. There isn’t that quick assessment, and you need time to figure them out and have them figure you out. They can easily be as genuine as the people you like instantly, but you don’t immediately know.

Then there are the ones you instantly dislike or mistrust. There are those that seek to complain, and are quick to annoy you or to be easily annoyed themselves.

Isn’t interesting how much time and thought we spend on these different kinds of people? Those that have a depth of quality, we appreciate and want to know, but we don’t necessarily think or talk about them when they aren’t around. But those that annoy and frustrate us consume more of our thought and attention than they deserve.

We spend too much time focused in on the shallow end of this continuum and not enough time going deep with those that deserve more of our attention. We play and replay scenarios dealing with shallow people instead of doing the work to let go of petty things and investing time with those that lift us up in body, mind, and spirit.

Sometimes I’m surprised by my inability to move beyond the shallow end. I try to convince myself that I’m not interested in playing in the shallows, but I allow small conversations and interactions to consume too much of my thoughts. And then I wonder why I don’t have the time or energy for more intellectual endeavours?

This is why I seek people to converse with one-on-one. I create the opportunities to go deep, to invest time with people that are intelligent, forthcoming, insightful, and enjoyable to be around. I create time away from from the shallow end, where conversations can go deep. We might still splash around in shallow conversations but these are enjoyable rather than taxing, playful rather than confrontational… and always open to going deeper.

Challenging Advice

Cal Newport, author of several books including, Deep Work – Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, was on the Sam Harris podcast. I listed to it over the past 3 days and a couple interesting things were discussed.

First of all, Cal has no social media profiles, despite studying social media as part of the research work he does. While I think that’s interesting, I don’t think that I’d want to do that myself. I have drastically reduced my time on social media over the past few years, with time on all sites going down significantly to barely a few minutes a day… other than Tiktok which I will spend up to 30 minutes maximum a day Monday to Thursday, and longer on weekends. Tiktok is more like television to me than social media because I don’t spend any time trying to look at my specific network and let the algorithm decide what I watch next. I watch almost no television and consider TikTok an alternative option to the TV. But while I’ve lowered the social of social media use, I’m not ready to delete or ignore the accounts I have.

The second thing Cal said was that he refined his ideas around doing Deep Work to:

  • Do fewer things;
  • Work at a natural pace; and
  • obsess over quality.

This sounds great! It’s just not workable in most jobs. If I had a job where I could do this, I’d never want to retire. But the reality of my job, and many other management jobs, is that I simply don’t have that luxury.

I want to do more things, because most of the time I spend on things I need to do rather than what I want to do. My pace is often dictated in a reactionary way, rather than a pace I actually choose. And while quality really matters, I’m often working on timelines that force me to do what’s necessary and then move on.

I’ve discussed this before, the challenge of doing ‘what you need to do’ consumes so much time and energy that there is little of either left for doing ‘things you want to do’. And so it’s not easy to take Cal’s advice. While it is laudable, it’s not realistic to try to achieve. I think writers and artists and similar creative endeavours can aspire to do fewer things, work at a natural pace, and obsess over quality, but most people simply don’t have the luxury to do so. Still that doesn’t mean these things aren’t desirable… I just don’t know anyone who works at a school that can say these are attainable goals.

Get stuff done mode

I must admit that I was lucky. Having been away and needing to do some catch up yesterday, I was working in my office with my door closed. And as it turned out, it was an unusually uninterrupted kind of day. Normally interruptions are what my day is mostly about. But yesterday was quiet and I was in a a real ‘get stuff done’ mode.

It’s not like things didn’t come up that needed my attention, and I had over 3 hours of online meetings that I actually had to pay attention in. But every moment before, after, and between these meetings was dealing with one task at a time.

If I was interrupted, I dealt with the interruption immediately, then went right back into what I was doing beforehand. No squirrel-brain bouncing around and forgetting what I was doing. No email rabbit hole of distractions. It was go-go-go.

Coming off of being sick and taking more days off in a week than I took in the last 2 years, I needed a day like yesterday. I wish every day could be like that… but as I said, I was lucky. Things don’t always run that smooth, and I’m not a hide in my closed office kind of principal. Sometimes the job is mostly about interruptions that can not be easily solved. But I’ll worry about that another day. For now I’m just going to celebrate having a great ‘get stuff done’ kind of day yesterday.

Chores with headphones

Yesterday I cut the grass and cleaned out my hot tub. Two boring jobs that aren’t hard, but take a bit of time to do. I did them both with headphones on, listening to a spy novel series I’ve been enjoying the past couple weeks. I was able to listen to the last couple hours of book two and then start book three.

It’s amazing what a shift in attitude I have towards menial jobs when I’m listening to a book. Music doesn’t do this for me, but a good book or long format podcast does. Suddenly the job is a physical distraction that allows me to keep my focus on what I’m listening to. I find it hard to sit and do nothing for too long while listening to a book. I also can’t do something that involves a lot of thinking while listening to a book or my mind wonders and I need to rewind and listen again.

Simple chores (and driving) are the perfect things to do when listening to a good book or podcast. I enjoy doing the task more, and I enjoy the book I’m listening too as well. It’s my chores equivalent to pairing a good wine with dinner… it makes both things more enjoyable.

Let down

Yesterday I made a decision not to run an online blended program we’ve run for 6 years. It’s a great course but we couldn’t get the attendance to fill it enough the last couple years. The course required the work of a not-for-profit organization organizing community presentations, and they too struggled with supporting our course with such low numbers.

It’s such a let down to take away something good from our roster of courses we offer. It feels worse because I think I could have done more to promote the course and get more students interested. But sometimes it’s important to recognize what your own personal limits are and not chase after something that requires too much work and energy. Schools already offer a version of this class and it’s hard to promote students taking an online and blended class where students need to go to another school to meet. The struggle to get students interested and enrolled was just too high.

And yet I feel disappointed. I feel I’ve let down people. I feel that I’m the reason we failed to fill the course. I think out of everyone, I let down myself the most. On the one hand I absolutely know I could have done more. On the other hand I feel like this wasn’t a year that I could have put more into anything. This doesn’t soften the disappointment much, but it reminds me that I’m better off giving less things 100% effort than spreading myself thin and giving everything 75% or less.

That’s the lesson, but it still stings.

Head Games

Today I tied my personal best score in archery at 18 metres (20 yards) on a 3 spot Vegas target. I scored a 289 for the 4th time. 290 has been elusive.

My one bad shot was way off. I punched the trigger rather than using back tension to release the arrow. That’s all it takes at this point, one off shot and I don’t break my record. Also, 5 of my 9’s were on my third target. That’s worth noting. But it wasn’t one shot that was my problem, it was my headspace. I had just scored a 287 before this. Then after 4 ends, with two 30’s and two 29’s, I knew that I was ahead of getting 290. I let that get in my head.

I put a lot of pressure on myself and I didn’t perform to the level I could. It wasn’t the one 8, it wasn’t the five 9’s on my third arrow, it was the head games I put myself through when I thought I could beat my record.

This is a part of my sport I need to get better at… reducing the self-imposed pressure and thinking more about just one thing… the shot I’m taking.

290 is in reach, but it need to get there one arrow at a time. More focus on what I’m doing, and less focus on the score.