Part One
For those of you who have had occasion to approach me from my left, you know I don’t have any peripheral vision on that side, and very little on my right. This phenomenon provides ample opportunity for startling me, as my children can attest, or being ignored by me, as anyone who tries to pass me the sacrament has endured. I put a positive spin on it by saying that I’ve got built-in blinders on that keep me focused on the path ahead. I am a Clydesdale, plodding down the parade route of life.
Part Two
My old office at work was a glorified closet that had served as the Projection Room in its previous life, which meant that its only window was eight inches square and opened into the next room. The employee on the other side of the window and I both hung paintings over the little window because it was an awkward window with an awkward view.
My new office in our new building at work is the opposite. One entire wall is a window. We are located on the ground floor just to the left of the entrance, so a pane of glass, a sidewalk, and landscaping are the only things between me and the parking lot. I have learned where my computer should be placed so that the window wall is not on my left, because I have been startled several times by the passersby on the sidewalk. People stop to check out their appearance. An Education Week lady even knocked on my window to ask for directions. I nearly had a heart attack. I now know what it feels like for the poor aquarium fish at the pediatrician’s office.
The other thing I learned is that when I interview, the student sits across from me at my desk, facing the window wall, and if I leave my blind open, their focus quickly leaves my face and moves over my shoulder to the expansive view beyond. That never happened in my old office, because there was nothing else to focus on. As you might rightly surmise, I always close my blind before an interview or the student won’t remember a solitary thing.
Part Three
Two weeks ago, I attended a writing workshop in Capitol Reef National Park. We stayed in a lovely field station in the middle of the park, surrounded by inspiring landscapes and starry night skies. My cell phone didn’t have service. There was no WIFI. No cable. No traffic. No conference attendees knocking on my window. And guess what happened? I paid rapt attention to the presenter. I added 10,000 words to my story. I engaged in conversation and learned from the experiences of others, and I laughed out loud with new friends rather than typing LOL on social media.
The Sum of the Parts
No matter what state our peripheral vision is in, or if we work near a window, there are constant disruptions and distractions that pull our attention away from what we should be focusing on, and if we can find a way to lessen those distractions by putting on our metaphorical blinders, amazing things will happen.
What are your distractions? Start by identifying the lady who is knocking on your window. Do you glance at your phone every time a notification dings? Does your inner body clock chime when it’s time to check Instagram? When a random caller from Chicago lights your screen, do you answer it on the slight chance it’s your third cousin who lives there instead of the scammer whose number you forgot to block? Do you unwittingly choose to work on a different project, rather than the one that needs attention? Do you stop folding laundry to check the freezer for something to throw in the oven for dinner, and then defrost the freezer and clean the oven and leave a mountain of laundry on the sofa? We all do it. We get sidetracked. Identify what pulls you off course, and then you can pull on the blinders.
We can’t all have built-in-no-peripheral-vision-blinders, but we can pull on a set of our making. Close the blind. Mute the notifications. Order the projects on your TO-DO List by priority and then stick to the order. Don’t answer if they aren’t in your Contacts. The IRS woman with a Russian accent can leave a message. Go into a quiet room and close the door. Or place yourself in the middle of a national park, if that’s what you need to find your focus.
The thing about blinders is that they don’t block what’s important. They only block the stuff on the periphery. Our lives are filled with important commitments that shouldn’t be ignored, and those are the things we put on the path directly ahead of us, in our line of sight. Our loved ones. Our Savior. Our work. Our passion. Place those squarely on the white line down the middle, and nudge everything else to the sidelines where the blinders can do their job. It’s not easy, pulling those blinders into place, but when we can focus clearly on what is straight ahead in our view, we can successfully travel the path, and accomplish some pretty amazing things along the way.
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