A story of redemption
David glanced at his task list — it has been clogged worse than a toilet at a frat party. As he scrolled down the list, he could only exasperate a bit more. He knew vaguely for some, and a bit more concretely for others as to how the tasks could be done. But, it didn’t seem to matter much. He closed the app and used the remainder of the bathroom break to play ‘Clash of Clans’. Suspending the decision making process and instead winning a game or two seemed much better.
He returned to his desk, popped open his email (why wouldn’t he?) and meandered a bit through random notes from various conversations. It was a bit past half past nine and he realized he had a short twenty minute window that he could pounce on some work. He swiveled in his chair, away from the monitor, to allow himself to focus.

Painfully aware of the exercise he was about to embark on, he still pulled a yellow legal pad and started to scribble the things that were on his mind. The worry was — there were always competing things clamoring for his attention. As soon as he jotted the first thing that bothered him, he realize he had to send a quick email asking John about an item to move it forward.
A few email filled minutes later, he was back again in a never ending standing pattern. The twenty minutes had done some good to the world, he wished. He had managed to send a few notes that would digitally push people to get some things moving forward. The next hour would be consumed in meeting and talking. His head ended up being full of words and he still hadn’t figured a good way to clear out his head.
At certain point of time, even the dullest of individuals start to realize a pattern in how they work. David started connecting the dots as well. They weren’t a pattern that made any sense but the connection was there. He was sure of it. His days were filled with meetings interspersed with free times that he had no idea how to utilize. Glancing one more time at his task list, he decided he would at least cross off the renewing the driver’s license.
The DMV office was a good hour drive from his place. As he started to pull on to the freeway, he reminisced about his previous botched attempt at getting his license renewed. After months of postponing, he had chosen early Monday morning to make it to the DMV only to realize that it was closed for Columbus day. The following week, his attempt was thwarted before it happened because he didn’t realize he had people visiting him at the office at the same time.
Not this time. Because of the extraordinarily long wait times in his home town, he chose a quaint little town an hour away to get his license back. Time to cross off at least one task and feel good about it. As he arrived at his destination, he was greeted by a swarm of fellow citizens who had gotten the same brilliant idea. The long drive back gave him further time to reflect as to how truly fucked up his approach was to getting things done.
David’s wife and he were polar opposite. She was punctual and never missed an appointment (even to a hairdresser). He was late to every appointment religiously. It was not for a lack of trying. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what the problem was. Duhigg’s book ‘Smarter, Better, Faster’ was the first one to offer a good clue — mental model. He never visualized how getting to an appointment would look like. This made him miss planning several small things that would eventually derail his attempt.
A typical week of one’s work life may be very indicative of how the entire year looks like. The tell tale signs of feeling spaced out or ambiguity in free time was not particular to a part of his job. Jeff Bezos once said that he was able to predict 5 quarters ahead as to how the company would do/what they will be working on. I barely know what my next week will look like, thought David.
Working backwards from the start of an event — start a mental process of getting there and you will uncover a brilliant amount of detail that you could not have foreseen. On a Friday evening, he had to take his friend’s daughter and his son to their violin class. Naturally, he didn’t plan when he had to leave his work place (Hint: left 7 minutes later than he should have) as he felt he had a bit more time. A simple visualization of how long it takes for the various connecting pieces to happen, he would have known he left later than he should have.
Just this realization lifted a veil of fog that had been clouding his life. He began with a thorough review of his calendar. He would no longer accept calendar invites blindly, only to find out that he had conflicts. He made appointments with himself for one task at a time. This little trick convinced his brain to work on that topic automatically instead of fighting it. Years of corporate training had washed his brain to do the thing that the Calendar tells it to.
Over the next six months, his visualization began to grow in strength. He began to enjoy adding more details to his visualization — the amount of detail he could encode in his mind’s infinite capacity to store this information was actually up-lifting. Knowing this information freed up more space from the mind than burden it. He was able to pick up inconsistencies ahead of time than many people missed.
For a long time, he had been wasting a great deal of time working at nights when he was dog tired. With his new found super power, he was able to switch entirely to a morning person. The luxury of two free hours before his kids wake up was something no parent would forego. He dedicated the time before getting to work entirely for personal development — adding new skills, taking care of his mental and physical fitness.
It’s probably customary in many companies to send a weekly report at the end of the week. Applying the method of visualizing ahead to weekly summary gave rise to the concept of pre-weekly. Instead of waiting for the end of the week to gather up what was done, pre-weekly dictates how you visualize the end of the week to look like. It allowed David to rattle off several volleys to people who need to get their own stuff done.
Although, the entire process of developing the skills to manage focus took him over an year, there’s no denying that it was well worth it. Being present in whatever the current moment offers is priceless.
