Monday Focus Check
Walked in the door Thursday night still arguing with a guy from a call that had ended 2 hours earlier. In my head, not out loud. My daughter was telling me something about her day and I was nodding at her with my face while the rest of me was still in that meeting, drafting the reply I wish I’d said. She noticed. Kids always notice.
There’s a name for what was happening to me. Sophie Leroy, a researcher who published it in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes back in 2009, calls it attention residue. When you switch from one task to the next, a chunk of your attention stays stuck on the last one. You’re in the room, but a percentage of you is still back there, and whatever’s in front of you gets the leftovers.
So the number that matters on a Monday is how cleanly I put each thing down before I pick up the next one. I’ve started running a stupid little ritual between blocks. I close the laptop, literally close it, stand up, get some water, and say the next thing out loud before I start it. “Okay. Writing now.” 3 seconds. Sounds like nothing. It’s the difference between showing up to the next hour and dragging the last one into it with me.
The version that costs me the most is the walk from the driveway to the front door. I’ve been working on putting down the metaphorical laptop between my ears before my hand hits the doorknob, so the people on the other side get me instead of the leftovers of my day. I’m bad at it. Some nights I get all the way to bedtime still half-stuck in a problem that has no business being at the dinner table.
Give yourself grace on the misses. Then close the laptop again.
So where’s your attention residue hiding, and what would it take to put one thing all the way down today before you grab the next?
Tomorrow, what to do when your body’s already reacting before you’ve had a say in it.
Here’re some tools that could be helpful: