It’s hard to keep things and projects in sight when you can’t put a finger on them — literally. A lot of what we do is ephemeral, online, or is only conceptually connected, like streaks of research. After a few days (weeks, if you’re lucky) our focus starts to slip, attention focused on a different set of activities. We are not very good at threading an abstract experience through the daily fabric of our existence.
I found it helps to create physical tokens of activities or commitments and placing them near or on your body. While there’s a new-agey practice of “manifesting” your desires (think and it appears), this is the reverse: you place a token near you, and it makes you think about its ephemeral part more often that you’d have done otherwise.
A token can be simply a reminder, or a sign of commitment, depending on how impermanent it is. A Post-It note on your wall? Usually a reminder. A tattoo? That’s commitment. For tech projects, that may be buying a domain and putting the link on your profile. Now it exists in a public space, outside of your head. Whatever it is, a token is a physical manifestation of something that doesn’t exist. It’s a symbol (we ascribe an arbitrary meaning to it), because it’s not the thing itself. The purpose of the token is to intrude on your immediate, felt experience in order to steer your thinking in a certain direction.
I decided to better control my focus as I’m too easily distracted, and got myself a heavy tungsten ring. I call it my “focusing ring”. When I snag it on something, or look down and see it on my finger, it’s a moment to check myself: am I doing what I should be doing? Am I distracting myself because I’m unwilling to make a tiny emotional effort? It’s been working well. By accident, I got a size that fits on my middle finger, and it turned out, the popular significance of a ring on the middle finger is commitment to a cause. Go figure. I chose to take it as a good sign.
Common tokens of commitment we all know are wedding rings and worn crosses. Notice how they gradually slip out of our attention. If you stop noticing your token, is this a sign you’ve internalized the behavior? If so — good, but if not, switch it up and use something new.