Improve Your Attention Span and Focus With This Rare Skill

Cal Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown University and a PhD graduate of MIT, is the author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (print, eBook, audiobook).

This premise of this book is that "Deep Work," the skill of performing professional activities in a state of distraction-free concentration, which pushes your cognitive capabilities to their limit, is becoming more rare and more valuable among "knowledge workers" (white-collar workers).

According to Newport, "Deep Work" enables two core abilities for thriving in today's global economy:

1. The ability to quickly master hard things, and
2. The ability to produce at an elite level in terms of quality and speed

In fact, research and neuroscience show the mental strain that accompanies "Deep Work" is necessary to improve your cognitive abilities, which are at the core of becoming more time-efficient and productive.

Here are a handful of my favorite takeaways from this book:

1. Does it really help your work to be constantly connected?

In its sixth decade, the Boston Consulting Group has offices in more than 90 cities across 50 countries, and more than 16,000 employees and partners. The company wanted to test the presumption that it helps to have their employees constantly connected, so they forced one of their consulting teams to be completely disconnected from everyone within and outside of the organization, for one day each week.

Sure enough, the consultants found more enjoyment in their work, better communication, more learning, and a better product delivered to clients.

2. Attention residue causes lowers levels of productivity.

Attention residue, the practice of partially thinking about a preceding task but working on another one, is the byproduct of working in a distraction-heavy environment, in which you're prone to switch from task to task more frequently.

For example, if you're constantly distracted by emails or people in your workplace, you're unable to fully focus on these emails or people's requests, because your brain is still focused on the task you were performing before the distraction.

Over the course of a day, attention residue grows and takes a greater (negative) effect on your brain, which diminishes your ability to be as productive (effective) as possible, not to mention its drainage on your time.

3. The paradox of trends in today's business communications

Trends in how business organizations operate today appear to improve employee relations, but decrease employee productivity in reality.

For example, instant messaging softwares like Slack and always-on email expectations are designed to increase response times and the sharing of ideas. At the same time, they fragment and ultimately minimize our attention spans, effectively rewiring our brains, which inhibits us from performing "Deep Work."

4. The impact of our current email habits on the bottom line

Tom Cochran, the CTO at Atlantic Media from 2012 to 2014, noticed he was spending an increasing amount of time in his email inbox, which was largely outside the scope of his role and responsibilities. So, Cochran commissioned an internal review of Atlantic Media's employee email practices, and found that the company was spending more than $1 million each year just to process email communications.

This isn't particularly surprising if you consider that a 2012 McKinsey report concluded the average U.S. white-collar worker spends 60 percent of work time engaged in some sort of communications (e.g. meetings, phone calls, email, instant messaging) — including 30 percent with email alone. In other words, the average U.S. white-collar worker spends more than half of work time conversing about work, rather than doing the actual work.

5. 'Deep Work' is most effective when it's planned and scheduled.

When Newport maps out his week, he blocks off specific times for "Deep Work," as opposed to making decisions about "going deep" moment-by-moment. In doing so, Newport reserves more mental energy for the "Deep Work" itself.

Vertical Planning is a terrific practice for planning and scheduling your "Deep Work."

6. 'Waiting for inspiration to strike is a terrible, terrible plan.'

Newport cites Mason Currey, a journalist who spent half a decade cataloguing some of the most thinkers and writers, in his point that "Deep Work" is best achieved through systemization, not inspiration.

"There is a popular notion that artists work from inspiration, that there is some strike, or bolt, or bubbling up of creative mojo from who knows where," according to Currey, the author of Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. "But I hope my work makes clear that waiting for inspiration to strike is a terrible, terrible plan."

"In fact, perhaps the single-best piece of advice I can offer to anyone trying to do creative work, is to ignore inspiration."

To make the most out of your "Deep Work" sessions, Newport suggests building rituals that will propel you to "go deep" more frequently and "stay deep" longer. My Deep Work Checklist is a great place to start.

7. The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish.

Newport recommends using 4DX, an execution process developed by Stephen R. Covey and Chris McChesney, which they detail in their book The 4 Disciplines of Execution. The crux of this process is:

1. Focus– Execution should be aimed at a small number of wildly important projects and tasks within your "Deep Work" hours.
2. Leverage – Measure your success with lag measures (results you want to achieve) and lead measures (tasks performed to achieve desired results).
3. Engagement – Record your measures in a visual place, such as my favorite project and task management software Monday.com.
4. Accountability – At the end of each week, review your projects and tasks, and ask yourself, “What are the one or two most important things I can do next week to impact the lead measures?”

8. At workday's end, shut down your thoughts about anything work-related until the next morning.

This means no late-night email checks, and no replaying of work-related conversations or happenings from earlier in the day. As Newport points out, there's plenty of science that suggests downtime will increase your productivity, including:

• Unconscious Thought Theory
• Directed Attention Fatigue
• Deliberate Practice Theory

According to Newport:

"Trying to squeeze a little more work out of your evenings might reduce your effectiveness the next day, enough that you might end up getting less done than if you had, instead, respected a shutdown."

9. Getting the most out of your 'Deep Work' habit requires training.

Once ours brains are wired for distraction (e.g. mobile phone notifications, workplace distractions), we crave distracting stimuli, so we must reconfigure our brains to be better-suited for ignoring distractions and staying on-task.

This is why Newport recommends taking breaks from focus, rather than taking breaks from distractions. After all, if you wanted to lose weight, you wouldn't pursue an inactive life, with breaks for exercise; instead, you'd pursue exercise on a regular basis, with intermittent breaks to give your body rest.

10. Put more thought into how you want to spend your leisure time.

We've made the mobile phone a bad habit of filling our free time (or downtime), ultimately diminishing the value of this time.

With this in mind, Newport advocates for planning what you want to do with your evenings and weekends before they begin (see: Vertical Planning).

Structured plans (e.g. hobbies, exercise) provide good fodder for these hours, since they generate specific actions and specific goals to fill your time, which "energizes the human spirit ... what it means to live, not just exist."

Check out Deep Work in print, eBook, or audiobook format.

There's more where that came from at Hack My Time.