Hyperfocus: How to Work Less to Achieve More

Mind the gaps. Resist the urge to tap around on your smartphone when you’re waiting in line at the grocery store, walking to the coffee shop, or in the bathroom. Use these small breaks to reflect on what you’re doing, to recharge, and to consider alternate approaches to your work and life. In these moments, mindlessly burning time on the phone isn’

What will be different in the world—or in your work or in your life—as a result of your spending time doing each of the items on your list? What task is the equivalent of a domino in a line of one hundred that, once it topples over, initiates a chain reaction that lets you accomplish a great deal?

When it comes to productivity and creativity, scatterfocus enables you to do three powerful things at once. First, as I’ll discuss in this chapter, it allows you to set intentions and plan for the future.

To focus on this book, I recommend leaving your device in another room. It may take your brain a few minutes to adjust to not having your phone or pad attached at your hip, but trust me, it’s worth powering through that initial resistance. It’s never healthy to be dependent on something—addictive, shiny rectangular devices included.

First, you have to actually care about your intentions.

What I’m arguing in my research is that goals need plans, ideally plans that include when, where, and which kind of action to move towards the goal.” In other words, if a student’s vague goal was to “find an apartment during Christmas break,” his implementation intention could be “I will hunt for apartments on Craigslist and email three apartment l

Divide up your work tasks based on the four categories in the above grid. This simple activity will give you an incredible awareness of what’s actually important in your work. Because I’ll return to the grid often going forward, divvying up your work activities will be valuable as you make your way through the book.

So how do you measure the value of a dot? First, the most valuable dots are both useful and entertaining—like a TED talk.

If not, allow me to introduce the Rule of 3: at the start of each day, choose the three things you want to have accomplished by day’s end. While a to-do list is useful to capture the minutiae of the day, these three intention slots should be reserved for your most important daily tasks.

Surprisingly, I learned that one of the best practices for fostering my creativity and productivity was learning how to unfocus. By paying attention to nothing in particular and letting my mind wander—as I did on my way to the Kingston diner—I found that I became better at making connections between ideas and coming up with new ones.