Today I have encountered a frustrating issue that seems to crop up fairly often in my working days. To begin with, I struggled to settle into work well and found myself somewhat distracted and not working very efficiently for a good chunk of the morning. Then, this afternoon I found I was fully into the task I was doing and so I now find myself, at about the time that I am wanting to go home, properly immersed in the task and not really wanting to stop working on it. Actually, no, that’s wrong, I really DON’T want to carry on working on it and I definitely DO want to stop working and go home. What I mean is that I am now working efficiently and am tuned into the work task at precisely the time that I am going to (have to) stop working on it, when this morning, when I had more work time stretching ahead of me, I couldn’t settle. This happens quite a lot. I find I just get going towards the end of the afternoon but then have very little time to make good use of my burst of focus and energy.
I have wondered about this before and whether there is any way that I can make better use of what appears to be a natural rhythm to my working day or whether there is something I can do to shift the focus/energy peak earlier in the day so that it has a longer period through which to be useful. How can I create the ‘end of the afternoon’ feel in the morning? Is it a matter of doing things differently earlier in the day or eating differently? Might it simply be that as the available work day starts to shrink I am better able to push myself into a state of focussed activity in an attempt to finish tasks before I go home? I suppose that if it was just me that I had to take into consideration I MIGHT allow myself to carry on working into the evening. I seem to really switch on about 2-3 hours after I have eaten lunch or about 5-6 hours after I arrive at work so it might be that I need to spend a long time ‘warming up’ – that would suggest an earlier start to the day. I don’t know. I’m confused. I’d love to solve this one.
Tim O'Hare 