I have a lot of friends who are struggling with focus at work given our current shelter-in-place conditions. I’m running into a little bit of this myself — I think my productivity is a little bit lower than usual, even though I’m used to working at home. But for the most part I’m doing ok getting work done.
Instead, what I’m failing at is relaxing. I’m finding it increasingly hard to focus, or enjoy myself at all, when I don’t have a clear “to-do” item in front of me.
- I’m having trouble with any kind of fiction reading, which is usually not a problem at all.
- I’ve been taking more walks, but I spend them either thinking about work or worrying about the state of the world in general.
- I can occasionally fool myself into baking, but only if I think of it as “I need this loaf of bread” instead of “it’s fun to bake!”
- While Leigh and I are slowly working our way through Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, I’ve watched it enough times that it’s as much background noise as media for me.
Instead, when I have any kind of downtime I just feel anxious. I stare at Twitter or the news, or just sit there and worry.
Needless to say this is not any good for work-life balance! I’ve been doing okay at not over-working, mostly thanks to Leigh and the cats, but I’m not sure hours of free-floating anxiety is all that much better.
Anyway. Not sure there’s a point to this, but that’s my current quarantine experience. If this sounds familiar, feel free to shoot me an email and happy to chat! (Apparently I could use the distraction…)