I didn't hit where I aimed

But I did get it done.

Almost two weeks ago now and as noted in the last post, I did all the work of anticipation and setting my task up for success, then I did something else. It wasn't a mistake. I wasn't lazy. I didn't let it drift. I made a conscious decision to do something else. Then, in order to do the thing I hadn't done. I made room for it by my not doing something else. I didn't take a break Sunday evening. Not something I want to do all the time, but during the long drive on Wednesday. I made two long personal calls that I would have otherwise made on Sunday. 

When I don't do something I planned, I'm always doing something else. Even if it's sleeping, eating, or staring off into the horizon. I need to give myself credit. 

The challenge comes when I didn't do something important because it required a higher degree of effort. It could have been physical effort like exercise, or, less visibly, mental effort. 

For this post, I promised you and my colleagues, I'd have it ready by Tuesday of this week, in order to have it ready a full week in advance. Then I would start the next one this coming weekend or early next week. I started the first two paragraphs on Tuesday, and today is Thursday when I'm picking it up again. Doing these requires my time, attention, and energy in optimum alignment. My energy for this kind of cognitive heavy lifting depletes quickly. Even if I write it in one go, I need to put it aside to reread and edit some hours or days later. I know at this point in my life, I'm not lazy when I put things aside. My attention and energy are renewable, and I need to give them time for the renewal. 

And amid all of life's possibilities every day, my energy-conserving reflexes slyly deflect me to less energy-consuming activities. I'm in the approach to write, and a good, useful, and easier thing shows up in my field of attention. In order to stay on track, I have to crank up my energy-draining metacognition to hold my attention on an even more energy-consuming activity.

Anticipation 

Prepare sufficient time, attention, and energy for the desired task.

Preview the challenges that could deflect or prevent the doing. 

Activation

Record what actually happened, 

A powerful thing I can do is measure my attention span. When I start a task, also start a stopwatch, or note and write down the start time. Then when I first catch my attention drift, note the time. Note the time when I reset my attention onto the task. Not the time when I catch myself having drifted. 

Someone else's attention span isn't mine. Yours isn't mine. We need to find our own span. Mine is embarrassingly short -- go ahead and ask -- but it's renewable. When I respect it, I get a lot done.

Reflection

This post, and my previous post, "Here it is: Sunday" are components of my reflection. What can I learn. When anticipation entered the real world of activation, what happened?

Now the discipline is: don't judge. Keith Svendsen, CEO of APM Terminals asks, "What are the learnings?" He runs a maritime enterprise. Nothing is certain. Every moment is an experiment. What do we learn from it?