Time utilisation and task awareness

Time utilisation is something most of us probably wish we were better at. I've been trying a lot lately to improve my skills in this area, which have been, in a lot of ways, pretty poor, and it occurred to me the other day one area that I've got a definite lack in.

Keeping an awareness of the current task(s) you're undertaking sounds so obvious, so basic, that it's hard to think that anyone could not do it. But it's something I have trouble doing, and I suspect that a lot of others do as well.

I'm not talking about eating lunch and having no awareness that's what you're doing; I'm talking about eating lunch, wiping the last crumb off your mouth and then jumping into the next thing that grabs your attention, without having concious awareness that you were doing so, and without thinking, have I really finished this task?

Shouldn't I also clean up and clear everything away? But more often that not I don't think that, and sometimes I feel I'm floating around on a breeze of what grabs my attention and what I feel like doing. If you haven't got a decent awareness of what you're currently trying to do, then it's easy to get sidetracked and/or leave tasks only partially completed.