Each week, I sit down at my computer to write the Word of the Week. [Pardon me, I need to check my email.] By the end of this week’s Word, I will have written over 32,000 words on 147 different topics. [Excuse me while I count the entries.] Each one begins with rock-solid writer’s block. [Be right back, need to refresh my Facebook feed.] Oh, sometimes I have a list of ideas to write about. [Google search “pretty notebooks” so I can start a new list.] But mostly, I draw a blank as the deadline draws near.

As my little asides might indicate, I am easily distracted. If you already clicked the link in the first sentence then spent some time exploring the R&A website, you might be easily distracted, too. The next time you’re watching television, count the number of transitions in a typical television spot – there may be as many as many as 45 different scenes in a 30-second spot. It’s because we’re easily distracted.

It’s amazing how many things I want to do before I do what I have to do. I have to clear my Inbox before responding to my messages, I have to update Twitter before having that difficult conversation, I have to run spell check a thousand times before actually writing that assignment. If you’re reading this email in order to avoid going out on the sales floor, or if you switched over to email in the middle of checking the weekend numbers, you might be avoiding something difficult, too.

Do you have any convenient interruptions? Ms. Jones won’t wait around while we wile away the hours. She’ll go find herself a company who’s willing to do the hard stuff.

I could relate to the business owner who told me he was “getting bogged down in the day to day.”  Sometimes I jump headfirst into the bog myself. [32,178 words, to be exact.]