Rochester resident Matt Knutson is the communications and events director for United Way of Olmsted County.

Can you say that again?” I asked my wife as she put our daughter’s food in the fridge while sharing instructions on how I’d be feeding her the next evening. Sera doesn’t often have to work late at the office, but one day this week she had back-to-back meetings until 8 p.m., so Gracelyn and I were blessed with some great father-daughter bonding time.

My wife is typically the master chef in our house, and she thoughtfully blended Gracelyn’s baby food the night before and put it in the fridge for me to use the next day. I’ve only ever fed our daughter from the pre-made baby food containers, but my wife regularly makes our own baby food from fruits, vegetables and meat as a cheaper alternative. Sera was giving me instructions on how to feed Gracelyn the next day when I tuned her out.

It wasn’t intentional, but I definitely stopped listening as I flipped through applications on my phone. After realizing I had no clue what my wife was talking about, she kindly repeated the instructions on how long to warm up Gracelyn’s food and where in the refrigerator she was storing it. I’m grateful for her patience.

That’s not the first time, nor will it be the last, that I’m distracted. Earlier this week I was going through one of several online trainings at work on how to turn outward to the community. It’s a brilliant concept from the Harwood Institute that our staff is being exposed to over eight weeks where we learn how to be better members of our community and work intentionally to listen and learn from the people we work with to create positive change. This week, however, I found myself replying to emails and designing an event invitation in the middle of the online learning lab. Why had I decided it was OK to distract myself from this important learning opportunity with my day-to-day work?

Even tonight I find myself distracted. Instead of writing this article I’ve been working on a website for an area nonprofit. Earlier this summer I had the honor of being invited to join the board of a local organization working with homeless families, and one of my main goals has been to bring their website out of the dark ages. This morning I was finally able to start making updates, and now it’s just about all I want to do. There’s no pressure from anyone else to get the website any more functional than it currently is, but I keep finding myself diving deeper and deeper into the website while I add new features and pages. Meanwhile, I’m working on a deadline for this article that is getting more and more challenging to meet as I get more and more tired.

Why do we allow ourselves to get distracted so often? In all of these scenarios, I’m intentionally distracting myself from things that I love doing. Before Gracelyn was born, I was so very excited about being a father. I literally dreamed of taking care of her, and now I find myself intentionally distracting myself with my phone instead of being more present in her life. When I’m participating in a great learning opportunity at work, I chose not to fully invest by multitasking. I’m even distracting myself writing this column, which I consider a great privilege to write each week.

We could all do better to be more present — to appreciate the things we once aspired to achieve. I once aspired to be in all of the situations I’ve described here, yet now I’ve purposefully distracted myself while partaking in each of them. That’s not the choice I want to continue to make.

Instead, I want to dive head first into everything I do and be able to focus my attention on what’s at hand. Being more present, in the moment, is something I don’t think a lot of us do very well anymore. So often we set a goal, put in the work to reach it, and quickly move on to whatever is next on the list. What would happen if we paused for a moment to recognize where we are at and what we have achieved? I think it might give us the moment of rest we need before jumping into something new and exciting.

This week I failed by letting the distractions take over, but there’s always another week to try again. Living in the moment requires appreciating what that moment entails in its entirety, so whenever possible, let’s not introduce distractions when we don’t need them in the first place.