I got to talking with two teammates who were less familiar with working from home and issues focusing and being productive. I think they had this mental image of me being 100% efficient and focused, and I laughed and we got to talking. /1

I told them that at my best, before all of this COVID-19 stuff, that I'd still have to constantly push for focus and then ride that particular wave for as long as I could, then take a break, then retry, and on the really good days some of those waves lasted an hour and a half /2

On bad days it's a struggle to string together 20-30 minute ones throughout the day. These days my new normal is 20-30 minute strings broken by trips to the fridge where I stare in there, tell myself I am not hungry and that I'm just stress/boredom eating, fill up my water /3

look out the back window for a little, then go back and do the next thing. I told that might be as good as it gets for awhile, and while I wish I was more productive, I also just forgive myself because this is a global pandemic - /4

and it's the grinding/terrifying background noise to everything we do for awhile, and tuning it out takes a lot of energy/focus that we’re so short on. So I set a timer for how long I think I can hold focus on a given task or objective, usually 20-30 minutes /5

like the Pomodoro technique ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique) and about 10 minutes in I want to check twitter or look out the window, and I look at the timer and keep going. And it gets easier, and the terrifying grinding noises of the outside world fade a bit. /6

For me, the days when my wife is working at the hospital, I get anxious and angry and depressed, and looking at the news just makes it worse and makes focusing for long stretches nearly impossible. /7

I’m grateful to still be employed, and grateful for the ability to lose myself a bit in my work until I can cook, or do laundry, or help her de-stress just talking after a long shift. But I’ve also learned to forgive myself for lacking focus these days. You should too. /8