Why can't I focus? The magic of flow & how to find it
Why does focus feel so elusive? Picture this: you sit down to tackle an important task, only for your phone to chime with a notification. You check your emails, then wander onto social media. Twenty minutes later, you return to your original task, but all your momentum is gone.
Sound familiar?
This is a challenge that spans the globe. Researchers at the University of California found that the average office worker can only maintain focus for about three minutes at a time. With so many distractions, how do we reclaim our attention? And how can we enter the coveted state of 'flow,' where focus and productivity effortlessly align?
Let's delve into what's stealing our focus and, more importantly, how to reclaim it.
What's stealing our focus?
There's been a lot of research around losing focus, particularly by Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention.
Hari claims that powerful external forces have stolen our focus. Through his research, he found twelve factors proven to reduce people's ability to pay attention.
Unsurprisingly, social media, smartphones, and many other facets of modern life are to blame, including the food we eat, the hours we work, and the hours we no longer sleep.
Case in point, Hari discovered that about 35% of workers feel they can never switch off their phones because their boss might email them at any time of the day or night. This has become such a problem that a 'right to disconnect' law is now in effect in Australia and other countries worldwide. Employees can ignore communications from their employers after hours if they choose to, without fear of punishment.
Battling the switch-cost effect
One of the biggest problems that comes with our lack of focus is known as the "switch-cost effect". Generally, we think we can do lots of things at once. For example, 60% of the time we use an electronic device, we are using at least one other device at the same time, according to research from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
But a fundamental limitation of the human brain is that we can only consciously think about one or two things at a time – that's it.
Neuroscientists found that when we believe we are doing several things at once, we are actually switching back and forth. Imagine you are writing a report, and then you receive an email. You look at – just a glance – and go back to the report. But Hari explains that in that moment, your brain has to reconfigure and reorientate to disengage from one task and shift attention to the other.
This constant switching leads to the "switch-cost effect", where you end up doing all these things less competently and more slowly. You make more mistakes, remember less, and are less creative.
A study at the University of Oregon found that if you are focusing on something and get interrupted, on average, it will take 23 minutes to get back to the same state of focus. More concerningly, a study of office workers in the US found that most of them never get even one hour of uninterrupted work in a typical day.
The science of flow
There are all sorts of changes we can make at a personal level that will protect our focus. One way is to focus on finding your flow state.
The term "flow" was first coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the father of positive psychology. Your "flow state" is when you engage in a particular task and you really get into it. You find yourself focusing deeply, becoming completely immersed in the task. Time falls away, and you experience a sense of effortless performance and enjoyment.
How do you find this magic state of flow?
Top tips to achieving flow
Hari claims there are three key factors that you need to get into flow:
Choose only one goal: Filter out everything else you're trying to do. If you try to do more than one thing, you won't get into flow.
Make the goal meaningful to you: You can't flow into a goal you don't care about – your attention will slip and slide.
Choose a goal at the edge of your comfort or ability: Too easy, and you'll get bored. Too hard, and you'll feel demotivated. Choose a slightly more challenging goal than one you're comfortable with.
Here are some more top tips to help:
Use your strengths: When you use your strengths, you're more likely to enter into a state of flow. When in flow, you maximise your skills and knowledge development and continue to supercharge your strengths.
Set aside time for deep work: Set clear times to put your head down, turn off notifications and close email browsers. Block off time to dedicate to particular activities so you can reduce the frequency of task switching.
Know when you do your best work: Do you work best in the AM or PM? For example, if you're an early bird, it will be better to have meetings in the morning and set an uninterrupted focus time for the PM.
Use the Pomodoro method: Make the most of your focus time with techniques like the Pomodoro technique, where you alternate 25-minute focus periods with a 5-minute rest.
Go with the flow
In our distraction-filled world, reclaiming focus isn't about working harder, it's about working smarter. By understanding what pulls our attention away and implementing strategies to find flow, we can unlock more productivity, creativity and happiness in everything we do.
So, the next time you catch yourself slipping into distraction, pause and ask yourself: how can I find my flow?
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