Why am I finding it so difficult to get started on this article?
It isn’t writer’s block. A scribbled outline is sitting on my desk. I know roughly what I want to say. Yet every two or three minutes my attention drifts. I find myself reaching for my phone, reading an email, following an unrelated information trail (a quick glance at the weather forecast and I’m soon watching Arctic puffins), double-checking facts, glancing at yet more “breaking news”. Perhaps not all in the same morning, and I exaggerate a little, but you get the idea.
None of these things is obviously wrong. I’m not looking at pornography or visiting a gambling site. Yet somehow they have become an escape route from the task itself. Twenty minutes later I know more than I did before, but I haven’t written a single word.
