Seven Habits of Highly Distracted People

Just for fun, a reprint of my humorous essay first published in the Seattle Times, June 28, 1998. Can you relate? Leave a comment!

People like me, who read best-sellers long after their prime, are waiting with breathless procrastination for the Seven Habits of Highly Distracted People. I borrowed its antithesis from a highly-effective friend, got to page 9 of 352 during car pool stops, then lost the book.

It surfaced a week later at my mother-in-law’s, where I’d dropped it before hauling out her garbage. That’s when I came up with seven habits that every distracted person can practice with pride.

1. Be reactive. Plan not to plan. Be spontaneous and mysterious. Posting the week’s nutritious and color-balanced menu may work for effective people. But after a long, disorganized day I’d rather play “What’s My Menu” with leftovers. I rationalize that I’m passing on the heritage of my Scandinavian ancestors, who gave the fancy name “smorgasbord” to refrigerator potluck.

2. End with the beginning in mind. Every project is worth starting. The other day I opened my sewing box to mend socks and encountered scraps to cut for my next quilt. That required clearing dirty dishes off the table for a cutting space. The soaking dishes reminded me to treat a grass stain on my son’s jeans. Opening his closet, I decided to sort out the clothes he outgrew six inches ago. Someday, I’ll sew that quilt.

3. Put last things first. Effective people ruthlessly sort their junk mail over the wastebasket. They miss reading about the joys of vinyl siding and easy credit They never find, as I did, a sample copy of a “life planner,” which promised to reduce my chaos to charts and disarray to discipline. Right away I wrote in my first and last priorities of the day: get up with the chickens and go to bed with the teenagers. I achieved both. The items between those didn’t fare as well, but there’s always tomorrow.

4. Think win-a-few/lose-a-few. One day it was just me and one of my young teens in the car. Realizing my offspring was staring at me soulfully, I jumped at this golden moment of parent-child bonding. “What’s on your mind, my dear?” I gushed. “Hey, Mom,” the child replied, “How come you have whiskers?” In true lose-lose form, I told the rude child that I was interviewing for a job as a circus bearded lady.

5. Understand that you never will. My graduate degree in communications doesn’t count a whit at 5:30 p.m. when a child is in distress over algebra homework sprawled all over the kitchen table. My suggestion that we re-attack homework after dinner reveals my ignorance of the intellectual process. “You never understand,” wails the child, who uses the same phrase on shopping trips when I choke over mini-skirts and platform shoes.

6. Syncopate. Highly distracted people are one-person bands who do it all with off-beat style. We all need those days that we discover—at noon—that our jeans are unzipped and the turtleneck is on backwards (no wonder it felt like a noose). Who cares? At least I pried a family out of bed, plunked a chicken in the crock pot, tossed a load in the washer, and delivered kids to the right schools before I showed up at the hardware store with my apron still on.

7. Grow wizened and wise. Distracted women may buy “Oil of Delay” by the Costco gallon and rub nasty stuff into their hair to cover up the silver. But we don’t believe that life after forty means a brain shrunk to the size and texture of a walnut. Every day holds wonderful learning experiences—if we can find where we scheduled them in our daily planners.

I once thought I wanted to be abnormally perfect. But now I’m content to be perfectly normal. I take courage from my great-great-something grandmother, whose perfect day included milking the cow, getting pecked gathering eggs, pumping the water to boil for laundry, knitting Pop’s socks, and plucking the feathers off the candidate for chicken dinner. Then when every last pot was scrubbed, she sat down at her little pump organ and sang, “The End of a Perfect Day.”

Well, it was almost perfect. She was supposed to ride the buckboard to town, but forgot to write it down in her planner.