Focus On One Step At A Time

           

I have the worst habit of over-expectation from myself. I think if I can do five things, then really why not ten? And if I make ten, why not fifteen? As you can see, it's a self-perpetuating cycle of potential destruction. When things don't get done, I get grumpy and often feel like I've let myself and others down. However if you ask "the others" they are likely to tell you I'm doing a great job and shouldn't be so hard on myself.

It's actually something I'm aware of and have been trying to break but it's slow going. However, the other day when I was loading the dishwasher, I was hit right in the face with a clear reason why it's important and more effective to slow down and focus on one thing at a time. It really wasn't anything earthshattering -- it was a dirty frying pan of baked-on, caked-on eggs that led to this epiphany.

You see, we have this awesome and great dishwasher with all sorts of features like sanitize, jet clean, power wash and normal. But each time you add something to the cycle, it takes more time for it to run (Ah, a parallel!).With this dishwasher, adding more things could mean it runs for four hours. That's not cool. I didn't want it to run that long and the only item in need of super cleaning was the egg pan.

I grabbed a scouring sponge and started attacking the pan. It's one of those heavy duty, copper bottomed aluminum pans without teflon. That means everything sticks to it (unless you use an entire stick of butter to cook in) and getting it clean takes an act of Congress. So there I am scrubbing all over the bottom furiously. Swipe. Swipe. Swipe. Nothing is really happening. Oh sure, a little bit is coming off here and there but not enough to make a visible difference. I could feel my tension rising and I was getting grumpy. At one point, I threw the sponge down and let fly with a few choice curses. Then I took a deep breath and picked up the sponge again. I looked at the pan and saw a spot on the edge that really wasn't all that bad. While I waited for my calm to return, I scrubbed the spot. A couple of swipes and it was gone. Poof! Just like that. I moved to another small spot and had the same success. Well, it didn't take me long to figure out that if I concentrated all my efforts on one small area I was getting excellent and fast results. I focused on spot to spot to spot and within five minutes the whole bottom of that pan gleamed like it was rolling off the showroom floor.

I was rather astounded especially when I equated the experience of washing that pan with tackling my various projects whether it's writing, cleaning, exercise or planning a wedding. I'm super impatient so I think casting a wide net will get me better results. Less time and energy, right?

Wrong.

This whole week since the "Pan Incident," I have practiced focusing on ONE thing at a time.  To my delight, I found that it works really well in many areas. Laundry doesn't count though. You can't really focus on doing laundry and nothing else until it's finished or you're  going to be staring at the washer then the dryer for a very long time. Which would make me even more tense because I'd be thinking of all the time I'm wasting that I could be using to do something else!

I haven't perfected focusing by any means. I still flit from project to project but at least now I'm becoming more attuned to focusing on the right now project instead of letting my mind wander to what I'll be doing next. This amazing trick really showed itself well last night when I sat down to plot Enticed, book four of the Sexual Magic series. I had a vague idea of what I wanted to happen in the book and who the characters were. When I sat down to put it to paper, I tuned inward and listened to what they had to say and did nothing but that. Within two hours I had the entire book plotted, character sketches drawn and even found a rather awesome bad guy quite unexpectedly. All from focusing on one thing instead of nine.

I think I like this focusing on the small stuff idea.It's working so far!

Happy reading,
Jennifer