Scatter-brained...

I just discovered that CheckRayz have two tournaments scheduled for tonight. First there is the CheckRayz-Celeb heads up poker challenge at 9pm EDT. At 10pm, we're at poker4ever. This was a scheduling error. I totally missed it - never saw it coming. I did not intend to have the tournaments on the same day, for those of you keeping score. I suspect my wide range of focus has caused me to be scatter-brained, and its showing.

My attention to detail has seemed to drop off lately. I typically work on multiple tasks at the same time with little difficulty. In fact, this typically plays to my advantage by having many things going on at once. One of my "known issues" is that I am easily "distracted." One of my friends once talked about how the universe works against him by nature. He "knew" certain things to be true. For example, when he was in a hurry to get somewhere, he'd hit every traffic light in town... and God help him if we were in road construction season. He was often in a hurry, needless to say. Additionally, in his spare time, he loved to read, though he was "always" interupted when he was in the middle of a good book. In fact, interuption after interuption would occur when he found his place.

So, being a logical guy, and a math major with a minor in philosophy, he saw the potential relationship between these two problems of his. He "knew" he'd be slowed down when in a rush, and distracted when in the middle of a good book. So to solve the time issue, he would bring his book with him when on the road. Of course, he'd hit every light/traffic jam in town. When this happens, he opens his book, quickly finding his place. This causes chaos in the universe as "the rules" state he may not read uninterupted, so the traffic jam imediately is relieved, thus he tricks the universe into getting him to his destination on time at the expense of missing out on reading a book he'd never be "permitted" to finish anyways.

I often do something similar. I know that I am easily distracted, as I said above. So, often when I am playing poker, I'll be blogging, or talking strategy to a friend, or scheduling a tournament, or working on a side project. I know if I am not multi-tasking, I will find something less productive to distract me... so I figure why not "pick" that which distracts? Over time, I get good at this and have three tables open, two IM windows, my blog, and four emails to poker reps all going at once. Did I mention I'm also on the telephone?

Yea, I'm taking on too much at once. Its time to slow down, relax a bit, and focus primarily on the main tasks at hand. Contrary to what I'd like to believe, there's a lot that can be accomplished in the 24 hour day. I lost track of the main purpose of the "controlled distraction," which was to productively control that which captures my "side" attention, to more of a distraction out of obligation (I need to get all of this done NOW!). My work is suffering, my game is slightly suffering, and now its right in front of me.

Time to re-focus... Nuff said.

Mike