Narrowing our Focus

I am very tired and I will have to save my loftier post ideas for another day but I wanted to talk about something that was at the center of my consciousness this morning. This week has been a nightmare at work. One of the more valuable employees went on leave and left us severely short handed. He was supposed to return today but he called in sick. Normally, this would not be a serious problem but none of the management was aware of his lengthened absence until I arrived at my place of work (an hour and a half after it was supposed to open) and found it empty and full of untouched work. I called and woke my manager (this was around 3:15 in the morning) and he said that he would send me some help but that I would take an hour or two before they arrive. I was faced with an insurmountable mountain of work and I was alone (for a while). I stood there for a brief moment and I began to feel slightly ill. "I'm so fucked," I thought. Then I realized that I was approaching this problem in the wrong way. I am one person and I can't concern myself with what I have waiting for me three or five hours down the road. I understood what I must do if I hoped to maintain my sanity. I had to stop looking at every task that was ahead of me and focus on only one thing at a time. The work was eventually finished and I came home to think about my day where it occurred to me that there was a simple but important lesson to be taken from the experience. We can easily overwhelm ourselves when we try to come to terms with a large and serious obligation. Some problems are difficult, time consuming, or complex and it is disheartening to actually consider what lies ahead when you are faced with them. It is better, I believe, to focus only on each individual step and to keep moving from one thing to the next because, even though the workload is the same, it helps to keep one's spirit high and prevents the individual from becoming overly stressed by circumstances that are beyond his or her control.

I know that it is not a new or particularly profound realization that I had today but it does address a common problem. We often assume that planning and awareness are key to our success and that is true to a point. It is fine try to work out how we will approach a problem before we approach it. However, once we do that, we do not need to continue thinking about our entire plan in order to put each step into action but we often do. We try to see the "bigger picture" and it's weight puts undue pressure on us. Panic or desperation begins to set in and our well drawn designs start to crumble. In the end, we are less effective at completing our work or solving our problem because we fail to comprehend the necessity of narrowing our focus.

The trick is not allowing one's self to be concerned with anything beyond the immediate step. The whole job make take hours or days. The problem may be large and complex. However, our plan can always be broken down into smaller pieces. When we only focus on one step at a time, we are less likely to feel the same level of stress that we would if we tried manage the entire task at once. The workload may be the same, but it is less taxing on us and we are more effective for that reason.

That's all I have for today. Things should be back to normal at work next week and I have a day off coming up so I hope to post something a little more substantial pretty soon.

Peace.

All the images in this post are sourced from the free image website, unsplash.com.