How an easy, five-minute technique transformed my focus at work

It was 8am on a Thursday when the drilling started. Two weeks of unscheduled renovation, the workmen told me after I stomped downstairs to investigate. The timing couldn’t have been worse: I had a job interview scheduled for Monday, and I was relying on 16 uninterrupted hours over the next couple of days to finish a complicated article for a new editor I needed to impress. As a freelance writer, I relish working from home because I can’t work anywhere noisy (plus, when I’m alone, no one can judge how many Nature Valley bars I eat). I’ve been freelancing for six years, and I have a strict routine: I’m an early bird, I never work after 6pm unless it’s an emergency, and I spend about eight hours at my desk five days a week. But as the banging and crashing thundered over the sounds of the Today programme, I started to panic. Then I came across a new book called The Attention Paradox – and realised there might be a way to put this fortnight to good use. The paradox in Dr Ben Sharpe’s book is a dilemma most of us face every day, whether or not the builders are in: the harder we try to focus, the less we can concentrate. To tackle this dilemma, he suggests a quick exercise. “Attention mapping” is the practice of keeping a journal for a few days, looking objectively at what kind of cognitive tasks we do during the day and how well they go. By keeping a journal, he promises, we get more observant about how the dozens of factors that affect cognitive ability (environment, mood, sleep) work for us.I start to log my attempts to work. As Sharpe suggests, I measure how I’m feeling (whether I’m rested, well-fed and comfortable or not), the work I’m doing (whether it’s easy, interesting, or engaging) and my mood. I’m also paying attention to where I am (whether it’s well-lit, cluttered, hot or cold) and the breaks I take. It only takes a minute or two a day, and this week, it’s a welcome distraction. When I talk to Sharpe, he says his main argument is that our attention isn’t – as pundits would like us to think – broken or dysfunctional. “You’re just asking it to do something it’s not designed to do”, he says. “At no other point in human history were we expected to sit down for eight hours and engage in spreadsheets or drive a car on a motorway. “People default to saying, ‘Oh, this is ADHD-type behaviour’, [about our inability to focus] but it’s often just an attentional behaviour that everyone possesses, not something that requires a diagnosis necessarily.” Getting distracted isn’t always a bad thing. Scans show that when we think our brains are at rest, some regions are actually at their busiest. What scientists call “mind-wandering” is essential for thinking about the future, understanding other people, creative insight and consolidating memories. It’s a feature, not a bug. And regular breaks are essential to retain concentration in the long run. I notice this during the week when I try to cope with the noise by working before and after it starts. When it gets unbearable, I go to the gym, run an errand or take micro-breaks (also known as taking the bin out). Stepping away from my desk doesn’t necessarily solve the problem I’ve left behind, but I’m surprised how much this “unproductive” time helps me get back to tasks that need deep attention. For example, one day I work from 7am to 11am, take a big break, and then go back to my desk for a 5pm to 9pm shift. I haven’t worked in the evening for years: I worry my work won’t be good enough (it’s fine), and that working late will affect my sleep (it doesn’t). I know most people don’t have the flexibility to work like this, though, and these transitions between what researchers call “focused” and “diffuse” modes of thinking take time. Anyone who’s tried to knuckle down to a task in a day studded with meetings will appreciate the effort this takes. As Sharpe writes in his book, we get “neural fatigue” in the same way we get muscle fatigue. Plus, we aren’t designed to flick from task to task constantly, as often happens in the modern working day of trying to do a work task and being interrupted by meetings, or five different Slack threads running simultaneously. The book also makes the case for “attention architecture” – making sure we can concentrate where we work. As long as my desk is tidy, I don’t usually think twice about it. I tend to zone out when I work. But I notice it’s not so much how my workspace looks that matters as how it feels. One morning, the living room, where I usually work, is particularly cold. Normally I’d force myself to sit at my desk no matter what the thermostat says, putting on a coat and scarf while the room warms up (a freelancer classic). For a change, I try going back to bed and turning on the electric blanket. Normally WFB (working from bed) is a real no-no – I’m a stickler for sleep hygiene. But instead of jumping up and down to make tea to stay warm, as I would have done at my desk, I plough through emails and even manage to read a boring document because I’m no longer staving off hypothermia. No matter where I work, though, I still find myself logging into Instagram whenever I finish a task or have to wait for something to load – not something that allows for brain recovery but instead exacerbates overload. I map all the times and places that I log onto social media and can’t see anything like a pattern. I have already uninstalled the apps, set app timers and put my phone grayscale (part of my digital “attention architecture”, according to the book) – this seems to be one time suck that Sharpe can’t help me with. The builders have now gone, but my attention-mapping – along with other advice from the book, like trying not to task-switch all day and building in mind-wandering – has stuck. It’s helping me really enjoy tasks that called for deep attention. Within a week, I’ve basically given up a rigid 9am-5pm at my desk and I’m already seeing the benefits in focus.. Discovering the importance of staying warm feels weirdly revelatory, too, as does my evening productivity, and the power of a split shift. Even if I end up back in an office, I’m going to protect my deep attention times more fiercely by taking breaks, staying warm and comfortable, and blocking out time for tasks that need deep attention. The Attention Paradox (Piatkus) is out next February