One thing at a time

I was sitting on the couch, reading an article, when I realized I had finished it but had no idea what it was about. 

I realized I was not only reading the article, but was listening to a podcast with headphones in one ear, and was watching a baseball game on TV. Not only that, but my wife was occasionally talking to me about something. 

I couldn't tell you what I read, listened to, or what's happening in the game. Of course, I could tell you exactly what my wife said, because I hear everything she says (not). 

At least I'm aware of this issue. If I can set up my environment to prevent it from happening, that would be ideal.

One thing I'm going to try is to set up a focus mode on my phone that triggers when I connect my earbuds and locks me out of all other apps, which would force me to disconnect my earbuds if I needed to look something up. We'll see how it works for me. This Routine was easy to set up on my Samsung using Modes and Routines.

Another habit I'm trying is to put my phone in a different room while watching TV. I imagine this will be a difficult habit to form. I rarely watch TV, other than having a baseball game on in the background, so this may not be necessary unless we're specifically watching a show or movie.

I've noticed a funny habit of mine: I always use one earbud, putting it in the ear facing away from the other person, just in case they say something, I will hear them., I suppose this works. Perhaps if I had the earbud in my other ear (or both ears), it would be obvious that I'm listening to something, and they would need to get my attention, if necessary. Or better yet, leave me alone (I'm joking, maybe)!.

Anyway, I feel like I'm rambling now as I think about this through my fingers on the keyboard.