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

by Chris Bailey

This study introduced meditation to students studying for the GRE—a standardized graduate admissions test in the United States. When it came time for them to take the test, their scores rose an average of 16 percent!

When you practice being with your breath, you practice being with your life.

A mindful shower is one in which you focus on the sights, sounds, and sensations of the present, which enables you to train your brain to better focus on what’s in front of you.

Practices like meditation and mindfulness are also powerful because they train you to practice holding a single intention in your mind for a given period of time.

I like to do this by setting three personal daily intentions in addition to my three work goals, even if one happens to be binge-watching a show on Netflix.

“Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.”

Incorporate at least one hyperfocus interval each day. You’ll experience less resistance as you get accustomed to working with fewer distractions

Think back to your last creative insight—chances are you weren’t hyperfocusing on one thing. In fact, you probably weren’t focused on much at all. You may have been taking an extra-long shower, having a walk during a lunch break, visiting a museum, reading a book, or relaxing on the beach with a drink or two.

Just as hyperfocus is your brain’s most productive mode, scatterfocus is its most creative.

scatterfocus fosters creativity.

We’re also prone to falling prey to what’s novel, pleasurable, and threatening when we let our mind wander and turn our attention inward.

When your mind wanders, it visits three main places: the past, the present, and the future. This is precisely why scattering your attention allows your creativity to flourish as you travel through time and connect what you’ve learned to what you’re doing or what you want to achieve.

We spend hardly any time thinking about the future when we’re focused, while in scatterfocus mode we’re fourteen times more likely to have these thoughts.

As well as helping you plan for the future, recharge, and connect ideas, research suggests that scatterfocus mode also leads you to become more self-aware; incubate ideas more deeply; remember and process ideas and meaningful experiences more effectively; reflect on the meaning of your experiences; show greater empathy (scatterfocus gives you the space to step into other people’s shoes); and become more compassionate.

Scatterfocus is always intentional.

For years I have been scheduling one or two fifteen-minute chunks of time each week to let my mind wander freely, during which I capture any valuable and actionable material.

Our mind’s propensity to wander toward these unresolved ideas is, in part, what makes scatterfocus so valuable—the open loops become much more accessible.

habitual tasks have been shown to yield the greatest number of creative insights

it’s impossible to piece together ideas and information we haven’t paid attention to in the first place.

just as you are what you eat, when it comes to the information you consume, you are what you choose to focus on.

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by no means a waste of time. —John Lubbock, in The Use of Life

Getting enough sleep, for example, can increase the size of attentional space by as much as 58 percent, and taking frequent breaks can have the same effect.

There are many signs that indicate you’re running low on energy and should recharge your attention by deliberately entering scatterfocus mode: Switching often among tasks and being unable to sustain focus on one thing Losing your grip on your intentions and working in a more reactive way Getting tasks done at a noticeably slower rate (e.g., reading the same important email several times to comprehend it) Opting to do less important, more mindless work—like checking email, social media, etc. Unintentionally slipping into scatterfocus mode

Pick an activity you love, something you can do once or twice a day where you work. Set an intention to do the activity tomorrow. This could involve walking around the office, taking advantage of a gym nearby, or spending time with coworkers who energize you. These activities are a great way to give your mind a genuine break.

Research on the value of breaks points to two simple rules: Take a break at least every ninety minutes. Break for roughly fifteen minutes for each hour of work you do.

Sleep dreaming and daydreaming in scatterfocus mode activate the same brain regions, though they’re even more active while we’re asleep.

Scatterfocus lights up your brain’s default network—the network it returns to when you’re not focused on something.*

As we cast a metaphorical net across our minds, fishing for novel connections, we connect ideas while we rest and plan for the future.

Uncompleted tasks and projects weigh more heavily on our minds than ones we’ve finished—focus comes when we close these distracting open loops.

Break activities like walking through a bookstore or people-watching at a diner are far more valuable than those that don’t carry any new potential cues.

Writing down the detailed problems you’re tackling at work and at home helps your mind continue to process them in the background.

Another powerful idea for the smaller nuts you’re trying to crack: in addition to setting three next-day intentions at the end of the workday, note the largest problems you’re in the middle of processing. You’ll be surprised how many you figure out by the next morning.

We are what we pay attention to,

If you’re in doubt about consuming something, ask yourself: How do you think your life will be different knowing this piece of information?

any sufficiently complex decision or idea is also indistinguishable from magic.

Recalling three things you’re grateful for at the end of each day (a good companion tactic to the Rule of 3, discussed in chapter 3) Journaling at the end of each day about one good experience you had Meditating (see chapter 5) Performing a random act of kindness