Hyperfocus: How to Manage Your Attention in a World of Distraction

by Chris Bailey

Just as you are what you eat, you are what you pay attention to.

As many as 40 percent of our actions are habits, which shouldn’t require conscious deliberation.

(One of the most underrated skills: letting other people finish their sentences before starting yours.)

The most urgent and stimulating things in your environment are rarely the most significant.

Directing your attention toward the most important object of your choosing—and then sustaining that attention—is the most consequential decision we will make throughout the day. We are what we pay attention to.

whether a task is productive (you accomplish a lot by doing it) and whether a task is attractive (fun to do) or unattractive (boring, frustrating, difficult, etc.).

Your focus determines your reality. —Qui-Gon Jinn, Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace

Becoming aware of what you’re thinking about is one of the best practices for managing your attention.

If you find yourself responding to important work in autopilot mode, chances are you’re trying to cram too much into your attentional space.

noticing that you’re beginning to feel overwhelmed is a great sign that you should check in to assess what’s occupying your attentional space.

An unfortunate truth is that the brain is not built to do knowledge work—it’s wired for survival and reproduction.

We have evolved to crave things that provide us with a surge of dopamine, which reinforces habits and behaviors that have historically aided our chances at survival.

The devices we own—our TV, tablet, computer, and smartphone included—are infinitely more stimulating than the other productive and meaningful things we could be focusing on, and so with fewer predators to worry about, we naturally focus on our electronics instead.

productivity means accomplishing what we intend to.

Productivity is not about cramming more into our days but about doing the right thing in each moment.

As I mentioned back in chapter 0, when we’re working in front of a computer—a device that’s obviously chock full of novel things to focus on—on average, we work for just forty seconds before we’re either interrupted or distracted (or in other words, interrupt ourselves).

One study found that when we continually switch between tasks, our work takes 50 percent longer, compared with doing one task from start to completion.

As far as your productivity is concerned, the best time to take a break is after you’ve finished a big task.

Few things will benefit your overall quality of life more than focusing with intention.

set intentions more often, modify your environment to be less distracting, overcome the mental resistance you have to certain tasks, eliminate distractions before they derail you, and clear the distractions inside your own head.

Your work was probably also at a comfortable level of difficulty: not so hard as to be intimidating; not so easy that it could be done out of habit.

Hyperfocus means you’re less busy, because you’re permitting fewer objects into your attentional space.

The most important aspect of hyperfocus is that only one productive or meaningful task consumes your attentional space.

while your performance on complex tasks benefits when you focus more completely, your habitual-task performance actually suffers when you focus with your total attention.

You enter into hyperfocus when you engage both your thoughts and your external environment and direct them at one thing intentionally.

To hyperfocus, you must choose a productive or meaningful object of attention; eliminate as many external and internal distractions as you can; focus on that chosen object of attention; and continually draw your focus back to that one object of attention.

Attention without intention is wasted energy.

at the start of each day, choose the three things you want to have accomplished by day’s end.

What will be different in the world—or in your work or in your life—as a result of your spending time doing each of the items on your list?

What task is the equivalent of a domino in a line of one hundred that, once it topples over, initiates a chain reaction that lets you accomplish a great deal?

Setting specific intentions can double or triple your odds of success.

Start by “feeling out” how long you want to hyperfocus.

Anticipate obstacles ahead of time.

By removing every object of attention that’s potentially more stimulating and attractive than what you intend to do, you give your brain no choice but to work on that task.

impulsiveness is also the character trait most highly correlated with procrastination.)

“One of the smartest things I did at Sevenly was to build custom walnut desk lamps for the entire team. They turned them on whenever they wanted to focus, and the rule was that no one was allowed to interrupt them when their lamp was on.

By disabling distractions ahead of time, you expend significantly less mental energy regulating your behavior in order to focus on your work.

What distractions interrupt your focus throughout the day that aren’t worth losing twenty or more minutes of productivity over?

Technology should exist for our convenience, not for the convenience of anyone who wants to interrupt us.

It’s also worth limiting certain apps to interrupting you on only one device—there’s no reason for your phone, tablet, watch, and computer to all inform you that you’ve received an email notifying you that your favorite clothing store is having a sale.

Mind the gaps. Resist the urge to tap around on your smartphone when you’re waiting in line at the grocery store, walking to the coffee shop, or in the bathroom. Use these small breaks to reflect on what you’re doing, to recharge, and to consider alternate approaches to your work and life. In these moments, mindlessly burning time on the phone isn’t worth it—doing so eliminates the valuable space in your schedule.

Buy a second “distractions” device. This may sound a bit silly, but I recently bought an iPad that I use for one sole purpose: as a distractions device.

Before you buy another device, ask yourself: What jobs am I hiring it to do that the devices I already own can’t?

In the knowledge economy, email is one of the largest distractions we face every day—it’s

Recall the three measures we can use to measure the quality of our attention: how much time we spend working with intention; how long we’re able to focus on one task; and how long our mind wanders before we catch it doing so.

Our work tends to expand to fit the available completion time—in productivity circles, this phenomenon is known as Parkinson’s law.

To measure if you have enough work in general, assess how much of your day you spend doing unproductive busywork.

When we do knowledge work for a living, we procrastinate, spending time and attention on email and social media, tasks that make us feel productive in our work but lead us to accomplish little.

There is, however, one practice that has been proven in study after study to increase working memory capacity: meditation.