"Multitasking is a myth." was the most tweeted phrase from my solo session at BlissDom, titled Uninterrupted Thought: Power of Focus. A point I anticipated being the most contentious turned out to resonate the loudest.

I spoke at BlissDom in late March, a conference I've written about frequently since 2008. I've spoken several times at BlissDom but this was my first opportunity to speak solo, not as part of a panel. The opportunity to dive deep into a thought with this audience I've come to know well, to shape the plot from inception to conclusion, was thoroughly fulfilling. 

BlissDom has evolved over the years from a blogging conference to more of an entrepreneurial development event. This is exciting because, as speakers, we see fewer questions of "Why should I care about becoming a better writer? I do this for me!" and more head-down work toward developing a thriving connection with audiences.

And head-down work we did in my session. After the presentation and an absolute hammering of studies on multitasking (whew), we dove into a workshop period centered around worksheets I designed to challenge the attendees on their work habits. BlissDom initially tried this format last year while I was Content Director. And then my brain melted.

It's a challenging sell to persuade an audience to do work and I've attended plenty of sessions where the tables slid into idle chit chat instead of maintaining a focus on the session topic. When I stepped off the stage to weigh in on progress at the audience tables, I expected to see a lot of blank worksheets and planned to cut the workshop period short. I was wrong.

Did you attend my session? You people worked! Three pages of questions were filled by the time I made it to the center of the room and all of the discussions I overheard were more than on topic - they were intensive debates. If I could have let that session go on another hour, I would have. So. much. fun.

One of the questions I heard most often while moving through the room during the workshop was if the worksheets were part of a larger course. I laughed and shook my head the first couple of times I heard that inquiry and then started to frown in consternation by the time I began making my way back to the stage. 

Y'all know how much I love to over-analyze, let's say, everything. The fact that this group enjoyed doing the same was an unanticipated thrill.

As a result of your interest (yay!), I've been invited to turn "Uninterrupted Thought" into a course. Not an e-book, but an interactive course. In another life, I was a teacher and I bet I loved it. Though I suspect I lost a lot of sleep worrying about my students before ultimately losing my life battling a dragon when my new-fangled armor turned out to be made of tin foil. What? Your past lives aren't medieval education-based and, um, dragon-ridden?

It's going to be a highly entertaining course. Ahem.

In the meantime, it's time to refocus. I opened that session with the earnest admission that I have not mastered what I was about to preach. No, I am deep in the trenches of learning how to build and maintain boundaries as an online writer. Particularly as I begin the process of moving my writing to print. And then I fainted.

Look, the reason my session may have resonated so well is because I'm not a master. I'm working on this with you. You and I? We're clad in tin foil and facing down dragons side by side, praying to Merlin that the beast doesn't notice the tears in our armor and see through our guise. 

Battling distractions is a feat I attempt anew every day. Every single morning my brain screams at me to check email. My fingers itch to touch the Twitter app on my phone. I. just. want. to. check. one. thing.

Always.

That's what makes talking about it with you so delicious. My memories aren't stale. I'm in it, right now, testing new approaches and celebrating minor victories. My current victory? I only have three tabs open right now: my blog editor, my blog, and the dictionary (because did I use "guise" correctly?). I haven't checked my email this morning and I am sure it is full of pressing issues after a spring break determinedly absent of email.

I swear I can feel the pressure from not checking my email at the forefront of my brain. But I wanted to talk with you first. I've been writing little posts to you in my head ever since BlissDom and I couldn't contain it any longer.

For every one of you that have emailed or written incredibly lovely things about my session, and especially those of you that have recorded your own progress, thank you. I've been deliberately offline for the most part since leaving Dallas (boundaries constructed by an introvert who rebounded by entering a family-centric cave of spring break) and plan to hunt each of you down today so I can finally respond.

Be sure to subscribe to my infrequent but lovely newsletter (which is really just an email subscription of this blog so you don't have to keep checking for updates) as I am building a resource page citing some of the tools, podcasts, and other resources mentioned in the session. The newsletter is the best way to ensure you don't miss it (or the course announcement) when it's ready.

Were you at BlissDom? Did you have a chance to attend my session on focus? I'd love to hear what you thought (leave links if you wrote about it!) and if you've been working on any of the ideas I proposed.

Have questions? Struggling with any points? Suggestions for what you'd like to see in the course (regardless of whether or not you attended the session)? Just want to say hey? I'd love to hear from you. 

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Follow my Focus Pinterest board for fun little sparks of encouragement.

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My little world is full of indulgences.

This weekend, the kids and I threw a Willy Wonka party in our living room to celebrate finishing reading aloud Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

We waited to throw our party until after Valentine's Day so we could take advantage of 50% off clearance Valentine's Day candy.

While I was at the checkout, loading all of our completely superfluous treats into my cart, an old woman in line behind me began placing her items on the counter. I barely glanced at her as I gathered my bags.

Preparing to leave, I heard a dull clatter of coins hit the linoleum. After a pause, the cashier softly cautioned, "Sugar, you'll only be able to buy your knee-highs with that. You don't have enough for your ice cream."

I looked up and took in the old woman, small and a little disheveled, with a little white plastic egg (presumably her knee-highs) on the counter next to a box of ice cream.

She looked dismayed at the cashier's warning and didn't react. She looked at her box of ice cream, pursed her lips and worriedly fiddled with the clasp on her emptied coin purse. She sighed but made no move to produce any more money. She was frozen between desire and reality. The cashier sighed.

The writer's brain never freaking stops. Instantly I conjured a mini play of her life. In the time it took for me to take in the scene, I cast her as a loving grandmother on a fixed income, giving in to a childhood memory of Drumsticks on summer days, not stopping to figure the damage to her current-day budget.

They cost $4.29. Her coins on the counter were mostly nickels and pennies.

Maybe nine seconds had passed between the cashier speaking and my producing a movie of this stranger's life in my mind. I whisked my bags into my hand, slipped $5 from my wallet, handed it to the cashier and whispered as I leaned in to grab my last bag, "Buy her ice cream for her."

Like a jackrabbit in fast-forward, I bolted, the scene playing out behind me in slow-motion. As the doors whooshed closed, I heard the cashier attempt to explain in a raised voice, "Honey, she paid for your ice cream. Honey! Sugar, look here!"

I have issues with jeopardizing people's pride. I didn't want to look at her. I didn't want to make her look at me.

And then I sat in my car and cried.

I felt helpless. All I did was buy ice cream for a woman who hadn't planned ahead. I concocted some half-baked story in my head about her childhood and then ran out of there with my bags full of sugar for my kids.

So I also felt ashamed.

Nothing is enough. No amount of help is enough. A single box of chocolate and nut-covered ice cream cones doesn't make a dent.

I just wanted her to have it. I wanted to stop her disappointment in its tracks. Just this once.

The smallness of my choice rang in my ears. That's why I cried.

But small acts add up. I know this. I have to believe this. Small acts are all I have.

For this 40 days of Lent, I am participating in the 40 Days of Water campaign with Blood:Water Mission.

For the next 40 days, I am choosing a single small gesture to make a difference greater than what I am capable of generating on my own.

Every day, I am replacing drinks like coffee and soda with tap water and keeping track of the cost of those saved drinks at the 40 Days of Water site. Every Sunday during Lent, I gather the money I saved during the week and donate it to Blood:Water Mission toward their well projects in Uganda.

This is important. And it's small. 

But the impact? Is huge. Particularly because I am not alone.

From Blood:Water Mission

By sacrificing your daily routine, you will make a difference in the daily routine of a person in Africa.

It’s a big commitment to not drink anything but water for Forty days. But from February 13th to March 30th, that’s exactly what we’re asking you to do. It’s a lot easier if you do it with other people like your friends or family.

Please join me for the 40 Days of Water campaign and help raise funds to build clean water wells in Uganda. It's an honor to work with them on this campaign and I believe in it enough to want to share it. 

You can start now. Missed the first few days? You can still track what you drank (other than tap water) and then donate the equivalent amount. Can't give up your coffee? Simply match the drink cost.

The journal of drinks saved is an eye opener.
$1 buys clean drinking water for a child in Uganda for a year. 

It will keep you mindful.
It has made me mindful. 

Our bags of candy were indulgences this weekend. Clean, accessible water should not be an indulgence.

Follow along with the #40Days hashtag on twitter and Instagram.
Follow @bloodwater on twitter and Like their Facebook page for illustrations of the impact of your drinks saved. 

Wanting to make a difference in the lives of others, however small that difference may be, can feel overwhelming. Where do you start? Will it really matter? 

Will these small gestures really matter? At the end of this 40 days, we'll see. I believe they will.  

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The number of times I've written about focus on this blog is telling. Every now and then I show up and say, "Eureka! I've solved my problem of focus! Watch out! Here I come!"

And then I get distracted.

What you see are the bursts of energy in the foreground. My excitement at a breakthrough, usually immediately followed by the realization that I overshot.

But in the background, I am consistently making permanent habit changes. Regardless of how "Productivity for the win!" I get, it is the simple, deep seated changes that propel me forward. Even if merely by inches at a time.

Habits like compartmentalizing my time online. As Amy Whitley referred to my approach, "firewalls of the mental sort."

Boundaries.

I recently chatted up the women at the new Power Down podcast on just this topic.

Heather King of The Extraordinary Ordinary and Amy Whitley of Never-True Tales invited me to join them as their first guest to discuss the value of unplugging and, as was my focus for our discussion, how to create and maintain boundaries between our professional and personal lives. 

In advance of my BlissDom writing workshop in Dallas this March (more on that next week), they were particularly interested in how I handle boundaries within my work. It's one thing to know to unplug and focus on your family (the ongoing subject of their podcast series), but it's a different challenge to compartmentalize your attention while you are working online.

Focus.

As I write this, it is a struggle not to open my Gmail in another tab. The Pinterest button in my bookmark bar keeps calling to me every time I move to look up a link.

That is precisely what we talked about: Tips to help you maintain focus during your writing process and while you are connected online, as well as how to protect your time offline.

I realize that taking a break from social media is a bit of a fad right now. When I first proposed the idea for my BlissDom session, I had seen very few people warm to the idea of a more regimented compartmentalization of our time spent online. Now? Apparently it's a thing.

My friend Ciaran Blumenfeld of Momfluential wrote about #FacebookBreak yesterday. I hadn't heard of it but the fact that there's a hashtag makes me want to take a nap.

People are realizing the need to take breaks from the constant intake of social media for a variety of reasons, but I strongly suggest that you take a longer term view.

That BlissDom session? The title is Uninterrupted Thought: How to Wield the Power of Focus. It won't be about how to take a break and brand it to your topical advantage. It won't be about being cool and on top of trends. 

It will be about flourishing.

I still want "furious furious beautiful enthralling art. With no commas."

Boundaries beget focus. 

Download the Power Down podcast (I am in episode 002) and then let me know what you think. For the moment, you can visit the SITS Girls Power Down page and listen to my episode right there on the site. (That will change with the next episode, though.)

Not sure how to download or subscribe to podcasts? Amy wrote an excellent post about What is a Podcast? How Do You Tune In? that walks you right through the easy process.

I had a ball talking with the hosts and am excited to follow along through their next episodes.

Episode 3 will feature Ann Imig! I fell a lot in love with Ann a few years ago at Creative Alliance in Ojai, California. It was my first time meeting her and I... can't even finish this sentence. I adore her. I wish fewer people adored her, though, because I need her attention to be less divided.

Ahem. Power down and look at me. I'm a kid trying to get his mom's attention.

It's a good podcast series. We need to talk about the effects of our attention being so divided all the time in a realistic way. I'm looking forward to Ann's episode and hope you find your thoughts provoked while listening to mine.

Thank you again, Amy and Heather and SITS Girls, for letting me thrash around a bit in your airwaves.

What are your tips for powering down? Thoughts after listening to the podcast?

Be sure to subscribe to my "Infrequent but lovely" newsletter while you are here, as newsletter subscribers received exclusive content in this post: 10 Practical Tips for Powering Down

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