Secrets of attention span expansion and productivity

I have had to learn/explore/discover and self-teach how to make myself get 8 productive hours out of the hours between 8am and 6pm on 5 days of the week.

I have learnt that reading a lengthy document with technical discussions and formulas and results will cause me to do the Office Chair Sleeping Beauty under the following conditions:
1. If the office behind me is unoccupied (the guy is away a lot)
2. If it is overcast weather outside and all the windows are closed.
3. If I have just eaten lunch in the sunshine.
4. If the document contains a lot of explanations before arriving at the information I need.
5. If I am really struggling to understand what I am reading.

And so we must devise some ways around it. So a can of cold cola helps to sip when the attention span drifts, sitting up in the most uncomfortable position possible (i.e. not reclining in my cool springy back office chair) and flinging the window open to the chilly overcast weather. (and irritating wind that makes my papers go flap flap flap flap flap!!!)

Other secrets are leaving my Internet and facebook capable cellphone in my handbag. Leaving to-do reminders in outlook to give me little tasks to work on everyday (today is research more training, tomorrow is update forecasts, Friday is update project schedules)

If nothing else I try reorder my desk and the papers turning(hopefully) to coal there and playing with my pot plant.

The final back up attention span/productivity saver is Origami. I often have to print papers out for reference and invariably print the wrong thing on occasion (like pressing print all 100 pages instead of the current page and then sprinting to the printer to cause a paper jam to stop the waste of paper!) Anyway I started with lilies, then swans, then dragons the sparrows and are now using my idle time to make butterfly rings.

The only problem is that my supervisor can take one look at my desk and see how bored I have been of late. The lilies now adorn my desk pot plant...



Future plans for improvement:
to spend less time correcting all my "teh"'s to "the"
to try not be blogging mid afternoon at work...

Back I go to the long educational word documents!