Focus

The idea of focus has been cropping up a lot lately. The concept of eliminating distractions and concentrating on goals is not a new one, but I have never managed to quite get there. I am still working on it. In fact, I was trying to write last night and realized I was getting nowhere. I have been using Google Drive to write recently because of the collaboration features; I realized last night, however, that I was typing a few sentences before clicking on my Twitter, Feedly, or Google Plus tabs and getting distracted.

Coincidentally, this post from Shawn Blanc popped up in my RSS Feed as this was all going on and helped me realize what exactly I was doing. I shut everything down early last night, un-followed around 60 accounts on Twitter, and read for a bit before deciding I'd get up early this morning. I'll probably be moving back to WriteRoom or something similar for pounding out words and using Drive for the editing and collaboration features. This morning even moving the tab I was working in to it's own full-screen window made a significant difference in the amount of work I was able to do in the time I had available.

It took effort, though, to make sure that I stayed on task and wrote. It didn't happen by accident. Remember that as you create.

From shawnblanc.net:

Intentions are dandy, but real men get to work.