Revisiting Focus
Struggling to find focus, I'm learning how to balance work demands and energy levels effectively.
Despondent feelings
I recently posted about my battle with focus and how a decade into work it still remains a challenge. It doesn’t help that I invite more work than my title demands and over promise to my peers. Tasks keep piling up and things start tumbling down.
The backlog starts compounding slowly similar to a heavy boulder. My suffering is similar to Sisyphus.
In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was known for his punishment in the underworld. His eternal task was to roll a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down before he could reach the top. This futile and repetitive labour has become a symbol of the somewhat absurd nature of what we go through as human beings at various points of our lives.
A lot of my work resembles the state of Sisyphus when pushing the boulder up the hill. There is an idea for a problem that germinated, it’s in my interest to scope it before we move forward to execution.
In my scenario, product discovery work or unpacking a concept for team on product. The time and energy spent during these types of work drains the life out of me. Getting these tasks done is both a function of rigorous research and conviction on the analysis. Many times I end up in a flux, unable to reach the end state.
There are tactics, of course, and by the time people have come to me, they’ve usually tried them all. They’ve reorganized their calendar. They’ve blocked out time. They’ve sat down with their partner to talk about what they each need and who’s going to cook for mom next week. They’ve prioritized. They’ve delegated. They’ve told their boss what they’re going to stop doing. They’ve told their reports what they no longer have room for. They’ve automated those two tasks that were taking too long. They’ve asked for more budget. They’ve asked to push a deadline. They’ve time-shifted. They’ve hacked their bedtime. They’ve cut out tea/coffee/soda/gluten/swedish fish. They’ve pomodoroed, for fuck’s sake.
The question to ask with all those things isn’t, “how do I make time for this?” The answer to that question always disappoints, because that view of time has it forever speeding away from you. The better question is, how does doing what I need make time for everything else
Not able to replenish my energy reserves outside of work was detrimental for the last two weeks. Conversations with people haven’t helped either. Work as an employee is not my primary a channel of my interests and purpose. I enjoy doing work well while executing newer ideas and contributing positively to the team. But thats all I can expect out of it.
As Mandy suggests to move past “How do I make time” to “How does doing what I need make time for everything else”. This framing helped with my focus once again. The byproduct of it is this issue coming ahead of schedule. I will write to you once I push the boulder up the hill.
Round up
I am currently in the midst of a series of Q&A with my former colleague Dinesh. The challenge is simple, we both ask each other questions that have to be answered in short 400 words posts. I have been posting them to my blog and sharing it on LinkedIn.
What would you do differently with Subjimandi.app?
Re-iterated the focus of side stepping doing the trade through your balance sheet. Many entrepreneurs make this mistake to show results but once you are addicted to doing trade. It is hard to peel back from it. The risk of loosing focus from the main problem is highly probable.
Other than supply chain which areas would I focus on agriculture
The one underserved demographic is women farmers. Making our service accessible to women farmers can be turned into a lever on building sort of moat in agriculture. Penned my approach of building a digital first FPC comprising of women farmers at their core.
Links that resonated
I would like to link to 2 specific posts about writing in public. Venkatesh Rao of Ribbon Farm fame is retiring his blog and moving on. This was bittersweet as a lot of his writing on varied topics were helpful in my own writing and learning.
Ribbon Farm is retiring
These half-assed retirement plans still leave an important function of this blog unaccounted for: As the default outlet for all my random impulses for nearly two decades. What I’ve called my salt-seeking tendencies. Without this blog serving as a sort of /etc folder, I will be sort of cognitively homeless after November 13, since such impulses are probably my most primal ones. It might sound silly, but “where will I put my random 2x2s now” is a real and serious question for me
He writes about the advent of cozyweb (more serialised writing) and the substack phenomena. Worthy of you time if you want to understand the lore of blogging in its hey days.
The other post talks about writing as a form of contribution to the domain in which one operates. Especially, if you are a leader. Jarche has been writing for the same amount of time as Venkatesh Rao.
Good seeds
We discussed other versions of stories that were based on not taking everything and giving back to the community in our online community today. It reflects my view of leadership in a networked society, which is helping make the network smarter, more resilient, and able to make better decisions.
My own public writing has shifted to the Digital Garden and the purpose of it is to imbibe the cozyweb form of writing to sow some good seeds into the networks I inhabit.
Sign off
The focus on building a repository of writing which will be updated timely with incremental lessons along the way adds to my energy. If it turns out to be useful for even one more nerd, it will surpass my expectation.
Whereas this newsletter is my narrative recital of things living rent free on my mind.
Singing off till the next time,
Vivek, pitching to everyone to start their own blogs