Traction On The Year II: Work

Yesterday was a lost cause at work.

As usual I came in with the best of intentions:  work on things, be productive.  What I found by the end of the day was that I was feeling distracted and unproductive.  Fine. This has happened multiple times of course; to improve I need to understand exactly what went wrong.

1)  Goals:  Yes, I know.  I have sort of beat this into the ground.  But I still have to be honest in that I do not really have any goals for work.  I can come up with a plethora of reasons why such goals are very difficult to generate at work (which they are), but in point of fact I do not have any.   Why does this matter at all?  Because without goals for work I find myself drifting from emergency to emergency or item to item without any drive as to how things will fit into the larger picture - or in my case, how I get up or get out.

2)  Focus:  I am a social creature.  I am also someone who does not deal well with repetitive tasks or boredom.  Thus, when I have to do much of what I have to do my mind tends to wander:  I get pulled into the conversations of others or "suddenly" have to find out information about this or that.  Part of this is a diversion on my own part to keep myself from doing that which is not interesting or informative, the other is an admission that my job is not challenging me at the highest levels.  While I feel trapped by my inability to change my current position, this does nothing to enhance my efforts and ability to get out of that position.

3)  Talk:  As I mentioned above I am a social creature.  As such, I like to talk.  I enjoy speaking with others (well, at least some others).  It is very helpful to my line of work; however, I find that I have the tendency to like to talk. A lot.  About things we have already discussed.  I took a quick mental note yesterday as I left concerning the amount of time I spent talking and was amazed (not in a good way).  What I found was I have the tendency to rehash and smoulder rather than actively work at getting things done.

The underlying problem here is that none of these failings move me any closer to finding something I really want to do.  They just act as a mitigation to a situation that I do not particularly care for.  I need to realize that these are symptoms of a larger problem - and then move on to address the larger problem.

Otherwise, I will find that this year looks remarkably like the one just past.