Chris Bailey is a productivity expert who has written extensively about focus and how the mind works with respect to attention. In his book Hyperfocus, he talks about how to use our brain’s attention to improve productivity at work and well being in life. He talks about how most of us go through our lives in autopilot mode, where the mind makes quick decisions based on simple heuristics. If you spend your workday doing busywork that comes to you of its own, you are activating your autopilot mode. The same is true for personal lives where we are constantly being distracted by devices and apps that prevent us from having truly fulfilling conversations with our loved ones. When we use our attention properly we live in the moment, remember more and experience life better.
Taking control of your attention is the first step to becoming productive. Intention before attention is a point that is made regularly in the book. To make our workdays productive and our life more meaningful we need to take control of what our mind deems important and then make changes in the way we think and work to focus on those areas and ignore the rest. Hyper-focus is a collection of tactics that help you focus on the right things in the right way.
The book is divided into two parts- hyperfocus and scatterfocus. The first part focusses on controlling your mind wanderings and focussing on the job at hand, while the second part is about utilizing our mind’s natural wandering inclinations to brainstorm new ideas and come up with novel solutions to our problems. The two parts sound completely opposite but complement each other and you can employ both of them.
Why the mind wanders
The techniques listed in the book help you focus and get things done. Before we dive into it, a quick sidebar on brain physiology would be apt here. The human mind did not evolve to focus on the complicated problems we use it today. It developed to do two things – survive and procreate. The mind is constantly seeking novel stimuli to get information that might help it survive. Listening to the rustling of the leaves, scanning the horizon for shadows, feeling your spine tingle, etc. The human mind had to encourage capture of newness around us to help protect against threats. This is the reason we find it so easy to get lost in our thoughts. It loves sugar as it allows the body to store fat and finally it loves sex as it is a chance to reproduce. It rewards these actions with dopamine shots that our body just loves. This is why we love to hear the notifications on the phone and sugary drinks.
We are not in the jungle anymore and survival and procreation are not our highest priority anymore. This is where the techniques in this book come in to help you control your wanderings and double down on the task at hand.
Hyperfocus
You may have read about flow and how it is a mental state where you are getting things done while feeling challenged and energized. You can think of hyperfocus as the process that helps you get to flow. One of the factors that affect your attention is the “working memory” also called “attention space”. Depending on your sleep levels, mood, and whether you are a morning lark or a night owl, your mind has varying attention space at any time. This space determines how much information you can keep in your mind at any time. This is one of the most important aspects of managing your focus and many of the techniques below help you optimize this space to your advantage.
Listed below are 4 simple techniques that help you hyperfocus.
Prioritizing intentions – Attention is nothing without intention. You need to first shortlist the intended tasks your today. This is the first step towards taking control of your days. Having productive work days and meaningful lives is directly related to setting key intentions. If you don’t have any key intended tasks, your day will be a set of ad hoc interruptions leading to a disappointing and unfulfilling day. This is often called working in autopilot mode, where your attention is being taken up by tasks that come to your plate outside of your control. Most of us actually spend our workdays pretty much in autopilot mode. The three techniques below can help you take control of the situation.
- Use the rule of 3 to identify your 3 most important intentions for the day. The number 3 forces you to ruthlessly prioritise stuff so only the top 3 items get picked and others get dropped.
- How do you decide which are the top items? Pick the ones that are most consequential and not the ones that are immediate. Most consequential tasks have an ability to set up a domino effect. They can trigger a chain reaction that is far more productive. For instance, if you had to choose between writing an onboarding guide for new developers, prepare a weekly meeting presentation and replying to 10 customer emails, you should choose the wiring of the onboarding guide. It seems most likely to have a multiplicative effect on the productivity of new employees.
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The hourly chime – think of this as an hourly check in to see if you’re focussing on your intended consequential tasks or wandering. Ask yourself the following questions when the chime rings. Answering these questions will help you evaluate how you’re doing.
- was your mind wondering?
- were you working on autopilot or on an intended task?
- are you focussing on the most consequential tasks?
- is your working memory full or overflowing with random tasks?
- are there distractions preventing you from hyper focusing?
Removing distractions – Removing interruptions is important as every interruption costs you 22 mins to get back to focus. You should eliminate external distractions like phone notifications, browsers, background music, etc. Internal distractions like older memories are also equally important to avoid.
Focusing on the intentions for a pre-determined amount of time – Get started with your main tasks one at a time to optimally use your attention space. When you are distracted, you use up your attention space with a lot of garbage that prevents you from working optimally. One way to avoid getting distracted is to try and stay focussed for specific periods of time. This can range from 25 mins to 70 mins (70 mins is the most human mind can focus before it needs a break). By planning breaks, you give your mind the chance to wander and then come back to the task at hand.
Coming back to the key intention when distracted – This is one of the key concepts of hyper-focussing. Distractions are inevitable in today’s world. You need strategies to bring you back to your main tasks to minimize the impact of these distractions. Our mind wanders for 47% of our day. Wandering is hard to avoid and so having a strategy to come back on track is essential to hyper-focus. As soon as you realize that the mind has wandered, you need to bring it back to the intended task and then continue to focus for the predetermined period. With practice, our predetermined periods of attention get better and less prone to distractions. Meditation and mindfulness are said to improve our attention space and our ability to realize when the mind has wandered.
Scatterfocussing
Scatterfocussing is the opposite of Hyperfocussing. It is letting your mind wander in a specific way so you can explore ideas, possibilities, nonlinear solutions, etc. The key difference between scatter focussing and regular daydreaming is that scatter-focussing is intentional. Much like hyper-focusing, you can plan this and set a schedule for this and make it a regular part of your workdays.
There are 3 modes in which you scatter focus.
Capture mode – When you intentionally let your mind wander with nothing specific in mind, issues, tasks, ideas, and chores bubble up in your head. You can note these down and make a list. You are literally stopping your mental boat and casting a net to capture ideas that come to you. Capture mode essentially lets you decompress and re-energize for hyper-focus mode. By simply letting your mind wander, you allow ideas and It allows you to free up the attention space that these items were occupying.
Problem-solving mode – When you let your mind wander with a specific problem in your mind. This lets you think of nonlinear solutions and concepts. It is possible that while you do this, other regular thoughts creep up and you have to be aware enough to drop them so you can bring yourself back to the problem.
Habitual mode – This is one of the more powerful concepts discussed in the book. The habitual mode is letting your mind wander while you do something habitual like going for a walk, do your laundry, make coffee. It can be anything that you enjoy doing but takes very little attention space. The habitual tasks occupy little working memory, giving you space to think about other things. Research suggests that the elevated mood associated with doing things that are both fun and habitual, expand your attention space, giving you more space to discover connections between ideas and concepts. Think of this as the mode in which your brain connects the dots you have accumulated through other modes.
Hyperfocus and Scatterfocus may seem completely different but you can use them together. Think of your Scatterfocus sessions as the fillers in the day where you take time off from hyperfocussing and replenish your energy reserves to get back to the focus mode. It also helps you organize thoughts, search for new problem solutions, and make useful connections between pieces of information lying around in your head.
I run a startup called Harmonize. We are hiring and if you’re looking for an exciting startup journey, please write to jobs@harmonizehq.com. Apart from this blog, I tweet about startup life and practical wisdom in books.