Hyperfocus

This morning, as I sip coffee and nibble home fries, I’ve been able to focus more deeply on my work and have more energy to burn. My morning meditation may have helped—I find I’m able to write more words when I take part in this ritual (40 percent more, by my calculations). I left my phone at home so I could write distraction free, and so my mind could rest on the walk to the diner, and wander. As I’ll discuss later, disconnecting is one of the most powerful ways to spark new and innovative ideas. (Location 53)

Attention is the backdrop against which we live our lives wherever we go and whatever we do, even if we’re just noticing the thoughts in our head. (Location 62)

For me, this book was born out of necessity: I wrote it because I needed it. (Location 68)

Note: Eigen voorwoord

I learned that one of the best practices for fostering my creativity and productivity was learning how to unfocus. By paying attention to nothing in particular and letting my mind wander—as I did on my way to the Kingston diner—I found that I became better at making connections between ideas and coming up with new ones. (Location 80)

Note: Unfocus

When we invest our limited attention intelligently and deliberately, we focus more deeply and think more clearly. This is an essential skill in today’s world, when we are so often in distracting environments doing brain-heavy knowledge work. (Location 89)

When your mind is even slightly resisting a task, it will look for more novel things to focus on. Our smartphones are a great example—they provide an endless stream of bite-sized, delicious information for our brains to consume. (Location 104)

Here’s a fun experiment to dive deeper into this idea: over the span of a day or two, pay attention to the number of times you instinctively pull out your phone. How are you feeling, and what compels you to reach for it? Are you trying to distract yourself during a long elevator ride? Are you avoiding a boring task, like updating your quarterly budget? By noting the times you habitually reach for your phone, you’ll gain insight into which tasks you resist the most and how you’re feeling in those moments. (Location 111)

Modifying your environment is one of the top ways to cultivate your focus. The most focus-conducive environments are those in which you’re interrupted and distracted the least. If possible, move yourself to one of these places—whether it’s a café down the street, the library, or a quieter room in the house. (Location 117)

Whenever I have to focus, I adopt the two tactics mentioned above—and I also bring a pen and a notepad with me. In the notepad I write every distraction that makes its way into my mind—things I need to follow up on, tasks I can’t forget, new ideas, and so on. (Location 123)

We consume a lot of things out of habit, without questioning their worth—books included. Take time to weigh the value of your routine consumption. (Location 127)

Note: Weigh the value

A tactic I find helpful is to view the descriptions of books, TV shows, podcasts, and everything else as “pitches” for your time and attention. Ask yourself: After consuming one of those products, will you be happy with how you invested your time and attention? (Location 129)

Just as you are what you eat, you are what you pay attention to. Attention is finite and is the most valuable ingredient you have to live a good life—so make sure everything you consume is worthy of it. (Location 130)

If it’s not too late in the day—caffeine takes eight to fourteen hours to metabolize out of your system—consider reading alongside a cup of coffee or tea. Caffeine provides an invaluable focus boost, and while you usually have to pay this energy back later in the day as the drug metabolizes out of your system, the costs are often worth it. Caffeine boosts your mental and physical performance in virtually every measurable way (more on here). Use this energy boost wisely to work on an important task or to read this book. (Location 134)

There are two ways to consume information: passively and actively. One of my (many) habits that bother my fiancée is that I tear out the first page of every book I read to use as a bookmark. (She argues this is sacrilegious; I say there are more copies of the same book at the store.) This is only the start of the carnage; I also read with a highlighter and a pen in hand so I can mark up the book as I read it. The number of highlights and notes on its pages indicates how much I liked it. When I finish that first read, I go through the book a second time, rereading just the highlighted parts so I can really process the most valuable nuggets. (Location 138)

Your ability to focus isn’t limitless—while you can improve your attention span, it’s only a matter of time until it begins to waver. This often takes the form of your mind wandering away from the words on the page to the thoughts in your head. This is perfectly normal and human—and, as we’ll see later, this wandering can be remarkably powerful when harnessed. For now, though, when you do notice your focus fading, step back from this book for a few minutes to do something relatively mindless. Whether it’s washing the dishes, people watching, or cleaning the house, you’ll effectively recharge your attention. Once your focus has been reset, return to the book with a fresh mind. And just as you’ve kept a distractions list while you read, make sure you have a place to capture ideas that come to mind during your break. (Location 148)

Note: Step back

(One of the most underrated skills: letting other people finish their sentences before starting yours.) (Location 174)

After we snap out of autopilot mode, we consider what we really ought to be doing and make the effort to realign our neurons to focus on that instead. (Location 180)

If you’re still here, you’re probably better at focusing than the average person. Reading a book requires a good deal of attention—and with attention becoming a rare commodity, fewer people are able to devote themselves to reading without distraction. (Location 186)

Directing your attention toward the most important object of your choosing—and then sustaining that attention—is the most consequential decision we will make throughout the day. We are what we pay attention to. (Location 220)

There are two main criteria to consider when categorizing what to focus on: whether a task is productive (you accomplish a lot by doing it) and whether a task is attractive (fun to do) or unattractive (boring, frustrating, difficult, etc.). (Location 224)

A perfectly productive person would focus on only the top two quadrants of the above chart. If things were that simple, though, you wouldn’t need this book. As you’ve no doubt experienced, sticking within the borders of necessary and purposeful work is much easier said than done. (Location 243)

Without selective interest, experience is utter chaos. —William James Your focus determines your reality. —Qui-Gon Jinn, Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace (Location 255)

“Attentional space” is the term I use to describe the amount of mental capacity we have available to focus on and process things in the moment. Our attentional space is what we’re aware of at any given time—it’s the scratch pad or clipboard in our brain that we use to temporarily store information as it’s being processed. Attentional space allows us to hold, manipulate, and connect information simultaneously, and on the fly. When we choose what to pay attention to, that information occupies our short-term memory, and our attentional space ensures it’s kept active so we can continue to work with it. Together, our focus and attentional space are responsible for most of our conscious experiences. If your brain were a computer, your attentional space would be its RAM. (Technically speaking, researchers refer to this space as our “working memory” and the size of this space as our “working memory capacity.”)3 (Location 310)

According to one study, the period at the end of a sentence is the point when our attentional space “stops being loaded, and what has been present in it up to that moment, must be in some way stored in a summarized form in a short-term memory.” (Location 336)

Directing your mental gaze to what is currently occupying your attentional space can be an odd exercise, as we rarely notice what has taken hold of our attention but spend most of our time totally immersed in what we’re experiencing. There’s a term for this process: meta-awareness. Becoming aware of what you’re thinking about is one of the best practices for managing your attention. The more you notice what’s occupying your attentional space, the faster you can get back on track when your mind begins to wander, which it does a remarkable 47 percent of the time. (Location 347)

Simply noticing what is occupying our attentional space has been shown to make us more productive. (Location 360)

For all the power it provides, the content of your attentional space is ephemeral; its memory lasts for an average of just ten seconds. (Location 368)

Many experts argue that we can’t multitask, which is often true for tasks that require focus to do properly and thus occupy a larger amount of attentional space. But the same is not true for habits—in fact, we’re able to multitask surprisingly well with habits. Though we may not be able to carry on two conversations simultaneously, we can walk, breathe, and chew bubblegum while we listen to an audiobook—the last task being one that will easily occupy what’s left of our attention. (Location 375)

Habits take up very little attentional space, because they take little thought once we get going with them. (Location 385)

You’re better able to chunk together information on the fly when you have experience with a given task, which provides more freedom to focus on other things. (Location 416)

Intention enables us to prioritize so we don’t overload our attentional space. Doing so also leaves us feeling more calm: just as you likely feel uncomfortable after overeating, stuffing your attentional space with too many tasks can make you feel unsettled. (Location 451)

If you find yourself responding to important work in autopilot mode, chances are you’re trying to cram too much into your attentional space. (Location 456)

The best way to avoid this overload is to be more selective with what you permit into your attentional space. On the drive home, shut off the radio, which will enable you to process the day and also remember your intention to pick up bread. At home, pause or mute the TV so you don’t try to continue processing the show and forget that you’re heading to fetch a note that’s in the other room. Making small changes like these allows you to keep your attention on your intention. (Location 470)

The state of your attentional space determines the state of your life. When your attentional space is overwhelmed, you, in turn, feel overwhelmed. When your attentional space is clear, you also feel clear. The tidier you keep your attentional space, the more clearly you think. (Location 475)

Simplifying what we focus on in the moment may feel counterintuitive: when we have so much to get done, our natural impulse is to focus on as much as possible. Compounding this is the fact that the brain’s prefrontal cortex—the large part of the forebrain that lets us plan, think logically, and get work done—has a built-in “novelty bias.” Whenever we switch between tasks, it rewards us with dopamine—that amazing pleasure chemical that rushes through our brain whenever we devour a medium-sized pizza, accomplish something awesome, or have a drink or two after work. You may have noticed that you instinctively reach for your tablet when you sit down to watch TV, that you can’t resist keeping your email open in another window as you work, or that you feel more stimulated when your phone is by your side. Continually seeking novel stimuli makes us feel more productive—after all, we’re doing more in each moment. But again, just because we’re busier doesn’t mean we’re getting more accomplished. (Location 480)

Note: Feel

After years of researching the topic, I’ve found that “productivity” has become a bit of a loaded term. What it usually connotes is a condition that feels cold, corporate, and overly focused on efficiency. I prefer a different (and friendlier) definition: productivity means accomplishing what we intend to. (Location 499)

Being busy doesn’t make us productive. It doesn’t matter how busy we are if that busyness doesn’t lead us to accomplish anything of importance. Productivity is not about cramming more into our days but about doing the right thing in each moment. (Location 503)

Multitasking means concurrently trying to focus on more than one thing at a time. Shifting our attention is the movement of our attentional spotlight (or our attentional space) from one task to another. (Location 508)

Technology speeds up time by tempting us in each moment to fill our attention to the brim. This leads us to remember less, because it is only when we pay attention to something that our brain actively encodes it into memory. (Location 515)

“When we learn while we multitask, we rely more heavily on the basal ganglia, a brain system that’s involved in the learning of skills and habits.” However, “when we encode information in a more focused state, we rely more heavily on our brain’s hippocampus—which actually lets us store and recall the information.” (Location 519)

When we fail to focus deeply on any one thing, we focus instead only on the “highlights” of what we’re doing and, as a consequence, later forget how we spent our time. Letting our attention overflow makes our actions less meaningful, because we don’t remember how we spent our time in the first place. This affects our productivity in the long run: we make more mistakes because we don’t properly encode the lessons we learned the first time we messed up. We also accumulate less knowledge, which, when we do knowledge work for a living, sets us back in the long run. (Location 522)

Note: Highlights

Just how severe is the productivity cost of switching? Switching does make your work more stimulating, and its costs may be worth bearing if your work takes only 5 percent longer and you make only the occasional mistake. In practice, though, the cost is usually much greater. One study found that when we continually switch between tasks, our work takes 50 percent longer, compared with doing one task from start to completion. If you’re working on a pressure- or deadline-free project, consider taking a break before starting something else so more of that attentional residue can dissipate. As far as your productivity is concerned, the best time to take a break is after you’ve finished a big task. (Location 558)

Intention is the bouncer of your attentional space—it lets in the productive objects of attention and keeps the distractions out. Few things will benefit your overall quality of life more than focusing with intention. It isn’t possible to work and live with intention 100 percent of the time—demands get in the way, our focus shifts, and our attentional space overflows—but we can maintain our intention for enough of the day to accomplish a lot more than we would otherwise. (Location 564)

Since hyperfocus is so much more productive, you can slow down a bit and still accomplish an incredible amount in a short period of time. (Location 612)

Picking which tasks to work on ahead of time lets you focus on what’s actually important in the moment. (Location 615)

You’ll often accomplish more in one hour of hyperfocus than in an entire day spent filling your attentional space to the brim with multiple—and often undeliberate—concerns. (Location 616)

This is counterintuitive but absolutely essential advice: the more demands made on your time, the more essential it becomes to choose what—and how many—things you pay attention to. You’re never too busy to hyperfocus. (Location 618)

When it comes to your most important tasks, the fewer things you pay attention to, the more productive you become. (Location 620)

The most important aspect of hyperfocus is that only one productive or meaningful task consumes your attentional space. (Location 622)

There is no task too small to consume your attention—if you tried hard enough, you could commit your complete attention to watching paint dry. But there are two reasons why this mental mode is best preserved for complex tasks, rather than habits. First, hyperfocus requires willpower and mental energy to activate, drawing from the limited supply we have to make it through the day. Because habits consume so little of our attentional space, there’s really no need to hyperfocus on them. Second, and more interesting, while your performance on complex tasks benefits when you focus more completely, your habitual-task performance actually suffers when you focus with your total attention. (Location 625)

Save hyperfocus for your most complex tasks—things that will actually benefit from your complete attention, such as writing a report, mapping your team’s budget, or having a meaningful conversation with a loved one. (Location 637)

One of the best ways to get more done—and done faster—is by preventing yourself from focusing on things that aren’t important. (Location 644)

Engaging solely with your external environment means you’re effectively living on autopilot. You slip into this mode as you wait for the traffic light to change or find yourself bouncing around a loop of the same apps on your phone. When you’re engaged only with the thoughts in your head, you’re daydreaming. This can happen when you go on a quick walk without your phone, your mind wanders in the shower, or you go for a jog. You enter into hyperfocus when you engage both your thoughts and your external environment and direct them at one thing intentionally. (Location 646)

So How Do We Enter Hyperfocus Mode? The science suggests we pass through four states as we begin to focus. First, we’re focused (and productive). Then, assuming we don’t get distracted or interrupted, our mind begins to wander. Third, we make note of this mind wandering. This can take awhile, especially if we don’t frequently check what is consuming our attentional space. (On average, we notice about five times an hour that our mind has wandered.) And fourth, we shift our focus back to our original object of attention. The four stages of hyperfocus are modeled on this framework. To hyperfocus, you must 1.   choose a productive or meaningful object of attention; 2.   eliminate as many external and internal distractions as you can; 3.   focus on that chosen object of attention; and 4.   continually draw your focus back to that one object of attention. (Location 651)

This first step to reaching hyperfocus mode is essential—intention absolutely has to precede attention. (Location 667)

Distractions are infinitely easier to deal with in advance—by the time they appear, it’s often already too late to defend our intention against them. (Location 671)

Third, hyperfocus becomes possible when we focus on our chosen object of attention for a predetermined amount of time. (Location 675)

It’s normal for our mind to wander, but the key is to center it so we can spend time and attention on what’s actually in front of us. (Location 680)

The concept of hyperfocus can be summed up in a single tranquil sentence: keep one important, complex object of attention in your awareness as you work. (Location 685)

Attention without intention is wasted energy. (Location 687)

The best way to become more productive is to choose what you want to accomplish before you begin working. (Location 689)

the Rule of 3: at the start of each day, choose the three things you want to have accomplished by day’s end. (Location 711)

If you’re like me, you may also find it handy to set three weekly intentions, as well as three daily personal intentions (Location 722)

A key theme of Hyperfocus is that you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself when you do notice your brain drifting off or doing something else weird. (Location 753)

Set an hourly timer on your phone, smartwatch, or another device—this will easily be the most productive interruption you receive throughout the day. (Location 759)

Setting specific intentions can double or triple your odds of success. (Location 803)

There are two notable caveats to setting specific intentions. First, you have to actually care about your intentions. (Location 819)

Deciding in advance when you’ll work on a task is significantly more important for a difficult one than when your intention is to do something simple. (Location 823)

How to hyperfocus: •   Start by “feeling out” how long you want to hyperfocus. Have a dialogue with yourself about how resistant you feel toward the mode, particularly if you’re about to hunker down on a difficult, frustrating, or unstructured task. As an example: “Do I feel comfortable focusing for an hour? No way. Forty-five minutes? Better, but still no. Thirty minutes? That’s doable, but still . . . Okay, twenty-five minutes? Actually, I could probably do that.” It’s incredibly rewarding to experience your hyperfocus time limit increase over time. Push yourself—but not too hard. When I started practicing hyperfocus, I began with fifteen-minute blocks of time, each punctuated by a five- to ten-minute distraction break. Hyperfocusing all day would be a chore, and a few stimulating distractions are always fun, especially at first. You’ll soon become accustomed to working with fewer distractions. •   Anticipate obstacles ahead of time. If I know I have a busy few days coming up, at the beginning of the week I like to schedule my hyperfocus periods—several chunks of time throughout the week that I’ll use to focus on something important. This way, I make sure to carve out time to hyperfocus, instead of getting swept up in last-minute tasks and putting out proverbial fires. Such planning lets my coworkers and assistant know not to book me during these times, and it also reminds me when I’m committed to focus. In weeks like these, a few minutes of advance planning can save hours of wasted productivity. •   Set a timer. I usually use my phone for this, which might sound ironic, given the distractions it can bring. If these phone distractions will cause a focus black hole, either put it on airplane mode or use a watch or other timer. •   Hyperfocus! When you notice that your mind has wandered or that you’ve gotten distracted, bring your attention back to your intention. Again, don’t be too tough on yourself when this happens—this is the way your brain is wired to work. If you feel like going for longer when your timer rings—which you probably will because you’ll be on a roll—don’t stop. (Location 833)

Productivity is often a process of understanding our constraints. (Location 862)

Note: Diep

While I started hyperfocusing by scheduling blocks of time into my calendar, I now enter into the mode whenever I’m working on a complex task or project that will benefit from my full attention. (Location 867)

The more aversive you find a task or project, the more important it is to tame distractions ahead of time. You’re most likely to procrastinate on tasks that you consider boring, frustrating, difficult, ambiguous, or unstructured, or that you don’t find rewarding or meaningful. (Location 871)

Note: Difficult; ambiguous

While experimenting with the research, I’ve been able to steadily increase the amount of time I can hyperfocus, and I’ve grown accustomed to working with fewer distractions. I wrote the sentence you’re now reading near the end of a forty-five-minute hyperfocus session—my third of the day. These sessions have enabled me to write exactly 2,286 words in around two hours. (This is one of the fun parts about writing a book about productivity: you can verify that your methods actually work by using them to write the book itself.) The third session was my last hyperfocus block, and between those periods I caught up on email, enjoyed checking social media, and had a quick chat with a coworker or two. (Location 887)

Our work obviously suffers from these distractions, and we fail to enter into a hyperfocused state. We compensate by working faster and more frantically, which affects the quality of what we produce and stresses us out. And perhaps most important, we fail to take control of, and deliberately manage, our attention. (Location 917)

Your email and message notifications may be worth keeping on if you and your team are collaborating on the same project in crunch mode, but under most circumstances this isn’t the case. (Location 923)

The costs of an unrelated interruption can be massive: it takes an average of twenty-five minutes to resume working on an activity after we’re interrupted, and before resuming that activity, we work on an average of 2.26 other tasks. We don’t simply attend to the distraction or interruption and then return to the original task—we become distracted a second time before doing so. (Location 924)

There is a simple reason why we fall victim to distractions. Even though we know they’re unproductive, in the moment they are much more enticing than our work. (Location 931)

We can’t even go to the bathroom anymore without mindlessly distracting ourselves. (Location 934)

You probably have a few notifications waiting each time you open Twitter—who shared your last post, new people who have followed you, and so on. It’s hard to resist the urge to check the site throughout the day, knowing another small hit of validation is just a click away. (Location 938)

If I don’t disable computer distractions ahead of time, I might as well wave good-bye to my productivity. (Location 944)

After choosing how long you’ll focus, eliminating distractions is the second step of hyperfocus. (Location 957)

Research shows, however, that we interrupt ourselves just as much as we are interrupted by other people.15 As Gloria Mark expressed it, “Simply looking at how we can break off external interruptions really only solves half the problem.” (Location 981)

Distractions from others aren’t quite as damaging as the times we interrupt ourselves. It takes us an average of twenty-nine minutes to resume a task after we have interrupted our own work—however, we get back on track around six minutes more quickly if we’re interrupted by someone else. (Location 983)

While we can’t prevent interruptions from arising, we can control how we respond to them. The best way to deal with annoying tasks that we can’t keep from hijacking our attentional space—office visitors, loud colleagues, and unnecessary meetings included—is to keep our original intention in mind and get back to working on it as soon as possible. (Location 988)

As I’ve found, though, the best possible way to respond to pleasurable, controllable distractions—like team lunches and calls from loved ones when I’m in the middle of something—is to make a concerted effort to embrace and actually allow myself to enjoy them but still get back on track when I’m able. (Location 993)

Treat yourself. After I’ve completed a hyperfocus session and I leave my distraction-free mode, I’ll occasionally treat myself to an all-you-can-eat buffet of distractions. Research shows that the more impulsive you are, the more stressed you become by blocking yourself from distractions. If you do have little self-control, or if you’re impulsive, indulging in the odd distraction break can be beneficial. (Side note: impulsiveness is also the character trait most highly correlated with procrastination.) I also usually indulge a cup of matcha or coffee before entering back into my distraction-free mode, which positively reinforces my behavior to focus more deeply. (Location 1054)

I always experience an odd and wonderful sense of relief when I enter my distraction-free mode, and I think you will too. Suddenly you don’t have to tend to the news, your social media feeds, and a never-ending stream of email. You can relax, confident that you can no longer waste time and attention on mindless busywork. (Location 1068)

A distraction-free mode also allows you to conserve energy. When you eliminate distractions, your energy goes further, and you can work for longer periods without needing a break. (Location 1072)

Choosing when you check for messages ahead of time means you maintain control over your attention and resist slipping into autopilot mode. (Location 1089)

Setting a specific time to focus on distractions like email, meetings, your smartphone, and social media transforms them from distractions into merely other purposeful elements of your work and life. (Location 1090)

Every notification pulls you away from what you’re doing and reminds you there’s an entire digital world you’re missing out on. (Location 1101)

One of my favorite daily rituals is to put my smartphone and other devices in airplane mode between 8:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. This is when I have the least energy and am more likely to fall victim to distractions. Plus, research shows we’re less likely to multitask when we end our daily activities and go to bed early the night before. (Location 1109)

Every time you pick up your phone without intent, you derail your attention for no good reason. (Location 1122)

Check for new messages only if you have the time, attention, and energy to deal with whatever might have come in. (Location 1172)

I personally check new messages once a day at 3:00 p.m. and have an autoresponse that notifies people of this. (Location 1182)

It takes only ten seconds to carry out one of the most important productivity tactics: deleting the email app on your phone. (Location 1194)

Your email application is the worst possible place to keep a to-do list—it’s distracting and overwhelming, and new stuff is constantly popping up, which makes it difficult to prioritize tasks and tell what’s truly important. A task list—where you simply keep a tally of what you have to get done today, preferably with your three daily intentions at the top—is simpler and much more powerful. (Location 1196)

Use the five-sentence rule. In order to save your time and respect your email recipient’s time, keep each message you write to five sentences or less, and add a note to your email signature explaining that you’re doing so. If you feel the urge to write anything longer, use that as an opportunity to pick up the phone. This may save you from engaging in an unnecessarily protracted email exchange. (Location 1208)

Wait before sending important messages. Not every email is worth sending immediately—this is particularly true when you find yourself in an emotionally charged state when drafting a reply. (Location 1212)

The absence of email allowed people to work slowly and more deliberately. (Location 1218)

Meetings are remarkably costly—gather even a small group of people in a conference room for an hour, and you can easily lose an entire day’s worth of work. (Location 1223)

Never attend a meeting without an agenda. Ever. A meeting without an agenda is a meeting without a purpose. (Location 1228)

Being disconnected from the internet for a twelve-hour period at home is nothing short of refreshing. (Location 1253)

My friends are often surprised when I share stories like this—as someone who researches and experiments with productivity as a fulltime job, I’m pretty sure some of them expect me to have a super-human level of self-control. But much as I do to resist digital distractions when writing, I try to deal with other temptations in my life ahead of time. Because food is my biggest weakness, I modify my external environment to avoid keeping any unhealthy snacks in the house, and if they are around, I ask someone to hide them. (Location 1267)

External environmental cues can affect us in remarkable ways. One study observed coffee shop patrons conversing with one another and discovered that those who kept their phone in front of them checked it every three to five minutes, “regardless of whether it rang or buzzed.” As the study put it, “Even when they are not in active use or buzzing, beeping, ringing, or flashing, [our phones] are representative of [our] wider social network and a portal to an immense compendium of information.” (Location 1277)

The cleanliness of your environment is also important. Make sure you tidy your space when you’re done with it—coming home to a mess of dishes in the sink and random objects strewn all over the floor will instantly stress you out, reminding you of all the things you still have to do. (Location 1312)

Decluttering your digital environment is just as important as decluttering your physical one. (Location 1317)

After I set my three overarching intentions for the following day at the end of the day prior, I write them on my whiteboard so they’re what I see first thing in the morning. (Location 1324)

Research suggests that the most productive music has two main attributes: it sounds familiar (because of this, music that is productive for you may differ from your coworkers’ choices), and it’s relatively simple. (Location 1335)

Here is a fundamental truth about focus: your brain will invariably resist more complex tasks, especially when you’re first starting them—and when it does, you’ll look around for more novel and stimulating things to do instead. (Location 1382)

Carving out more attentional space for what you’re doing also enables you to work with greater awareness—of what distractions you’re resisting, how you feel about your work, how much energy you have, and whether you need to recharge. In addition, you will actually notice temptations and impulses that arise, so you’ll fall victim to them less often in the future. (Location 1400)

Consciously making your tasks more complex, and taking on more complex ones, is another powerful way to enter into a hyperfocused state, as they will consume more of your attention. This will keep you more engaged in what you’re doing and lead your mind to wander less often. In his groundbreaking book Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi offers intriguing insights about when we’re most likely to enter into a flow state: when the challenge of completing a task is roughly equal to our ability to do so, and we become totally immersed in the task. (Location 1441)

When our skills greatly exceed the demands of a task—such as when we do mindless data entry for several hours—we feel bored. When the demands of a task exceed our skills—such as when we’re unprepared to give a presentation—we feel anxious. When the demands of a task are roughly equal to our ability to do that task—when we’re playing an instrument, immersed in a book, or skiing down a freshly powdered slope—we’re a lot more likely to be fully engaged in what we’re doing. (Location 1445)

Note: Just right

On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you find you’re anxious at work even after taming distractions and working with more intention, consider whether your current skills are a good match for the tasks at hand. (Location 1452)

Our work tends to expand to fit the available completion time—in productivity circles, this phenomenon is known as Parkinson’s law. But by disabling distractions in advance, you may find the same thing I did: your work no longer expands to fit the time you have available for its completion, and you discover how much work you truly have on your plate. Some executives I coach find they’re able to accomplish a full day’s work in just a few hours when they focus on only their most consequential tasks. (Location 1456)

Little did I know that this guilt had two sources: a lack of working with intent and my work expanding to fill how much time I had for it. (Location 1467)

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. (Location 1470)

To measure if you have enough work in general, assess how much of your day you spend doing unproductive busywork. If you’re high on the busywork scale, you may have room to take on significantly more tasks—and become more engaged and productive in the process. (Location 1473)

A higher working memory capacity has been shown to reduce mind wandering when you’re focused on complex tasks. When your mind does wander, it actually wanders more productively—the larger the size of your attentional space, the more likely you are to think about (and plan for) the future. Even better, a larger attentional space means you’ll have extra attention to think about what you’ll work on next, while keeping your original intention in mind. (Location 1491)

There is, however, one practice that has been proven in study after study to increase working memory capacity: meditation. (Location 1504)

My meditation rule is simple, and one I’ve stuck with for years: it doesn’t matter how long I meditate, as long as I do so each day. (Location 1531)

When you practice being with your breath, you practice being with your life. (Location 1534)

Begin to practice mindfulness by choosing one daily task that doesn’t consume your complete attention—sipping your morning coffee, walking through your office, or taking a shower—and intentionally be with that experience for a minute or two. (Location 1543)

Here’s the key: the smaller the object of attention, the more your mind will wander, but the more you’ll expand the size of your attentional space as you focus on it. (Location 1550)

Practices like meditation and mindfulness are also powerful because they train you to practice holding a single intention in your mind for a given period of time. (Location 1554)

The more you notice what’s grasped your attention, the more quickly you’ll be able to redirect it to your intention. (Location 1560)

Every once in a while, I like to travel to a local Buddhist monastery to join a public Saturday-afternoon meditation. This usually consists of a potluck and an hourlong meditation session, followed by a talk given by one of the monks. During one of my visits, a monk spoke about how for several weeks during his meditation practice he focused solely on the sensation his breath made on the tip of his nose—an impossibly small object of attention. I tried doing the same during an extended two-hour meditation practice the next day, and my mind has never wandered so much. With an object of attention that small, it’s no surprise. But the following Monday morning, I focused more deeply on my work than I had in weeks. I wrote several thousand words in just a few hours, brainstormed three talks, and had time left over to clear my email inboxes. The positive effects lingered beyond that day, as I was able to focus better throughout the week. The quality of attention is so integral to productivity that increasing it even slightly makes a remarkable difference in how much we accomplish. (Location 1565)

Note: Small object

The secret to deep, meaningful conversations is simple: bring your complete attention to the person you’re speaking with. You can do this in many ways, such as by allowing someone to finish talking before you start (a simple but highly underutilized technique). (Location 1593)

Hyperfocus lets me dive deeper into my personal relationships, in conversation and other aspects. I’m convinced that love is nothing more than sharing quality attention with someone. As David Augsburger, a Baptist minister and author, has put it: “Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.” (Location 1597)

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. (Location 1605)

Assuming you’ve already given hyperfocus a try, even if only for ten minutes, you may have felt what I did at first: a mental resistance to focusing on just one thing. This was probably a mixture of restlessness, anxiousness, and succumbing to novel distractions. You likely found yourself craving these distractions more than usual in the initial stage of entering the hyperfocused state. 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: For example, while it might take weeks to summon the energy and stamina needed to clean the garage or bedroom closet, once we do it for even just a minute, we could keep going for hours. (Location 1611)

Note: Just a minute

Starting provides enough momentum to carry out our intentions. (Location 1618)

Note: Starting is enough

When we begin a new task, working on it for at least one minute with purposeful attention and limited distractions is critical. (Location 1620)

Note: At least 1 purposeful minute

Here are my four favorite strategies for battling this initial resistance: 1.   Shrink your desired hyperfocus period until you no longer feel resistance to the ritual. Minimize the amount of time you’ll dedicate to focusing on one task until you no longer feel mental resistance to it. Even setting a mental deadline of five minutes will likely be enough to get you started. 2.   Notice when you “don’t have time” for something. You always have time—you just spend it on other things. When you find yourself saying this familiar statement, try doing a task swap. For example: if you “don’t have the time” to catch up with a friend over coffee, ask yourself whether you’d have an equal amount of time to watch the football game or surf Facebook. If you feel you “don’t have time” to take something on, ask yourself whether you could free up your schedule enough to meet with your boss or clean your inbox. If the task swap shows you do have the time, chances are this is just your resistance talking. 3.   Continually practice hyperfocus. Incorporate at least one hyperfocus interval each day. You’ll experience less resistance as you get accustomed to working with fewer distractions and appreciate how productive you’ve become. 4.   Recharge! Hyperfocus can be oddly energizing: you spend less energy regulating your behavior when you don’t have to continually resist distractions and push yourself to focus on what’s important. That said, resisting the ritual can also be a sign you need to recharge. (Location 1621)

To this point in the book I’ve discussed only the negative effects of a wandering mind. At times when we need to focus, these mental strolls can undermine our productivity. However, this mind-wandering mode—when we scatter our attention and focus—can also be immensely powerful. In fact, it’s so powerful that I’ve devoted the second part of Hyperfocus to it. I call this mode “scatterfocus,” because in it, our attention scatters to focus on nothing in particular. While hyperfocus involves directing your attention outward, scatterfocus is about directing it inward, inside your own mind. (Location 1661)

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. (Location 1665)

Not all those who wander are lost. —J. R. R. Tolkien (Location 1673)

But daydreaming is immensely potent when our intention is to solve problems, think more creatively, brainstorm new ideas, or recharge. As far as boosting our creativity is concerned, mind wandering is in a league of its own. (Location 1678)

Think back to your last creative insight—chances are you weren’t hyperfocusing on one thing. In fact, you probably weren’t focused on much at all. (Location 1679)

Entering scatterfocus mode is easy: you simply let your mind be. Just as you hyperfocus by intentionally directing your attention toward one thing, you scatterfocus by deliberately letting your mind wander. (Location 1685)

When it comes to productivity and creativity, scatterfocus enables you to do three powerful things at once. (Location 1688)

Your brain automatically plans for the future when you rest—you just need to give it the space and time to do so. (Location 1691)

Focusing on tasks all day consumes a good deal of mental energy, even when you’re managing and defending your attentional space using the tactics set out in part 1. Scatterfocus replenishes that supply so you can focus for longer. (Location 1693)

Scattering your attention and focusing on nothing in particular supercharges the dot-connecting powers of your brain. The more creativity your job or a project requires, the more you should deliberately deploy scatterfocus. (Location 1696)

Note: Deliberately

Despite the productive and creative benefits of scatterfocus, most of us are somewhat hesitant to engage this mode. While it’s easy to get excited about becoming highly productive and hyperfocused, scattering our attention is less exciting, at least on the surface. When we’re surrounded by so many novel and stimulating objects of attention, most of us don’t want to be left alone with our thoughts. (Location 1699)

What once aided our chances at survival now sabotages our productivity and creativity in the modern world. (Location 1725)

We’re also prone to falling prey to what’s novel, pleasurable, and threatening when we let our mind wander and turn our attention inward. Our greatest threats, worries, and fears no longer reside in our external environment but within the depths of our own consciousness. (Location 1726)

Our mind primarily wanders to the negative when we’re thinking about the past, but we wander to the past just 12 percent of the time—the remainder is spent thinking about the present and the future, which makes scatterfocus remarkably productive. (Location 1733)

Neurologically speaking, it’s impossible to both focus on something and reflect on that thing at the same time. This makes entering scatterfocus critical. 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. (Location 1759)

Every moment of our lives is like a Choose Your Own Adventure story—continually offering different options that allow us to define our future path. Scatterfocus lets us better imagine these paths: (Location 1766)

We spend hardly any time thinking about the future when we’re focused, while in scatterfocus mode we’re fourteen times more likely to have these thoughts. (Location 1772)

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. (Location 1774)

As well as helping you plan for the future, recharge, and connect ideas, research suggests that scatterfocus mode also leads you to •   become more self-aware; •   incubate ideas more deeply; •   remember and process ideas and meaningful experiences more effectively; •   reflect on the meaning of your experiences; •   show greater empathy (scatterfocus gives you the space to step into other people’s shoes); and •   become more compassionate. (Location 1777)

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. (Location 1787)

Intention is what makes scatterfocus so powerful. This mode is always deployed deliberately—and involves making a concerted effort to notice where your mind goes. (Location 1798)

I’ve found it helpful to distinguish among 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. (Location 1799)

In capture mode, any unresolved ideas or projects move to the forefront of your mind, ready to be written down and acted upon later. Our mind’s propensity to wander toward these unresolved ideas is, in part, what makes scatterfocus so valuable—the open loops become much more accessible. (Location 1816)

Of the three styles of scatterfocus, you’ll probably find capture mode to be the most aversive—at least initially. Many people find the process boring, but this is precisely what leads your mind to wander and creates the space for ideas to rise to the surface of your attentional space. Cutting yourself off from distractions naturally turns your attention inward, as your thoughts become more interesting than anything in your external environment. (Location 1831)

Problem-crunching mode is most useful when you’re brainstorming a solution to a specific problem. 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. (Location 1835)

Problem-crunching mode enables you to solve complicated problems more creatively—providing nonlinear solutions you wouldn’t necessarily arrive at while logically brainstorming with a pen and a sheet of paper. Since you’ll experience the same problem-solving benefits (and then some) when scatterfocusing on a habitual task, I recommend using the problem-crunching mode sparingly—save it for the largest problems you’re processing. (Location 1838)

I went into problem-crunching mode constantly when coming up with the structure for this book; I would do so while canoeing, or I would walk around town with only a small notepad in my pocket. Once I had my structure, and before pitching the book to my publisher, I had around 25,000 words of research notes that weren’t organized in the slightest. In my head the ideas were just as jumbled. I decided to put the research to the test and scatter my attention, hoping to give my mind the space it needed to connect the ideas I had captured. I printed my research notes—it’s helpful to review problems before entering into problem-crunching mode—and then let my mind wander around them for an hour or two at a time on nature walks, while listening to music, or on airplanes. I slowly untangled my notes over the course of several weeks, shaping them into something that resembled a book. (Location 1848)

Problem-crunching mode gives your mind the space and freedom to make these large leaps in your thinking. Try entering this mode if you haven’t been able to solve a specific, nonlinear problem in a traditional way. (Location 1854)

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. Doing this is beneficial for countless reasons. For starters, scatterfocus mode is actually fun when you’re engaged in a habitual activity you find pleasurable. Wandering your mind around one idea or capturing your thoughts can sometimes feel tedious, but when you do something habitual that you enjoy—like walking to get a coffee, woodworking, or… (Location 1859)

An elevated mood actually expands the size of your attentional space, which leads you to… (Location 1865)

Your attentional space is just as essential in scatterfocus mode as it is in hyperfocus mode—it’s the scratch pad… (Location 1866)

As well as being more fun, habitual tasks have been shown to yield the greatest number of creative insights when compared with switching to another demanding task, resting, or taking no break whatsoever. This holds especially true when you’re stepping back from a problem—whether you’re stumped on how to conclude a short story or considering the phrasing of an important report. It’s also easier to stay aware of your thoughts when doing something habitual, as there’s greater attentional space available to house… (Location 1871)

Note: Stay aware

Habitual tasks also encourage your mind to continue wandering. When you let your mind rest and wander, chances are you’ll want to continue this scatterfocus exercise until you’ve finished whatever you started. A habitual task acts as a sort of “… (Location 1876)

To practice habitual scatterfocus, pick something simple that you enjoy doing. Then carry out that one task—and nothing else—until your mind wanders. The simpler the task, the better—going for a walk will unearth greater insights and connect more ideas than listening to music or reading a book. Good ideas… (Location 1878)

This is where problem-crunching and habitual scatterfocus differ: in problem-crunching mode, you bring your thoughts back to the problem you’re tackling; in habitual… (Location 1883)

There is a beautiful simplicity in doing one easy thing at a time, like drinking a cup of coffee, walking to… (Location 1885)

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. Instead, let your mind wander. The effect of this simple decision alone is noticeable. If you don’t check your phone each time a dinner date gets up… (Location 1888)

By giving your attention a break, you’ll have the attentional space to reflect on the conversation you’ve been having and… (Location 1891)

the key to practicing habitual scatterfocus is to frequently check what thoughts and ideas are… (Location 1893)

Sometimes I’ll enter habitual scatterfocus by playing a simple, repetitive video game on my iPad. The game frees my mind to wander and think positively, and I come up with a remarkable number of ideas in the process. (Who said video games have to be unproductive?) Because I can play the game out of habit, I have some attention to spare—but I absolutely have to remember to continue to check what’s occupying my attentional space, since the game is such a novel and… (Location 1895)

Practicing hyperfocus—and deliberately managing your attention—provides a host of benefits: expanding your attentional space so you can focus on more tasks simultaneously, improving your memory, and letting you become more aware of the thoughts flying around your head. As it turns out, all three of these are beneficial in scatterfocus mode. (Location 1916)

The better we manage our attention when we’re focused, the more information we’ll have to draw upon when we’re not. (Location 1928)

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. (Location 1945)

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. (Location 1951)

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: 1.   Reading the iTunes terms and conditions 2.   Staring at the ceiling 3.   Watching C-SPAN 3 4.   Waiting on hold with Air Canada’s baggage claim department 5.   Watching C-SPAN 2 6.   Watching my turtle, Edward, swim back and forth in her tank 7.   Staring at a slowly rotating fan blade 8.   Painting a tiny canvas with one color 9.   Watching paint dry 10.   Looking out my office window 11.   Removing and counting the seeds on a strawberry with a pair of tweezers 12.   Watching grass grow 13.   Staring out a train window 14.   Watching an online chess tournament 15.   Watching one cloud in the sky 16.   Waiting at the hospital 17.   Watching a dripping faucet 18.   Ironing every piece of clothing I own 19.   Counting the 0s in the first 10,000 digits of pi 20.   Watching my girlfriend read 21.   Making dots on a sheet of paper 22.   Eating alone in a restaurant, without a book or phone 23.   Reading Wikipedia articles about rope 24.   Watching a clock 25.   Watching every file transfer from my computer to an external hard drive (and back) 26.   Peeling exactly five potatoes 27.   Watching a pot boil 28.   Attending a church service in Latin 29.   Watching C-SPAN 30.   Moving small rocks from one place to another, repeatedly (Location 1953)

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. (Location 1987)

Note: Pacifier

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. (Location 1991)

Note: Less stimulated. Deeper thinking

More boredom is not something that I’d wish on anyone—but more mind wandering is. (Location 1994)

We defragment our thoughts when we carve out space between tasks. (Location 2003)

Note: Defragment

the more often we scatterfocus to replenish our mental energy, the more energy we have for our most important tasks. (Location 2016)

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. (Location 2018)

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 (Location 2024)

Research also suggests that your mind wanders less when you’re doing something you genuinely enjoy. (Location 2035)

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. (Location 2035)

Note: Restorative pocket of time

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. (Location 2038)

Note: Pleasurably effortless

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. (Location 2051)

Resist the urge to mindlessly distract yourself during this pocket of time. (Location 2053)

When you choose a break activity you love, you can still experience the benefits of habitual scatterfocus while you rest and recharge. (Location 2064)

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. (Location 2068)

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.) (Location 2070)

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. (Location 2075)

Research on the value of breaks points to two simple rules: 1.   Take a break at least every ninety minutes. 2.   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. (Location 2078)

Why is ninety minutes the magic number? Our mental energy tends to oscillate in ninety-minute waves. (Location 2083)

Note: Oscillate

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. (Location 2083)

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. (Location 2088)

Note: Strategic breaks

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. (Location 2096)

The best time to take a break is before you need to. (Location 2101)

Note: Wow

Much as you’re probably already dehydrated when you feel thirsty, your focus and productivity have likely already begun to falter by the time you feel fatigued. (Location 2101)

Note: Dehydrated brain

For every hour of sleep you miss, you lose two hours of productivity the next day. There’s no scientific backing for this rule—as with breaks, we’re all wired differently—but the amount of sleep we get matters a great deal, especially with regard to knowledge work. (Location 2104)

The size of our attentional space can shrink by as much as 60 percent as the result of a sleep deficit—complex tasks can take more than twice as long when we’re tired. (Location 2107)

Some people claim they’re able to get by with less sleep than everyone else, but chances are either their work isn’t as complex or they’d be capable of accomplishing even more if they were better rested. Even worse, a sleep deficit makes us perceive our productivity as being higher than it actually is. (Location 2111)

Sleep dreaming and daydreaming in scatterfocus mode activate the same brain regions, though they’re even more active while we’re asleep. On a neurological level, dreaming is scatterfocus mode on steroids. (Location 2119)

The mind has a chance to defragment its thoughts during both sleep and mind-wandering episodes, as well as to consolidate the information it’s been learning and processing. The brain also fires somewhat randomly in each mode, which can lead to breakthrough ideas (as well as to some random, useless material). (Location 2123)

Research shows that as we get less sleep, we also •   feel more pressure at work; •   focus for a shorter duration of time (even less than forty seconds); •   fire up social media sites more often; •   experience more negative moods; •   actively seek less demanding tasks (eliminating those that no longer fit into our shrunken attentional space); and •   spend more time online throughout the day. (Location 2128)

Getting to bed at a decent hour is the best way to get enough sleep. (Location 2141)

It often doesn’t feel right to step back and rest when you have more work to do than time to do it—you may even feel twinges of guilt. This is usually just self-doubt rearing its ugly head: as you consider the opportunity costs of taking a break, you begin thinking of all the other things you should be working on instead. Taking a break feels less productive than getting real work done, so you feel at fault when you even consider stepping back. This logic doesn’t hold water in practice. In fact, taking a break is one of the most productive things you can do. As we’ve discussed, your brain has a limited pool of energy, and once that reserve is depleted, so too are your focus and productivity. (Location 2143)

Note: Most productive

Taking more breaks will absolutely lead you to work smarter and accomplish more—ironically, the busier you are, the more you need them. During times like this, the likeliness of being overwhelmed is higher, and you will benefit from the perspective scatterfocus provides. (Location 2157)

It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer. —Albert Einstein (Location 2163)

On a neurological level, our brain is a constellation of dot-filled networks—and we’re constantly adding more with every new experience. We gather dots when we’re creating memories with loved ones, studying history, or reading the biographies of people who lived through it—which helps us understand the sequences of ideas that created the world we live in today. We accumulate dots with each mistake we make (and learn from) and each time we’re open enough to admit that we’re wrong—which replaces the obsolete dots in our mind with new ones. We harvest dots with each enlightening conversation, which permits us to gaze at the constellations of dots that live in the minds of knowledgeable people or ones who see the world differently. Each dot is encoded into our memory and available for later use. The word that best describes how your brain looks when you enter scatterfocus mode is “random.” Scatterfocus lights up your brain’s default network—the network it returns to when you’re not focused on something.32 This network is widely distributed across the brain, as is the information we’ve encoded into memory. One of the many reasons scatterfocus leads to so many creative insights is that while in it, we naturally begin to connect the scattered dots we’ve collected. (Location 2170)

Since we can focus on just a small amount of information at one time, only a few of the active connections in our minds can break into our attentional space. However, these random connections do get our attention when they become sufficiently activated. (Location 2184)

Uncompleted tasks and projects weigh more heavily on our minds than ones we’ve finished—focus comes when we close these distracting open loops. 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. (Location 2187)

The richer our environment, and the richer our experiences, the more insights we’re able to unearth. (Location 2228)

Simply entering habitual scatterfocus mode will enable you to experience the remarkable benefits I’ve covered so far. But if you want to level up even further, here are six ways to do so. 1. Scatter your attention in a richer environment. Being mindful of and controlling your environment is one of the most productive steps you can take. 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. (Location 2235)

A rich environment is one where you’re constantly encountering new people, ideas, and sights. Break activities like walking through a bookstore or people-watching at a diner are far more valuable than those that don’t carry any new potential cues. (Location 2240)

Write out the problems you’re trying to crack. (Location 2250)

My outline document was essentially a 25,000-word problem statement. I printed and reviewed it regularly—noting at the top of the pages my biggest challenges, such as how I’d make the book practical, structure the manuscript, and present the research so that it was interesting. Regularly reviewing these problems and the document itself kept the project fresh in my mind. Frequently entering habitual scatterfocus mode (including one afternoon during which I scanned the tables of contents of about a hundred books to see how they were structured) surrounded me with potential solution cues—I was scattering my attention in a richer environment. Eventually the answers came. (Location 2252)

Note: Eventually the answers came

Writing down the detailed problems you’re tackling at work and at home helps your mind continue to process them in the background. (Location 2257)

3. Sleep on a problem. As I mentioned earlier, dreaming is scatterfocus on steroids: while you’re sleeping, your mind continues to connect dots. (Location 2264)

Edison put it memorably when he purportedly urged that you should “never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.” (Location 2269)

One study that had participants incubate a problem found that during REM sleep, participants “showed enhanced integration of unassociated information,” which helped them find a solution. (Location 2271)

Sleep also helps you remember more—it consolidates the dots you’ve accumulated over the course of the day into long-term memory and intentionally forgets the less important and irrelevant dots you encountered. (Location 2273)

To invest in a good night’s sleep and to use this tool to your advantage, review the problems you’re facing, as well as any information you’re trying to encode into memory, before you head to bed. Your mind will continue processing these things while you rest. (Location 2276)

This is where scatterfocus trounces hyperfocus—scatterfocus is much better at piecing together solutions to complex, nonlinear problems. The better you’re able to focus, the less prone you are to mind wandering and the more important it is that you purposefully unfocus. (Location 2282)

Purposefully delaying creative decisions—as long as you don’t face an impending deadline—lets you continue to make potentially more valuable connections. (Location 2285)

5. 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. (Location 2288)

For example, try stopping work on a complicated report midway through a sentence. (Location 2290)

6. Consume more valuable dots. We are what we consume. You can take deeper advantage of scatterfocus mode when you become deliberate about the information you take in. (Location 2292)

This knowledge is what helps us become more creative in scatterfocus mode: the more valuable the dots we collect, the more we have to connect. (Location 2299)

People become experts on particular subjects by accumulating and connecting enough dots related to them, in the form of experiences, knowledge, and best practices. Our brains are naturally programmed to cluster related dots. (Location 2304)

Reading is a compelling example of the power of collecting and connecting dots. By learning something new, you transfer dots from your external environment to your memory so you can link them and make use of them later. From the moment you’re born to the day you die, your brain is always engaged in this process. 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. (Location 2314)

We read more efficiently by processing words and sentences than by processing individual letters. (Location 2320)

We can work with more expertise and creativity because we’ve already done the due diligence to cluster this information together. (Location 2325)

This information prompts us to respond appropriately in a situation, even if we’re not consciously aware that we’re doing so. For example, during a conversation we can intuit that a member of our team is upset and that there’s something she’s not telling us. We know this to be the case because we’ve experienced the same situation in the past and, on some level, remember the signs that indicated that she was unsettled. This is how intuition works: it’s the process of acting on information we remember but don’t consciously retrieve. (Location 2327)

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. (Location 2331)

Accumulating many valuable dots helps us in innumerable ways. We become able to connect our challenges with the lessons we’ve learned. Our scatterfocus episodes become more productive as we link valuable ideas, especially as we become more responsive to new insight triggers by exposing ourselves to new dots. And our hyperfocus episodes become more productive, since we’re able to make more efficient use of our attentional space, avoid mistakes, see opportunities for shortcuts, make better high-level decisions, and approach our work with more knowledge in hand. (Location 2332)

THE VALUE OF A DOT Just as there are limits to how well we’re able to focus, the same can be said about how much information we can collect. While our brain has nearly limitless storage space, our attention is far more restricted. (Location 2337)

No two pieces of information are created equal. Consuming a book or having an engaging conversation with someone smarter than you will enable you to collect more valuable dots than doing something like watching TV or reading a gossip magazine. This is not to say that consuming popular culture isn’t fun—life would suck without the occasional Netflix binge. And you’d probably get more than a little bored if you spent every spare minute reading dense books and academic journals. At the same time, 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. (Location 2341)

So how do you measure the value of a dot? First, the most valuable dots are both useful and entertaining—like a TED talk. Useful dots stay relevant for a long time and are also practical. (Location 2346)

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. (Location 2354)

Consuming information adjacent to what you’ve taken in before allows you to develop a constellation of dots around a single idea. (Location 2355)

Any piece of information that supports your existing skills is a good use of time. The more expansive your constellation of dots, the more valuable connections you’re able to make. Your brain even releases more dopamine, a pleasure chemical, when you consume information that supports what you know. At the same time, it’s also immensely valuable to consume dots that are unrelated to what you 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. Again, your brain is attracted to and wired to remember novel information. (Location 2357)

The same principle applies here—when your creativity is effectively the sum of the dots you connect, consuming information on autopilot mode is one of the least useful activities to engage in. (Location 2364)

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. (Location 2374)

Books provide access to the highest-quality thinking and most useful dots on pretty much any topic. (Location 2376)

However powerful our brains are as dot-connecting machines, consuming exclusively nonentertaining material can quickly become a chore. That’s why it’s also important to seek out balanced dots—information that is both useful and entertaining. Countless things fit into this category, including novels, podcasts, documentaries, and TED talks. (Location 2378)

Finally, there’s the bottom third of what we consume: information that’s entertaining or, at worst, trashy. Though, like junk food, it can be fun to consume in the moment, this information is the least dense, isn’t practical, and won’t help you live your life or reach your goals. (Location 2382)

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. (Location 2387)

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. (Location 2393)

1. Consume things you care about, especially when few others do. (Location 2413)

Double down on developing the skills and knowledge that you find entertaining. (Location 2416)

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. (Location 2427)

5. Veg out . . . intentionally. 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. 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. (Location 2431)

7. Get things to bid for your attention. (Location 2441)

How would you want to see yourself occupying that time if it were sped up into a thirty-second video? (Location 2449)

Note: Mooi

9. Invest in serendipity. 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. (Location 2453)

For each worthless thing you eliminate, consider doubling down on something you’re already good at or a subject you know a lot about. (Location 2462)

Albert Einstein was undoubtedly a genius—he connected more dots, in more unique ways, than almost any other human. At the same time, he was bound by the same mental limits that we all are. To conceive of an idea like the general theory of relativity, he had to collect and connect an incredible number of dots so he could bridge ideas from nature and mathematical concepts, forming connections others hadn’t. To let his mind wander habitually, he played the violin for hours on end.35 Einstein worked to attain his genius. As he put it, “I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious.” Asking questions like “What would it be like to race alongside a light beam?” he spun complex webs of dots to formulate his theory of relativity. (Location 2476)

How frequently you should scatter your attention will depend on a host of factors. For one, it will be tied to how often you use (and need to recharge) your ability to hyperfocus. Hyperfocus consumes mental energy, while scatterfocus is energy restorative. (Location 2495)

The more creativity your job requires, the more often you should scatter your attention. (Location 2499)

The more scatterfocus time we schedule as we’re putting together a plan, the more time we’ll save later. (Location 2504)

Disconnect from the internet between 8:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. •   Notice when you finish a task, and use that as a cue to scatter your attention for a bit. •   Buy a cheap alarm clock so you’re not immediately distracted by your phone when you wake up. •   Walk to get a coffee carrying only a notepad. •   As a challenge to yourself, leave your phone at home for an entire day. •   Take an extra-long shower. •   Make yourself bored for five minutes and notice what thoughts run through your head. •   Tame distractions and simplify your environment to make sure your attention doesn’t overflow the next time you do a creative hobby. •   Cook with music playing instead of watching something entertaining. •   Go for a nature walk. •   Visit an art gallery. •   Work out without music or a podcast. (Location 2511)

Though you don’t look busy, your mind certainly is. 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. (Location 2525)

When we focus, we consume and collect dots; when we scatter our attention, we connect these dots. (Location 2532)

Intentionally letting your mind wander takes the guilt, doubt, and stress out of the process, because you choose to unwind rather than doing so against your will. (Location 2553)

On the other hand, a negative mood shrinks the size of your attentional space. (Location 2563)

While moods and attitudes aren’t necessarily dots and ideas you can focus on and remember, they do greatly influence how you perceive and relate to what’s in your attentional space, and they affect the size of your attentional space itself. (Location 2597)

Scatterfocus is most powerful when you have the least energy. (Location 2611)

I call these time periods when we have the least energy our Creative Prime Time. (Location 2614)

A great way to work smarter is to schedule tasks that require focused attention during your BPT and tasks that require more creativity during your CPT. Block time for these tasks in your calendar. (Location 2620)

I view drinking alcohol as a way by which we borrow energy and happiness from the following day. (Location 2643)

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. (Location 2645)

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: •   It deepens our focus, regardless of whether a task is simple or complex, and narrows it, which makes hyperfocusing on a task easier (but scatterfocus more difficult). •   It helps us persevere, especially with tasks that are long and tedious. (It boosts our determination regardless of how tired or fatigued we are.) •   It improves our performance on tasks that require verbal memory, a quick reaction time, or visuospatial reasoning (e.g., putting together a jigsaw puzzle). In general, these effects diminish after the consumption of approximately 200 milligrams of caffeine (a single cup of coffee contains around 125 milligrams). Amounts greater than 400 milligrams should be avoided, as at that amount you begin to feel more anxious, and your performance becomes impaired. (Location 2647)

As your body metabolizes caffeine out of your system, your energy crashes, and your productivity dips. (Location 2663)

Instead of having a cup of coffee after you awake, wait until you get to work so you’ll benefit from the boost when you work on your most productive tasks. (Location 2667)

Enter hyperfocus mode at least once a day to deal with your most productive tasks; eliminate distractions and concentrate on one important thing. Enter scatterfocus multiple times a day—particularly habitual scatterfocus mode—so that you can plan for the future, connect ideas, and recharge your ability to hyperfocus. Do the same at home, hyperfocusing on meaningful experiences and conversations and scatterfocusing when you need to plan, rest, or ideate. (Location 2694)

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. I’d be lying if I said I spent a lot of time planning how long I’ll dedicate to each mode—no one should do that. But I do consider, briefly, whether my week will benefit from one mode more than the other. When doing the same for your own schedule, ask yourself questions like these: •   How much productivity and creativity will I need this week? Does an upcoming deadline mean I need to hyperfocus more than usual? Or do I have more space to plan for the future and connect ideas? •   What commitments do I have coming up that will get in the way of my hyperfocus and scatterfocus time (e.g., travel, a draining conference, or an inordinate number of meetings)? How can I deal with these obstacles in advance? •   How many blocks of time can I commit to hyperfocus and scatterfocus? Can I commit to these periods in my calendar? (Location 2697)

Your life becomes more meaningful, because you pay greater attention to meaningful experiences and process them more deeply. In this way, meaning isn’t something we try to find—it’s something we make an effort to notice. (Location 2729)