Journaling project, Day 10

[drwex]

What you focus on grows. Stop managing your time. Start managing your focus. 99% of what stressed you out recently won’t even matter a month from now. Shake off the nonsense, bring your attention back to what’s important, and move forward with your life.

What is truly worth focusing on today? What is NOT?

Would that it were so easy. First, there's an inherent assumption that it's possible to tell - from the inside, from in media res - that 1% that will make a difference. I don't believe that's possible. We can have flashes, and good guiding principles, but I strongly believe that both god AND the devil are in the details. That which we strive to get right has impact, even if it's just the impact on ourselves of knowing we strove and knowing we succeeded.

By some criteria I'm wasting my time with these entries. It's not meaningful and in a few years who's going to remember that I spent 40 days on a project of this sort? Likely, nobody. But maybe people read these things and maybe they help think more clearly. I used to believe - and maybe still do - that every life has a purpose and sometimes we figure out a bit of what our purpose is in our lives, or in this phase of our lives. Looked at from this perspective, I feel like I want to reject this "99%/1%" dichotomy because clues to meaning are everywhere. Did you take a different route to work today? Was there something new or different you experienced on this non-routine path? Did you notice who sat next to your usual seat on the bus, in the subway, in the meeting room?

I'm not a mystical person, nor do I think that small details have mystical meanings the way they're shown to in many movies. But I do think that it's important to be open to the possibility that ideas can come from unexpected places and nothing has the power to change our lives like new ideas. Sometimes it's very mundane. Like, I complained about a problem to a friend and she suggested something that opened up a whole new solution I hadn't thought about before. Sometimes it's more meaningful, like how if you watch the way a person treats the serving staff at a restaurant you can get insight into how they treat business partners and relationship partners. God, and the devil, are in the details.

Today I want to focus on getting through work without triggering any landmines. Today I want to figure out how to conserve my energy so I don't wilt before a party tonight. Today I want to clean up some tasks I've left lying untouched - they're minor, but there are a number of them. Is any of that "truly worth" focusing on? Likely not, in the "will it matter in a month" sense. But that's what living life means - do the details, get through the day.

(Dang that got profound. I'm 1/4th of the way through the 40 prompts and still don't feel like I'm resonating with them. Maybe I'm coming at them with the wrong mind?)

Comments

[redbird]

If whoever wrote that can honestly say that 99% of what they're stressing about now won't matter in a month, they are some combination of oblivious and very fortunate: the largest things I stress about are political and health issues. Best case, in a month my joints will be working better, but "the problem has been solved" is very different from "it doesn't matter whether this changed."

OK, oblivious, very fortunate, or overgeneralizing from having an untreated anxiety disorder.

[flexagon]

AFAICT the prompts themselves are pretty good and you're writing interesting responses to them -- the paragraphs that precede each prompt are the annoying bits. Would it reduce the annoyance to address only the prompts?

[drwex]

Perhaps. I worry that the questions are too broad and if I'm unfocused I won't be able to cohere something of a response. I may give it a try. I haven't read ahead in the prompts to see.

[corylea]

I think maybe you're taking the prompts a bit more literally than their writer intended, but that's okay -- that's what computer guys do. (Every time my husband takes something I say far too literally, I remind myself that if you marry Spock, you gotta expect him to be literal at you. :-D)

I think as long as your response to the prompts keeps being profound, then they're serving a purpose in stimulating your thinking, even if your first thought is, "God, that's a load of crap!" :-)

I'm enjoying your thoughts -- I like to hear you think aloud. But then, hearing smart people think is a treat for me. ;-)

[drwex]

Thank you, that's very kind of you to say. I hardly think of my meanderings as 'profound' but I at least try to address the topic honestly (also another Spock trait, I know).

[corylea]

Er, I was just repeating what you said, above. You said, "Dang that got profound." Since you wanted to call it that, I used the word. Because I have Spock tendencies of my own. :-)