Most of us believe that the secret to productivity lies in our ability to manage our time—but in 2018’s Hyperfocus, productivity expert Chris Bailey presents an alternate hypothesis: The key to becoming the most productive, creative version of yourself lies not in managing your time but in managing your attention.
In Hyperfocus, Bailey shares two main methods of deliberately managing your attention: hyperfocus and scatterfocus (intentional mind-wandering). When you hyperfocus, you maximize your productivity. And when you scatterfocus, you maximize your creativity.
In this guide, we’ll first discuss how to determine where your attention goes most often. Then, we’ll share the five-step process of hyperfocus. Finally, we’ll describe what intentional mind-wandering is, and how it can boost your rest and your creativity. Throughout, we’ll compare Bailey’s strategies to recommendations from other productivity experts and neuroscientists, noting where they differ and supplementing Bailey’s strategies as needed.
In order to understand why you need to deliberately manage your attention, you must first discover how little time you spend deliberately directing your attention now and what you could accomplish if you did. To understand the current state of your attention, Bailey recommends that you first create an attention management matrix.
To create your attention management matrix, sort your tasks into four quadrants.
(Shortform note: Bailey’s attention management matrix echoes a time management tool known as the Eisenhower matrix. Originally developed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Eisenhower matrix splits tasks into four quadrants based on their urgency and importance.)
When you’re finished, review the matrix. You likely spend most of your time on Quadrant 1 and 2 tasks, which means you’re operating on autopilot mode: Instead of deliberately directing your attention, you react automatically to external triggers that pique your interest—especially if it’s new, potentially dangerous, or gratifying. (Shortform note: One marketing expert also suggests that you may automatically react to things based on your personal associations with them.) So when you’re in autopilot mode, you naturally focus on less valuable tasks. But when you learn how to deliberately manage your attention, you can focus more on Quadrant 3 and 4 tasks. (Shortform note: We’ll return to this in Step 1 of hyperfocus.)
How do you deliberately manage your attention? Bailey recommends that you hyperfocus: In hyperfocus, you deliberately direct your attention to a single task. (Shortform note: Bailey’s description of hyperfocus is occasionally contradictory. For clarity, we’ve defined hyperfocus based on what Bailey states is its “most important aspect”—the fact that you’re focused on a single task.)
Why just one task? Because, as Bailey explains, it fits comfortably in your working memory, or “attentional space.” Bailey explains that whenever you do a task, it occupies some portion of your working memory, which holds information your mind is actively processing. Your working memory has a limited working memory capacity: You can only focus on a finite number of things. (Shortform note: Bailey’s definition of “attentional space” combines definitions of short-term and working memory, but since neuroscientists don’t agree on the distinctions between the two terms and Bailey’s main point is that your attentional space is limited, we’ll refer exclusively to working memory.)
If you try to focus on more than you’re capable of, you’ll crowd information out of your working memory and forget it. To avoid this, focus only on what fits in your working memory. And since the amount of working memory a task takes up depends on how complex it is, you can fit only one complex task fully in your working memory. (Shortform note: Research suggests that your working memory capacity peaks at young adulthood and declines as you age—so if you’re older, you might not be able to focus on the same complexity of tasks or the same amount of information as you used to without forgetting it.)
We’ve divided Bailey’s method into the following five-step process:
(Shortform note: Bailey’s method has only four stages, but we added Step 0 since he also presented several recommendations for what to do before you begin hyperfocusing.)
To hyperfocus, first plan when and for how long you’ll hyperfocus.
Bailey suggests that choosing how long to focus is simple: Pick a duration you’re comfortable with and won’t put you off from focusing tomorrow, since hyperfocus works best as a daily habit. As you get used to hyperfocusing, you’ll become used to focusing for longer periods, and the lengths of your hyperfocus sessions will naturally increase. (Shortform note: If you were running a marathon, you wouldn’t run 26.2 miles at once; every day, you’d run just a little bit longer than you did the previous day until you reached a comfortable rhythm. Treat your cognitive endurance the same way.)
Bailey recommends that you choose when to focus based on your schedule, your energy levels, and your tasks. Hyperfocus requires both time and energy, so schedule your hyperfocus sessions when you have both available—in other words, when you have free time and you feel energized. (Shortform note: If you have neither, consider exercising more: Exercise boosts both your energy levels and your productivity—which might give you more free time.) Alternatively, schedule your hyperfocus sessions based on the tasks you need to accomplish. If you have a particularly cognitively demanding task that needs attention, like a presentation, that's a good time to hyperfocus. (Shortform note: Improve your estimate of how long your hyperfocus sessions should be for each task by discovering the percentage by which you underestimate task length and adjusting accordingly.)
Choosing what to focus on is critical because hyperfocus is most beneficial when we focus on the right task. According to Bailey, the quality of the tasks we pay attention to determines the quality of our lives: When we focus on high-quality tasks, we perform high-quality work and have high-quality impact. (Shortform note: You might argue that you can get everything done, but Essentialism argues that you must set priorities for your own life—if you don’t, others will do so for you.)
So how exactly do you pick the right task? One strategy Bailey suggests is to hyperfocus on the meaningful tasks from your attention management matrix. Another is to consider the impact of your tasks: Focus on tasks that will have the biggest positive impact. To evaluate this, look at both the task’s immediate and long-term effects—the long-term effect is the real impact of your task. (Shortform note: Getting Things Done also recommends choosing your tasks based on their priority levels, but it takes a bottom-up approach: Focusing on your low-priority actions first frees your mind to think about what your higher-level priorities are.)
Bailey also recommends ensuring that you hyperfocus on your most important tasks by setting three goals each day. When you can select only three goals for the day, you’re forced to prioritize. When you know what goals are high-priority, you know what tasks will best support those goals. These are the tasks most deserving of hyperfocus. You also learn what is less important, so you learn what not to focus on. (Shortform note: Setting three priorities might seem impossibly small, but Essentialism explains that this is a new concept: The word “priority” only had a singular form until the 1900s, when we started insisting that we could have many “first'' things.)
In Step 2a of hyperfocus, you limit distractions—which Bailey defines as anything that diverts you from the task you defined in Step 1. Bailey explains that limiting distractions is critical to hyperfocus because we’re terrible at avoiding distractions if they’re available to us: If you work on a computer, you get distracted every 40 seconds. (Shortform note: Your distractibility also increases with age.) One reason is that we have a “novelty bias”: Whenever you do something new, like giving in to a distraction, your brain gives you a hit of dopamine—so getting distracted feels good. (Shortform note: Conversely, making distractions feel bad should help us avoid them. Consider punishing yourself every time you get distracted: Humans find the possibility of avoiding loss (or avoiding punishment) more motivational than potential gain.)
So how, exactly, do you limit distractions? Bailey recommends that when you encounter a distraction you can’t control, keep your original purpose in mind so that you can return to it when the distraction goes away. This should be easy for unenjoyable distractions—like loud colleagues—but might be more difficult if you enjoy the distraction. In this case, Bailey recommends letting yourself enjoy the distraction but urges you to remember your original goal. (Shortform note: Bailey admits that given his focus on productivity, even the enjoyable distractions annoy him because he dislikes interruptions to his schedule. So this suggestion may not be as helpful if you’re more flexible and already enjoying the distraction.)
(Shortform note: One alternative strategy is to control what you can about the distraction: Even distractions that initially seem unavoidable usually have some element you can control. Another option is to reschedule your hyperfocus session. If, despite your best efforts, an unavoidable distraction crops up mid-hyperfocus session, adjust your schedule. That way, you can give your full attention to whoever interrupts you—and hyperfocus on your initial task at a different time.)
What’s the best way to deal with distractions you do have control over? Bailey explains that the most important element is to deal with them before you start trying to focus. Bailey implies that your brain wants to conserve energy, so it resists energy-guzzling hard tasks by looking for less energy-guzzling stimuli—like an easy smartphone game. Therefore, Bailey argues, your brain finds distractions most tempting when you’re resisting a complex task—like when you start trying to hyperfocus. So deal with distractions before you start hyperfocusing, when they’re less tempting. (Shortform note: If you can’t deal with distractions before hyperfocusing, try eating sugar to re-energize your brain: If your brain is prone to distraction because it wants to conserve energy, the more energy you have, the less distractible you should be.)
We’ve listed some of Bailey’s specific strategies below. (Shortform note: Bailey separates his strategies based on whether you want to totally avoid distractions during hyperfocus or merely limit them during regular work sessions. Since both involve limiting distractions—but to different extents—we’ve combined these strategies into methods for limiting distractions to the furthest extent possible.)
Track your distractions. Your brain views commitments and tasks you haven’t yet externalized as threats—so it naturally focuses on them. (Shortform note: Bailey got this idea from Getting Things Done, which shares a five-step task management system: Externalizing your tasks is just Step 1.) Reduce this tendency by writing your potential and actual distractions down: Before you hyperfocus, write down anything that could distract you—like incomplete to-dos. While you hyperfocus, write down any thought that does distract you. By writing them down, you deal with the perceived threat, so you reduce your mental load and can focus better. (Shortform note: Indistractable suggests scheduling 20 minutes each week to reflect on what distracted you and adjusting your schedule—perhaps by scheduling time to list your to-dos—accordingly.)
Distance your distractions. As Bailey explains, our brains are constantly looking for more interesting things to focus on. So make distractions as inconvenient to access as possible—perhaps by removing them together by disconnecting from the Internet. (Shortform note: Distancing your distractions makes accessing them inconvenient, and making bad habits inconvenient is an oft-cited strategy for breaking them: Switch also discusses creating change-supporting spaces that make good behavior easy and undesirable behavior difficult.)
Delegate. Bailey points out that many of our tools perform similar or identical tasks—you probably can text on your cell phone and computer. Bailey argues that this redundancy increases our likelihood of giving in to a tempting distraction because we’re tempted twice. To reduce this redundancy, carefully evaluate whether you need the tool at all. If two of your devices do similar tasks, do you really need both of them? (Shortform note: Digital Minimalism takes this idea one step further, recommending that you identify your priorities and discover which digital tools promote or inhibit these priorities.)
Be more intentional. Since Bailey defines a distraction as something that diverts you from your original purpose, actions like watching TV aren’t distractions if you meant to do them in the first place. (Shortform note: Indistractable makes a similar argument, suggesting that you schedule every activity—even ones like social media—you do each day.) Therefore, Bailey recommends being more intentional about when you do potentially distracting activities—like by scheduling when you respond to emails. (Shortform note: Indistractable explains that people are wired to imitate each other: If you wait to respond to an email, expect not to receive immediate responses, either.) You might also turn off notifications: Choose when to check your apps instead of responding to notifications out of habit.
Hyperfocus on the distraction. Emails and meetings can be distracting, but they’re sometimes essential tasks you must complete. So, counterintuitively, Bailey recommends hyperfocusing on these potential distractions. Try hyperfocusing on meetings you can’t get out of to get the most value from them. (Shortform note: Improve your ability to focus on tedious meetings by actively looking for drama and disagreement during them, which may keep you engaged.) He also recommends hyperfocusing on emails if you have many to respond to. This strategy is especially effective when combined with scheduling if your job requires quick responses to emails. (Shortform note: If you’re inundated by emails, try viewing your inbox as a temporary workspace you use to sort your emails before dealing with them instead of a storage space.)
In Step 3 of hyperfocus, you focus on your intended task for a set period. To make this easier, Bailey recommends incorporating two daily habits: mindfulness and meditation.
To meditate, focus on a single thing and bring your attention back to it when your mind wanders. Specifically, Bailey recommends focusing on your breathing for a small duration of time each day. Conversely, mindfulness is when you pay attention to everything you experience in a given moment. Bailey recommends picking a simple daily task and being mindful during it: Notice everything that happens as you, for example, wash the dishes. (Shortform note: Not everybody agrees with Bailey’s definitions of meditation and mindfulness: One expert defines meditation as intentionally doing something good for yourself and mindfulness as a general awareness of your circumstances.)
Bailey explains that both meditation and mindfulness are good for hyperfocus because they increase your working memory capacity. (Shortform note: Bailey also suggests that hyperfocus might increase your working memory capacity, but he doesn’t delve deeply into the topic—perhaps because both meditation and mindfulness are scientifically validated methods for increasing your working memory capacity, but hyperfocus is not.)
Improving your working memory is important for three reasons:
In addition to redirecting your attention to your task when you become distracted, an ability that practicing meditation and mindfulness improves, a second piece of maintaining focus is to prevent your mind from wandering. Bailey recommends doing this by matching your tasks to your skill level and increasing how many high-impact tasks you do.
Match your tasks to your skill level. If your mind wanders a lot as you focus on various tasks, you might be bored or anxious. Citing Flow, Bailey explains that boredom occurs when your tasks are too easy, and stress occurs when your tasks are too difficult. Both are known causes of mind-wandering. Therefore, excessive mind-wandering may be a sign that your current job is too easy or too hard. Reduce mind-wandering by adjusting your daily tasks to your current skill level. (Shortform note: Even if you find that your job is not matching your skill level, you don’t have to quit. One Harvard Business Review article suggests having two careers can make you happier and more fulfilled.)
Increase how many high-impact tasks you do. Hyperfocus improves your productivity, so you may find yourself with more free time. But if you’re hyperfocusing and just as busy as you used to be, you might be unconsciously filling this newfound free time with unimportant tasks or distractions—and since your mind wanders when you’re unsure if your current task is the highest-impact option, this lack of important work might increase how frequently your mind wanders. Therefore, Bailey suggests evaluating how much time you spend doing lower-impact tasks. If it’s higher than you like, increase the number of high-impact tasks on your plate.
(Shortform note: To discover whether you’re filling your time with unimportant tasks or distractions—and the tasks you should do instead—regularly recreate the attention management matrix, sorting your tasks by how productive and enjoyable they are. By doing so, you ensure you’re maintaining an acceptable level of productivity—and you always have a list of high-impact tasks to focus on.)
In addition to hyperfocusing, Bailey shares another way to deliberately manage your attention: intentional mind-wandering, or “scatterfocus.” In scatterfocus, you deliberately leave room in your working memory to allow your mind to wander. (Shortform note: Bailey skips the neuroscientific explanation of exactly why your mind wanders when you give it that space, perhaps because even neuroscientists don’t agree on how that relationship works.)
Bailey disapproves of mind-wandering when it distracts you from your original intention. But when you mind-wander intentionally, you can experience its benefits. Mind-wandering lets us rest and increases our creativity, which we’ll return to in later sections. Technically, you experience these benefits during unintentional mind-wandering too, but Bailey suggests that intentional mind-wandering maximizes these benefits because you remember what you thought of: If your mind wanders unintentionally, you might not notice it’s wandered—so you’re far less likely to remember any useful insights. (Shortform note: Bailey doesn’t suggest using memorization techniques to remember these insights—perhaps because you’d likely have to transform the insight into an easy-to-remember form, which requires focus and could disrupt your mind-wandering.)
Bailey suggests two main ways to intentionally mind-wander. First, try a fun, cognitively simple task that takes up little working memory, leaving the rest of your working memory free to let your mind wander. Regularly check in to see what you’re thinking about, and keep a pad of paper on hand to jot down any great ideas. (Shortform note: What counts as a fun, cognitively simple task? One that Bailey recommends is walking, which both Charles Darwin and Friedrich Nietzsche regularly did. On his blog, Bailey also extols the benefits of knitting.)
Secondly, schedule time to record your ideas. Bailey recommends scheduling two 15-minute blocks each week with just your thoughts and a notepad. During this time, don’t think about anything in particular. Instead, write down whatever useful thoughts pop into your head so you don’t forget them. (Shortform note: To use mind-wandering as a tool to achieve your long-term goals, read books that discuss the importance of having long-term goals, like 12 Rules for Life: Having long-term goals in the back of your mind may trigger mind-wandering towards actionable to-dos about the future.)
Another major benefit of intentional mind-wandering is that it helps you rest. When you focus on a task, you regulate your behavior—which takes a toll on your brain. When you let your mind roam free, you stop regulating your behavior, so mind-wandering gives your brain a break and helps you recharge. (Shortform note: Since your brain uses 20% of your total energy, you might assume that spending more mental energy regulating your behavior will burn many more calories—but your brain mostly uses its calories for more basic activities like staying awake.)
So how, exactly, can you intentionally mind-wander for rest? First, Bailey recommends that you pick an easy and enjoyable task you can do at work, since that’s likely where you want to recharge your energy. (Shortform note: For best results, consider something physical that gets you away from your desk, like staring out the window or rubbing lotion into your hands.)
As for when to mind-wander: Bailey recommends regular sessions throughout your workday to maximize your productivity—but the exact times depend on individual factors like your workload and energy levels on a particular day. Bailey recommends two main strategies to discover your ideal break time:
Experiment. As Bailey explains, it's best to rest when you have low mental energy. But since regulating your behavior consumes mental energy, the amount you use every day varies. Generally speaking, tasks that require more focus use more energy than simple tasks. But if you hate your job and have to force yourself to do even the simplest task, you will tire very quickly. So experimenting is the best way to find the break time that maximizes your productivity. (Shortform note: As you experiment, keep a journal to track exactly what you do and how it affects your productivity. As we've seen, our memory is limited, so relying on it may be a losing strategy.)
Pay attention to when your energy begins to falter. Bailey explains that, just as we sleep in 90-minute cycles, our mental energy occurs in 90-minute cycles. We feel energized for 90 minutes, then tired for about 20. As such, Bailey recommends paying attention to your energy levels throughout the day and resting when they start to decrease. Specifically, Bailey recommends resting every 90 minutes to take advantage of this natural rhythm. This natural rhythm Is not as regular in the afternoon, but Bailey recommends following it anyway for the sake of consistency. (Shortform note: This energy cycle is biologically known as your ultradian rhythm, and it's another reason why taking regular breaks is so important. Research shows that if you power through dips in energy, your next energy peak isn’t as high as it is when you rest appropriately.)
A third major benefit of intentional mind-wandering is that it increases your creativity. This has to do with how learning and creativity work in the brain: Whenever you encounter a new stimulus, your brain stores this information in a “dot,” or bit. When you learn, you connect new bits to related bits you’ve already stored. (Shortform note: This is why memorization techniques ask you to connect new information to information you already know: The more connections a bit has in your brain, the more likely you are to remember it.) Creativity comes when you connect unrelated bits together—which is why intentional mind-wandering leads to moments of inspiration: By not focusing on anything in particular, your brain randomly looks for connections—and when it connects two unrelated bits, you gain a new, creative insight. (Shortform note: Creativity isn’t just useful in the arts—one researcher posits that mind-wandering is so common because it was useful in ancient times: We found creative solutions that helped us survive thanks to mind-wandering.)
So how, exactly, do you intentionally mind-wander for more creativity? Bailey suggests that the first key is to increase the quality of the information you encounter: You create bits when you encounter new information, and you think creatively when you connect those bits in unexpected ways—so if you increase the quality of your information, you’ll gain higher-quality bits and have higher-quality ideas. Bailey argues that the quality of your information depends on how useful it is, stating that the most useful (and thus highest-quality) information is accurate, related to your goals, practical, and relevant long-term. (Shortform note: Although this is a generally applicable rule, rating the value of information is an extremely subjective process. If you personally find a piece of information useful, that’s enough. Don’t feel like information that doesn’t meet all of these criteria can’t be useful.)
Despite this, Bailey doesn’t suggest exclusively taking in high-quality information: Low-quality information is often fun. (Shortform note: Lower-quality information like watching TV can also help you relax if you’re facing a major stressor.) Rather, he recommends that you be more intentional about the information you take in. To do so, spend a few weeks asking yourself the following questions before you consume any information.
Bailey also suggests that you trigger creative insights by intentionally mind-wandering due to the Zeigarnik effect. The Zeigarnik effect is this: We remember things we haven’t yet completed much better than the things we’ve completed—so our brain continues to work on problems it hasn’t solved even if we’re not actively working on them.
As you subconsciously work on this problem, your brain encounters various stimuli, and it connects all of these stimuli to your problem. Sometimes, the stimulus your brain encounters reminds it of something else it already knows. It connects this old information (or the new stimulus, which may itself be the information you were missing) to your problem—and solves it.
Intentional mind-wandering maximizes the possibility of encountering the stimulus you need for a creative insight because, when you perform a fun, easy, task, you maximize the number of stimuli you encounter: You experience both external stimuli (from doing the task) and internal stimuli (the thoughts you have as your mind wanders). The more stimuli you encounter, the more likely you’ll encounter the one you need.
(Shortform note: Despite the Zeigarnik effect’s popularity in productivity books, most modern psychology books don’t mention it because researchers haven’t been able to replicate it reliably.)
For best results, Bailey recommends the following strategies:
Intentionally mind-wander in busy environments. You need new stimuli to trigger a creative insight, so maximize your chances of having a burst of inspiration by maximizing the external stimuli you encounter. Bailey recommends intentionally mind-wandering someplace you’ll regularly encounter new cues—like a train station or a busy café. (Shortorm note: If you work from home, expand your weak-tie network through cross-departmental collaborative projects to increase new stimuli: Chance comments from “weak ties” can be the source of unexpected inspiration.)
Manipulate the Zeigarnik effect. One way to manipulate the Zeigarnik effect is to write down a problem you’re stuck on. Writing down your problem helps you remember the problem so it stays in the back of your mind. (Shortform note: This strategy may only work if you’re handwriting, which improves your memory: Typing doesn’t have the same effect.) Then, move onto a fun but easy task and let your mind wander: The Zeigarnik effect will ensure that your brain will try to connect both the external stimuli (the task) and the internal stimuli (your thoughts) you encounter to your problem—and the more connections your brain makes, the more likely it is to make a useful connection.
(Shortform note: Like Bailey, Barbara Oakley’s A Mind for Numbers argues that you can switch to diffuse-mode thinking (which is similar to intentional mind-wandering) to work out a creative solution to a problem. But Oakley’s technique has one important caveat: She argues that in order for your mind to best come up with a creative insight, you can no longer be consciously thinking about the problem—which can take several hours.)
Sleep on it. You might argue that sleeping is a biological necessity and doesn’t count as intentional mind-wandering. But Bailey argues that dreaming is “scatterfocus on steroids,” noting several famous examples of great ideas humans had in their sleep. (Shortform note: One he doesn’t mention is Mary Shelley, who dreamt up her gothic classic Frankenstein during an afternoon nap.) Bailey suggests that dreaming may trigger creative insights because sleep is so neurally similar to intentional mind-wandering. Both intentional mind-wandering and sleep energize us. Random neurons fire both when we sleep and when we mind-wander intentionally, which leads to breakthrough ideas. Our brains consolidate information during both brain modes. Our minds wander to similar areas during both modes, including the past, the future, and our relationships with other people. However, Bailey admits that our minds jump much more between these areas when we mind-wander intentionally. (Shortform note: Why might sleep be so neurally similar to intentional mind-wandering? Perhaps it’s because dreams come from activity in the brain’s “default network,” which is most active when we daydream, too.)
To use sleep to trigger a creative insight, Bailey recommends asking yourself important questions and going over information you want to remember just before you go to sleep. He posits that this will cause your mind to wander around these topics while you sleep—so you could wake up with a new creative insight. (Shortform note: If you use this technique, keep a notebook on your nightstand to capture these insights. After all, most of us forget our dreams as soon as we wake up. Keeping a dream journal, in general, can also help you learn from your mistakes.)
In a world full of distractions, most modern-day knowledge workers believe that the secret to productivity lies in your ability to manage your time. In 2018’s Hyperfocus, productivity expert Chris Bailey presents an alternate hypothesis: The key to becoming the most productive, creative version of yourself lies not in managing your time but in managing your attention.
In his book, Bailey teaches two main methods of managing your attention. First, he presents several strategies to help you “hyperfocus,” or single-task, so that you can be as productive as possible. Then, he presents several strategies to help you “scatterfocus,” or intentionally mind-wander so you can be more creative and have more energy.
Chris Bailey is a Canadian productivity expert. His first book, 2016’s The Productivity Project, was a Canadian non-fiction bestseller that chronicled the year-long productivity experiment Bailey undertook during his post-university sabbatical. Bailey also chronicled the experiment on his blog, which he continues under the name “A Life of Productivity.”
Connect with Chris Bailey:
Publisher: Viking Penguin
Published in 2018, Hyperfocus is Bailey’s second book.
Hyperfocus came out in the late 2010s, a time during which many authors were writing about how to focus in a world increasingly driven to distraction. Bailey’s own The Productivity Project came out in 2016, as did Cal Newport’s Deep Work, which shares tips on how to deeply focus on work. Nir Eyal’s Indistractable, which also suggests strategies for doing focused work, came out in 2019—just one year after Hyperfocus.
Online reviewers who appreciate the book like how actionable Bailey’s advice is. They also appreciate that he cites substantial research for his ideas. Additionally, they like his tone, which they find easy to understand and not too stuffy.
Online reviewers who dislike the book primarily feel that Bailey repeats too many ideas he’d already shared in his first book, The Productivity Project. Some also find the book elitist due to some assumptions Bailey makes about his readers—like that they have a lot of control over their own schedules.
Hyperfocus teaches you how to manage your attention partly by explaining the neuroscience of how attention works. Bailey gained this knowledge by reading scientific papers extensively—and perhaps in an attempt to simplify these papers for the layperson, he created unique words to refer to common concepts, such as “scatterfocus,” and “attentional space.” While well-intentioned, Bailey's terms don't exactly match those neuroscientists and other experts use, which sometimes makes it difficult to know what scientifically-backed concept he’s referencing when he’s using his own terminology.
Bailey’s simplification of the neuroscience of attention also manifests in imprecise (or absent) explanations of why or how these scientific phenomena work. This tendency weakens his argument: It’s not always clear how he came to a conclusion, and he often doesn’t explicitly address potential counterarguments. For example, he argues that if you develop a regular meditation practice, you’ll increase how often you deliberately direct your attention—but he never explains why that might be the case.
As discussed, many online reviewers complained that Hyperfocus was too similar to A Productivity Project—and indeed, most of Bailey’s conclusions in the first half of Hyperfocus reflect productivity techniques that may be familiar to fans of productivity books. The second half of Bailey’s book, which focuses on intentional mind-wandering and how it benefits creativity, is more unique, but it also reflects ideas in previously published texts: Notably, A Mind for Numbers shares a similar technique for accessing creativity, although it is geared towards students instead of businesspeople.
Bailey begins his book with a few introductory chapters that explain his interest in focus, his approach in the book, and several strategies his reader can use to focus better on the book itself. He then splits the book into two parts. In Part 1, Bailey describes the neuroscience of how your attention works, explains what hyperfocus is, and shares several strategies for accessing it. In Part 2, Bailey describes the benefits of scatterfocus and shares several strategies for it.
Our guide to Hyperfocus attempts to clarify some of the confusion resulting from the book’s oversimplification of the relevant neuroscience. To that end, we've replaced Bailey's unique terms with terms that are more commonly used or easier to understand. In our commentary, we also point out some of the logical inconsistencies in Bailey's arguments and offer ways to resolve them.
Sometimes, Bailey repeats ideas or clarifies an idea several chapters after he first presents it. Additionally, several actionable strategies lack a clear logical order, making them hard to follow.
Consequently, we’ve re-organized Bailey’s ideas to aid the flow of logic and make topics easier to find. Here’s a mapping of the parts of this guide to the chapters of the book:
In Part 1, we’ll explain why your biology makes it so hard to manage your attention and focus in the modern world. We’ll then explain how to hyperfocus, complete with strategies to use at each stage to make hyperfocusing easier.
In Part 2, we’ll share why Bailey considers deliberately managing your attention through scatterfocus, or intentional mind-wandering, an essential life skill. You’ll learn how it can increase your energy levels and how managing what you pay attention to and how you direct your attention through scatterfocus can increase your creativity.
Throughout our guide, we’ll share how Bailey’s ideas compare to accepted neuroscience, providing greater background information to clarify why Bailey’s strategies work. We’ll also compare Bailey’s techniques to methods from other productivity experts, like Nir Eyal and Cal Newport, supplementing his strategies when needed so that you can direct your attention even more effectively.
In a world full of distractions, most modern-day knowledge workers believe that the secret to productivity lies in your ability to manage your time.
In 2018’s Hyperfocus, productivity expert Chris Bailey presents an alternate hypothesis: The key to becoming the most productive, creative version of yourself lies not in managing your time but in managing your attention.
When you deliberately manage your attention, you direct your attention to the most impactful tasks and activities. You also become better able to ignore modern-day distractions, so you’re more engaged in these activities—which has several benefits. For example, if you’re more engaged in a work task, you can complete it more efficiently. Being more engaged at the dinner table tends to improve your relationships with your family. Deliberately managing your attention also allows you to choose when not to focus on a specific task and let your mind wander instead. As we’ll see, letting your mind wander also has a host of benefits—such as increased creativity and greater energy.
But how, exactly, do you deliberately manage your attention?
In this guide, you’ll first learn about your biological programming: What do humans do, and why doesn’t it work in the modern world?
Then, you’ll learn how to work around these biological limitations and deliberately manage your attention in two main ways. First, you’ll learn how to deliberately direct your attention to a particular task to maximize your productivity. Then, you’ll learn how to stop focusing on a specific task and intentionally mind-wander so that you can access the several benefits of mind-wandering, including increased creativity.
Due to advancements in industry and technology, our world has evolved rapidly over the last several decades. Unfortunately, our brains have not. The fundamental functioning of your brain hasn’t changed since ancient times. Your brain is biologically optimized for a world that no longer exists.
So at best, your brain is not biologically equipped to handle the demands of the modern world as well as it could. At worst, the neurobiological phenomena that kept us alive as cavemen hinder our ability to succeed today by actively preventing us from focusing.
In this section, we’ll discuss the three biological tendencies that Bailey argues make our brains ill-prepared for the demands of the modern world.
Tendency #1: We default to autopilot mode.
Tendency #2: We can only pay attention to a limited amount of information.
Tendency #3: We love to task-shift.
Bailey explains that, by default, our brains expend our attention in autopilot mode: Instead of choosing what to focus on in advance, we react to the external triggers that pique our interest. Bailey notes that we’re especially prone to reacting to anything new, potentially dangerous, or gratifying. (Shortform note: Ben Parr, the author of Captivology: The Science of Capturing People’s Attention, also suggests that you may automatically react to things based on your personal associations with them.)
One reason autopilot mode kept us alive in ancient times is that it kept us alert to changes in our environment. In primitive times, the quicker we noticed new changes in our environment, the quicker we noticed their potential effect: bad, good, or neutral. The quicker we noticed danger, the quicker we could react to and avoid it. And the quicker we noticed gratifying things, the faster we could take advantage of them—for example, we could eat the delicious berries before the birds plucked them off.
(Shortform note: Another reason that autopilot mode kept us alive in ancient times may be because, as Switch notes, it allows us to conserve energy. When you make familiar choices on autopilot, you don’t expend any energy on decision-making. So in ancient times, autopilot mode may have let us conserve our hard-won energy for the tasks that truly needed them. As we’ll see in Chapter 4, Bailey does imply that our brains are prone to distraction because we’re wired to conserve energy—but he never explicitly connects our brains’ desire for energy to our tendency to default to autopilot mode.)
Autopilot mode remains useful in the modern day. As Bailey notes, nearly 40% of our actions rely on habits. Habits are an example of autopilot mode: We react automatically to specific triggers.
(Shortform note: Bailey doesn’t explicitly mention that autopilot mode is also what makes bad habits so difficult to break—we perform them automatically without stopping to think about whether they’re good for us.)
Similarly, autopilot mode lets us perform simpler cognitive tasks with ease. Thanks to autopilot mode, clearing the table is a five-minute endeavor instead of an exercise in intense decision-making about which dish to clear first. (Shortform note: In Deep Work, author Cal Newport calls non-demanding cognitive tasks “shallow work.” However, unlike Bailey, he adds that shallow work tasks don’t create much value and anyone can do them.)
However, autopilot mode has one major drawback: It makes us prone to distraction.
As mentioned, in autopilot, you automatically react to anything new, potentially dangerous, or gratifying. This inclination makes us susceptible to distraction because usually, the thing we’re trying to focus on is not as new, gratifying, or potentially dangerous as other things in the room. (Shortform note: In Chapter 4, Bailey recommends several strategies to make the thing you need to focus on the most stimulating thing in the room, but all of his strategies revolve around limiting potential distractions. Alternatively, make what you need to focus on newer, more gratifying, or more potentially dangerous. For example, if you’re working on a book, treat yourself to a chocolate every time you finish a chapter. This can convince your brain that writing the book is more gratifying than it really is because it gets you chocolate.)
Furthermore, many modern-day companies have specifically designed their products to take advantage of our innate tendency to focus on new, gratifying, and potentially dangerous things. So it’s not just that you’re biologically inclined to get distracted—it’s also that the potential distractions you encounter every day are specifically designed to be as tempting as humanly possible. (Shortform note: Digital Minimalism delves further into this, explaining how companies design digital tools to be addictive—such as by providing inconsistent positive reinforcement, causing you to continue the behavior more than if you experienced reinforcement consistently.)
Even if you do manage to resist these companies’ products, your own thoughts might distract you from your original objective. As Bailey notes, one feature of being human is that our minds wander 47% of the time. So if they happen to alight on a thought that fits any of the distraction criteria (new, potentially dangerous, or gratifying), you’ll automatically start to focus on that instead. (Shortform note: The statistic that our minds wander 47% of the time is based on self-reported data. But self-reported data on mind-wandering is not ideal given that humans tend to be bad at noticing where their mind goes. One study on mind-wandering controversially tried to get around this issue by studying masters of Vipassana mindfulness meditation, which supposedly improves your ability to notice your thoughts.)
Can You Make Hyperfocus a Habit?
In Deep Work, Newport argues that you can use your brain’s tendency to default to autopilot mode to your advantage: When you turn deep work—focused, uninterrupted, intense work on a task—into a habit, your brain requires less willpower to ignore distractions and do deep work because you’ve trained it to do deep work on autopilot mode.
As we’ll see, Bailey also discusses the importance of regularly performing focused work on a task. But while he does say that regularly performing focused work on a task makes it easier to start the work and ignore distractions, he never argues that you can turn it into a habit you automatically default to.
Another reason your brain isn’t optimized for the modern world is that you can only pay attention to a limited amount of information. This has to do with how attention works in your brain.
When you pay attention to a task, it occupies some portion of your working memory. (Bailey refers to your working memory as your “attentional space.”) Working memory holds information that your mind is actively processing. Imagine it as your brain’s temporary storage solution: When your friend tells you their new phone number, you hold those digits in your working memory long enough to type them into your phone.
Working memory is essential to focus because focusing on a task requires you to remember information long enough to act on it. If you didn’t have a working memory, you wouldn’t be able to have a conversation: By the time someone reached the end of their sentence, you’d have forgotten what they said at its beginning, so you wouldn’t be able to understand their meaning.
The amount of working memory a task occupies depends on its complexity: The more complex a task, the more working memory it requires.
But your working memory can only hold so much information at a time. As Bailey notes, our conscious brains are incapable of processing too much information: Of the 11 million bits of information our brains process every second, our conscious brains can only process 40 of them. Therefore, you can only pay attention to the things that fit in your working memory.
Working memory capacity refers to the amount of information your working memory can hold simultaneously.
The Difference Between Working Memory and Short-Term Memory
Bailey’s explanation of attentional space is a little confusing, primarily due to his usage of the terms “mental scratchpad,” short-term memory, and working memory. He uses “mental scratchpad” to refer to both short-term and working memory, which implies that he’s using the terms interchangeably. But he then discusses how you hold something in your short-term memory after you focus on it, which implies that they are different.
Compounding this confusion, the distinctions between the terms “short-term memory” and “working memory” are unclear in the academic field in general. Some researchers use the terms synonymously, but others don’t: Working memory usually “refers to structures and processes used for temporarily storing and manipulating information,” while short-term memory is “the capacity for holding, but not manipulating, a small amount of information in mind in an active, readily available state for a short period of time.”
In our guide, we’ve exclusively used the term working memory for several reasons. First, Bailey refers most often to working memory. More importantly, the exact distinctions between working memory and short-term memory are tangential to his main point, which is that you can only pay attention to a limited amount of information at one time.
So exactly how much information can you pay attention to simultaneously?
Studies suggest that the average person can hold only four bits of information in their working memory—and the maximum is seven. (Shortform note: The exact amount of information that fits in your working memory may depend on the type—studies suggest that people can hold seven digits but only five words.) Memorization techniques like chunking use this knowledge to their advantage: Remembering a list of 15 items is easier if you group it into three groups of five. (Shortform note: If you use this idea to memorize a random string of numbers, like Moonwalking with Einstein recommends, you might call it “arbitrary chunking,” since you arbitrarily impose the grouping and artificially create a unifying meaning for each chunk of numbers.)
Bailey argues that this cognitive limitation also explains why you often see groups of up to seven—like the days of the week—but rarely see groups beyond that. (Shortform note: A clear exception is groups of 12, like the months of the year, the 12 Apostles, or the 12 grades in school.)
As for tasks, Bailey identifies three general patterns of tasks you can focus on comfortably. (Shortform note: These patterns might not work for everybody: Research suggests that your working memory capacity peaks at young adulthood and declines as you age. Similarly, mental illnesses like schizophrenia and depression are associated with your working memory capacity.)
#1: You can focus on multiple simple tasks.
Bailey explains that many tasks are automatic and require little to no active intervention. Such tasks use very little working memory, partly because you do them mostly automatically. You likely expend some cognitive energy to begin these tasks, and there may be moments mid-task when the task demands more of your attention. But generally speaking, your brain reverts to autopilot mode once you get going. For example, beginning your skin care regimen might require conscious effort. If you put your lotion on the wrong shelf, you’ll focus on finding it. But otherwise, your skincare regimen likely doesn’t demand much conscious thought.
Since these tasks require so little attention, they’re the only kind you can successfully multitask: You can easily focus on them simultaneously.
#2: You can focus on one complex task and one simple task.
Some tasks don’t require as much attention as writing a term paper, but they require more attention than drinking coffee. You can combine these tasks with a simpler task.
This is why you can listen to the radio as you get ready for work in the morning. You mostly pay attention to getting dressed and eating breakfast (the more complex tasks), but you direct a small portion of your attention to the radio (the simpler task).
What Counts as a Simple Task
Bailey refers to simple tasks as “habitual tasks,” which he defines as tasks that require “little mental intervention.” This seems self-explanatory, but his examples are somewhat confusing. For example, he defines grocery shopping as a habitual task. If you’re following a list, shopping for groceries requires little mental intervention. But if you decide what you want to buy while you’re at the store, shopping for groceries likely requires considerable mental intervention.
Additionally, as we’ll learn later, the better you get at a task, the less working memory it takes up. So buying groceries likely requires little mental intervention if you’ve been to the same store 100 times. But if you’re new to grocery shopping—or shopping in a new store where you don’t know the layout—the added layer of difficulty means the task takes up more of your working memory.
The conclusion is likely that there is no universal definition of a simple task—how much working memory a task uses up differs based both on who does the task and how they do the task.
#3: You can focus on one complex task.
Some complex tasks, like writing a term paper, are cognitively demanding and require focus. As such, they take up most of our working memory—but the exact amount varies moment to moment as you move through the task. So even when you’re performing a cognitively demanding task, you should have some working memory to spare.
Bailey states that having this spare working memory is beneficial for the following reasons:
(Shortform note: Having spare working memory may not be as helpful if you suffer from anxiety. Research suggests that since anxiety is one of the things your working memory pays attention to, the more working memory you have available, the more attention you can pay to anxious thoughts—but if you don’t have the working memory available, you don’t have any room to pay attention to anxious thoughts. This may also explain why music sometimes drowns out anxious thoughts—the music might literally crowd your anxious thoughts out of your working memory. If you suffer from anxiety, consider listening to music while you work, like this song proven to reduce your anxiety levels.)
How Parallel and Serial Processing Affect What You Can Pay Attention to
A final reason you’re only able to pay attention to a finite number of things—and why that number changes based on the complexity of your task—may have to do with parallel and serial processing.
When you process information serially, you process one stimulus at a time. Conversely, parallel processing is your brain’s ability to process different stimuli simultaneously—it explains why you both feel the cup and taste the coffee as you drink your java. You often process information in parallel. However, psychologists explain that this ability is limited by “serial bottlenecks”: You're only able to process some stimuli serially.
So how, exactly, does the fact that you can only pay attention to a finite number of things limit your success in the modern world? Although Bailey doesn’t say it explicitly, we can infer that the problem stems from the fact that most people aren’t aware of their limited working memory capacity. Faced with countless attractive modern stimuli, we try to take it all in simultaneously: We watch TV as we check our social media and chat with our friends. But when you try to focus on too much information, the various activities don’t fit into your working memory, and they start to crowd each other out.
Bailey refers to this state as “attention overload.” When you stop holding the information in your working memory, you stop paying attention to it and forget about it. Sometimes, the thing you forget is the thing you were trying to do in the first place. If you’ve ever opened the refrigerator and forgotten why you did so, you may have fallen victim to attention overload.
(Shortform note: Bailey’s description of “attention overload” sounds similar to the more widely used “information overload,” but they describe slightly different concepts. Attention overload exclusively describes your mental state when you try to take in too much information. Information overload can describe this mental state, but it’s also used to refer to the state of the world—in other words, the amount of information in the world you could be paying attention to.)
Bailey suggests another reason our brains are ill-prepared for modern-day success: We love to task-shift.
When people say they are multitasking at work, they’re usually referring to task-shifting. Multitasking complex tasks is biologically impossible: Our working memory is only large enough to fit a single complex task. What most people think of as multitasking is actually task-shifting: You’re not focusing on multiple cognitively demanding tasks simultaneously but switching your attention rapidly between them. (Shortform note: One article notes that people use the term multitasking to refer to three separate activities: classic multitasking (performing multiple tasks at the same time), rapid task switching (doing one task right after another), and interrupted task switching (switching between tasks before completing either). Bailey’s definition of task-shifting is closest to interrupted task switching, which the article explains is the most distracting way to multitask.)
Bailey suggests that people love task-shifting for logical reasons. As previously noted, our ability to quickly notice new changes in our environment kept us alive in ancient times: The quicker we noticed something new, the quicker we could assess whether it was a potential threat and act on it. Therefore, Bailey argues, our brains evolved a “novelty bias”: They release dopamine whenever we do something new. So in modern times, whenever you switch to a new task under the guise of multitasking, you receive a hit of dopamine. These hits of dopamine cause task-shifting to feel good and productive, so people love it. (Shortform note: Our novelty bias may also explain why your brain is more likely to remember new things. Moonwalking with Einstein suggests using this to your advantage by imagining things you want to remember in new, novel ways.)
This love of task-shifting negatively affects modern-day success because task-shifting doesn’t work: Research shows that task-shifting makes individual tasks take 50% longer. (Shortform note: Even worse, in Brain Rules, John Medina notes that multitaskers make as many as 50% more errors.)
But why, exactly, does task-shifting negatively impact productivity? We’ve already seen one reason: When you’re paying attention to too many things, you risk overloading your attention. Bailey suggests two more reasons based on your brain’s biology.
#1: You don’t encode your memories properly.
Bailey explains that when you’re focused on a task, you use your hippocampus—the brain region responsible for storing and recalling memories. But when you multitask and task-shift, you use your basal ganglia. The basal ganglia is the brain region responsible for performing habits and learning skills.
Since you’re not using the brain area devoted to memory, you can’t encode what you’re doing properly, so you don’t remember it as well. Bailey argues that this harms productivity because you don’t remember your mistakes. If you don’t remember the mistakes you made on a task the first time, you’re far more likely to make those same mistakes again.
(Shortform note: Make It Stick explains further exactly how different brain regions control different types of tasks. The more you practice a skill, the stronger and faster the brain signals become to perform that skill. When it becomes a habit, your brain links the motor skill with the cognitive action so that they fire off simultaneously and subconsciously. So instead of using the hippocampus, which consolidates new information and memories, your brain recodes the habit in the basal ganglia, where other subconscious acts originate.)
#2: Your brain doesn’t forget tasks quickly.
Bailey explains that when you stop doing a task, you don’t forget it immediately. Rather, tasks leave behind mental residue. In other words, they remain in your working memory for some time before they eventually disappear. So if you stop doing Task A and immediately move onto Task B, you can’t totally focus on Task B. Task A still occupies some portion of your working memory.
When you constantly shift between the same tasks, you never stop doing any one of them long enough for its mental residue to completely dissolve. Since you’re always thinking about the last task you stopped doing, you’re never able to focus fully on a single task—which makes completing these tasks take longer.
In this way, task-shifting negatively impacts productivity.
(Shortform note: In Deep Work, Newport recommends that you reduce this mental residue when writing emails by articulating all the essential information. He argues that doing so closes the mental loop and prevents mental residue from accumulating. If true, closing the mental loop on other tasks should eliminate or reduce the mental residue they leave behind. Complete tasks before moving on from them, and close the mental loop by asking yourself: Have I done everything I can do right now to complete this task?)
In the previous section, you learned the biological reasons you struggle to succeed in the modern world.
In this section, you’ll discover exactly how these struggles manifest in your day-to-day life by learning how to understand the current state of your attention. Using Bailey’s techniques, you’ll realize how little time you spend deliberately directing your attention—and the insignificance of the tasks that take up your time when you spend most of your day in autopilot mode. You’ll also discover what important tasks you could be spending more time on if you deliberately directed your attention.
Moreover, Bailey argues, just by practicing meta-awareness—awareness of your attention—you become better at deliberately directing where your attention goes. This also improves your productivity: You notice more quickly when you’re distracted and thus can refocus faster. (Shortform note: Don’t confuse the term “meta-awareness” with “metacognition,” which refers to thinking about thinking, and is more commonly used in discussions about learning. You may also recognize the term as the blue hat Edward de Bono describes in Six Thinking Hats.)
In this section, we’ll review the two main strategies Bailey suggests for tracking your attention: the attention management matrix and the attention alarm.
Bailey suggests that you create an attention management matrix to determine the tasks worthy of your attention. By sorting your tasks, you'll gain a clear picture of how you're spending your time and where you could be more efficient.
Use the matrix to sort your tasks into four quadrants:
Quadrant 1: Tasks That Are Unnecessary
These tasks are both unproductive and unenjoyable (which Bailey calls unattractive). You probably perform tasks that are unnecessary—like sorting your pen drawer—when you’re avoiding something else you should be doing.
Quadrant 2: Tasks That Are Distracting
These tasks are enjoyable (which Bailey calls attractive) but unproductive. These are the time sucks to watch out for the most—like smartphone games.
Quadrant 3: Tasks That Are Necessary
These tasks are productive but unenjoyable. These are the tasks you have to force yourself to do, like cleaning the kitchen or sitting through a boring meeting.
Quadrant 4: Tasks That Are Meaningful
Tasks that are meaningful, which Bailey calls “purposeful work,” are both productive and enjoyable. These tasks help you achieve your broader purpose in life.
You may only have a few meaningful work tasks, but they are most connected to your purpose. Bailey notes that they’re also usually difficult, and you may be better at them than most other people, so it’s a good use of your time to focus on them.
The Pareto Principle: Focus on Meaningful Tasks
More specifically, Quadrant 4 tasks are what we might call “Pareto Principle tasks.” The Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule, states that 80% of your outcomes come from 20% of the work you do. So focus on the 20% of your tasks that get you 80% of your results.
For example, if you’re a doctor, your Pareto Principle tasks might be to diagnose and treat patients. Filling out their medical charts—although connected to your broader purpose of helping people—likely falls under necessary work.
When you’ve finished, review your matrix. If you spend most of your day doing Quadrant 1 or 2 tasks, you’re likely operating mostly on autopilot. If you spend most of your day doing Quadrant 3 or 4 tasks, you likely already have some practice managing your attention deliberately.
In this way, creating this matrix shows you how well you currently manage your attention and how much you could improve. It also clarifies what Quadrant 4 tasks you should be focusing on. We’ll return to this in Step 1 of Hyperfocus.
(Shortform note: Bailey doesn’t mention that his attention management matrix is extremely similar to a time management tool commonly known as the Eisenhower matrix. Originally developed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, it was popularized by Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It’s also the basis of Covey’s First Things First. The Eisenhower matrix splits tasks into four quadrants based on their urgency and importance. In other words, tasks can be urgent and important, urgent and not important, not urgent but important, or neither urgent nor important.)
Another way to understand where your awareness goes is to set an attention alarm, which Bailey refers to as an “hourly awareness chime.”
To do this, set an alarm on your phone to go off every hour. When it rings, note where your attention is at that moment. Specifically, Bailey recommends asking yourself questions like: What am I doing right now? Is this what I want to be working on?
If the alarm annoys you, Bailey recommends an alternative: Note where your attention is at natural breaks in your day, like when you leave your desk.
Why set an attention alarm? Bailey posits that it’s the easiest way to implement the habit of tracking your attention. Also, tracking your attention improves the quality of your attention, which Bailey argues depends on three factors.
Factor #1: You can assess the quality of your attention based on how long you can focus: The longer you can focus on a single thing, the higher the quality of your focus. When you track your attention, you notice potential distractions and defend against them in advance—so you focus for longer.
Factor #2: You can assess the quality of your attention based on how long it takes you to notice that your mind has wandered. When you track your attention, you notice your mind has wandered more quickly and so you refocus faster.
Factor #3: You can assess the quality of your attention based on how frequently you deliberately direct your attention. Bailey argues that tracking your attention improves this. For example, in Chapter 4, Bailey argues that if you track how often you check your email, you’ll notice how much it disrupts you and implement measures to check it less.
(Shortform note: The idea of assessing the quality of your attention based on these three factors appears unique to Bailey. A more common way psychologists assess how well you pay attention is the Stroop test, which presents words like red or green in colored text, asks you to name the color of the text, and measures how long it takes you. (For example, you would see the word “red” in green text, and the psychologist would measure how long it took you to say “green.”))
Why Time-Tracking Software Doesn’t Count as an Attention Alarm
If you spend most of your day on your computer, you might skip setting an attention alarm and use time-tracking software instead. After all, apps like RescueTime log exactly what you do and when you do it.
But you experience the benefits of tracking your attention when you track it in the moment—you notice your mind wandering so you refocus, and you notice potential distractions before they distract you. You can’t notice these things if you wait until the end of the day or week to see where your attention went.
And while the insights you gain from time-tracking software may prompt you to take more measures to deliberately direct your attention, it’s likely more powerful to notice that you’re distracted when you’re distracted rather than noticing after you become distracted. So while time-tracking software can be useful, use it in conjunction with the attention alarm rather than in place of the attention alarm.
Make tracking your attention a lifelong practice. No matter how good you get at deliberately managing your attention, you will always face potential distractions, and your mind will always wander—so you’ll always experience the benefits of tracking your attention. Bailey adds that by tracking your attention, you’ll see how your ability to focus improves over time, which is a rewarding experience.
(Shortform note: You can only track how your focus improves over time if you remember how well you focus at various stages of your life. But Bailey doesn’t suggest writing down any of the answers to the questions you ask when your attention alarm rings—which is interesting, given that he discusses extensively the limitations of human memory. Dedicate a notebook to tracking your attention to accurately track your progress.)
Bailey suggests a similar albeit shorter-term strategy in Chapter 0.5: Spend a few days tracking when and why you reach for your phone. The patterns that emerge will give you insight into what tasks you least like doing and the emotional state you’re in when you reach for your phone. Use this information to create and implement strategies to reach for your phone less. (Shortform note: Newport suggests a version of this in Digital Minimalism, when he recommends limiting your access to technology for 30 days. This “digital declutter” reveals both the current effects of various technologies on your life and the true consequences of not using them.)
Now that you understand the biological limitations on your attention and why deliberately directing your attention is necessary, you’ll learn how to work with the biology of your brain to deliberately direct your attention for maximum productivity.
Bailey calls this method “hyperfocus.” In this section, we’ll first define what hyperfocus is and why it matters. We’ll then present the five stages of hyperfocus before elaborating on the first two.
Bailey suggests that you can be your most productive self through hyperfocus.
In hyperfocus, you direct your focus on a single task.
Shortform’s Definition of Hyperfocus
Bailey’s description of hyperfocus is contradictory. Initially, he describes hyperfocus as a state in which a single task “fills your attentional space completely.” (As you may recall, “attentional space” is Bailey’s term for working memory capacity.) But later in the same chapter, he espouses many benefits of hyperfocus that are only possible because you “have some attentional space to spare” during hyperfocus.
Bailey doesn’t directly address this apparent contradiction in his definition of “hyperfocus,” but we can infer that in some moments of hyperfocus, a single task fills up all your working memory capacity, while in others, the task takes up most of your working memory capacity but leaves some of it free. For clarity, we’ve defined hyperfocus based on what Bailey states is its “most important aspect”—the fact that you’re focused on a single task.
By directing your focus on a single task, you accept that your working memory capacity is limited and work within its confines. This allows you to avoid the biological attention traps we’ve discussed and maximize your productivity. By actively directing your focus, you deliberately direct your attention and don’t work in autopilot mode. Focusing on a single task ensures the task fits comfortably within your working memory capacity. As such, you don’t overload your attention. Instead, you experience the benefits of having spare working memory: You are better able to defend against distractions, you refocus your attention faster when your mind wanders, and you make better decisions about your task. In other words, you become less distractible, and you work more efficiently. You also avoid the traps of multitasking: Unlike when you multitask, you use your brain’s hippocampus instead of the basal ganglia, so you remember all the mistakes you made and don’t make them again—which improves your efficiency.
Why You Should Learn About Single-Tasking
All of the benefits Bailey spouts about hyperfocus have been well-documented—notably in Deep Work, which describes extensively the dangers of distractions and multitasking and how single-tasking can make you more efficient. However, most authors discuss the benefits of single-tasking instead of hyperfocus. Indeed, you could reasonably argue that they’re exactly the same thing.
So why do we need a whole book about focusing on one task? The obvious response, which Bailey addresses and which the spate of productivity books in recent years suggests, is that we live in a world full of more distractions than ever before, so we need more techniques to avoid those distractions.
Another potential response is that teaching people how to focus is especially important for younger generations, who’ve only ever lived in worlds inundated with technology and thus are terrible at focusing. But this may not be true: Younger generations may be both capable of focusing and also better at filtering out non-essential information than their predecessors.
Hyperfocus also maximizes your productivity because it helps you achieve a “flow state.” First defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, flow states occur when we’re so occupied by what we’re doing that we forget that time is passing. Flow states occur when a task meets the ideal level of difficulty, pushing your cognitive limits just enough to be challenging but not so much so that it’s distracting. And, as Bailey notes, we’re far more likely to experience flow if we are focused on a single task. (Shortform note: Most of us think about flow states when we’re trying to achieve a task, but Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow also discusses how to achieve flow states in your relationships. In fact, having friendships and romantic relationships with flow is essential to your happiness.)
Bailey argues that hyperfocus is especially beneficial for busy people: The busier you are, the more you need to hyperfocus because it becomes even more critical to prioritize the correct tasks and not waste time on low-impact tasks.
(Shortform note: In The Busy Trap, author Tim Kreider argues that we like being busy because it reassures us that our lives are filled with meaning. In contrast, both Bailey and Essentialism suggest that we can find more meaning by doing fewer activities but doing them better.)
Crucially, despite its intense name and the fact that Bailey mostly describes how to hyperfocus at work, hyperfocus is essential in your personal life, too. You can hyperfocus just as well on a budget report as you can on a trip to the zoo with your kids. (Shortform note: In Deep Work, Newport makes a similar point about deep work, which he defines as any task you do that’s aligned with and focused on your values. You can hyperfocus on spending time with your children, and spending time with your children can count as deep work.)
Bailey highlights how hyperfocusing on conversations improves your relationships, going so far as to posit that “love is nothing more than sharing quality attention with someone.”
(Shortform note: Hyperfocus may help your relationships because we’re just as distracted at home as we are at work. Looking at your phone while you’re with someone has become so prevalent there’s a word for it: phubbing, an amalgamation of phone and snubbing. But phubbing decreases the quality of your relationships—one study found that just having a phone nearby during a conversation reduced the trust and empathy participants felt from and towards one another.)
Bailey explains that there are four steps to hyperfocus.
(Shortform note: Bailey states that he modeled the stages of hyperfocus off of the scientifically accepted states of focus, but he doesn’t provide any evidence to support this and we were unable to find external research on it.)
After describing Step 1, Bailey presents several strategies on “starting a hyperfocus ritual.” Since most of these strategies involve choosing when and how long to hyperfocus, we’ve included these strategies as Step 0.
In our guide, we’ll also describe the various strategies Bailey presents in connection to each stage of hyperfocus. Bailey doesn’t always do this, as we’ll see; sometimes, he explicitly ties a strategy to a particular stage of hyperfocus, but more often, he discusses the importance of various techniques for hyperfocus without explicitly explaining which stage of hyperfocus it improves. In this way, Bailey presents a series of recommendations for hyperfocus that are sometimes hard to follow because they aren’t always presented in the most logical order. We’ve tied Bailey’s strategies to individual stages of hyperfocus to make his ideas easier to implement.
In order to hyperfocus, you must first plan when and for how long you will hyperfocus. As Bailey explains, planning ahead is a critical element of ensuring that hyperfocus works with not just your biology but also your external reality.
Bailey argues that your brain feels aversion to the idea of focusing on only one thing for a prolonged period. As you’ll see, planning your hyperfocus sessions in advance helps reduce this aversion.
(Shortform note: Why does your brain feel averse to the idea of focusing on one thing for a prolonged period? Bailey never makes this explicit, but he implies one reason we’ll elaborate on in our discussion of Chapter 4: Hard tasks require mental energy, which your brain wants to conserve. Neuroscientists have also proposed another theory known as the “process model”: Your brain does hard tasks only because it wants a reward—and if it isn’t confident it’ll receive a reward, it loses motivation to do the hard task.)
Furthermore, planning ahead allows you to work around external factors that affect your particular situation. For example, hyperfocusing at dinner with your family is more difficult if you’re going through a particularly busy time at work and need to be available for your coworkers after-hours.
(Shortform note: By scheduling when you’ll hyperfocus in advance, you also ensure that it remains a priority. As First Things First recommends, schedule your most important tasks every week before filling the extra space with your less crucial tasks.)
So for how long and when should you hyperfocus?
Choosing how long to focus is simple. Bailey suggests starting small: Pick a length of time that feels comfortable. It shouldn’t be too short, but it shouldn’t be too long, either. (Shortform note: If you have trouble with this, imagine that you’re training for a marathon. You wouldn’t immediately try running 26.2 miles—you’d run just a little bit longer than you normally would then slowly increase the time. Treat your cognitive endurance in the same way.)
Additionally, Bailey explains, hyperfocus works best as a daily habit. So select a duration that won’t put you off from hyperfocusing more tomorrow. As you get used to hyperfocusing, you’ll become focusing for longer periods of time, and the lengths of your hyperfocus sessions will naturally increase. (That said, Bailey also cautions against overdoing it: If you’ve been hyperfocusing regularly for a few weeks but suddenly feel intensely averse to hyperfocus, give yourself a break.)
(Shortform note: In The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle explains one reason why consistency is essential: neurologically speaking, skill development depends on the growth of myelin, the insulation around our neural circuits, and repetition increases this myelin—strengthening the neural connection. But when we let our practice lapse, the myelin decreases. So inconsistency worsens the connection and our ability to do the skill (in this case, hyperfocus).)
Bailey also recommends setting a timer to help keep you on track. Don’t feel obligated to stop when it rings if you’re in the zone. (Shortform note: While this is a useful strategy when you first start hyperfocusing, you might find it unnecessarily distracting as you continue hyperfocusing—especially if you start regularly achieving flow.)
Choosing when to focus is slightly more complicated, but it still involves working with both your biology and your external realities. Specifically, Bailey suggests basing your decision on three main constraints: your schedule, your energy levels, and your tasks.
Hyperfocus requires time and energy, neither of which are unlimited resources. (Shortform note: If you’re regularly low on energy, you may want to exercise more. Exercising regularly can improve your memory and thinking, which may help you focus.) One way to ensure you have both available during your hyperfocus is to schedule your hyperfocus sessions around your other personal and work commitments. For example, you might schedule fewer hyperfocus sessions during a busy holiday season. (Shortform note: Indistractable takes the idea of scheduling when you’ll focus one step further: Eyal recommends “timeboxing,” where you split up your entire day into blocks (or boxes) of time, all of which are allocated to specific activities—not just the times you focus.)
Alternatively, maximize your productivity by scheduling your hyperfocus sessions when you have the most energy. To discover what these times are, Bailey recommends keeping track of your energy levels for a few weeks. (Shortform note: Bailey calls the time you have the most energy your “Biological Prime Time,” a concept he described in his first book, The Productivity Project. To discover his, Bailey spent three weeks charting his energy levels hourly from 6 A.M. to 9 P.M. He also cut stimulants like alcohol and caffeine, varied his workout times, consumed little sugar, and woke up without an alarm.)
He also recommends manipulating your energy levels by consuming caffeine, which increases focus, endurance, and performance on many cognitive tasks. Specifically, 200 milligrams of caffeine (about one and a half cups of coffee) will give you the maximum benefits—after that, you start to get diminishing returns, and more than 400 milligrams a day will stress you out. However, caffeine also causes energy crashes—so, he recommends, be strategic about when you consume caffeine: Maximize caffeine’s benefits by consuming it just before you hyperfocus instead of just after you wake up.
(Shortform note: Bailey notes that everybody reacts differently to coffee, so take your own reaction into account. In fact, coffee has several other benefits in varying amounts. How Not to Die describes how people who had a high risk of liver disease and drank more than two cups of coffee daily showed less than half the risk of chronic liver problems, while people who drink six cups of coffee daily were 80% less likely to commit suicide. Adjust your coffee intake based on these factors as well.)
Another option is to schedule your hyperfocus sessions based on the tasks you need to accomplish. If you have a particularly cognitive demanding task that needs attention, like a presentation, that's a good time to hyperfocus.
Scheduling cognitively demanding tasks in advance can also reduce the amount of mental residue they leave behind. You may recall that you don’t stop thinking about a task the minute you stop doing it. All tasks leave behind some mental residue. However, Bailey notes that there are two ways to reduce this mental residue—both of which are easier if you schedule your tasks in advance.
First, set a strict deadline. The more time you have to complete a task, the more you think about how you’ll complete the task. Even after you select a method, the other options you paid initial attention to leave behind some mental residue—so you continue to think about them, wondering if you selected the best possible option. But when you have a strict deadline, you only consider the options you can complete within the time limit. The fewer options you consider, the less mental residue a task leaves behind: You don’t continue thinking about how to complete a task better if you never started thinking about it in the first place.
(Shortform note: Bailey explains that strict deadlines make switching between tasks easier, but he doesn't specify whether self-imposed deadlines have the same effect. They probably don't if you always change the deadline. If you create your own deadline, consider taking another action that limits further editing of the project, like emailing it to your boss, so that you can reduce the mental residue left behind.)
Second, space out your tasks. If you wait long enough, the mental residue a task leaves behind will naturally dissipate, and you’ll forget about it. So Bailey recommends taking a break between cognitively complex tasks. This allows you to focus fully on your next task without any mental residue from your previous task to distract you. (Shortform note: Can’t space out your tasks? If you must switch tasks, write down what you're doing and what you'll do when you refocus on that task. This reassures your brain that you’ll come back to the task and allows it to release any residue from the task.)
(Shortform note: If you schedule your hyperfocus sessions based on what you need to accomplish, you must realistically estimate how long each task will take—but most of us are bad at this. Improve your estimates by discovering the percentage by which you underestimate task length and adjusting accordingly. To do so, divide the time you spend on a task by the time you expected to spend on a task.)
Bailey also recommends hyperfocusing on the tasks you don’t want to do, since you’re most likely to get distracted and procrastinate when doing them. If you think you’re too busy to focus on a particular task, ask yourself: Would I be too busy to do (something you like)? If not, chances are you’re avoiding focusing. (Shortform note: The tasks that are most cognitively demanding may also be the tasks you least want to do—Eat That Frog suggests that your most important and consequential task is the one you’re most likely to put off.)
Now that you’ve chosen when to focus, you can turn to Stage 1 of Hyperfocus: Choose What to Focus On.
In this section, we’ll first explain why choosing the right task to focus on is essential. Then, we’ll describe the types of tasks you should—and shouldn’t—focus on and present Bailey’s suggestions for selecting the most impactful tasks. Finally, we’ll discuss how setting three daily goals can help you choose what to hyperfocus on.
Bailey argues that hyperfocus is most beneficial when we choose the right task to focus on.
According to Bailey, the quality of the tasks we pay attention to determines the quality of our lives. When we focus on high-quality tasks, we perform high-quality work and have high-quality impact. When we focus on low-quality tasks, even if we perform high-quality work, we will have low-quality impact.
(Shortform note: If you’re not used to setting priorities, you might think to yourself: Why choose at all? I can get everything done. Essentialism argues that if you don’t set priorities for your own life, others will do so for you—and people often regret conforming to others’ expectations at the expense of their own goals at the end of their lives.)
Bailey suggests focusing on “complex” or cognitively demanding tasks, like preparing a presentation or helping your child decide what college to apply to. Technically, you can hyperfocus on anything you want—including habits. But Bailey cautions against this for two main reasons.
First, hyperfocus is hard. Mental energy and willpower are both finite resources. To be the most productive version of ourselves, we need to use them efficiently. But you perform habits in autopilot mode. You don’t need to think about your habits; you do them automatically. Since you don’t need that much energy to perform habits, it doesn’t make sense to hyperfocus on them. Conversely, hyperfocus requires a lot of mental energy and willpower. So you should conserve these resources for the cognitively demanding tasks that really need them.
Second, hyperfocusing on habits worsens your performance. Bailey references several studies that demonstrated that when people focused more than usual on habitual tasks, their performance on those tasks suffered. He argues that when we hyperfocus on habits, we overthink the activities that we normally do automatically. Therefore, we end up second-guessing ourselves and doing worse on the task at hand.
How Hyperfocus Can Help You Break Bad Habits
Bailey’s suggestion not to hyperfocus on habits makes sense if these habits add value to your life. But what if you’re trying to break a bad habit? Habit experts differ on the best way to do this.
Atomic Habits divides habits into four steps: A “cue” triggers a “craving” so you perform a “behavior” and receive a “reward.” To break a bad habit, you make the cue invisible, the craving unattractive, the behavior difficult, or the reward unsatisfying.
Tiny Habits suggests similar strategies, most of which involve experimenting with the behavior you substitute. Hyperfocusing during the actual process of breaking your habit may make breaking it difficult since it might increase your craving—so perhaps an alternative solution is to hyperfocus when you brainstorm how you’re going to break the habit, instead.
However, it's not enough to hyperfocus on cognitively demanding tasks. You need to pick the right tasks to focus on. A simple strategy is to hyperfocus on the meaningful tasks you pinpointed when you created your attention management matrix. But Bailey also suggests two more strategies for picking the right tasks to hyperfocus on,
Strategy #1: Consider the impact of your tasks.
Bailey recommends hyperfocusing on the tasks that will have the biggest positive impact. To evaluate this, he suggests looking at both a task’s immediate and long-term effects. Think of your task as the first in a chain reaction. When you extend the chain, that’s the real impact of your task.
For example, let’s say you set an intention to be more present with your family by turning off your phone at dinner. The first effect could be that you pay more attention to what your kids are saying at the dinner table. Since you’re focused on them, your kids feel more loved. This is the secondary effect. Your kids feel more loved, so they feel more comfortable opening up to you more about a problem they’re having at school. This is the third effect.
If we extend this chain far enough, you could see your children feeling more comfortable in their relationships as an adult or being better parents to their own children—all because you put your phone away at dinner. This is an example of a task that has outsize long-term impacts that can make the temporary stress of not checking your notifications far easier.
(Shortform note: Getting Things Done also recommends choosing your tasks based on their priority levels (although it uses a six-level model instead of a matrix). Interestingly, however, author David Allen recommends working from the bottom-up instead: Getting in control of the actions in front of you frees up your mind to think about projects, which leads to higher thinking.)
Strategy #2: Make a plan
Bailey explains that when we set even vague goals, we’re 20 - 30% more likely to achieve them than if we hadn’t set any goals at all—but when we make a plan for achieving our goals, we’re two to three times more likely to achieve them. Therefore, when you select a task to hyperfocus on, increase the likelihood you’ll complete it by creating a plan, sometimes called an “implementation intention.”
When you create an implementation intention, you plan for a behavior by assigning it a specific plan (usually a place and time). A useful formula is: When X occurs, I will do Y. This works the same way habits do: You choose to perform an action in advance. When you encounter that environment, your brain is already primed to do that action, so doing it becomes easier. (Shortform note: In fact, setting an implementation intention is one strategy Clear suggests for creating new habits in Atomic Habits. He adds that implementation intentions can be especially effective if they harness two well-known cues that trigger habits: time and place.) For example, you could set an intention to “work on your presentation.” But it’s much more powerful to say, “When I return from lunch, I will create six slides for my presentation.”
How specific you need to be varies due to several factors. Most of the time, it only needs to be specific enough so that you understand it—for example, “When I’m tired.” But if you have many tasks or a difficult task, more specificity is helpful. (Shortform note: Clear explains that this is because specificity removes the need for inspiration or motivation to kick in: all the decisions have already been made, and you just need to perform the intended action. Since more difficult tasks require more motivation, removing the need for them can be especially effective.)
It’s also crucial that you actually want to accomplish your goal. If not, setting an implementation intention isn’t as effective. (Shortform note: Prevent yourself from working on goals you’re not passionate about by learning how to set better boundaries.)
Another way to ensure that you hyperfocus on the most important tasks is to set three goals for each day. These goals are the most important things you want to accomplish that day.
When you can select only three goals for the day, you’re forced to prioritize. When you know what goals are high-priority, you know what tasks will best support those goals. These are probably the tasks most deserving of hyperfocus. You also learn what is less important, so you learn what not to focus on.
(Shortform note: If setting just three priorities seems impossibly small, consider this: According to Essentialism, the word “priority” only had a singular form for centuries. We created “priorities'' in the 1900s, insisting that we could now have many “first” things.)
In addition to helping you prioritize your tasks, setting three goals has two major benefits.
Bailey states that setting three goals is simple enough that you can do it both when you have control over your schedule and when you don’t.
(Shortform note: Why does this matter? Probably because if it’s easy to set three goals in any situation, you’re more likely to do it every day. If you develop a habit of defining three goals every day, you’ll naturally want to complete the goals and direct your attention more often in pursuit of those goals. (We’ll discuss our brain’s innate desire to complete tasks in more detail in our discussion of learning and creativity.))
On days you have unavoidable appointments, Bailey recommends adjusting your perspective on those tasks. For example, a doctor’s appointment could become an opportunity to ask important questions about your health. (Shortform note: This may also be useful if you have little control over your tasks. Even if your everyday tasks are dictated by the whims of your boss, there’s usually some aspect of them that you can anticipate and control.)
You can easily remember three goals, so you’re better able to pay attention to them. Bailey does also suggest setting three weekly goals and three daily personal goals, which totals nine, but they’re still easy to remember since they’re chunked into three.
(Shortform note: Consider creating overarching weekly goals and using daily goals to complete their component parts. For example, if your goal for the week is to plan your next vacation, your daily goals could include having a conversation with your spouse about where you’d like to go or booking a hotel reservation.)
Hyperfocus involves single-tasking for a prolonged period of time. Distractions, which Bailey defines as anything that diverts our attention from our original purpose, thwart our ability to hyperfocus. Therefore, the second step of hyperfocus is to limit distractions.
In this section, we’ll discuss just how bad we are at avoiding distractions and why we’re so bad at avoiding them. You’ll then learn how to limit both distractions you can’t control and distractions you can control.
In Chapter 4, Bailey further highlights how our biological tendencies hamper our ability to do modern-day knowledge work: They make us terrible at avoiding modern-day distractions. Bailey references several studies as evidence. One study found that when you work on a computer, you get distracted every 40 seconds. Another found that you toggle between apps on your computer 566 times each workday—both for work and non-work-related tasks. And we’ve already seen how bad task-shifting is for our productivity. (Shortform note: Your age also affects your distractibility: The older you are, the more distractible you become—especially if you’re stressed. Research indicates this may be due to the diminishing function of the locus coeruleus, a brain region that helps direct your neural activity when you’re stressed.)
As we’ve discussed, we also have a “novelty bias”: Our brains release a hit of dopamine whenever we do something new. Just as we do something new every time we switch tasks, we do something new every time we give in to a distraction—this gives you a hit of dopamine and feels good. And, as we all know, it’s hard to avoid doing things that feel good.
(Shortform note: If we like getting distracted because it feels good, then making distractions feel bad should help us avoid them. One strategy is to punish yourself when you give in to distraction: Humans find the possibility of avoiding loss (or avoiding punishment) more motivational than potential gains. For best results, punish yourself with an activity that feels immediately bad but supports your overall goals. For example, you could do five pushups for every distraction you give into.)
In Chapter 4, Bailey also implies that our brains’ desire to conserve energy may also make us prone to distraction. Your brain might resist hyperfocus because hard tasks take up a lot of energy, and it would rather do something easier and more immediately distracting—a desire that most potential distractions satisfy. Your brains’ desire for energy also explains why ignoring distractions is counterproductive: You use willpower and energy trying to ignore distractions, which exhausts you, so your brain wants to conserve even more energy and becomes even more prone to distraction.
(Shortform note: If your brain is prone to distraction because it wants to conserve energy, then the more energy you have, the less distractible you should be. Roy Baumeister posited a similar idea when he described “ego depletion,” the idea that you have a limited pool of willpower or mental resources you deplete each day. After depleting your ego, you may be able to re-energize your willpower—and thus avoid distractions more effectively—by eating sugar to re-energize your brain.)
How to Limit Distractions More Effectively
Now that you understand the true productivity cost of distractions and why you’re so bad at resisting them, you have a clearer idea of why limiting distractions is essential for prolonged focus on a single task.
But how, exactly, can you effectively limit distractions?
Bailey suggests that just knowing how often you get distracted will help you reduce these distractions: Once you know the extent of the problem, you’ll be more motivated to fix it.
Therefore, the first step to avoiding distractions effectively is to know what distractions you can and can’t control.
All of us face distractions we have no control over.
Therefore, Bailey recommends the following strategy: When you encounter a distraction you can’t control, don’t forget your original purpose. That way, you can return to your original purpose as soon as the distraction goes away. This should be easy for unenjoyable distractions, like loud colleagues. But it may be more difficult if you’re enjoying the distraction—such as if you receive a call from a loved one. In this case, Bailey recommends letting yourself enjoy the distraction but urges you to remember your original goal. (Bailey admits that given his focus on productivity, even the enjoyable distractions annoy him because he dislikes interruptions to his schedule. So this suggestion may not be as helpful if you’re more flexible and already enjoying the distraction.)
Shortform Exclusive: Other Strategies for Dealing With Distractions You Can’t Control
Bailey’s strategy makes sense at first glance. But a closer examination of his suggestions reveals two inconsistencies in his reasoning.
First, all of Bailey’s examples of distractions you can’t control are controllable to some extent. His unenjoyable examples include “office visitors, loud colleagues, and meetings.” However, you can schedule your hyperfocus sessions around meetings and office visitors or ask loud colleagues to keep it down. Similarly, Bailey lists “team lunches, calls from loved ones, and watercooler conversations“ as enjoyable distractions you can control. However, you can schedule your hyperfocus sessions around team lunches, ask loved ones not to call you at work, and not take part in watercooler conversations if you’re busy hyperfocusing.
Second, one of Bailey’s major arguments is that paying full attention to whatever you’re currently doing is a critical element of making that task or interaction meaningful. How can you do that if you’re mulling over a task in the back of your mind?
Consider the following strategies instead.
#1: Control what you can.
The fact that you can control at least some element of all of Bailey’s supposedly unavoidable distractions suggests that you can probably control some element of most distractions that seem initially unavoidable. So evaluate your distractions appropriately. You might not be able to eliminate something totally, but can you reduce its effect in some way?
For example, you might think you can’t hyperfocus regularly because your boss talks to you all the time. But Indistractable recommends “timeboxing,” or creating a schedule with blocks of time dedicated to specific activities—and author Nir Eyal suggested in our interview that you could show your boss your timeboxed schedule in advance and ask her if it’s appropriate to your task. So through creativity and collaboration, you may be able to reduce the toll of seemingly unavoidable distractions.
#2: Reschedule your hyperfocus session.
You can avoid many of Bailey’s supposedly unavoidable distractions by not scheduling your hyperfocus sessions when you expect them to happen.
But what if you begin a hyperfocus session and then encounter an unexpected distraction—such as your boss calling an impromptu meeting? If you followed Bailey’s suggestion, you’d only partly pay attention to the meeting. But you wouldn’t be as engaged as you normally were, so you wouldn’t extract as much benefit from the meeting.
Why not reschedule your hyperfocus session? This may be frustrating and initially annoying—but it’s probably better than only paying half of your attention to a potentially important task.
#3: Convince people not to bother you.
If, like Bailey, the distractions you find difficult to control mostly involve other people, convince them not to bother you during hyperfocus in the first place. One simple way to do that is to politely set boundaries—like asking your loved ones not to call you at work. Another technique is to hyperfocus consistently until it affects your reputation. Once your coworkers expect you to single-task and know that you’re rarely distracted, they may respect this part of your identity more and think twice about bothering you.
To deal with distractions you can control, Bailey recommends that you limit distractions before you start trying to hyperfocus.
This method works around your biological limitations: As we’ve seen, your brain resists hard tasks by looking for more interesting stimuli. Therefore, Bailey argues, your brain finds distractions most tempting when you’re resisting a complex task—like when you start trying to hyperfocus. So to deal with distractions after you start trying to hyperfocus is to fight a losing battle: Resisting distractions at that time requires even more willpower and energy than normal. So you’re less likely to successfully resist the distraction.
Avoid this cycle altogether by dealing with potential distractions prior to starting a hard task—in other words, before they become extra-tempting—so that you have more willpower and energy to devote to creating a more productive environment in which to work.
(Shortform note: If your brain resists hard tasks so much, then why is it able to perform them at all? The Willpower Instinct explains more: Most of us have what scientists call “one brain but two minds.” One mind caters to immediate gratification. This is the part of your brain that resists the hard tasks. The other mind delays gratification in the interest of achieving long-term goals. This is the part of your brain that resists distraction. Our prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for self-control struggles to keep us focused on the long game (or the hard task), but if we feel tired, stressed, or even mildly intoxicated, we tend to give in to immediate gratification—like distractions.)
But what specific techniques should you use?
Bailey divides his techniques based on whether you use them in distraction-free mode or reduced-distraction mode. In distraction-free mode, you remove all potential distractions and become totally unavailable to the people you work with. In this mode, you hyperfocus on your most complex tasks. In reduced-distraction mode, you work on tasks you don’t need to hyperfocus on—such as tasks that require occasional collaboration with others. Reduced-distraction mode isn’t a setup for hyperfocus; rather, the point is to limit the productivity costs of distractions.
We’ve eliminated this division for two main reasons: First, both modes involve limiting your distractions to a far greater degree than you do now—so many of the techniques are similar, if not identical. Second, Bailey’s description of distraction-free mode implies that you must have total control over both your environment and your availability to coworkers in order to hyperfocus. But having complete control over your environment isn’t feasible for most knowledge workers. For example, Bailey describes how Sevenly CEO Dale Partridge implemented “distraction-free mode” on his team: He had each employee turn on a specific lamp to indicate when they were unavailable. This technique only works if other employees can see your lamp—so Sevenly likely had an open-office plan, which is not an environment you can control. (Shortform note: Partridge was also famously pro open-office.)
Instead, we’ve combined Bailey’s methods into the various strategies you can use to limit distractions to the furthest extent possible—a strategy that will improve your ability to hyperfocus (and improve your productivity whether you’re hyperfocusing or not). After all, Bailey notes, true productivity is the ability to work on your intended goal within your personal limitations.
Bailey admits that some of these strategies seem initially annoying because they take a few extra minutes. However, he argues that this is worth it because no single strategy should take 20 minutes—the average amount of productive time a single distraction costs. (Shortform note: Atomic Habits imagines these initially annoying strategies as “decisive moments”—by making one decision, you start a chain reaction and limit the options your future self has to choose from. It describes three types: the two-minute rule, commitment devices, and one-time actions.)
Additionally, Bailey admits that following many of these strategies could negatively impact your social life at work—so weigh your productivity benefits against what would happen if you were unavailable.
To do so, realistically assess the potential impact of your unavailability. For example, If you eat lunch with your coworkers every day, they’ll probably become annoyed if you stop going every day. But if that lunch eats into your work time, reducing the number of outings is reasonable.
How to Balance Hyperfocus and Your Social Life
When you’re assessing what would happen if you were unavailable, don’t forget about the second- and third-order consequences. For example, deliberately reducing your interactions with your gossipy coworker might have immediate productivity benefits. But if that’s the main way you stay in touch with office happenings, you might miss crucial information—like rumors of potential layoffs that make you remind your boss of your recent contributions.
If you’re worried hyperfocusing will have too big an impact on your social life, think about how to incorporate hyperfocus into it instead. For example, you could suggest hyperfocusing to a coworker and make each other your accountability buddies to help you sustain a hyperfocus habit. This may be especially helpful if you are better at meeting expectations set by others than you are at meeting your own.
We’ll discuss Bailey’s strategies for managing distractions you can control in the next chapter.
Now that we’ve discussed Bailey’s strategy for dealing with distractions you can’t control, we’ll discuss his strategies for dealing with distractions you can control.
#1: Track your distractions.
We previously discussed how to keep track of the things that distract you with an attention alarm. Similarly, Bailey suggests that writing your potential and actual distractions down reduces your mind’s inherent tendency to wander during focus sessions: Before your hyperfocus session, write down anything that could distract you—like to-dos you haven’t completed. During your hyperfocus session, write down anything that does distract you—like the argument with your spouse you keep replaying at inopportune times.
(Shortform note: Instead of keeping a list of actual or potential distractions, Eyal recommends scheduling a 20-minute block or “timebox” each week to reflect on what you got distracted by and how to adjust your schedule to reduce those in the future. Adjusting your schedule may include adding time to list your to-dos.)
Citing the work of Getting Things Done, Bailey explains that your brain wasn’t built for keeping track of everything but for creating and processing. In fact, Bailey suggests that your brain views commitments and tasks you haven’t yet externalized as threats—so it’ll naturally focus on them. By capturing both your tasks and thoughts, you deal with this perceived threat, so it no longer attracts your attention. Therefore, you reduce your mental load and are better able to focus.
(Shortform note: While externalizing your tasks is an essential part of the Getting Things Done system, it’s the first step of five. After capturing all your ideas, clarify each one, organize them all appropriately, reflect on them, and engage them.)
#2: Distance your distractions.
As Bailey explains, our brains are constantly looking for more interesting things to focus on. So get as much distance as possible from anything that might be more stimulating than your main task—both in your physical and digital environments. First, assess how stimulating every potential distraction is and then make them difficult to access—perhaps by removing them together. (Shortform note: Distancing your distractions makes accessing them inconvenient, and making bad habits inconvenient is an oft-cited strategy for breaking them: Switch also discusses creating change-supporting spaces that make good behavior easy and undesirable behavior difficult.)
Bailey’s strategies for your physical environment are:
Put your phone in a different room. (Shortform note: Charge your phone outside the bedroom if you’re trying to hyperfocus on your relationships.)
If you want to focus on a person, trade phones. This allows you to make calls, but the phone isn’t super-customized so you won’t get nearly as distracted. (Shortform note: Alternatively, try the phone stacking game, which went viral in 2012: Everybody puts their phone in the middle of the table and the first person to pick it up pays for the meal.)
Add elements that trigger productive behavior. Music may help—but only if it’s the right kind. Bailey explains that all noise attracts some of your attention, so silence is best for hyperfocus. But noise that’s recognizable, straightforward, and quiet is best—so if music hides the blare of construction next door, it can help you hyperfocus. (Shortform note: If you need good work music, try lo-fi music. It’s generally recognizable, straightforward, and quiet, and it boomed during the COVID-19 pandemic—perhaps because it relaxes you, too.) Other productive elements Bailey suggests include calming houseplants or a whiteboard to capture your daily intentions. (Shortform note: If you’re allergic to plants, try adding a photo of them to your whiteboard: a University of Michigan study found that looking at pictures of nature can replenish your attentional capacity.)
Bailey’s strategies for your digital environment are:
Delete apps you don’t need. (Shortform note: How do you know if you need it? Indistractable suggests keeping only apps that benefit you or align with your values.)
Use apps like Freedom (paid) or Self-Control (free) to block access to distracting apps and websites. (Shortform note: If you can’t use apps, Indistractable also recommends using browser extensions to limit what you see.)
Alternatively, hide distracting apps in folders so they’re not as accessible. You could also move them away from the home screen. Bailey specifically recommends using a “Mindless” folder for your most distracting apps, arguing that the folder name will make you think twice about using it. (Shortform note: Eyal recommends a similar strategy: Place only apps that are “Tools” (apps that help you with everyday tasks) or “Goals” (apps that help you with things you’d like to spend your time with—like a mindfulness app if you want to meditate more) on your home screen—and move everything else into folders on your secondary screen.)
Close your email client if you’re not using it. (Shortform note: If you can’t close your email client, try expanding your work to your full screen—if it’s not visible, it’s less likely to distract you.)
Bailey also recommends that you declutter to both physical and digital distractions. Clutter reminds you of your other to-dos, so it stresses you out. Cleaning it all up by putting your computer away or clearing off your desktop screen will help you focus when you need to—and rest when you need to. (Shortform note: You could try the extreme strategy Indistractable author Eyal describes: Leave your desktop screen completely blank except for the files you’re working on, and file everything else into one folder labeled “Everything.” Use your laptop’s search function to find files you need so you’re never distracted by visual desktop reminders.)
(Shortform note: Clearing your work laptop may be particularly important if you’re hyperfocusing on your personal life and work from home—if you don’t see it, it’s less likely to trigger thoughts of work tasks.)
#3: Delegate.
Bailey points out that many of our tools perform similar or identical tasks. For example, you might be able to send and receive text messages on both your cell phone and computer.
Bailey implies that this redundancy increases our likelihood of giving in to a tempting distraction. For example, you might successfully ignore the text message notification on your phone but fail to ignore the notification on your computer. He suggests reducing this redundancy in two main ways.
First, he recommends limiting how you use each tool by delegating specific devices to specific tasks. His strategies for this are:
Secondly, he recommends carefully evaluating whether you need the tool at all. Each digital device is a tool with a collection of features—but if two of your devices do identical tasks, do you really need both of them? For example, if you have an analog watch and a smartphone, you may think twice about purchasing a smartwatch.
The Origins of Delegating Your Distractions
The recommendation that you delegate specific devices to specific tasks echoes Digital Minimalism. But unlike Bailey, who discusses only devices, Newport suggests viewing all technology as a collection of features and evaluating all the technology you use by its individual features. By following Bailey’s strategy, you might use Facebook Messenger on your phone and Skype on your tablet. But Newport would question why you can’t eliminate one app entirely since both have similar features: They let you call and direct message people.
Bailey’s suggestion to evaluate whether you need the tool at all is also both similar to and different from Newport’s. Like Bailey, Newport questions the necessity of various digital tools. But Newport suggests overhauling your entire philosophy of tech use by identifying your priorities and determining which digital tools promote or inhibit these priorities; Bailey doesn’t elaborate nearly as much. Interestingly, however, Bailey does base his suggestions on a theory with much broader implications: He cites Clayton Christen, who argued that devices have “jobs,” and you only need to hire one device to do each job. Christensen’s original theory targeted producers—not consumers—and applies not just to devices but to all products consumers use.
#4: Disconnect.
Many of our most time-sucking diversions require the internet. So if you’re trying to hyperfocus, consider disconnecting your computer from the wifi or the Internet. This technique is especially useful if you’re unable to install apps on your work devices. (Shortform note: You may need to get permission from your boss on this one, since many of us are available to our coworkers only via the Internet.)
Bailey also suggests limiting your internet access in general so that you can pay attention to other tasks and potentially feel more rested. This is a daunting request for most people. Bailey recommends starting by spending a 24-hour period on the weekend without Internet to see how it feels. Alternatively, you could not buy Wi-Fi when you travel to see how productive you are without Internet.
(Shortform note: Bailey suggests that a major benefit of temporarily pausing your Internet is deeper engagement with your family. But what if you live alone? Digital Minimalism states that a key tenet of reducing your digital dependency is to replace the time you spend on devices with high-quality leisure activities, such as building or fixing something new each week.)
Another way to disconnect is to stop looking at your cell phone every time you have a short break in your day. Instead of occupying your attention with your phone, Bailey recommends using these brief intervals to give your brain a break. In these moments that you are seemingly doing nothing, reflect on the activity you’ve just been doing, or reflect more broadly on your work or life. (Shortform note: Digital Minimalism argues that regular breaks from your phone are essential: When we’re constantly on our phones, we never get a break from all outside input. This “solitude deprivation” harms both our mental and emotional health—but we can reclaim it by, for example, taking long walks without our phones.)
#5: Disable notifications.
As Bailey says, notifications are a seemingly innocuous black hole. They only take up a second of your attention—but once you click on one, you’re dragged into a device that’s specifically designed to keep you on it as long as possible.
So Bailey recommends disabling your notifications for non-essential apps on your devices. You can usually do this via the Settings menu on your devices. (Shortform note: Bailey only recommends disabling the audible and vibrating notifications, stating that he looks for new alerts when he looks at the time on his phone. But you might get distracted every time you pick up your phone to look at the time if the screen is overrun with notifications. Adjust your visual notifications so they only appear when you unlock your device.)
You also set when you receive notifications—either by pre-scheduling Do Not Disturb or Airplane Modes or by turning these modes on when you want to hyperfocus. (Shortform note: Think of this as setting office hours for conversation, as Digital Minimalism suggests.) If you are waiting on a notification from a specific person, Bailey recommends temporarily enabling notifications for just that person. (Shortform note: This echoes Digital Minimalism’s assertion that some technologies are only essential under specific circumstances. It describes a digital decluttering experiment where one woman used her phone only to communicate with her husband when he traveled by only allowing text notifications from him.)
#6: Change your environment.
According to Bailey, you may find it easier to work away from the office. He suggests that when at the office, you’re constantly bombarded with environmental cues that remind you of all of the other tasks on your to-do list. For example, you might see the coworker who’s waiting on a report you’re not working on. This stresses us out and redirects some of our working memory away from the task at hand.
(Shortform note: Hyperfocusing consistently in one environment—and only one environment—may be advantageous. One article suggests by devoting specific types of work to specific environments, that environment can trigger that type of work. So if you always hyperfocus at your favorite coffee shop, sitting there may trigger a bout of hyperfocus.)
If you’re a team leader, Bailey suggests, have your team use environmental cues to signal when they’re doing focus work. (Shortform note: Do this even if you’re not a team leader: Indistractable suggests using obvious visual cues like headphones to signal to others that you’re not available for conversation.)
#7: Schedule distraction breaks.
As we’ve seen, dealing with distractions ahead of time drastically reduces the mental energy you spend avoiding them. But you spend some mental energy regulating your behavior whenever you hyperfocus—whether it’s to refocus your thoughts on the task at hand or to ignore the occasional temptation to go to the other room and pick up your phone.
(Shortform note: Your brain takes up just 2% of your total body weight but uses 20% of your total energy. So you might assume that if you spend more mental energy, you’ll burn more calories. Scientists note that this is true, but the difference is barely noticeable: Your brain mostly uses its calories for more basic activities like staying awake.)
One reason breaks are energizing is because, during the break, you stop regulating your behavior and give yourself permission to do anything you want. Therefore, Bailey recommends scheduling occasional “distraction breaks” between hyperfocus sessions: Allow yourself to indulge in all the mental temptations you avoid when you try to focus. (Shortform note: Eyal suggests another reason breaks are helpful: They can renew and restore your motivation to complete difficult tasks.)
Distraction breaks may be especially helpful if you’re impulsive: Bailey explains that more impulsive people feel more stress when blocking distractions. This implies that since it’s harder for you to focus, you’re likely spending more energy to stay focused. A distraction break relieves your stress level, which lets you return to the task with renewed vigor—both because the break energizes you and because when you’re less stressed, it’s easier to focus so you spend less energy regulating your behavior to stay focused.
(Shortform note: You may want to be careful with distraction breaks. If you always hyperfocus and then reward yourself with a distraction break, your brain may consider this a habit with hyperfocus as the behavior and your distraction break as a reward. Craving a distraction break every time you hyperfocus may be problematic, especially if it causes you to shorten your hyperfocus sessions.)
#8: Be more intentional.
Bailey defines a distraction as something that diverts you from your original purpose. So whether an activity counts as a distraction depends not on the content of the activity but on your original purpose. If you’ve scheduled 45 minutes to exercise but watch a TV show instead, the TV show is a distraction. If you schedule 45 minutes to relax, the TV show fills your original purpose and is not a distraction.
Therefore, Bailey recommends being more intentional about when you do potentially distracting activities. We already saw this in the suggestion about “distraction breaks.” Technically, if you schedule five minutes to scroll through Instagram during your “distraction break,” scrolling through Instagram for five minutes doesn’t count as a distraction because you’re doing exactly what you want to do.
Timeboxing, the strategy from Indistractable we mentioned previously, echoes this idea. Like Bailey, Eyal defines a distraction as something you do in place of what you originally meant to do. So when you timebox, you schedule all your activities, including things like scrolling through Reddit—which means that if you scroll through Reddit at the appointed time, it’s not a distraction because you’re doing what you meant to do.
Timeboxing has another major benefit: When you know exactly what you’re supposed to be doing at any given moment, when something does divert you from your original purpose, you can pinpoint exactly when and why.
Another easy way to schedule potential distractions is to schedule when you respond to emails so they’re not constantly interrupting you. As Bailey notes, this could be a private decision or a public one if you use an auto-responder to explain that you only check emails once a day. (Shortform note: Indistractable discusses how people are wired to imitate each other: If you respond immediately, they'll also respond immediately. If you wait to respond, expect not to receive immediate responses, either.)
Scheduling isn’t the only way to be intentional: Bailey also reminds us to respond to emails when we have the energy to do so. Even if you have the working memory capacity and the time, responding to emails when you are exhausted can be a recipe for disaster. You could send the wrong document or a snappy unprofessional response. Remember: Most things can wait.
(Shortform note: If it’s a lack of emotional energy, not physical energy, that’s prohibiting you from answering emails, try these strategies to increase it—like breathing deeply for five to six seconds.)
#9. Hyperfocus on the distraction.
Emails and meetings can be distracting. But sometimes, they’re essential tasks you must complete. So, counterintuitively, Bailey recommends hyperfocusing on these potential distractions.
Specifically, he recommends hyperfocusing on meetings you can’t get out of in order to get the most value from them. (Shortform note: If you find the meeting tedious, you may have trouble focusing on it. Death by Meeting suggests that tension is an essential element of meetings in order to keep participants engaged. Try actively looking for drama and disagreement during the meeting.) He also recommends hyperfocusing on emails if you have many to respond to. This strategy is especially effective when combined with scheduling if your job requires quick responses to emails. (Shortform note: If you’re inundated by emails, try following the strategies espoused by Inbox Zero: Instead of storing your emails in your inbox, view it as a temporary workspace you use to sort your emails before dealing with them.)
In addition to the above, Bailey also suggests several strategies specifically to reduce how distracting meetings and email can be.
#1: Reduce the number of meetings you attend. Bailey suggests reducing the meetings you attend in two main ways:
First, only attend meetings with agendas. If there isn't one, ask the organizer to provide one for you. Bailey states that most of the time, this question will make the organizer realize that they can replace the meeting with a phone call. (Shortform note: This strategy may not be as effective depending on the culture you’re working in. In The Culture Map, author Erin Meyer divides cultures into two types: monochronic cultures, which hold meetings with agendas, and polychronic cultures, which rarely have meetings with agendas.)
Secondly, reevaluate your recurring meetings. Look at the meetings that recur on your schedule. Do you really need to be there?
Do a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether the meeting is an effective use of your time. But just as with your tasks, make sure that you are evaluating the domino benefits of meetings as well. Some update meetings might initially feel like a waste of time. But if they begin a chain reaction that ends with better relationships and greater team cohesion, they may be worth attending.
(Shortform note: One way to evaluate whether a meeting is essential is to see where it falls in the types of meetings recommended by Death By Meeting. It divides meetings into four essential types: the check-in, the tactical, the strategic, and the review.)
#2: Reduce the number of people at the meeting.
If you’re leading the meeting, Bailey suggests inviting only the essential players. Alternatively, invite the non-essential players, but let them opt out if they have more important tasks. (Shortform note: You could adapt Bailey's strategies to your own benefit even if you're not leading the meeting. For example, your boss might balk if you want to skip all your recurring meetings. But she might be more open if you ask to skip half of them.)
#1: Only send emails that are five sentences or fewer.
One of the best ways to reduce the number of emails in your inbox is to reduce the number of emails you send. Bailey contends that five sentences is enough for most email conversations. If you can’t fit your response in this limit, that’s a good benchmark that calling might be better.
However, as Bailey suggests, note this limit in your email signature. He doesn’t explicitly state why, but this is presumably because emails that are too short can seem overly brusque. (Shortform note: This strategy may not be as effective if you’re a woman. Women who write short, concise emails often receive negative feedback from both superiors and clients because their tones buck traditional gender expectations.)
#2: Take limited email breaks.
If you have a big project to focus on, Bailey suggests not checking your email at all for one to two days. In order to avoid angering others, Bailey recommends setting an autoresponder explaining what you’re doing and when you’ll be back—just as you might if you were on vacation. (Shortform note: If you want to remain available for emergencies, include a phone number. People tend to think twice about calling instead of emailing.)
In Step 3 of hyperfocus, you focus on your intended task for a set period of time. This is a surprisingly difficult endeavor you can make easier by following the various strategies you learned in Steps 0 - 2. Bailey also names two daily habits that can make hyperfocusing easier: meditation and mindfulness. Meditation and mindfulness improve your ability to hyperfocus because they increase your working memory capacity. Furthermore, they offer several other benefits because they improve the quality of your attention in general.
In this section, we’ll first discuss what meditation and mindfulness are. We’ll then discuss how increasing your working memory capacity—a major benefit of meditation and mindfulness—improves your ability to hyperfocus. You’ll then learn three other ways that meditation and mindfulness improve the quality of your attention. Finally, we’ll describe Bailey’s strategies for effectively incorporating meditation and mindfulness into your daily life.
While many people use the terms meditation and mindfulness interchangeably, Bailey does not. Bailey explains that when you meditate, you focus on a single thing and bring your attention back to it when your mind wanders. When you practice mindfulness, you pay attention to everything you experience in a given moment. For example, if you wash dishes mindfully, you pay attention to everything that happens moment-by-moment, like how the water feels on your skin or how it sounds as it hits the sink.
In both meditation and mindfulness, you regularly refocus your attention. But when you meditate, you refocus your attention on a single task—like breathing. Practicing mindfulness is not about focusing on a single thing but about noticing your current circumstances and directing your attention to whatever you’re currently doing instead of letting your mind wander away.
(Shortform note: Other people also distinguish between meditation and mindfulness, but their definitions differ from Bailey’s. For example, mindfulness expert Elisha Goldstein defines meditation as intentionally doing something good for yourself and mindfulness as a general awareness of your circumstances. She refers to what Bailey calls practicing mindfulness—purposefully noticing what you experience in a given moment—as “mindfulness meditation.”)
Meditation and mindfulness share another similarity: Research indicates that both practices increase your working memory capacity. (As Bailey notes, many brain training apps claim to improve your working memory capacity. But meditation and mindfulness are the only two scientifically proven methods for doing so.)
(Shortform note: Bailey later argues that hyperfocus increases your working memory capacity, too—perhaps because, just as in meditation and mindfulness, you regularly refocus your attention on the current task. However, this may not necessarily be a scientifically validated insight given that he cites no research on the topic.)
As you may recall, your working memory capacity dictates how much information you can pay attention to—the bigger it is, the more information you can process simultaneously. Therefore, Bailey argues that increasing your working memory capacity improves your ability to hyperfocus in three main ways.
First, increasing your working memory capacity increases the amount of information you can pay attention to simultaneously. The more complex a task, the more information you need to pay attention to simultaneously. So when you increase your working memory capacity, you improve your ability to process complex tasks.
(Shortform note: Increasing your working memory capacity may improve your ability to process complex tasks best when they’re new to you. A large working memory capacity helps you process complex tasks because it lets you fit all the information you need into your working memory—but the more you improve at a task, the less working memory it uses, and the easier it becomes to fit all the information you need into the working memory capacity you already have. (We’ll elaborate more on this in our discussion of learning and creativity).)
Secondly, increasing your working memory capacity makes you less prone to distraction: Research shows that the minds of people who have higher working memory capacity wander less when they’re focused on a complex task. And if something does distract you, you can return to your original intention faster: The more working memory you have available, the less likely a distraction is to crowd your original intention totally out of it. Since your original intention always remains in your working memory, you never forget it completely—so you return to it faster than you would if you forgot it. (Shortform note: Research suggests that the opposite may also be true: A working memory deficit is associated with ADHD (Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). One symptom of ADHD is distractibility.)
Finally, increasing your working memory capacity makes you more productive. Research shows that the minds of people with higher working memory capacity tend to wander toward the future—a generally productive endeavor, especially since Bailey seems to equate thinking about the future with planning for the future. Similarly, Bailey explains that a higher working memory capacity improves your ability to make efficient decisions: You use some working memory to do your current task, but you can devote your spare working memory to thinking about your current task and what you want to do next. The greater your working memory capacity, the more spare working memory you have available—so the more attention you can pay to thinking about your tasks, which allows you to make better decisions.
(Shortform note: Bailey assumes that thinking more about your tasks leads you to make better decisions, but that shouldn’t necessarily be the case. If you think too much about the task, you could overthink your decisions and experience “analysis paralysis,” which is when you think too much about your decisions and are unable to make any decisions at all for fear of making the wrong one.)
In addition to improving your ability to hyperfocus, Bailey argues that meditation and mindfulness improve all three measures of the quality of your attention. As discussed in Chapter 2, you assess the quality of your attention based on how long you can focus in a single sitting, how quickly you return to your original intention after becoming distracted, and how frequently you direct your attention.
#1: Meditation and mindfulness teach you to focus for longer periods of time.
Bailey explains that during both meditation and mindfulness, you focus on information or activities that only occupy a small portion of your working memory. With so much working memory available, your mind wanders a lot.
We can infer that through meditation and mindfulness, you get a lot of practice directing your attention to where you want it to go—whether it’s to a particular task (as in meditation) or to the present moment (as in mindfulness). The more you practice directing your attention, the better you become at controlling where it goes, the less likely you are to get distracted, and the longer you can maintain your focus on a single task. As such, we can conclude that since they let you practice directing your attention, meditation and mindfulness teach you to focus for longer periods of time.
(Shortform note In this way, using meditation and mindfulness to redirect your attention might be just like any other skill. As psychologist Daniel Goleman notes, every time you redirect your attention, you “strengthen the neural circuitry for focus” and get better at doing it.)
#2: Meditation and mindfulness help you get back on track faster after you become distracted.
As we’ve seen, we don’t always notice when we’ve become distracted. The longer it takes us to notice that we’ve become distracted, the longer it takes us to return to our original task.
So why do meditation and mindfulness help us get back on track faster? Bailey never makes his reasoning explicit, but we can infer the following: Both meditation and mindfulness are exercises in noticing and redirecting your attention, so when you practice them, you practice noticing your thoughts—which makes you more apt to notice your thoughts in general. The more often you notice what you’re thinking about, the faster you realize that you’ve become distracted, and the faster you refocus on your original intention. In this way, meditation and mindfulness help you get back on track faster after you become distracted.
(Shortform note: In Quiet, author Susan Cain describes how extroverts tend to focus more of their attention on completing their task, while introverts tend to focus more of their attention on reflecting on the task. If introverts reflect more than extroverts do on individual tasks, they may also more generally reflect on their thoughts than extroverts. As such, you may find mindfulness and meditation more effective if you’re an extrovert.)
#3: Meditation and mindfulness increase how often you deliberately direct your attention.
In both meditation and mindfulness, you practice deliberately directing your attention. Bailey argues that this practice spills over into the rest of your life: You start to deliberately direct your attention even when you’re not meditating or intentionally being mindful. In this way, Bailey suggests that meditation and mindfulness increase how often you deliberately direct your attention.
(Shortform note: Bailey never makes explicit why deliberately directing your attention during meditation should make you deliberately direct your attention more frequently in other aspects of your life. Perhaps it’s because if you meditate regularly, you regularly remind yourself to direct your attention and not operate on autopilot—and the more you remind yourself of that, the more you remember to do it.)
So how, exactly, can you reap the benefits of both meditation and mindfulness? Bailey urges you to make both a daily habit.
To meditate, sit down and focus on your breathing for a given amount of time each day. For best results, Bailey encourages you to start small: Meditate only for an amount of time that feels easy. He also encourages trying guided meditations with apps like Headspace. To practice mindfulness, Bailey encourages to pick a single daily task and be mindful during it. In other words, notice everything that happens as you do that task. For best results, choose a task that occupies very little working memory, like eating a meal.
Your mind will wander a lot during both practices—but don’t beat yourself up if it takes a long time for you to notice! After all, researchers suggest that the brain regions that notice your mind wandering are the same regions involved when your mind wanders to begin with. Similarly, Bailey cautions against judging any thoughts you have too harshly. Just because a thought pops into your head doesn’t mean that it’s true or that you believe it.
More Than Attention: Meditation’s Other Benefits
In addition to improving your working memory capacity, there are several other reasons to regularly practice meditation and mindfulness.
21 Lessons for the 21st Century suggests that meditation is critical for success because it’s the best way to understand your own mind, namely your thoughts, fears, and desires. By understanding your own mind, through which you interpret and react to the world, you can choose your actions more wisely and execute them more effectively. The same text adds that meditating makes you realize how little control you have over your thoughts—and that realization is the first step to gaining control over your thoughts.
Practicing meditation and mindfulness may also be good for your health. Several studies examining the relationship between a mindfulness practice and various medical issues have shown promising results. For example, mindfulness may help treat coronary disease and slow the progress of Alzheimer’s disease.
Now that you’ve learned the importance of meditation and mindfulness for hyperfocus, you can take steps to ensure you perform them in your daily life.
Think about how much your schedule differs on a daily basis and decide whether you’d rather be mindful or meditate. Is there a task you do every single day without fail during which you can realistically be mindful, or would it make more sense to implement a new habit of meditating?
In Step 1 of hyperfocus, we learned how to increase your likelihood of achieving a goal by setting an implementation: Decide that when you do X, you’ll do Y. Write down exactly how you plan to implement the habits of mindfulness or meditation into your daily life. For example, you might write: When I brush my teeth every morning, I will practice being mindful.
There are two parts to maintaining focus: 1) redirecting your attention to your task when you become distracted, and 2) preventing your mind from wandering. We discussed strategies for redirecting your attention using mindfulness and meditation in Step 3. In this chapter, we'll discuss Bailey’s two main strategies for the second piece of maintaining focus, preventing your mind from wandering: Match your tasks to your skill level, and increase how many high-impact tasks you do.
If your mind wanders a lot as you focus on various tasks, you might be bored or anxious.
Citing Flow, Bailey explains that boredom occurs when your tasks are too easy, and stress occurs when your tasks are too difficult. Both are known causes of mind-wandering. Therefore, excessive mind wandering may be a sign that your current job is too easy or too hard. Reduce mind-wandering by adjusting your daily tasks to your current skill level.
(Shortform note: Even if you find that your job is not matching your skill level, you don’t have to quit. One Harvard Business Review article suggests having two careers can make you happier and more fulfilled.)
When you hyperfocus, you reduce the time you spend on tasks. As such, you might find yourself with a lot of free time.
But if you’re regularly hyperfocusing and just as busy as you were before, Bailey suggests that you may be a victim of Parkinson’s Law. Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the time you have to complete it. So if you suddenly don’t have enough work to do thanks to your newfound productivity, you might start trying to fill your time with unimportant tasks or distractions.
As Bailey notes, your mind wanders whenever you’re unsure if your current task is the highest-impact option. So this lack of important work may also increase how frequently your mind wanders.
Therefore, Bailey suggests evaluating how much time you spend doing low- to zero-impact tasks. If it’s higher than you like, increase the number of high-impact tasks on your plate.
Why You Should Regularly Recreate the Attention Management Matrix
How do you know if you’re filling your time with unimportant tasks or distractions? And how do you know what tasks to do instead? Bailey doesn’t specify—but one option is to regularly recreate the attention management matrix, when you divide your tasks based on whether they’re productive and whether you like doing them. By, for example, categorizing your tasks on a quarterly basis, you ensure you’re maintaining an acceptable level of productivity—and you always have a list of high-impact tasks to focus on.
Bailey’s strategies for overcoming Parkinson’s law revolve around re-evaluating your work, but you can also overcome it by adjusting the time you have to complete your work. One article suggests shortening your workday to maximize your productivity.
Bailey also notes that following some of the strategies mentioned in Chapter 4 will reduce how often your mind wanders. When you capture all your thoughts in a list, you reduce how much working memory your personal issues take up, so your mind doesn’t wander toward them. (Shortform note: Similarly, As A Man Thinketh also suggests that having a purpose for your life reduces the chances of your mind wandering to fears, doubts, and self-pity because it gives you a positive, productive place to center your thoughts.) And when you reduce external distractions, your environment is calmer so your brain doesn’t wander towards it. (Shortform note: This isn’t always positive depending on your purpose—working in messy environments can increase creativity.)
In Part 1, Bailey espouses the benefits of deliberately managing your attention for productivity: By focusing on a single task for a prolonged period, you can be as productive as possible.
In Part 2, Bailey switches gears to explore a seemingly contradictory idea: that sometimes, deliberately managing your attention involves intentional mind-wandering, which he calls “scatterfocus”—and that intentional mind-wandering can improve your life.
In this section, we’ll explain what intentional mind-wandering is, why you resist it, and why you should do it anyway. Then, we’ll introduce Bailey’s three main intentional mind-wandering techniques. Finally, we’ll discuss when, how long, and how often to intentionally mind-wander.
When you hyperfocus, you direct your attention to a cognitively demanding task that takes up most of your working memory. Bailey explains that in order to intentionally mind-wander, you do the opposite: You deliberately leave a lot of room in your working memory, which causes the mind to wander.
Why Does Your Mind Wander?
Bailey states that leaving room in your working memory gives your mind the space it needs to wander, but it’s unclear why your mind wanders when you give it that space. He does state that intentional mind-wandering “lights up your brain’s default network—the network it returns to when you’re not focused on something.” Research indicates that the default network is active when your mind wanders. So it’s possible that having spare working memory activates your brain’s default network and thus causes your mind to wander.
But having spare working memory is also the reason you notice that your mind has wandered, which further complicates the relationship between spare working memory and mind-wandering. This may explain why Bailey skips the neuroscientific explanation and instead just states that the more working memory you have available, the more your mind wanders.
We’ll cover Bailey’s specific techniques for intentional mind-wandering in the next section.
But first: why would you want to intentionally mind-wander? After all, you just spent several pages learning techniques to prevent your mind from wandering so that you could hyperfocus on your highest-impact tasks. Furthermore, you likely dislike the idea of intentional mind-wandering—a preference Bailey attributes to your biological tendencies.
Bailey suggests that people resist the idea of intentional mind-wandering because they’re terrified of being left alone with their own thoughts. As we’ve discussed, your focus is naturally drawn to potential dangers—a disposition that kept us alive in primitive times.
But in modern times, external dangers are few. Bailey posits that the biggest threats we encounter are our own fears and anxieties. Bailey argues that we avoid letting our minds wander because we assume that if we do, we’ll have to face these threats, aka our fears and anxieties—which we dislike doing because it’s unpleasant. And in the modern world, you never have to sit with your thoughts if you don’t want to. You always have access to something, like your smartphone, that can distract you from your own mind. (Shortform note: It’s possible that this reliance on our phones increases our resistance to intentional mind-wandering. If you never let your mind wander because it’s scary, you might mentally exaggerate how scary mind-wandering is—which causes you to avoid it even more.)
(Shortform note: Bailey doesn’t explicitly state this, but there are presumably two elements of mind-wandering that stress people out: The idea that we have to be totally alone with our thoughts, and the idea that we also can’t use our phones. If you struggle with being alone in general, this New York Times article has several suggestions—like starting small and realizing that excessive stress may be a sign you need professional support. If you’re intimidated by your own thoughts, it also suggests journaling as a method for processing those emotions.)
However, Bailey argues, this resistance is unfounded: While our minds do ruminate on negative thoughts when they wander towards the past, they only wander towards the past 12% of the time. (Shortform note: Interestingly, the paper that found that people’s minds wander 47% of the time also found that mind-wandering decreases our mood no matter the topic. As we’ll see later, Bailey cites this portion of the study but argues that it decreases your mood only when the mind-wandering is involuntary. The study discusses only unintentional mind-wandering, so it’s not clear if the authors would agree with Bailey.)
More importantly, Bailey explains that mind-wandering isn’t inherently bad. Mind-wandering is only problematic during hyperfocus because it distracts you from your original intention and reduces your productivity. But mind-wandering has several benefits.
#1: Mind-wandering helps you plan for the future.
When our mind wanders, we spend 88% of this time thinking about either the present or the future. Both are essential for our success. We can’t simultaneously focus on and reflect on a task—so our wandering thoughts about the present allow us to reflect and consider alternate solutions to our problems. Conversely, our thoughts about the future allow us to think about our long-term goals and adjust our present circumstances so that we can achieve them.
Why You Must Mind-Wander to Think About the Future
You may argue that you can reflect on your current tasks and think about the future without necessarily letting your mind wander—you could, for example, hyperfocus on discovering what’s wrong with your current approach or thinking up how you’ll increase your finances by 10% next year.
For reasons that are unclear, Bailey appears to think this is impossible, arguing that you must “step back” to “consider alternative approaches to the task,” and that “without entering scatterfocus mode, you never think about the future.”
#2: Mind-wandering increases our creativity.
Creativity involves making connections between disparate fields in our brain. When we let our minds wander, we give ourselves the mental space we need to make these connections. (Shortform note: We’ll elaborate more on this in our discussion about creativity, in Chapters 8-9.)
#3: Mind-wandering lets us rest.
Previously, we discussed how regulating our behavior exhausts our brain. When you let your mind roam free, you stop regulating your behavior. So mind-wandering gives your brain a break and helps you recharge. (Shortform note: We’ll elaborate more on this in our discussion about rest, in Chapter 7.)
Technically, you can experience the benefits of mind-wandering whether it’s intentional or not. But mind-wandering intentionally maximizes the benefits of mind-wandering.
Firstly, Bailey explains that in order to experience the full benefits of mind-wandering, you need to remember what you thought of—which you can do better if you’re mind-wandering intentionally. As we’ll see, a common thread in Bailey’s intentional mind-wandering techniques is to pay attention to and write down the thoughts you have so you don’t forget them. For example, a creative insight you gain while mind-wandering is useless if you can’t remember what it was. But if your mind wanders unintentionally, you may not even notice that your mind has wandered—so you’re far less likely to remember any creative insights you have.
Why Memory Techniques Don’t Work When Mind-Wandering
You might assume that you can increase the likelihood that you’ll remember what you think of when your mind wanders by improving your memory more generally. But most memory techniques—like the ones Moonwalking with Einstein describes—involve transforming information into a form your brain is naturally inclined to remember.
To do this, you must focus on the piece of information, which will stop your mind from wandering. Of course, writing down the thoughts you have also forces you to focus momentarily. But writing down the thoughts you have is easy and likely disrupts your mind-wandering less, whereas trying to transform your thoughts in order to remember them presumably requires more mental energy and is thus more disruptive.
Secondly, intentional mind-wandering allows you to experience only the benefits of mind-wandering and avoid its potentially unpleasant effects. For example, Bailey notes that some things that cause mind-wandering have unpleasant side effects: Namely, boredom makes your mind wander but also makes you feel anxious. If you mind-wander intentionally, you can experience only the benefits of mind-wandering and avoid feeling anxious. (Shortform note: If you ever feel bored again, reframe your perspective to reduce your anxiety: Think of it as the ideal moment to try intentionally mind-wandering.)
Similarly, unintentional mind-wandering is a major source of distraction during hyperfocus, which makes it a type of double-edged sword. On the one hand, if your mind wanders unintentionally during a hyperfocus session, you might be happy if—for example—you gain a creative insight. On the other hand, since your mind is wandering, your hyperfocus session isn’t as productive as you want it to be. Intentional mind-wandering allows you to avoid this quandary altogether: You focus when you need to focus and let your mind wander when you want it to wander.
Bailey also notes that involuntary mind-wandering worsens your mood—and even if you’re thinking about a positive topic, mind-wandering doesn’t significantly boost your mood. He posits that intentional mind-wandering doesn’t worsen your mood because your mind is doing what you want it to so you don’t feel stressed or guilty about it. (Shortform note: Unintentional mind-wandering normally worsens your mood, but not always: One study found that unintentional mind-wandering about something interesting is associated with a more positive mood.)
Therefore, in order to access the benefits of mind-wandering, Bailey recommends intentional mind-wandering.
So how, exactly, do you mind-wander intentionally? Bailey presents three main techniques.
Bailey suggests performing a fun, cognitively simple task—in other words, something that takes up only a little working memory—and leaving the rest of your working memory open so that your mind can roam. Regularly check in to see what you’re thinking about, and keep a pad of paper on hand to jot down any great ideas. (Shortform note: What counts as a fun, cognitively simple task? One that Bailey recommends is walking, which both Charles Darwin and Friedrich Nietzsche regularly did. On his blog, Bailey also extols the benefits of knitting.)
Bailey suggests that this technique, which he calls “habitual mode,” is the ideal method for accessing the benefits of intentional mind-wandering for three main reasons.
First, doing something you enjoy elevates your mood—which has several benefits. Happiness increases your working memory capacity, so your mind can access more thoughts simultaneously as it wanders. (Conversely, a negative mood decreases your working memory capacity.) When you’re happy, your mind wanders towards more positive thoughts and increases the likelihood you’ll connect ideas in innovative ways. (Conversely, a negative mood increases the likelihood your mind will wander towards the past, which tends to depress you and isn’t as likely to lead to creative insights.) Finally, doing something you like is easy—so it gives your brain a break from overseeing your behavior.
In Chapter 10, Bailey elaborates further on the benefits of doing something you enjoy. He explains that happiness can be both the cause and the consequence of both hyperfocusing and intentional mind-wandering: On the one hand, being happier in general helps you hyperfocus more deeply and increases your creativity when mind-wandering for the same reasons mentioned above. On the other hand, hyperfocusing and intentional mind-wandering can result in increased happiness. Bailey argues that involuntary mind-wandering worsens your mood because your brain isn’t doing what you want it to. Hyperfocus prevents involuntary mind-wandering and allows you to focus your attention on the present; similarly, when you intentionally mind-wander, you have control over your brain and focus on more productive thoughts—so both make you happier.
But there’s a simpler reason to improve your mood and do the things you enjoy: because it feels good. All of Bailey’s arguments hinge on the idea that doing things you enjoy allows you to better access the benefits of hyperfocus or intentional mind-wandering. But doing something you enjoy purely for the sake of achieving a particular goal can make your task less fun.
So don’t let an obsession with success sap enjoyment from your favorite tasks: It’s still OK to enjoy things because they’re fun to do and not because they make you more productive or creative in some way. This is primarily a matter of perspective. Doing the tasks you like will still allow you to access all of the benefits Bailey espouses about happiness. But if you start to view the task as a means to an end, it will likely add to your stress levels and won’t be as fun anymore.
Secondly, doing enjoyable tasks extends the duration of your intentional mind-wandering session. The more you enjoy a task, the more likely you are to keep doing it. So if you like the task that causes your mind to wander, you’ll want to keep doing the task—so your mind will wander for longer. (Shortform note: To focus for longer, make sure that your enjoyable task is something you’re physically able to continue for long periods of time. For example, if you have trouble with your feet or carpal tunnel, long walks or knitting may not be the best idea.)
Finally, this technique maximizes your chances of capturing any creative insights you have. When you do a relatively simple task, you have more working memory available, so you can be more aware of the thoughts that pop into your head. By keeping a notebook on hand, you’re able to capture and remember these thoughts. (Shortform note: In his section on hyperfocus, Bailey notes that although we shouldn’t spend too much time on “rote tasks,” we like them because they’re more enjoyable. You may be able to use these simpler tasks at work to intentionally mind-wander.)
(Shortform note: It may also be so that the details of your habitual task help you gain insights relevant to other areas of your life. Albert Einstein arguably had so many pioneering scientific insights because he spent so much time sailing at sea. Sailing can be complicated, but the fact that Einstein regularly got lost and liked to “let [the] boat drift” suggests he spent few cognitive resources on it.)
Bailey recommends scheduling two 15-minute blocks each week with just your thoughts and a notepad. During this time, don’t think about anything in particular. Instead, write down whatever useful thoughts pop into your head so you don’t forget them. He refers to this as “capture mode.”
(Shortform note: Bailey notes a list of to-dos he thought of using this mode—nearly all of which were things he needed to complete in the near future. But what if you’d like more clarity on your longer-term to-dos? Try reading books that discuss the importance of having long-term goals—like 12 Rules for Life. (Rule 4 is to judge yourself by your own goals, not by others’.) When you read books like this, you’ll have your long-term goals in the back of your mind, which may trigger mind-wandering towards actionable to-dos about the far future.)
Worried you won’t think of anything useful? Bailey argues that this is unlikely. As we’ve seen, your mind naturally focuses on threats, and your brain views tasks you haven’t yet dealt with as threats. Therefore, he argues, scheduling 15-minute blocks to think about nothing in particular will inevitably lead you to think about all the things you need to complete in the future. But if you’re concerned, Bailey recommends wandering around your house or office. The environmental cues you encounter might remind you of tasks you need to deal with—like when you look in your refrigerator and remember to buy milk.
Why Completing Tasks Might Help You Mind-Wander
This technique appears slightly contradictory to Bailey’s argument that the benefits of mind-wandering outweigh its potential harms. He argues that it’s worth mind-wandering because we rarely ruminate on negative thoughts—but if your mind regularly wanders towards something it sees as a threat, doesn’t that mean it’s wandering towards a negative thought?
Presumably, Bailey doesn’t see the stress from incomplete tasks as a reason not to mind-wander because incomplete tasks are usually easy to deal with. But if you have many incomplete tasks on your plate—especially ones you’ve been avoiding that are an active source of stress—you may feel especially resistant to intentional mind-wandering. Reduce this resistance by completing a few easy tasks.
Do you have a major problem that requires a critical solution? Have you tried traditional techniques—like brainstorming—to no avail? If so, Bailey recommends thinking about this problem while you do something else for 30-60 minutes. He refers to this as “problem-crunching mode.” Mull over the problem in your head, attacking it from different perspectives. If your mind wanders away from this problem, bring it back. (This isn’t to say that you hyperfocus on the problem—hyperfocus involves single-tasking, so in hyperfocus, you would think only about this problem and not do anything else. In problem-crunching mode, you let your mind wander while you do something else.)
This is the least clear of Bailey’s techniques for intentional mind-wandering for two major reasons:
1: Bailey doesn’t explicitly recommend thinking about the problem while you do something else—he only recommends thinking about the problem. However, all of his examples involve him thinking about his problems while doing something else, such as canoeing or walking around town. Therefore, thinking about your problem while you do another task appears to be the essential element of problem-crunching mode.
2: Bailey recommends reserving problem-crunching mode for only your most difficult situations because you can access “the same problem-solving benefits (and then some)” in habitual mode. However, he never makes clear why problem-crunching mode is better for more difficult problems. Perhaps it’s because in problem-crunching mode, you’re deliberately directing your mind-wandering towards a specific problem, so you’re more aware of the thoughts you’re having—and you’re more likely to capture any creative insights you hit upon.
Hyperfocus vs Focused-Mode Thinking: Comparing Hyperfocus and A Mind for Numbers
In general, Bailey’s descriptions of hyperfocus and intentional mind-wandering are similar to what Barbara Oakley’s A Mind for Numbers calls focused-mode thinking and diffuse-mode thinking.
Oakley explains that in focused-mode thinking, you focus your attention on something and process detailed information. But focused-mode thinking is susceptible to the “Einstellung effect,” which occurs when you are unable to solve a problem because the solution is outside the scope of where you are looking for it. You can circumvent the Einstellung effect by switching to diffuse-mode thinking: You relax your focus and let your mind wander, but your subconscious continues to work on the problem. During this time, you mentally step away from detailed problems and see the big picture or generate creative solutions by making connections between diverse concepts.
In hyperfocus, you also focus your attention on something and process detailed information—just like you do in focused-mode thinking. In scatterfocus, you also relax your focus and let your mind wander—just like you do in diffuse-mode thinking. However, Oakley’s text is geared towards learning, so her descriptions of focused-mode and diffuse-mode thinking describe how to use the modes to solve problems. In contrast, Bailey’s text is focused more broadly on attention. So while you can hyperfocus to solve a problem, you can also use it for other things, too—like responding to an email or having a conversation. Similarly, you can switch between hyperfocus and scatterfocus to solve a problem. But scatterfocus also has several other benefits, like giving your brain a break.
When, exactly, should you mind-wander intentionally? The best time to mind-wander intentionally depends on several factors, like your schedule and your purpose for mind-wandering. Therefore, just as with hyperfocus, Bailey recommends pre-scheduling your intentional mind-wandering sessions at the beginning of each week based on your commitments and your needs.
Bailey also recommends the following general strategies for deciding when to intentionally mind-wander.
Mind-wander intentionally when you’re tired. Bailey explains that the more tired you are, the less restrained your brain is—which leads to increased creativity. He suggests tracking your energy levels and scheduling intentional mind-wandering sessions for when you’re lacking in energy. (Shortform note: This is an interesting recommendation given that, as Bailey posits, one major reason to mind-wander intentionally is to give your brain a break. Intentionally mind-wandering for the express purpose of having a creative insight when you’re tired seems like placing pressure on an already-tired brain, which would only tire you out more. So while you could mind-wander intentionally for creativity when you’re tired, it may be better to intentionally mind-wander for rest when you’re tired most of the time instead.)
Mind-wander intentionally after drinking. Bailey explains that alcohol increases your creativity. But it also decreases your ability to think logically and decreases your working memory capacity—so use it sparingly. (Shortform note: The link between alcohol and creativity may contribute to why so many famous artists—like Vincent Van Gogh and Jackson Pollock—suffered from alcoholism.)
Mind-wander intentionally when you need to be more creative. Bailey suggests that although everybody should intentionally mind-wander multiple times a day, you should schedule sessions more often during weeks that will require more creativity. (Shortform note: As we’ll see, you can intentionally mind-wander in situations designed to increase your creativity—but by nature, you can’t force yourself to have creative insights at a given time. The more often you intentionally mind-wander, however, the higher the likelihood that you’ll gain a creative insight.)
As for how long to intentionally mind-wander, Bailey explains that sessions of at least 15 minutes help your brain switch properly from hyperfocus to scatterfocus mode. Still, shorter periods are also beneficial because they allow you to rest and zoom out on your day. (Shortform note: Bailey doesn't specify why you need 15 minutes. It may be because, as we’ve seen, tasks don’t immediately leave your working memory once you stop doing them and instead leave behind some mental residue that takes a while to dissipate. So if you've been properly hyperfocused on a task, it may take that long for your mind to begin wandering at all.)
And how often should you intentionally mind-wander? Bailey recommends that everybody should schedule several intentional mind-wandering sessions each day for maximum benefit. (He doesn’t explicitly state why, but this is presumably to give yourself regular breaks from hyperfocusing.)
If any of the following apply, Bailey recommends that you intentionally mind-wander more often:
You hyperfocus a lot. It may seem counterintuitive, but in general, hyperfocus actually makes you better at intentional mind-wandering. Hyperfocus increases your working memory capacity. When you’re able to hold more information in your working memory at once, your mind can wander around more information—so you can potentially make more connections and have better ideas. (Shortform note: Since meditation and mindfulness both also increase your working memory capacity, practicing them should increase the productivity of your intentional mind-wandering sessions.)
Hyperfocus helps you remember more. You draw upon the information you remember to think of creative thoughts and to accurately imagine the future, so remembering more improves the benefits you get from intentional mind-wandering. (Shortform note: Hyperfocus might also help you remember more because it gets you in the right state: You’re focused on paying attention, so you learn more. Similarly, Limitless suggests you learn best when you approach what you’re learning in a state of joy, curiosity, and interest.)
Thirdly, hyperfocus increases our attentional awareness. This also helps us when we mind-wander intentionally because we're able to notice when we have useful insights and remember them. (Shortform note: This may be a double-edged sword: Although researchers state that knowing that your mind is wandering improves creativity, they also state that knowing that your mind is wandering might prevent it from wandering in the first place. So if you struggle to make your mind wander at first, persist.)
However, training your brain to focus on one thing for long periods of time causes it to wander less. This is great for hyperfocus. But it means you won’t get the benefits of mind-wandering unless you mind-wander intentionally. Additionally, hyperfocus is tiring. The more often you do it, the more often you’ll need to recharge by intentionally mind-wandering.
(Shortform note: It seems probable that even though intentional mind-wandering recharges you, deliberately directing your attention at all times might be exhausting—especially if you’re used to spending most of your day in autopilot mode. To truly give yourself a break, give yourself permission to do absolutely nothing.)
You rely on creativity. As we'll see, intentional mind-wandering can regularly induce creative insights.
You need to get it right the first time. (Shortform note: Bailey explains that intentional mind-wandering as you create a plan saves time when you execute the plan, but he doesn't specify why. One reason may be that when your mind wanders, you imagine potential worst-case scenarios and are thus able to implement a plan that prevents them.)
Now that you’ve learned that focusing on a fun, simple task you can use to mind-wander, you can start to think about which fun, simple task you’d like to use.
What do you like to do that’s fun and easy? For example, do you like to sew or take long walks? List everything that comes to mind, even if the answer is playing a smartphone game.
Look at your list of tasks. Which could you use to intentionally mind-wander?
If you can’t use any of the exercises to intentionally mind-wander because they’re all screen-based, think back to when you were a kid: What activities did you enjoy that you could use to intentionally mind-wander?
Guess what? You just intentionally mind-wandered to come up with a list of activities to use to intentionally mind-wander. How do you feel? (Writing down how you feel might help you realize that mind-wandering doesn’t have to be stressful and reduce your aversion to it in the future.)
As we’ve discussed, a major benefit of intentional mind-wandering is that it lets your brain rest.
But why is rest so important for your brain?
In this section, we’ll first explain why rest is essential for productivity. Then, we’ll cover the two main techniques you can use to rest: intentional mind-wandering and sleep. You’ll learn why intentional mind-wandering is restful and why avoiding it might be making you even more tired than you are already. You’ll also learn exactly how and when to intentionally mind-wander for maximum productivity. Then, you’ll learn how getting a good night’s sleep can improve productivity and creativity—and three simple ways to improve your sleep.
(Shortform note: Bailey exclusively discusses how intentional mind-wandering can replenish your mental energy, but many texts suggest that restoring your physical energy can help your mental energy as well. For example, in High Performance Habits, Brendon Burchard discusses how maintaining mental, emotional, and physical health can improve and maintain your mental clarity.)
In Chapter 7, Bailey explains that rest is essential to our productivity because it affects our working memory capacity.
As we've seen, our ability to be productive depends on our working memory capacity. The more working memory capacity we have, the more we are able to focus appropriately on whatever we need to do.
However, your working memory capacity depends on your mental energy: The more mental energy you have, the more working memory capacity you have. With more working memory capacity, you can pay attention to more things simultaneously and be more productive. The less mental energy you have, the less working memory capacity you have. When you have less working memory capacity than usual, you can’t pay attention to as much information as normal and so you become less productive.
Therefore, in order to be your most productive self, you need to be properly rested.
(Shortform note: Bailey’s description of working memory capacity and productivity are a little abstract, so it may be more helpful to consider the physical toll knowledge work takes on your brain and body. In order to focus, your brain and body burn fuels such as oxygen or glucose. This process creates byproducts such as metabolic waste—and when enough of these accumulate, you experience them as stress. Taking regular breaks allows your body to flush all of these byproducts out of your system and restore your energy sources so you can eventually return to your task at full capacity.)
However, many of us feel guilty when we take a break. This is especially true the busier we are. When we are supposed to be resting, our minds instead turn to all of the other things we should be doing.
So in order to rest properly despite this guilt, Bailey encourages us to reframe how we rest. Instead of viewing breaks as a waste of time, view them as an essential element of being the most productive, healthy version of yourself. If you have trouble with this, Bailey urges you to imagine the most and least productive times of your life. Chances are, during the most productive times, you were regularly taking breaks, while the least productive times were the times you were most fatigued. (Shortform note: If you can't figure out how regular rest affects your life, try a sleep journal. Spend a week or two tracking the times you go to bed and wake up, the quality of your sleep, and your productivity. What correlations do you see?)
So what is the best way to rest? Bailey recommends two main techniques—practice intentionally mind-wandering regularly and get a good night’s sleep.
The first technique Bailey recommends for better rest is to practice intentional mind-wandering regularly.
Why should you intentionally mind-wander regularly? Bailey implies that your avoidance of mind-wandering could be increasing your exhaustion levels. We’ve already discussed how mind-wandering is restful partly because it lets you temporarily stop regulating your behavior. Bailey also argues that mind-wandering is more restful than the activities most of us use to rest. As we’ve seen, most of us avoid mind-wandering on breaks. Instead, we rest with activities like scrolling through our phones.
However, according to Bailey, such activities still consume our attention and engage our mind—so they’re not actually as restful as we think they are. If you rest exclusively with these activities, you never totally disengage your attention and thus never get a real break. Therefore, you’re more tired than you would be if you mind-wandered intentionally.
Why Some Break Activities Exhaust You
Bailey’s argument above is confusing. He states that the activities we use to rest aren’t restful because they “still require our attention, [so] we never truly have a chance to recharge.” But everything requires at least some attention—including the methods Bailey suggests for intentional mind-wandering.
Compounding this problem, it’s unclear what exactly counts as a non-restful activity: Bailey states that during breaks, we “become too busy checking social media and the news and distracting ourselves in other ways without stepping back to actually let our minds rest.” This logic is circular—it defines a non-restful break activity as an activity that doesn’t let you rest. Furthermore, Bailey previously defined distraction as something that diverts you from your original intention—so if your intention is to check social media on your work break, that shouldn’t count as a distraction.
It seems likely that Bailey’s argument isn’t about whether a break activity requires your attention but how much it requires. Activities like checking social media and the news probably require more working memory than the activities you use to intentionally mind-wander, so they exhaust you more than intentional mind-wandering does. This article suggests another possibility: You use the same mental processes you use when you work to check social media and the news, so you don’t give those processes a break, which increases your exhaustion.
(Shortform note: If you stare at screens for work and during your breaks, screen overuse may also contribute to your exhaustion levels. Staring at screens strains your eyes and can wreak havoc on your sleep schedule. (Screens emit blue light, which can increase alertness). To reduce eye strain, follow the 20-20-20 rule: every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. To limit how screens affect your sleep, purchase a screen filter or blue-light-blocking glasses.)
But how exactly, can you disengage your attention and intentionally mind-wander for better rest?
There are two keys: know what to do and know when to do it.
The “what” is simple: Pick an easy and enjoyable task—like the one you use to enter “habitual mode.” Choose something you can do at work, since that’s most likely where you’ll want to regularly recharge your energy.
What Activities Are Restful?
Some of the activities Bailey suggests you use to rest are confusing. For example, he suggests reading a book during your lunch break. But shouldn’t reading thoroughly engage your attention and up a lot of working memory? In fact, this article explains that only activities that are social or relaxing (like mind-wandering) benefit you during breaks; activities that are cognitive (reading) or nutrition-based (having a snack) do not.
For best results, consider something physical that gets you away from your desk, like staring out the window or rubbing lotion into your hands. These are especially effective if you work at a computer, since both suggestions give your eyes and your hands a break from repetitive motions and staring at a screen.
The “when” is more complicated. Bailey recommends taking regular breaks throughout your workday in order to maximize your productivity. He adds that it’s best to take these breaks before you feel tired: He argues that you only start to notice your exhaustion after your productivity has already dipped. (Shortform note: Similarly, many people don’t realize they’re sleep-deprived because fatigue isn’t always its main symptom. If you’re feeling more sensitive than usual, you may need to take a break or get more sleep.)
However, when exactly you need to take a break depends on several individual factors like your workload and your energy levels on a particular day. Therefore, Bailey recommends two strategies to discover your ideal break time:
Strategy #1: Experiment.
As Bailey explains, it's best to rest when you have low mental energy. But since regulating your behavior consumes mental energy, the amount you use every day varies. Generally speaking, tasks that require more focus use more energy than simple tasks. But if you hate your job and have to force yourself to do even the simplest task, you will tire very quickly. So the best way to determine when to take a break for maximum productivity is to experiment. (Shortform note: As you experiment, keep a journal to track exactly what you do and how it affects your productivity. As we've seen, our memory is limited, so relying on it may be a losing strategy.)
Strategy #2: Pay attention to when your energy begins to falter. Bailey explains that, just as we sleep in 90-minute cycles, our mental energy occurs in 90-minute cycles. We feel energized for 90 minutes, then tired for about 20. As such, Bailey recommends paying attention to your energy levels throughout the day and resting when they start to decrease. Specifically, Bailey recommends resting every 90 minutes to take advantage of this natural rhythm. This natural rhythm Is not as regular in the afternoon, but Bailey recommends following it anyway for the sake of consistency. (Shortform note: This energy cycle is biologically known as your ultradian rhythm, and it's another reason why taking regular breaks is so important. Research shows that if you power through dips in energy, your next energy peak isn’t as high as it is when you rest appropriately.)
But you might also notice your energy falter when you finish a big task. Taking a break then has the added benefit of letting your attentional residue dissipate so you can perform better on your next task. (Shortform note: In addition to yawning and general loss of focus, signs you might need a break include hunger, thirst, physical clumsiness, and the urge to use the restroom.)
Another way to ensure you're taking regular breaks is to rest every 15 minutes per hour of work you do. This recommendation is based on a company that found that its most productive users worked for 52 minutes, then rested for 17 minutes. Following either of these time recommendations adds up to about 90 minutes of rest throughout a typical workday—like one hour for lunch plus two 15-minute breaks throughout the day. (Shortform note: Bailey argues that this is easy, suggesting that you take a coffee break or go to the employee nap pod. Although his book is geared towards knowledge workers, who might be more likely to have access to these things, not all knowledge workers have the ability to take breaks like this. Plenty of people have to clock out for breaks, and many are not allotted 90 minutes of break time each day. If you are committed to taking regular breaks, it may be worth talking to your boss about its benefits.)
The second technique Bailey recommends for better rest is to get a good night’s sleep.
A good night’s sleep is essential for good productivity because it increases your working memory capacity by nearly 60%. As we’ve seen, working memory capacity is essential to productivity—so the better you sleep, the more productive you are.
If you feel productive on little sleep, it might be because you think you’re more productive than you actually are—a common side effect of sleep deprivation, Bailey explains. He also suggests that you may be taking on easier tasks and that you could have gotten even more done had you slept longer. (Shortform note: Bailey doesn’t offer concrete reasoning for this, but Why We Sleep does. It explains that less than 1% of the population is able to get six hours of sleep and show no impairment—and this is largely genetic. It also adds that not only does sleep deprivation make you unaware of how poorly you’re performing, chronic sleep deprivation makes this poor performance your new baseline—so it's even harder for you to see just how badly you’re performing.)
Bailey focuses exclusively on how our reduced working memory capacity due to poor sleep affects our productivity. However, if you drive regularly, a bad night’s sleep is dangerous: In 2017, driving while sleepy led to 91,000 car accidents in the United States. This may be because driving requires you to pay attention to several things at once, which you can't do as well with reduced attentional capacity.
So how can you get a better night’s sleep? Bailey recommends three simple techniques.
#1: Remember that one hour of bad sleep equals two hours of poor productivity.
Bailey readily admits that this is a personal rule with little scientific basis—so why introduce it at all? It’s probably because even though the rule is inexact, it’s catchy and easy to remember. Most of us have known for years that sleep is critical to productivity, but we still have trouble getting to bed on time—partly because we forget the toll sleep takes on productivity until we’re struggling at work the day after a poor night’s sleep. This simple formula makes that toll clear, which likely makes getting to bed easier. It’s much harder to convince yourself that staying up three hours past your bedtime is a good idea if you equate that to six hours of lost productivity the following day.
#2: Create a bedtime ritual.
Most of us rely on willpower to get to bed at a decent time. But when you’re tired, your brain reverts to autopilot mode: Instead of managing your attention deliberately, you start to react automatically to external triggers. Therefore, Bailey recommends creating a bedtime ritual to improve your sleep quality.
Why a Bedtime Ritual Helps When You’re in Autopilot Mode
Bailey doesn’t make explicit why creating a bedtime ritual is good for a brain in autopilot mode. But as we’ve seen, you perform habits in autopilot mode: To develop the habit, you repeatedly perform the same action when you encounter a specific external trigger. It becomes a habit when you start to automatically perform that action whenever you encounter that trigger.
By creating a bedtime ritual, you develop habits that enhance your sleep length and quality. So it doesn’t matter that your brain reverts to autopilot mode when you’re tired because you’ve designed both your external triggers and your reactions to them to improve sleep. For example, your phone might automatically turn off at 10 P.M., which triggers you to begin preparing for bed.
But when you don’t have good sleep habits in place, your external triggers and automatic reactions might decrease your sleep length and quality. For example, you might get a vibrating text notification at 10 P.M., which triggers you to pick up your phone. If you weren’t tired, you’d respond to the message and turn the phone off because you know it’s late and you want to get a good night’s sleep. But if you’re tired and operating in autopilot mode, you might respond to the text message then automatically check social media because that’s what you normally do—and this could trigger hours of scrolling that cause you to go to bed much later than planned.
(Shortform note: If you’re in a relationship, Eyal suggests that developing a bedtime routine in conjunction with your partner can help improve your relationship For example, Bailey suggest removing the TV from your bedroom—Eyal goes a step further and suggests removing all devices, such as by replacing your phone alarm with an analog clock.)
#3: Go to bed early.
While sleep needs vary by person, Bailey suggests that most of us need at least eight hours of sleep. (Shortform note: The 4-Hour Body suggests that we can gain the same sleep benefits with polyphasic sleep, which is when you divide your sleep into chunks instead of sleeping for long stretches every night.)
You’ve now learned how to mind-wander so that you can plan for the future and so that you have more energy.
A third major benefit of intentional mind-wandering is that it increases your creativity. But how, exactly, does intentional mind-wandering increase creativity? And how can you make your intentional mind-wandering sessions as creative as possible?
In this section, we’ll first explain how learning and creativity work in the brain. We’ll then discuss the importance of exposing yourself to the right stimuli and present Bailey’s strategies for maximizing your chances of getting the right stimuli. Finally, we’ll explain why and how to intentionally trigger creative insights with the right strategies.
Whenever you encounter a new stimulus, your brain stores this information in what Bailey refers to as a “dot.” We’ll call them bits. Your brain treats each bit differently based on two major factors: what it is and what you already know about it.
When you learn, you connect a new bit to the bits you already know. In other words, you always interpret information based on your personal background. For example, a chef might look at a meal and think about how it was made. An environmentalist might look at the same meal and consider the environmental costs of all of its ingredients. (Shortform note: This connection can occur unintentionally—you smell a stranger’s cologne on the street and suddenly think of your first love. It can also occur deliberately, which many memory techniques use to their advantage. They make you connect new information to information you already know because the more connections a bit has in your brain, the more likely you are to remember it.)
Bailey explains that when you learn related bits, you join them together in a “cluster,” or chunk. The more bits you gather, the denser each chunk becomes. And the more chunks you gather around a topic, the more of an expert you become.
As an example of the chunking process, think about learning to drive a car with a manual transmission: To shift gears, you have to push in the clutch, move the stick to the right position, and keep the engine RPMs in the right range while you let the clutch back out. You also have to control the steering wheel, operate the brake, keep track of your speed, and so forth.
Initially, your brain treats each of these elements separately. Since only a few items fit into your working memory simultaneously, driving takes up all of your attention. However, once you learn to drive a stick-shift, you don’t think specifically about all these little tasks. You just think, “I need to drive to the grocery store,” and pretty soon you’re cruising down the road in third gear, without any conscious recollection of how you shifted from first gear into second or second into third. This is because your brain has condensed all the little tasks into a single chunk of information that you can use intuitively.
This single chunk becomes one of the things that your brain is paying attention to. Since all of the initially separate bits are now condensed into one, it requires less working memory, so we regain room in our working memory and thus the ability to pay attention to more items—like the radio in the car.
(Shortform note: In A Mind for Numbers, Oakley describes this exact process. She also explains that the more often you access a chunk, the stronger connections it has and the more it sticks in your memory. This is one reason why it’s essential to regularly review any information you study.)
This isn't to say that you remember every piece of information that you ever learn. This is thanks to sleep, which purges unimportant bits from your short-term memory and moves important bits into long-term storage.
Just like learning, creativity also involves connecting clusters and bits together. But when you learn, you connect related ideas together. Creativity involves connecting disparate ideas together. This is why intentional mind-wandering often leads to moments of inspiration: By not focusing on anything in particular, our brains randomly look for connections between bits. When it arrives at one, you gain a new, creative insight.
(Shortform note: Most people assume that creativity is only necessary in the arts. But the researchers behind one study that found that mind-wandering increased creativity posit that mind-wandering is so common because it was useful in ancient times: We found creative solutions that helped us survive thanks to mind-wandering.)
We’ve now learned that you create bits and chunks when you encounter new information, and you act creatively when you connect those bits and chunks in unexpected ways. Therefore, creativity depends on the information you encounter. In other words, the higher-quality bits and chunks you create, the higher-quality ideas you have.
So how do you get the highest-quality bits? Since our brains can store nearly limitless amounts of information, you could try cramming as much information into your head as possible. However, as we’ve seen, you can only pay attention to a limited number of items simultaneously due to your limited working memory capacity. So even if you tried to pay attention to all the world’s information, you would only capture a certain amount—and not necessarily the data that was most beneficial to you. Furthermore, as we’ve seen, trying to pay attention to more items than your working memory is capable of holding overwhelms your brain and causes you to forget important information.
(Shortform note: Another problem with paying attention to all of the data has to do with information overload. Smarter Faster Better describes how in our modern society, many of us become so overwhelmed by the amount of data available that we enter a state of “information blindness,” where we either ignore the data, misinterpret the data, or stop taking it in altogether. Author Charles Duhigg explains that you avoid information overload by interacting with the data in some way, such as by writing it out, plotting it on a graph, or explaining it to another person.)
Instead, Bailey argues, to get the highest-quality bits, you need to pay attention to the highest-quality information.
Bailey goes so far as to argue that paying attention to the right information is what causes genius. People often cite that geniuses are made by 10,000 hours of practice. But in order to come up with genius ideas and decisions, Bailey argues, you must connect 10,000 hours’ worth of information. (Shortform note: The 10,000-hour rule was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers, but this is actually a myth. One reason for this is that he doesn’t distinguish between different types of practice. As Peak explains, not all practice is equal: deliberate practice, which involves setting clear goals and making specific improvements, is the best type.)
So how do you get the highest-quality information?
First, you must determine what counts as high-quality information. Bailey posits that all the information we encounter can be ranked based on its usefulness and its entertainment value. The most useful (and thus highest-quality) information is accurate, related to your goals, practical, and relevant long-term. Bailey suggests that we encounter this mostly in books and podcasts. (Shortform note: Although this is a generally applicable rule, rating the value of information is an extremely subjective process. If you personally find a piece of information useful, that’s enough. Don’t feel like information that doesn’t meet all of these criteria can’t be useful.) However, the most useful information also takes the most work to learn—so it’s also the least entertaining. According to Bailey, generally speaking, the less useful the information, the more entertaining it becomes.
Then, improve the quality of the information that you take in. Bailey doesn’t suggest exclusively taking in high-quality information. Fun is important, and given how much work it is to learn useful information, taking in only high-quality information would be exhausting. (Shortform note: Lower-quality information has benefits other than fun, too. For example, watching TV can help you relax if you’re facing a major stressor.)
Rather, Bailey recommends that you be more intentional about the information you do take in. So we recommend trying this experiment: Over the next few weeks, ask yourself the following questions before you consume any information. Doing so will teach you to be more intentional about the information you consume so that you can consume higher-quality information.
Question #1: Do I enjoy this?
Bailey explains that sometimes, we consume information out of habit and not because we genuinely enjoy it. Stop doing this. (Shortform note: If you struggle with this, try Chapter 4’s strategies for reducing distractions to help cull the information you consume.) Conversely, most of us enjoy something that others don't. Bailey encourages you to keep doing this, even if others find it strange or unappealing. (Shortform note: If you struggle to enjoy things that you like but other people don't, it may be a signal to be kinder to yourself. Try strategies like complimenting yourself—doing so boosts your endorphins and spurs you to accomplish more.)
Question #2: Is this worth finishing?
Have you ever powered through a book you hated just because you wanted to finish it? Bailey explains that this is due to the Zeigarnik effect—your mind doesn't like leaving things unfinished. (We’ll elaborate more on this later.) Give yourself permission to walk away from information that is ultimately not valuable.
(Shortform note: What if you don't want to read the whole book but are still curious about what happens? In this case, simply Google the title of the media you're consuming and spoiler. You’ll satisfy your curiosity without spending all the time to finish everything.)
Question #3: Is this worth my time, focus, and energy?
Bailey argues that too many of us select the media we consume based on others’ recommendations and not because we actually want to. So he encourages you to vet any media you’re considering consuming by asking this question. (Shortform note: Bailey first introduces this idea in Chapter 0.5 by telling his reader to re-evaluate whether or not they really want to read Hyperfocus. This is unique in works about productivity and demonstrates Bailey’s commitment to his mission: Most books don’t encourage you to reconsider whether you want to read them after you’ve already picked them up.)
If you can’t decide between multiple options, imagine yourself looking back on your life. Which activity would your future self think was a better use of your time? Would your future self have any regrets about how you spent this time? (Shortform note Imagining your life from the perspective of your future self can help you determine more than what piece of information to consume—it can clarify your goals for the future. One common technique is to write your own obituary so that you think about the impact you want to leave and whether your current actions support that.)
Question #4: Is this related to what I know already?
Bailey explains that you gain the most creative insights when you connect the ideas that are the most different. So venturing outside your comfort zone and learning new things is key to gaining more creative insights. (Shortform note: This is true of both topics and creators. In 2020, many Americans deliberately diversified the media that they consumed—not by topic but by consuming more media created by BIPOC.)
That said, expertise comes from collecting as much information about a topic as possible. So when you stop consuming something, he recommends consuming something new—ideally, something related to your field of expertise. (Shortform note: Given that one of Bailey's major ideas is that we are generally overstimulated, this recommendation seems counterintuitive. It may be worth eliminating poor-quality sources of information and not replacing them to get used to less stimulation overall.)
Question #5: Do I want to do this?
Since Bailey defines productivity as accomplishing your intended goal, relaxation can be productive. The key? Don't let yourself fall into autopilot mode. To accomplish this, schedule your relaxation periods in advance and stick to them. It’s OK to binge-watch a TV show as long as you decide how many episodes to binge in advance.
(Shortform note: A lot of distractions like Netflix suck us into long unintended bouts of relaxation because they autoplay. Make your Netflix binge more intentional by turning off this setting—having to manually select the next episode might help you reconsider whether this Is how you really want to be spending your time. This is an example of what Atomic Habits describes as a one-time action that triggers good habits.)
You’ve now learned how, by improving the quality of the information you consume, you’re able to have higher-quality ideas. But how do you actually have those ideas? Most people assume that creative insights happen randomly. However, Bailey explains that you can intentionally trigger creative insights thanks to what psychologists call the Zeigarnik effect.
The Zeigarnik effect is the name for a peculiar neural phenomenon: We remember things we haven’t yet completed much better than things we’ve completed. Thanks to the Zeigarnik effect, your brain continues to work on problems you haven’t yet solved—even if you’re not actively working on them.
(Shortform note: One paper notes that, despite the Zeigarnik effect’s popularity in productivity books, most modern psychology books don’t mention it because researchers haven’t been able to replicate it reliably. Studies that support the Zeigarnik effect suggest that it relates to motivation: People motivated by feeling successful remember incomplete tasks better because they need to complete them to achieve their goal. However, the Zeigarnik effect is not a universal phenomenon.)
As you’re subconsciously working on this problem, your brain encounters various stimuli. It automatically tries to connect all of these stimuli to this problem. These stimuli might be external (like the apple that fell on Isaac Newton’s head). If your mind is wandering, these stimuli might be internal—like an old memory you haven’t thought of in a while. (Shortform note: A falling apple definitely triggered Newton’s theory of gravity—but there’s no evidence to suggest it fell specifically on his head.) Sometimes, the stimulus your brain encounters reminds it of something else it already knows. It connects this old information (or the new stimulus, which may itself be the information you were missing) to your problem—and solves it.
When your mind wanders, you encounter many more stimuli because you think about many more things. The more stimuli you encounter, the higher the likelihood you encounter the stimulus you need to solve your problem, so the more likely it is you’ll gain a creative insight.
If you mind-wander intentionally, you’re far more likely to notice and remember this creative insight. Furthermore, when you perform a fun, easy task as you mind-wander, you maximize the stimuli you encounter: You experience both external stimuli (from doing the task) and internal stimuli (the thoughts you have as your mind wanders). Therefore, intentionally mind-wandering in the right situations can increase your likelihood of having and remembering a creative insight.
Design such situations yourself using Bailey’s strategies.
#1: Intentionally mind-wander in busy environments.
As we’ve seen, you need new stimuli to trigger a creative insight. So maximize your chances of having a burst of inspiration by maximizing the external stimuli you encounter. Bailey recommends intentionally mind-wandering someplace you’ll regularly encounter new cues—like a train station or a busy café.
(Shortform note: “Where’s the Spark? How Lockdown Caused a Creativity Crisis” describes how COVID-19 caused a loss in creativity partly because people weren’t exposed to new experiences. If your company still works from home, expanding your weak-tie network through cross-departmental collaborative projects might be a good way to increase new stimuli: Chance comments from “weak ties” can be the source of unexpected inspiration.)
#2: Manipulate the Zeigarnik effect.
Bailey explains that there are two main ways you can manipulate the Zeigarnik effect.
Both methods ensure that your problem or task remains in the back of your mind. Writing down your problem helps you remember the problem. (Shortform note: Bailey doesn’t offer evidence to support this claim. Many studies indicate that handwriting improves your memory, but typing doesn’t have the same effect—so Bailey’s strategy may only work if you handwrite your problem.) And stopping your task in the middle works because the task leaves behind mental residue, so your mind continues to work on it even if you’re not actively doing the task. (Shortform note: Stopping your task in the middle likely works best if you’re able to let your mind wander for a while. As you may recall from our discussion of hyperfocus, if you still have mental residue from a task in your working memory when you need to hyperfocus, the mental residue will distract you and you won’t be able to hyperfocus as well.)
When you move onto a fun but easy task and let your mind wander, the Zeigarnik effect ensures that your brain will try to connect all the stimuli you encounter to the unsolved problem or the incomplete task. So by mind-wandering after writing down your problem or stopping your task in the middle, you increase the number of connections your brain tries to make with your problem or task. The more connections your brain makes, the more likely it is to make a useful connection.
(Shortform note: Like Bailey, Oakley argues that you can switch to diffuse-mode thinking (which is similar to intentional mind-wandering) to work out a creative solution to a problem. But Oakley’s technique has one important caveat: She argues that in order for your mind to best come up with a creative insight, you can no longer be consciously thinking about the problem—which can take several hours. Bailey makes no such claim; in fact, the problem-solving mode we saw earlier uses the exact opposite logic since you need to repeatedly bring your mind back to the problem you’re working on.)
#3: Delay your decision.
As we’ve seen, the more you hyperfocus, the less your mind wanders—and the harder it becomes to trigger a creative insight. One strategy Bailey recommends if you regularly hyperfocus is to wait as long as possible when making creative decisions. The more time you give your mind to wander, the more stimuli your brain will encounter and the higher the possibility you’ll come up with an innovative solution. (Shortform note: Of course, there are famous examples of people coming up with creative solutions under high time pressure. But one study’s Time-Pressure/Creativity Matrix suggests this is exceedingly rare and almost exclusively when people feel a sense of purpose and urgency about their task.)
#4: Sleep on it.
You might argue that sleeping is a biological necessity and doesn’t count as intentional mind-wandering. But Bailey argues that dreaming is “scatterfocus on steroids,” noting several famous examples of great ideas humans had in their sleep. (Shortform note: One he doesn’t mention is Mary Shelley, who dreamt up her gothic classic Frankenstein during an afternoon nap.) He also cites a study indicating that REM sleep in particular allows your brain to make the connection it needs to find a creative insight. (Shortform note: REM sleep is also important for sleep quality: The 4-Hour Body suggests that the higher the ratio of REM sleep to total sleep, the more restful your sleep.)
Bailey suggests that dreaming may trigger creative insights because sleep is so neurally similar to intentional mind-wandering. Both intentional mind-wandering and sleep energize us. Random neurons fire both when we sleep and when we mind-wander intentionally, which leads to breakthrough ideas. Our brains consolidate information during both brain modes. Our minds wander to similar areas during both modes, including the past, the future, and our relationships with other people. However, Bailey admits that our minds jump much more between these areas when we mind-wander intentionally.
(Shortform note: Why might sleep be so neurally similar to intentional mind-wandering? Perhaps it’s because dreams come from activity in the brain’s “default network,” which is most active when we daydream, too.)
So how can you use sleep to intentionally trigger a creative insight? Bailey recommends asking yourself important questions and going over information you want to remember just before you go to sleep. He posits that this will cause your mind to wander around these topics while you sleep—so you could wake up with a new creative insight.
(Shortform note: If you use this technique, keep a notebook on your nightstand to capture these insights. After all, most of us forget our dreams as soon as we wake up. Keeping a dream journal can also help you learn from your mistakes.)