Two Serious Distractions to Our Work - at Least They Are to My Work

One of my rules at work has been to stick with the tasks at hand. What that means: When I get down to the business of the day, only what's on my "To Do" list gets my full attention. 

Generally I start working around the same time every morning. There are some exceptions. For example, I may decide to catch up on some personal matter or two. But typically we're talking about taking anywhere from a few minutes to maybe a half hour - that's it. Anything beyond that has to wait until I finish all those tasks sitting there awaiting my attention. In any event, it's rare that I delay the start of the work day.

Sure, it takes a bit of discipline. And it's taken time to develop that discipline. For quite a few years, when newspapers were still alive and kicking, I'd spend a chunk of time first thing reading about "what's happening." The excuse was that you have to know what's going on in the world to be successful in your business. Sounds good. And to some degree it's true. It's just that you don't need to know what's going on every minute of every day. That was true even before the media became perverted by its embrace of agenda-driven stories, when there was a modicum of effort put into uncovering facts and reporting them "as is." 

Of course, now it's hard to find news worthy of any attention. But when you do find it, it's hardly ever necessary to know right now. If it's really important, there's usually time to get to it after you get your work done. The less distraction, the better you can focus and make sure you do good work and get it done on time.

With that said, two issues have been nosing their way into my work day to the point of distraction. The first is this whole "vaccine" thing. The effort to push us all into getting the shot (or shots) has been ramped up almost to the level of a hysterical "scream." The result has been that you can hardly meet anyone these days without their asking, "Did you get the vaccine." This includes friends, neighbors, family, even people you meet and don't really know very well. Lately it's graduated from a topic of conversation to practically a greeting, replacing "Hello" or "How've you been." Ridiculous.

If it stopped there, it would be irritating, but not so distracting. What's made it distracting are the facts related to these injections. These concern me. We won't get into all that now, but just know that I reserve judgement regarding both the efficacy and the safety of these shots. 

Now add to this concerns for loved ones who have gotten or are planning to get jabbed. And it wouldn't be so bad if the concern was restricted to adults, even if some of these are our own adult children. But the latest push is for not only college students, but kids to be jabbed. Kids! And each day brings more push and pressure.

Of course, if you're fine with all this, you likely can go about your business without it all being a distraction. But if you're not, and you think your loved ones may suffer negative consequences (to put if blandly), you might understand how this can be distracting.

My way of dealing with this so far has been to do my best to learn all I can. I try to keep the time devoted to this effort to before or after work hours. But sometimes, when I'm taking a break anyway, I'll read up, watch a video, or listen to an audio file that help me better understand the risks. And, yes, there are risks to taking these.

If you're not sure about this, just ask yourself whether you've ever heard anyone claim any sort of medical treatment was completely safe? Every drug company commercial always spews disclaimers and warnings about any of the plethora of drugs they're pushing on us these days. In fact, you can't download an update to an app on your phone without "agreeing" to the dozens of pages of disclaimers attached to the download. Right? 

So these things are completely safe? Right.

As you might imagine, we could go on about the issues here, but we won't. It's hard enough for me to forge ahead with my work day without allowing this stuff to distract me and take up time I should be devoting to the task at hand.

Next time we'll look at that second distraction. For now, let's get on with the day's work. Those tasks await our full attention.