The fact that I am writing this right now proves that the internet has robbed me of the ability to concentrate.

Too! Many! Shiny! Things!

Right now, I am supposed to be working, as in writing two blog posts for The New Parents Guide, at least one for DealLocker and maybe even one for Tjoos. Then I need to make out my end-of-month invoice and submit it to the people who pay me.

But here’s how it went down:

Tomorrow’s August, so I went hunting for the fun and strange “holidays” that come up every month. Those help me come up with topics for NPG’s blog.  I pasted the August list into OneNote, where I keep topic ideas for the blogs.

I saw that August 1-7 is “Simplify Your Life Week” and I remembered that I’d seen a tweet about an article Jen Fulwiler wrote about organization. So I went over there to read it. (Don’t miss it, by the way! It’s great!) I completely related to the parts about lack of focus, because there I was in the same boat, except without the babies and toddlers in the house.

The oven bell went “ding!” so I headed into the kitchen to pull the meatballs out of the oven. 

I opened up a new post at NPG, intending to sing the praises of sling bookcases (see Jen’s post for details or stop by NPG on Thursday to see more on this subject).

The UPS truck pulled up and delivered a box of coffee packs for my Keurig. Even though I had ordered this coffee and therefore knew exactly what was in the box, I stopped what I was doing so I could open the box and admire all that coffee.

I opened one of the boxes right away and put the K-cups into the little storage drawer so they’d be ready for the morning.

Then I stirred the spaghetti sauce.

I remembered that I want to talk up a tip for making even-more-awesome spaghetti sauce on my cooking Facebook page, so I wrote a note in my planner to remind myself to do that.

I saw a note in my planner reminding me of tonight’s folk-group practice, so I went back to my email to print out the list of music I’ll need.

I refilled my water glass. I ignored the fact that there’s laundry I need to move to the dryer and fresh sheets to put on my bed. But I won’t be able to ignore that for long.

Between the household chores and the Internet’s lures, I’m never going to get my work done today. I’m considering switching to a two-browser system:  one for work and one for Everything Else. Because I’ve got 16 browser tabs open right now, and that’s way too many things screaming for my attention.

Now that that’s out of my system, I’m off to work. I think I’ll just set a timer to help me focus on the job at hand. When the little bell rings, THEN I can get up and do something else.