We live in a time where we’re always connected. A constant barrage of messages from friends, notifications from apps, and the hottest trending news dings, flashes, pops and otherwise yells for our valuable attention. That attention is a commodity advertisers pay top dollar to secure. In a time like 2017 it feels harder than ever before to get anything meaningful done.
Your Distraction-Lovin’ Brain
Distraction is a difficult beast to tame these days, and it’s something I’ve personally worked to get better at. As human beings we tend to enjoy being distracted because it can make us feel accomplished, valuable, and “in-the-know.” People often claim that they’re good at “Multitasking,” performing more than one task at a time. It’s even common to see job listings that name “ability to multitask” as a needed requirement to perform the job. The problem with multitasking, though, is that scientifically speaking the human brain simply doesn’t do it well, no matter how accomplished it makes us feel on the surface. If you are one who feels you’re an exception to this rule and if you take pride in your ability to multitask, it may be worthwhile to reexamine that and just see what happens when you try to focus on and do one thing at a time instead. It may feel productive trying to broaden our attention to include a lot of important things at once, but in reality it is a much less efficient way to use our brains’ capabilities.
The Myth of Multitasking
Rather than doing tasks simultaneously, what we understand from neuroscience is that the brain can, at best, only switch rapidly between tasks. It may seem like we’re focusing on two things at once, but this rapid transition back and forth gets a little rough. Since it takes the brain effort to switch from one task to another, we’re just burning up our precious mental energy more quickly. Having to stop and start over and over costs us time. It’s similar to how much gas a car uses driving in the city compared to on the highway. Having to repeatedly stop and then accelerate uses more gas than keeping a consistent speed does. Similarly, trying to maintain the mental back and forth of distraction or the attempt at “multitasking” exhausts the mind and uses mental energy much more quickly. It’s terribly inefficient and it prevents us from doing our best work, causing more mistakes and not allowing us to dig in deep to find our best ideas. When, like us, you’re trying to make something worthwhile in your limited spare time, that mental energy and hours spent working are worth their weight in chocolate-dipped gold-plated diamonds. It’s vital to learn to protect your mental stamina and use it to its fullest.
To do this, we can learn to focus on one thing, and make that focus less like a broad spotlight and more like the beam of a laser. Focusing like this can feel a little unnatural; in my experience the brain tends to resist this kind of focus tooth and nail because it’s so addicted to being distracted and responding instantly to its sense of the outside world. Fortunately, this kind of focus is something we can train the brain to do, just like we can train our muscles to lift heavy objects. In the meantime, there are a few “hacks” that I’ve found have worked for me that I’d like to pass along. These have helped me in my quest to develop the ability to focus deeply, and they will help you too if you’ll apply them regularly.
9 Steps to Improving Your Ability to Focus
1. Know yourself. You know better than anyone when you’re the most likely to get distracted by things, whether they’re important or trivial. You know what kinds of things pull you in and waste your time and energy. It could be something frivolous like checking your email or Facebook multiple times, or it could be something important like your children wanting your attention. At any rate, take a minute and determine what things tend to call out the loudest to distract you.
2. Know your project. Plan it out and break it up into bite-sized tasks. For me, there are a lot of varied types of activities that go into Meager Quest. There’s animation and background painting, and there’s also managing our social media to grow our following and creating content like what you’re reading now. I separate all these things out into smaller bite size tasks so that when I sit down to work I can focus in on just one of the smaller areas and get something more meaningful done, rather than trying to do tiny bits of each in a single work session and going crazy.
3. Get strategic and schedule your time accordingly. Make a schedule that addresses these things you know about yourself and about your project. Maybe you can work early in the morning or late at night when the kids are in bed or when you know nobody in their right mind will be sending you emails or texts. Maybe you can work on a certain aspect of your project on Monday and a different specific dimension of it on Tuesday. Stick to that schedule— make it a habit that happens automatically (I’ve talked a bit more about habit formation here. Schedule time for everything that’s important in your life. Set up specific blocks of time for your important relationships, for relaxation and sleep, and carve out a little chunk of time each day when you can work uninterrupted on your awesome project.
4. Take some time to get organized. Visual clutter sucks. It’s distracting and stressful. Don’t buy into the lie that as a creative person you’re “supposed” to be cluttered. You’re not, and you’ll do better work if you relieve your mind of having to deal with and interpret unnecessary chaos at every turn. You’ll also save tons of time by not having to search long and hard for digital files or physical tools lost in the mess every time you need something.
5. Eliminate any distractions while you work. Turn the internet off! Unplug your router from the wall if you have to. If you need certain parts of the internet for pertinent work-related research, there are various web blockers you can use that won’t allow you to access certain sites that you know are going to suck you in (I’m looking at you right now, Reddit.) Self Control is a great free app if you’re using a Mac. If you’re not, you can install a Chrome extension called StayFocusd that works really well. Turn off any notifications on your computer. Put your phone in another room and shut the door, you don’t need it. Right now, during this time you’ve specifically set aside to work, it is just you and the specific task at hand. No distractions. Texts, email, nervous-twitch Facebook checking, and even your friends can wait for an hour.
6. Use a “signal jammer,” as I call it. Even after doing all you can to eliminate distractions, seemingly innocuous outside noise can come creeping in and pull your attention to far-off places. To “jam” these stray “signals,” I like to listen to lyric-free ambient music or nature sounds (thunderstorms or running water are particularly effective for me personally.) A few artists I like to listen to for this are Jonn Serrie, Brian Eno, Tycho, and Solar Fields. Classical can work really well too if you’re into that. The music is calming and the droning sounds of the ambience can be turned up to mask out outside noises without ever screaming for your attention themselves. They also have no lyrics to distract you or muddle with your own internal dialogue. There’s also a paid music service called Focus@Will that works incredibly well, and they offer a free trial. Regardless of where you’re getting this music, though, you’re not listening to the music for entertainment while you work, you’re listening to calm your brain and isolate your sense of hearing. I’d strongly suggest listening from a service that doesn’t throw ads into the mix.
7. Your day job (or school) is your training ground. Practice this ability to focus during the 9-to-5. The more focused you are there and the less you bounce around from task to task, the more energy you’ll have left at the end of the day to put into your personal project. Since you’re already at work for a good chunk of your day anyway, you might as well transform the office into your brain training dojo. That way it becomes something that supports your other endeavors rather than just taking time away from them.
8. Treat yourself well. You’re not a robot and you need to practice self-care. Get plenty of sleep, eat delicious food (squeeze something healthy in there too!), take a little time out to do something totally unproductive every day that you enjoy (mine will be Splatoon 2 for the next while!) DO NOT risk burning yourself out. It is better to work slowly and steadily, rather than being Superman for one week but then stopping and giving up before you’re done. Always push your limits, but treat yourself like a human, not a machine.
9. On the weekend (or whenever you have a day off from your day job) give yourself a longer block of time than normal to get things done. For me, it’s good to work just a little bit at a time during the week when time is more limited to keep habits up and creativity flowing. However, it’s important that you practice focusing on your project, uninterrupted, for a longer period of time. During these sessions of deeply focused work you’ll be able to get a lot done, and with the added time you’ll find that your focus can get even deeper into “the zone.”
Put these into practice as I have, and I promise that as you do them consistently, you will be training your brain to focus in and create amazing things on demand. Deep, focused work doesn’t just preserve your precious mental energy. It also allows you to do much better work than you ever thought possible. I hope you’ve found something worthwhile from these tips, and until next time, happy creating!
