The Value of Focus and of Switching Tasks

05/14/15

I have long since come to appreciate the value of focusing on one thing at a time (though I often fail to adhere to this understanding), but recently I have rediscovered that sometimes you just need to step aside and work on other things.

Human beings are not proper machines. More time put into a task does not ensure any kind of increased produtivity on task being worked on. In some cases, it can result in negative work, or burn out that makes further work impossible without a much longer break.

But I'm not just talking about simple breaks from tasks. I'm talking about switching to a different task for a while. Several times at work lately, I realized something I could be doing on a task I wasn't working on.

It reminded me of a time when I was going through the exercises of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I often did the exercises during breaks at work, and found myself more capable of thinking of solutions to the problems I was working on whilst I did my drawing break.

Basically, I think I'm properly realizing now that there's value in taking breaks from productive work with other, appropriately different productive work. And I would like to try to apply that to my extra-curricular productive work.

How exactly I go about that is still something I'm working out, Stephan.