Hyperfocus: How to Work Less to Achieve More

by Chris Bailey

Because I think of myself as a pretty productive guy, my failure was tough to admit to myself, but it taught me an essential lesson: doing mindless stuff at work or at home is not only unproductive but also a sign you don’t have enough important work. This also accounts for why busywork gets set aside when you’re on deadline: there’s no time available to contain its expansion.

mindless work can give us immediate feedback and the sense of having accomplished something.

The greater your working memory capacity, the more information you can hold at the same time and the greater your ability to process complex tasks.

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

Like hyperfocus, meditation involves continually returning your focus to a single object of attention—usually your breath—as soon as you notice your mind has wandered from it.

Since observing your breath doesn’t consume your full attention, your mind will wander constantly—which is somewhat the point. Each time you return your wandering mind to the details of your breath, you heighten your executive functioning: how much control you have over your attention. This eventually enables you to improve each measure of the quality of your attention. You’ll be able to focus for longer, your mind will wander less, and you’ll be able to work with greater intention.

Mindfulness is about becoming conscious of what is filling your mind and noticing the circumstances of the current moment. This includes noting anything you happen to be perceiving, feeling, or thinking. Mindfulness differs from hyperfocus in one major respect: it’s about focusing on the circumstances of the present, rather than becoming immersed in them.

If you take away one lesson from this chapter, it should be that few practices will improve the quality of your attention—and the size of your attentional space—more than meditation and mindfulness.

I’m convinced that love is nothing more than sharing quality attention with someone.

Whether at work or at home, the quality of your attention determines the quality of your life. At work, the more attention you give to what’s in front of you, the more productive you become. At home, the more attention you devote to what’s in front of you, the more meaningful your life becomes.

This resistance we feel toward complex and productive tasks isn’t distributed evenly across working time—it’s usually concentrated at the beginning of when we start these tasks:

Starting provides enough momentum to carry out our intentions.

Shrink your desired hyperfocus period until you no longer feel resistance to the

ritual.

Notice when you “don’t have time” for something.

Continually practice hyperfocus.

Recharge!

While hyperfocus involves directing your attention outward, scatterfocus is about directing it inward, inside your own mind.

Just as hyperfocus is the most productive mode of the brain, scatterfocus is the most creative. Scatterfocus can derail our productivity when our original intent is to focus, but when we’re coming up with a creative solution to a problem, planning for our future, or making a difficult decision, it is just as essential as hyperfocus.

We can harness the remarkable benefits of scatterfocus by practicing inte...

You enter this mode whenever you leave attentional space free around what you’re doing in the moment—whether going for a run, biking, or investing time in anything that doesn’t consume your full attentional space.

it allows you to set intentions and plan for the future.

scatterfocus lets you recharge.

scatterfocus fosters creativity. The mode helps you connect old ideas and create new ones; floats incubating thoughts to the surface of your attentional space; and lets you piece together solutions to problems.

We’re also more likely to focus on anything that’s pleasurable or threatening.

We’re continually surrounded by novel distractions, pleasures are plentiful, and legitimate threats are few and far between.

What once aided our chances at survival now sabotages our productivity and creativity in the modern world. It makes our most urgent tasks feel a lot more important than they actually are.

While our evolutionary history leads us to think about the novel and the negative, it has also wired our brain for profound creativity whenever we turn our attention inward. I’d argue that our ability to do so is practically a superpower.

we spend just 12 percent of our scatterfocus time thinking about the past,

our mind wanders to the present 28 percent of the time.

Wandering thoughts about what we’re currently working on usually prove to be fairly productive—we need to reflect on our tasks in order to work more deliberately.

Without entering scatterfocus mode, you never think about the future. It’s only once you step back from writing an email, drafting a paper, or planning your budget that you can consider alternative approaches to the task.

our mind wanders to think about the future 48 percent of the time—more than our past and present thinking combined.

Researchers refer to our mind’s propensity to future-wander as our “prospective bias.”

Scatterfocus lets us work with greater intention because our mind automatically contrasts the future we desire against the present we need to change to make that future a reality.

We consider our goals only about 4 percent of the time when we’re immersed in what we’re doing, while in scatterfocus mode we think about them 26 percent of the time. The more time you spend scatterfocusing between tasks—rather than indulging in distractions—the more thoughtful and productive your actions become.

There are two ways your mind wanders: unintentionally and intentionally. Unintentional wandering takes place without your awareness, when you don’t choose to enter into the mode. This is where I draw the line between mind wandering and scatterfocus. Scatterfocus is always intentional.

a few different styles of scatterfocus: 1. Capture mode: Letting your mind roam freely and capturing whatever comes up. 2. Problem-crunching mode: Holding a problem loosely in mind and letting your thoughts wander around it. 3. Habitual mode: Engaging in a simple task and capturing the valuable ideas and plans that rise to the surface while doing it. Research has found this mode is the most powerful.

Of the three styles, capture mode is best for identifying what’s on your mind; problem-crunching mode is best for mulling over a specific problem or idea; and habitual mode is best for recharging and connecting the greatest number of ideas.

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. This practice is as simple as sitting with coffee, a pen, and a notebook and waiting to see what rises to the surface of my consciousness.

In capture mode, any unresolved ideas or projects move to the forefront of your mind, ready to be written down and acted upon later.

To enter this mode, hold a problem in your mind and let your thoughts wander around it, turn it over, and explore it from different angles. Whenever your mind ventures off to think about something unrelated or gets stuck on one point, gently nudge your attention back to what you intended to think about, or the problem you intended to solve.

As with the other modes, habitual scatterfocus is fairly easy: you simply do something habitual that doesn’t consume your complete attention. This gives your mind space to wander and connect ideas.

The happier you are in scatterfocus mode, the more benefits you’ll reap. An elevated mood actually expands the size of your attentional space, which leads you to think more expansively.

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

Habitual tasks also encourage your mind to continue wandering.

in habitual mode, you pretty much let your mind roam free.

A primary reason many of us feel burned out is that we never give our attention a rest. Try this today: don’t bring your phone with you the next time you walk to get a coffee or eat your lunch.

the key to practicing habitual scatterfocus is to frequently check what thoughts and ideas are in your attentional space.

With hyperfocus you direct your attention outward; with scatterfocus you direct your attention inward.