Hyper Focus

Author Chris Bailey

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Status Finished

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Format Physical

Completion 100%

Current Page 241

Total Pages 241

Dates @June 25, 2025 5:04 PM

Year Finished 2025

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Hyper Focus 1
 CHAPTER 0

Why Focus Matters

Disconnecting is one of the most powerful ways to spark new & innovative ideas.

Attention is all around us. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Hyper Focus 2
 Studies show we can work for an average of just forty seconds in front of a computer
before we’re either distracted or interrupted.

Focusing deeply on just one important thing at a time- hyper focusing- we become the
most productive version of ourselves.

CHAPTER 0.5

How to Better Focus on This Book

Productivity is highly personal.

1. Put your phone out of sight

2. Mind your environment

Modifying your environment is one of the top ways to cultivate your focus.

The most focus-conducting environment are those in which you’re interrupted &
distracted the least.

3. Make distraction list

4. Question whether this book is worth consuming at all.

You are what you eat, You are what you pay attention to.

Attention is finite & is the most valuable ingredient you have to live a good life.

5. Consume some caffeine before reading

6. Grab a pen or highlighter

7. When you notice your focus wavering……

Your ability to focus isn’t limitless- While you can improve your attention span. It’s
only matter of time until it begins to waver.

PART ONE HYPERFOCUS

CHAPTER 1

Switching Off Autopilot Mode

Autopilot Mode

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 Autopilot mode is enables us to keep up with the demands of our life.

As many as 40% of our actions are habits, which shouldn’t require conscious
deliberation.

One of the most underrated skills: letting other people finish their sentence before
starting yours.

Attention is our most limited & constrained resource.

The more we can manage our attention with intention, the more focused, productive &
creative we become.

A DAY IN AUTOPILOT MODE

research shows that our eyes actually scan the page more slowly when our mind is
wandering.

The four type of tasks

necessary work: We usually have to push ourselves to do this types of work.

Unnecessary Work: Don’t bother with this tasks unless we’re procrastinating to doing
something else.

Active form of laziness

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 Distracting work: Black hole for productivity. Small doses.

Purposeful work The tasks we’re put on earth to do. Largest impact.

A perfectly productive person would focus on only the top two quadrants of the above
chart.

CHAPTER 2

The Limits of Your Attention

Without selective interest, experience is utter chaos. - William James

Your focus determines your reality- Qui-Gon Jinn, Star Wars

The boundaries of your attention

There is finite limited to how many things we can focus on.

Our brain receives 11 million “bits” of information in the form of sensory experiences
each second. Only 40 (only 40, not 40 million) of them are consciously process & focus
on at once by our brain.

After focusing on something, we can hold only a small amount of information in our
short- term memory.

The ability to temporarily store information in our minds is practically a superpower.

Our lives are generally structured around the fact that we’re able to hold, at most, seven
pieces of unique information in our short- term memory.

You need look no further than the world around you to see evidence of ho we organize
data into mentally orderly units.

Meet your attentional space

Attention space: Amount of mental capacity we have available to focus on & process
things in the moment.

Our focus & attention space are responsible for most of our conscious experiences.

If your brain were a computer, your attention space would be its RAM.

Researchers refer to this space as our “Working memory” & the size of this space as our
“Working memory Capacity”

Hyper Focus 5
 Over the last 2.5 million years, our daily tasks weren’t nearly as complex as the
knowledge work we do today.

(Our brain) Just 2-3 % of our body mass, it burns 20% of the calories we take in.

The space hold everything that you’re aware of- it’s your entire conscious world.

Your brain is hard at work converting the raw bits of perceptual information into facts,
storis & lessons that you remember & internalize.

Much as the world doesn’t combine many groups of data into sets greater than seven,
every book is structured to accommodate a reader’s restricted attentional space.

The period at the end of a sentences the point when our attentional space “Stop being
loaded, & what is has been present in it up to that moment, must be in some way store in
a summarized form in a short-term memory.”

Your attention is constantly synced to what you’re reading or doing.

What filling your attentional space?

Meta Awareness

Becoming aware of what you’re thinking about is one of the best practices for managing
your attention.

The more you notice what’s occupying your attention space, the faster you can get back
on track when your mind begins wander, which it does a remarkable 47% of the time.

You’re essentially spending half of your time & attention on what’s not in front of you,
lost inthe past or calculating the future.

We perform significantly better on every task when we’re aware that our mind is
wandering.

Tasks that pair well

Tasks take different amounts of attentional space depending on their complexity.

IF you listen an audiobook during that routine, hourlong trip, you’ll be able to read an
extra book each week by utilizing the attention freed by habitual task.

Our attention space can process even more when we’re working on unrelated tasks.

Because we use different brain regions to process them, the tasks aren’t competing for
the same mental resources.

Hyper Focus 6
 The number of habitual tasks we can fit into our attentional space is much higher than the
number of demanding ones.

1. A few small, habitual tasks.

2. A task that requires most of our focus, as well as a habitual task

3. One complex task

Attention overload
We have to work with intention as much as possible- this is especially true when we have
more to do than time within which to do it.

Life often pressure us with unexpected surprises.

The brain is not built to do knowledge work- it’s wired for survival & reproduction.

Productivity means accomplishing what we intend to.

Being busy doesn’t make us productive.

It doesn’t matter how busy we are if that busyness doesn’t lead us to accomplish anything
of importance.

Productivity id not about cramming more into our days but about doing the right thing in
each moment.

The costs add up

Multitasking means concurrently trying to focus on more than one thing at a time.

Shifting our attention is the movement of our attentional spotlight (Or our attentional
Space) from one task to another.

The basal ganglia, A brain system that’s involved in the learning of skills & habits.

Hippocampus- Which actually lets us store & recall the information.

We also accumulate less knowledge, which, when we do knowledge work for a living,
sets us back in the long run.

According to Sophie Leroy, It’s not possible for us to seamlessly switch attention from
one task to another. It is called as “Attention Residue.”

Switching does make your work more stimulating, & its costs may be worth bearing if
you work taskes only 5 % longer a& you make only the occasional mistake.

Hyper Focus 7
 One study found that when we continually switch between tasks, our work takes 50%
longer, compared with doing one task from start to completion.

The best time to take a break is after you’ve finished a big task.

The quality of your attention

Intention is the bouncer of your attentional space- it lets in the productive objects of
attention & keeps the distractions out.

CHAPTER 3

The Power of Hyperfocus

Introducing Hyperfocus
This one task filled your attentional space.

Your work was probably also at a comfortable level of difficulty: not so hard as to be
intimidating; not so easy that it could be done out of habit.

Hyperfocus is many things at once: it’s deliberate, undistracted & quick to refocus & it
leads us to become completely immersed in our work. It also makes us immensely happy.

Hyperfocus means you’re less busy, because you’re permitting fewer objects into your
attentional space.

You’re never to o busy to hyperfocus.

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

Hyperfocusing on habits:
Only one productive & meaningful task consumed your attentional space.

The more attention they brought to their typing, the slower they typed & the more
mistakes they made.

When doing such habitual tasks, it’s best to not focus completely on what you’re doing.

One of the best ways to get more done- & done faster- is be preventing yourself from
focusing on things that aren’t important.

Hyper Focus 8
 The four stages of hyperfocus:
Hyperfocus when you engage both your thoughts & your external environment & direct
them at one thing intentionally.

So how do we enter hyperfocus mode?

First, we’re focused (& productive). Then, assuming we don’t get distracted or
interrupted. Third, we make note of this mind wandering. Fourth, we shift our focus back
to our original object attention.

The more meaningful our objects of focus, the more meaningful our life becomes.

Distraction are more attractive objects of attention than what we really ought to be doing.

Our mind wanders for 47 % of the day.

It takes an average of 22 minutes to resume working on a task after we’re distracted or

interrupted.

It takes 29 minutes to return to working on the original task.

Keep one important, complex object of attention in your awareness as you work.

Choosing what to focus on

Attention without intention is wasted energy.

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

1. The rule of 3

2. The most consequential tasks

3. The hourly awareness chime

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

How to set stronger intentions:

While we often achieve our vague intentions, specific intentions greatly increase our
odds of overall success.

Even vague intentions like these voost your odds of successfully carrying them out by
around 20 % to 30 %

Hyper Focus 9
 Implementation intention

Make a veryw to detailed plane on how you want to achieve what you want to achieve.

Goals need plans, ideally plans that include when where, & which kind of action to move
towards the goal.

A remarkable 62% of students who set a specific implementation intention followed

through on their goals.

Setting specific intentions can double or triple your odds of success.

You have to actually care about your intention.

Easy to accomplish intentions don’t have to be as specific.

When the goal are tough, or when you have so many goals, it’s hard to attain them all,
that’s when planning works particularly well.

Starting a hyperfocus ritual:

Start by “feeling out” how long you want to hyperfocus. Push your self- but not too hard.

Anticipate obstacles ahead of time: a few minutes of advance planning can save hours of
wasted productivity.

Set timer

Hyperfocus

Whenever you can:

Whenever you have an important task or project & a window in which you can work
on it, don’t pass up the opportunity to hyperfocus- you’ll missing out on a lot of
productivity if you do.

When you’re working on a task that only you can do, it’s the perfect time to enter
into hyperfocus mode.

Around the constraints of your work:

Most of us don’t have the luxury of hyperfocusing whenever we wish.

Productivity is often a process of understanding our constraints.

When you need to work on a complex task

Based on how averse you are to what you intend to accomplish

Hyper Focus 10
 Building your focus
CHAPTER 4

Taming Distractions
Forty seconds
We switch between computer application 566 times during the average workday.

Interruptions that are in some way related to a project we’re working on don’t derail our
productivity as severely.

It takes an average of 25 minutes to resume working on an activity after we’re

interrupted.

Once you become aware of how frequently you interrupt yourself it’s hard to go back to
working the same way again.

Why we love distraction

After choosing how long you’ll focus, eliminating distraction is the second step in
hyperfocus.

The four types of distractions

“Distraction” as anything that can direct us away from our intention.

Hyper Focus 11
 We interrupt ourselves just as much as we are interrupted by other people.

Distraction free mode

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Hyper Focus 13
 There are many apps available that cut you off from distractions:

People who deploy distraction blockers are more productive & focus for longer
periods of time

If you workplace restricts what apps or plugins you can install on your computer

Get out of the office

Be thoughtful & don’t underestimate (or overestimate) the social costs of you
disctraction-free mode:

Your coworkers need you a lot less than you think you do.

Trat yourself

The more impulsive you are, the more stressed you bemoce by blocking yourself
from distractions.

Create a disctraction free mode for your team.

Productivity is a process of understanding & adapting to your constraints.

A disctraction-free mode also allows you to conserve energy.

Working with reduced disctractions

It’s impossible to work in hyperfocus mode 100 % of the time.

Technology should exist for our convenience, not for the convenience of any one who
wants to interrupt us.

Notifiction:
You suddenly get to choose when you’re interrupted by your phone, rather than you
phone deciding when to interrupt you.

We less likely to multitask when we end our daily activities & fo to bed early then ight
before.

Your smartphone (& other devices)

We shouldn’t give any shiny rectangualar decide so much power.

Strategies to prevent you phone:

Mind your gaps.

Do a phone swap

Hyper Focus 14
 Strategically use airplane mode: It’s impossible to share quality time without also
sharing quality attention.

Buy a second distraction device:

Create a mindless folder

Prune your list of apps

Questions what “jobs” you “hire” devices to do for you.

Email:
Email is one of the largest distractions we face each day.

64% of people use notifications with wither audible or visual signals to alert them to new
messages.

Check for new messages only if you have the time, attention & energy to deal with
whatever it might have come in.

Keep a tally of how often you check for message: The averagge knowledge worker
checks his rmail 11 times/ Hour- 88 times over the span of a day. The same study
found that employees spend an average of just around thirty-five minutes on email
per day.

Predecide when you’ll check: 70% of emails are opened within the first 6 seconds of
receipt. 84% of workers keep their email client open in the background as they work.

Hyperfocus on email: Set a timer for 20 minutes & in that time, blow through as
many emails as you possible can.

Limit points of contact

Keep an external to-do list

Sign up for two email accounts

Take an “Email Holiday”

Use the five sentence rule

Wait before sending important message: Not every email is worth sending
immediately. For important messages, heated exchanges or email that require more
thought, give yourself tiem to respond- & let your mind wander to let new. better &
more creative ideas rise to the surface.

One study that had participants go without email observed that after a perod of just one
week, their heart rate variability changes as they became significantly less stressed.

Hyper Focus 15
 Meeting:
A recent study found that, on average, knowledge workers spend 37% of their time in
meetings.

Never attend a meeting without an agenda

Question every recurring on your calendar: Some may be more valuable than they
seem on the surface. Some may be difficult to get out of, but taking a few minutes to
gracefully ease your way out will save hours later on.

Challenge the attendance list

Hyperfocus on Meetings

The Internet

Simplifying your environment:

Those who kept their phone in front of them checked it every 3 to 5 minutes, “regardless
of whether it rang or buzzed”

Even when they are not in active use or buzzing, beeping, ringing or flashing, (our
phone) are representative of (our) wider social network and a portal to an immense
compendium of information.

Environmental cues don’t actively interrupt us, but they can do just as much harm to our
productivity & personal life.

1. Take stock of the distractions around you

2. Distance yourself

3. Introduce more productive cues into your environment

Decluttering your digital environment is just as important as decluttering your physical

one.

Music
Even office temperature influences productivity to some degree.

Research suggest that the most productive music has two main attributes: its sound
familiar & Its relatively simple.

Music never exist in isolation.

Hyper Focus 16
 A study found that overhearing one side of a phone conversation is significantly more
distracting than overhearing a regular dyadic conversation- your brain works overtime to
fill in the missing side of the half- alogue, so the conversation occupies more of your
attentional space.

Music impairs the performance of introverts more than extroverts.

If you’re looking to focus, keep the music you listen to simple & familiar.

Clearing your mind:

Our brain is for having ideas, Not for holding them. An empty brain is a productive brain,
& the more stuff we get out of our heads, the more clearly we think.

Something remarkable happens when you externalize tasks & commitments: You work
with almost no guilt, worry or doubt.

You experience guilt when you feel tension about your past, worry when you feel tension
about your future & doubt & stress when you feel tension about the present moment.

Maintaining a calender or a to-do list turns internal disctractions into external clues.

Capturing ideas that come to you as you let your mind rest & wander will mean you can
make use of them letter.

Feel out your own threshold: Start with setting a few intentions each day, & keep a to-do
list & a calender.

Working with purpose:

Your brain will invariable resist more complex tasks, especially when you’re first starting
them- & when it does, you’ll look around for more novel & stimulating things to do
instead.

How much time we spend working with intention: How long we’re able to focus on one
task, and how long our mind wanders before we catch it doing so.

When we text while reading something, it can take us anywhere from 22% to 59% longer
to read the same passage. It doesn’t matter if you work at a slower, more deliberate pace
if you’re continuously working in the right direction.

CHAPTER 5

Making Hyperfocus a Habits

Hyper Focus 17
 What makes our mind wander:
Feeling stress or bored

Working in a chaotic environment

Thinking about personal concers

Questioning whether we’re working on the best thing

Amount of unused attentional space

The power of making your work harder

Consciously making your tasks more complex & taking on more complex ones, is
another powerful way to enter into a hyperfocuse state, as they will consume more of
your attention.

We’re most likely to enter into a flow state: when the challenge of completing a task is
roughly equal to our ability to do so. & we become totally immersed in the task.

If you find difficult to become immersed in your work through out the day, it’s worth
questioning whether your task are difficult & complex enough.

The tactics in Hyperfocus will allow you to accomplish more in less time, but you may
then find you don’t have enough work remaining to fill that extra time.

Our work tends to expand to fit the available empletion time- in productivity circles, this
phenomenon is know as Parkinson’s Law.

To measure if you have enough work in general, assess how much of your day you spend
doing unproductive busywork.

We’re happier doing tasks that don’t consume our complete attention.

While our productive tasks are important they’re usually also more aversive, which is
why we’re usually well compensated to do them- they take advantage of our unique
mental resources.

Increasing the size of your attentional space:

The greater your working memory capacity, the more information you can hold at the
same time & the greater your ability to process complex tasks.

A larger attentional space means you’ll have extra attention to think about what you’ll
work on next, while keeping your original intention in mind.

Hyper Focus 18
 Possessing a greater working memory capacity “Enables (you) to take full advantage of
these underutilized resources and return to (you) favored mention destination”

It found “no evidence” that the app worked, even when the tasks they measured were the
ones they were designed to improved.

One study discover that when participants developed a meditation practice, not only did
their minds wander less, but they could also focus foe longer before that happened- two
measure of the quality of attention.

The most validated technique for minimizing the disruptive effects of mind wandering.

A 45 Minute mediation exercise twice a week.

An average of more than 30%

When you practice being with your breath, you practice being with your life.

Mindfulness differs from hyperfocus in on major respect: It’s about focusing on the
circumstances of the present, rather than becoming immersed in them.

A mindful shower is one in which you focus on the sights sounds, & sensations of the
present, which enables you to train your brain to better focus on what’s in front of you.

Don’t be hard on yourself when your mind wanders- remember, you brain was built to do
this.

The smaller the object of attention, the more your mind will wander, but the more you’ll
expand the size of your attentional space as you focus on it.

You might even notice your mind has wandered to somewhere productive and you want
to continue that train of thought.

Mindfulness and meditation improve virtually every aspects of how you manage your
attention.

Hyperfocus at Home
The secret to deep: Meaningful conversation is simple bring your complete attention to
the person you’re speaking with.

Love is nothing more than sharing quality attention with someone.

Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost
indistinguishable.

Spending out time at home more purposefully also enable us to feel recharged.

Hyper Focus 19
 The quality of your attention determined the quality of your life.

At work, the more attention you give to what’s in front of you, the more productive you
become.

Four (More) ways to battle your resistance to hyperfocus

We’ll work on a task for only 40 seconds before falling victim of distractions.

1. Shrink your desired hyperfocus period until you no longer feel resistance to the ritual.

2. Notice whrn you “Don’t have time” for something: You always have time- you just spend
it on other things. If the task swap shows you do have the time, chances are this is just
your resistance talking.

3. Continually practice hyperfocus

4. Recharge: Hyperfocus can be oddly energizing.

The power of hyperfocus

Every idea in Hyperfocus is designed to help you more deliberately manage your
attention- an essential idea when our attention is o limited & in demand.

Attention is the most important ingredient we have to living a good, productive life.

The power of mind wandering:

Our attention scatters to focus on nothing in particular.

While hyperfocus involves directing your attention onward, scatter focus is about
directing it inward, inside your own mind.

Just as hyperfocus is the most productive mode of the brain scatter focus is the most
creative.

PART TWO SCATTERFOCUS

CHAPTER 6

Your Brain's Hidden Creative Mode

Not all those who wander are lost. - J.R.R Talkien

Introducing scatter focus:

Hyper Focus 20
 Just as you hyperfocus by intentionally directing your attention toward one thing, you
scatter focus by deliberately letting your mind wander.

It’s impossible to set future intentions when you’re immersed in the present.

Your brain automatically plans for the future when you rest- you just need to give it the
space & time to so.

Scattering your attention & focusing on nothing in particular supercharge the dot-
connecting powers of your brain.

Why we’re averse to scatter focus

83% of Americans responded that they didn’t spend any time whatever “relaxing or
thinking” in the 24 hours period before they were surveyed.

A full 71 percent of men in the study chose to self administer an electric shock when left
alone with their thoughts, Women fared better: only 26 % chose to shock themselves
again.

We’ve crafted the world around us to cater to these cravings for novel, pleasurable &
threatening objects of attention.

Our greatest threats, worries & fears no longer reside in our external environment but
within the depths of our own consciousness.

Our mind primarily wanders to the negative when we’re thinking about the past, but we
wander to the past just 12% of the time- the remainder is spent thinking about the present
& the future. which makes scatter focus remarkably productive.

Compared with other mammals, our ability to think about something that’s not
immediately in front of us is fairly unique. It afford us the ability to plan for the future,
learn form the past, & have daydreams that spawn remarkable infights.

Scatter focus enables us to step back from life & to work & live more intentionally.

Oh, the places our mind goes

When your mind wanders, it visits three main places: the past, the present & the future.
This is precisely why scattering your attention allows your creativity to flourish as you
travel through time & connect what you’ve learned to what you’re doing or what you
want to achieve.

38% of our past related thoughts connect with earlier in the day events,42% relate to the
previous day’s, and 20% involve ruminating on what happened in the more distant past.

Hyper Focus 21
 Our mind wanders to the present 28% of the time.

Neurologically speaking, it’s impossible to both focus on something & reflect on that
thing at the same time.

Our mind wander to think about the future 48 % of the time- more than our past &
present thinking combined.

44% of our future thoughts concern a time later the same day & 40% tomorrow.

Scatter focus enables us to act more intelligently & more intentionally.

Every moment of our lives like a choose your own adventure story- continually offering
different options that allow us to define our future path.

We spend hardly any time thinking about the future when we’re focused while in scatter
focus mode we’re 14 time more likely to have these thoughts.

We consider our goals only about 4% of the time when we’re immersed in what we’re
doing. while in scatter focus mode we think about them 26% of the time.

The 3 style of scatterfocus:

While hyperfocusing can be difficult, we already spend 47% of our day in something
similar to scatter focus mode without any effort, whenever our focus lapses & our
attention wanders.

Scatter focus is always international.

Research also suggests that we notice where our mind wanders around half of the time.

All mind wandering goes on without awareness without intention.

Intention is what scatterfocus so powerful.

Research has found this mode is the most powerful.

Problem-crunching mode is best for mulling over a specific problem or idea; habitual
mode is best for recharging & connecting the greatest number of ideas.

Capture mode:
Clearing your mind of open loops is a powerful productivity tactic.

Unresolved tasks, projects & Commitments weigh heavily on our mind, perhaps because
our brain view them as threats.

Hyper Focus 22
 Courting yourself off from distractions naturally turns your attention inward, as your
thoughts became more interesting than anything in your external environment.

Problem-Crunching mode:

Habitual mode
Your attentional space is just as essential in scatterfocus mode as it is in hyperfocus
mode- it’s the scratch pad your brain uses to connect ideas.

Habitual tasks have been shown to yield the greatest number of creative insights.

Habitual tasks also encourage your mind to continue wandering.

A habitual task acts as a sort of “anchor” that guides your mind until you’ve completed
the work.

Good ideas will rise to the surface of your mind so long as you have attention to space.

A primary reason many of us feel burned out is that we never give our attention a rest.

The key to practicing habitual scatter focus is to frequently check what thoughts & ideas
are in your attentional space.

How hyperfocus help you scatter focus

Hyperfocus is about focusing on the thing; scatter focus is about focusing on noting in
particular.

The two mental modes are even anticorrelated- when the brain network that supports
scatter focus is activated.

The size of your attention space is one of the biggest determinations of how fruitful your
scatterfocus episodes will be.

Helpful to think of the brain as a fundamentally prospective organ that is designed to use
information from the past & the present to generate predictions about the future. Memory
can be thought of as a tool used by the prospective brain to generate simulations of
possible future events.

Remembering the past helps us imagine the future.

Just as you are what you eat, when it comes to information you consume, you are what
you choose to focus on.

We notice our mind has wandered, on average, just 5.4 times every hour.

Hyper Focus 23
 Can hijack the very brain regions that are necessary for recognizing its occurrence.

Rethinking Boredom:
Never in human history have we divided our attention among so many things.

Boredom is the feeling we experience as we transition into a lower level of stimulation.

The less stimulated you are the more deeply you can think.

We fail to plan, unearth ideas our mind has incubated or recharge so we can work later
with greater energy & purpose.

CHAPTER 7

Recharging Your Attention

Rest is not idleness & to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day.
Listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by
no means a waster of time. - John Lubbock

When you should recharge:

Our energy levels influence how well we’re able to focus.

Recharging is critical & worth the time investment.

Research shows that attentional space expand & contracts in proportion to how much
mutual energy we have.

Getting enough sleep, for example, can increase the size of attentional space by as much
as 58 % & taking frequent breaks can have the same effect.

When attentional space is approximately 60% larger, productivity can grow by just as
much.

Taking more refreshing breaks

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

Research has shown that a refreshing work break should have three characteristics. It
should be….

1. Low effort & habitual;

Hyper Focus 24
 2. Something you actually want to do; &

3. Something that isn’t a chore (Unless you genuinely enjoy doing the chore)

Timing:
No two people are the same, the frequency & length of breaks depend on countless
factors.

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

1. Take a break at least every 90 Minutes

2. Break for roughly 15 Minutes for each hour of work you do

We sleep in 90 minutes cycles moving between periods of light, deep & REM sleep.

Research shows we’re more creative during these low energy periods, as during them our
brain is the least inhibited.

Sleep
For every hour of sleep you miss, you lose 2 hours of productivity the next day.

We lose more than we gain when we compromise our sleep to work longer hours.

The size of our attentional space can shrink by as much as 60% as the result of a sleep
deficit- complex task can take more than twice as long when we’re tired.

A sleep deficit makes us perceive our productivity as being higher than it actually is.

Sleep dreaming & day dreaming is scatterfocus mode activate the same brain regions,
though they’re even more active while we’re asleep.

Neurological level, dreaming is scatterfocus mode on steroids.

Rest is not idleness

Taking a break is one of the most productive things you can do.

Taking more breaks will absolutely lead you to work smarter & accomplish more-
ironically, the busier you are, the more you need them.

Scatter focus mode helps us to recharge our ability to hyperfocus, in addition to letting us
plane for the future & become more creative.

CHAPTER 8

Hyper Focus 25
 Connecting Dots
It’s not that I’m so smart: it’s just that I stay with problems longer.- Albert Einstein

Becoming more creative

You can use scatterfocus mode to become more creative in 2 ways:

1. By connecting more dots

2. By collecting mode valuable dots.

In scatterfocus mode you do the opposite: you zoom out & connect the constellations of
“dots” in your head (a “dot” being any piece of information you hold in your mind.)

On a neurological level, our brain is a constellation of dot-filled network & we’re

constantly adding more with every new experience.

We accumulate dots with each mistake we make (and lean from) and each time we’re
open enough to admit that we’re wrong- which replaces the obsolete dotes in our mind
with new ones.

Scatterfocus lights up your brain’s default network- the network it return to when you’re
not focused on something.

Insight triggers
Uncompleted tasks & projects weigh more heavily on our minds than ones we’ve
finished- Focus comes when we close these distracting open loops.

Two things were likely true at that moment:

1. At that moment your insight was a reponse to a problem you were stuck on.

2. Your mind was likely wandering while you were doing something that didn’t require
your full attention.

3. We connect each new experience to these unresolved problems in order to unearth

novel solutions.

The better you remember a complex problem, the greater you odds of coming up with a
creative solution.

Habitual Scatterfocus lets our minds connect the problems we’re tackling with what we
experience, as well as where our minds happen to wander.

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 You don’t need the results of research to support these findings- you probably have
enough data at your disposal in the form of your own past experiences.

The richer our environment, & the richer our experiences, the more insights we’re able to
unearth.

Connecting even more dots:

1. Scatter your attention in a richer environment

2. Write our problem you’re trying to crack:

When it comes to the problems you’re in the middle of solving: recording them on
paper helps you to better clarify, process & remember them.

3. Sleep on a problem

Edison put it memorably when he purportedly urged that you should “Never go to
sleep without a request to your subconscious”

During REM sleep, participants “showed enhanced integration of unassociated

information”, which helped them find a solution.

Sleep also help you remember more.

4. Step back

Research suggests that the larger your attentional space, the more likelu you are to
continue stubbornly hammering away at complex tasks on which you’re stuck.

5. Intentionally leaave tasks unfinished

The more abruptly you stop working on a creative task, the more you’ll think about
it when you switch to another.

6. Consume more valuable dots:

We are what we consume

CHAPTER 9

Collecting Dots
The more valuable the dots we collect, the more we have to connect.

People become experts on particular subjects by accumulating & connecting enough dots
related to them, in the form of experiences, knowledge & best practice.

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 Our brain are naturally programmed to cluster related dots.

As we cluster more & more dots about a given topic, we naturally develop expertise,
which in turn helps us better manage our attentional space.

We are what we pay attention to, & almost nothing influences our productivity &
creativity as much as the information we’ve consumed in the past.

The value of a dot

While our brain has nearly limitless storage space, our attention is far more restricted.

No two pieces of information are created equal.

The most valuable dots are both useful & entertaining

Useful information is typically actionable & helps you reach your goals.

Any piece of information that supports you existing skills is a good use of time

The more expansive you constellation of dots, the more valuable connections you’re able
to make.

The brain even releases more dopamine, a pleasure chemical, when you consume
information that supports what you know.

When your creativity is effectively the sum of the dots you connect, consuming in
formation on autopilot mode, is one of the less useful activities to engage in.

Collecting more valuable dots

This information is actionable, is accurate, helps us reach our goals.

While a book can sometimes take less than 10 hours to read, it can take decades to write
& may contains a lifetime of lessons that the author has leaned & summarized.

Books provide access to the highest-quality thinking & most useful dots on pretty much
any topic.

The average Americans consumes 34 Hours of TV a week.

1. Consume things you care about, especially when few others do.: Double down on
developing the skills & knowledge that you find entertaining.

2. Eliminate some trash: Passively consuming pointless trash adds nothing to your life.
Every time you stop consuming trash, you make room foe something useful to add value
to your life.

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 3. Choose a few valuable things to add: The most valuable information you can consume in
material that challenges you & usually requires your full attention.

4. Notice what you consume on autopilot mode

5. Veg out…intentionally: You’re perfectly productivity whenever you accomplish what

you intend to.

6. Reevaluate what you’re consuming as you’re consuming it: The Zeigarnik effect makes
us want to finish what we start, but every minutes we spend on something useless is a
minute we love working on something useful.

7. Get things to bid for your attention

8. In the moment, zoom out.

9. Invest in serendipity: The more disparate the dots you connect, the more valuable the
connections often end up being,.

10. Double down on what’s valuable: There are some things you’re better at, than almost
anyone in the world.

Like magic
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you
good. - Malcolm Gladwell

10,000 hours is enough time to build rich constellation of dots around a certain topic or
skills.

Making scatter focus a habit

Hyperfocus consumes mental energy, while scatter focus is energy restorative.

Scattering your attention will be particularly beneficial when your work demands that
you connect more complex, disparate ideas.

The more creativity your job require, the more often you should scatter your attention.

Give me 6 hours to chop down a tree & will spend the first 4 sharping the axe.- Abraham
Lincoln.

The brain needs a few minutes to switch between hyperfocus & scatter focus.

Scatter focus is the most creative mode of your brain.

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 CHAPTER 10

Working Together
Blending hyperfocus & scatter focus
We’re unable to be in both hyperfocus mode & scatter focus mode at the same time.

Invest in your happiness

Positive thinking does not work to make you more happy or productive.

Decreases people’s odds of entering new romantic relationships.

A wandering mind makes us less happy.

A positive mood expands the size of your attentional space.

A negative mood shrink the size of your attentional space.

Whenever you’re feeling miserable, you’re often also dealing with a number of serious
issue.

According to one study, habits that train our brain to wander less- such as mindfulness &
meditation- are even “Effective in reducing relapse in recovering depressible
individuals.”

Happier people are 31 % more productive than those in a negative or neutral state.

We spend 47 % of our time daydreaming.

Happiness is the rose-colored lens we place atop our attentional space, which allows us
to relate to our experiences in a mode productive & creative fashion.

Work around your energy levels:

You’re the most productive when you dedicate your energy-rich moments to your most
complex meaningful tasks.

Scatterfocus is most powerful when you have the least energy.

Analytical problems require focused attention to solve but solutions to creative problems
come when you connect the greatest number of ideas.

One study discovered we solve 27.3% more insight problems during our nonoptimal time
of day, when we’re naturally more tired.

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 A great way to work smarter is to schedule takes that requires focused attention during
your BPT & tasks that require more creativity during your CPT.

Drink alcohol & caffeine strategically

After watching the movie, tipsy participants solved 38% more creative word puzzles than
the sober participants.

While a alcohol helps us scatter focus, caffein helps us hyperfocus.

Caffein boosts mental (& physical) performance in pretty much every measurable way.

It deepens our focus

it helps us persevere

It improves our performances

If you have a brainstorming meeting first thing in the morning, consume caffeine after
the session.

Open offices
Research supports this: we distract ourselves 64% more often in an open environment, &
we’re interrupted by others more often as well.

One study found that after a team understood how costly interruptions were, they fell by
30%.

Creating a focus ritual

Noticing
If you’ve reached an impasse with a problem, awareness will give you the ability to
determine whether the problem is more analytical or requires creative insight to solve-
you can then enter hyperfocus or scatter focus accordingly.

When you’re aware of what has taken hold of your attention, you’re able to direct it back
toward more important & meaningful things.

The power of managing you attention well

Meaning isn’t something we try to find- it’s something we make an effort to notice.

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 Hyperfocus can help you get an extraordinary amount done in a relatively short period of
time.

Scatter focus lets you connect ideas- which helps you unearth hidden insights, become
more creative, plan for the future & rest.

Your attention is the most powerful tool at your disposal to live & work with greater
productivity, creativity & purpose.

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