How to re-claim your attention
When I quit the news last year, I was taking an unknowing first step toward re-claiming my attention. Before this, I was wildly scattered and distracted—like I had somehow forgotten how to focus. My attention span was at an all-time low.
As I started training myself to pay attention again, I became diligent about two main strategies: setting intentions and minimizing distractions. These sound like simple common sense things, but it took many months of practice before I noticed the positive effects.
I wanted to take a few moments to document the more granular details on how I integrated these strategies into my life… juuust in case I lose my focus again.
1. Key internal strategy: Setting intentions
Telling myself, “I’m going to spend x amount of time on y activity,” is a signal that what I’m about to do is important to me and deserves my full attention. This can include working on my book, chatting with a friend, or watching a movie. The point of the intention is for me to be fully present for what I’m about to do.
Here are the specific tactics I use:
I set time blocks. My favourite durations are 25 minutes (pomodoro timer), 60 minutes, and 90 minutes. When I’m in the flow, especially with my creative projects, I often work in time blocks longer than 90 minutes—but I try to break these up with a pomodoro timer so I’m not sitting for too long. A time block can also be the length of a movie that I’m planning to watch or a coffee date with a friend.
I batch similar activities to complete within one time block. When it comes to focus, I find this much more effective than switching between dissimilar activities.
I practice time blocking in all aspects of life, even for activities that might seem trivial. For example, I batch my “relaxing” activities into one time block. This is usually an open time block at the end of the day when I do whatever I want (playing games on my phone, checking social media, browsing fun websites). If I know I’m planning to spend a block of time on fun entertainment, I’m less likely to be distracted when I want to focus on my work.
I try to choose long-form content as this tends to help my ability to focus. I’ve noticed that short-form content tends to decrease my attention span so I batch most of this into one infrequent time block.
For infrequent or irregular activities that might otherwise slip my mind, I create a calendar entry so I have a built-in time block and reminder. An example is moon planning, which happens approximately every two weeks and takes around an hour.
When I feel like external accountability will help me focus, I join a writing or co-working session. My current favourites are Morning Coffee Sessions and Writer’s Hour.
I set an alarm (on my watch) multiple times a day so I don't need to keep an eye on the time when I have something coming up. This helps me focus fully on what I'm doing, without worrying about losing track of time.
I do my best to come out of the activity on time. This can be difficult when I’m in flow, but I don’t want to drag things out because this throws off the rest of my day, which creates a negative experience for me. I want to end on time because this helps me arrive at my future time blocks more joyfully.
2. Key External strategy: Minimizing distractions
We all know about external distractions, but sometimes it’s hard to take the steps to minimize these. I felt a lot of resistance and guilt when I was first setting boundaries for my time and attention. But the discomfort of communicating these boundaries to the people around me has been worth it. I’m feeling less urgency around external requests (i.e., the need to respond right away), which helps me maintain my focus.
Here are the specific tactics I use:
I try to gather up all the necessities before starting what I have planned. This means that if I start a time block for my creative work, I’ll make sure I have everything I need within reach (tea, lip balm, tissues, etc.). This way, I don’t interrupt my focus because I have to get something.
I put the phone away. At a minimum, I turn my phone face down. Sometimes I don’t even know where it is.
I silence notifications. I pretty much have all my push notifications turned off. I have some subtle visual notifications on, but I’ve gotten really good at ignoring these—at least for the rest of my time block. I know not everyone can or wants to silence notifications, but this works well for me.
I let people know when I’m trying to focus. This might not work for everyone in your household (for example, if you have young kids), but I try to set the expectation in advance if I need to concentrate and don’t want to be interrupted. The easiest way to do this is to be in another room with the door closed, but there are other creative solutions like using visual or audio cues.
I do regular brain dumps in the form of morning pages or to-do lists so I can get distractions out of my mind.
The wonderful thing about training your attention is that it doesn’t require perfection, just consistency. I still get distracted at times but, overall, I am so much more present and focused than I used to be.
