Stolen Focus And How to Reclaim It.
When we think about FOCUS, we don’t typically distinguish the types of focus nor recognize the war waged on our sustained attention.
It’s an insidious degradation born out of technological advances in content generation, content platforms, and content curation that, if left unaddressed or passively allowed, can ultimately corrode our ability to engage in sustained and deep focus.
So, let’s talk about it.
According to Johann Hari, focus can be separated into three types: Spotlight, Starlight, and Daylight.
Some people can be really good at having big dreams and larger-than-life aspirations, but their day-to-day actions don’t reflect or match that drive. They get side-tracked and disturbed, and 2 hours later, they find themselves mindlessly surfing the internet or scrolling on their phone.
Other people can work hard in the moment, and focus on their day-to-day accomplishments but have no larger aspiration or destination in mind. Waking up one day in the future with a crisis-like fervour questioning their existence, happiness, and life to date.
So here they are:
SPOTLIGHT
Spotlight focus is responsible for meaningful progress and acquiring valuable insights. It is our immediate attention.
STARLIGHT
Starlight focus is your overarching prerogative. What are your big-picture north stars and worthwhile goals?
DAYLIGHT
Daylight seems to be the meta-level attention. Monitoring our day-to-day actions, building self-awareness, and knowing with a conscious certainty that what we want is actually what we want.
How do we know that it truly is what we want?
What will we notice when we reach that point?
What will others notice when we reach that point?
THE WORLD WE LIVE IN.
The modern-day world we live in is a sophisticated firehose stream of information that is optimized to demand our attention.
Our ability to focus on these three types of focus is hindered by two things.
1. The Great Acceleration
With social media, content platforms, and the firehose of information that the internet offers, we live in a modern-day world of constant stimulation. It predisposes us to skim information than deep dive into a subject shallowly.
This hit home for me with the following question:
Does the rapid consumption of shallow information ever make you feel calm and ready to do deep work?
Irrespective of whether you retain any shallowly consumed information, it never feels calming nor a facilitator of deep focus. You’re never primed to sit and focus and, in many cases, actually scatterbrained or scattered in your thoughts.
2. The Gradual Deprivation
The other effect of our content-filled world is our acceptance of that content to the detriment of our sleep. As content becomes more sophisticated, more developed, and refined, it becomes more addicting and more captivating. We willingly deprive ourselves of sleep to binge-watch the next craze show, to mindlessly scroll a little longer, and to vicariously peruse the curated lives of friends and celebrities.
Now an additional 30 minutes to an hour may not seem like a lot, but it deprives us of a portion of our REM-sleep, the last component of our sleep cycle prematurely. REM is vital for memory formation, sustained focus and attention. So, in a similar fashion, sleep deprivation can impact your sustained attention and focus.
WHAT CAN WE DO?
There are a few suggestions that Johann Hari proposes.
VERSUS THE GREAT ACCELERATION
Johann proposes a 60-minute rule first thing in the morning.
Don’t touch your phone for the first 60 minutes.
Use the time to re-establish your Daylight, Starlight, and Spotlight focus.
DAYLIGHT
What matters most to me?
What are my strengths and values?
How can I be uniquely valuable to others?
STARLIGHT
Write down your long-term objectives and think of some weekly and daily goals that will get you to those objectives.
SPOTLIGHT
Spend the remaining 60-minute duration and go deep on one daily goal until the 60 minutes have elapsed.
Whatever you choose to work on, do it slowly and methodically
An additional rule that Johann proposes is specific to phone use.
THE PHONE RULE
Any time you try to unlock your phone, open your favourite eBook reader app and read a few paragraphs of a book before checking whatever it is you intended to check. Whether that be your social media feed, chats, email, Facebook, or whatever else.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a researcher in flow states and positive psychology, indicates reading books was the simplest and most reliable way for people to experience flow. Reading is effective in facilitating deep-focus work.
VERSUS THE GRADUAL DEPRIVATION
Pre-commitment is key. Using both physical restrictions as well as social restrictions imposes an environment that limits the temptations.
PHYSICAL RESTRICTIONS
Johann proposes the use of physical restrictions to limit your phone addiction and content consumption before bed. For example, deleting applications off your phone and instead only having access to those applications on a tablet. By physically locking that tablet away 2 hours before bed, you won’t be tempted to binge-watch a TV show and stay away late.
Other options include using applications that restrict access to other apps or using smart power outlets that cut out power at a certain time to devices such as your smart TV.
Discipline and structure with these physical restrictions remove the need for cognitive willpower.
SOCIAL RESTRICTIONS
Additionally, social restrictions can serve you as well. Whether that is publicly announcing a hiatus or informing your friends and loved ones of your commitment to a technology-free bed time, taking active action to inform others of your intentions supports their respect for your boundaries. Otherwise, they may be inadvertent enablers of your phone addiction.
IN SUMMARY
Here’s what you can do.
Step 1 - Develop awareness of the things that steal your attention and focus.
Step 2 - Implement two habits to beat the Great Acceleration
#1. 60-minute morning routines to re-establish your Starlight, Daylight, and Spotlight focus
#2. Use a phone rule to build sustained and deep focus from book reading
Step 3 - Prioritize sleep using physical and social restrictions
Ultimately, Johann Hari says we have to decide NOW whether we value attention and focus. We must ask ourselves whether being able to think deeply matters to us and whether we want it for our children. If we do, we have to fight for it and be deliberate on how we foster and protect it.
What I take away from it is a consistent theme across multiple books and personalities about the importance of deliberate and intentional decision-making in creating our lives. Our lives are as actively or passively shaped as we let them be. With the march of time being unceasing, unless we take an active role in how our lives play out, we are at the bidding of external factors and others who wish to use us for their own lifestyles, whether that be as a market for their product, a side-character in their hero story, or anything else.
And in the world of productivity, it means that we have to create rules deliberately, guiding principles deliberately, and habits to keep us on the path that we intellectually aspire to be on because too many external forces are vying for our attention.