Pay Attention!

“Have you noticed that the house has been feeling hot lately?” asked the wife.

Her husband didn’t put much thought into it and replied, “No, it’s fine.” 

“She always thinks it’s hot anyway,” he thought to himself. He would jokingly say that going into her parents’ home was like going into a penguin exhibit. All the windows were covered up, the air conditioner was on full blast, and going outside would threaten their very existence because of the South Texas heat. 

So no, it wasn’t hot, it’s just her. 

A week passed, and the temperature comments were just background noise. They settled for just adjusting the thermostat according to how they were feeling at the moment, but somehow, the thermostat was always off! 

It wasn’t until he placed an online order at a home improvement store. It was on the way to work, and the staff would place the order in the lockers by the door. From there, he could put in his code and collect his item. 

So he went about his day until it was time to come to the store. He put in the code, and the screen read,

“This order does not exist.” 

He compared it to the order on his phone, and everything should have been correct! Then why isn’t it here? 

He paid closer attention to the order and thought, “It can’t be the wrong location. It’s the only store in town.” 

But it was. 

The order was placed in a store nearly 450 miles away! 

It turned out that recently he had installed a VPN on his phone. His browser and thermostat were tracing his phone to a city he was not in. Thus, the thermostat would not go on because according to his phone, ‘he was not home’ and his order was not ready because it was prepared in a store 450 miles away. 

The common thread is there were so many opportunities to pay attention. 

He could have paid attention to his wife’s concern. He could have paid attention to how his new app works. And he could have paid attention to where he placed the order.

In a world with so many distractions, take a moment to pay attention to the people around you. If you are working on a project, focus on it alone, and put away the distractions. You’ll save time, and see progress!