Executive Functioning and the Limits of Hyperfocus

Ericsson subsequently posited that four and a half hours is the natural human limit for the highest level of focus on a single task in any given day.

“Any time you do a task—whether it’s visual, auditory or otherwise—it draws on a specific set of cognitive operations. The more tasks you perform, the more you draw from that limited pool of resources.”

The second way that our attention is limited is that after focusing on something, we can hold only a small amount of information in our short-term memory.

critical point that bears repeating is that attention is a limited-capacity resource—there are definite limits to the number of things we can attend to at once. We see this in everyday activities. If you’re driving, under most circumstances, you can play the radio or carry on a conversation with someone else in the car. But if you’re looking