---
date: 2020-11-09T16:48
tags:
  - timeline
  - practices
  - productivity
---

# focus requires a rigorous contract

Balancing many disparate tasks is good for my morale ("Wow! If I get bored with
this one thing, I can just do something else!"), but feeling "behind" is most
decidedly _not_ good for my morale.  Timeblocking and scheduling are great, but
they require _discipline_. I like to think that I am effectively entering into
a short-term contract with myself. If the terms aren't clear, the chances of
failure go up (significantly). Interestingly, I think this scenario represents
a conflict of interest: I am basically the party responsible for _monitoring_
that contract, as well as the one actually executing the work.

Besides having a clear plan (a statement of work) I think the next biggest
concern involves distractions. In my experience, you can't get rid of
distractions, but you can be judicious about _what_ distractions you choose to
entertain. That gets to the same end-goal of choosing _when_ to focus on
distractions, but puts a different emphasis on the problem.

The "hard" part (to me) is that developing the intuition of what to do (and
when) is much easier said than done. Maybe because it is a constantly moving
target?