My partner finished her graduate degree online from a desk in her kitchen while three kids all under the age of 12 ran around acting exactly the way young kids are supposed to act. It didn’t matter. It also didn’t matter that she was on a shoddy internet connection linked to a computer already a decade past its prime. She was locked in. Maybe some of those things even helped. Maybe the noise of children and limited ability to have multiple windows open on screen helped her focus on what was directly ahead of her. She wasn’t trying to do everything in the moment. She was focused on the one thing she needed to get done. She was doing what every writer struggles to do–stay focused and avoid distractions.
Presently I have to grade 23 assignments and write 7 sections of a project alongside two more adventures. Presently there are 17 internet windows open on my laptop to go along with the 9 docs, 2 excel spreadsheets, and 23 pdfs. The majority of these windows and files are divided between three distinct interests. This is to say that I am engaged in a ridiculous level of multi-tasking that means that if anything gets done it will be done eventually. This, of course, is not the way. The way is to be focused as she was. The way is to take one bite at a time, one step at a time, and one task at a time.
We have become so attached to multi-tasking and escapism as a human society that we forget to be where we are and enjoy being in that moment. In that forgetting we lose access to the deeper connections between ourselves and the world around us and, as writers, to the material we create. I write best when I do nothing else but write. I write best when I have the mindset to drown out everything else and let the words guide me for however long that I am able to be in that zone–be it ten minutes or an hour or 4 hours. As I grow older I find that I have less and less time to stay in that zone. That is strange, because as I grow older I have more and more time that does truly belong to me. It comes down to how I choose to assign that time and how much of that time I spend locked in on one thing. Am I trying to squeeze in a game between paragraphs? Am I checking the news as I look up the definition of a word I want to use?
I am learning to be focused on the moment and stay in that moment, because that is how we get back to understanding the meaning of what we are doing and having a real connection with what is happening right in front of us. Equally importantly, that is the way to get stuff done fast and right.