Knowing What to Ignore

You started at seven in the morning and finished at six in the evening, and somewhere in between you did about forty things. None of them were stupid. Every one had a reason attached. Someone asked. Something arrived. A question came in and you answered it because answering took two minutes. A colleague wanted five minutes and took twenty-five. You were not idle at any point in the day.

Then in the evening you tried to name what you had actually moved forward, and the answer was thin. Not nothing. Thin. The one piece of work that will still matter in a year got forty minutes at the end, when you had nothing much left to give it, and you told yourself you would make a proper start on it this week.

The hours were all there and all used. That is what makes the day so difficult to argue with. Time was the resource you had plenty of. Attention was the one that ran out by about eleven in the morning.