Messes are inevitable when you focus on just one thing. While you whittle away on your most important work, the world doesn’t sit and wait. It stays on fast forward and things just rack up and stack up while you bear down on a singular priority. Unfortunately, there’s no pause or stop button. You can’t run life in slow motion. Wishing you could will just make you miserable and disappointed. One of the greatest thieves of productivity is the unwillingness to allow for chaos or the lack of creativity in dealing with it.