Or take me, sitting here with my laptop. This morning, as I sip coffee and nibble home fries, I've been able to focus more deeply on my work and have more energy to burn. My morning meditation may have helped-I find I'm able to write more words when I take part in this ritual (40 percent more, by my calculations). I left my phone at home so I could write distraction free, and so my mind could rest on the walk to the diner, and wander. As I'll discuss later, disconnecting is one of the most powerful ways to spark new and innovative ideas. The music playing on the restaurant speakers is catchy, but not enough to be distracting. I'm not here for phonethe soundtrack, though, and also chose this diner over my favorite café because there's no wi-fi-constant connectivity is one of the worst disruptions to our focus and productivity. As the last few paragraphs demonstrate, I am a bit distracted by the environment and the people it's hosting, but they're serving as good fodder for this introduction.
This restaurant scene is a handy illustration of a revelation I had awhile back: attention is all around us. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. Everyone awake on the planet, in this one moment-whether they're eating breakfast, working, or spending time with their family-is focused on something. Attention is the backdrop against which we live our lives wherever we go and whatever we do, even if we're just noticing the thoughts in our head.
t has been a few years since I first began to explore how we can not only focus better but also think more clearly. While this is tough to admit, especially as someone who was making his living as a "productivity expert," I started to notice my own increased distraction, especially as I accumulated more devices. I had never been so busy while accomplishing so little. I had grown restless with boredom and a lack of stimulation and was trying to cram as much into every moment as I could. I knew that my brain never functioned well when I was trying to multitask, but I felt compelled to do it anyway. Working with my email client open and my smartphone on my desk was simply more appealing than trying to concentrate on one or two simple things. For me, this book was born out of necessity: I wrote it because I needed it. When I get excited by a new idea, I typically order dozens of books on it and nerd out
about that topic. Focus has been my most recent fascination. This includes how we can
best manage the distractions around us; multitask more effectively, if that's possible (it
is); battle our resistance to focusing on tasks that make us procrastinate; and also better
unfocus so that we can genuinely relax and recharge. In my reading, I found an awful lot
of information-advice (often contradictory) that was fun to read but ultimately didn't
help me progress my work and life forward.
I then turned to the actual scientific research-scores of academic studies and
decades of documentation dedicated to learning how we best focus. As I carefully read
every study I could find, the "Focus" folder on my computer became massive. I
amassed tens of thousands of words of notes and began to identify the most practical,
tactical lessons from them. I started speaking to the world's foremost attention
