Shadab, who wrote in a few weeks back, had another question:
"I work as a receptionist in a noisy Indian hospital. Sometimes people come up to me every 2-5 minutes, and sometimes there’s a break of
even 10 minutes. I do most of my writing (and reading) while responding to people.
Often when I reach the state of flow, I’m compelled to switch back. Cal Newport, Josh Kaufman and several others say that switching projects back and forth damages our cognitive capabilities in the long run.
I obviously am scared for my concentration. but besides the hospital job, I don’t get that many chances for burnishing my
writing skills."
Some jobs, like Shadab's, involve quite a bit of downtime: you need to be present, in case a customer (or patient, etc) arrives ... but you're not constantly doing something. (Parenting two small children has similar moments, I've found!)
Assuming your employer doesn't mind, this can be a great chance to squeeze in a bit of writing. But, as Shadab points out, this type of writing is likely to be subject to all sorts of
interruptions -- ones that you can't predict, and that you need to give your full attention to.
It is very frustrating to get into flow only to get interrupted. I'm not convinced, though, that it's a danger to your long-term ability to focus. My understanding is that distracting yourself (i.e. writing for 2 minutes, checking Facebook, writing for 2 minutes, checking the headlines...) is more of a problem than being interrupted by
something external. If you keep interrupting yourself, it becomes second-nature; a normal part of your writing process.
So: write, despite external interruptions ... but don't let these become an excuse for not focusing well when you do have uninterrupted time.
What I'd suggest to Shadab, or anyone else in a similar situation is:
#1: Continue to seize opportunities to write,
even if they're not ideal. Ten minutes is fine. (Katharine Grubb has a whole book on this, Write a Novel in Ten Minutes a Day, detailing how she writes in 10 minute bursts around homeschooling her five children!) Even if you can only manage 2 - 5 minutes, that's better than nothing.
#2: Where possible, try to work in some longer, uninterrupted writing sessions -- perhaps once or twice a week. These don't have to
be very long. 30 minutes would be great (I do most of my writing in 30 minute sessions), but even 15-20 minutes could work fine.
If frequent interruptions are making it really difficult to write during work, then you could look for non-writing activities to do instead. Reading is a great example, as Shadab suggests; you could also do pre-writing activities like coming up with ideas, jotting down an outline for a blog post, working out what should
happen in the next scene of your novel-in-progress, and so on.
Have you got a question about writing? Just hit reply to let me know, and I'll cover it in a future newsletter or blog post.
