How to Focus in a World Full of Distractions

Speaker's Personal Experiment

• Observation: Life is a series of screens from morning to night (phone, iPad, computer)
• Issue: Constant distractions (phone, notifications) impacting productivity
• Experiment: Limited phone use to 30 minutes/day for one month
  • Activities included: maps, calls, music, podcasts
  • Adjustment period: 1 week to lower stimulation level
  • Results:
    • Attention span increased
    • More ideas
    • More plans and thoughts about the future

Learning and Research

• Research Methods:
  • Hundreds of research papers
  • Personal experiments
  • Global meetings with focus experts
  • Resulted in 25,000 words of research notes

Attention Span and Stimulation

• Attention Span:
  • In front of a computer: focus for 40 seconds before switching tasks
  • With distractions like Slack: focus for 35 seconds
• Root Cause: Overstimulation, not just distraction
  • Novelty Bias: Brain rewards new, stimulating information with dopamine (social media, email)

Reducing Stimulation: The Boredom Experiment

• Method: One hour/day of boring activities for a month – results parallel to the phone experiment
  • Examples:
    • Reading iTunes terms and conditions
    • Waiting on hold with Air Canada
    • Counting zeros in the digits of pi
    • Watching a clock tick
• Results:
  • Attention span increased
  • More effortless focus
  • Increased creativity and planning

Benefits of Mind Wandering

• Wander Focus: Deliberately letting the mind wander (e.g., while showering, walking)
  • Enhances creativity and problem solving
  • Research Findings: Mind wanders to three main places: past (12%), present (28%), future (48%)
• Practical Examples:
  • Knitting
  • Long showers or baths
  • Walking without a phone

Recommendations

• Fundamental Shifts:
  1. Less is More: Don’t focus on fitting more in – our best ideas come from downtime
  2. Symptom, Not Cause: Distraction is a symptom, the root cause is overstimulation
• 2-Week Challenge: Make the mind less stimulated and observe the effects:
  • Use phone features to reduce time wastage
  • Implement a daily disconnection ritual (e.g., 8pm-8am)
  • Weekly disconnection ritual (e.g., technology Sabbath)
  • Rediscover boredom
  • Scatter attention deliberately

Conclusion

• State of attention determines the state of life
• Less stimulation leads to increased productivity, creativity, better focus, and an overall better life

Speaker's Final Words: Thank you.

(Applause)