Pretending to Work
At some point around 1:00pm today, I veered off my to do list, which included going to two classes and a group meeting. Nearly three hours later, I think I might have made the wrong choice for the wrong reason.
The reason I made the choice is because I was in a state of 'flow' while doing my work, a state where I lose sense of time/hunger and become very interested in what I'm doing. This state can be extremely effective in terms of getting work done and being creative. One specific memory is spending seven hours on a random day in January of 2001, searching for entrepreneurship awards on Yahoo, many of which I eventually won. These awards changed my life.
With that said, this great strength has also turned into a great weakness. For example:
- If Sheena tries to talk with me when I'm in this state, I often don't hear her or even worse get angry. Somehow, I've managed to pretend to listen without really doing so. This has backfired a few times (2 out of 10 times - she would argue more. I would argue less) when she tells me something very important like what airline I'm taking and I don't realize I don't know the airline until I'm in a cab on the way to the airport.
- I end up doing whatever grabs my attention instead of what I've decided beforehand is most important. I've noticed that when I'm in different states of being, I have different priorities. The most obvious example of this is when I wake up, but am really tired. I can't tell you how many times I've extended my sleeping time after deciding that going to an early morning class wasn't as important as I thought it was the night before.
- I have this sense of urgency and instead of priorities, I see everything I have to do at once and I get overwhelmed, start to rush, jump from one task to another, and feel guilty about it.
- Spend more time creating a prioritized, manageable to do list.
- Take breaks often to return to baseline state and reflect upon what happened and plan what is going to happen next.