Ten past five again

It's ten past five on a Tuesday, some weeks later. You lean back from the screen.

On a sheet of paper beside the keyboard is this morning's list. It has nine items. Four are crossed through. One has a line through it and the word "dropped" beside it, after a conversation with your manager at eleven. Three have parking notes. One hasn't been touched, and its turn is tomorrow.

The quarterly report went to Priya at ten to twelve. You started it at nine, before opening your inbox, and had two stretches of fifty minutes on it with a coffee in between. At twenty to ten you hit the paragraph on staffing costs and didn't know what you thought. The pull to check your messages was strong. You wrote, "What I'm trying to say here is that the saving depends on not replacing Tom," and that turned out to be the paragraph.

You opened your inbox for the first time at ten. There were thirty-one messages. One was mildly urgent, and the sender had also rung, as you'd asked people to. You answered the lot in thirty-five minutes. Nobody commented on the delay. In the first week two people did. Since then nobody has.

The afternoon wasn't as tidy. A colleague needed help with something that took an hour, and then there was a call you hadn't expected. You wrote a parking note each time. "Recon at row 62. Next, query the two unmatched credits." When you came back, it took about a minute to pick up.

The tally sheet has fourteen marks on it. On the first day you kept one, it had fifty-three.

The capture sheet has seven scribbles. One says "Dave??" and you ring him now, as the last thing you do today. It takes four minutes. He wanted to know about parking permits.

You're tired. You also know what you did today, which used not to be the case. The laptop stays in the office.

At home the washing machine is running while you cook. After dinner your daughter wants to show you something she's made. Your phone is on the hall shelf, and you go and look.

If you've read this far and changed nothing yet, try it tomorrow morning. Before you open your inbox, write down the one thing, name the stopping point, and work on it for twenty-five minutes. Then write down where you got to.