Productivity and Focus

Having a period of time off work for my cancer treatment allowed me a lot of time for self-exploration.

Initially the goal was to find the silver bullet for the cancer.

But there is no silver bullet, and I became focused on the marginal gains – anything and everything that would allow my body to get to a state of equilibrium, or perhaps better.

One thing I have struggled with is productivity and focus.

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Almost 20 years of lawyering hard-wires the brain to measure productivity in terms of billable units undertaken, fees collected. Focus is driven by deadlines. I was going to say and urgency, but urgency is a derivation from deadlines.

Did I become a lawyer because I was results focused, or did I become results focused because I had a lawyer mindset?

I was certainly results focused before-hand.  Give me six months for an essay, and I will still be doing the late night to finish it off. I was also revising and cramming to the last minute and attribute a good margin of grades to information crammed in the morning of the exam but forgotten by the evening.

But my musical background taught me that you can’t cram everything. You need incremental growth and persistence. Practice won’t make perfect, but it will lead to improvement.

In terms of intellectual challenges, I have come to realise that my brain works on a problem, seeing it from different angles and formulating possibilities, but it is the deadline coalesces these thoughts, without which they continue to drift.

That doesn’t mean everyone who wants to be a lawyer needs that, but in my view the smartest lawyer in the room who misses the deadline, should never win the case. I’ve worked with some very smart people, but would rather work with those who don’t lead their team into an all nightly simply because of their lack of planning.  (It’s frustrating when you’ve worked to a deadline and the opposition gets an extension for a feeble excuse, but there should be equity in justice if not in procedure).

Cancer treatment starts off feeling like a sprint. There are immediate deadlines:

• chemo is starting in two weeks, what do I need to know to get it perfect?
  • Now radiotherapy, how do I best prepare my body for it?
    • Hormone treatment is no longer working, what is the next one?

What do I need to know now, at every stage?

Those feel like hard deadlines. But like in life, the answer submitted on time is better than the one that comes too late. Each improvement is a marginal gain and we have to accept that never achieve perfection.

But around, and outside of the treatment, I have had chance to learn a lot about myself.

Side effects from various drugs stimulate things:

• Steroids drive my sense of invincibility in both physical and mental pursuits, setting goals for myself to implement ideas;
• Fatigue makes you want to take a break from things, but exercise;
• Giving into side effects only makes them worse;
• A sense of purpose helps you work towards the next stage with more meaning.

I adopted the concept of aiming for Above Average in various pursuits that would lead to physical health. I set myself some creative goals.

But none of them carried real deadlines. And those that did – the London marathon, resulted in a slump afterwards.

One reason I pushed to return to work in January was the prospect of a sense of purpose, working towards meaningful outcomes. I have come up with a lot of plans, probably driven co-workers crazy with some of them.

But absent real, hard deadlines, I struggle with productivity and focus – ideas never coalesce, I am a magpie that flits between the shiny things and reach the end of each day dissatisfied in the absence of concrete results.

This weekend is a good example. I had Lutetium yesterday and I am isolating from the family because of the potential consequences of radioactivity on the family (particularly the kids) – so I am faced with two weeks of isolation (yes, we are being even more conservative than the conservative timelines).

I have steroids (Dexamethesone) to counter the fatigue and bone-pain of the Lutetium. I took a walk in Windsor Great Park after the treatment, and then headed home faced with the prospect of 48 hours at home, and a task list of things I wanted to achieve, from the mundanity of tax returns, to working on my creative skills and getting in some exercise.  

The Dex gave me a sense of invincibility and I managed to fix the data cable to my garden office with some online tuition and new tools from Amazon, then got back into Zwifting (gentle Zwifting) and did some drawing practice.

I always struggle to sleep when I’m away from Anna and the kids, and the heat and steroids don’t help so I tried to counter that with Melatonin, which throws in its own factors.

So this morning I woke groggy and lacking a sense of deliberate purpose. After being sucked into some catching up on social media I knew I needed to force myself into a routine beyond eating, medication and supplements for the weekend, or I would feel that deep sense of frustration by the evening.

I have been enjoying some new Podcasts recently to expand my mind – in particular Cal Newport, Simon Sinek and James Taylor (super creativity). Cal’s concepts of Deep Work and disconnecting from distraction led me to work on a new idea for my day that I thought may appeal to the dopamine centres of my target hours riddled brain – breaking my day into segments.

Cal talks a lot about the loss of time in switching between tasks, so it is important to focus on a task. What is the best period?

I decided 45 minutes – so after taking my supplements and a call from Anna and the kids, I set my watch timer to 45 minutes and set out to oil the garden office. Breaking only when I remembered I needed to drink my coffee before it cooled I covered a surprising amount of the office and then did a little more just to finish the second section. I listed to Cal’s podcast episode on the Brain Gym while I worked – it stimulates my thinking and feeds into this process.

Then I thought I need to keep the momentum going but need time to switch between tasks, accepting wasted time and setting up systems. I set myself 7 minutes so as not to waste too much time, which would include a bit of research, then would sit and write for a focused 35 minutes.

Set-up took longer than planned and so cut into the “research”, but I then commenced writing what was meant to be recommendations on productivity and focus.

Turns out 35 minutes may not be long enough. So Part 2 may give more detail. But I will post this now (may re-read later, and will also post on Fighting Stage 4), because I know I need to learn to finish things to satisfy my demons and in the absence of external deadlines will impose this on myself to post today.

Give me the benefit of the doubt, I am on the Dex.