Hyperfocus: How to Work Less to Achieve More

by Chris Bailey

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.

To hyperfocus, you must 1. choose a productive or meaningful object of attention; 2. eliminate as many external and internal distractions as you can; 3. focus on that chosen object of attention; and 4. continually draw your focus back to that one object of attention.

The concept of hyperfocus can be summed up in a single tranquil sentence: keep one important, complex object of attention in your awareness as you work.

the Rule of 3: at the start of each day, choose the three things you want to have accomplished by day’s end.

If you’re like me, you may also find it handy to set three weekly intentions, as well as three daily personal intentions—such as disconnecting from work during dinner, visiting the gym before heading home from the office, or gathering receipts for taxes.

A second intention-setting ritual I follow is considering which items on my to-do list are the most consequential.

sum of both its short-term and long-term consequences.

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?

Another way to look at this: when deciding what to do, instead of considering just the immediate consequences of an activity, also consider the second- and third-order consequences. For example, let’s say you’re deciding whether to order a funnel cake for dessert. The immediate consequence of the decision is that you enjoy eating the cake. But the second- and third-order consequences are quite a bit steeper. A second-order consequence might be that you’ll feel terrible for the rest of the evening. Third-order consequences might include gaining weight or breaking a new diet regimen.

the most important tasks are often not the ones that immediately feel the most urgent or productive.

As far as productivity is concerned, these individual moments are where the rubber meets the road—it’s pointless to set goals and intentions if you don’t act toward accomplishing them throughout the day.

My favorite way to make sure I’m staying on track with my intentions is to frequently check what’s occupying my attentional space—to reflect on whether I’m focusing on what’s important and consequential or whether I’ve slipped into autopilot mode. To do so, I set an hourly awareness chime.

When your hourly chime rings, ask yourself the following: • Was your mind wandering when the awareness chime sounded? • Are you working on autopilot or on something you intentionally chose to do? (It’s so satisfying to see this improve over time.) • Are you immersed in a productive task? If so, how long have you spent focusing on it? (If it was an impressive amount of time, don’t let the awareness chime trip you up—keep going!) • What’s the most consequential thing you could be doing right now? Are you working on it? • How full is your attentional space? Is it overflowing, or do you have attention to spare? • Are there distractions preventing you from hyperfocusing on your work?

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

The more aversive you find a task or project, the more important it is to tame distractions ahead of time.

With their permission, Mark and Czerwinski installed a logging program on participants’ computers to observe exactly how often they switched between tasks—every forty seconds. Shockingly, we interrupt ourselves even more often when we keep apps like IM and Skype open—every thirty-five seconds.

So often we go from being totally productive and immersed in our work to interrupting ourselves to do something unrelated and far less important.

When you calculate the average among people who visited Facebook at least once, it almost doubles, to 38 daily checks.)

Our work obviously suffers from these distractions, and we fail to enter into a hyperfocused state. We compensate by working faster and more frantically, which affects the quality of what we produce and stresses us out.

And perhaps most important, we fail to take control of, and deliberately ...

The costs of an unrelated interruption can be massive: it takes an average of twenty-five minutes to resume working on an activity after we’re interrupted, and before resuming that activity, we work on an average of 2.26 other tasks.

Once you become aware of how frequently you interrupt yourself, it’s hard to go back to working the same way again. This is why it is critical to manage your attentional space wisely. You can focus for so much longer by taming distractions ahead of time.

The above anecdote alone should dispel any notion that, as a productivity expert, I have a superhuman level of self-control. What I am better at is managing my impulses ahead of time. After choosing how long you’ll focus, eliminating distractions is the second step of hyperfocus.

I define a “distraction” as anything that can direct us away from our intentions.

If we zoom in on the “distracting work” quadrant back in the first chapter, we can divide it up based on two criteria: whether or not we have control over the distractions and whether we find them annoying or fun.

Research shows, however, that we interrupt ourselves just as much as we are interrupted by other people.15 As Gloria Mark expressed it, “Simply looking at how we can break off external interruptions really only solves half the problem.”

Distractions from others aren’t quite as damaging as the times we interrupt ourselves. It takes us an average of twenty-nine minutes to resume a task after we have interrupted our own work—however, we get back on track around six minutes more quickly if we’re interrupted by someone else.

As I’ve found, though, the best possible way to respond to pleasurable, controllable distractions—like team lunches and calls from loved ones when I’m in the middle of something—is to make a concerted effort to embrace and actually allow myself to enjoy them but still get back on track when I’m able.

Fretting over things you simply can’t control is a waste of time, energy, and attention.

Over time, I’ve developed two modes of working: 1. A distraction-free mode, which I enter whenever I’m about to hyperfocus. 2. A regular, reduced-distraction working mode, where I work with a manageable number of distractions throughout the day.

Collaborative work, on the other hand, involves interacting with other people and being available in case you’re needed. The more you and your team are available for one another, the more productive your team as a whole becomes. When engaged in collaborative work, it’s best to enter into reduced-distraction mode, in which you’ve tamed your largest distractions but are still accessible when you’re needed.

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.

I always experience an odd and wonderful sense of relief when I enter my distraction-free mode, and I think you will too. Suddenly you don’t have to tend to the news, your social media feeds, and a never-ending stream of email. You can relax, confident that you can no longer waste time and attention on mindless busywork.

What distractions interrupt your focus throughout the day that aren’t worth losing twenty or more minutes of productivity over? It isn’t possible to shut off these distractions entirely, and you might not even want to, but it is worth becoming more thoughtful about what interrupts your work.

Once I began viewing my smartphone as just a more distracting computer, I kept it stowed in my laptop bag instead of my pocket. And, most important, I made sure I had a good reason before checking it.

Every time you pick up your phone without intent, you derail your attention for no good reason.

try disconnecting completely for a period of twenty-four hours this Sunday, and encourage your family to do the same.

the “mere presence of a cell phone placed innocuously in the visual field of participants was found to interfere with closeness, connection, and relationship quality.”

When we keep our phone, tablet, and television in another room, we are derailed less often, become accustomed to working in a less stimulating environment, and ensure the environment around us is not more attractive than what we intend to focus on.

Hanging a whiteboard in your environment may prompt you to brainstorm your thoughts and is a useful place to write your three daily intentions. Lining up your favorite books on an office shelf might remind you of ideas as you work. Keeping a fidget cube by your side is a cue to occasionally take a break, daydream, and consider new ideas.

Continuously capture unresolved commitments and ideas as they come up, and get into a habit of revisiting them at a set time later. This will free up a lot of attentional space to spend on better things.

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.

Creating a distraction-free mode lets you carve out time to spend intentionally while eliminating the more attractive objects of attention that would ordinarily derail your focus. • Working with fewer distractions in general lets you eliminate novel objects of attention throughout the day and reclaim more of your attention for what’s important. • Utilizing both of these working modes helps you train your brain to wander less and focus longer. • Simplifying your working and living environments eliminates a slew of tempting distractions. • Clearing your head of distracting open loops lets you work more clearly and frees even more attentional space for your most productive tasks.

One final benefit of eliminating distractions in advance is gaining the freedom to work at a slower, more purposeful pace.

Depending on their complexity, tasks will require varying amounts of your attentional space. If you’ve ever tried to meditate and focus only on your breath for a few minutes, you might have noticed your mind wanders more than usual—far more than when you’re going for a run, carrying on a deep conversation, or watching a movie. These latter tasks are more complex and fill more of your attentional space by default.

Consciously making your tasks more complex, and taking on more complex ones, is another powerful way to enter into a hyperfocused state, as they will consume more of your attention. This will keep you more engaged in what you’re doing and lead your mind to wander less often.

your work no longer expands to fit the time you have available for its completion, and you discover how much work you truly have on your plate. Some executives I coach find they’re able to accomplish a full day’s work in just a few hours when they focus on only their most consequential tasks.

I experienced a dreaded feeling of guilt whenever I wasn’t busy, which, of course, disappeared as soon as I did more busywork.

It took several months before I finally stepped back to tame the novel distractions that were flooding my available time. In doing so I discovered how little work I actually had on my plate. In response I intentionally took on more meaningful tasks—writing more for my website, thinking about this book, and ramping up my speaking and coaching sessions.