Hyperfocus: How to Work Less to Achieve More

by Chris Bailey

Useful information is typically the densest of the three categories. Books are a good illustration: while a book can sometimes take less than ten hours to read, it can take decades to write and may contain a lifetime of lessons that the author has learned and summarized. Books provide access to the highest-quality thinking and most useful dots on pretty much any topic.

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.

4. Notice what you consume on autopilot mode.

Pay special attention to what you pursue when you’re low on energy or as you transition from one task to another.

5. Veg out . . . intentionally.

If you’re going to veg out, do so with intention—set the criteria for what you plan to do, such as the number of episodes you’ll get through, what you’ll eat as you watch, what you’ll do afterward, and so on. This not only allows you to act with intention but also leaves you feeling less guilty so that you actually enjoy yourself.

6. Reevaluate what you’re consuming as you’re consuming it.

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. After you begin a book, movie, or TV series, assess along the way whether you should pursue it to the end.

When you double down on what you’re already accomplished at, you’ll be surprised by how much more productive and creative you become.

The more creativity your job requires, the more often you should scatter your attention. In most cases, the knowledge work of today benefits from as much creativity as we can bring to it.

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

taking scatterfocus breaks that are at least fifteen minutes long will yield better results than trying to take advantage of tiny chunks of time throughout the day.

WORK AROUND YOUR ENERGY LEVELS

energy levels over the course of the day are anything but constant. They fluctuate according to when your body is programmed to have the most energy (e.g., if you happen to be an early bird or a night owl), how often you exercise, what you eat, and whether you get enough sleep.

Scatterfocus is most powerful when you have the least energy. Your brain is less inhibited during these periods and doesn’t hold back the ideas it generates.

For most people this occurs during the late morning (around 11:00 a.m.) and midafternoon (around 2:00 or 3:00 p.m.). Our energy is typically lowest right after lunch.

If you drink alcohol, do so strategically: in those rare times when you want to let your mind roam more freely (and have nothing important planned afterward) or you want to steal some happiness from tomorrow.

Caffeine is another drug to consider consuming strategically. When it comes to managing attention, caffeine has the polar opposite effect of alcohol: while alcohol helps us scatterfocus, caffeine helps us hyperfocus. The research is conclusive: caffeine boosts mental (and physical) performance in pretty much every measurable way:

One of my favorite weekly routines is a focus ritual, which I schedule for every Sunday evening or Monday morning to plan my week. During it I decide on my three weekly intentions and assess how much I’ll need to hyperfocus and scatterfocus in the days ahead.

Another random, fun finding from this study: we do the greatest number of rote tasks on Thursdays (about a third of the routine tasks we do throughout the entire week). If you find you fall into this pattern, it might be worth seeing Thursdays as your “Maintenance Day”—when you do all the tasks you’d rather not focus on during the rest of the week.