Fuzzy-Focused Time in the Sonoran Desert

The desert outside of Scottsdale while enjoying an ATV tour.

And so here I am. Sitting at an oasis in the Sonoran desert. I'm in Phoenix, AZ at the Arizona Grand Resort (& Spa), sitting on the patio just outside the resorts golf pro-shop. The coffee is tasty as I watch the upper middle class (does that still exist) play the high handicap version of golf that is probably still way better than my game. 

Along the patio are a good, but not overly crowded, mix of mom's with their kids, non-golfing dads and the occasional youth baseball player who looks like they just received gear from the bat armory and has their marching orders for the day's tournament. The speakers are playing some motown, funk and classic rock/folk classics. I'm finding myself frequented by birds, namely a precocious sparrow hoping to find some dropped crumbs. Sorry, I've only got coffee at the moment.

So, this is my spring break. It's a small escape from the stress good people in MN had to, undeservedly, endure in January and February. I didn't bring my clubs, which is just as well. I'm tagging along on this adventure with my girlfriend and her kids who seem to adjust to the two-hour time difference between here and home much easier than I do and likely still slumbering in the room. Good on them. I've reached a phase where I get restless easy in the morning and the coffee and work (and mild sciatica) serve as my alarm clocks. It's all just part of the aging process I suppose. 

Cacti in bloom.

I do enjoy quiet mornings though. Even in my ideal career space, I'd have a good hour or two to focus and get aligned for the day. That mode is a little tricky in the current job due to the high pace and need to communicate internationally. Mornings are the prime overlap time for status updates and such. It's not my favorite operating mode, but I've learned to live with it to the extent that I'm not itching to do something different. 

I think this current gig is helping to improve my personal efficiency so that I can have more quiet moments. As much as I resist structure, carving out specific times to, for example, go through and take action on my emails and (Microsoft) Teams chats leaves me with a sense of completeness. It also means I don't have to worry about things the instant they appear in my email (with the occasional "urgent" exception).

While doing things like carving out time for emails seems like something natural to do, the benefits aren't always intuitively obvious. Part of this is assigning structure can feel burdensome. I'm a bit of a putterer by nature. I feel as though I get into flow most naturally by exploring and keeping headspace open. However, not having a mechanism by which I can get the necessary things done leads to a stress buildup. This resulting buildup can lead to frustration and really screws with my puttering about. As annoying as setting structured work times can then feel, they do result in the benefit of minimizing the puttering paralysis. Nobody likes their happy times paralyzed.

At work we have things we do to keep the pace of business. As a manager I have an "management operating system" it includes a mix of meetings and reporting. These integrate with other groups across the organization to help call out challenges/problems and move things forward. In a similar fashion, I took a leadership training last fall (2025) and while it involved learning on elements of coaching, mentoring and defining goals, the development of a personal "leader operating system" was also included. 

Part of the cobbling away time came from this, but I also think it would be a useful extension into my home life. Not to say that things operate as some kind of militaristic system, but there are opportunities for where a little more structure could be helpful. Puttering could even be included in this. For instance, what could I putter on in the basement as opposed to the main floor. Would that help get some stuff done. Maybe the goal could be fuzzy, e.g. get some stuff piled up for donation. Then some hard goal, e.g. get the darn stuff donated, could be something different. I'm just thinking in digital ink right now but I don't hate the idea of fuzzy focused time. I mean it's what I'm having now with this chickenscratch.