Hyperfocus: How to Work Less to Achieve More

by Chris Bailey

I started to notice my own increased distraction, especially as I accumulated more devices. I had never been so busy while accomplishing so little.

When we invest our limited attention intelligently and deliberately, we focus more deeply and think more clearly.

The number of highlights and notes on its pages indicates how much I liked it. When I finish that first read, I go through the book a second time, rereading just the highlighted parts so I can really process the most valuable nuggets.

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.

Necessary work includes tasks that are unattractive yet productive.

Unnecessary work includes the tasks that are both unproductive and unattractive—like rearranging the papers on your desk or the files on your computer. We usually don’t bother with these tasks unless we’re procrastinating on doing something else

such busyness is just an active form of laziness when it doesn’t lead to actually accomplishing anything.

Distracting work includes stimulating, unproductive tasks and as such is a black hole for productivity.

purposeful work—the productivity sweet spot. These are the tasks we’re put on earth to do; the tasks we’re most engaged in as we do them; the tasks with which we make the largest impact.

“Attentional space” is the term I use to describe the amount of mental capacity we have available to focus on and process things in the moment.

As you read, your brain is hard at work converting the raw bits of perceptual information into facts, stories, and lessons that you remember and internalize.

We perform significantly better on every task when we’re aware that our mind is wandering.

If you pay attention to what’s on your mind—which is admittedly hard to do for more than a minute or so—you’ll notice that the content of your attentional space is constantly changing.

There are two kinds of tasks in our life and work: habits, which we can perform without much thought and require minimal attentional space, and complex tasks, which can be done well only with dedicated focus.

we’re able to multitask surprisingly well with habits.

This makes it possible to multitask without compromising the quality of your actions.

Every Sunday I like to lump my personal, relatively rote “maintenance tasks” together—tasks that help me maintain who I am, like preparing meals, trimming my nails, and cleaning the house—and do them all in an allotted period of time while listening to podcasts or an audiobook. It’s easily one of my favorite weekly rituals.

Because we use different brain regions to process them, the tasks aren’t competing for the same mental resources.

You accomplish more in doing them because they require focus and brainpower and take advantage of unique skill sets.

Spending time on our most productive tasks means we usually have very little attention to spare—if there’s any left at all.

Having some attentional space to spare during complex tasks allows you to do two things: It leaves room to reflect on the best approach to completing the task, so you can work smarter and avoid autopilot mode.

Leaving some space also enables you to work with a greater awareness of where you should be directing your attention in the first place.

We have to work with intention as much as possible—this is especially true when we have more to do than time within which to do it. Intention enables us to prioritize so we don’t overload our attentional space. Doing so also leaves us feeling more calm: just as you likely feel uncomfortable after overeating, stuffing your attentional space with too many tasks can make you feel unsettled.

By not stepping back to deliberately manage your attention, you allow it to overflow.

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.

Chances are you’re trying to cram too much into it at once.

When your attentional space is overwhelmed, you, in turn, feel overwhelmed.

Compounding this is the fact that the brain’s prefrontal cortex—the large part of the forebrain that lets us plan, think logically, and get work done—has a built-in “novelty bias.”

Whenever we switch between tasks, it rewards us with dopamine—that amazing pleasure chemical that rushes through our brain whenever we devour a medium-sized pizza, accomplish something awesome, or have a drink or two after work.

Continually seeking novel stimuli makes us feel more productive—after all, we’re doing more in each moment. But again, just because we’re busier doesn’t mean we’re getting more accomplished.

productivity means accomplishing what we intend to.

Being busy doesn’t make us productive. It doesn’t matter how busy we are if that busyness doesn’t lead us to accomplish anything of importance. Productivity is not about cramming more into our days but about doing the right thing in each moment.

Technology speeds up time by tempting us in each moment to fill our attention to the brim. This leads us to remember less, because it is only when we pay attention to something that our brain actively encodes it into memory.

Constantly shifting our attentional spotlight to focus on one thing and then another and then another not only prevents the formation of memories but also undermines our productivity.

Research shows that the more often we fill our attention to the brim, the longer it takes us to switch between tasks, the less we’re able to filter out irrelevant information on the fly, and the poorer we become at suppressing the urge to switch between tasks in the first place.

Needless to say, our best work happens beyond this forty-second mark—nearly every single important task takes more than forty seconds of focused attention to do well.

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.”

This attention residue keeps our mind continuing to evaluate, problem-solve, reflect, and ruminate about a previous task long after we’ve transitioned to the next.

Time pressure narrows our focus on the task, restricting us from considering a number of more creative ways to complete it. We don’t question our approach as much, because we haven’t stepped back to consider the alternatives. This makes it easier to switch.

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

If you’re working on a pressure- or deadline-free project, consider taking a break before starting something else so more of that attentional residue can dissipate.

As far as your productivity is concerned, the best time to take a break is after yo...

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

In order to put its advice into practice, you’ll need to do several things: 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.

You enter this mode by managing your attention deliberately and purposefully: by choosing one important object of attention, eliminating distractions that will inevitably arise as you work, and then focusing on just that one task.

Hyperfocus is many things at once: it’s deliberate, undistracted, and quick to refocus, and it leads us to become completely immersed in our work. It also makes us immensely happy.

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

You’re never too busy to hyperfocus.

When it comes to your most important tasks, the fewer things you pay attention to, the more productive you become.