As a Productivity Ninja, I am able to see trends early. As I work with clients, I can see patterns as they first appear, and one of the most striking patterns of the last six months has been the emergence of the Epidemic of the Un-Finished Thing.
These Things show up on clients' PCs, in two places. First, in a swarm of opened, started-but-unfinished documents, presentations and spreadsheets. When questioned, the client will say, "Yes, not sure about that, it will probably disappear when I close my PC."
More pernicious is the second type of Thing. This appears in the "Drafts" folder in Outlook. A recent client had 452 items in Drafts. These are things that had been very important when they arrived, and when she started drafting a response, but as soon as her attention was snatched away by the next new thing, the Thing was left Un- Finished for ever.
This is the problem. We are always so focused on what's "new in" that we tend to ignore what is actually, really, truly worth doing. So we hop, like kids on hot sand, from one immediate, trivial thing to the other, never actually doing anything worthwhile.