Things I could do when I couldn’t focus, paid-work edition:

• Attend meetings.
• Make useful contributions in meetings.
• Take notes.
• Review email.
• Answer email.
• Field tech support requests (“I can’t print!” “Would you tell me what you see on your screen?…”).
• Annotate tech support tickets and mark them completed.
• Update project plans.
• Skim trade mags.

Things I can do when I can’t focus, grad student/summer 2020 edition:

• Walk, unless there’s a heat advisory.
• Read a book, unless it’s something I want (or need) to remember.
• Review my email, now mostly mass-mail.
• …
• Read social media.
• Play solitaire.

The former set can easily consume days, and contributes to the organization. The latter… is feeling more and more sparse as the summer progresses.

*

I think, for me, there’s a quality to decoding — reading, playing cards — that listening (to podcasts or audiobooks) and/or watching (movies, TV shows) doesn’t engage. I don’t “get lost” in the audio-visual the way I do in print. Or digital solitaire. (Digital? Because who wants to shuffle cards? Not me!)

Maybe that’s also what made those paid-work activities effective autopilot for me — decoding others.

Now there’s just me.

And decoding myself ain’t autopilot, either.