Focus & “Workus Interruptus”

I am listening to a Headspace meditation series on Focus this week. My middle name is “distractible.” You too?! We all struggle to stay on task with everyone and their brother or sister clamoring for our attention.

Wait… what’s that over there? A shiny object!
The to-do list calls. “Yoo-hoo. You forgot something.”
I add Something. Capital ‘S’? Little ‘s’? Either way, is it necessary? Did I stop what I was doing? YAASSS! 

Workus interruptus. It’s a new Latin term recently resurrected from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, California. Really. Just last week. You didn’t hear about it? WI as they called it to save time was brand new back in the day just after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and the Latin speakers then (yes, there were a few) coined the term. A careless tourist to Los Angeles dropped the WI write-up while visiting the area that is now the La Brea Tar Pits, where the dinosaur bones were buried in the muck.

No one wanted to go in to fish out the term at the time, and WI only reinserted itself into the lexicon as the tectonic plates shifted ever so slightly, bubbling new tar and the term workus interruptus to the surface. Last week. It was in the news.

What a find!

[P.S. Spell Check is having a FIT right now. “Fix it. Fix it!” she says underlining furiously. I think she’s having a fainting ‘spell.’]

The Headspace app does not mention this phenomenon directly. But it does mention, of course, the importance of being aware of distractions and interruptions. One of the tricks Andy Puddicombe (the founder of Headspace) mentions is clearing your workspace. Think “Outer Order, Inner Calm” as in Gretchen Rubin’s book.

So, I will busy myself cleaning my desk drawers. Talk about workus interruptus!?!? 

Spell check has given up.