Hyperfocus summary

Most things that you do in life require some form of attention. If you want to perform at your best, you have to pay close attention to whatever task is at hand.

But there’s a problem: your attention is severely limited. First of all, there’s a limit to the number of things you can pay attention to at any one time. Timothy Wilson, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, estimates that the human brain picks up about eleven million bits of information every second. But the number you can consciously process at one time? A mere 40.

Picture this. You’re at your desk. You’re working. Your attentional space is zeroed in on your task, and you’re on the brink of hyperfocus. Then, suddenly, your phone beeps.

If you’re like most of us, you’ll reach over instinctively and check the notification. But even if you don’t, your flow has been interrupted – your phone has intruded on your attentional space, and brought a whole host of irrelevant thoughts along with it.

Hyperfocus is a powerful tool. The ability to give sustained, intense attention to whatever task you’re engaged in, gives you an edge in a wide variety of situations.

But, despite its usefulness, hyperfocus alone isn’t enough. Your mind needs time to rest and refresh every now and then – and even more importantly, you need to give yourself the opportunity to be creative.

Have you ever paid attention to the flow of your thoughts while meditating or trying to fall asleep? If you have, then you probably realized that randomness is a key characteristic of the resting mind. When your mind’s relaxed, unrelated memories, images, and ideas bubble to its surface unsummoned – and often without any discernible logic or pattern.

If you’re trying to doze off or focus on your breathing, these random thoughts can be annoying. But if you’re trying to think creatively, they can sometimes prove a godsend.

So, scatterfocus helps you to establish insightful connections between diverse observations and ideas. It allows you to relate new experiences to old problems – and sometimes even leads you to solutions.

But it’s not simply a matter of mulling things over and hoping your environment will trigger a eureka moment. If scatterfocus is about connecting dots, then it stands to reason that collecting dots matters too – because the quality of the information you absorb determines the quality of your subsequent insights.