Highlights §
- throughout the day, how frequently do you choose what to focus on? In other words, roughly how much of your time do you spend deliberately and with intention, deciding in advance what you want to do and when you’ll do it? (Location 232)
- While falling into autopilot mode can help us keep up the pace of work and life, attention is our most limited and constrained resource. The more we can manage our attention with intention, the more focused, productive, and creative we become. (Location 237)
- 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 273)
- Here’s an immediate way to improve your productivity. Divide up your work tasks based on the four categories in the above grid. This simple activity will give you an incredible awareness of what’s actually important in your work. Because I’ll return to the grid often going forward, divvying up your work activities will be valuable as you make your way through the book. (Location 302)
- Our attentional space can process even more when we’re working on unrelated tasks. (Location 441)
- There is a tipping point to attentional space, of course—doing too many habitual tasks at the same time will cause your attentional space to become overloaded. This is especially true if what you’re doing isn’t totally automatic and requires frequent mental intervention. (Location 444)
- your most necessary and purposeful tasks can’t be done out of habit.* (Location 452)
- Having some attentional space to spare during complex tasks allows you to do two things: It leaves room to reflect on the best approach to completing the task, so you can work smarter and avoid autopilot mode. (Location 481)
- At any one time, your attentional space should hold at most two key things that you are processing: what you intend to accomplish and what you’re currently doing. This isn’t possible 100 percent of the time, especially as you become immersed in a task, but by being mindful of your intention, you can be confident that what you’re immersed in is what you’re actually aiming to get done. (Location 500)
- The best way to avoid this overload is to be more selective with what you permit into your attentional space. (Location 514)
- Shifting attention throughout the day is necessary; if we focused on just one thing all day long, no matter how important it was, we probably wouldn’t have a job. Still, too much shifting can be dangerous, especially when we’re surrounded by more novel objects and distractions than our brain is capable of handling. (Location 554)
- As far as your productivity is concerned, the best time to take a break is after you’ve finished a big task. (Location 606)
- Hyperfocus is many things at once: it’s deliberate, undistracted, and quick to refocus, and it leads us to become completely immersed in our work. (Location 648)
- The most important aspect of hyperfocus is that only one productive or meaningful task consumes your attentional space. (Location 662)
- 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 684)
- 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 724)
- the best productivity tactics are the ones that require you to step back and remove yourself from your work so you have the mental space to think critically about how you should approach that work differently. (Location 743)
- 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. (Location 950)
- because you’re investing your time, attention, and energy into just one task, you can slow down and work more purposefully. (Location 1087)
- When you eliminate distractions, your energy goes further, and you can work for longer periods without needing a break. By disabling distractions ahead of time, you expend significantly less mental energy regulating your behavior in order to focus on your work. (Location 1088)
- Your phone is probably your most stimulating and novel object of attention, and you’re absolutely going to be tempted by it, especially when the task you’re working on becomes more intimidating or complex. (Location 1129)
- When you sit down at your desk the next morning, you’ll be able to focus immediately on your intentions, (Location 1321)
- Decluttering your digital environment is just as important as decluttering your physical one. (Location 1322)
- hyperfocus: choosing an object of attention, eliminating distractions, focusing on a task, and getting back on track. (Location 1400)
- Our work tends to expand to fit the available completion time—in productivity circles, this phenomenon is known as Parkinson’s law. (Location 1449)
- When we do knowledge work for a living, we procrastinate, spending time and attention on email and social media, tasks that make us feel productive in our work but lead us to accomplish little. (Location 1469)
- One review of the literature on the subject described meditation’s benefits most succinctly, calling it “the most validated technique for minimizing the disruptive effects of mind wandering.” (Location 1514)
- With this extra awareness, you gain the power to notice stray objects of attention at the edges of your attentional space, such as when you’re seeking external stimulation or about to fall victim to a seductive distraction. (Location 1556)
- 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)
- If you take away one lesson from this chapter, it should be that few practices will improve the quality of your attention—and the size of your attentional space—more than meditation and mindfulness. While both will consume some of your time, you’ll make that time back, and then some, in how much more clearly, deeply, and deliberately you’ll think and focus. (Location 1568)
- The next time you meditate (if you’ve begun to do so), pay attention to how your mind is naturally drawn to the threats, pleasures, and novel ideas floating in your head. (Location 1721)
- 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 1751)
- 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. (Location 1868)
- the key to practicing habitual scatterfocus is to frequently check what thoughts and ideas are in your attentional space. (Location 1873)
- 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 1897)
- Take a break at least every ninety minutes. Break for roughly fifteen minutes for each hour of work you do. (Location 2049)
- The best time to take a break is before you need to. 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 2071)
- habitual scatterfocus lets our minds connect the problems we’re tackling with what we experience, as well as where our minds happen to wander. (Location 2188)
- The richer our environment, and the richer our experiences, the more insights we’re able to unearth. (Location 2196)
- Scatterfocus lets you find useful connections between disparate ideas and experiences, recharge, and plan for the future. To reap these benefits, you simply have to let your mind rest and wander—preferably while doing something habitual. (Location 2455)
- Scatterfocus is most powerful when you have the least energy. Your brain is less inhibited during these periods and doesn’t hold back the ideas it generates. (Location 2566)
- Again, when it comes to solving creative problems, the less control we have over our attention, the better. (Location 2587)
- How many blocks of time can I commit to hyperfocus and scatterfocus? Can I commit to these periods in my calendar? (Location 2660)
- As you become more aware of what’s occupying your attentional space, how much energy you have, and how full your attentional space is, you’ll become more agile and adjust as conditions change. For example, if you’ve reached an impasse with a problem, awareness will give you the ability to determine whether the problem is more analytical or requires creative insight to solve—you can then enter hyperfocus or scatterfocus accordingly. (Location 2665)
- When you’re aware of what has taken hold of your attention, you’re able to direct it back toward more important and meaningful things. You’ll then work with greater purpose, focus for longer, and daydream less—all of which will increase the quality of your attention and the quality of your life. (Location 2673)