Hyperfocus: How to Work Less to Achieve More

by Chris Bailey

According to Sophie Leroy, a professor of organizational behavior at the University of Washington, it’s not possible for us to seamlessly switch attention from one task to another. Leroy coined the term “attention residue” to describe the fragments of the previous task that remain in our attentional space after we shift to another activity: “It could be that you’re sitting in a meeting and your mind keeps going to a project you were working on right before the meeting, or something you anticipate doing right after the meeting. It’s having that divided attention, where part of your brain is thinking about those other ongoing projects that you have. This is what makes it so difficult to devote yourself to what you’re supposed to be doing in the present.”