September's only just started and already I'm behind. It's not just me that's feeling it. Candace is getting started on reading the stack of books for her Masters Degree before classes start in a few days. She's also still moving her stuff in to our place from her old house. My daughter's schedule is full again of skating, piano and gymnastics and still no room for Aikido. I've noticed the past few years (and it seems obvious in retrospect) that September is more than just the back-to-school time. It's when everybody seems to stop relaxing, knuckle down and get back to work on whatever it is they do.

I've mentioned before that I have trouble getting myself focused when the workload grows. I don't think it's an uncommon reaction to want to go out and do something different when everything you're in the middle of seems to get boring and stagnate. For example, I had a little success working on a web app login page the other day so last night I sat down at the computer to figure out the next step. And spent an hour-and-a-half reading xkcd. Not just the comic but Randall's blag too. That kind of took me full circle in a "holy shit how does this guy have time on his hands like this" sort of way.

Anyhow, I think the key is in those moments when the context switches or when I go from one step to the next. Like yesterday I planned to work on the basement. Before I started I was in a different context like eating breakfast or back-to-school shopping with the kid. During those times I repeatedly brought up detailed stuff about what we had to work on. The plan was to get the closet framed in her new bedroom. So we talked about details like where the closet is, what's involved in framing it and why the closet has to be the next step. This kept me thinking about the details. When we finally could go into the basement to get to work I was in the right frame of mind. In my head I'd already been doing it. So we got some good work done. Not everything but we worked as steady as we could.

I think the difference between the two examples I've got here is simply that in the first case, my web project, I sat down at the computer kind of thinking that's what I should do. In the other example I invested myself in the project in detail before we started. The more concrete the work I'm doing is, the easier it is to prepare. The more times I've done something before, the easier it is to prepare. But in every case it seems like getting down to real details first gets me on task.

Maybe knowing how to do something works against me sometimes - since I know what to do the details are boring and I won't work them out. I'm always interested in working out the details of the slightly unknown, as any good geek is.

Motivating myself is all about the details.