An Experiment in Being Present
Working at Home Through the Summer
Last week, you were a data collector.1 You noticed the moments when you were at your desk but somewhere else entirely, and the moments when you closed the laptop but couldn’t quite leave work on the other side of it. You have a list, or at least a feeling, of where the tension lives.
But what do you do with it? You didn’t really need another to-do list. If we aren’t careful, the awareness of the problem can become a bigger problem. Research shows that it’s not always the stress that impacts you, but rather your thoughts about the stress. The same is true here. If your list from last week has become a new source of guilt, something you’re turning over in your head while you’re trying to be somewhere else, that’s not a solution. That’s just more of the same.
So before anything else: put the list down for a second. What follows isn’t another system to implement perfectly. It’s time to get curious; put on your lab coat.
Contaminated Time
Being in one place while thinking of another has a name. In her book, Overwhelmed, Brigid Schulte called it contaminated time - when your brain is supposed to be in one place but keeps drifting to another. You’re on a call, but part of you is tracking what’s happening in the next room. You’re at the pool, but you’re mentally composing the email you didn’t finish. You’re neither fully at work nor fully anywhere else. You’re just constantly distracted. Your brain never gets a break. It keeps running the background calculation: should I be somewhere else right now? Am I missing something? Is this okay?
That’s the data you collected last week. Not a failure list. A map of where the contamination is heaviest.
Start with What You Want
Before you can figure out what to do to decontaminate your time, you have to figure out what you actually want. Not what would make you more productive. Not what would impress your boss or quiet the guilt. What do you want your time to feel like this summer?
When you’re at work, what does fully present look like for you? Is it two hours of uninterrupted focus in the morning? Is it being on a call without half your brain in the living room? What would it feel like to finish a work day, close the laptop, and not think about it again until the morning?
When you’re not working, what does fully present look like? Is it being outside without your phone in your pocket? Is it giving your kid your undivided attention while they talk about a video game? Is it taking time for yourself to read a book or float in a pool undisturbed?
These aren’t rhetorical questions. They’re the hypotheses you’re going to test. The tools in the sections that follow are only useful if you know what you’re trying to feel on the other side of them. Otherwise you’re just implementing someone else’s system in your life and wondering why it doesn’t fit.
The One Thing
Now that you know how you want your day to look and feel; name the one thing that actually has to happen today. You don’t need the full to-do list or a list of all the things you wish you could get done. Name the one thing that, if you did it and nothing else, would mean the day wasn’t wasted.
If you know that, you can protect it. You can build your day around making sure that thing happens, and let everything else flex around it. The summer is full of interruptions you can’t control. But if you’ve already decided what matters most, an interruption is just an interruption. It doesn’t have to become a crisis.
This also does something else. When you know the one thing is done, you can stop. You have permission to close the laptop. You don’t have to keep grinding through the afternoon to prove something to yourself. The work is done. The rest is either bonus or tomorrow.
The Art of the Pulse
OK. You can name the one thing, but you have no idea how to actually do it. This is where the idea of pulsing comes in.
Pulsing is the practice of working in focused intervals followed by genuine rest. Not scrolling. Not half-watching something while you answer emails. Actual rest. The research suggests ninety minutes as a natural work interval, but that number isn’t sacred. Forty-five minutes of genuine focus is worth more than ninety minutes of contaminated time. The right pulse length is the one where you can actually stay present for the whole thing before your brain starts drifting.
Here’s where it gets complicated in the summer. The original concept of pulsing assumes your rest interval is actually restful. But if your rest interval is also when your kid needs something, or when you’re supposed to be present for family time, it’s not really rest.
So the question isn’t just how long your pulses should be. It’s what each pulse is actually for. A work pulse means the door is closed, and you’re not half-monitoring the living room. A family pulse means the laptop is shut, and you’re not composing emails in your head. A contaminated pulse isn’t a pulse.
Time Confetti
Even with the best plans in place, summer is still full of scraps. The fifteen minutes waiting in the car pool line. The half hour at the pool while swim practice finishes. The gap between when one thing ends and another begins. Brigid Schulte calls these fragments time confetti.
The default move is to fill them with work. Catch up on email. Return a text. Get a head start on something. And sometimes that’s the right call. But is it the right call for you? The goal isn’t to optimize every moment and be productive. The goal is to figure out what works for you.
Maybe for you, time confetti is folding a basket of laundry (Yuck), so that later, you can spend focused time playing a game with your family. But then, maybe your sanity is better preserved by a five minute walk down the street with your kid and the dog. Or maybe for you, it’s something else entirely. Again, the goal isn’t to optimize every minute of your day. It’s to stop letting them drain you further.
What does your time confetti want to be? What do you need in that gap so that when the next thing starts, you can actually be there for it?
Closing
This whole thing is a grand experiment, and the thing about experiments is that sometimes, they fail. That’s not a flaw in the method. That’s the method working.
You’re going to try a pulse length and find out it’s too long. You’re going to decide your time confetti is for walking and then stand outside in the heat wondering why you thought that was a good idea. You’re going to protect the one thing and then have a day where three other things explode and the one thing doesn’t happen anyway.
None of that means you’re doing it wrong. It’s just data. What didn’t work today is just as useful as what did. The goal isn’t to find the perfect system on the first try. (If you do, teach me how to do that!) The goal is to keep asking the questions: what worked, what didn’t, and what do I want to try differently tomorrow?
Don’t beat yourself up for a failed experiment. Celebrate the data. Adjust the hypothesis. Try again tomorrow. Summer is long enough for a lot of experiments.2
Reflect and Act
Reflect: Which of these concepts landed hardest for you? Contaminated time. Pulsing. Time confetti. The one thing. You don’t need all of them. You need the one that made you think: oh, that’s what’s been happening!
Act: Run one experiment this week with that concept.
Pick a pulse length and test it.
Decide what your time confetti is for and try it for three days.
Name the one thing every morning and see what it does to the rest of your day.
One concept, one week, one honest assessment at the end: did it help?
This is part 2 of a series. To read part 1, click here.
This particular experiment has a summer label on it. But the questions (what do I want my time to feel like, what's the one thing, what does my time confetti want to be) those don't expire in September.