Today, in the midst of my long winded procrastination and anxiety, I got to thinking: what are some of our community member’s “go-to” ways of maintaining focus, or getting their focus and concentration back after becoming distracted or being pulled away by other things “demanding” attention?
I really struggled with work today. Just an overwhelming amount of outstanding projects and assignments and client deadlines. Felt stressed and that resulted in me being avoidance and procrastinating and mindlessly doing everything BUT what I needed to do to stop feeling stressed and get stuff off my plate.
When you get stuck in those types of situations, what do you find are the best strategies to “snap out of it” and get back to work or being productive?
At my previous job, which lasted 12 years, I built up this massive spreadsheet with charts, graphs, etc. A lot of it was automated. Every time I completed a task, that line or bar graph would just climb a little bit higher. I had a work-done-per-day metric that gave me that little bit of dopamine boost. Getting files done = watching my production ratio go up for the day, week or month. It got to the point that I was able to say to my boss in performance reviews, “I completed 15,000 items of this-or-that between 2011 and 2016,” etc.
I would also often read and save stories about how people had to work twice as hard me for half as much pay. Sure, I wasn’t getting paid all that much. But there’s always billions of people beneath you in terms of hardship, and it was a constant reminder in gratefulness.
Short term: STAND UP. Just the physical act of tearing yourself away from whatever digital rabbit hole you’re using to procrastinate can help re-center your attention.
Medium term: Procrastinate healthier. If you’re avoiding a stressful task, do so by engaging with a less stressful task that also needs doing, rather than by wallowing in random online distractions (are you listening to yourself Kimstu ).
Long term: What Velocity says about the detail planning, IF you are the sort of person who enjoys the satisfaction of arranging little clerical details of task management. I like that stuff myself, but if you’re not that sort of person, micromanaging your activities that way will probably just stress you out further.
In that case (or in any case, really), odd though it may seem, I’d suggest pivoting to improving your sleep hygiene, basic nutritional and household maintenance, and similar general lifestyle grounding.
I know that sounds like some sort of weird Jordan Peterson “clean your room” cult discipline, but if you’ve got chronic stress and can’t organize your way out of it because organizational tasks make the stress worse, then just work on giving yourself better stress-healing capacity in general.
Tell your manager and everyone to f’ off and let you crunch through your tasks, in the order that you think makes the most sense. Reject any incoming requests or changes of priority.
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