Hyperfocus: How to Work Less to Achieve More

by Chris Bailey

Remembering the past helps us imagine the future, as it’s impossible to piece together ideas and information we haven’t paid attention to in the first place. The better we manage our attention when we’re focused, the more information we’ll have to draw upon when we’re not.

There’s an interesting reason that it takes us awhile to realize that our mind has wandered. As one study put it, its doing so “can hijack the very brain regions that are necessary for recognizing its occurrence.”

in the absence of stimulation, I instinctively looked for distractions to occupy my attention.

It’s not a coincidence that so many tactics in this book involve making your work and life less stimulating—the less stimulated you are, the more deeply you can think.

The lesson of this chapter is simple: the more often we scatterfocus to replenish our mental energy, the more energy we have for our most important tasks.

As our mental energy steadily depletes throughout the day, so too does our ability to focus. Recharging is critical and worth the time investment.

Research shows that attentional space expands and contracts in proportion to how much mental energy we have. Getting enough sleep, for example, can increase the size of attentional space by as much as 58 perce...

In addition to scatterfocus’s other benefits, practicing it provides a pocket of time in which you don’t have to regulate your behavior, which is energy restorative. Practicing scatterfocus, even if just for five to ten minutes, lets your brain rest, which helps replenish your limited pool of mental energy.

Research has shown that a refreshing work break should have three characteristics. It should be • low-effort and habitual; • something you actually want to do; and • something that isn’t a chore (unless you genuinely enjoy doing the chore). In short, your breaks should involve something that’s pleasurably effortless.

Work breaks aren’t generally as refreshing as they should be, as we immediately become too busy checking social media and the news and distracting ourselves in other ways without stepping back to actually let our minds rest.

Research shows we’re more creative during these low-energy periods, as during them our brain is the least inhibited, which allows more ideas to rise to the surface.

the main idea is simple: scatterfocus mode helps us to recharge our ability to hyperfocus, in addition to letting us plan for the future and become more creative.

We’re wired to remember what we’re in the middle of more than what we’ve completed. In psychology circles this phenomenon is called the Zeigarnik effect, after Bluma Zeigarnik, the first person to study this concept. The Zeigarnik effect can be annoying when we’re trying to focus, but the opposite is true when we scatter our attention. In fact, it leads to amazing insights into the problems we’re incubating.

When we’re in habitual scatterfocus mode, potential insight triggers come from two places: our wandering minds themselves and the external environment.

Scatter your attention in a richer environment.

In addition to creating a focus-conducive environment (using the steps discussed in the first part of this book), you can also help surface scatterfocus insights by deliberately exposing yourself to new cues.

You can also use cues to capture everything you need to get done. Walk around your house with a notepad and draw up a list of tasks that need to be completed. This list represents your external cues.

Write out the problems you’re trying to crack.

one afternoon during which I scanned the tables of contents of about a hundred books to see how they were structured)

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.

Sleep on a problem.

It’s also worth taking your time in solving the problems presented by creative tasks. Purposefully delaying creative decisions—as long as you don’t face an impending deadline—lets you continue to make potentially more valuable connections.

Intentionally leave tasks unfinished. The more abruptly you stop working on a creative task, the more you’ll think about it when you switch to another.

Leaving tasks partly completed helps you keep them front of mind as you encounter external and internal solution cues.

Consume more valuable dots.

As we cluster more and more dots about a given topic, we naturally develop expertise, which in turn helps us better manage our attentional space. Curiously, the more we know about a subject, the less attentional space that information consumes.

Recall that our attentional space can hold around four chunks of information at once. The more dots we’re able to cluster, the more efficiently we’re able to use that space, as we can accommodate and process a lot more pieces of information when they’re linked together.

We are what we pay attention to, and almost nothing influences our productivity and creativity as much as the information we’ve consumed in the past.

it’s worth auditing and increasing the quality of dots you consume regularly. The most creative and productive people defend their attentional space religiously, allowing only the most valuable dots to be encoded.

Useful information is typically actionable and helps you reach your goals.

As well as being actionable and beneficial, useful dots are also either related to what you’ve consumed in the past or completely unrelated to what you already know.

Taking in novel data gives you an opportunity to question whether you’re consuming only information that confirms your existing beliefs, and it may provide an insight trigger.

As a rule, we should • consume more useful information, especially when we have the energy to process something more dense; • consume balanced information when we have less energy; • consume entertaining information with intention or when we’re running low on energy and need to recharge; and • consume less trashy information. There are two steps to upping the quality of information you collect: 1. Take stock of everything you consume. 2. Intentionally consume more valuable information.

You’re perfectly productive whenever you accomplish what you intend to. This is true whether your goal is to read a chapter of a textbook or watch four episodes of Game of Thrones.

In addition to being more selective about what you consume, you should reevaluate content as you consume it—skipping or skimming anything that’s not worth your time. The Zeigarnik effect makes us want to finish what we start, but every minute we spend on something useless is a minute we lose working on something useful.

Consume challenging things outside the boundaries of your expertise, ones that force you to make more disparate connections. The more disparate the dots you connect, the more valuable the connections often end up being.

While we often find the story of a lone, driven genius compelling, all geniuses have put in time and effort to achieve greatness.

Scatterfocus lets you find useful connections between disparate ideas and experiences, recharge, and plan for the future. To reap these benefits, you simply have to let your mind rest and wander—preferably while doing something habitual.

The more scatterfocus time we schedule as we’re putting together a plan, the more time we’ll save later.

Scatterfocus is the most creative mode of your brain. Just as with hyperfocus, it’s worth spending as much time as you possibly can practicing it.

deliberately managing our attention is a practice with compounding benefits.

happier people are 31 percent more productive than those in a negative or neutral state. Happiness also helps you become more creative in scatterfocus mode. You’re more likely to experience insightful solutions to problems when you’re in a positive frame of mind, which is not surprising, given that your brain has more attentional space and energy with which to work.