Red Alert! It's very easy to be distracted.

2
byBIS
7.8K followers

Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much you plan or schedule it can all go awry at a moment’s notice by getting distracted. This is what happened to me yesterday.  I knew exactly what I planned to do – complete a video that I’ve been struggling with and create a banner advertising a free webinar.  I also wanted to complete 5 half written articles and schedule a month’s worth of tweets for one of my accounts.

Perhaps that list sounds ambitious but I was quite confident that if I remained focussed I would get it completed.

So did I succeed?  No I didn’t.  In fact I failed miserably.  Not only did I not complete the list I actually didn’t even finish one single item and I’m rather cross with myself. It wasn’t that I spent hours trying to compete my video and failed – no I wasn’t even tackling anything on my list.

I started off well and then on a break I decided to drop in WA to see what was going on in the Live Chat. I love the Live Chat.  I remember when it first started thinking it was something reserved for a select few and then I thought blow it and joined in.  You get such a mixture of conversations and sometimes it can be really difficult to follow if there are four or five threads going on simultaneously.

But you can pick up some really good tips and information from those conversations.  Yesterday was one of those occasions.  One member had been struggling with finding the right theme for their site and Jay suggested a possible theme. Well being a bit of a theme junkie I couldn’t resist going to have a look.  Ten minutes later I signed up to the site and had downloaded the theme.

Now I should have left it at that, but of course I didn’t.  I’ve never quite been satisfied with the theme that I have  for my coaching blog – so without much thought I activated this new theme and then spent the next 6 hrs playing around with it.  6 hours ?  Yes 6 hours!

Now changing the theme wasn’t a priority, but I couldn’t resist trying out this new theme.  I should have known better.  I got increasingly frustrated when I couldn’t easily get it to look the way I wanted and in the end I realised that it wasn’t what I wanted at all.  First thing this morning I changed it and after playing around with some other themes went back to the original and made some improvements to  the site which I’m pleased with and should have done some time ago.

Reminder to self ...STAY FOCUSSED AND DON’T GET SO EASILY DISTRACTED!

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Recent Comments

6

I think I sometimes will find a side task that isn't as frustrating as the targeted task, and convince myself I should do that first. Chat really is a catch 22! I often do learn from it though.

I agree with you Todd - the Live Chat is great and you can learn loads from it and I have done so myself. It is easy to pick a task that one prefers over the one that one needs to do. We've all been there.

I realize having a "to do list" is important in this business - in any business for that matter. But is it "wrong" to follow something that grabs your attention - or follow something that really inspires you if it's related to IM?

Hi Dee - no I don't think there's anything wrong about looking at something that grabs your attention but I think it's important to do it in a timely manner. Normally I have a slot in my day which I allocate just for that reason - and I can play and research to my hearts content.

Spending 6 hrs on that one topic which just wasn't a priority made me not only lose a lot of time but caused me a great deal of stress as I fell behind with other things. And it was all self inflicted stress! Foolish and unnecessary!

Don't ya hate it when that happens. Another form of shiny object syndrome. Well when you decide to use that Theme at least you will know how it works.

I would like to think that I won't do it again. But it's a habit that I find difficult to break.

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