Focus

I was recently sent a link to "focus: a simplicity manifesto in the age of distraction", and read through the free HTML version (the one linked via the table of contents).

The ideas of focus, reducing distraction, and prioritisation are very important, and it was good to see a clear and coherent description of why they are necessary and pointers to ways of thinking to achieve them. Ignore the parts which stress how terribly middle-class and privileged the writer is.

At work I occasionally just turn off email and get my head down on a single task for a set time, and keep my inbox clear by importing nearly everything into Request Tracker and use that to prioritise jobs. Without doing that, my stress levels rise and I start forgetting to do things, which leads to more stress, and so on. Here is the tool I wrote to import email: "RT Email Import".

So far so good. It's all very well reducing distractions and prioritising, as that reduces stress and results in Things Getting Done. But when it comes to deciding what Things should be Done - working out long term goals - the whole "what do you want" question stalls me completely.

Doing things I "like" seems rather pointless and self indulgent and so it's hard to focus on those without feeling like I'm wasting my time. Art is ultimately functionless (especially if it's crap) and so squeezing something out of my artistic sphincter also feels like a waste of time. I'm not enough of a nut to think that I'm a special and unique snowflake with any higher purpose. The only meaningful things to work towards are those which provide a positive benefit to at least one other person.

What the "focus manifesto", Aleister Crowley's law of Thelema, and many many other things have in common is the idea of someone having an ultimate purpose in their life. The Great Work is to find it. I guess the problem I have with that idea is it's a load of navel-gazing bollocks. Focus on what's good and useful for yourself and others, and anything else is fluff.