Hyperfocus

by Chris Bailey

  The more often you do this check, the more productive your mind-wandering episodes will be. You will be better able to move your thoughts away from the past and instead think about current ideas and the future. As with expanding the size of your attentional space, practicing meta-awareness has been shown to make scatterfocus mode significantly more positive and constructive.

  RETHINKING BOREDOM

  Answer this question honestly: When was the last time you were bored?

  Really think about it. Can you remember?

  Chances are it was a long time ago, maybe before welcoming devices into your life. Never in human history have we divided our attention among so many things. In the moment this can feel like a benefit—we always have something to do—but the disadvantage is that distracting devices have basically eliminated boredom from our lives.

  You might be asking: Isn’t ridding ourselves of boredom a positive change? Not necessarily. Boredom is the feeling we experience as we transition into a lower level of stimulation. It most often appears when we are suddenly forced to adapt to this lower level—when we find ourselves looking for something to do on a Sunday afternoon or switch from writing an email to sitting in a grueling meeting:

  It’s no wonder that boredom eludes us when we always have a device to reach for or a distracting website to visit—there is always something to amuse us in the moment. As a consequence, we don’t often find ourselves having to adjust to a lower level of stimulation. In fact, we frequently have to yank our focus away from these devices when it’s time to actually get something done.

  I’m a big fan of experimenting with my own advice, because many tips that sound good on the surface don’t actually work in practice. I recently did so to determine, once and for all, whether boredom is, in fact, a positive thing. Is boredom productive in small doses? How does it differ from scatterfocus? Are we right to resist it?

  During a monthlong experiment I intentionally made myself bored for an hour a day. In that period I shut off all distractions and spent my time and attention on an excruciatingly boring task, based on the thirty weirdest ideas suggested by my website readers:

  Reading the iTunes terms and conditions

  Staring at the ceiling

  Watching C-SPAN 3

  Waiting on hold with Air Canada’s baggage claim department

  Watching C-SPAN 2

  Watching my turtle, Edward, swim back and forth in her tank

  Staring at a slowly rotating fan blade

  Painting a tiny canvas with one color

  Watching paint dry

  Looking out my office window

  Removing and counting the seeds on a strawberry with a pair of tweezers

  Watching grass grow

  Staring out a train window

  Watching an online chess tournament

  Watching one cloud in the sky

  Waiting at the hospital

  Watching a dripping faucet

  Ironing every piece of clothing I own

  Counting the 0s in the first 10,000 digits of pi

  Watching my girlfriend read

  Making dots on a sheet of paper

  Eating alone in a restaurant, without a book or phone

  Reading Wikipedia articles about rope

  Watching a clock

  Watching every file transfer from my computer to an external hard drive (and back)

  Peeling exactly five potatoes

  Watching a pot boil

  Attending a church service in Latin

  Watching C-SPAN

  Moving small rocks from one place to another, repeatedly

  A few times each hour I randomly sampled what was going on in my head: whether my thoughts were positive, negative, or neutral; whether my mind was focused on something or was wandering; how constructive the thoughts were; how I felt; and how much time I estimated had passed since the previous sample.

  Some of the findings from this experiment were unsurprising. As soon as my external environment became less stimulating, I naturally turned my attention inward, where my thoughts were infinitely more interesting and stimulating. In this sense, boredom is really just unwanted scatterfocus. I still found my mind planning for the future, processing ideas, and bouncing between the past, present, and future, just as it does in habitual scatterfocus mode, but I didn’t enjoy the process as much or have the desire to keep going.

  The experiment also yielded a few unexpected side effects. One that made me feel especially uneasy was how, in the absence of stimulation, I instinctively looked for distractions to occupy my attention. Forced to remove the seeds of a strawberry with a pair of tweezers or read Wikipedia articles related to rope, I found myself looking for something, anything to do: a mess to clean, a device to pick up—any pacifier that would distract me from the thoughts in my head. If I had been able to administer myself an electric shock in that moment, I might have done it. Our mind is accustomed to constant stimulation and tends to seek it as if it were a universally good thing. It isn’t.

  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. Each time we eschew boredom for stimulation, we fail to plan, unearth ideas our mind has incubated, or recharge so we can work later with greater energy and purpose.

  This is not to say boredom is totally useful. Unlike habitual scatterfocus, boredom makes us anxious, uneasy, and uncomfortable—feelings I constantly had during the experiment. More boredom is not something that I’d wish on anyone—but more mind wandering is. Fortunately our mind wanders to the same places during episodes of either scatterfocus or boredom, so scatterfocus is just as positive—it lets our mind wander while we become less stimulated, but it does so with purpose.

  There used to be an app called Disk Defragmenter that came preinstalled on all Windows computers, back when every PC shipped with a slow, spinning hard disk. If your computer was running sluggishly, the program would dutifully rearrange the discontiguous blocks of files so they would be physically closer on the drive. This significantly sped up the computer, because the drive would no longer have to spin like crazy to search for the elements of a given file scattered across its platter.

  Regardless of how technical you were, using the app was always oddly satisfying, and even visually pleasing, as it displayed an image of blocks strewn across a rectangle, which would be dutifully rearranged and cleaned up during the running of the program.

  Our mind works in a similar way. We defragment our thoughts when we carve out space between tasks. This helps us think clearly and gives us extra attention to process relationships, experiences, ideas, and problems we can’t figure out. In these moments, boredom and scatterfocus are powerful because they enable useful self-examination.

  As I hope you’ll agree, these activity gaps are just as valuable as the activities themselves. It’s time to reclaim them.

  CHAPTER

  7

  RECHARGING YOUR ATTENTION

  Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by no means a waste of time.

  —John Lubbock, in The Use of Life

  WHEN YOU SHOULD RECHARGE

  As well as enabling you to set intentions more often and improving your creativity, scatterfocus helps you recharge.

  Our energy levels influence how well we’re able to focus. You probably felt the effects of this the last time you missed a few hours of sleep or skipped your work breaks. Odds are that all three measures of the quality of your attention decreased: you couldn’t focus
for as long, you were distracted and sidetracked by other tasks or interests more frequently, and you found yourself working on autopilot more often.

  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 percent, and taking frequent breaks can have the same effect. This impacts productivity: when attentional space is approximately 60 percent larger, productivity can grow by just as much, especially when we’re working on a demanding task. The better rested we are, the more productive we become.

  Hyperfocus can be pretty tiring—it requires that we regulate our behavior, which steadily drains a pool of limited energy. Eventually our energy wanes, and focusing on the task at hand becomes more difficult. Our attentional space contracts, and we need to recharge.

  There are many signs that indicate you’re running low on energy and should recharge your attention by deliberately entering scatterfocus mode:

  Switching often among tasks and being unable to sustain focus on one thing

  Losing your grip on your intentions and working in a more reactive way

  Getting tasks done at a noticeably slower rate (e.g., reading the same important email several times to comprehend it)

  Opting to do less important, more mindless work—like checking email, social media, etc.

  Unintentionally slipping into scatterfocus mode

  TAKING MORE REFRESHING BREAKS

  Many people burn through an inordinate amount of time doing work that doesn’t make them happy. Doing work you love is significantly less exhausting than doing work you don’t care about—focus always feels more forced for the latter. The more you care, the more mileage you’ll get out of your attention. Research also suggests that your mind wanders less when you’re doing something you genuinely enjoy.

  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.

  Fun, leisurely work breaks provide the same remarkable benefits of the habitual scatterfocus mode: your mind will wander to the future as you create the attentional space for more ideas and insights. Fun breaks also energize you for when you do resume working.

  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. These “breaks” are effectively a code name for activities unrelated to our work—and because they still require our attention, we never truly have a chance to recharge. Instead of thinking clearly and deliberately when we resume working, we can muster the energy only to work on autopilot mode, checking if new emails came in and doing unnecessary and distracting work.

  There are countless refreshing and enjoyable break activities, each of which will let you experience the immense benefits of habitual scatterfocus while not taking away from your ability to hyperfocus once the break ends.

  Pick an activity you love, something you can do once or twice a day where you work. Set an intention to do the activity tomorrow. This could involve walking around the office, taking advantage of a gym nearby, or spending time with coworkers who energize you. These activities are a great way to give your mind a genuine break. Resist the urge to mindlessly distract yourself during this pocket of time. During my own work breaks I step back every hour or so to let my mind recharge. I love walking to and from the local coffee shop without my phone, working out at the gym, catching up with a colleague or two, or listening to a podcast.

  Here are a few other break activities that have worked for me, and for the people I’ve coached:

  Going on a nature walk*

  Running outside or visiting the gym at work (if your company has one) or off-site

  Meditating (especially if your office has a relaxation room)

  Reading something fun and not work-related

  Listening to music, a podcast, or an audiobook

  Spending time with coworkers or friends

  Investing time in a creative hobby like painting, woodworking, or photography

  When you choose a break activity you love, you can still experience the benefits of habitual scatterfocus while you rest and recharge.

  TIMING

  So when and how often should you step back from your work?

  Because no two people are the same, the frequency and length of breaks depend on countless factors. Just as you had to try various alternatives to create a personalized distraction-free mode, experiment to learn what provides you with the most energy. For example, you may need to take breaks more often if you’re an introvert whose work involves a great deal of social interaction with large groups of people. If you’re an introvert who works in an open office, you may need to step back more frequently throughout the day as well.

  If you’re in a management role, hiring people who deeply care about your company values is the best decision you can make. Managers often try to make their team more productive after the fact. They successfully hire highly skilled people, but ones who are doing the job only for a paycheck.

  Frequent recharging may also be necessary if you find you aren’t motivated by a particular project, or by your work in general. The more you need to regulate your behavior—to resist distractions and temptations or push yourself to get things done—the more often you’ll need to recharge. (This is why deadlines can be so useful: they force you to focus on something.) Focus becomes effortless when you’re working on a task that’s intrinsically motivating—all the productivity advice in the world won’t help if you can’t stand your job.*

  Research on the value of breaks points to two simple rules:

  Take a break at least every ninety minutes.

  Break for roughly fifteen minutes for each hour of work you do.

  This may seem like a lot of time across an eight-hour workday, but it’s approximately equivalent to taking a one-hour lunch break and a fifteen-minute break in the morning and afternoon. In most situations these two rules are practical and can be carried out without affecting your work schedule.

  Why is ninety minutes the magic number? Our mental energy tends to oscillate in ninety-minute waves. We sleep in ninety-minute cycles, moving between periods of light, deep, and REM sleep. Our energy continues to follow the same rhythm after we wake: we feel rested for around ninety minutes and then tired for a short period of time—around twenty to thirty minutes. A short break every ninety minutes or so takes advantage of these natural peaks and valleys in energy cycles. Take a break when you notice your focus dipping or after finishing a big task—doing so will mean you’ll experience less attentional residue as you allow your mind to wander.

  By taking strategic breaks we’re able to use periods of greater mental energy for maximum productivity—and replenish our energy when it would naturally dip. 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. This makes low-energy moments perfect for scatterfocus. Start to pay attention to the ebb and flow of your energy levels in the morning, and make a concerted effort to step back when you feel your energy beginning to dip. Energy levels stabilize a bit more in the afternoon and dip less predictably—but it’s worth sticking with a similar rhythm.

  And why should we have a fifteen-minute break for each hour of work? There isn’t a lot of reliable research on this subject, but one company did try to crunch the numbers. A time-tracking app called DeskTime—which automatically tracks the computer programs you have open so you can see at day’s end how productive you were—assessed the break data for the most productive 10 percent of its users. They discovered that, on average, these users took a seventeen-minute break after every fifty-two minutes of work.

  It’s worth adapting your break schedule around your work habits. If you have a second tea or coffee in the morning, take it after ninety minutes of work and give your mind a legitimate rest during that time. Instead of eating a rushed lunch in front of your computer, take a real lunch break—one that will legitimately recharge you for the afternoon. Leave your phone at the office and enter scatterfocus mode on a lunchtime run or while reading a good book, being sure to capture any thoughts and ideas you’ve been incubating. In the afternoon, grab a decaf coffee, or take advantage of your company’s nap room, meditation space, or gym.