Hyperfocus
Chris Bailey
read
A book about where your attention goes. I never finished it, but the first half had already done its job.
Chris Bailey starts from a simple picture. Your attention has a small amount of room in it, what he calls your attentional space, and everything you're holding in your head takes up some of it. The task in front of you, the message you haven't answered yet. When that space fills up you get slower and sloppier, and you usually don't notice.
The first half of the book is about hyperfocus: choosing one thing, clearing everything else out of the room, and catching yourself when your mind wanders off so you can bring it back. He's practical about it. Make distractions harder to reach before you start, decide ahead of time what you're working on, and check in with yourself now and then about what you're actually doing.
The second half is about the opposite mode, which he calls scatterfocus. It's letting your mind wander on purpose, because that's where a lot of ideas and connections come from. I have to be honest here. I never got to that half. I put the book down after the part about focus, which is a little funny, because the half I skipped is the one about not concentrating.
The first half was enough. The idea that attention is a small room that fills up fast changed how I set up a night of work. Before I start, I decide on one task and put the phone out of reach.
