It's Tidy Tuesday, and I am a happy nerd.
My repaired desktop PC motherboard finally, finally showed up at my door this morning, and after plugging everything back in, my system is back to its wonderfully bootable self.
It will take me more time than I can put in today to get everything back to normal with my whole desk setup. I have a bunch of temporary cables and peripheral connections that I have to untangle and put away. Still, it shouldn't take more than a day. Also, after some brainstorming, I'm planning to dial back some of what I had before the crash to simplify, streamline, and segment my whole work area.
This idea of "segmenting" brings us to today's topic, which is an idea still bouncing around in my head.
The recent adventure with my computer highlighted the importance of having a well-tuned environment to work in, regardless of the kind of work you're doing. Organizing data, writing, reading, programming, and even non-digital things like doing dishes or folding laundry. When your workspace is a mess, it's just harder to do...anything.
That much is pretty obvious. But my brain didn't stop there.
I started wondering about other factors that could have similar effects on focus and productivity. For example, why do I still so often find it hard to stay on task, even if my desk is clean and I start with no distracting apps or websites open, even if I've planned and prioritized my day's work in advance? Theoretically, that setup should make it easy to do exactly what I want to do. And yet, I still end up spending time on things I didn't intend to.
It's frustratingly hard to do real "deep work" in the Cal Newport sense. It's not just that we have so many things to distract us, like emails and text messages and the never-ending torrent of notifications from all of our devices; those things are bad, and turning them off does help, but there's more to it--a problem arising through multiple decades of systemic change: technology has eliminated task-specific physical contexts for most of us. Especially for so-called knowledge workers.
For example: the space, desk, and devices I use to write code for work are the same space, desk, and devices I use to write code for side jobs, or for fun.
And to research new ideas. And to communicate with family. And friends. And coworkers. And to read news. And to make phone calls. And to play games. And to create art. And to buy things. And to sell things. And to organize family photos. And to write in my journal. And to listen to music.
...and a hundred other things unrelated to each other.
There's no easy way to separate these tasks into a different physical context, and after a while, they start blending into the same mental context as well. I forget what I'm supposed to be working on because the very physical actions I'm doing might apply to any of a few dozen tasks, many of which were at the front of my mind at some point in the previous 24 hours.
I'm not really "switching contexts" when I start working on something else accidentally. I'm still in the same context. I've just drifted over to a slightly different set of actions.
This is why people recommend that you never bring your laptop or your phone with you into bed, even to do personal things. The bedroom is for bedroom things. Sure you can read a book or drink tea or meditate, as part of your morning or evening routine. But don't watch Netflix or scroll Facebook or do online shopping. Physical space and relevant context must be guarded, or they lose meaning and purpose.
In contrast, this is not nearly so much of a problem if you are, say, a plumber or an electrician, or a piano tuner, or a grocery clerk, or many other roles where your job has a much more specific physical context...maybe even a set of equipment that applies only to that job.
I'm still considering the ideas here and what, if anything, I can do in my specific case to combat the problem. Technology is great, and I obviously enjoy it immensely. But being able to do just about anything with a single tool does make it extremely difficult to stay focused when you have eight things that all need to be done in the immediate future.
This is undoubtedly not a novel idea in the world, but I'm only thinking about it now myself for the first time. What about you--have you encountered this either by your own realization or in a book or podcast somewhere? Does it fit with your experience, or do you perhaps have a different take?
For now, I'm off to wrap up a bit more desktop PC reassembly. Victory is at hand!
Until next week, happy data-taming!