It’s believed that we have about 50,000 thoughts a day: big, small, urgent, banal – “Did I leave the oven on?”. And those are just the ones that register. Subconsciously, we’re constantly sifting through a barrage of stimuli: background noise, clutter on our desks, the mere presence of our phones.
Every second, 11m bits of information enter our brains. Just 0.0004% is perceived by our conscious minds, showing just how hard our brains are working to parse what’s sufficiently relevant to bring to our attention.
It’s no wonder you feel distracted. Formidable though they may be, our brains’ processing powers are a poor match for the fast-paced modern world, the constant pings of our devices and sources of distraction. Many of us routinely feel overwhelmed, and struggle to focus on what we need to get done.
But a new book suggests doing so may be easier than we think. In Focus On-Off, Dutch experts Mark Tigchelaar and Oscar de Bos argue that we can better harness our attention by better understanding our brains, and learning how to manage common “leaks” of our concentration.
“We like to play the blame game with focus,” says De Bos, head of the training company Focus Company, over Zoom from Amsterdam. But many of the most common difficulties, “you can solve for yourself.”
Here’s what we commonly get wrong about focusing, and how we can better manage our minds.
Myth: concentrating is hard
Even a mention of your name, for example at a party, can cause subconscious distraction. Photograph: Posed by models. Compassionate Eye Foundation/Natasha Alipour Faridani/Getty Images
Most of us don’t find it hard to focus on something we’re interested in, De Bos points out. What we condemn as “distractions” are just the brain prioritising what it perceives as most important at that moment. Yes, you might conclude that checking Instagram wasn’t the best use of your time – but your brain didn’t struggle to act on the urge to open the app and enjoy some pictures of your friends or of strangers’ cats.
It shows that focusing isn’t hard. Where we run into difficulty is by struggling against our brains, and even judging them for doing what they’re built to do, says De Bos.
We routinely underestimate how hard our brains are working to take in everything around us and put it into order. De Bos gives the example of talking to someone at a party. “If you’re listening to this conversation and somebody mentions your name, you’re going to be subconsciously distracted,” he says. “All the words around you came into your ears, were processed inside your brain, and then your brain decided: ‘Oh, wait, this is important – let’s switch our attention.’”
Instead of trying to fight this mental tendency to jump around, we can learn to manage it by becoming aware of common “leaks” of concentration. If you find a task boring, make it more interesting. If your work environment is distracting, move somewhere quieter. If your mind is too busy, clear some space by writing down your thoughts. If you’re exhausted, give your brain a break.
Myth: turn off notifications to focus
Most of us know to turn off notifications to limit interruptions from our phones, but even having our devices within sight subtly drains our concentration.
A 2017 study by researchers at the University of Texas found that participants performed better in complex cognitive tasks when their phones were in a different room, compared with when the devices were in sight or even inside a pocket or bag.
The mere presence of the phone was found to negatively affect available working memory and functional fluid intelligence (such as problem-solving and critical thinking), even among people who typically didn’t struggle to focus.
While keeping your phone to hand probably won’t interfere with sending emails or similarly untaxing tasks, De Bos suggests moving it to a different room and/or turning it off when you want to get “deep work” done.
Even keeping your desk and workspace clear, and minimising open browser tabs, can aid cognitive capacity, he says.
Myth: we should be striving for ‘flow’
Total focus … in the ‘flow state’. Photograph: Posed by model; Rattanavan Baunoi/Getty Images
The antithesis of a frazzled, jumpy state of mind – and frequently put forward as optimal for productivity – is the fabled “flow state”, whereby we’re absorbed in what we’re doing.
Coined as a term by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihály in 1975, it’s characterised by total concentration, and such effortless, productive attention that we’re not even aware of time passing.
It’s nice when you can get it, says De Bos, but it’s not realistic to aim for routinely. Achieving flow depends on striking a delicate balance between challenge and skill: a task must be difficult enough to be absorbing, but also achievable. It also takes time to kick in, usually around 10 to 15 minutes without interruptions.
So it’s unlikely you’re ever going to get “into flow” going through your emails. We may also be losing the skill, having become so accustomed to jumping between tasks, De Bos suggests. “It’s almost beyond what the average person can do nowadays … We don’t have these 10 to 15 minutes of doing the same thing.”
Stop striving for flow when you’re unlikely to achieve it, and set yourself a lower bar, says De Bos. “Focus is just a few seconds of doing the same thing; the flow state is more difficult.”
Myth: it’s only a quick email
The biggest thief of our focus is task-switching. Sometimes this is put upon us by external interruptions, such as a question from a colleague or a buzz from our phone, but the trigger can also be internal: a thought will register and we’ll act on it, almost without thinking.
You might think “it’ll only take a second”, but every time you switch to a new task, part of your brain clings to what you were just doing, splitting your attention, slowing you down and making you less effective.
Simply checking your phone or inbox causes a temporary drop in IQ, lasting at least a minute. If either the original activity or the interruption is a bit more complex, that recovery takes longer.
Minimise task-switching … Photograph: Posed by model; Milan Markovic/Getty Images
The best way to improve your focus is to take whatever steps you can to minimise this task-switching. De Bos suggests not checking your emails before (or during) a meeting, shutting down your inbox while doing complex work and not starting tasks you don’t have time to finish.
If you have more control over your time, you can further minimise task-switching by structuring your days (or weeks) by tasks, projects or themes. De Bos reserves meetings for Monday and Wednesday mornings, deep work for Tuesday and Thursdays and creative work on Fridays.
Not only does this give you a chance to “get into the groove a little bit”, but over time, “these highways in your brain get stronger, so it’s easier to stay focused”.
Likewise, if you feel a sudden urge to check your phone or email, wait five minutes, training your attention span.
Myth: getting stuff done takes peace and quiet
Distracting conversations can be blocked out by reading faster. Photograph: Posed by models; Maskot/Getty Images
We might think we need total silence to focus, but “sometimes we don’t have enough stimuli”, De Bos says. That’s why our minds tend to wander when faced with a task we find boring, easy or slow. “Everything else is more exciting for your brain, and it will start to think about something else.”
One solution is increasing the level of mental challenge. If you’re struggling to read a dense document while your colleagues are having a noisy conversation about The Traitors, try reading faster, De Bos suggests.
Similarly, listening to music you know well (and are unlikely to be distracted by) can help you to engage with work you don’t find stimulating. Both strategies make your brain work harder, focusing it more effectively on the task at hand.
“Especially if it’s something you do every day, challenge yourself – go a bit quicker, or make it harder, to kind of trick yourself into thinking that it’s more exciting,” De Bos says.
Myth: take the easy wins
It can be tempting to pad out your to-do lists with small wins as a way to motivate yourself to tackle more, but De Bos cautions against it.
“For some people, it works, because you can get a kind of dopamine rush,” he says. People with ADHD in particular, who can struggle to prioritise and order tasks, may benefit from creating momentum.
But often, says De Bos, those easy victories work against us by draining our finite mental reserves. He supports what’s known as the “eating the frog” method of time management, and tackling your most important task first.
A good night’s sleep regulates glutamate levels. Photograph: Posed by model. Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty Images
The brain tires with exertion over the course of the day, making us less effective and more impulsive. A 2022 study by researchers at the Paris Brain Institute found that, as we’re engaged in “attentionally demanding” work, glutamate (an amino acid and neurotransmitter) gradually accumulates in one area of the prefrontal cortex, impairing functioning.
That buildup of glutamate “is not easily cleaned up” by short breaks, says De Bos: it really takes a good night’s sleep for the brain to feel fully refreshed, meaning you should budget on having “a certain amount of focus” each day.
Knowing that, it makes sense to spend it judiciously, and do your most important work first. “You never know how much you’ll have left in the second half of the day.”
Spacing out mentally taxing activities and taking breaks from work both help to regulate glutamate levels, but what we do in those breaks is also important. Scrolling social media, reading and many other activities we find fun or refreshing might be less demanding than work, but still involve taking in new information. “Your brain is not recharging in that moment,” says De Bos.
Without regular opportunities for the brain to pause and “do mostly nothing”, over time, that accumulated glutamate can lead to stress, sleeping issues and potentially burnout: “That’s where you really get into problems.”
Stare way to tech heaven? Photograph: Posed by model; Igor Suka/Getty Images
The most restorative activities are those that require very little of you, such as going for a walk without headphones, cleaning and even staring out the window. These activate the brain’s all-important “default mode network”, says De Bos, permitting it a chance to recover and stave off burnout. “When you’re not feeding it with new information, it finally has time to clean up your memories of the day … Anything where your mind can kind of wander is a good break.”
Even rewatching a familiar television show is a better option than a new or challenging one, De Bos adds – and certainly less involving than social media.
Myth: we should all be ‘time-blocking’
Many productivity hackers swear by “time-blocking”, where you plan out your day hour-by-hour and assign hours (or minutes) to a particular task or activity in a calendar.
If it works for you, great, says De Bos. Just don’t then also use a to-do list as you’ll risk creating inconsistencies between that and your calendar – not to mention potentially spending more time on productivity management than being productive.
For many people, however, time-blocking is a headache and sometimes counterproductive, given that it depends on our faulty powers of prediction. “We’re trying to think, ‘How much time is this task going to take me?’ and the answer is never right,” says De Bos.
Either we underestimate and fall behind, or else a straightforward task balloons to fit the time assigned to it. “We overestimate what we can do in a day, and underestimate what we can do in an hour,” he says.
The Pomodoro technique of working in 25-minute bursts can be better for motivating you to meet a deadline, or getting you started on a complex (or boring) task. But sometimes the secret to getting more done is attempting to do less, says De Bos. Our finite powers of focus mean there is a limit to how many projects or responsibilities we can take on.
Myth: most meetings should be emails
Many meetings are over just as they’re getting started. Photograph: Posed by models; Organic Media/Getty Images
While nobody likes meetings, the trend for making them shorter – or replacing them with emails – isn’t helping our ability to focus, says De Bos.
It takes at least 10 minutes to really engage with an activity, meaning many meetings are over just as they’re getting started, leading to more meetings. But managing, sending and replying to emails is an even bigger drain on our concentration. “If it’s important, I’d rather have a good, long meeting and be done with it,” De Bos says. But, he adds, “I think we’re over-communicating.” Technology has enabled us to externalise and outsource our every thought at the expense of not just our time but other people’s. “We kind of do brain dumps on each other … There’s no time for work any more; it’s just emailing.”
So try to be intentional and considerate in your communication. Do you need to fire off this “quick q” to your colleague, or could you wait to see if it resolves – or answer it yourself?
“There’s a lot we can do smarter,” says De Bos. If you have too many things on your mind, make a note to revisit later. Don’t use your colleagues “as your capture tool. If you email a lot, you’re part of the problem.”
Myth: we can’t beat Big Tech
Between the stranglehold of Big Tech, reports of screen addiction and shortening attention spans, it’s easy to feel hopeless about our ability to focus. But De Bos is refreshingly optimistic.
Yes, the modern world is riddled with sources of distraction, but we also have more power to resist them than we might assume. “The time is now to start thinking about it, and make some decisions: what does worklife look like?” Instead of shutting your phone in a drawer, ask yourself: how are you going to spend the time you would have lost to scrolling? What routines and rules can minimise day-to-day disruptions and decision-making?
‘We get nervous about not being productive’ … Oscar de Bos. Photograph: Judith Jockel/The Guardian
Perhaps your struggles with focus stem from asking too much of yourself. “We get so nervous about not being productive,” says De Bos.
But our brains need breaks, and time to recover, just as our bodies do. Sometimes, it might be best to stare into the middle distance.
Focus On-Off by Mark Tigchelaar and Oscar de Bos is published 29 January
