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Random thoughts teaching Work

8/52 on focus and distraction

It’s Saturday morning, and we’ve finished Week 4 of term. Nearly half-way there! And I feel like I’m starting to emerge from the ‘head-down-bum-up’ non-stop ‘doing the work’ that’s been my life this year.

Take a breath.

Look around.

Take a second breath – because I can.

It certainly has been a busy start to the year. The line between important and urgent, work and home has been blurred, and I’ve made more mistakes than I’d like to think about… but praise God for sustaining me to reach this morning, this day, this weekend!

A day in which to reconsider priorities, rather than just paddle, paddle, paddle furiously like that duck who seems to be swimming serenely but underneath the surface, the legs are flailing relentlessly.

And this is where I’m thinking I’ll start. This post, which came across my feed the other week, and had me thinking about the spectrum of ‘focus’ to ‘scattered mindset’:

You see, when there’s multiple things pulling at your attention, it’s easy to do the ‘fun’ thing. To mix the ‘important’ with the ‘urgent’ and focus on the wrong thing. To allow distractions to take over, to move you off course. Or maybe that’s just me?

So today, this morning? A reset. A chance to sit back and look. And think. And re-prioritise. Circle those 5 things and – more importantly – identify those 20 distractions.

Here’s hoping for quite a lot more clarity by the end of it! And for you too as well, dear Reader!

KRidwyn

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#blogjune

Reality blues meme

Thanks to @jobeaz for inspiring this post.

What I would like to be doing:

1. relaxing

2. writing

3. re-arranging my home to suit my current family life, rather than the family life I like to think I have

4. enjoying being with my kids

5. reading a book while sitting in the sun

What I am doing instead:

1. worrying about money (well, lack of it, actually)

2. yelling at my kids when they interrupt my sitting in front of my gorgeous Macbook Pro, in the sun

3. listening to the birds, and the breeze through the trees (man, it’s wonderful living in paradise)

4. thinking that I may have to get up soon and fix some lunch. And then maybe think about doing some marketing work that I said I’d do today.

5. preparing to console Miss 3, who’s currently on the losing end of an argument with Miss 6 in the sandpit. This could get sandy. I should maybe think about running a bath for them as well (refer number 4)

… actually, I may be one of the fortunate ones, whose “What I would like to be doing” isn’t too far from the ” what I actually am doing”. Thank you, Lord, for that revelation!